Red Jungle Read Online Free

in this wretched country full of communists, and Isabella had cried. He had gone to London and died surrounded by English nurses. He had spoken to them in Spanish, and they had not understood a word of his confession. Whatever he told them went to the grave with him.
    He had been close to many presidents of the republic, especially Araña. Perhaps it was about that—the things her father had done to keep people in power. He had helped with the Bay of Pigs invasion. He had died wondering why Castro had won the battle. He blamed Kennedy, but was very sorry when he’d heard he’d been assassinated, because Kennedy was a good Catholic.
    “Did you hear me?” Isabella said.
    “Sí, señora.”
    “Not the records, Maria … the radio . I want to hear the radio. It’s noon, and they play the marimba at noon time. I want to hear it the way papa used to. Do you remember, Maria? With a gin and lemonade before lunch.”
    “Sí, señora, ” the cook, Maria, said. She passed Isabella, moving into the dark hallway with its yellow wallpaper from Belgium, past the room with the infant and Olga. Maria walked on towards the living room, all of them ignoring the sound of the gunfire. She walked to where the big old-fashioned wooden radio sat in the living room.
    Isabella heard the sound of the radio suddenly. A BBC reporter’s earnest voice filled the hallway. Isabella had been listening last night, alone, drinking, waiting for her lover, trying to get some news. She had had many lovers since her divorce, but this one was important because he was the first she felt anything for. She was a modern woman and a failed Catholic. Antonio De La Madrid had called this morning and said that he couldn’t come to lunch as planned. There was no reason to ask why. It was the guerrillas; they were everywhere, he told her. He’d seen them on the road below his own plantation house. He didn’t dare leave his mother alone. He was only nineteen, but was the head of the house because his father lived most of the time in New York, where he raced horses. They had hired some American mercenaries and were hoping for the best, he told her.
    “No. Not that,” she said loudly. She didn’t want to hear the BBC or talk of war. She walked towards the living room and stopped by her father’s office door. The door was closed. “Please, Maria, not that. I want to hear Marimba, ” Isabella said, holding the doorknob to her father’s study. The music suddenly filled the hallway. Luna De Xelaju . The sound of the marimba, romantic and haunting, filled the house.
    “Thank you, Maria,” Isabella said. She took her hand from the doorknob, then touched it again and opened the door to the office. For a moment she saw her dead father standing over his desk, the way he had been when she was a child. He turned and smiled, holding his lemonade and gin, his shirt sweat-stained from having been out all morning walking with the plantation’s administrator, his khaki pants muddy at the cuffs. He wore his never-really-care smile. “Dear, I know you can be brave. You were always brave when you were a girl. The bravest,” her father’s ghost said, and winked at her.
    “I don’t know, Papa,” she said aloud. “I really can’t be, not really, I’m a woman. And you know how we are, pretty and all, but not for this sound of guns. Where is Roberto? Where is my brother? We need him; I have a child. A boy.”
    “I told you not to marry that American. He was much too dry for you,” her father said, touching his blond mustache. He turned his back to her and looked at something on his desk. “He should be here with you. He should have lived here with us.”
    “Could we dance, father? The way we used to. Remember?” she said. He turned around, smiling again, and she saw her father as she had seen him for the last time, and she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to see him like that. She wanted to see her father of 1955. She opened her eyes again and he was there in a