The Buenos Aires Quintet (40 page)

‘What’s going to become of me without all this excitement? Are you sure you want to go back to Spain, Pepe?’

Carvalho avoids a direct reply.

‘At this time of year there was still lots of daylight after school, and my mother let me play out in the street for a while. Only for a little while, because this was just after the civil war in Barcelona, and there were lots of rumours going around about vampires with tuberculosis who sucked children’s blood. And one morning, my mother gave me a piece of freshly baked bread – or perhaps I’m just imagining it was freshly baked – and a handful of black olives, those really tasty wrinkled ones from Aragon. I can still taste them, still remember how happy I was to be free like that in the street. If only I could get back to that morning. That would be my real homecoming. My Rosebud. Do you remember
Citizen Kane
?’

‘The land of our childhood.’

Alma gets up and goes over to the window. She is upset but calm as she looks down into the street. What she sees changes her anxiety to scorn. Two police cars have just pulled up stealthily in front of the building. Pascuali and as many as six others are getting out. They take up their positions on each corner and by the entrance. Pascuali motions to them to keep quiet, and opens the front door, followed by Vladimiro and two men in plain clothes. They climb quickly and silently to Carvalho’s apartment.

He does not give them time to batter on the door, but opens it for them. He is in his pyjamas, and seems sleepy.

‘What kind of time d’you call this... ?’

Pascuali pushes the door wide and enters the room.

‘Search warrant,’ Carvalho says, without much conviction.

‘I’ve got it here,’ Pascuali says, touching his trouser zip.

No need to be rude, Carvalho thinks to himself. By now, all the police are in the apartment. Carvalho follows them wearily. Alma is in bed, apparently naked, with the sheets drawn up to cover her breasts. The police search the room without paying her any attention. Pascuali watches them with a wry smile on his face. It’s still there when in the kitchen he notes the three places set for dinner. One of the policemen thinks he has made an earth-shattering discovery when he kneels in the fireplace and shouts: ‘They’ve burnt something here!’

Pascuali turns to Carvalho.

‘Borges? Sábato? Asís? Soriano? Macedonio Fernández? Bioy Casares?’

Alma emerges from the bedroom draped in a sheet like a vestal virgin.

‘Piglia, Ricardo. Born in Adrogué fifty something years ago.’

Vladimiro brushes past Carvalho, avoiding his gaze.

‘So who was here? Raúl Tourón?’ Pascuali weighs his next words to see the effect they have: ‘Or Bruno Loaiza perhaps?’

‘You and I have to talk in private,’ Carvalho suggests.

‘You don’t know how delighted I am to hear that. I was just about to say the same thing.’

He does not even have time to cross Tres Sargentos, heading for San Martín. He is bundled rapidly into a van. They do not need to use violence, the pressure of round barrels on his back is enough for someone like him, well-schooled in threats. Inside the van, his brain starts to work almost normally again: neither the smell nor the way he is treated bear the hallmarks of the Captain or Pascuali. There is no point asking anything, so he keeps quiet. Even when the van turns off on to dirt tracks – to judge by the jolting suspension and the efforts of his four guards to cling to the van walls. The men have not even bothered to put on hoods. At first this relieves him, but on second thoughts it suggests they feel menacingly untouchable. He can smell water and rotting vegetation outside: the river or the Tigre delta must be close by. The van pulls up, and they are not worried either that he sees the face of the pilot of the launch or the route they take through the Tigre. The launch leaves the main waterways behind, while Raúl, in sympathy with the weeping willows, casts his eyes back at the elegant buildings disappearing in the distance: the Cannotieri, the Club de la Marina, the Tigre Club – uncertain images in his uncertain memory. There is nothing uncertain though about the giant trees rising pearled with damp from the labyrinth of rivers: gum trees, jacarandas, palms, monkey-puzzles, flamboyants, and huge clumps of bamboo and ferns, the sudden gift of hanging orchids, the smell of water spume and ancient, deep-down rottenness.

Nor do they prevent him seeing the abandoned garden or the house on stilts ringed with flood marks like different archaeological epochs. It is one of the hidden mansions of the Tigre, built from once noble woods, gloomy inside and with almost all its windows broken, and everywhere the penetrating smell of dampness rising from the floor to the peeling stucco of the ceiling. A table that looks too new for its surroundings stands in the centre of the main room, which has a fireplace with crumbling, over-ornate columns; behind the table sits a man with a smile on his face. He offers Raúl a chair.

‘Are you all right? Did they treat you well? Given the situation, I mean. Let’s not waste time, Señor Tourón. You may not know it, but the game is up: for the good of everyone, it has to stop. You’re reaching the end of your journey, aren’t you?’

‘Who sent you? Gálvez?’

‘There is more than one Gálvez.’

‘You know who I mean. Richard Gálvez Aristarain.’

‘Let’s say it was.’

‘There was no need to kidnap me.’

‘Kidnap? Why use such an obsolete term? Let’s live in the present. You are trying to find your identity and your daughter. You have been offered your identity back by your associates, but there’s the problem of the Captain. Then there’s your daughter. What about her?’

‘Have you found out anything about the links between Ostiz and the mysterious Señora Pardieu?’

‘We’re looking into it.’

The interrogator signals to the four men to guard Raúl, and climbs a wooden staircase that creaks under his feet. In a much more rustic room than the ones on the ground floor, Güelmes and the director-general Morales are waiting for him.

‘What next? Did you hear what he said?’

‘You want to know what comes next? He’s just given you the whole script! He told us everything in two minutes. Richard Gálvez is helping him find his daughter through Ostiz and someone called Señora Pardieu. Morales, I want a report at once on all the people he mentioned – Gálvez, Doctor Ostiz – that Borges fan you admire so much, and the Pardieu woman. The one he called the ‘mysterious’ Señora Pardieu. Go back and question him some more. Promise him news, and get him to talk about why he came back. Let him talk – he must feel like talking by now.’

He does feel like talking, especially because he thinks he can see light at the end of the tunnel, without knowing exactly what that might mean. Eva María. The vague outline of a baby who is now a woman. He himself. What would he be like at the end of the tunnel?

‘It all started in Spain. I had an argument with my father. He’s a strong character. I’m not. I told him I felt rootless. He couldn’t understand. But you have all the power my money and your scientific knowledge can give you, he kept shouting. And in the heat of our argument, he said something that horrified me. He said he had done a deal with the Argentine military to win my freedom. He had given them all my research and had promised they would hear nothing more from me. As far as me and my group were concerned, that was it. He gave up all idea of finding his granddaughter. He even gave up all claim to having a granddaughter. I was his only son. He did not even have a granddaughter.’

‘Who did he do this deal with?’

‘With Captain Gorostizaga. In those days, his name was Gorostizaga.’

The Captain orders the fat man to leave, but the motorcyclists stay lined up beside him. Merletti sits in a chair, crushed by his own abjection and by Peretti’s inquisitive stare.

‘Is this another of your secret attempts at protection?’

‘Don’t jump to conclusions – let him speak.’

‘That’s right, don’t jump to any conclusions,’ the Captain agrees. ‘I’ll lay my cards on the table. I found out about Loaiza by chance. All you asked us to do was to beat up an addict who was getting in the way. I was looking for a mouse, and instead I found a cat. Loaiza and I know each other of old. He was a collaborator in the days when we were cleaning the country of Bolsheviks masquerading as nationalists and Perónists. We were the only true nationalists. But Loaiza is not what he once was. He’s a piece of human waste who is blackmailing you. No, don’t deny it. I know everything. Everything. I’m not bothered about your relations, or even your tastes. I’ve known some very macho queers. You’re a national symbol, and we don’t want any more symbols destroyed like Monzón and Maradona were. Their problems should have been declared state secrets. Who else can the Argentines turn into myths? Come and see.’ He takes Peretti over to a door, slides open the spyhole and steps to one side. ‘Take a look.’

Peretti leans forward to peer through the spyhole. There is a bare room, and on the floor by the far wall Loaiza is in the throes of withdrawal, his mouth frothing as he writhes miserably in a pool of urine.

‘I’ve been more effective than your friend Pepe Carvalho. Why did you bring that asshole Spaniard into this? We could have sorted it out as Argentines.’

‘I told you so, Boom Boom,’ Merletti agrees.

‘Let him go,’ orders Peretti.

‘Who?’ the Captain asks, startled at the order.

‘Bruno. Loaiza.’

‘I can’t, I shouldn’t. Was I wrong about you?’

‘If you don’t let him go, what are you going to do with him?’

‘So I was wrong about you. My, my. I still respect you as a myth, but as an Argentine for me you’re no more than a
pulastro
...a cheap whore.’

‘I’m telling you to let Loaiza go,’ Peretti repeats, grabbing the Captain by the arm.

The Captain tries to shake him off. Peretti punches him in the stomach so hard he clatters against the door of Loaiza’s cell. The motorcyclists fling themselves on Peretti. They beat him with clubs, chains; they kick and punch him. Merletti tries to protect the boxer, but receives a beating too for his pains. By now the Captain has got his breath back, and is trying to pull the motorcyclists off their victim.

‘Don’t touch Peretti, you bunch of idiots!’

Too late. They have to drag both Peretti and Merletti to the car. The fat man is in the driving seat, as a distraught and hesitant Captain watches them load the vehicle. To the fat man this is just another job, and he reflects on things divine and human to murmurs of approval from the motorcyclists with him, as the car searches for a particular spot on the dark highway When he finds it, the fat man slows and brakes. A door is opened, and Merletti and Peretti are flung out into the roadside ditch. Merletti’s face shows the punishment he has received, but Peretti’s is one huge bloody mess. He sits covering it with his hands, as if still trying in vain to protect himself. Merletti does not yet understand what has happened, and stares blankly at the car in the distance. It has not gone far – it has pulled up slowly at a rubbish dump a few hundred metres further on. Two motorcyclists are lit by the headlights as they get out, open the car boot, and throw a body on to the waste tip. As the car speeds off again, Peretti runs to the dump, where the body is lying flat on its back, eyes open to the stars. It is Loaiza, Peretti confirms, staring after the disappearing car with impotent hatred.

‘It’s Bruno.’

It’s Bruno, he says over and over again to himself hours later, as obsessively as he stares into a mirror at the bumps and cuts on his face that have needed a lot of stitches, at the bruises as big as tumours. In the solitude of the bathroom, Peretti cries for Bruno and for himself.

‘The Dorian Gray syndrome. The face is the mirror of failure. Of our fundamental failure. That’s what you used to say. Bruno. Poor Bruno. Poor Peretti. Poor Boom Boom Peretti.’

He comes out of the bathroom. Merletti is fast asleep on a sofa. Peretti goes over to a bedroom door and looks in on Robert’s peaceful sleep. Then he goes out into the street.

The Captain returns home, and goes to his kitchen-office. He pours out a coffee and downs it in two gulps. The house is completely quiet. He climbs the stairs and looks in at his daughter’s room. Muriel is sleeping, and the Captain goes over to the bed to stroke her face. She wakes up and smiles.

‘I’ve got a secret.’

‘Perhaps it’s not a secret for me.’

‘I was at the Peretti fight.’

The Captain says nothing, encouraging her to go on.

‘I didn’t like it...it was so brutal!’ Before falling asleep again, she nods towards something on her night-table. ‘Peretti gave me his autograph. Or rather, he gave it to someone else on my behalf. I didn’t dare ask him for it.’

With this, she falls asleep again. The Captain picks up the piece of paper.

To a young lady I do not know, but who has chosen someone I think the world of to ask for my autograph.

BOOM BOOM PERETTI

Without a trace of emotion, the Captain puts the autograph back where he found it. He walks back down the stairs, pushes past the slumped body of his wife and collapses into an armchair in front of the television. Although he is nodding off to sleep himself, he switches it on to catch the early morning news bulletin. The images and words finally coalesce inside his brain: something has happened to Boom Boom Peretti. He forces himself awake, and manages to reconstruct what happened in the early hours of that morning.

Employees at Jorge Newbery airport rouse themselves and smile broadly at the man who has suddenly appeared. They shake hands with him, congratulate him.

‘That’s some beating you took, Boom Boom!’

‘He sure caught you this time, didn’t he?’

‘On TV it didn’t look so bad.’

The employee interviewed said they joked with Peretti as usual, but the boxer did not respond. He was concealing his eyes behind a pair of enormous sunglasses; his cheeks had strips of plaster on them, and he wore the collar of his leather jacket up. He went out to his plane and climbed into the pilot’s seat. Signalled for the all-clear for take-off. Adjusted the controls. He had taken off his sunglasses and his jacket, and the destruction was plain for all to see.