The Buenos Aires Quintet (51 page)

‘D’you mind telling me what your sympathy is for?’

‘So you’re from the Bette Davis school. At least you talk like Bette Davis. I was offering sympathy for a daughter who has just lost her father.’

‘I lost my father forty years ago. He abandoned my mother and me in this city while he went off to play at being the Great Gratowsky’

‘So can I feel sympathy with you for that?’

‘Why? Do you know how it feels to have a father abandon you forty years ago? Not in Buenos Aires of course, from your accent you’re a Spaniard.’

‘My father had a proper sense of the ridiculous, and never abandoned anyone in his life. Not even a mangy old cat we had at home called Negrín.’

‘Was it a black cat then?’

‘No. His name was in honour of a Spanish Republican leader, Juan Negrín. But you wouldn’t have heard of him.’

‘I can’t even remember the names of our own politicians. What’s our president called?’

‘Menem, I think. Is that right?’

Ruth gives a sigh and says defiantly to Carvalho: ‘Detective? Insurance inspector?’

Carvalho puts on his broadest, most disarming smile.

‘Private detective.’

Ruth gets up at once. For her, the conversation is over, and she is about to stride off when Carvalho’s voice pulls her up short.

‘A private detective who could cause you problems cashing in the insurance policy your father left you.’

The phantom of a vanishing dream flickers in Ruth’s eyes, and all of a sudden Carvalho feels sad and truly sympathetic. He mutters an apology and leaves.

One by one, Don Evaristo surveys all the components of Carvalho’s living-room-cum-office, as if drawing up a mental inventory of all the changes his nephew has made. He also has one ear pricked for the lengthy phone call Carvalho is making to Barcelona, as if calculating how much it is going to cost, and whether the detective is likely to return to Spain without paying it. From the conversation, it seems as though someone has come back.

‘So Charo is going to stay? She’s going to start a business? I don’t know, Biscuter. I don’t know. There are lots of loose ends to tie up.’

The conversation goes on and on to no purpose, in Don Evaristo’s view. People have lost all respect for the telephone, he thinks, and talk and talk without realizing that beyond the person they are talking to, in the basements of the telephone companies there are Lilliputian accountants rubbing their hands with glee at the profits they are making thanks to all these blabbermouths. He had never exactly thought of his nephew as a blabbermouth, but now there he is, his lips stuck to the mouthpiece and one arm folded over his head like a chimpanzee, as if he were trying to build a protective wall round himself.

‘No, Biscuter, there’s no way I can tell you.’

So if he can’t tell him, what more is there to say? Don Evaristo pretends to drift off to sleep, to avoid having to listen to his nephew and to the endless chatter from Don Vito, but in reality he is keeping a weather eye open on the people coming and going in the office, until finally he sees Raúl outside the door and then coming towards him slowly, unkempt and cold – cold with him, his own father – even though he does bend and aim a kiss in the general direction of his cheek. Even Carvalho has put the phone down to see how their re-encounter goes, and Alma appears from the room next door, where she has been closeted with Font y Rius and Silverstein. Alma has shed floods of tears from eyes that look drowned in too many conflicting emotions, and is waiting for the old man to say something. No one looks at him, but they are all waiting for him to say something.

‘The Day of Judgement,’ is what he eventually does say, knowing they all wanted to hear more. ‘So our Berta didn’t die after all.’

Then he adds, sarcastically: ‘Of course, how could your great leader die?’

By now he cannot interrupt the outpouring of his anguished feelings.

‘At my age I don’t have to apologize for anything. I didn’t ask you to take on the Argentine army, the whole of Argentine society or the CIA, which was determined not to lose the Cold War anywhere in the world, and especially not here in America. I didn’t ask you to play the fool. I had to deal with the consequences of something I had nothing to do with. Is that clear? That’s why I am not going to apologize to anyone. I did things as I saw fit, just as you had done. I was able to do something to save your lives, but I had to pay the price.’

‘Eva María?’

Don Evaristo has stood up, and now raises himself to his full height to confront his son face to face.

‘She was a means to an end – to saving her and saving the rest of you. When I met Captain Gorostizaga...’

‘Doreste.’

‘Dorwhatever! What does it matter what his real name is? I used my influence – it will make you laugh, but it worked better than all your intellectuals, priests or human rights people put together – and I managed to reach the Captain.’

‘What influence did you have?’

‘Milk.’

By now he is sitting down again, and his tired eyes strain to see the effect his words are having on Raúl.

‘Can you remember what my main business was in those days?’

‘You ran a wholesale milk delivery business.’

‘That’s right. I had a contract to supply a lot of the army barracks, and that contract meant some juicy kickbacks for the top military men. It was Don Evaristo here, Don Evaristo there, what can we do for you, Don Evaristo? My son’s been taken in, just some silly young people’s nonsense. We’ll see what we can do, Don Evaristo. What does he think is so funny?’

Silverstein has doubled up laughing.

‘What I’m telling you is true, every word. I had very good connections in this country, the bribes I paid stood me in good stead with the commanders, and so I got to talk to the Captain’s superiors. You had lost everything, and Eva María was in an orphanage, without any legal identity. You Raúl were alive, so I did a deal to hand over all your research and to keep quiet about what had happened. Berta was dead, or so I believed at the time, and anyway, it wasn’t only you I got out, but all those who had been picked up with you, in your apartment. That meant the fellow who’s so amused over there, Alma, and Pignatari – where is Pignatari, by the way?’

‘He’s dead!’

Silverstein says between guffaws: ‘So this guy saved our lives because he sold the army milk!’

‘At least I had something to sell: you lot had nothing, either then or now; and either that bonehead stops laughing, or I’m not saying another word. What is there to laugh about anyway? Isn’t the Captain still around? Do you think you’re more powerful than I am? What are you going to do when the Captain comes to get you again?’

This time it is Raúl who speaks, without looking his father in the face.

‘No one is judging you. We knew something must have happened for us all to be saved so miraculously. We didn’t want to know the details, until I came back because I wanted to feel I belonged somewhere. Anyway, the Captain is no threat any more. At this very moment there’s a warrant out for his arrest.’

‘Idiots! People like him never get arrested!’

‘Tell Adriana I’m off the case. I’m leaving. Going back to Spain with my uncle. I’m handing the Great Gratowsky case over to Don Vito. I don’t have the heart to tell her myself.’

Alma refuses to believe what she is hearing.

‘You’re telling me you’re going back to Spain? That you’re never going to visit Tango Amigo ever again?’

‘No, this is my last tango show. And with a quintet, no less. The Quinteto Real. Or the New Buenos Aires Quintet, as the posters say. After that, it’s goodbye.’

There’s a bottle of Bourgueil wine on the table, compliments of the house, and on the platform five old tango masters are tuning up with a skill born of a lifetime’s practice. They are in the wine club in the Calle Contreras, the kind of place that advertises alternative theatre venues and plays born of the alienating madness of a city steeped in identity. Luis Cardei and Antonio Pisano on the bandoneon, Nestor Marconi and Antonio Agri on the violin, Salgán on the piano, De Lio on the guitar. Carvalho cannot take his eyes off the casual virtuosity of Agri, who used to play the violin for Astor Piazzola. He is an elegant old man with worried eyes that are full of the music he lives and breathes. The instruments start up their dialogue, with the bandoneon taking the lead and making room for itself. To Carvalho the bandoneon seems like the objective correlative, while the piano, guitar and violin fill in behind. The bandoneon is a stabbing spotlight, weary of illuminating only battlefields of defeat. Raúl, Norman, Font y Rius and Alma are excited. They are paying attention to the music, but are also busy discussing their meeting with Muriel this evening – we can’t let this evening go by without talking to her.

‘Shall we call her Eva María?’

‘I prefer Muriel.’

‘Let her choose.’

Carvalho is a stranger outside the group, which is caught up in an adventure that is exclusively their own concern. It has nothing to do with him, or Raúl’s father, or Güelmes.

They leave the wine club and set off for their meeting with Muriel.

‘Callao on the corner with Corrientes.’

Font y Rius says goodbye.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘I’ll pick up the pieces afterwards. Remember, you can always get a discount at my clinic.’

Carvalho’s car is commandeered, and he finds himself hired as driver, although no one asks him if he agrees. There is a lot of traffic, and lots of police on duty for what looks like a large demonstration.

‘Is it the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?’

‘No.’

‘The old-age pensioners?’

‘No. It’s for the “night of the pencils”.’

The night of the pencils. While in the back of the car Raúl and Alma continue to go over the details of what to say to Muriel, in the front seat Norman explains what to Carvalho what that means.

‘At the start of the dictatorship, the military arrested some secondary school students, just children. They accused them of putting out a “subversive publication”, and killed them all. Well, one survived. We call it the “night of the pencils” because they were young schoolkids.’

Norman turns round and looks at Raúl and Alma, who are oblivious to anything that might happen in the car or in the wide world outside. He comments: ‘I was reading an article in
Nuevo Porteño
about Paco Urondo’s kids. The elder one is a boy, who grew up with his father. And there’s a girl, who was kidnapped by the military and was one of the disappeared. They have met again after all these years. The boy is a living book of memory, because he had the time to realize what it meant to be Urondo’s son. But the girl needs everything explaining to her, everything, including the fact that her father was a great poet. None of these kids can ever be normal. Muriel will never be normal.’

When they get to the corner of Corrientes and Callao, Alma dives into a shop selling Argentine books and records. The three men stand watching the demonstration go by: thousands of young people, veterans already of years of marching, of so many defeats, with the image of Che Guevara waving over their heads, and above that too the shout of ‘Venceremos!’ It’s like an optical illusion that the seventies are still with us, Silverstein says to himself over and over again, the years when it seemed we were on the verge of winning, until the sons of bitches came and wiped us out, wiped us out once and for all, in Argentina, in the United States, in Italy, in Germany. To Carvalho it seems as though the loudspeaker vans are groaning under the weight of all the drums and triumphant anthems. Alma reappears from the shop and hands him a bag.

‘Here. Records and books to teach you something about us. The records are for you to listen to. The books are for you to burn.’

Alma’s beautiful eyes are telling him: farewell, farewell, my masked Spaniard, I’m saying goodbye first, before you say goodbye to me. But perhaps Carvalho does not want to say goodbye. Perhaps Alma wants Carvalho to say: ‘No, I don’t want to say goodbye.’

Carvalho’s lips move as if he does want to say something. It’s not very clear what that might be: perhaps he wants to ask Alma – do you want me to stay? After you’ve got Eva María back will you devote a part of your lovely green eyes to me? Will I be an indispensable part of the everyday life of your green eyes? But Raúl is shouting that there she is, there’s Muriel. She is marching with Alberto in the first row of a group of students. Alma runs to join her, followed by Raúl, then Silverstein, who apologizes to Carvalho but rushes off for his appointment with history, only to return a few moments later after kissing Muriel on both cheeks to tell him breathlessly that he is leaving because he has to go to Tango Amigo to present Adriana. Carvalho and Silverstein join the march alongside others who are relieved to find that for a few hours at least they can dispel the demon of forgetting. Then they push past the security guards and reach the pavement, where crowds of curious onlookers judge this attempt to go back down the time tunnel respectfully but without great enthusiasm.

Muriel seemed very serious when she saw them coming. Alberto had his arm round her shoulders. She looked Raúl up and down with great curiosity. She said: I know everything already. That was all. They all march on and on.

Carvalho has changed his mind. He does go to Tango Amigo one last time, but keeps his promise of not saying goodbye to Adriana. He has to watch her lunar expressiveness one last time, to seek out the thrill of her neckline for the origin of her voice in the spot where women bury all sense of time and place to reproduce the species, where the division of work is made between victims and executioners, tortured and torturers. Silverstein has promised him that tonight he will hear the first tango of the future, a tango beyond Piazzola, through the looking-glass of tango.

‘I wrote the words, and they’re dedicated to you.’

Güelmes is in the club. Drinking and observing. First he waves to Carvalho from the far side of the room, then decides to come over.

‘Great atmosphere, isn’t it?’

‘I didn’t realize you came here.’

‘I come quite often, but I don’t like to bother Silverstein. We lead parallel lives. In fact, it was Alma I was hoping to see. And you. Are you satisfied?’