The Buenos Aires Quintet (6 page)

Slowly Alma comes back to reality. She’s cradling her arms as though the baby were still in them. Carvalho gently stops her movements, but encourages her to go on with the story.

‘Some days later I read in the papers that Berta had been killed in the shoot-out. I thought it was the right moment to go home or at least to my parents’ place to hand over Eva María. Until then I’d been in hiding, like an insect, not knowing who to turn to. So I went to my parents’ apartment. The goons were there. I didn’t even get to see my parents. I was arrested. They took the baby away’

She’s about to break down. Carvalho comforts her.

‘It’s all right. That’s enough for today’

‘You’re right. You made me talk about something I never wanted to mention again.’

Now it’s not an emotional Alma opposite him, but a woman furious with herself and with him. She’s had enough of confessions and of being there. She stands up abruptly, and leaves Carvalho open-mouthed when he realizes she’s stood him up yet again.

All human rights offices look the same, especially if organized by a group of victims of crimes against humanity. They are down-at-heel apartments full of second-hand furniture and posters proclaiming hope beneath garish neon lights. The people there act as if they were in a convent, fired by the secret joy of those who have succeeded in freeing themselves from at least a tiny part of their innate selfishness. In other words, people who feel solidarity: in this case, almost all of them women, somewhere between old and very old, well-dressed middle-class ladies who discovered in their own families during the Process how cruel history can be. Anyone who goes into the office hands over and receives an invisible ethical credit card, a solidarity Mastercard. Carvalho can feel its presence in his jacket pocket just above his heart as he explains why he has come to an impossibly short-sighted old woman, behind whose pebble glasses he can see at least five pairs of eyes superimposed on each other, and with a tiny mouth painted a gentle pink to chime in with her oh! so nice way of talking. She turns away from him and makes off down a corridor to the room where the grandmothers keep all the painful memories of the grandchildren they hope to find alive, even though they are just as disappeared as the parents who were snatched by the armed forces during the years of the military junta. Carvalho is moved by everything he sees around him, even the routine inertia of what has become an office, the veneer of habit laid over the most sensitive skin, the rawest of wounds. Then the old lady comes back with a big white folder. She sniffs it before opening it. ‘I told them to put in those little white balls for damp.’

Then she plunges her inadequate, ocean-deep eyes into the pages of the file, until... ‘Ah, yes...I remember...I remember...’

She remembers and looks up at Carvalho.

‘Eva María Tourón Modotti. No trace of her from the moment she was taken from her aunt, Alma. A disappeared baby, disappeared without trace. The raid was led by a Captain Ranger, although his prisoners knew him as Gorostizaga. No one is sure of his real name. Do you want to see him?’

She hands him a press cutting. Someone is giving Captain Ranger a medal. All muscle and fibre, eyes that command obedience, a disdainful smile on his lips, triangles where his hair is receding. ‘A hero of the Falklands War.’

‘Has anyone talked to him about the raid?’

‘Nothing was ever officially proven about his taking part in it or the kidnapping. There’s nothing in the archives. We know that from information given us by the girl’s aunt, Alma Modotti, and from other survivors. But it wasn’t always the officers in charge who were responsible for this trafficking of babies. Sometimes it was their subordinates. Ranger is a pseudonym he was given because he was always boasting about how he was trained in the US Marine school in Panama – the place where the Yankees trained all the Latin American butchers.’

‘Are there no leads?’

‘Nothing. It’s one of those obscure, baffling cases which if and when they are eventually solved, prove to have been right in front of our eyes the whole time. Sometimes we can’t see for looking.’

Even though she’s so short-sighted, she is aware of Carvalho’s ironic smile at this.

‘I’m not talking about myself. I know I’ve got the worst eyes in the world – every time I got pregnant, my eyes weakened by three dioptres. And I had four pregnancies.’

That’s when Carvalho notices she has three photos pinned to her dress. The woman would be entitled to cry, but her voice is firm as she comes to the end of her train of thought.

‘Only one of the four is still alive. A girl, who lives in Sweden. She reckons she’ll never come back to Argentina even if President Menem sends his Ferrari to fetch her.’

‘D’you have any grandchildren in your files?’

‘A boy we found, and a girl we’re still looking for.’

Carvalho wishes her luck with a vague gesture. Then gives her his card. ‘If you ever hear anything about the Tourón Modotti baby’

‘Baby? By now she’ll be almost twenty years old.’

It’s no easy task to open a door with a bag in each hand and with your mind set on the idea of saving time by not putting the bags on the floor, opening the door, and then picking them up again, and going in. Carvalho prefers to do it all at once, wondering how he could manage things better, but when he succeeds in depositing his bags safe and sound on the table he is delighted that he has not only overcome his own sense of how things should be done, but has achieved the feat without even putting the light on. He goes over to the window, opens the shutters and smiles at being free from the weight of the bags and at the light streaming in from outside. But there’s something unexpected filling the space behind him, so he turns round. An angular, strongly built man is calmly going through the bags Carvalho dumped on the table. Another man is standing there, hands in pockets, staring at him menacingly. The first one tips up a bag, and books pour out. Then the other, which is full of food. A tin rolls across the floor towards Carvalho, who stoops to pick it up. A foot appears, and kicks the tin out of his reach. Carvalho looks up at these threatening figures, and slowly straightens. A police badge is thrust into his face, and when he peers beyond it he can see that this Argentine cop is just like any other cop in the world. A cop isn’t a face. It’s a state of mind.

‘Inspector Oscar Pascuali.’

Carvalho stares at him suspiciously. Gives him his best hard-boiled private detective look – sometimes it’s best to start where you mean to leave off. But this Argentine cop is one of the sarcastic ones. ‘Been shopping, have we?’

The second man is still watching carefully. Carvalho moves away from Pascuali, picks up the tin, and puts it on the table. Pascuali goes over, and starts to examine some of the things from the bags. ‘Salted cod, tomato sauce, peppers, rice, a guide to Buenos Aires, olive oil, cloves of garlic;
Who Killed Rosendo? The Open Veins of Latin America, The Cafés of Buenos Aires, The Complete Works of Jorge Luis Borges, Adam Buenosayres, A Funny, Dirty Little War,
two bottles of Chilean wine – ah! just as well,
three
bottles of Argentine wine: Navarro Correa, Velmont;
The Tragic Decade, Flowers Stolen from Quilmes Gardens, Perón s Boys,
a large portion of offal, black pudding. Have you got someone to cook all this for you?’

‘I’m quite a good cook.’

‘And a good reader.’

‘I hardly look at the books. Reading them would be too much like hard work. I like to buy them, and then burn them.’

‘To burn them? Did you hear what he said, Vladimiro? Señor Pepe Carvalho here burns books. That’s a job for us police to do, isn’t it? Because we are Fascists, aren’t we? Isn’t it true we’re Fascists? And book-burning is for Fascists, isn’t it? Are you a Fascist too?’

‘A bit, like everyone is, like you are.’

‘No, I’m only a cop. But I respect books. Even ones like these, which I would probably never read. Do you know why I respect books?’

Carvalho gives a shrug.

‘Because as a child I only ever had one.’

‘
Trueheart,
by Edmondo de Amicis?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘It was the only book working-class kids ever had, and you look as if that’s where you came from.’

Pascuali thrusts his face right up against Carvalho’s, then spits at him: ‘When you come into this country, you leave your balls at Customs. Pick ’em up when you leave.’

He steps back to survey the effect these words have had on Carvalho, but sees only a face trying its best not to betray any emotion. Pascuali signals to his assistant to follow him, and they head for the door. He turns round in the doorway.

‘The best thing you can do for Raúl Tourón is to stop looking for him. If his family wants to find him, tell them to go to the police.’

‘Where’s that? I’m a foreigner here. Where can I find the police? Wouldn’t you like to leave me your card?’

Vladimiro is about to launch himself at Carvalho, but Pascuali stops him.

‘Let him be. Assholes like him bring it on themselves.’

While he is busy fussing over a steaming pot, Carvalho can’t get this phrase out of his mind. ‘Am I really one of those assholes who brings it on themselves?’

He adjusts the seasoning. Snatches a handful of the steam rising from the pot, and sniffs at it.

‘Appearances are deceptive. I’ve always had a good instinct for self-preservation.’

He glances occasionally at a book open on the stove.
The Open Veins of Latin America.

‘But what exactly am I trying to preserve? What have I got that’s worth preserving? Myself?’

The table is set in the dining-room. A single plate, one set of cutlery, one cod stew, an open bottle of wine, one glass.

‘An instinct to preserve this?’

Carvalho goes over to the fireplace. Puts on some logs. Picks up the book he was reading. His hands tear it to pieces, and toss it on to the wood. As he lights the fire, the flames light up his face. He can see it as if it were someone else bending over in his place. He looks across at the table, where he dimly senses the smell of the stew calling him, but all he feels is nostalgia as he gets a sudden mental picture of his grandmother, her face enveloped in steam, carrying a pot of this same stew. Then when he sinks his fork into the rice it tastes of exile, as if there is some special ingredient missing to make it like the dish he remembers. To cut short any more self-pity, Carvalho’s fork hastily scoops up the last of the food, then his hand reaches out for the half-filled glass of wine and raises it quickly to his mouth. A satisfied sigh in honour of the other Carvalho who’s accompanied him throughout this solitary meal. He gets up. The fire is still blazing in the grate. Carvalho sinks into an armchair. Then he changes his mind, struggles up, and goes over to the writing desk to find the letter to Charo he has so often begun and abandoned. ‘Perhaps we ought to admit we’re not kids any more and that what’s at stake is choosing whether or not we’re going to enjoy the years left to us.’ He reads it through. Gives up yet again. Then decides to pick up the phone and dial a lengthy number.

‘Biscuter? It’s Carvalho, in Buenos Aires. It might seem I’m close by, but I’m not. Ten at night. Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think of the time difference. Cod stew. No, no. Pure nostalgia. What’s the weather like in Barcelona? Any news of Charo? Good. This city’s still full of forlorn Argentines. Listen, is it true you sometimes put sausage in the base for cod stew with rice? Be careful with our funds.’

Alma is waiting in the bus queue. From a nearby taxi, Carvalho watches her get on. He leans forward and tells the driver to follow her: he’s not surprised at the request, but his eyes light up with excitement and he obeys the instructions as if this were the most normal thing in the world in Buenos Aires. He tails the bus with professional skill, only cursing out loud when another driver pulls in front of him. ‘See that? Good job I’m the calm type, otherwise I’d give that guy a good crack across the head. Is your friend going to the Caminito? Is this a tourist contest?’

The bus heads for the Boca. On their left, the modern ruins of the Puerto Viejo. Yard after yard of empty dock warehouses, falling into ruin, poetically obsolete and useless, although perhaps at night they’re put to some use, when all cats and tramps are a dark shade of grey. Alma gets off her bus. Carvalho pays his driver.

‘You should pay for this kind of joyride in dollars,’ he comments, screeching off.

But Carvalho has already set off in pursuit of Alma, who’s running along a street with brightly painted walls and full of pavement artists. When she reaches a part lined with a mixture of tourist and cheaper restaurants, she seems to have doubts. She looks all around, as if unsure whether to go on, or whether she’s being followed. Eventually she disappears inside the corrugated iron door of a rusty store. Inside it’s as if, as the tango says, twenty years are nothing: it’s full of antiquated implements and useless gadgets, all of them abandoned to the dust, dirt and rats. Alma climbs an iron spiral staircase. Waiting for her on the floor above is a wretched room and a white-haired man who looks older than his years. His nervous twitches abate when he sees her. They gaze at each other. Smile. He flings himself on her. Alma’s face is perfectly calm, she even smiles a little while the man is stripping her roughly to the waist, working himself up into a frenzy.

‘You can’t live without my prick, can you? Can’t live without little orphan Norman? There’s nothing like Norman’s little prick, is there? Circumcised like a baby’s dummy, or a big red strawberry. Is there?’

Alma lets him push her over to the camp bed, stretches out on it and opens her legs when Norman frantically leaps on top of her, unzips his trousers and starts thrusting at her. Despite this sexual assault, Alma’s face loses none of its calm self-control, as if she were doing him a favour. Five thrusts, five groans, and it’s over. Alma seems to be counting silently. After the fifth groan, the man’s body collapses on top of hers. Alma strokes his head and tries to look him in the eyes.

‘You were much better today, Norman.’