Colonel Rutherford's Colt by Lucius Shepard Page B

was insupportable, implausible, unfathomable. She would not be the first American wife to take a Cuban lover, but given her isolation and the inquisitive nature of his servants, he could not imagine how she would manage it.
    â€œGo ahead,” he said with some confidence.
    â€œDo you know a man named Luis Carrasquel? The nephew of General Ruelas?”
    â€œI know of him. We may have met . . . I’m not sure.”
    â€œOdiberto is employed at the Banco Nacional, where Carrasquel also works. And that is not their sole association. They have been friends since childhood. Our families have vacationed together. A week ago, Carrasquel asked Odiberto to have a drink with him after closing. He seemed quite distraught and said that for some time he had been involved in a romance with a beautiful American woman. The woman loved him—he was certain of that. Yet for reasons he could not understand, she refused to leave her husband, a man she described”—Doctor Lens offered the colonel an apologetic look—“as a monster.”
    Colonel Rutherford suffered this slur without visible reaction. But a numbness began to spread from his extremities, and along with the numbness, though he rejected the notion that whatever their personal difficulties, Susan could ever think so badly of him as to call him a monster, there came a feeling of certainty that the story was no boast.
    â€œI think it might be best if Odiberto told the story from this point on,” said Doctor Lens. “I have heard it but once. Thus I cannot recall every detail . . . and it is from the details, I believe, that you will be able to determine its truth. Since Odiberto regrettably speaks no English, I will translate.”
    â€œThat’s fine,” said the colonel, and favored Odiberto with what he intended as an encouraging smile.
    The story unfolded in a curious fashion, alternating between Odiberto’s bursts of passionate narration, accompanied by florid gestures and woeful faces, and the calm, almost lectoral translations of Doctor Lens. The emotional opposition of these two styles set up a dissonance in the colonel’s thoughts, and it came to seem that he was listening to both a lie and the truth at once, and that at heart they were the same.
    â€œÂ â€˜I have never seen Luis so upset,’ ” said Doctor Lens. “ ‘Once we reached the bar, he began to cry. When I asked what was wrong, he said he could not tell me. He could tell no one, and the pressures of the situation were driving him mad. But at length I prevailed upon him to confess his secret. I swore I would never reveal it.’ ”
    â€œApparently this was not a sacred oath,” the colonel said with wry bitterness.
    Doctor Lens let out a heavy sigh. “It is shameful, I know. Odiberto’s motives in coming forward were less than pure. He was passed over for promotion at the bank and blames this upon Luis, who is in a supervisory position. But since the story is out, I thought it best that you be made aware of things.”
    â€œWhen you say the story is out,” the colonel said, “what do you mean? Has he told anyone else apart from you?”
    â€œMy wife,” said Doctor Lens. “Odiberto told us together. I give you my word that I will tell no one, but my wife . . .” He shrugged. “I can control how much money she spends at market, but not whom she whispers to.”
    â€œI understand,” said the colonel. “Please . . . proceed.”
    Odiberto, through the agency of Doctor Lens, told of the married woman’s indecisiveness, this the thing that had caused Luis so much pain and distraction.
    â€œÂ â€˜He could not determine what she wanted,’ ” the doctor said. “ ‘One minute she was telling him she would do anything to make him happy, and the next she became distant, uncommunicative. He asked me what he should