"You have property there. It was your dead father's, and now, of course, it's yours. It was of course Poppa's. Poppa was your grandfather, but you never knew him. He was taken into heaven before you were born. Your father and I in-herited from Poppa, of course, but when I married your Uncle Humberto, your father bought out my share."
"Is that so?"
"As I recall, the property in Corrientes was rather extensive. Five or six es-tancias and something else, some kind of a business...."
"Three estancias, my darling," Humberto said with a banker's certainty. "The tea plantation, and the refrigerico"-a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant.
"Yes, I knew it was something like that. Anyway, long before we were there, the Jesuit fathers were there, bringing the Indians to the blessed Jesus. You can still see the ruins of what they built. You really must see those ruins, Cletus, it would be very educational for you. Anyway, the Jesuits-this was hundreds and hundreds of years ago-taught the Indians whose souls they had saved crafts, among them wood carving."
"Is that so?"
"And that wood-carving skill has stayed with the people after all these years, even though there are hardly any Indians at all left. Long after the Jesuits were expelled from Argentina. Can you believe that?"
"It's hard to believe, Aunt Beatrice."
"But it's true. You can get the most beautiful carved things in Corrientes. Anyway, there was a man on one of the estancias who was a really good wood carver, so Poppa had him sent to Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo, took him to the place where he had stored the cedar he'd acquired, and told him to make a casket."
"Really?"
"And the man did. And when Poppa was taken into heaven, your father re-membered that Poppa was always talking about being laid to rest in his carved cedar casket, so he went looking for the casket Poppa had made. And do you know what he found, Cletus?"
"No, Ma'am."
He drained his wineglass, and Claudia gave him sort of a warning look.
El Coronel got really drunk when they buried cousin Jorge, and she doesn't want a repetition of that from me. And she's right. If this keeps on much longer, I'm going to be either drunk or crazy.
"Casket after casket after casket. A dozen caskets!" Beatrice announced happily. "Maybe more. Maybe fifteen, or sixteen. But at least a dozen. Anyway, so what had happened, you see, is that when the man who carved the casket fin-ished, and no one sent him back to Corrientes, and there was a lot of cedar left over, he made another casket, and when he finished that, another. Isn't that amazing?"
A maid appeared at his side with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Clete covered his glass with his hand, and got a quick pursing-of-the-lips kiss from Claudia as his reward.
"Absolutely amazing," he said.
"This went on for... I don't know. Humberto, darling, for how many years did the wood carver make caskets?"
"Several, my darling."
I wonder how in hell he puts up with this, day after day?
"Anyway," Beatrice went on relentlessly, "finally he ran out of cedar and asked someone, one of the foremen, what he wanted him to do next, and that was the first your father knew about all the caskets this man had made. What-ever happened to the man, Humberto, do you recall?"
"I don't know where he is now, my precious. I know he stayed on at Es-tancia San Pedro y San Pablo for a long time. He did all the carving in La Capilla Nuestra Se¤ora de los Milagros."
"Yes, that's right. I'd forgotten. Now, Cletus, I know you've been there. Your father buried Se¤ora Pellano from Nuestra Se¤ora de los Milagros."
The Chapel of Our Lady of the Miracles, which was equipped with two priests, seemed to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Estancia San Pedro y San Pablo. Clete remembered his father telling him that 1,400 people lived and worked on the estancia, whose 84,205 (more or less) hectares (one of which equals 2.47 acres) surrounded the small city of Pila, in southeast Buenos Aires Province.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"And in one of Poppa's carved cedar caskets. Your father was really fond of Se¤ora Pellano, Cletus. Otherwise he would have buried her in an ordinary casket-after all, all she was was a servant-instead of in one of Poppa's carved cedar caskets."
"My father was very fond of Se¤ora Pellano, Aunt Beatrice."
"Anyway, all of these caskets just sat there in the building on San Pedro y San Pablo until we needed one for Se¤ora Pellano. We couldn't put my Jorge Alejandro in one, you see. I forget why, exactly, but Monsignor Kelly said it wouldn't be a good thing to do, and I never question the Monsignor's judgment, but when Se¤ora Pellano was taken into heaven, we used one for her, and now that your father has gone to be with all the angels and your blessed mother, Cle-tus, we are going to lay him to rest in one. I thought it looked so handsome in the Edificio Libertador. Many people commented on it."
"It is a magnificent casket, Se¤ora de Duarte," Capitan Lauffer said po-litely.
"Well, anyway, it's going to be a long, long time before anyone in this fam-ily has to go out and buy a casket," Beatrice said, and then changed the subject: "Capitan Lauffer, did you think to bring a schedule of events with you?"