The Buenos Aires Quintet (47 page)

‘My feelings are a personal matter, and don’t change. As soon as you start changing them, they become obscene.’

The Captain raises his wine glass in a toast to Sara, then to Carvalho, and especially to Ostiz, who does not return the compliment. Then the military man drinks with everyone else except Carvalho, who is staring at him defiantly. At this point Magín comes in to remove all their plates, and when the guests find the space in front of them free, they start to fill it with noisy conversation on all sides. Magín serves more wine, then finally starts to bring in the
Pantagruel potpourri.
The extravagance of the dish is reflected in the gourmets’ faces, which shine as though they were about to take first communion. Gorospe stands up and taps his spoon on a wine glass to silence the hubbub.

‘Ladies and gentlemen. Once every two months we meet in this Gourmet Club to eat.’

Laughter from the others.

‘To talk of “eating” as directly as that might seem brutal, but in itself, the act is not an aesthetic one: it is very primitive. We kill to eat, and we eat to survive. Every animal does this – but it is only man who has converted this primitive act into culture, who has elevated it beyond animal instinct into a cultural act. I don’t want to spoil your pleasure, girls and boys,
companions of a lifetime
’
s adventures.
..’ Gorospe pauses until the laughter at his tango reference dies down: ‘but I would like to draw your attention to what we are about to eat.
Pantagruel potpourri!

On the one hand, a vulgar anthology of all the meats we Argentines are so fond of; on the other, the glory of the first modern literary work devoted to the joys of pleasure and of culture: Rabelais’
Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Just look at it!’ and when several of them do not follow his command, he repeats: ‘Look at it! What do you see?’

‘A butcher’s shop,’ Sara says wickedly.

The dining table explodes with laughter. Even Gorospe has to chuckle.

‘OK. But thanks to culture, the brutality of so much dead meat has been transformed into a poem, into a marvellous synthesis of flavours and fragrances. So before you sink your knives and your teeth into this feast, I’d like to propose a toast to culture: to culture, which saves us from being mere cannibals and murderers!’

Everyone gets to their feet.

‘To culture!’ they cry, raising their glasses.

Then everyone attacks the
potpourri
as if they really were cannibals. Meanwhile, up in his office, Lucho Reyero takes off his jacket, his waistcoat, his trousers, his suspenders, his socks, shoes and shirt. He seems completely stunned as he twists trousers and shirt to make a rope. He stares up at the ceiling, until his eyes fix on the light fitting in the centre of the room.

Tango Amigo before the public arrives. The barman is wondering about the meaning of life, Adriana is practising the opening of ‘Tango Oranges’ with the orchestra, Silverstein is muttering his monologue to himself, but gesticulating as though the audience were already in their seats. His arm stays in mid-air, because he sees Raúl come into the club, pausing at the lit-up doorway to try and make out where everyone is in the darkness. Silverstein’s two hands are scarcely enough for all the gestures the fugitive’s sudden appearance evoke in him. He comes over, and Silverstein stiffens at the words Raúl whispers in his ear, then follows him out without a word of explanation to the others, as if something far more important than anything Tango Amigo can offer him is guiding his steps. In the taxi, the two men respect each other’s silence until Silverstein realizes they have reached Villa Freud.

‘Font y Rius?’

‘I wasn’t going to ask Güelmes along, was I? These days he represents power.’

Norman’s eyes signal his agreement, and he trots along behind Raúl when he gets out of the taxi at the clinic and strides across the gravel path up to the side door where Font y Rius’ office is situated. He is waiting for them beyond the glass panels, and does not ask a thing when he opens the door for them, takes off his white coat, feels in his jacket pockets, smoothes down the bare sides of his head rather than any actual hair and sighs resignedly. His first reaction comes when they are all back at the taxi.

‘I’ll get rid of him. We can go in my car.’

Font y Rius pays off the driver, and once he is installed behind the wheel of his own car, he turns to Raúl.

‘Are you sure about all you told me?’

‘Absolutely’

‘And who are these people who first of all abduct you, then lead you to the solution of your problems?’

‘Why does that matter?’

‘Why does anything matter at this stage?’

This leads Font y Rius into a lengthy monologue that lasts from the car leaving the centre of Buenos Aires, travelling through the suburb of San Isidro, and down towards the bridges over the river at the Tigre delta, with its promise of the open pampas beyond the last lines of houses where the city has already lost its name.

‘When they killed my poor Alma and I was held by the military goons in the Navy School of Engineering, I thought my life was over. I was sure all of you were dead. Berta, Norman, Pignatari, Güelmes, you Raúl, and all the others, the ones who really had been killed, whose names only a few of us remember and will continue to remember: even if they were only their assumed names, they were every bit as real as the ones their parents had given them. No one can deny we acted out of altruism, a suicidal altruism maybe, but altruism should be enshrined as one of the great traditional virtues. And then mysteriously, I didn’t die. Something happened and we all survived. I thought to myself: someone has performed this miracle, God bless them. After that, I didn’t believe in altruism. I was only concerned about myself. I even began to hate the two sisters, Berta and Alma, because I could see it was their influence that made me a militant. They did the same to you, Raúl. Not you, Norman, you never knew why you were doing it. No, don’t thank me. But it’s very hard to grasp the dialectic between altruism and survival. When we became partners with the Captain, we were playing a dirty trick on ourselves, even though Güelmes tried to argue that it was simply another dialectic, like the master and slave when their relation reaches the point where the slave is as powerful as the master, and ends up destroying him. That’s the trap a whole generation of Argentines has fallen into. Look at Alfonsín, look at Menem. The result is obvious. You don’t change the culture of power, it’s the culture of power that changes you. Do you follow me? And where exactly am I headed? The only way we can win is by destroying the Captain and all those like him, so what we are doing now is winning our war. Do you agree or don’t you?’

He grips the steering-wheel even more firmly, and does not seem to realize that his companions remain silent, and will never give him the answer he is looking for.

In the kitchen, Magín, Drumond and the waitress are still at their posts.

‘We can’t count on her any more,’ Magín moans, ‘look at her, she’s completely out of it.’

‘I’m going to serve the desserts, if it’s the last thing I do.
Mon dieu! Qu’est-ce que j
’
ai fait pour mériter ça?
’

The kitchen maid comes round, and stares at them wildly.

‘Out of respect for the dinner I haven’t called the police,’ Magín tells her, ‘and I haven’t said a word to the boss – he’s locked himself up in his office anyway. It’s too late to do anything more.’

‘When they have all drunk their last glass of Armagnac, when they’ve exhaled the last breath of smoke and finally gone home, call the police and if need be, here are my hands for the cuffs.
Je suis disposé pour le sacrifice! Moi, le plus important élève de Robuchon!
’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Lupe asks, finally fully aware of where she is. ‘Why did you kill my husband? Murderers! And where’s my Santos?’

‘She’s going to scream!’ Magín shouts in panic.

Lupe screams at the top of her voice.

‘Murderers!’

The guests in the restaurant turn towards the noise, as Drumond and Magín try to grab the waitress.

‘Did you hear someone shouting?’ Señora Fieldmann asks the others.

‘They’re killing a pig in case we ask for more,’ says Ferlinghetti number one, cackling at his own wit.

With that, most of the guests turn their attention back to their plates, although Señora Fieldmann is still half-listening to what is going on in the kitchen, where the
grand chef
and Magín are busy gagging Lupe and using a Souvenir of Mar del Plata apron as an improvised straitjacket to tie her up. They have no idea what to do with her, until Drumond points to the cold-storage room.

‘In there!’

Drumond opens the door, and Magín pushes Lupe inside. As he does so, he thinks he sees something very odd and tries to get a better look, but Drumond quickly shuts the door and stands guard in front of it.

‘Let’s leave her in.’

‘But I thought I saw...’

‘Nothing. You saw nothing. As my great maestro, Michel Gérard – or was it Robuchon? – told me one day when I was very nervous because things weren’t coming out right:
Drumond, cessons de jeter de l’huile sur le feu, voulez-vous, et d
’
alimenter une polémique stérile.
.. Either you cook, or you argue.’

‘I must admit you’re a professional to your fingertips, Monsieur Drumond.’

‘My dear Magín, ideologies and fashions may come and go, but professionalism,
elle reste
!’

In his office, Lucho is still staring up at the improvised rope dangling from the centre light like an invitation to suicide or an escape from Alcatraz. He picks up a portrait of his wife, and rubs his genitals with it.

‘Sow,’ Lucho says, poking his tongue out. ‘Now you’ll see what it takes to be a man!’

He flings the framed photo against the wall, where it shatters in pieces. He strides determinedly towards the rope. He barely even notices the din from the restaurant below.

‘This dish reminds me of all those ideas about a well-done piece of work being the only true ethical value. Otherwise ethics is so relative!’ Sinaí observes. ‘But a well-done piece of work is exactly that. That’s why I appreciate Borges, even though he’s not exactly from my world, of my ideological persuasion.’

‘Borges was a right-wing anarchist,’ Carvalho suggests.

‘That’s too much of a simplification!’ Gorospe protests.

‘I don’t know if he was on the right or on the left, but he was an anarchist. Like me. Like most extraordinary people. Like all of you. But he wrote well, and I know a lot of his work by heart,’ Sinaí concludes.

As he says this, he is staring hard at Carvalho. The detective cannot imagine why, and glances furtively to the left, the right and behind, in case something is going on that he is not aware of. Eventually Sinaí makes his mind up, and launches into: ‘“A couple of years ago, although I have lost the letter, Gannon wrote to me from Gualeguaychú, telling me he had sent me a version – possibly the first to be published in Spanish – of the poem
The Past
by Ralph Waldo Emerson, and adding in a postscript that Don Pedro Damian, whom I surely recalled, had died some nights earlier of a pulmonary congestion...”’

A round of applause obliges him to stop there.

‘Can you guess where that fragment comes from?’

‘The opening paragraph of the epilogue from
El Aleph
,’
Ostiz says, proud of himself.

‘Borges! Borges! Borges is like a pig or the Virgin Mary, every bit of him is useful, and he is useful for everybody,’ Sara complains. ‘Personally, I prefer Sábato. He’s not so chewn over.’

‘But I can’t bear Ernestito ever since he turned into a mendicant friar searching for those disappeared
lumpen,
I can’t bear him or what he writes.’ Sinaí scolds the speaker. ‘And anyway, to compare Borges to Sábato is like comparing the Holy Trinity to the Pope, to any Pope.’

‘Well said, Sinaí, well said!’

In a few more minutes, bottles of wine have almost completely filled the table. Magín comes in to clear away the plates. There is a lot of food left over, but the wine is slipping down their throats like water, is being drunk as if they were parched in a desert. Despite her composed exterior, Señora Fieldmann is completely drunk. She keeps trying to grab her husband’s genitals, which he protects desperately between mouthfuls.

‘Is this your first trip to Argentina?’ Sinaí asks Carvalho.

‘Yes.’

‘And what do you think of the Argentines?’

‘Why don’t you come straight out and ask him what he thinks of Argentine women?’ Gorospe cuts in. ‘Come on, Sinaí, you can recite whatever you like, but don’t ask him such awkward questions.’

Sinaí stands up, enraged.

‘I ask whatever questions I like...and who are you to criticize me anyway? You’re just a pen-pusher – a rich one, but nothing but a pen-pusher nonetheless!’

‘For heaven’s sake, Sinaí,’ Dora protests.

‘Me, a pen-pusher? I’m the foremost publicist in the Southern Cone!’

‘I sell my wine by the bottle, but you line your pockets because you’re thick as thieves with Menem and his cronies, all those building labourers in silk shirts!’ Sinaí yells.

‘If it wasn’t for official orders, your wine wouldn’t even be good enough for vinegar!’

‘Gentlemen!’ Hermann intercedes.

‘Let them be. You know they always get over it,’ Dolly calms him.

Gorospe and Sinaí lean towards each other over the table until their faces are almost touching. After a few moments, they draw back.

‘What a horrible sight you are close-up,’ Sinaí comments.

‘And you look like death in a Bergman film,’ Gorospe responds.

Sinaí sits down again and returns to Carvalho.

‘OK, so don’t tell me your impression of Argentines, men or women. The women are all bitches anyway! They’re all food for psychoanalysts, and sooner or later they end up taking us to see them as well, the same psychoanalysts who are busy screwing them. But tell me what you think of Argentina! What do you make of this Argentina of ours?’