Patience in Cape Verde

The next morning Gehler was chipper and moved energetically around his study, dictating to me and being more effusive and jovial than I had seen him in the short time we had traveled together from Vienna to the Cape Verdes. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and I was impressed at how well defined his musculature was and how well he V’d down to a thin waist at his age. Even at leisure, he wore his clothes elegantly, like a model for an expensive men’s store. I had no doubt that his clothes had come from such a store.

He made no mention of whatever had happened during the night—if I heard it from my open French doors, surely he did as well, as he was in the room adjacent to mine. And I made no mention of it as well.

The next two days went uneventfully, with him somehow getting me to talk about myself and my hopes and ambitions without him revealing much about himself at all. But he was a brilliant man, well conversant with the politics and economics of the world, obviously earning his position in the world of finance honestly. And all the while there was the sense about him of a commanding general, holding the lives of all of his soldiers in his hands. Certainly that was how the three servants responded to him.

The next incident in what I came to realize was my spiral down into degradation, occurred two nights later. I awoke in the night slightly gaseous and knowing that all I needed was a glass of milk, as this was what had always worked before when my stomach was slightly off—the cook was an excellent one, but the Portuguese-based food that was being served was slightly more spicy than I was used to.

I had already found and drunk the glass of the milk from the refrigerator in the kitchen when I heard the sounds—quite similar to those of the other night. The sounds of sex. I was drawn to the sounds, which seemed to be coming from the lounge just a short distance away in the wing facing the sea.