Thursday Night Widows (30 page)

A week after the funeral, Ronie and Virginia invite the widows to their house. They needed this lapse of time to prepare themselves for the meeting. Carla and Teresa arrive punctually. Lala comes twenty minutes later. The first exchanges are difficult – impossibly painful – the
first glances, the first words, the first silences. Virginia serves coffee. The women ask about Ronie's plaster cast. He tells them about the operation, the treatment, the rehabilitation. About his fall. He tells them about his fall without yet telling them why he fell. But it's enough to introduce the subject of that night. The moment has come, and he begins, once he has told them about the broken bone and the endless blood and how Virginia got him into the car and how they crossed paths with Teresa on the way out of the club. “I didn't think they were capable of it,” he says, “I didn't think they would really do it.” And they don't understand him. So Ronie tells them, as best he can, about El Tano's plan, about Martín Urovich's depression, of how El Tano had begun to tell a story, the story of his own death, to which Ronie had not given any credence. He does not mention the motives he used to convince Gustavo. There's no need. Carla weeps. Lala repeats “son of a bitch” several times, without clarifying whether she is referring to her own husband or to El Tano. Or to Ronie. Teresa cannot take it all in.

“But then, it wasn't an accident?”

“I don't think so.”

“Did they commit suicide?”

“Yes, they committed suicide.”

“That can't be, he never said anything to me,” says Teresa.

“Son of a bitch,” says Lala again.

“He must have thought that it would be best for you and the kids,” says Virginia.

“He didn't think; El Tano's the one who does the thinking,” says Lala, in the present tense, as though El Tano were still alive.

“I don't think any of us realized early enough how sick El Tano was,” Ronie tries to explain.

“But he wasn't sick; we had projects – we were about to go on holiday,” says Teresa, still without understanding.

“What about me?” Carla asks. Nobody answers. “How did El Tano persuade Gustavo?” she asks again.

“I don't know,” says Ronie. “I thought that he had failed to persuade him.”

“My God,” she says, sobbing.

“I'm sorry. I would have preferred to spare you this distress, but you needed to know,” says Ronie, as though justifying himself.

“Who says we needed to know?” asks Lala. Carla can't stop crying. Virginia goes over to her and takes her hand. They embrace. Lala leaves the room, slamming the door.

Teresa still cannot fit all the pieces together. “He wasn't ill. I swear he wasn't ill.”

The four of them fall into a long silence that is interrupted only by Carla's sobbing. And then Teresa asks, “Are you sure of what you're saying?”

“Absolutely sure.” Silence again and then El Tano's wife wants to know: “And does this change things somehow?”

“It is the truth,” answers Ronie. “It doesn't change anything else but this: that now you know the truth.”

Not two hours have gone by since the meeting in which Ronie told the widows about the events of that night, when Ernesto Andrade and Alfredo Insúa arrive at the house. They want to speak to him alone. They make this clear without actually saying it, so Virginia goes to the kitchen and takes longer than necessary to make coffee, hoping to avoid the disagreeable intimation that this
conversation is “not for ladies”. They begin by talking about something else.

“Does anyone know what level the country risk reached today?” Nobody knows.

“Things are getting sticky. If you've got money in the bank, take it out, Ronie – I've got it on good authority.”

“All I've got in the bank is debts.”

“I hope they're in pesos.”

“Did you hear anything about safety deposit boxes?”

And so on, until finally they arrive at the subject they've come to discuss. “Does anyone else, other than you and Virginia, know about this business of the supposed suicide?” asks Andrade.

“Up until now I've only spoken about it to Lala, Carla and Teresa.”

“Why do you say up until now?”

“I don't know – because that's the way it is, because that's what I've done up until now.”

“Ronie, it can't have been a suicide.”

“Yes, I know it's hard to understand.”

“Never mind understanding, Ronie, it's just a fact: there simply was no suicide.”

“But I was there, I heard them plan it – except that I didn't believe it, otherwise…”

“Then don't believe it now, either – that suicide helps no one,” says Insúa. “Tell me: do you realize that if it was suicide, those women will be left with no roof over their heads?”

Ronie does not answer.

“You understand what I'm talking about, don't you?”

“How would I not understand when El Tano himself explained it to me?”

“Of course, you're right. We're giving the widows a hand sorting out all this mess they're landed in. Ernesto with the legal stuff and me with the insurance.”

“Not with Carla, because she's been very distant and won't accept any help,” Insúa clarifies.

“What it comes down to is this: if they can't cash in the insurance, they're completely screwed, Ronie,” Andrade resumes. “If there's the slightest suspicion of suicide, however absurd, the company will start checking, the floodgates will open and those poor women will never see a penny, as long as they live.”

“I never even thought about the insurance.”

“That's understandable. You've been deeply affected by this business. It's no wonder you're not seeing the whole picture, but this requires a lot of clear thinking and luckily we're here for that.”

Virginia brings in the coffee. The three men clam up. She passes each one his cup, exchanges a glance with her husband and goes back out with the empty tray. “So, do you see how things stand, Ronie?”

“I only wanted them to know the truth.”

“Yes, we realize that, but the world is full of good intentions, Ronie, and, leaving aside the question of whether or not you did the right thing, because – what do I know if it's better for those women to think that their husbands were electrocuted accidentally or deliberately, right? But leaving that aside… leaving that… now I can't remember what I was going to say… It'll come back any minute.”

“What's paramount is that the women get their hands on the insurance right away, Ronie.”

“That's what I was going to say.”

“I thought that they deserved to know the truth.”

“Maybe they do – who knows? – I'm no expert on psychology. Maybe knowing that truth can help them turn the page on this incomprehensible tragedy and realize that their husbands were almost… well, heroes.”

“What do you mean?” says Ronie, astonished.

“You've got to have balls to do what those boys did.”

“They killed themselves to leave their families with something. Isn't there something heroic about that?”

Ronie listens as each one says more or less the same thing, repeating themselves. He says nothing. He stirs the sugar into his coffee and thinks. He thinks: I was not heroic – I was a coward; or rather – he corrects himself – they were cowards because, otherwise, what does that make me? Another kind of coward, or a failure, like El Tano said, someone clutching pathetically onto life. Or – what? All of those things; none of those things.

“We need to know we can rely on your silence,” says Andrade firmly. Ronie looks up from his cup and catches sight of Juani, who is watching them from the landing. The men follow his gaze and see him too. “And on the silence of all your family.”

“The widows are depending on it. We can't let them down.”

“The worst thing would be for those men to have killed themselves for nothing.”

Ronie stands up as best as his cast will allow. He looks at Juani and then at the men sitting opposite. “I've got the message; now I need to rest,” he tells them.

“We can count on you, then.” Ronie doesn't answer; the men don't move. Juani comes down a few more steps. “Is it fair to say we can leave it at that?”

Juani walks towards his father. Ronie tries to walk towards the door on his cast, hoping to steer his guests
out. He stumbles and Juani catches him. The men still have not moved. “Didn't you hear my father? It's time to leave,” says Juani.

Andrade and Insúa look at him and then at Ronie. “Think about it, Ronie. You don't gain anything by broadcasting the details.”

“I'm not out to gain anything: that's what you don't seem able to understand.”

“Think about it.”

The men make their way to the door, unaccompanied. Juani does not move from his father's side. From the kitchen door, Virginia watches them leave.

I looked at my husband and son, standing together. “What are we going to do?” I asked.

“We've already done what we had to do,” Ronie answered.

But Juani looked at us both: “And what if that weren't the truth?” We didn't understand. “Come upstairs – I want to show you something,” he said.

We helped Ronie up the stairs. In Juani's room, sitting on the window frame waiting for us, was Romina. I hadn't known that she was there. She was holding her father's digital video camera. Juani asked us to sit on the bed. The television was on and a reporter was announcing an imminent attack on the part of the United States against the country thought to be responsible for the Twin Towers atrocity. “Our soldiers are ready and they will make us proud,” announced their president, from the screen. Juani took the video camera over to
the television. In a few seconds he plugged in some cables, unplugged others and replaced the image of the president with filmed material from the camera. Romina acted as assistant, handing him the necessary cables. At first I did not notice what it was he was showing us, so impressed was I by my son's technological dexterity. It would have taken me a whole day to sort out that connection, even supposing I could have done it at all. It was Ronie's expression and the way he clutched his head, his eyes fixed on the screen, that made me focus on the image before me. The picture was rather shadowy, but there was no doubting what it showed: the Scaglias' swimming pool.

It was filmed from above, as though the person holding the camera had climbed to his vantage point. “We go up trees,” said Juani and now I realized that those obstructing shadows were leaves. Martín Urovich was already lying in the water in a starfish pose, while holding onto a float. He held onto the float with one hand and onto the side of the pool with the other. El Tano was positioning a hi-fi system close to the stairs, on top of the Travertilit tiles. “The stereo,” said Ronie, and we both knew what he meant. The extension cable had been trailed across the ground from a socket over on the veranda. El Tano passed the long-handled net they used to remove leaves from the pool under the cable, then wound this around it, leaving the end of the handle close to the edge of the pool. Very close to him. Gustavo was sitting on the side, with his feet in the water. The distance was such that one could not be sure if he was crying, but the position of his body, its slight tremor and certain almost imperceptible spasms strongly suggested that to be the case.

When El Tano had finished arranging everything, he got into the water and drank from one of the three glasses that were lined up beside the pool. A branch moved, covering for an instant the camera's lens. Then El Tano appeared again, talking to Gustavo. We couldn't hear what he was saying, but Gustavo was shaking his head. El Tano's harangue became increasingly energetic and, faced with the other man's refusal, he grabbed his arm hard. Gustavo shook him off. Once again, he tried to grab him and, once again, Gustavo freed himself. El Tano scolded him as though he were a child – we couldn't hear his words, but the gestures were unmistakable. Gustavo broke down: he sobbed, with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands covering his face. Now his weeping was manifest. His shoulders heaved to the rhythm of his uneven breathing. El Tano grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into the pool and then immediately – almost as though this were part of the same movement – he used the cane to yank the extension cord out of the hi-fi. Urovich was still floating. Gustavo came up to the surface in spite of El Tano's efforts to hold his head under with his free hand. But Gustavo was stronger and younger than El Tano, and was able to shake him off once more as he tried to reach the edge of the pool. He grabbed the edge. It was too late: he couldn't get out. With his other hand – not the one that had pulled Gustavo in and held him under – El Tano submerged the bare end of the extension cable close to himself, so that electricity surged through the pool. The bodies went rigid, then sank. The water churned. And there was total darkness. All the outside lights went out and the music stopped. Then the camera started to register crazy images, very
dark, scarcely visible: the leaves on the tree from which Romina and Juani were now descending; the ground beneath their feet as they ran. “What are we going to do?” Romina was heard saying on the tape. Then the dark ground again, the noise of running, of hurried breathing. A black background.

Ronie and I remained quiet, without finding words to say. Juani and Romina waited. “Could we have saved them?” asked Juani.

“He killed him,” said Ronie, incredulous.

“Could we?” insisted my son. I glanced at Ronie. I knew what he was thinking and I quickly said: “Nobody could have.”