Panama by Shelby Hiatt Page B

Castilian, and he says he's honored to make my acquaintance, and then we're quiet.
    Federico straightens with the Whitman in his hand. "Here you are."
    "Thanks." But I don't move or start to leave.
    Federico begins to look at me in that way he has, penetrating and curious, and Augusto stands. He stretches. "Think I'll take a little walk. Get some
airefresca"
he says and tries to look casual.
    Federico smiles at this. Decades, whole centuries, of European sophistication behind that smile, and I stand lost in his aristocratic aura.
    Augusto goes out.
Forty-Four
    Now it's really awkward.
    I want to vanish, but Federico isn't disturbed, which helps a little.
    He stands looking at me, trying to figure me out. I'm desperate—need to fill the air with talk—and then I remember. I dig in my pocket.
    "I thought you'd want to see this."
    I give him a clipping from
El Unico,
the Spanish weekly published in Miraflores. It's a report on the death of a Spaniard in a premature explosion and has to be the man Federico is grieving.
    He takes the clipping, starts reading, and slowly lowers himself into his chair the way he did looking at the Freud when we first met, that evening still locked vivid in my mind. He takes his time, even rereads the article—it's short. Tears well in his eyes at one point but he doesn't seem to realize.
    "May I have this?" he says and looks up at me.
    "Of course."
    "How do you see this paper? It's an anarchist publication. Surely your family doesn't read it."
    "No. I buy it to practice my Spanish. And I like what it says."
    He looks at me and I'm uncomfortable again, but I don't say anything. I let him study me.
    "You are not a typical American."
    I don't know how to answer that, but I consider it a compliment and say nothing. It makes me shy, the whole situation does, and I look away. He edges forward on his chair, leans his arms onto the table, and starts talking to me, urgently, quietly.
    "This was the man, yes. Miguel Blanca y Ortez, a celebrated lawyer in Spain, like a father to me. He was fighting for the people." He lets that sink in. "Have you seen what it's like for the workers here, the labor camps? Lirio?"
    "Yes, with Harry." But he hardly hears me.
    "Tenements, that's all. Wobbly shanties with tin cans and washtubs and rickety chairs. It's the same everywhere—stairways breaking, small rooms, no windows. They hang cheap, dirty curtains to divide something they call the parlor from a five-foot bedroom for the whole family, and that's cluttered with junk and dirty blankets and breaking furniture..." I'm nodding and agreeing through all this. "Probably a prayer book under the baby in the basket, too. Old Voodoo worship—do you blame them? No chance for the children. They'll live the same way." He goes on, even more intense, his jaw muscles flexing, then finally he slows a little and looks straight at me.
    "That's what we have in Spain—masses of peasants like that, living hopeless lives, nothing changing it." He leans even closer to make me understand. "It could change, you know. Everything could be different, but the Church hoards the money. Do you know about this?"
    I want badly to say yes but I shake my head, an obedient good girl, honest. I do not know about peasant life in Spain.
    "It's a terrible injustice, inexcusable, and Miguel was going to change it ... under threat of death, always the threat of death. The Church doesn't like what he's doing. He's educated, a real danger to them, a writer, a lawyer, and he can get things done—
could
get things done. They have good reason to fear him, so they said cease or die. That was his choice, and we came here so he could stay alive, and now..."
    He opens his arms in a gesture of despair, leans back exhausted, and in a plaintive voice says, "We were going back with money to raise a rebellion."
    He goes completely quiet staring at the floor.
    I have no idea what to say but I no longer want to disappear.
Forty-Five
    When I finally