bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, p. 34
Do You Believe in the Supernatural?
It was my first missing persons case as a newly-minted consular officer. At the time, I was about two weeks on the job at the embassy in Mexico City. One Monday morning I received a call from a woman in Vancouver who reported that her husband had been scheduled to return home from a trip to Mexico on Sunday evening, but he hadn’t been on the flight. She emphasized that he was a responsible person and would have called if he had been delayed. I undertook to initiate a missing persons investigation.
The lady called me every subsequent morning for a report, but I had no news. On Wednesday, we chatted a bit and she rather jokingly said that she had received a phone call the previous evening from a friend of hers who was a seer/tealeaf reader/psychic living in Northern British Columbia. The psychic asked her how her husband was, and she replied that she didn’t know because he was missing somewhere in Mexico. The psychic said that she thought something was seriously wrong since she had been having a recurring dream since Saturday night that the missing husband had been driving a black car on a winding road but had lost control and had driven into a ravine and died. We both had a good laugh about psychics and voodoo, but no progress was made that week.
On the following Saturday we received a call from the Mexican Red Cross informing us that our missing person had been found. He had been driving a rental car on a winding country road near Cuernavaca. Apparently he had lost control and driven into a ravine. The approximate time of death was the previous Saturday evening. I felt a chill run down my spine, and I asked the Red Cross representative what was the colour of the car. Somewhat bemused by the question, he replied “black”.
0 Canada
To me, our national anthem portrays dignity and understated but immense pride. It is about as good as any other out there, but for Latin Americans it has one major fault: it is too short. Most Latin American anthems go on for a glorious five or six minutes, while ours barely manages a minute. This causes problems when one of our embassies receives important dignitaries and the playing of anthems is de rigueur. The Embassy sends over the score for military bands and the inevitable response is “Is that all there is? Is there something missing?”
Naturally hospitable and not wishing to show bad manners by giving short shrift to welcome visitors, Latin Americans have devised a few strategies to redress our musical asymmetry. In Venezuela, we received the now-defunct National Defence College. A highlight of the visit was the laying of a wreath at the tomb of the liberator, Simon Bolivar. The ceremony began with the two anthems, during which all military members had to hold a crisp and precise salute. After six minutes of the Venezuelan anthem, soldiers were experiencing elbow lock and beads of sweat appeared on furrowed brows. As the band swung into O Canada there were slight sighs of relief as the ordeal appeared to be nearing an end, but despair reigned once again! …the band performed it twice in an attempt to even up the air-time. The Commandant later whispered to me that he thought he might never be able to hoist a beer again with that arm — not often that the military show weakness in front of a civilian!
In Brasilia, at the airport arrival ceremony for our foreign minister of the time, the massed band slammed out the rollicking Brazilian anthem. This lively performance was followed by O Canada at something less than half speed — a funereal pace. It was raining lightly and we dignitaries, solemnly lined up on the tarmac, became somewhat sodden. During such a dirge, one’s thoughts tend to stray, and I wondered whether my newly purchased Hong Kong-tailored suit might shrink from the wet. Can you imagine greeting the big boss with pant legs up above the ankles and cuffs showing six inches of sleeve? Happily, it was not to be: dirge completed, sodden but not shrunk, we soldiered on. I like to think that polyester had nothing to do with it.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2014) — Spring 2014 // Printemps 2014, p. 34. Read the rest of this issue →
