Sweet Money (21 page)

 

 

Lascano’s arms ache with the tension of holding the aeroplane up for the entire flight. As they descend through the cloud cover, São Paulo begins to take shape through the window. The closer he gets to earth, the better he feels. A river wends its way toward the sea, painstakingly finding a path through the intricate geography of houses, huts and fairytale mansions, clumped together in small neighbourhoods with dead-end streets, other neighbourhoods intersected by highways packed with cars, buses and trucks going every which way, very slowly.

 

Along the Marginal Highway, right where it borders the Tietê, that stinking black river whose water has the consistency of pudding, the luxurious black Mercedes Benz competes for a foot of space with an old
calhambeque
that’s being barely held together with a bunch of wires, a super-modern dump truck and a dilapidated bus crammed full of wary and exhausted workers. The traffic, like the river, stops and goes, and stops and goes. The highway is blocked, there’s a detour, it picks up again, then gets cut off again. On one of those detours, the taxi that is carrying Lascano from Guarulhos to Rodoviaria stops in front of an enormous warehouse. Through a gaping hole that looks like a window without glass appears a
gigantic papier-mâché
mulatta
, her monstrously huge naked breasts leaning on the sill. The carnival doll’s colourful and astonished eyes glue themselves on Lascano like an omen. As the taxi starts moving, he looks at the people in the other cars. Nobody else seems to even notice this enormous sexual demon appearing along the road. Here this colossally erotic woman is simply a part of the landscape. At that moment, Perro wishes he had never quit smoking.

 

When the taxi stops, he sees her. She’s sitting on the front steps of the pavilion of the School of Architecture. Next to her sits Martín, the painter-architect, striking an almost feminine pose as he seduces her with his words. Marcelo can almost imagine what he is saying, and it suddenly crosses his mind that he is not going to stand idly by while that man steals his woman right out from under him. He crosses the street with long, rapid strides. Judging from the surprised expression on Vanina’s face and the terrified one on Martín’s, his own face must look a lot like that of a rabid lunatic. Marcelo’s subsequent actions corroborate this impression. Without saying a word, he grabs the lapels of Martín’s studiously casual corduroy jacket, pulls him to his feet and gives him a shove. Martín makes a feeble show of standing up to him, man to man, but Marcelo brings his face to within only a few inches of Martín’s and glares at him menacingly. Martín’s body exhibits a strange combination of impulses. From the waist down, it wants to hesitate, retreat, it begs to flee. From the waist up, it longs to show courage and defiance. This dichotomy, however, doesn’t last long; a planter box full of dead flowers sets the limit of Martín’s
retreat, even as Marcelo continues to advance upon him. Unable to go back any further, Martín lifts a foot and places it on the edge of the box, striking the pose of a contender, but his upper body is ready to submit and his eyebrows are begging for mercy. His phoniness makes Marcelo laugh, and pity him, but he is determined to humiliate the man. He places his finger on his chest, applies gentle pressure and the architect falls backward over the planter box. As he falls, his head hits a piece of cement, producing an ominous and hollow-sounding noise that makes Marcelo and Vanina stop dead in their tracks. She reacts, bends down over Martín, holds his head and asks him if he is okay. Martín opens his eyes, lifts up his head and says yes. Marcelo turns and walks away the way he came. For the first time in his life he feels the intense satisfaction of having done something very, very wrong. He is certain that he has also ruined any chance he may have had to win Vanina back. He’s one of those people who believes that women always side with the weak. That’s why he’s surprised when she catches up with him, grabs his arm and forces him to turn and face her; then she asks him if he is crazy. They engage in a discussion that ends up in the Etcetera – a hotel you pay for by the hour on Monroe Street, near Figueroa Alcorta, one with a splendid view of the edge of the Palermo forest. There, in the serene glow of sexual gratification, as they contemplate their magnificent naked selves in the mirror on the ceiling, Marcelo proposes to her. Vanina says yes, without missing a beat, and curls up against his body. The boy thinks about how happy his mother and mother-in-law are going to be when she tells them, then experiences a moment of distress: he
has the sensation that his life is starting to turn into an eternal Sunday afternoon.

 

By the time Lascano reaches Juquehy, it’s already dark. The only place he can find to stay for the night is a tourist hotel built right in the middle of the
mato
. The rooms, rustically elegant, are far apart and surrounded by bromeliads and orchids. The town is very small. He eats dinner at the hotel, takes a shower and stretches out on the bed. He falls into a deep sleep, as if he’d been punched in his lower jaw, and wakes the next morning as if he’d dropped off two minutes earlier. Along the dusty streets of Juquehy, his white suit makes him look like a wealthy landowner or a
pai de santos
out for a stroll, and the locals look at him with a kind of reverence. He asks directions and finds his way to Rua Lontra. It is a dirt road gutted by rain. The further he walks along it, the steeper and more gutted it becomes and the vegetation along the sides grows denser. As he comes around a curve he sees a pond fed by the tiny bubbling
cachoeira
. Just beyond it he sees three houses. None has numbers or any distinguishing marks. They look deserted. He knocks on the metal door of the first one; nobody answers. The door to the second is blocked by a gate. He presses the doorbell and a spine-tingling mastiff, as quiet as a shadow, appears and begins to pace eagerly back and forth in front of him, never taking his eyes off him. He seems eager to plunge his fangs into this piece of meat that might dare enter his territory. The third, perched at the top of the slope, has a small wooden door in front of a log staircase that leads to a terrace, where a hammock is hanging and, behind that, some blue latticework. There’s
no doorbell, so he claps his hands, but the only person who seems to hear him is a man coming down the hill carrying a bicycle on his shoulder.

 

I’m looking for a woman named Eva, do you know her?
The man smiles widely and points to the house in front.
Ah, sim. Senhora Eva. Do you know where I can find her?
He scratches his head and gazes at Lascano with empty eyes.
Where is she? Dónde está? Na praia. In the beach? Sim, na praia, barraquinha. Barraquinha?
The Brazilian mimes drinking. Lascano imitates him.
A bar on the beach?
The man smiles and gestures for Perro to follow him.

 

Lascano discovers that going down is more difficult and dangerous than going up. The man he is following is a thin, sinewy mulatto whose feet know every single stone and obstacle, every crack along the way. Perro decides to step precisely where the man steps. When he reaches the street that borders the sea, the man gets on his bicycle and starts riding away. Lascano watches him leave without turning to look back. Lascano continues in the same direction. The man said there would be something orange. He said “they will be there”, or did he misunderstand? Lascano’s heart tightens when he considers the possibility that Eva is involved with someone. He needs to find out. He doesn’t know what he will do if that is the case. He doesn’t even know if he will approach her. He doesn’t want his appearance to cause any trouble for her, doesn’t want his life, which now has nothing to do with her, to upset whatever life she has managed to build. Eva, however, is the only thing he can see in his own future. Without her the world seems barren,
useless, senseless. He is afraid of what he will find, but he continues on the tail of one specific memory.

 

After walking for ten minutes along that street paved with octagonal concrete tiles, he sees the mulatto about thirty yards ahead, standing next to his bicycle and pointing to the beach. When Lascano waves back to show that he sees, the man gets back on his bike and continues on his way. To Lascano’s right, between two houses, there’s a passageway at the end of which he can see the sea. He starts down it. It comes out a little above a terrace with orange-coloured umbrellas. Just as he’s about to take a step in that direction, he hears a familiar voice calling “Victoria”. A child appears, running toward the terrace. The little girl is laughing and carrying a black rag doll wearing a polka-dot dress. Eva appears right behind her. Her hair is loose, she’s very tanned and she’s wearing a bikini top and a beach towel on which multicoloured dragons, enlivened by her stride, are engaged in battle. Lascano has the same impression he had when he first saw her. The same feeling. The same agitation. The same sense of unreality. How to approach her? How to greet her? What words to use? What gestures, now that all he feels is the desire to shout and cry and die?… Just then a man appears on the terrace behind her and starts to walk toward her. The child jumps into his arms, he hugs her and presses her against his chest. The girl looks in Lascano’s direction. Again, those familiar eyes that seem to swirl as they stare at you. Eva’s eyes, her mother’s eyes, little Juan’s eyes and now Victoria’s eyes. The man comes up to Eva, takes her by the waist; she turns around slightly and kisses him on the lips. She is glowing, she looks happy and beautiful, but when
the man turns around Lascano feels like he’s been struck by lightning: it is his friend Fuseli. He feels his knees weaken and buckle under him until he finds himself sitting on the stair at the end of the path and the beginning of the sand, the same sand over which Eva, Fuseli and little Victoria walk serenely toward the water. Behind them the sea lazily licks the shore; further out, the jungle islet fills with birds. His head is spinning; he feels as if he’s on the verge of passing out. The last thing he wants is to meet them in this state. He wants to be thousands of miles away, he wants to take off running, he feels he’s about to burst. He stands up, staggers back up the passageway to the street, where the sun is dazzling. A man is standing right there in front of him. He shields his eyes from the sun with his hand and recognizes him: it’s Miranda the Mole.

 

 

As if obeying some kind of tacit agreement, Lascano and Miranda start walking up the street. Mole looks at the octagonal paving stones; Perro looks at the sea.

 

 

 

On the beach, Eva and Victoria are building a sandcastle. Fuseli lights a Tuscan cigar, turns, and looks down the alleyway leading to the street. A few minutes earlier he thought he saw a familiar figure, but then he decides it’s just his nostalgia playing tricks on him.

 

A few yards away, Lascano and Miranda keep arguing as they climb back up the hill.

 

Superintendent Lascano is a detective working under the shadow of military rule in Buenos Aires in the late 1970s. Sent to investigate a double murder, he arrives at the crime scene to find three bodies. Two are clearly the work of the Junta’s death squads, murders he is forced to ignore; the other one seems different.

 

The trail leads Lascano through a decadent Argentina, a country poisoned to its core by the tyranny of the regime. The third corpse turns out to be that of Biterman, money lender and Auschwitz survivor who has recently called on the debts of the well-born Amancio. When Lascano digs too deep, he must confront Giribaldi, an army major, quick to help old friends, but ruthless in dealing with dissenters, such as Eva, the young militant with whom Lascano is falling in love. An honest cop in a police state, Lascano goes in search of the truth in a land where honesty can mean risking your life.