The Buenos Aires Quintet (53 page)

‘The Great Gratowsky’s shrine!’

The twice-life-size portrait of Gilda Laplace is not the only nostalgic cult object in the room. There are a whole series of the stars of stage and screen from the same era, which have Don Vito and Madame Lissieux struggling to see if they can remember them all. There are photographs of Gratowsky in his prime; on nights of celebration with his artists; at social events; the photo of a woman typically 1940s or 1950s, with a young girl who already has a sour expression on her face – Ruth Gratowsky and daughter; the Great Gratowsky as a young concert violinist; another of a group of young people who have just arrived in Argentina, all of them looking pleased to have left the European tragedy behind – one of them is Gratowsky. Aníbal goes along confirming their guesses as to who is who, but stops when he comes to this last photograph.

‘Who are these?’

‘He never said much about this group. All he said was that they were European Jews, people who had escaped with him, but nothing else. He was very, very Jewish.’

‘He was tight-fisted?’

‘No, he wasn’t tight-fisted at all. But he felt very Jewish, about Israel and everything, you know what I mean. He was organized – he went to Jewish meetings.’

Madame Lissieux drives them to the Once neighbourhood. Aníbal has told them about a Jewish cultural centre between Uriburu and Pasteur that the Great Gratowsky used to frequent.

‘It’s an organization that supports the Jewish communities here.’

The reception is full of posters of Israel, Zionist propaganda and offers of trips to the Promised Land, courses in Yiddish and Hebrew. The man in charge is a master of silence who does not want to become the slave of his words.

‘All I can tell you is that Abraham Gratowsky was a good Jew’

‘I don’t doubt it. He followed the Scriptures.’

‘Being a good Jew doesn’t just mean following the Scriptures. You have to be an active Zionist too.’

‘Of course, international Zionism.’

The receptionist does not like this particular form of words.

‘Words can have more than one meaning, depending on who uses them. “International Zionism” was invented by people who wanted to wipe out the Jews.’

Don Vito calls on Madame Lissieux to testify to his innocence.

‘No, no, don’t get me wrong! Lots of my best friends are Jews, I admire their genius, like Einstein. Isn’t that so? Kirk Douglas. No, sir. I’m no enemy of the Jews, and I’m delighted to hear that Abraham was a Zionist, a militant Zionist. Did he contribute money to the cause?’

‘As long as he could, yes. Lately it was all he could do to keep up with his insurance policy and the old people’s home. But he was always active, and was well aware of the dangers facing the Jews in Argentina.’

‘Are you in danger then?’

‘Have you forgotten about the bomb attack on the Israeli embassy? What’s happened to the perpetrators? How many Nazis from before and from now are hiding in this country?’

‘Could you give me any details of how Gratowsky was active?’

A voice that sounds familiar to Don Vito cuts short his questions.

‘No, he can’t.’

He turns round and there is Pascuali, a fact that Don Vito immediately communicates to Madame Lissieux.

‘Madame, allow me to introduce the best policeman in Buenos Aires – Inspector Pascuali. He is going to be our ally in many future adventures.’

‘What adventures are you talking about?’

‘My associate, Señor Pepe Carvalho, is on his way back to Spain this evening, and I have assumed full control of Altofini & Carvalho, Partners in Crime, with the invaluable assistance of Madame Lissieux here.’

Pascuali is heard to mutter: ‘Stupidity is never born and never dies. It simply changes form.’

On the way to Ezeiza airport, Pascuali alternates the hard cop warning them not to go on investigating the Gratowsky case...‘It’s got nothing to do with skirt-chasing. It’s related to the blowing-up of the Israeli embassy’...with the soft cop paying particular attention to Madame Lissieux, as demonstrated by his taking them to Ezeiza in a squad car with siren blaring.

‘What case were you involved in? I read about a woman in some of my reports, but then there was nothing more. Was it Borges’ son?’

As soon as he says the words, a lightbulb flashes in Pascuali’s mind. He shuts his eyes to visualize the scene more clearly. That old tango singer outside Corrientes 348. The man who looked like the Polack Goyeneche.

‘That fake Goyeneche! So now he’s the spitting image of Goyeneche, as if he had come back to life!’

Neither Madame Lissieux nor Don Vito have the faintest idea what he means, until Pascuali uses the car phone to speak to headquarters.

‘Put out a search call for a fake Polack masquerading as Goyeneche. I have an idea it could be Arielito Borges Samarcanda. And keep an eye open, he must be up to something.’

‘Arielito as a tango singer?’

They reach Ezeiza, where Carvalho was expecting only Don Vito to come and see him off. He kisses Madame Lissieux on the hand, and greets Pascuali with a coldness he does not feel. The policeman tells him: ‘I came to make sure you really were leaving.’

‘I on the other hand knew you would be left here at the Captain’s mercy’

‘The Captain’s vanished.’

‘They’ve dropped him for now. But he’ll be back. Either they kill him, or he’ll be back.’

‘I don’t ask questions. He’s gone, and that’s enough for me.’

Don Vito quickly sums up the Gratowsky case, exaggerating what he knows about its connections with Zionism and anti-Zionism. Gilda Laplace? No, she’s got nothing to do with it. But Pascuali lets slip: ‘We’ve traced her to a plastic surgery clinic. She’s having her tenth face-lift.’

Carvalho does not want to know about any more loose ends – he has enough of those waiting for him in Spain. There will be time enough for him to feel a new nostalgia, a nostalgia for Buenos Aires and perhaps for Alma. Don Vito hugs him so hard he almost crushes him, Madame Lissieux gives him the farewell kiss that Alma refuses, Pascuali tips two fingers to an imaginary hat brim and turns on his heel. All these gestures stay with Carvalho until their first stopover in Rio de Janeiro. His uncle has already dozed off by the time Carvalho settles in the seat next to him and tries the Argentine wine offered by the crew. He even starts to flick through the pages of the
Clarín
newspaper, but does not get beyond the front page headline: ‘Richard Gálvez killed in air crash’. He died with his lawyers in attendance, and from some remaining stock of incredulity inside Carvalho there rises a nagging doubt that forces its way out in an expression of dismay. So Richard Gálvez is dead. No wonder it had suddenly become so easy to track down Muriel, no wonder the Captain had been dealt with. If he had been able to, he would have turned the plane back to Buenos Aires, but there is nothing to be done, it is already fast disappearing down the plughole of the future. When they reach Rio, he wakes his uncle and makes sure he totters into the right airport lounge, but still at the back of his mind is Gálvez’s death. Power. So real power had taken a hand to make sure things came out as required. He remembers what Güelmes once said: ‘The importance of me being in power is that I’ll be able to look after Alma.’

Carvalho feels on edge. All he wants to do is carry on drinking so that he can doze through the wait, especially when his uncle finally wakes up properly and insists on striking up a conversation. The illuminated panels on the walls offer all kinds of escape, and if he could, he would have loved to head off to some city in Australia, given that he did not really believe Australia existed anyway. A couple sitting next to him are talking in Catalan. They are discussing their trip in voices strained by the discomfort of being between two seasons and two continents. ‘But the traveller who is fleeing sooner or later has to end his flight,’ Carvalho sings to himself, whistling the tune. The young Catalan woman stares up at him, her head on her companion’s shoulder: ‘Have you come from Buenos Aires?’

‘Yes. And you two?’

‘We spent a week there. What about you?’

‘Several months.’

‘You must know a lot about the place.’

‘Tango, the disappeared, Maradona.’

The girl looks perplexed, and her boyfriend turns to Carvalho with an ironic smile.

‘I’ve heard of Maradona, of course. But he’s ancient history. Ronaldo, Ronaldinho is the new king of football. Tango – do they still sing tangos in Buenos Aires? And what disappeared are you talking about? Are they something to do with the
X Files
?’

This plants a seed of doubt in Carvalho’s mind, which is still there when the postmodern glass palace of Barcelona airport comes into view. Has he really been in Buenos Aires? He never even got to see Cecilia Rosetto. It is then he remembers Alma gave him a present to prove he had been in her city. So he did have proof of his stay there, in addition to her green eyes, an image already being swallowed up by the quicksands of his memory. He opens the package he had stuffed into his shoulder bag, and several CDs fall out, plus a whole pile of books. Edmundo Rivero singing Discépolo. And the fattest book,
Adán Buenosayres,
by Leopoldo Marechal, also starts with a song:

The little white handkerchief
I gave to you
Embroidered with my hair...

And it goes on:

Gentle and smiling (as so often in autumn in that most graceful of cities, Buenos Aires) shone the morning that twenty-eighth of April; the clocks had just struck ten and at that time, wide-awake and demonstrative in the early sunlight, the great capital of the south was a dense corn-cob of men and women shouting and arguing for their right to possess the morning and the earth.