Seven Ways to Kill a Cat (21 page)

We’ve wandered a few metres, zigzagging through the crowd, when I hear a voice I recognise shouting behind me.

‘Hey, if it isn’t Captain Ahab himself!’

I turn and there’s Piti holding a bottle of beer. He’s babbling on to a girl in a Rasta hat and some skinny guy in a khaki shirt in a crowd of about a dozen people. All from outside the barrio. The same guys I ran into in the city centre a week ago – the Students’ Union militants who were marching down the Avenida Corrientes with no one bringing up the rear. They don’t need a banner, anyone could pick them out a mile off. Rich, middle-class kids from the posh suburbs of Buenos Aires coming into town to play at being revolutionaries.

‘You find your white whale yet, Captain?’ Piti shouts over, holding up the bottle in a salute. He hands the beer to the girl in the Rasta hat and whispers something to the rest of the gang. It must be funny, because they’re all shitting themselves laughing. He’s taking the piss out of me.

I walk over to the group, itching to break his face. ‘You know that
loco
?’ El Chelo asks.

I nod my head, fist balled by my side. I look the kids up and down, give them the evils, but they don’t seem intimidated. Quite the opposite.

‘Haven’t found it yet,’ I say to Piti, ‘but I’m still looking! What about you?’

‘Too right,
viejo
, only mine’s not a whale … more of a mermaid with great tits.’ He glances at his girl who gives him a disgusted look and swears under her breath. ‘A siren from the coast of Jamaica more dangerous than anything Odysseus had to face.’

The rest of the students are whispering and laughing, and I’m guessing Piti’s not the butt of their jokes.

‘Mind telling me what the fuck your friends are laughing at?’ I say, jabbing a finger into Piti’s chest. ‘Someone could get the wrong idea. They need to realise they’re not in some nice middle-class suburb and to stop taking the piss …’

‘Come on, Gringo,’ El Chelo says, tugging on my arm. ‘Leave it, don’t start something …’

‘My friends?’ Piti sighs. ‘Yeah … I wish the fuck they’d drink beer and stop reciting
Das Kapital
, they’re busting my balls here …’ He’s refusing to be wound up, trying to play the peacemaker. The kids all cheer him on. Not me.

‘Chill,
compañero
…’ the guy in the khaki shirt says. ‘The enemy’s over there …’ He points at the police cordon and offers me the beer.

‘So what’s up, you Bollinger Bolshevik?’ I say, taking a long slug of beer. I can be a smart-arse too when I want.

‘Hey … take it easy,
loco
, it’s all good … We were just laughing because Piti here says you think Melville was wrong … But don’t get mad …’

‘Ignore them,’ says the guy with glasses, the guy who was barking orders into the megaphone on last week’s demo. ‘I’m with you on this one …’ he says, patting me on the back and I’m wondering what the fuck gives him the right to be so buddy-buddy. ‘Melville’s a decadent writer. His vision of society doesn’t go beyond his own bourgeois, conservative, late-nineteenth-century ideology. The only thing he’s got going for him is he points up the excesses of rampant capitalism …
Moby Dick
describes the foundering of a whole society, of a system of production based on authoritarianism. And
Bartleby, the Scrivener
– you read that?’ I shake my head, but the kid just carries on with his lecture. ‘Well, it’s not exactly a masterpiece, and it’s really short, but it’s good because it shows how capitalist alienation suffocates even the smallest revolutionary reflex. But Melville doesn’t really question anything, he’s not offering any solutions …’

This guy has clearly found his whale, I think, while he blethers on, waving his hands like a fucking lunatic. Only his isn’t white, it’s red. The colour of the proletarian revolution. But the guy hasn’t a fucking clue … If he had, he wouldn’t come looking for it up here in this shithole, and he certainly wouldn’t be lecturing the locals. Is he looking to get his head busted? Because if he wants to go down with his whale, I’d be happy to help. Right now I’d happily kill the fucker with my bare hands.

And his friends are just the same – can’t open their mouths without putting a foot in it. They gather round the guy in the glasses and start debating points of order. Piti makes the most of this to chat to the girl with the Rasta cap and the tits. Whispering in her ear. He’s hitting on her, and it must be working, because she’s smiling at him.

‘Gringo! Come here a second!’ shouts El Chelo, who’s wandered away from the group. Crafty fucker. He’s calling me over because he knows if I hang with these kids any longer, things are going to kick off.

ON A FULL
belly, everything looks different. Worse. Even the perky little old ladies scraping out their pots to serve a last helping to the stragglers make me depressed. Despite the fact that the food seems to have lifted everyone’s spirits. Everyone is in a better mood, you can tell. They’re chatting and laughing, someone’s playing the guitar, and people are passing
mate
around.

El Chelo’s on the cadge for a cigarette to help his digestion. I give him one and spark up one for myself. Without saying anything, I get up and go over to give back the crockery some woman lent us so we could eat – a saucepan lid, a disposable plastic tray and a couple of spoons. She’s sitting in the shade of a makeshift tent, breastfeeding her kid. When she sees me coming over, she covers herself as best she can and shouts, ‘Just leave them there!’

I say thanks and turn away so as not to embarrass her. I skirt round a gang of kids kicking a plastic bottle and, passing the bonfire, I chuck my cigarette butt into the flames. The wind shifts every now and then. The thick greasy smoke whirls and eddies. It stings my nose.

‘You want me to introduce you to El Toro López?’ says El Chelo, who’s leaning against one wheel of his cart. ‘He’s over there, the dark guy in the cap talking to that group of unemployed guys, see him?’ He points.

‘No way.’

‘Why not? He’s a good guy …’ El Chelo says, a little pissed off.

‘I don’t care, I don’t want anything to do with leaders. Far as I’m concerned, they can all go fuck themselves …’

‘Whatever you want,
loco
. Just saying.’

We don’t say anything for a while and I feel embarrassed. Embarrassed for him. Maybe I hurt his feelings. I was a bit harsh. I stand up and, without saying anything, I clap him on the back. El Chelo looks up, gives me a wink. We’re cool.

I wander around, killing time, bored out of my skull, keeping my ears open … I don’t talk to anyone. I go over to where the truckers are playing cards and, since I’ve got a wad of cash, they deal me in to their game of
truco
. We lose three hands straight. The fat guy partnering me looks like he wants to cap me. He hasn’t had a single decent card for a while and he blames me for it. Says I’m bad luck, says he was on a roll until he was partnered with me. Since the fat guy’s pissing me off by now, I bail. I tell the old guy he’s been sneaking a look at my cards and I fuck off.

The sun is slipping behind the horizon. The sky bleeds red and purple and the air becomes heavy and charged with unease. The sort of electrical charge that builds up before a storm. I see the López guy anxiously pacing among the demonstrators, giving out orders, I can tell from the signals he’s making. The teachers are all grouped together, a tight knot of white smocks; they’re probably wondering what the hell they’re going to do if all this kicks off. Makes sense, they’re all about books and blackboards, what the fuck do they know about bullets and tear gas?

‘Here come the Feds,’ El Chelo warns me.

We watch, fascinated, as the
milicos
climb out of their trucks. A bunch of them form a cordon with riot shields in front of the patrol cars and the rest of them pile in behind. They’re a tight group, the only things visible above the riot shields, their helmets and their semi-automatics.

Things don’t seem quite so organised our end, but they’re getting there. Anyone not feeding the bonfire is collecting rocks and stones to throw. Chains and knives start to appear and a couple of guns. El Chelo hands out the bolts and ball bearings to anyone with a catapult. I see him in the crowd a few metres away, taking out the .38, putting bullets in the chamber. He looks up and our eyes meet. He gives me a thumbs up. I do the same just as the cop with the megaphone orders us to disband. ‘Clear the road now in a civilised fashion, before the operation commences,’ the
milico
says. I recognise the voice. It’s the guy I heard talking to El Jetita on the police radio the other night. Commissioner
hijo-de-
fucking-
puta
Zanetti. And that phrase, ‘in a civilised fashion’, reminds me of what Chueco said the other day about there being seven ways to kill a cat, but when it comes down to it, there are only two that matter: in a civilised fashion, or like a fucking savage.

And so, in a civilised fashion, we stand our ground. The teachers start up with the national anthem and everyone in the crowd joins in. At the end, there’s a burst of applause, of cheers and whistles like we’re all celebrating coming top of the league. But we didn’t. We’re being hammered. After the last cheers, a gulf of fear opens and the
milicos
make the most of the silence to start their advance. With every step, the thud of marching boots gets louder. They’re heading straight for us.

In the faces of the people nearest me, I see everything: rage, fear, panic, dread … I look around for El Chelo but find myself face to face with the kid in the glasses. He’s bricking it, it’s obvious. The kid backs away and finally I see El Chelo who’s looking at me grimly.

‘Fuck sake, come on!’ he roars, waving the gat.

I pick up a stone and hurl it; the first shot rings out. It’s raining tear gas. We throw anything we can find at them, including the smoking canisters of tear gas. Now things are really kicking off. In a seriously civilised fashion …

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Copyright © Matías Néspolo 2009
English translation copyright © Frank Wynne 2011

Matías Néspolo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published with the title
Siete maneras de matar a un gato
in 2009
by Los Libros del Lince, Barcelona

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
H
ARVILL
S
ECKER
Random House
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London SW1V 2SA

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