The Buenos Aires Quintet (9 page)

‘Are you surprised at all this poverty?’

‘My ability to be surprised is not what it was.’

‘Rock ’n’ roll means something to me, and protest rock means you live among people who protest.’

Raúl looks all around the shack, and what can be sensed outside.

‘So who’s protesting around here?’

‘Nobody. But they should be. You know as well as I do that an external awareness is needed to make the popular classes conscious of the way they’re being exploited.’

‘Rock music is for dancing. Not even Mexican corridos helped create a revolution.’

‘I could live like a comfortable bourgeois; but then what songs would I be entitled to compose?’

‘But the lumpen don’t ask their idols to live in poverty. They prefer to see them arriving at concerts or football matches in their Mercedes. Take Maradona for example.’

‘I’m not interested in those lumpen.’

Pignatari carefully puts on a red silk shirt with black polka dots, a studded leather jacket and a pair of tight leather trousers, then a pair of grey cowboy boots with silver décorations and spurs. He takes a hairpiece out of a cardboard box and fits it in place on his head to cover his bald patch. He checks it in a mirror, and when he turns round thinks he sees a sad glint in Raúl’s eyes. Pignatari says not a word. Picks up his electric guitar from an ancient, broken chair.

‘The best thing would be to come with us in the van. You could pretend to be one of the crew. Those motorcyclists might come back.’

Raúl obeys in silence. A silence that lasts the whole trip to the abandoned chicken farm in Barracas where Pignatari is giving his concert. The rest of the band is waiting for them: they’re a bit younger than Pignatari, but none of them is under forty. Their gestures show a tired professionalism, until they pick up their instruments and start warming up. On stage they peer out at the half-full arena, where the audience participates with a mixture of mockery and enthusiasm. At the end of the set, they shout for more. They want one song in particular. The singer is exhausted, but agrees. The band starts up. It’s a song dedicated to a young girl: Eva María. It’s a song of victory, written just before the deluge. Raúl, who’s going round the audience with beers in a wire basket, feels tears come to his eyes.

Eva for Eva,
The bright star María
The little girl shines
Eva María.
Eva María
Will finish off the CIA
The guns of justice
Will have their day.

Pignatari is sweating. There’s not enough applause for another encore, so he jumps down from the stage into the audience with a leap that leaves him cursing silently and his knees creaking. A notebook and a pen. He signs an autograph. He winks at the beer seller, Raúl, who comes over to him.

‘Have you decided then? Are you going to meet your cousin?’

‘I’ll see.’

A girl steps in front of them. Shyly, she pushes a piece of paper and a pen into his hands.

‘It’s for my mother.’

Pignatari smiles ruefully. He leaves the concert hall. In the bare wasteland outside, the tiny hut where his CDs and cassettes are on sale seems even smaller and more desolate. A slovenly-looking youngster is doing the selling, not exactly convinced he is a salesman.

‘How did it go today?’

‘As usual.’

‘Badly, in other words.’

Pignatari looks at his brightly coloured watch. There’s still time, but his body is crying out for a rest after all the tension on stage, and the caravan is there waiting for him as if it were one huge bedroom, a welcoming country. Pignatari climbs in, tired but relaxed. Two fat men-insects or insect-men are waiting for him. Two motorcyclists. One of them grabs him by the studded leather jacket. The other punches him with a fist full of knuckledusters. Pignatari has no time to protect himself, and all the objects in the caravan start to fly through the air or crumple into trash, with in the foreground the swollen, bleeding, slashed face of the rock singer. Either he hasn’t shouted for help or his shouts can’t be heard because someone has turned up the volume on the loudspeaker to full blast:

Eva for Eva,
The bright star María
The little girl shines
Eva María.

These are the last words Pignatari hears as he succumbs to terror and horror. The motorcyclists show no emotion. They’re breathing hard, hitting him with deadly precision. One of them pummels him without asking any-thing at all. The other is also punching away, but he’s more than a cut-out figure and still betrays a certain curiosity. ‘Where is Raúl Tourón?’

Pignatari tries to say something, but is too far gone. His head lolls on his chest. The two motorcyclists call a halt. One of them places the back of a hand full of brass rings against the singer’s neck.

‘We’ve gone too far.’

‘We’ve got our hands full of shit all for nothing.’

He gives Pignatari’s body a soft, scornful kick. It topples to the floor.

Two police cars with their flashing lights whirling. Onlookers pushing to get to the front of the crush around the caravan. Pascuali is framed in the doorway. His face is an expression of disgust. Vladimiro asks: ‘Now what do we do?’

‘Hold a vigil for him, Vladimiro, what else?’

At the back of the watching crowd, Raúl is both fascinated and terrified. His fear increases still further when he hears Carvalho’s voice beside him, speaking out of the corner of his mouth without looking at him.

‘Raúl. Don’t be alarmed. Your father sent me. Alma. Norman. Pignatari told us to come here. I’m your cousin Pepe.’

Raúl’s face has completely altered. He looks calm and collected, in control of the situation. ‘My dear Alan Parker, I only hope we can meet one day in happier circumstances. You’ll be hearing from me. And say hello to Zully Moreno from me.’

Carvalho nods. ‘I will. But I think he retired from the film world years ago.’

He decides to risk looking at his cousin. But by the time he does so, Raúl has vanished, and suddenly Pascuali pushes in front of him, preventing Carvalho from going anywhere.

‘A coincidence?’

‘I had an appointment with Pignatari.’

‘When did you get here?’

‘About the same time as the police.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘It’s not a theorem.’

Pascuali shouts for Vladimiro.

‘Take this clown’s statement.’

Just trying to annoy me, Carvalho thinks, as he peers for his cousin in among the crowd being dispersed by the police. Vladimiro pushes him into one of the squad cars, and when they’re both inside, he turns to the detective.

‘How come you got yourself mixed up in this mess?’

‘It’s my job.’

‘My father’s from Spain too. He came after that war of yours; now he refuses to leave his house. He’s scared they’ll come back: Franco, Perón, Videla. Who knows? Politics ruins everything.’

‘So that’s why you’re called Vladimiro; your father was a Leninist when you were baptised.’

‘I haven’t been baptised.’

‘Are there many unbaptised cops?’

‘More than there are unbaptised priests.’

So Vladimiro has a sense of humour. But it vanishes when he takes his notebook from his pocket. He can’t find a pen. Carvalho lends him his.

‘Come on, make up some nonsense so we can get this over with.’

So Vladimiro is human as well. Carvalho simply tells him he had arranged to meet Pignatari, that he arrived on time, but everything was already in turmoil.

‘The meeting was to solicit information as to the whereabouts of a cousin of Don José Carvalho, Don Raúl Tourón, who is apparently somewhere in Buenos Aires.’

The formalities over, Carvalho makes to leave the car. As he is getting out, the young policeman gives him a piece of advice.

‘Don’t go looking for trouble, my friend.’

It seems he wants to say something more, but doesn’t dare.

‘Is that all?’

Vladimiro looks all around him, and when he realizes no one can hear, adds in a low whisper: ‘My father’s a distant cousin of yours. Carvalho is my third or fourth family name.’

He winks at the detective and that’s that.

Twenty-four hours later, when Carvalho sees him trailing along behind Pascuali at Pignatari’s wake, Vladimiro has again become the tough, scornful cop who eyes him suspiciously. But things are different now, because the corpse is laid out in its coffin in a back room, while in the parlour two conventional-looking widows and three equally conventional-looking adolescents are busy exchanging the conventional condolences. The only person who looks really affected is Alma, slumped on a sofa. Norman is trying to console her, console himself, or say something, but it’s too much for him. Alma finds the words.

‘D’you remember? D’you remember the music box he made for Eva María with the song he wrote for her on it?’

Carvalho comes in. He looks from Alma and Norman to Font y Rius, who is with Roberto. They appear to be arguing. Font y Rius is saying something through gritted teeth, and Carvalho thinks he can make out: ‘So it’s the hunting season again, is it?’

Then he hears quite clearly what Roberto replies: ‘I told you it would all get complicated if Raúl came back.’

And he hears what Roberto adds, staring straight at him. ‘That detective was all we needed.’

‘Why can’t he just take Raúl back to Spain?’

Forty-year-old rock ’n’ rollers crowd round the parlour door. They want to see the body, sign a petition on behalf of the body, applaud the body. A radio reporter is talking into her recorder as if it were an essential part of her anatomy.

‘So great is the consternation caused by the brutal assault and murder of the man who was the leading figure in Buenos Aires protest rock that the deputy minister for development, Doctor Güelmes, is here in person to say farewell to someone who was both a friend and an outstanding artist.’

Güelmes shows he knows how to control the situation. He strides through the photographers’ flashes, goes straight up to the elder of the two widows, gives her an emotional hug, dries a furtive tear, then turns back to the reporters for his interview.

‘I trust you understand my feelings of grief and will respect them. Pignatari and I, together with other friends of ours, lived through hard years of struggle that also promised hope. We wrote the words, he sang the songs of freedom. I’ve lost a friend, but all of us have lost a great musician. Thank you very much.’

He makes as if to leave, but with one ear still alert for any questions. There’s a hubbub of confused suggestions, then one voice imposes itself on all the others.

‘Was his death a settling of accounts from the time of the Process?’

‘What accounts are you talking about? Thanks to Menem, all our accounts have been settled.’

A sudden silence, followed by Güelmes’ exit. As he passes by, he glares at Carvalho. The detective notes the tension and scorn in his face.

‘A Señor Tourón would like to speak to you. Shall I put him through?’

Font y Rius is taken by surprise by his own intercom. It takes him a second to recover and react.

‘Who did you say? Who’s calling me?’

The voice on the intercom repeats the same name with the same intonation.

‘I said a Señor Tourón would like to speak to you. Shall I put him through?’

Font y Rius thinks over his reply, staring at the four walls of his office as if they might supply him with inspiration from someone less dumbstruck than himself.

‘Keep him on the phone, make up whatever excuse you can think of so he doesn’t hang up.’

He frantically dials a number, as frantically as only a psychiatrist overwhelmed by his own psychosis can do. Before he speaks, he takes a deep breath, like a basketball player before shooting a free throw.

‘The biologist is trying to contact me. I’ll keep him on the line as long as I can. Trace his call.’

He hangs up the phone and flicks the intercom.

‘Put him through.’

All of a sudden Font y Rius’ face is wreathed in smiles.

‘Hello? Hello? Is that you, Raúl? Where have you got to? Hello, Raúl, Raúl Tourón?’

The silence at the other end of the line disconcerts him. Then all of a sudden a noise comes through the receiver. Someone is whistling the same song for Eva María that Pignatari sang at his concert.

‘What’s that? Raúl? Are you crazy? Who do you think you are? Raúl! If you’re a man, come and see me. Where are you calling from?’

His face flushed, Font y Rius jerks his head away from the receiver. When he listens again some moments later, the whistling is still going on. He stands up angrily, the music filling his brain, as though it were not just a distant whistle, but the overpowering sound of a rock group inside his head. Then there’s silence.

‘Raúl? Are you still there? I’m sorry for shouting at you, but I don’t like it when you play at being mysterious. Raúl? Raúl?’

The psychiatrist stares at the telephone in his hand as if it had turned into something useless yet dangerous. He hangs up, then takes an address book out of the top pocket of his white coat, and firmly dials another number.

‘Captain? The net’s closing in. We’re being surrounded by one man. Raúl’s out to get us. We have to do something. But nothing violent, as we agreed, not your usual methods.’

All intercoms are pretty much the same. So are the voices they transmit, and sometimes even the messages they relay.

‘A Señor Raúl Tourón would like to speak to you.’

Güelmes thinks this over.

‘Is he here?’

‘No, sir. He’s on the telephone.’

‘Put him through.’

He adopts a gentle smile so that his words will be gentle too.

‘Raúl? Raulito?’

All this forced tenderness does not seem to evince a reply.

‘Raulito? It’s me. That shit Güelmes, as you used to call me.’

From the telephone, Pignatari’s song gushes like a wave of nostalgia, whistled with feeling.

‘Raúl. Stay right where you are. Raulito. For old times’ sake, trust me.’

The only reply he gets is the whistled tune.

‘Trust me, and don’t move, will you, Raúl?’

By now all he can hear over the phone is the crackle of a dead line. Güelmes slowly replaces the receiver. A worried look steals over his face as he takes a phone number out of his desk drawer, dials for an outside line, and then the number.