The Crime of Julian Wells

27

Our meeting with Hernando Vilario was not scheduled until the day after our arrival at Iguazu, and so Loretta and I decided to visit the great falls. I’d made the same trip with Julian years ago, the two of us flying out of Buenos Aires on a stormy after shy;noon. We’d stayed in Iguazu a couple of days, then returned to the capital.

A good deal had changed at Iguazu since then, changes no doubt necessary in order to make the place more attractive to tourists. Now a small train took visitors into the jungle that surrounded the falls. As we disembarked, I noticed that they were playing the theme from The Mission, a film whose dramatic opening scene had ended with the startling image of a crucified priest being swept over the Devil’s Throat.

For a time we walked silently through a jungle that was now equipped with cement walkways and steel railings, safe for old people and children.

“The music back at the train reminds me of what Julian said about the difference between tourists and travelers,” I said.

Loretta peered out to where the roiling waters of Iguazu could be heard but not yet seen.

“This is the last time he was a tourist,” I said. “When we got back to Buenos Aires, Marisol was waiting for us. We all went to a restaurant in La Boca and had dinner and wine. Julian had never looked more delighted with his life. Everything had come so easily to him.”

A thought appeared to strike Loretta. “I know you felt rather dull in comparison to Julian. We both did. But were you jealous of him, too?”

It is strange what can be unearthed if the time is right and the inquisitor is dear, and at that moment I felt it rise like a gorge in my throat, the awful truth of things.

“Yes,” I said, and with that admission I felt a crack run through the portrait of my long friendship with Julian. I recalled all the times I might have influenced him, might have taken advantage of his weariness, his long bouts of despair, and even his penury-I might have used all that to nudge him in a different direction. I had even silenced any criticism of his work that might have made it leaner and sharper or reined in the wild sprawl that had sometimes marred his books. He might not have listened, but the fact remained that I had never offered him the slightest direction. With Loretta’s question, I had to wonder if I had done this not because I thought it would do no good, but because I’d preferred him to remain where he was, tucked into a shadowy corner of the literary world, preferred him to remain what he was, a writer whose subject matter would doom him to an inconsequential place. Had I said nothing because I secretly delighted in all the now-darkened lights that had once shone on him, took pleasure in his failure?

“My God, Loretta,” I breathed. “Was I not his friend?”

She saw my eyes glisten as all the many deceiving layers of my feigned friendship fell away.

She drew me into her arms. “Now you are,” she said.