Almost Murder

A very personal journey in the tropics

Can you explain every conscious move you made? Most, probably, but maybe not the most important, the ones that make you who you are, the decisions that define the person you've become. Visiting a tropical island where I didn't want to go in the first place, I almost became responsible for the death of a man. A dear man. An intimate friend... almost.

Chapter 1

I never went to see my father when he lived in the tropics. Once, after I had already bought a plane ticket, he called to tell me not to come: la migra was making it tough to travel back if your papers were not in order, and everything was suddenly much more controlled. Having overstayed my tourist visa by a few years, I was living in the US illegally back then. I suspected that there were other reasons why he'd rescinded his invitation at the last minute; the way he lived with a young woman, "une très jeune fille" as he put it bluntly in a letter; and the fact that she had given him a baby. Did he need one more child in his old age? And how young was the girl? Anyway, I didn't go.

But I could not avoid a visit to the island where my father had died. The premonition that it might be a descent into hell explains why it took me so long. First I had to be sure of coming back to my life in New York, so I waited until I found a steady job and a plastic card in my wallet officially stating that I am an American resident. Then I chose someone who could maybe help me through that hell, who cared enough for me. That someone turned out to be my boss, Professor Roberto Delapeña, the Chair of the English Department at Sierra Community College in Manhattan where, with his help and under his protection, I had just become a junior professor. Roberto was born in Puerto Rico; he knew something about islands. He loved to travel, he said, and was insistent that it would do me good to see my father's grave and finally be able to do some serious mourning (meaning, of course, that it would do me even better to take him along). Besides, it was summertime and we both enjoyed the beginning of extended vacations. Why not travel together abroad and share this crucial experience? "I want to see how you are going to transform over there, and for the better. Be aware, Frédéric, you are not going to be the same. I want to be around when that happens." Roberto Delapeña liked to make theatrical pronouncements and I was not convinced, but I had to see how my father was buried.

Yet to bring him along was a mistake; I knew it from the start, it was asking for disaster. The man cared for me a little too much. He was in love with me, he said, he couldn't live without me nearby. He had not made it a condition sine qua non of his professional support, but his objectives had been made clear and our visit to a foreign land—staying in a third-world village—might afford Roberto occasion to push his intentions on my person. That's what he was hoping for, my giving in, my softening around the edges once we'd found ourselves on a strange and remote island.

By then, I had let him hope against hope for a good year. We had become not only colleagues but intimate friends, almost lovers. We spent evenings together in his apartment on West Thirteenth Street. He invited me out to concerts and museums and to expensive French restaurants. I learned a lot from his bargaining for first editions and exceptional glass vases in the flea markets of the West Village. Roberto interested me for his conversation, his appreciation of literature, his good advice when it came to choosing a doctoral program that would help me get a full- time position. Besides his repeated insistence that I spend the night at his place and, eventually, move in with him, he was a good friend and somewhere, I have to say it upfront, the kind of father figure that I had been looking for all my life. He opened doors for me, allowed me to belong to his coterie of professors at Sierra and beyond. He was an important man, a little too important perhaps. I should have gone to see my father's grave on my own. But I will be honest here, I was weak, and didn't have the courage to travel alone.