The Buenos Aires Quintet (5 page)

Améndola seems to be enjoying the thought of the imaginary scene. The well-endowed young woman, possibly an assistant, passes by. Carvalho can’t help admiring her ass and legs again. Roberto notices his interest. ‘That comes from a lot of meat protein. Lots of steaks. Our asses are full of the best of Argentina. Do you want to see the real Argentina?’

Roberto’s eyes go to the poster showing the contented cow. Carvalho follows his gaze. New Argentina it says on the door. Outside the window, motorcyclists dressed as if they intend to terrify circle round. Roberto leads the way and shows Carvalho to cowsheds that look like something out of a Hollywood film, with all the latest equipment. Unbelievable cows. Superbly looked after. ‘First the lupins, remember...then the cows, then mankind – riches, plenty. We have a future again.’

He goes into the pastures, strokes the cows, kisses them. Carvalho doesn’t know whether to laugh or be concerned. He looks round to see if anyone is watching, but doesn’t see how behind a Venetian blind a gaunt-faced man with pale grey ice for eyes is staring at them. Next to him is the fat man from the plane, who’s clenching his teeth so hard he almost seems to have a jawbone beneath the rolls of fat. The gaunt, athletic-looking man of around fifty stares out of the window and says: ‘He’s a fool. Why did he let the Spaniard in here?’

‘I told you Captain, he’s unreliable. He’s going to cause us trouble. The mess that crazy guy Raúl caused here the other night has knocked him off balance.’

‘I should have finished them all off twenty years ago. That son of a bitch isn’t going to cause me any trouble. I wish I’d never even thought of doing a deal with them.’

Out in the field, Roberto is still spouting his theories about cows and the future. All of a sudden he falls silent. He’s spotted Raúl a bit further on, peering at them from a ditch. Roberto tries to say something but fails, as if Raúl’s hidden gaze had paralysed his body and his voice. Then he snaps out of it, mutters an excuse to Carvalho, turns on his heel and runs into the Foundation. He bursts into the room where the fat man and the Captain were observing them. They stare angrily at him. ‘He’s here! I’ve just seen him!’

The fat man rushes up to him and asks: ‘Who?’

‘Raúl!’

The Captain turns to the window. All he can see is Carvalho philosophizing with the cows. The fat man hurries out of another door and runs waving his arms towards the motorcyclists. The bikes roar off round the building, and zoom towards Carvalho, who is taken by surprise at their determination to catch him. He doesn’t have time to ask them why. Two black leather angels throw themselves on him and knock him down. They start punching, and as he is trying to avoid the third one landing on top of him as well, beyond their masked faces he thinks he sees the fat man from the plane come panting up, shouting at the top of his voice: ‘Not him, you assholes!’

Carvalho loses consciousness.

Raúl runs along the ditch and falls panting by an irrigation channel. He raises himself on his elbows, and can’t see any immediate danger. Kneels down again to cup some water from the channel, and is brought up short by the image of himself reflected in the water. The wild, staring eyes of a man: Raúl. Himself. In a bad way. Several days’ growth of beard, as if he were still down in that cement hole with a narrow grating on its roof. He remembers how when his mind wandered in those days, he would sometimes see himself on top of the grating with Roberto, commenting on the behaviour of his other, imprisoned self, the laboratory rat. The two of them would stand there, in their white coats, staring down at the tortured Raúl with the same indifference as they would study a rat. Perhaps it was because he was able to stand outside himself and see that Raúl, that rat in a torture laboratory, that he managed to grasp the situation more objectively, that he managed to survive. But what was Roberto doing there, always alongside his other scientific self, the rat torturer? Passing neutral comments on the rat’s squeaks of fear. Raúl, beside himself, about to succumb mentally from the pain and fear. Then all at once the Captain appeared alongside them, with his refined, subtle cruelty.

‘Would you like to go out into the street, Doctor Tourón?’

Or: ‘Who would you kill, son of a bitch, to be allowed outside?’

The same Captain. The one who once took him out for a ride in his own car. That was no guarantee you would survive. It just happened that sometimes the torturers took you out of the cave where all you saw were shadows of reality, and allowed you a glimpse for an hour or two of the life you had left on hold. They took you to the cinema. Or showed you the bills for flowers they had sent in your name to their wives, or to your mother. The Captain took him to see
Being There
with Peter Sellers, and within a few minutes both he and his torturer were laughing, taking time out from their real roles. But then back in the underground cell, there was no guarantee that the good mood would continue, that a beating or a torture session with the cattle prod would not immerse you once again in the only possible reality. And you couldn’t take advantage of being outside to escape, because your family was facing all kinds of threats, as were you, and then beneath or beyond those threats was the syndrome of the grateful hostage.

‘That’s an excellent idea, Señor Tourón,’ the Captain said to him on one of these outings. ‘And it was you who first thought of it. The grateful hostage! I remember that in your research into animal behaviour you wrote brilliantly about awarding a prize arbitrarily and very rarely, as a powerful exception to the rule of constant and equally arbitrary punishment.’

Then one day they let him see his father. That was a sign they were not going to kill him, that he wasn’t going to disappear – or if he was, his father would disappear too. But he seemed in control. He was very sure of himself, and the Captain seemed to respect him. Raúl was allowed to speak alone with him, but they didn’t manage to say anything to each other. They never managed to say anything ever again. Not when a few days later the two of them returned to Spain. Not for almost twenty years in Spain. Only when Raúl, his mind made up, told him he was leaving the next day for Buenos Aires. And then all the old man had said was: ‘What will be, will be. And all I’ve done is useless.’

The students listened to her perhaps because she had the look of a mature Madonna, with scars on her face that looked gentle or traced with her permission. The lecture room of a university fallen on hard times, in keeping with a pauper culture. Alma is sitting behind a table up on the platform. Carvalho has slipped in through the half-open door, behind the backs of the carefully scruffy students sitting in this carelessly scruffy room, a rundown, cheap and mercenary scene that is completely at odds with the words coming from Alma’s pale, sensual lips.

‘The criticism that the language of marginalized people is a non-language merely disguises the fact that all language has now become non-language. Look at all the usual messages we get from politics or advertising. They are not trying to convey knowledge, truth, or a sense of mystery. All they want to do is convince us. And we all pretend we have been convinced, because we doubt whether there is any point in doubting, suspecting, or still less, denying. Steiner asks himself the Romantic question of whether it is still possible that words can reacquire the mystery they had at the dawn of tragic poetry’

The lecturer is as beautiful as she is sure of herself, and sceptical.

‘But why does Steiner ask himself that question? Isn’t he doing it from a position where his own language has become false? Isn’t he laying claim to an impossible nostalgia?’

Silence.

‘Thank you for your attention. Tomorrow we’ll look at the topic from the point of view of Roland Barthes’
Mythologies.
’

Carvalho pushes his way forward through the scrum of young bodies. He observes how Alma rhythmically collects up her books, straightens her cardigan, stands up and accommodates her dainty muscles to her remarkable forty-year-old frame. She smiles briefly to dismiss everyone, and when she raises her head to decide which corridor she should make her escape down, she sees Carvalho standing by the platform.

‘The masked Galician. Are you interested in Steiner or Barthes?’

‘Are they a tango duo? Or do they play on the left wing for Boca Juniors?’

‘Don’t make me talk any more. I’m thirsty. Thirsty for water.’

‘The thirst for water is a primitive one. Thirst for wine means culture, and thirst for a cocktail is its highest expression.’

Only now does Alma notice the bruises on Carvalho’s face, and a transparent bit of plaster on the corner of his mouth.

‘What happened?’

‘I got beaten up by mistake. They thought I was Raúl.’

Alma’s ironic mask slips. She looks around as though Raúl’s name could only bring alarm and disaster. Carvalho leads her out and she allows herself to be taken along without realizing exactly where they are going, until she finds herself in a club inevitably lined with precious woods, and with a cocktail list in her hands. She doesn’t even glance at it, still horrified by Carvalho’s face.

‘Are you going to explain or not?’

But the presence of a waiter hovering over them cuts short their conversation. Carvalho surveys the list of cocktails, shuts it with a sigh, and hands it back.

‘Surprise me.’

‘Would you like to try a Maradona?’

‘What’s in it?’

‘Bourbon, peach, lemon and orange juices, with a sprig of fresh mint and some strawberries.’

‘What’s that got to do with Maradona?’

‘Nothing, probably. But if you are Spanish...’

‘How can you tell?’

‘You Spaniards are almost as unmistakable as we Argentines are.’

‘Oh, you don’t say. Go on. If I were Spanish, what would you offer me?’

‘A “fifth centenary”, perhaps.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Pisco, white wine, and a few drops of sweet sherry’

‘Help!’

Alma laughs despite herself, but when the waiter moves off, her eyes are again full of concern and enquiry.

‘I went to see Raúl’s former associate, Roberto. My cousin had been there, and paid him another visit. Their experiments are part of a foundation which calls itself The Spirit of New Argentina. I’ve been hearing about it since I started my trip here. The man in the seat next to me on the plane is one of their promoters, he told me about the foundation and about Güelmes.’

‘Güelmes?’

‘Yes, your almost minister Güelmes. While Roberto was showing me the pride of Argentina’s cows, he thought he saw Raúl and ran off. All of a sudden, two motorcyclists leapt on me and started to beat me to a pulp. Before I lost consciousness I saw my flight companion, a fat guy out of a B-movie. He was giving the orders.’

‘What did Roberto say?’

‘He patched me up. He said he was sorry, and explained how obsessed Raúl seemed to be with returning there. First he paid them a call, then one night he got into the laboratory and trashed it, and now he’s been back a third time. The strange thing is that when I mentioned the fat man, the man I’d met on the plane and who was in charge of the motorcyclists, he looked at me like a scientist faced with some farfetched theory, and told me the only fat things around were the New Argentina cows. I reckon the meeting in the plane was a set-up. They knew I was coming from Spain. They must have been monitoring your letters or your phone calls to my uncle. How else would they know?’

Although she’s on the verge of it, Alma has no time to be scared stiff. Two ‘fifth centenaries’ fall from the skies and put a stop to Carvalho’s confessions. She waits until he’s tried the cocktail, winked at the waiter and given his verdict.

‘Very refreshing.’

The waiter glides off, pride assuaged.

‘Ghastly, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve drunk worse. What d’you make of my adventure?’

‘Why did they beat you up? I mean, why did Roberto let them beat up the person they thought was Raúl?’

‘He said Raúl’s night-time shenanigans had annoyed them.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘No; but I’ve no better idea. By the way, I won’t be attending your classes any more.’

‘Why? Are they that bad?’

‘You’re pessimistic about language, but you earn your living discussing and analysing other people’s language. Don’t you believe in what you’re doing?’

‘I use words to earn my living, and say what people expect to hear. Aren’t you a pessimist?’

‘I’m supposed to find a cousin I don’t know in a city I don’t know either. Those of you who were closest to him could help me. Are you sure you haven’t seen him?’

Alma sustains his gaze.

‘No.’

‘Why not? I don’t understand.’

‘He didn’t want to see me. Perhaps I remind him too much of my sister. We’re very alike.’

‘Perhaps.’

Alma changes the subject. Sips at her drink.

‘I’ve tasted worse too.’

‘What did you make of your brother-in-law?’

‘An industrialist who used science. All he wanted to do was make money from his discoveries. He was a behaviourist who taught how to treat people like rats.’

‘Did Berta agree with him?’

‘No. At some point she thought perhaps the discoveries could serve the cause, but she often expressed her doubts to me. Like all of those who come from the working classes, Raúl had a twin brother inside him who wanted to be rich, even though his father was already rich enough. But that’s enough about Raúl.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘You mean, in general?’

‘No. I mean the night you were arrested. How did you survive? What exactly happened to the little girl?’

Alma shakes her head, but eventually thinks about it and starts to speak as if she has no need for an audience. As she tells the story, she takes on the role of the different people involved that night.

‘They forced their way in, shouting, insulting us, guns in hand. We were in Raúl and Berta’s apartment. There were more people there, who didn’t survive. Font y Rius, my husband, was there. Pignatari had written a piece of music dedicated to Eva María, and I’d had it recorded in a music box. Have you ever heard a rock song in a music box? Then they burst in. It was like a full-scale battle. Berta grabbed a pistol and faced up to them. They hit the walls of the entrance hall and crawled their way towards us. Raúl shouted at Berta not to resist. “Don’t be stupid! They’ll kill us all, the child too! Don’t be so stupid! We surrender! Just spare the girl’s life! The little girl!” I remembered Eva María in her cot, so I dropped my gun and ran in there. She was only a year old. I picked her up. My mind was a blank – perhaps that’s how I managed to get out, by being completely blank. I got out with my Eva María – it was as if the bullets stopped to let us through.’