Fortunate But Fated: Memoir of a Life and Death Concealed Revealed

By Maurice Posada

Young, well liked, admired, and apparently privileged but in fact ill-fated, Adolf, my elder brother and only sibling, found what saved him, but it eventually doomed him. Though dead in body, Adolf lives on in mind — in my mind. Never before had he flown, but when about thirteen, up he went at an airshow to stunt in a two-winged plane for two, the pilot in one cockpit, he in the other. When he came down, he said, "I want to fly again." A few years later, in England where we grew up, Adolf decided he wanted to be a surgeon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781684706433

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POSADA

Copyright © 2019 Maurice Posada.

Cover design: Keith Buckley at Zap Graphics, Portland, Oregon.

Cover art by Zap Graphics is based on the image of a lone man created by Antoine de Villiers (www.AntoineArt.com)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0644-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6847-0643-3 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:  06/21/2019

For Adults Only

Dedication

To David and Claire, son and daughter, in greatest gratitude and love;

To the memory of Amy Johnson, of Amherst, Massachusetts, who, when I retired, urged me to write; and

To Jennifer Lauck, of Portland, Oregon, who first taught me how to write a memoir.

Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to:

Keith Buckley of Zap Graphics, Portland, Oregon, for his superb cover;

Flint of Portland, Oregon, for her meticulous editing; and

F. Howard Schneider of Portland, Oregon, for his scrupulous formatting.

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Fortune vs. Fate

Fortunate he was: well liked, admired, and favored in his position. And yet ill-fated: he found what saved him, but it doomed him.

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Up in the Sky

Never before had he flown, but when about fourteen, up he went excited to stunt in a plane for two, the pilot in the forward cockpit, he in the one behind, both open to the sky, goggles and earflaps on their heads, shoulders hunkered down. That was sport in the 1930’s in the spirit and style of the dashing pilots of World War I.

Our father had taken us to an air show over a field near Worthing on the south coast of England, due south of London, and I was astounded to see my four-and-a-half-year-older brother, Adolf, be so bold. I had flown once before when I was six, but up in the air I had been terrified, sick, and miserable. I had never seen an airplane because, in those days, no planes flew over the Andes Mountains of Colombia where we lived. But in 1928, in a deep valley of the Andes, at a port way down on the tropical Magdalena River that divides Colombia from south to Caribbean north, my aunt Susana, my mother, and I were ushered into a row of three seats in the close quarters of a small seaplane bobbing unsteadily on its floats. Two tall, foreign-looking men sat down in the row in front of us and busied themselves with strange-looking instruments. My mother told me they were German pilots who would fly the plane up in the air with us inside it. The third, empty, seat of their row was turned towards me, canvas bags on it and under it, some bulging, some not, all fastened down with straps. My mother said they contained letters and parcels. Those strange men and strange surroundings in and out of the plane made me feel uneasy and afraid.

When the plane flew up in the sky and over the river, I became even more afraid that the weight of everyone and everything in the plane, which had nothing under it to support it, would cause the floor to fall out and down and I would go with it down, down, down, and crash into the ground and be killed. The plane would sometimes suddenly drop then as suddenly heave. With it my stomach would as suddenly rise feeling hollow empty then as suddenly drop feeling bloated full. My mouth would then disgorge disgusting muck into paper bag after paper bag that my mother passed to me. Much of the time I either cried or moaned in misery.

But now that my feet were on that safe and solid field in England, I gawked up toward my big brother in awe, envy, and amazement as he bounded about the sky.

As the show had touted and Adolf wanted, the pilot gave his passenger the special thrill of ending the flight in a loop-the-loop, a dog-fight maneuver. Starting level as if at the bottom of a big circle facing us, they zoomed up in a semicircular loop—first left, then up, then right—arched backs in open cockpits bending backwards more and more but without any flier falling out. At the top of the circle, they hung for a moment upside down, as if toy figures glued to their seats. Then they arched downward in a semicircular loop—first right, then down, then left—gradually becoming more and more upright until, at the bottom of the circle, they levelled out, landed, and came to a stop intact.

Adolf pulled himself up and out of his cockpit and stepped down onto land. He came towards us with eyes sparkling, excited as I had never seen him before nor ever since.

All keyed up he said, I want to fly again.

The prospect filled him with delight. The opportunity would come to him in despair.

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At Odds

A few years later in London, at the Mount Royal Hotel off Oxford Street near Marble Arch, where my father was staying, he, Adolf, and I—his only two offspring—went to the lounge for tea as we always did when Adolf and I went to see my father. We boys, coming from the hard and rigid chairs of our classrooms, quickly flopped down delighted into the soft, velvet cushions of a sofa in the lounge. My father, who couldn’t raise his portly figure from such a low position, settled into an upright, open-arm chair with a padded green seat facing us across a long, low, narrow table with a glass top. A waiter put down on it what we ordered—tea and crumpets for three, rich pastries for Adolf and me.

The talk was about what Adolf, then about seventeen, would be when he grew up.

I want to be a surgeon, he said. I had heard him say that before to my mother but not to my father.

That would take too long! my father immediately declared.

Though short, with slightly greying black hair and bushy eyebrows, thick, black, eyeglass frames, and dark, fiery eyes, my father had, besides a determined look, an imposing manner. Years later, in a newspaper obituary, the cartoonist would portray him with an angry look on his face and bristling eyebrows fiercely sprouting up over his forehead. That was likely a typical attitude of his in Congress and, yes, he was given to quickly making his point and imposing his will. A mighty fortress was our father (with apologies to Martin Luther), dominating and impregnable, not to be opposed.

So for Adolf surgery was out. What was in was what our parents always took for granted, thought natural, and wanted for Adolf and me: business. So, by parental domination, filial deference, and familial osmosis, we boys would come to believe that what our parents wanted for us was the natural order of things, good for us and good for our future. After school in England we would go into business in our hometown of Colombia’s second city, Medellín [MEH-theh-YEEN: See Appendix B for the pronunciations of Colombian names and places mentioned here.]. And just like our father, his father, his brothers, his cousins, and his friends, we, too, would do well in business.

On that our parents were agreed but on little else. Twenty-four years separated them in age when they had married, he for her beauty, she for his money. Ten years later they separated in anger, he forty-eight, she thirty-four, on their hands two boys, nine and five, whom he had wanted, she had not.

I never wanted to have children, my mother told me in later life. They spoil a woman’s figure. But the Church and your father made me have them. When you were inside me, I tried by all means legal, and as late as possible into my term, to shake you out. But, she added laughing, you were stubborn; you hung on. Her candor took me aback. It made me wonder how much she resented my existence.

I was actually her third son. Her second one, she told me, was born dead. I have sometimes wondered whether he died only from natural causes or with her help.

She also told me that my father had wanted children as heirs so that he wouldn’t have to leave his money to his nephews and nieces. So after my mother gave him one heir, perhaps she then decided to not spoil her figure anymore and took to measures to discourage the arrival of further heirs to share my father’s estate and lessen her share of it. But more heirs came—one dead on arrival, then I alive and kicking.

After my parents separated, my father, as obliged by Colombian law to support his wife, did so but barely in order to deprive her of the luxury for which she had married him and which she had so much relished.

But the jewels that he had showered on her upon their marriage were hers to keep. She prized them, sometimes brooding over them like a hen over her eggs. But, except for a diamond ring she always kept on a finger, all those jewels—rings and earrings, bracelets, brooches, and necklaces—treasures she guarded jealously—all were later stolen in a single swoop. For three days she cried in bed disconsolate.

Why my parents separated I can only surmise from what my mother told me in later life: I wasn’t unfaithful to him until he was unfaithful to me.

Her seemingly single act of infidelity was likely prompted more by pique than passion. She did like the flattering attention of men attracted to her at small hotels in England when I later saw her living there, but I never saw her encourage anything more than that. I never saw or sensed in her any signs of ongoing friendships with men or of having them as lovers. Her moving from country to country every six months or so would not have been conducive to more than passing affairs. But sexual desire, as far as I could tell, did not loom large in her life. Only flattering attentions.

Once, when I was ten or so, she joyfully announced to Adolf and me that a man had invited her to go for a car ride. She loved cars. She had loved the Lincoln she had had with my father in Medellín. Later in England, she loved to enter beauty contests in a newspaper that printed pictures of beautiful cars and, standing by them, beautiful women beautifully dressed. She would mark her choices and send them in, hoping to win a money prize, but never did. Yet she kept on buying that paper to see more pictures of beautiful cars and beautiful women beautifully dressed in more contests for money prizes that she hoped to win. So much love for cars did she show that when I was still a boy, I told her one day that when I grew up, I would give her a car. She yearned so much for a car ride that