Suddenly he found that he could sleep at night; as soon as he entered his bed he sank into the deep, anesthetic slumber of a man seizing escape.

One day in May the heavy silver watch with angels on the lid arrived like a white feather from Uncle Erneido by registered mail. The note which accompanied it was brief but contained a number of messages.

My Nephew,

As you are aware, this family watch is part of the Meomartino inheritance. It has been guarded with honor by those who kept it in trust for you. Guard it as well as you are able. May you pass it along to many generations of Meomartinos.

We do not know how your brother died, but we have it on the best authority that he perished, and that he acquitted himself well before his destruction. I will attempt to learn more as time goes on.

I do not expect that we will meet in the near future. I am an old man, and whatever energies I have left I will use the best way I know how. I hope and trust that your medical career goes well. I despair of seeing my Cuba liberated. There is not a sufficient number of patriots with men’s blood in their veins to wrest from Fidel Castro that which is rightfully theirs.

Your uncle,

Erneido Pesca

He placed the watch in his bureau and left for the hospital. When he returned forty hours later and opened the drawer it was there waiting for him. He stared at it and then closed the drawer and put on his coat and left the rooming house. Outside the afternoon was trying to decide whether it was the shank of spring or the edge of summer, with rain clouds gathering. He walked over the pavements of Boston, block after block for a long time through the afternoon heat.

On Washington Street, feeling hunger like sudden surprise, he turned into a saloon in the shadow of the elevated. The Boston Herald-Traveler was a block away. It was a good tavern, a workingman’s bar full of newspapermen eating or drinking their suppers, some of the pressmen still wearing square hats of folded news sheets to keep the ink and grease from their hair.

On the end stool he ordered veal cutlet parmigiana. A television set above the mirror spewed forth a news broadcast, the latest assessment of the catastrophe at the Bay of Pigs.

Few of the invaders had been evacuated.

A large percentage of them had been killed.

Virtually all survivors had been taken prisoner.

When the veal arrived he didn’t bother to cut it. “Double scotch.”

He had that one and then another, which made him feel better, and then a third, which made him feel very bad. Needing air, he dropped a bill on the mahogany and walked away on tired legs.