Target in the Night (30 page)

After a while they were able to discern the signs of Luca's more current activity. Spherical and curved objects set up on the floor, like animals from a strange mechanical bestiary; a device
with wheels, gears, and pulleys, which seemed recently finished, painted in bright red and white paint; a small bronze plate that read:
The wheels of Samson and Delilah
; the diagrams and plans for a monumental construction, fragmented in small, circular models, laid out on a drafting desk. A garage where one hundred workers were once employed, now occupied by a single man.

“We have resisted,” Luca said, then switched to the second person singular. “No one helps you,” he said. “They make everything difficult. You get taxed before you've even produced anything. This way, please.”

He wanted to show them the work to which he'd dedicated his recent efforts. He led them on a path between connecting rods, batteries, and stacked tires, through an alley formed by large containers, and to an opening near the back where they saw an enormous steel structure rising in the air. It was a conical construction, six meters tall, made of grooved steel, resting on four hydraulic legs, painted with a dark, brick-red antioxidant paint. It looked like a stratospheric device, a prehistoric pyramid, or like the prototype of a time machine, maybe. Luca called this unsettling conical contraption
The Viewer
.

You could only enter
The Viewer
from underneath, by sliding through the tubular legs. Inside, once you stood up, you found yourself in a triangular metal tent, tall and serene. The interior contained stairs, a glass elevator, stretched platforms, and small, grilled windows. The device culminated in a glass eye at the top, two meters in diameter, surrounded by metal corridors. It could be reached by climbing the spiral staircase that led up into the control room, with its large windows and rotating chairs. The view from
the top was circular and magnificent. In one direction, according to Luca, you could see the entire
celestial sphere
. In the other, by using a mechanical arm to adjust a series of mirrors set up as square cells, you could also look out over the deserted pampas. In the distance, toward the south of the province, the moon reflected off of the surface of the lakes, in turn surrounded by flooded fields that formed an extended yellow vastness across the plains. Closer in were the sown fields, the animals scattered in the prairies, and the roads intersecting on the slopes near the large estancias. Finally, crowded at the foot of the hills like a sandbank, you could just make out the roofs of the tallest houses in town, the main street and square, and the railroad tracks.

In front of the chairs there was a board with electronic instruments to fine-tune the positioning of the mirrors and make slight oscillations to the pyramid. Luca had placed three Zenith television sets above the steel walls, attached by clamps, and he'd connected them with a complex network of cables and movable antennas. The screens, when they were turned on, were tuned to simultaneous channels. On them, you could follow three different images at the same time.

“We considered calling this machine
The Nautilus
, but it's actually the replica of a spaceship, not a submarine. It's an aerial machine; it produces changes in the perspective and viewpoint of what one comes to see. It's a sign of the times: a stationary vehicle that brings the world to us, instead of us having to go to the world.”

It had taken him nearly a year to build the pyramid, all the instruments, and the accompanying guides. He took advantage of the technology available in the factory's garage to fold the large
sheets of metal. The seamless carapace of the machine, formed without any soldered joints, was the work of a watchmaker.

“It's not finished yet. It's not finished, I don't think we'll have it finished before winter.”

He was haunted by the idea that the factory might be confiscated the following month, when the mortgage payment was due. He had received a letter from the courts with a date for a reconciliation hearing, but he'd postponed it because he didn't think that he was ready.

“We received the telegram inviting us to parley a week ago. They didn't use that word exactly, but that was the meaning of it. They want us to sit down and negotiate, they want to discuss the fate of the confiscated funds. We'll see what they propose. For the moment we've postponed the date. We didn't write directly to the judge, but to his secretary. We sent him notice that our company needs more time and that we were requesting an extension. They send telegrams or cablegrams, we only write letters.” He paused. “Our father has interceded. My father has interceded, even though I didn't ask for his help.”

“Do you know what this is?” Renzi asked, showing Sofía a piece of paper with the code Alas 1212 on it.

“Looks like an address.”

“A finance company.”

“At my brother Lucio's funeral, my father decided that he was going to get the money to Luca, even though they weren't speaking to each other.”

“And Tony brought it for him.”

“The funds belonged to the family, they were in an account that the
Old Man had abroad, in dollars, he couldn't transfer it legally. Or he didn't want to.”

“He sold his soul to the devil.”

Lying sideways on the bed, propped up on her elbow, a hand on her face, Sofía started laughing.

“
Achalay
! Man, you live in the past.” She touched him with her bare foot. “I wish I could make such a deal with the devil, my little dove. You don't know how quickly I'd take off. But what I'm offered is never that convincing.”

“My father helped me with the money, but I didn't ask for it, he saw me at the cemetery, at Lucio's funeral. I didn't ask him for anything, I'd rather die first. He advanced me my inheritance, but I don't want anything to do with him.” Luca started pacing around the garage as if he were alone. “No, I can't ask my father for anything, ever.” He couldn't ask the person responsible for all his misfortune for help. That's why at first he hesitated, but there were larger issues at stake. He stopped his pacing. “While I'm able to keep the factory operational, my father can have his rationale and I can have mine, my father can have his reality and I mine, each separate. We will succeed. The money is legal, it was brought in
surreptitiously
, but that's secondary, I can pay the back taxes and the fines to the Tax Office once the capital is acquired. If necessary, I have the official statements from my father and my sisters, and from my mother in Dublin, to prove that the money belongs to the family. It's joint assets—and that's how I'm going to pay off the mortgage. I'm one step away from finding a process for the lighting, my observatory needs just a few final touches. I can't stop now.” He
lit a cigarette and smoked, lost in his thoughts. “I don't trust my father, he's hiding something, I'm sure the prosecutor is working for him. If I'm not mistaken, this is why I have to be very clear. I don't understand his reasons, my father's, and he doesn't understand the
unfathomable
humiliation that he subjects me to by having to accept that money to save the plant. The factory is my whole life.
³⁷
This place is made with the stuff of dreams.
With the stuff that dreams are made of.
I must be true to this directive. I'm sure that my father wasn't responsible for that young man's death, Tony Durán. That's why I've accepted what belongs to me, from my mother's inheritance.”

This was going to be the basis for his case in the trial. The factory was his great work, it was already built and had proved its effectiveness, so why liquidate? Why make it dependent on loans? He thought these arguments would convince the court.

He was going to bet his life at the trial. Luca had a cause, a sense, and a reason to live—and this was all that mattered to him. This fixed idea kept him alive, he didn't need anything else, just a little
mate
to make his hot, bitter infusion to have with some crackers, and occasionally to be able to pet Croce's dog. He was absorbed in his own thoughts for a while, then said:

“We have to leave you now. We're very busy, our secretary will see you out.” Barely waving goodbye, he headed to the staircase and climbed to the upper levels of the plant.

The secretary, a young man with a strange look about him, accompanied them to the front door. As they walked toward the exit he told them that he was worried about the trial, which was actually a reconciliation hearing. The offer from the prosecutor Cueto had arrived. Rather, Cueto had communicated to them that he had an offer about the money that Luca's father had sent him through Durán.

“Luca didn't want to open the envelope with the offer from the court. He says he prefers to go in with his own arguments, and not know those of his rival ahead of time.”

The secretary seemed alarmed, or maybe that was his normal demeanor. A bit detached, there was a strange, shy air about him. He walked down the corridor, a few steps behind them, and said his goodbyes at the door. When they crossed the street, Renzi looked back and saw the dark mass of the factory and a single light illuminating the windows of the upper rooms. Luca was looking down from behind the glass, smiling, pale as a specter, following them from the white above, in the middle of the night.

They heard noises from the entrance downstairs. Sofía sat up, motionless, anxious and alert.

“She's here,” she said. “It's her, Ada.”

They heard a door and then a few steps and a soft whistling, someone had entered whistling a melody. And nothing else, except for window shutters being closed in one of the rooms down at the end of the hallway.

Sofía looked at Emilio then, and moved closer to him.

“Do you want me to… I can call her…”

“Don't be silly,” Renzi said, and embraced her. Her body temperature
was incredible, soft skin and very warm, with beautiful freckles like a golden archipelago drifting down, disappearing into her red pubic bush.
³⁸

“I was kidding, dummy,” she said, and kissed him. She finished getting dressed. “I'll be right back, I want to see how Ada is doing.”

“Call me a taxi?”

“Really?” Sofía said.

35
   
Surface area covered: Main nave: 3,600 m
²
. Underground level: 1,050 m
²
. Offices: 514 m
²
. Conference rooms: 307 m
²
. Total surface covered: 5,501 m
²
. Land for future expansion: 6,212.28 m
²
. Total: 11,713.28 m
²
.

36
   
There were meetings, marches, protests, but they didn't get any support. The people from the countryside would come by on their horses to see the acts, they'd say hello by touching their hats with the tip of their riding crop, and ride on. “Gauchos don't go on strike,” Rocha said. He'd been the delegate for the internal commission. “If they have a problem, at most they kill their boss, or they take off. They're more self-sufficient than the Virgin.”

37
   
“Sometimes Luca hears the mocking laughter of a group of children. Are they laughing at him? He hates children, their voices, their
metallic
laugh, the little childish monsters. The
neighbors
are watching, they send their children
to observe
. His fate has been to be celibate, a true non-father, the anti-father, nothing natural, everything
made
, and thus rejected and persecuted” (Report by Mr. Schultz).

38
   
When she lay down on a white sheet on the grass to sunbathe, the chickens would always try to peck the freckles on her torso…

18

When Renzi went back to visit Croce at the asylum, he found him alone in his block. As he crossed the lawn, the fat man and the thin man, who'd been transferred to another section of the hospital, approached Renzi and asked him for cigarettes and money. Off to the side, sitting on a bench between the trees, he saw another of the admitted patients—a very gaunt man, with the face of a corpse, wearing a long, black overcoat—masturbating, looking up toward the women's rooms on the other side of the gated fence. On the upper level of that building, Renzi thought he saw one of the women leaning out the window with her chest bare, making obscene gestures while the man watched her with a lost look in his eye, touching himself between the folds of his open coat. Did they pay for that? Renzi wondered.