Target in the Night (25 page)

“I liked speaking with him,” the Old Man said. “He had integrity. He thought it was strange that there should be so much land in the hands of so few people in this country. I explained to him that it was one of the results of the Indian Wars, that they gave land to the army officers as far as their horses could ride.
²⁸
Five
million leagues were handed out to thirty families, I told him one day. When he calculated it out, comparing the pampas to the size of the island of Puerto Rico, he laughed. I liked his way of speaking, and I know why he came here. But he was on a road to perdition,” the Old Man added suddenly, “and no one could stop it. Just like my children, on parallel and divergent roads.”

“I'm sure no one knows what you're talking about, Father,” Ada said.

“You think that Yoshio killed him.”

“I don't think anything. That's what the police say.”

“That's not Croce's theory,” Renzi said.

“But who would imagine that they would hire a jockey and have him dress up as a Japanese night porter to go in and kill Anthony? It's inconceivable, even in this country. That's not how things are done around here.”

“And how are things done around here?”

“Different,” the Old Man said, smiling.

“Less baroque,” the girl clarified. “And out in the light of day.” She stood up. “If you need me, let me know,” she said, and said goodbye. Only then, as he saw her walk away, did he realize that she was wearing high heels and that her jeans were very tight, as if she wanted to shock her father in this fashion, or entertain him.

“I'd like to get your thoughts on the situation with the factory.”

“My son Luca is a genius, like my father was,” the Old Man seemed tired. “But he doesn't have any common sense. I've helped
him in every way possible.”

By that point the Old Man was basically speaking to himself, with the tone of an owner reprimanding his foreman because he's let insects into the hacienda. He went back to the beginning.

“I'm sick of this whole affair, I'm tired of journalists, of the police, I don't want to hear any more stories about my family or about my children. That young man was very dear to me, Tony, he was a lucky boy until he somehow came here, to die in this desert.” The Old Man stopped and served himself another whiskey. “I've had what's called a cerebrovascular incident, a brain hemorrhage, and I shouldn't drink, but when I don't drink I feel even worse. Alcohol is the fuel of my life. Listen, young man, they want to confiscate the factory, the military does, and when Perón comes back it's going to be the same, because Perón's a military man too. We've owned this place since its foundation and now they want to take everything away, their plan is to speculate with the surrounding lands. At a certain point my son confronted me, he's turned away from me, he's always been set in his ways, determined to have it his way, but he has every right to keep his factory empty if he wants to, he should be able to use it like a
paleta
court if he felt like it, or a pigeon house, whatever, he's paid his debts and he's going to cover the mortgage, but they want to get a hold of his loan and confiscate the plant. It's not a State loan, it's a loan from a private bank, but they want to expropriate it. Look, see?” he said, looking through some papers and showing him a cutout from the newspaper. “The business owners are behind it, they want to build a commercial center there. I hate progress, I hate this kind of progress. The countryside should be left alone. An enclosed
mall! As if this were Siberia.” Suddenly the Old Man grew quiet. Then he put the palm of his hand on his forehead, and resumed his monologue. “There are no values left, only prices. The State is an insatiable predator, it pursues us with its confiscatory taxes. For those of us—for me, I should say—who live in the country, away from the chaos, life is harder all the time, we're surrounded by large floods, by large taxes, by new commercial roads. Like my ancestors were surrounded by the Indian hordes who were always raiding them, now we're surrounded by a State Indian horde. Every once in a while, we get a drought in this area, or hail, or locusts, and no one protects the interests of the countryside. To keep the State from taking everything, we're supposed to trust their word, to follow the old customs, no checks, no receipts, everything by word, honor above all, but there are two economies at play, a double bottom with an underground where money circulates. Everything to avoid state expropriations, the confiscatory taxes on rural production, we can't pay those rates. Buenos Aires should be an independent nation, like in the time of Mitre. Buenos Aires on one side, the thirteen ranches on the other. Or is it fourteen now?” He paused again, looking for something in the pockets of his jacket. “There's a lot of real estate speculation in the area, they want to use the factory as a base for a new project of urbanization. The town already seems obsolete to them. I'm going to prevent it. Here, take a look. I sent for that money for my son, it's part of his inheritance, from his mother.” He handed Renzi a withdrawal receipt from Summit Bank in New Jersey, for $100,000. “I wanted to make amends with my son. I wanted to help him without him finding out. But the son of a bitch inherited his Irish mother's
pride.” He paused for a longer stretch. “I never imagined anyone would die.”

“You never imagined…”

“And I don't know why they killed him, either.”

“Who's doing all those business deals, Mr. Belladona?”

“The same black rabble as always,” he said. “Anyway, enough for today. We'll continue some other time.” He pressed the button again, and a little bell sounded somewhere in the large house. Almost at once the door opened and a young woman entered, identical to the other but dressed differently.

“I'm Sofía,” she said. “Come on, let's go, I'll see you out.” She covered her father with a blanket and patted him gently on the head. The Old Man had dozed off. Then she and Renzi walked out. “I know you,” she said when she closed the door behind them. They were in a side room, a kind of office, looking over the gardens. “We met a long time ago, in a party in City Bell, in Patricio's house. Zip zap. Touché. I studied in La Plata too.”

“That's impossible. How could I forget someone like you?”

“I was in Agriculture School,” she said. “But I used to go over to Humanities sometimes, listen in on some of the classes, and I was good friends with Luciana Reynal, her husband is from around here. Don't you remember? You wrote a short story about that night.”

Renzi looked at her, surprised. He‘d published one book of stories, years ago, and it turned out that this girl had read it.

“It wasn't with the story from that night,” he managed to say. “I can't believe that I could forget someone like you…”

“A party in City Bell. And you killed Luciana off, how silly,
she's perfectly alive, still getting laid all the time.” She looked at him, seriously. “And now you write a bunch of poppycock for the paper.”

“I've never heard that word. Poppycock. Is it a compliment?”

Her eyes were a strange color, her pupils would suddenly expand and cover her irises.

“Give me a cigarette, will you?”

“And how is she?” Renzi asked. It's what they had in common, he hung on to keep the conversation alive.

“I haven't the faintest idea. And of course her name wasn't Luciana, that's what she told people because she didn't like her real name.”

“Right, her name was Cecilia.”

“Her name is. But I haven't seen her in years. She used to come here in the summer with her husband. One of those idiots who plays polo all the time, she wanted to study the philosophy of Simone Weil, can you imagine? And she also had some kind of adventure with you, I'm sure she told you she was going to leave her husband.”

“I loved her,” Emilio said. They remained quiet for a moment. She smiled at him. “What do you do?” he asked.

“I take care of my father.”

“Other than that?”

Sofía looked at him, but didn't answer.

“Come on, let me show you where I live. We can talk a while longer.”

They walked down a hallway and came out on the other side of the house. An open back porch faced a lawn and gardens. On
the other end of the yard there was a guesthouse with two large windows, lighted up.

“We can sit here,” Sofía said. “I'll get some white wine.”

They had grown silent. A nocturnal butterfly flickered around the light with the same determination with which a thirsty animal approaches a puddle. Finally it hit against the lighted lamp and fell to the ground, partially singed. An orangish splash of dust burned for a moment in the air, then dissolved like water in water.

“In the summer I get very skinny,” Sofía said, looking at her arms. “I live outside. When I was a little girl I forced myself to sleep out in the fields with a blanket, under the stars, to see if I could overcome my fear of being out there. Because Ada didn't want to, she's afraid of insects, she prefers the winter.”

Sofía walked back and forth along the edge of the porch with a soft smile on her face, distant and peaceful. Like all very intelligent women who are also beautiful, Renzi thought, she considered her beauty to be annoying because it gave men the wrong idea about what she was really like. As if wanting to refute what he was thinking, Sofía stopped in front of him, grabbed his hand, and brought it to her chest.

“Tomorrow I'll take you to meet my brother,” she said.

28
   
One of the most widely disseminated stories in the countryside, the legend has it that after the Campaign of the Desert, the State divided the lands taken from the Indians and distributed it to the officers using a method entirely in line with Argentine traditions. The individual would gallop as far as his horse could go, and the rider would be given the land he had managed to cover, galloping, without stopping. Commonly the soldiers would ride the Indians' extraordinary horses, which could run for days on end, in long, smooth gallops, without tiring. If one keeps in mind the facts about the distribution of land in the country, it is difficult to believe the extension of that solitary ride. In 1914, half of the Argentine extension—the five provinces of the wet pampas—was occupied by gigantic estancias in the hands of very few owners. And nothing has changed since then. According to the latest estimates from the National Agricultural Census, in 1969: 124 million hectares, with 59.6% of the total land in the hands of 1,260 owners (2.5% of the total population).

PART II

15

From a distance the building looks like a fortress, rectangular and dark. In recent months the Industrialist—as everyone here calls him—has reinforced the original structure with steel planks and wooden partitions, and he's had two guard towers raised at the southeast and southwest corners of the factory. These turrets look over the plains that extend for thousands of kilometers toward Patagonia and the end of the continent. All the transoms, glass roofs, and windows are broken and haven't been replaced because his enemies would simply break them again. The same goes for the outside lights, the bulbs of the street lamps, which someone has smashed by throwing rocks at them—except for a handful of the tallest lamps, still on that late afternoon, soft and yellow in the twilight. The outside walls are covered by torn, re-glued posters and political graffiti, all seemingly repeating the same slogan—
Perón Returns
. Written in different styles by a variety of groups, the posters all show the same smiling face ready as always to come back from anything, they all claim and celebrate the imminent return—or hope for return—of the General Juan Domingo Perón. Flocks of pigeons fly in and out of holes in the walls and the broken windows, and circle above the premises; below, stray dogs bark at each other, or lie in the shade under the trees along the broken
sidewalks. Luca hasn't been outside the factory in months, to avoid seeing the landscape and the decrepitude of the outside world. He remains indifferent to everything outside the plant. Echoes and threats reach him, still, voices and laughter and the sound of cars speeding by on the highway, near the fence, on the other side of the factory's parking areas and loading zone.

After ringing the bell several times outside the locked, chained front iron door, and after leaning through a broken window and clapping their hands trying to get someone's attention, they were finally received by Luca Belladona himself. Tall, polite, oddly dressed in very warm clothes for the time of year—with a large, black leather cardigan, a gray flannel pair of pants, a thick, leather jacket, and Patria boots—he asked them to come directly up to the main offices. They could visit the factory plant a little later, he told them. They walked down a gallery, where the enclosing glass was broken and dirty, and there were phrases and words drawn along the inside walls, too. Things Luca had written there, he explained, things he couldn't afford to forget.