The Buenos Aires Quintet (21 page)

Carvalho crosses the street to Mudarra’s block, and uses his bunch of keys to open the street door. He gropes his way up a staircase dimly lit from the streetlamps. He reaches the apartment. He fondles his keys, doubting, but finally puts them away and rings the bell. After a good while, the door finally opens. Mudarra stares at him, expressionless.

‘I came to say hello to your mother. You told me she liked visitors.’

Mudarra steps back to allow Carvalho in. It’s a flat as poor as the Latin teacher’s, but this one is scrupulously clean. In what functions as a dining-room, living-room and kitchen there is a black and white television that is showing a zigzag of lines, but no programme. Opposite it sits an apparently invalid woman in a wheelchair, rug drawn over her knees. But Carvalho can see blood on her face, and her eyes stare blankly. He pretends not to have noticed.

‘So she’s asleep. I’m sorry...’

‘Yes, asleep at last.’

‘What about Canelo?’

Mudarra jerks his head vaguely into the distance.

‘He’s asleep too.’

Carvalho moves across the room, followed by the young man, who has a slight smile on his face but says nothing more. They go into the bathroom. A bath that in its day must have looked regal, but now stands there like an abandoned elephant that has only three legs instead of four. Inside the bath, water and blood and Canelo’s dead body. His head lolls over the side, eyes clouded over and teeth bared as if he were snarling uselessly at death or were waiting for another portion of Carvalho’s croquettes.

‘He made too much noise. The neighbours were complaining. My mother never did a thing. The whole world is false. Take my mother. She loved me because she needed me, but if she hadn’t, she would have confessed she hated me.’

‘And the Latin teacher?’

Mudarra doesn’t seem in the least surprised by the question.

‘He was another clown. A dirty old man, who always left his flies half open. He stank of piss. I can’t bear a smell like that.’

‘What about Carmen Lavalle?’

‘A whore. She went around boasting about how she paid for her studies by dancing, but she would let anyone slobber over her, even that disgusting old man.’

‘But not you?’

Mudarra nervously rubs at his lips, as if trying to wipe them clean. Carvalho gives a last look at all the horror in this one small apartment. He lingers on his way out as he passes by the old lady.

‘Goodnight, Señora.’

Mudarra follows him and opens the door. Out on the landing, Carvalho turns back to question this tubercular, emotionless prince’s face.

‘What will you do now?’

‘I’ll never go out again.’

He shuts the door slowly and carefully. Carvalho hears him shutting the bolts. He starts down the stairs.

Chapter 3

The Malvinas War

They have never seen anything like it in the Calle Florida, and how can it be that something has never been seen in the Calle Florida? A man dressed up as an explorer or a castaway, wearing clothes straight out of a nineteenth-century illustration of
Robinson Crusoe.
Behind him a black man got up in equally outlandish fashion, a Man Friday of childhood memories. The black man even has a parrot on his shoulder, and Robinson is leading a pet llama. Robinson and Friday in all their splendour, with flowing locks down to their shoulders. The white man has a well-established beard, and strides along arrogantly; Friday is the noble savage wary of the big city and its overdressed inhabitants. The passers-by cannot make up their mind whether this is a piece of street theatre, some candid camera television programme, or perhaps a prize competition. As if he were a street singer or one of the people who sold songbooks in villages before the Korean War, Robinson is speaking into a rudimentary loudhailer, little more than a funnel. Friday underscores the message with rhythmical beats on his drum.

‘Citizens of the Argentine Republic! In these times of corruption and the collapse of patriotic, social and ethical values, times when man is a wolf to man, and women are the worst she-wolves to other women, it’s essential to regenerate mankind and our nation, using Robinson Crusoe and his values as our starting point. We have to become islanders again. We have to rediscover pure solitude, Robinson’s lonely grandeur on his island, if we are to reconquer a continent, a world. Which islands? Do we have to imagine them like Daniel Defoe did? No. We have our own islands, the Malvinas. We have to reconquer the Malvinas to save our nation.’

A mixture of applause, whistles, a braying sound here and there, the sarcastic comment of a one-armed man: ‘I have to get to the Malvinas again because I left an arm there. I wonder if the Gurkhas kept it for me, if they ate it or stuck it up their arses.’

The sadness of a prematurely old mother: ‘I left a son there. I wonder if they kept him for me.’

But Robinson’s speech is over, and he heads off for the Harrods stores with Friday, the llama and the parrot in tow. The procession continues until they reach the barber shop, where several clients are roused from their centuries-old slumber to discover this weird apparition. Robinson in a barber’s chair. The llama. Friday and his parrot. The barbers stand there, razors in mid-air. The security guards do not know whether to intervene or not. Robinson starts to speak, and the clients listen, their faces half-shaven or their hair half-cut or washed. The manicurists’ hands hang in the air above their customers’ fingers. Robinson announces: ‘When I say the Malvinas, I’m talking about both real and symbolic islands. We have to retake our islands, but we should not think they are only ours. They are a step on the road to universal reason, to the establishment of true ethical values: fraternity, equality and liberty.’

This same quartet: master, slave, llama and parrot, walks up and down outside the Faculty of Letters until it has gathered a group around it. Robinson is making the same speech, as if oblivious to who might be listening: ‘We have to conquer the Malvinas in order to reconquer ourselves, to rediscover the innocence that the torturers and their accomplices stole from us. But how can we do that?’

It’s Alma who speaks up from an audience which apparently cannot decide whether to be scornful or interested.

‘First of all, we have to get there. Swimming. Just like the last time, when those military bastards sent our youngsters swimming to the islands.’

As well as laughter, there’s a positive suggestion from one student: ‘We could make rafts.’

Robinson folds his arms and looks at them as if he pities the shallowness of their comments. ‘Why not swimming? Why not on rafts? My plan is to save the world’s ecosystem, so why not bring together the new ecowarriors, ecologists and “liberation theologists” so we can bring about a peaceful, universal invasion of the Malvinas. What would the British do if thousands, millions of pacifists went and took over the Malvinas?’

Again, it’s Alma’s voice which tries to put history back in its proper place. ‘They’d machine-gun them.’

Laughter and more whistling. Alma continues indignantly: ‘Where does this prophet think he’s from? Are you crazy or just irresponsible? Do you think you can still stir the masses up as if this was an Argentina-Chile football match?’

‘Woman, who robbed you of your faith?’

‘And you – where were you when Videla and Co. stole it from me?’

Now the applause and whistles tell Alma she should get away, show her disapproval at having been drawn into the trap. She is still angry when she enters the lecture-room, and leaves her books and papers on her desk. She sits and tries to calm down. She looks up. Some students are filing in. One of them is Muriel, who comes to the front and sits in a seat that Alma is glad, was hoping, she would take, because she likes having the girl’s bright face close to her. The rest of the class drifts in. They are arguing about what Robinson said. All of a sudden two of them start a fight. Alma shouts: ‘That’s enough! What’s going on?’

But the direct intervention of other students is more effective than the lecturer’s voice. One of them tries to explain: ‘This one says he’d give his life for the Malvinas, and this other one says the Malvinas aren’t even worth...’

‘Aren’t even worth what?’

‘Not even...’

The student starts to blush, but the person who originally used the phrase comes to his rescue: ‘It was me. I said the Malvinas aren’t even worth the toilet paper I use to wipe my arse with.’

This time the whistling is louder than the applause, and by now Alma has recovered her place, her voice, the reason why she is standing out in front of this classful of students.

‘There’s still a difference between fantastic literature and eschatology. The Malvinas exist. They are a national reference point – for many, a nationalist one. Anti-imperialist, possibly. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing anymore. But they’re there. That clown outside was talking symbolically, and irresponsibly. And romantic adventures cost lives.’

Now it’s Muriel who speaks up.

‘Excuse me, miss, but why do you call him a clown?’

‘How do you see him?’

Muriel swallows hard, but launches herself anyway.

‘As a poet. And anyway, I like clowns.’

Alma looks down at Muriel with interest. She restrains herself, and does not pronounce the brilliant repartee that could crush her. Instead, she softens her tone: ‘There are dangerous poems, just as there is dangerous music. Clowns may be innocent, but clowns’ tricks can be criminal, like the stunt General Galtieri pulled when he started the Falklands War.’

Alma repeats the same phrase to herself: there are dangerous poems, just as there is dangerous music and criminal clowns’ tricks, as she is travelling home on the bus, as she walks from the bus stop to her apartment, as she halts in amazement at the spectacle greeting her there: Robinson, Friday, the llama, the parrot. She walks past them, letting drop a commentary in the guise of a question: ‘Is it carnival time then?’

Robinson leans towards her with a courteous gesture: ‘We wanted to talk to you.’

Alma surveys the four of them.

‘You four must be the most picturesque quartet Buenos Aires has ever seen. So now you want me to join in and make a quintet, do you?’

‘We simply wanted to talk to you.’

‘Well if that’s what you want, it has to be all of you, including the llama.’

The quintet piles into the lift, causing stupefaction on the faces of the people waiting on each floor, who stare in disbelief at the ascension of Alma, Robinson, Friday, the llama and the parrot. Once they’re all safely installed in her apartment, Alma leaves her books and notes on a table, and invites them to make themselves at home.

‘Just like your own cabin. ‘I’m sorry there’s no stockade to make you feel more secure.’

Robinson sits on the couch, with Friday next to him. The parrot settles on Friday’s shoulder, and the llama starts sniffing at Alma’s pot plants. Alma acts the perfect hostess: ‘Did you miss this kind of comfort? Would you like something: hard tack, meat jerky? What about you, Mister Robinson? Have you always been Robinson Crusoe?’

‘I used to have a different name, but I chose to be Robinson. You used to have a different name, and chose to be called Alma.’

Alma becomes alert. This Robinson is very different from the crazy clown out in the street. He goes on talking calmly: ‘I’m a petroleum engineer. That’s my trade, and I’ve worked in the Middle East and in Argentina. Afterwards I trafficked arms, favours, currencies. I laundered money for some of the planet’s worst assassins. My driver and favourite butler here can tell you it’s all true.’

He points to Friday. Alma looks at him, back at his master, and finally settles on the slave.

‘Do you talk like a grateful slave then?’

Friday responds in an effeminate twitter: ‘I like crazy women like you, because next to them I seem normal.’

Robinson is very pleased at Friday’s retort. So is the parrot, which starts to screech: ‘I love gays, I love gays, I love gays.’

The llama is sniffing at Alma’s favourite fig plant. She is worried he will eat it, but Robinson focuses her attention back on him: ‘Appearances can be deceptive, but they’re all we have. I could dress myself up as any kind of guru, so why not Robinson? I took part in the Falklands War, in many other wars, because I sold arms and charged my commission. And my youngest son was killed in the Malvinas. He was an idealist who believed in Videla, in Galtieri, in his father – above all, in his father. He believed in me.’

Friday leans over and kisses him on his cheek, then throws an arm round his shoulder, as if trying to protect him from his own nightmares. Alma tries to be as icy as possible: ‘What has all this got to do with me?’

Robinson says, quietly and apparently guilelessly: ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

‘Who from?’

‘Raúl. Raúl Tourón.’

A disciplined darkness in the room. A big television screen is showing a video set in motion by a pair of plump hands full of rings. In the darkness, the Captain’s rapacious profile staring at the images, the fat man pausing them, a group of other men looking intently on. The fat man is stopping and starting the video like an image-hunter. The video shows Robinson and Friday in the streets of Buenos Aires. The Captain’s voice rings like a stone.

‘Is his identity confirmed?’

The fat man replies.

‘Confirmed. Joaquín Gálvez, one of the vice-presidents of the bosses’ association not so long ago: the Brucker, Ostiz clan and so on. I think he was there until early on in Galtieri’s time. In those days, the black man was his driver: it was always a white Rolls-Royce. His youngest boy was killed in the Malvinas.’

The Captain spits: ‘I knew him. A buffoon.’

The fat man knows the file by heart.

‘Trafficking of arms, of currency, on good terms with the Yankees: he was said to be a close friend of President Reagan before he was president.’

‘So now where has he built his Robinson Crusoe cabin?’

‘He’s kept an old mansion by the river. On the outskirts of the Tigre delta.’

‘Is it a ruin?’

‘I don’t know. Lots of his business affairs are going well. His son Richard Gálvez takes care of them.’

‘Why Richard?’

‘A homage to ex-president Nixon. Homage from the days when he hadn’t yet been president or ex-president, but was Eisenhower’s vice-president. That was when Gálvez was linked to a lobby group in California, which backed the young Nixon too.’

The video has come to the point where Robinson is haranguing the university students. The Captain orders the fat man to be quiet and to increase the volume so that he can hear Robinson’s voice: ‘My plan is to save the world’s ecosystem, so why not bring together the new ecowarriors...’

‘What an asshole, what an irresponsible clown.’

But suddenly the Captain pauses in his litany of insults, because he spots Muriel in the front row of students.

‘It’s my daughter! Turn the volume down and pause the image! It’s Muriel! That son of a bitch is poisoning her for me. Can you blow up the image? Have you seen who I’ve seen?’

‘Yes, it’s Muriel.’

‘Blow up the photo of my daughter.’

The girl seems fascinated by what Robinson is saying. The Captain rubs his eyes as if he cannot believe what he is seeing.

‘What a mess! What are you doing getting mixed up in this farce? Carry on, carry on.’

Robinson’s voice starts up again: ‘What would the British do if thousands, millions of pacifists went and took over the Malvinas?’

First they hear the voice: ‘They’d machine-gun them.’

Then they see the face: Alma. The Captain leaps out of his seat.

‘It had to be, didn’t it? It had to be her.’

Alma’s angry voice goes on: ‘Where does this prophet think he’s from? Are you crazy or just irresponsible? Do you think you can still stir the masses up as if this was an Argentina-Chile football match?’

Robinson replies: ‘Woman, who robbed you of your faith?’

Alma: ‘Where were you when Videla and Co. stole it from me?’

Rivulets of sweat as narrow as his features run down the Captain’s cheeks. He barks an order: ‘Switch it off!’

The lights are flicked on, and there is silence. The Captain is sitting head in hands; the fat man looks undecided; the rest are paralysed. The Captain suddenly realizes everyone is looking at him.

‘Who told you to switch the lights on? All I said was for you to stop the video!’

He’s beside himself, so all the others decide it’s safer to keep quiet and simply to follow on behind him when he leaves the viewing room and goes down to the car park. The Captain flings himself into his seat at the back, and the fat man slides in the front. He gradually takes control of the situation, and voices his concern out loud to the Captain: ‘I told you it was dangerous to send her to university. It’s a breeding ground for subversives. Thirty thousand disappear, and another thirty thousand spring up to take their place. Those leftists grow like weeds, and the girl’s in the midst of them.’