Like every one. Like most people. I can't even talk right; my head couldn't decide and said half both at the start then switched sides. I always do that. I swear, there's something wrong with me. I'll blame it on my grandfather but I can't hold it against him.

I finally got to talk to my Grandfather Rivadavia when my scrambled head got itself a job in Orlando. Growing career, growing city. . . .coincidentally, he had changed big band stations and changed the window to stare out of. He'd moved down here, too. There's a lot of retired people in Florida.

I was expected to visit him, being in town. Finally I did. It was quiet a lot, at first. He listened to his radio. Just when I was about to use some excuses he turned to me and named the song minutes ahead of the announcer. "This was the first season Doris Day was with Will Bradley, Johnny. Later she left to get married. Some years passed, and she returned to his orchestra. It was then, in 1941, that she recorded 'Sentimental Journey.' Do you know 'Sentimental Journey'? I believe it is still played." I had never heard him talk so much. He started talking with that big band show.

"There's an illusion there somewhere, Johnny. You hear it as one band. It's actually a whole mixture of people. They all just happen to like the same tune at one time and have different ways of showing it. Fifteen band members, each with their own views and background and idea. Disappearing into one melody. The Big Band! To say nothing of the bandleader, how they fit with the voice that is heard! Something illusory, not coherent...." He lapsed for a while and then laughed. He stated my view, and we got us talking. "I'm reading too much into it. Band music! Damn." We laughed. "I'm glad you're here, Johnny. You turned out OK, now you're all grown up?"

* * *

He had a lot I needed to know but I doubt I could say it any better than he could explain his Big Band. "You're twenty-two now. I remember back in the World War. Men of twenty-two were majors, captains." I can't really understand. I can only write down what he said. I was twenty-two now, as old as he was then. I guess that meant old enough. He'd talk to me now. "Young men got to wear the leaves. Wear the eagles. So many people killed. Advance you right up into, God knows what."

I found out I had a Great Uncle killed in the war. I had almost known that before. I'd heard of it. If asked, Did you have any ancestors killed in The War, if I was totally honest with myself, I would have said Yes. I know of one. "He was my older brother Ramon. Brilliant man in some ways. He was second in his high school class and had college! Three years, Johnny, before the war started. Three years of college for one of our community, that was a distinction back then. He had his three years and then he joined the Service, six months before Pearl."

"Service? You mean, guarding Roosevelt?"

"No, picked up and ran for far-off parts, that means."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I thought that could be slang, I guessed, Secret Service rather than Armed Services."

"No. No, not that I ever heard. But serve, he served well. He was killed for it in Argentina."

"Argentina? We didn't fight Argentina. Weren't they even on our side, the Allied side, at the end of the war?"

Grandfather Rivadavia's eyes darted around out the window then back at me and out the window again. Finally he spoke.

I read more later but his crazy story will not fall apart. Whatever I discover only backs it.

* * *

Ramon Rivadavia served in Buenos Aires, Argentina from March 1941 to his death in February 1945. He was attached to the diplomatic corps of the American embassy, which awarded him numerous commendations for distinguished service. His official title, after the promotion for weathering terrible 1943, was Secretary to the Naval Attaché. He carried the military rank of major. Reading between lines, he was an intelligence officer. This is confirmed in documents declassified in 1995, despite years of denials from the Navy at the time of Ramon's death and in the years after. A Naval Attaché is only slightly murky spying. They are eyes and ears expected and tolerated in national capitals. They eye comings and goings. And perhaps offer a sympathetic ear, a semiofficial channel, for contacts, maneuverings, and responses that some in either government see no value in sounding through official means. These were messages especially well handled, placed with one who, though not Argentine, looked the part and carried a surname, un apellido, highly regarded from the common Mother Country. Ramon Rivadavia and the Argentines saw themselves in each other, and attracted to the common ground. He was a brilliant man, in some ways.

"Your Grand Uncle met Borjes once," told Grandfather Rivadavia. "Ramon was brilliant in the ways of literature. In assessing ideas, connections. He could never remember where he put his wallet, or his keys, but he shared the rare and remarkable combination, ease around people and ease with ideas."

I was then told Borjes was a great writer. He wrote fantasy like Labyrinths, The Aleph, Fictiones. "Read Labyrinths to try to know Borjes."

Ramon was one set of slightly murky eyes and ears, in one country, for The Big War. Argentina had sixteen million people, back then. It had an economy comparable to that of the US in the 1880's or 90's. Heavy immigration and birth-pains of industrial power. Poor farmers. Rich cattle. Argentina even had cowboys, just like the Old West. It also had its American Spanish heritage. It had a constitution full of progressive democratic ideals. It had all the troubles we had then. It was much like us. Also, it had a large fascist movement in key places.

This was the 30's and 40's, not the nineteenth century. Fascism seemed to have worked so readily in Germany and Italy. Some key men in business and government believed in what they saw as the most modern, efficient course of action. The problems of a changing world had only gotten worse, they believed, during the experiment of democratic control. Efficient new ideas of The Corporate State and a decisive, guiding authority appealed to them. All those years of German officers, hired by the Argentines to train and modernize their army may have contributed, too . . . though in truth, it turns out, the Wehrmacht was largely apolitical. American words did little to dissuade, especially as it was only 40 years since we had seized Panama, Spanish Cuba and Puerto Rico, all in Democracy's name.

Still, the trade with America was an important entity- trade in ideas and goods. Maybe in more, as too. As well. The American side was winning this war. They would be setting the pattern for the world to come. The UN. Free trade. There were those in Buenos Aires who saw this as the future, and knew that if they could show America something of itself, something shared, a partnership would grow on common ground.

It probably was the same men who reached one hand in the air with fascism that held the other out to us. Or perhaps not. Perhaps my easily scrambled head has got it all confused around. But that was his world.

"Ramon and I had been close. He was my big brother," told Grandfather Rivadavia. "We shared everything. Heroes. Music. Even the mumps, though he was four years older than me. In February 1945 I was home on leave from my station in New Jersey. We received a call from a woman in Buenos Aires named Elena Bonnaplata. Ramon was dead. He was killed. It- it. . . I'm sorry, Johnny, this is difficult for me--- it happened in the stairway of his apartment home. She had held him as he died, I can still hear her buzzing. I hung up the phone. The doorbell rang. It was a telegram. It was the Navy. To shield my mother from the pain, I opened it, but it was different news. Ramon had been transferred to a Navy ship, it said- the USS Bold, a minesweeper. Two days later another telegram came and my mother received word, the Bold had hit a mine while clearing the mouth of the River Platte. Clearing up mines the Germans secretly laid there as retribution for breaking diplomatic ties in '44. All hands lost helping a neighbor shaking off the fascist reins. I was not there to protect her from this telegram. I was already in South America, In Buenos Aires.

"Johnny," he went on, after a long pause. "You just didn't do that sort of thing back then. It was very unusual. Boarding a plane and flying thousands of miles away? Very expensive, too. My return ticket put me back in New Jersey well before my two-week leave was up. Only my, our, Spanish apellido giving the examining officer the notion the trip was legitimate--- otherwise, I feel I would have been detained and questioned, though a trip was nothing illegal. Just unusual. Unknown, back then. I went. Did you turn out okay, Johnny? Good, good. I see you and I, we cannot quite. . . let me continue. Do your best to see yourself in my shoes.

"No one expected Ramon's brother so recently in his footsteps. I found Buenos Aires beautiful but surprisingly like Philadelphia or New York. It was a city of six and a half million. Maybe I was expecting something quaint or Hispanic but I was more struck by the size, the municipality. There used to be many small private busses that efficiently carried the public transport, but back in '36 the Brits got a monopoly; Buenos Aires looked just like the rest of the world. I put on my suit, but walked past the embassy; I wanted to get my own feel of my brother's city before I got an official tour. I walked past the Navy yard. I found la barra my brother had spoken of, where he had done some business, where he had been eyes and ears. Then I was before the fashionable apartment house. No sign, nothing telling that twenty-odd hours before Ramon Rivadavia had been purposely killed in this stairway. No change, nothing new in plants or paneling. No notice, no physical sign indicating I had the correct location, unless a specter was to appear about midnight, and why that? His whole life my brother had probably given no thought to this stair, I can very well live without these plants and panelings. Well, they lived on without him too.

"No difference. . . .

"I had never actually met someone's lover before. Within an hour, I suddenly stopped drinking and listened to this direct and mysterious rubia.

"She told me it was no random thing. Ramon Rivadavia would not die in a mugging. I told her I had come. I told my brother's lover about the Navy's mix up. The wrong telegram.

"She appraised me then. "'The suit is not bad. Very yuppie.'"

"She said 'yuppie.'?"

Grandfather paused at me. "The Argentine equivalent of the time.

"I told her my brother had sent it to me, at Christmas. I told her I wanted to see his body. Instead we talked briefly of my suit. Then she already said, 'You've been very protected, growing up. That is no defense for you, here. This place is not good for you. The moment you open your mouth, with your accent, you are in trouble. Stay here and think of your suit,' she told me, 'I must arrange a meeting for you for tomorrow. It is with people who would talk to you, Ramon Rivadavia's brother. A brother to Ramon Rivadavia is about the only one to whom they would talk. Are you ready?'

"I said I was.

"'You are a stupid man with your brother's eyes, it is a damn fine thing I found you when I did. Your only advantage is that you have gotten yourself here, and now.' She explained to the bartender that I was not to get myself drunk and useless. He heard her and for the next two hours would serve me nothing but Coca-Cola.

"Finally she returned. At first glance, I recall, I did not recognize the woman with her hair up. I was startled when she sat beside me- that woman, Elena!- and said, 'Tomorrow at six A.M. you will meet two men with whom your brother occasionally worked. You must drive, Mister Rivadavia, down the Avenue L.M. Alem, down behind the Casa Rosada to Puerto Nuevo. Another car will follow you. At Puerto Nuevo there is train terminal. Sit on the first bench there and enjoy the view of your Yanqui freighters hauling Pampas beef off to your England. The two men will sit with you there, if you are alone and all is safe.'

"Who are they?"

"The minute she delayed, then, was not preparation enough to speak without that business voice cracking. 'Either they are the ones who killed your brother or they know who did and why. . . . "

"She took me home.

* * *

"I slept in her car, out in front of her apartment building. Keeping watch, I suppose. She was inside crying, she told me later. Me outside in a car across the street. I slept some. Some." He paused.

"The time came. I'd counted down and dozed. Now I drove on brilliant streets I knew from maps. The pigeons only were awake. Did a car follow me? I don't know. For all I was sure, Elena was acting out some bizarre hoax as revenge upon an ex-boyfriend who had transferred safely away, abandoning her. I thought I saw a car behind, passing the Casa Rosada. The Argentine 'White House,' only it is painted pink. . . . I sat on that bench. The people passed by, what people had business there at six A.M. on a Sunday. I'd had a few hours of sleep. Three, maybe. I remember the hangover, though Elena was half currency, half power, and I had been cut off early. Everything was so bright. Grief, maybe. Then they came straight forward as they did not want to alarm me more. One sat on my right side. 'I want to know about my brother,' I said. The second bracketed my left.

He stared out the window again, for a long time. "Granted, I have not the widest experience. I have spoken with few people, about few real things, for most of my adult life. But that was one of the best conversations I have ever had, Johnny. One of the most incredible, too.

"Let me tell you in my own words, what they told me in their own way. Now suppose, Johnny, it's back in War times. Our generals and decision makers, living their lives, who do you think they felt closest to? Ultimately, where did they feel their allegiance? There's the generals across the lines, facing them as they have for years. Enemy, yes, but men who have proved themselves to be clever, resourceful, efficient. Our generals have to admit they are paired against an equal match. If the other side had been weak or cowardly, there would have been no war. These adversaries would be locked up in the brig with the weak and the cowardly and the pettily criminal whose ways the Army could not change. No, these marshals on the other side are educated, intelligent men, following with high dedication the same code of honor, if under a different flag. Wearing a different uniform, yes, but no one can help where they are born, Johnny- only who they become, within their human nature.

"Option two: the other place in their daily lives where they can feel their allegiance is with the soldiers down in the trench. Here there is the same flag. The same language, though they tend to use different words. Conscripted men, probably with darker skin, griping in the mud. . . . . Who ultimately, these two Argentines asked me, would generals hold in higher respect? Their mirror image or those who will be working for them, poaching from them, back home?

"It is a credit, indeed, that these thoughts I share with you have never passed through most laureled heads. Most of the men and most of the factions in our Allied camps gave year after year of selfless dedicated service, distinguishing themselves with unquestioning loyalty. But just as those two with whom I talked had respect for good Ramon over their flag, some US and British senior officers shared a sympathy with their German counterparts across hostile lines. In 1945, the war to destroy the Nazis was all but won! It was over! Across the lines, those are not political zealots. They are the heart of a civilized culture, well-refined family men about to be overrun. Educated lives slain, plundered, by hordes of illiterate Russian factory workers. Barons killed by peasants. Mona Lisa hanging on a mud hearth, the thorn strangling the rose- the image, I believe, made some men see that in the destruction of terrible war, something high could be saved.

"Somewhere in Ramon's belongings, perhaps, lay a clue to say if this tale was credible. The men there, they told me they did not kill my brother, and that for certainty neither the police nor any other uniform of Buenos Aires knew who did. They told me Ramon was a good officer, as well as a good man. He was tireless in his duty to Roosevelt's country. And they left at that. The loyal fascists, the two officers, if that was what they were, shook my hand and departed. I never knew who they were or saw them again.

"As the day and freighters passed, I became more and more glad I had not checked in. It was possible it was my brother's superiors who had killed him. I had thoughts of the Old Boy network, one schoolmate on the German front to another in the Argentine office. "Old Boy, let this ship through. Turn the blind eye. . . ." I could see that. I could see my brother, the good officer keeping too close a watch. Making an attempt to report. Could I see the Old Boys diverting Ramon? Ramon, driven by the shame of his flight to four years of absolute dedication? No. Could I see the Old Boys willing to include, approaching, converting, a rising young Hispanic? No. His was one more soldier's blood, just another spic's blood, in the vast War. It was nothing to them.

"I returned to the blank and fashionable stairway that had so unnerved me the night before, when I had come and did not even know why. I climbed the stairs. I was counting on my brother's second-best brilliance. How he'd always lose his keys and wallet. At home he had a key secreted in the fixture of the lamp outside our door.

"Ah! Sure enough, he had done the same in Buenos Aires. Other than he, I became the only person ever to use that key.

"The room, Johnny, was untouched. I had half-expected it ransacked, but no. If his own superiors had killed Ramon his office would have been immediately cleaned. But his superiors did not expect anyone in his rooms, not so soon. Not with his nearest family thousands of miles away. Not from the gordita embassy secretary he had quietly taken up with! No one planned or expected anything in these next few days. Wait until the Policia have lost their immediate interest. Wait until the apartment neighbors have gone and looked the other way. Wait until--- you can imagine, Johnny. All the same, I locked the door behind me and left Elena's car parked two blocks away. I set to look, for what, I was not quite sure.

"There was so much work in his apartment! Many, many files and books that Ramon had brought home to work on. Some were old, not returned soon and then out of date. Other papers were recent. Some, perhaps, he had for a personal interest or suspicion. Reports from the OSS on German aristocracy, preliminary directives from the War Crimes Tribunal, obscure dispatches from Army intelligence- nothing labeled secret, but unusual all the same in the lodgings of an adjunct Naval Attaché half a world away. I spent a good deal of time going through them- was Ramon onto something, thinking ahead?

"His room was so sparse, other than his work! But I spent an equal time over my brother's few personal possessions. He had his books, the familiar spines. His bedspreads. Some pictures- me, our mother, surpisingly, one of Anna and his little- well. . . . then one of he and Elena. Generic things, but the room somehow wore his mark. I don't know exactly how.

"For hours I struggled through manifests and the like. This was his language, his expertise. Not mine. I was cursing my lack of foresight at not bringing any food, afraid to turn on the lights against the gathering dark, and frustrated with the work. I was about to give up when I saw it.

"His briefcase was between the wall and the bed. Forgetful Ramon, he had been without it when he was killed! Death saving him a trip back up the stairs. Saving the case for me.

"Right on top, inside, was the carbon of a memo addressed to the Naval Attaché. In clear, efficient language like I have never learned to use, was a warning that ships were arriving that did not carry what, or who, they claimed. Refugees of a certain refuge. . . .

"'My brother was a good officer, a good man,'" Grandfather echoed.

* * *

"That night the US minesweeper Bold exploded at the mouth of the Platte. Now my brother was officially, cleanly, legitimately dead. All hands lost. Fifty loose ends, perhaps, cleanly tied. The next day I met with Elena. She was surprised to see me at the embassy. I told her we were going to lunch. Walking on the way she, hushed, chastised, 'It is dangerous for you-' I hushed her right back. We walked in a stream of my countrymen and hers. I knew damn well it was dangerous. Around us were those who I'd thought I would have gone to for help. Around us somewhere were those who had arranged my brother's murder and our family resemblance, if dare say mention it, is quite striking. I took her by the arm as secretary-friends and embassy villains whispered, for different reasons. Whispers I could bear, Johnny. For now it was only she who recognized only me, only we knowing the gleam in my eye was the greatest secret and pain. Soon that secret, I swore in my heart in my best Ramon's-voice, would blast this whole crowd!

"She left for lunch and effectively disappeared. I told her my news and she told me hers. By the time the worried for her, in the embassy, we were on the plane. Headed back for New York. Was I out, wandering the city with gun in hand and bomb under coat? Was I lurking in political shadows to seek revenge and retribution against the machinations of high men? No. Maybe Ramon operated like that. Maybe spy novel heroes. We were ordinary mortals, Johnny. We did our ordinary thing- we ran and told. Two days later- two days of phone and then worry which had the greater connections, the Old Boy network or loyalty to the service, loyalty to duty like I used to have-- In two days we were in touch to some men at Foggy Bottom, at the State Department. We told all, everything we knew or thought. I gave them what evidence I had taken from Ramon's apartment, if evidence it was. The officials did seem to be listening carefully. They listened over and over, a number of different officials. . . .

"And some things did come of it," Grandfather Rivadavia began, after an exceptionally long silence. "Just as in the Argentine military government, our government was made of many different people, with different powers and ideas. Some of them did press for action. Later on in 1945 a new ambassador, Spruille Braden, was sent to Argentina. He threw his power, voice and people into his search for righteousness. He did hound zealously for answers, and in 1946 he and others did get published the State Department's famous bluebook blasting Argentine fascist connections. Did it sweep in unanimous justice for Ramon's killers? No. Did it stop people from doing what they had planned anyway? No, it just raised un poco protesta against it. Which these men actually took advantage of. Peron, making an public issue of Yanqui meddling, publishing his own blue-and-white book and gathering popular opinion against, oh, the menace of insidious American bullying. Blue and white being Argentina's national colors, Johnny. Braden served briefly, probing about with the blunt clubs of his questions, and was called home. He did his best, though he was not a great nor especially bright man. Like I did mine, though I was, I know, exceptionally small. I'm sure they acted because of others as well. I know for a fact Ramon's death and my trip did not alone inspire what came later. But we helped. Johnny, I am not a man of importance or action but I did my best. One time fifty years ago I went where I was not expected and walked boldly before the eyes of men who were killers. We ran and told. I am a small and quiet man. Your grandmother and I always thereafter afraid, some retribution to fall--- But it was fear alone that harassed us, the short years we had together. She died in 1950, never giving birth to one that was mine. Are you all right, Johnny? Yes, Elena was your grandmother, and secondly my wife. I could not leave her behind, when she told me that. In time she did come to love me, seeing Ramon's shade in me. I loved her, too. Not now, not anymore. I haven't stared out the window pining for her all these years. I'm well healed, of that. We never had any of our own to carry on our love, you see. Ramon and I shared everything, the mumps there. Which he weathered better, making two babies, that I ever could. Elena died and I went on. I had your father there to keep me company. I had mi familia, mi madre y el primos and gradualmente we Rivadavias accepted Anna and little Nina too. That was a long time ago but it did happen.