upon iron legs which stand upon two blocks of wood between which is sandwiched a layer of solid rubber of the sort used in car-engine mountings. Screwed on to the wall beside the lathe is a stereo speaker; across the room is another. I have installed a steel kitchen sink in the room and a cold-water tap, connected to the water and outflow pipes in the bathroom next door. I have a stool upon which to sit and a square of carpet beneath it. By the workbench is an electric fan heater. To the left of the door is an architect’s drawing board and another stool. That is all.
The lathe was awkward. Signora Prasca understood the workbench. Artists use such tables, she thought. Besides, I made sure she noticed my easel and drawing board arrive at the same time. And the spotlamps. The workbench was therefore disguised as a part of the artist’s requirements. But the artistry of miniatures necessitates no lathe. This I kept in pieces in the rented van in which I had driven up from Rome, parked in the Largo Bradano. Bit by bit, over four days, I moved it to the apartment. The bed of the lathe was too heavy for me to lift. I obtained the help of one of Alfonso’s mechanics from his garage in the Piazza della Vanga. He believed he was carrying a printing press: after all, artists made prints of their work. He said so himself. Signora Prasca was out shopping in the market at the time.
Should the lathe be making too much noise, I turn on the stereo loudly. The speakers are wired to the compact-disc player in the sitting room. If the metal tends to screech in the turning, I play one of three pieces: Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’, the second movement, and, most appropriately, for I appreciate twists of irony, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A, the ‘Italian’. Perhaps, in order to complete the irony, I should add to my little repertoire of covering music the closing five minutes of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (opus 49). The cannon fire would be a suitable accompaniment for the lathe.
Imbert. He was a quiet man, as I recall. Antonio Imbert. You will not have heard of him unless you are a specialist in Central American affairs, or an elderly official in the CIA. Nor will you know of his associates, his comrades-in-deed, his co-conspirators. They were important men in their world, in their history: Diaz was a brigadier general, Guerrero a presidential aide, Tejeda and Pastoriza both engineers (I never knew of what). There were also Pimentel and Vasquez and Cedeno. And Imbert.
Of the assassination squad, I met only him and only on the one occasion, for about twenty minutes over a cocktail in a hotel in South Miami Beach. It was a most apt rendezvous. The hotel was a seedy joint once glorious in the days of bootlegging, tommy-gun-toting gangsters. It was an art deco building, all rounded edges and curving lines like an old-fashioned American limousine, a Dodge, say, or a Buick, a Great Gatsby automobile. It was said Al Capone had spent a holiday there, once: Lucky Luciano, too. I ordered, I remember, a manhattan whilst Antonio had a tequila, sipping it with salt and lemon.
It was reported he was the only one to escape the subsequent fusillade of bullets which chase after such men as him, just as angry wasps pursue him who kicks the hive. They were all hive-kickers. Their hive was the Dominican Republic and the wasps were the followers of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
He disappeared – Antonio, that is; Trujillo just died. I never knew where he went, though I have an inkling of a suspicion he went first to Panama. As agreed, on 30 July, two months to the day after the event, I received a bank draft drawn on the First National City Bank mailed to me in Colon.
It was all so long ago, late February 1981, when we met. Trujillo’s assassination was that May.
It was a traditional killing. Al Capone would have been more than satisfied by it. It had all the hallmarks of a gangster
The lathe was awkward. Signora Prasca understood the workbench. Artists use such tables, she thought. Besides, I made sure she noticed my easel and drawing board arrive at the same time. And the spotlamps. The workbench was therefore disguised as a part of the artist’s requirements. But the artistry of miniatures necessitates no lathe. This I kept in pieces in the rented van in which I had driven up from Rome, parked in the Largo Bradano. Bit by bit, over four days, I moved it to the apartment. The bed of the lathe was too heavy for me to lift. I obtained the help of one of Alfonso’s mechanics from his garage in the Piazza della Vanga. He believed he was carrying a printing press: after all, artists made prints of their work. He said so himself. Signora Prasca was out shopping in the market at the time.
Should the lathe be making too much noise, I turn on the stereo loudly. The speakers are wired to the compact-disc player in the sitting room. If the metal tends to screech in the turning, I play one of three pieces: Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 ‘Titan’, the second movement, and, most appropriately, for I appreciate twists of irony, Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 in A, the ‘Italian’. Perhaps, in order to complete the irony, I should add to my little repertoire of covering music the closing five minutes of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (opus 49). The cannon fire would be a suitable accompaniment for the lathe.
Imbert. He was a quiet man, as I recall. Antonio Imbert. You will not have heard of him unless you are a specialist in Central American affairs, or an elderly official in the CIA. Nor will you know of his associates, his comrades-in-deed, his co-conspirators. They were important men in their world, in their history: Diaz was a brigadier general, Guerrero a presidential aide, Tejeda and Pastoriza both engineers (I never knew of what). There were also Pimentel and Vasquez and Cedeno. And Imbert.
Of the assassination squad, I met only him and only on the one occasion, for about twenty minutes over a cocktail in a hotel in South Miami Beach. It was a most apt rendezvous. The hotel was a seedy joint once glorious in the days of bootlegging, tommy-gun-toting gangsters. It was an art deco building, all rounded edges and curving lines like an old-fashioned American limousine, a Dodge, say, or a Buick, a Great Gatsby automobile. It was said Al Capone had spent a holiday there, once: Lucky Luciano, too. I ordered, I remember, a manhattan whilst Antonio had a tequila, sipping it with salt and lemon.
It was reported he was the only one to escape the subsequent fusillade of bullets which chase after such men as him, just as angry wasps pursue him who kicks the hive. They were all hive-kickers. Their hive was the Dominican Republic and the wasps were the followers of Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
He disappeared – Antonio, that is; Trujillo just died. I never knew where he went, though I have an inkling of a suspicion he went first to Panama. As agreed, on 30 July, two months to the day after the event, I received a bank draft drawn on the First National City Bank mailed to me in Colon.
It was all so long ago, late February 1981, when we met. Trujillo’s assassination was that May.
It was a traditional killing. Al Capone would have been more than satisfied by it. It had all the hallmarks of a gangster
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