The Buenos Aires Quintet (7 page)

Norman sits up on the side of the bed. He smiles, pleased with himself. Alma, like a charcoal sketch, encourages him.

‘How many times did I manage?’

‘Five.’

‘I’m getting better. The last time it was three. D’you remember the good old days? No, you weren’t my partner then, but d’you remember what they used to call me?’

‘The insatiable ferret.’

‘I’ll be one again some day’

Alma strokes his hair again.

‘You’re good because you don’t put me off. But if a woman starts shouting before I can get it up – “Give it to me, do it” – and to shake about like a foodmixer, I can’t do it, Alma. I used to fuck anyone. Half an hour at least. Half an hour without stopping.’

‘What about Raúl?’

Norman shrinks from her, as if the question has brought him up short.

‘I don’t know.’

Alma is no longer calm – she’s furious and indignant.

‘What d’you mean, you don’t know?’

Norman points to a cage where a laboratory rat is moving nervously about.

‘That’s all that’s left of him.’

‘What are you talking about, you idiot?’

‘He brought the rat with him when he came, and when he disappeared again yesterday, he left it. I brought it here from the theatre.’

Alma pushes Norman away and stands up. She grabs a blanket to cover her body. Her stockings are down round her ankles like a pair of socks, and her bra is round her midriff. She swaps the blanket for a sheet.

‘You’re an asshole, a bastard, an irresponsible lout!’

‘That’s the way I am. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘How long ago did he leave?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t watch over him all day long. I couldn’t stand any more monologues about rats, about Berta, or Eva María. He’s a grown man. A free man.’

‘You’re meant to be grown-up too. And we’re all meant to be free. Didn’t you stop to ask yourself where he got that rat? Can’t you guess? Can’t you see he’s in danger? When did he leave? Where did he go?’

‘About four days ago.’

‘Four days! Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Who do you think you are? Still the one giving orders?’

The man bursts into tears.

‘I don’t know. I was sick of him, of myself, of all of us. He said some very strange things. That he’d been back to his laboratory, that some men on motorcycles were following him, that they’d tried to run him over or push him into the river. That he was really close to finding out where Eva María is. I thought he was raving. I had to go out to audition an actor. I couldn’t miss it, it was the first dress rehearsal. I told him to go and see Pignatari. What are you doing?’

Alma is throwing on her clothes. Suddenly a look of alarm appears on Norman’s face, and he gets up from the bed.

‘Who’s that?’

Alma looks in the direction Norman is pointing. Carvalho appears from the shadows of the staircase.

‘Carvalho, the Masked Galician.’

Norman is about to throw himself on the intruder, but comes to an embarrassed halt when he realizes he’s naked. Carvalho says scornfully: ‘Mind you don’t damage the insatiable ferret.’

‘Calm down, Norman. He’s just a voyeur.’

‘A disgusting voyeur!’

‘No, a very respectful one who’s only come on to the scene once the young lady had finished and was almost dressed again.’

Alma’s face reflects her efforts to control her indignation, but she is still only half-dressed, so Carvalho takes charge of the situation.

‘Now let’s talk quietly and calmly about Raúl, and I hope this time you don’t lie to me. Why did you tell me you hadn’t seen Raúl when you knew where he was hiding?’

‘I didn’t lie to you. Raúl didn’t want to see me. You didn’t ask whether I was helping him or not.’

‘Why didn’t he want to see you?’

‘That’s what I’d like to know. I thought Norman here was looking after him, but he’s gone.’

‘From here?’

‘No. Norman kept him more or less in hiding in a theatre he runs. He was pretending he’d hired him to do the cleaning.’

‘And who are these mysterious motorcyclists who are out to get him, and beat me up by mistake?’

Alma shrugs. Norman is dressed by now, and when he speaks, his voice is self-assured: ‘Now it’s my turn to ask a question: who is this Spanish bullshitter who’s messed everything up for us?’

But like an English gentleman from a Noël Coward comedy, he immediately adds:

‘Anyway, you two must have lots to talk about together. A gentleman is someone who instinctively realizes when he’s not wanted. Good-day to you, madam.’

At which he kisses Alma’s hand, and turns to bow his head slightly to Carvalho. He makes to walk past him, but as he does so, he swiftly punches him in the genitals and then runs out laughing. Carvalho is bent double as the other man clatters down the staircase, shouting: ‘Next time go watch your mother fucking, you queer!’

Carvalho is trying to get his breath back, seated on the bed. Alma looks at him quizzically, uncertain what to say.

‘Did you see anything?’

‘Everything and nothing. Don’t worry. By the time we’re forty, everyone has the face and the arse they deserve.’

Carvalho stares at the rat in its cage.

‘Raúl’s partner didn’t tell me the whole truth. Or perhaps he didn’t tell me any of it. Raúl was definitely there, but I wonder what really happened?’

‘Roberto is a piece of shit, always was and always will be. Deep down he’s jealous because Raúl and Berta were brilliant.’

Alma goes over to the bed and sits next to Carvalho. She puts her hand in his jacket pocket and takes out his packet of cigars. Pulls out a cigar, lights it for him, puffs on it, then gives it him. The detective draws deeply on the cigar with obvious pleasure.

‘Friends?’

Alma hesitates at the proposal, but then offers him a hand and a smile.

‘Friends.’

‘Are we going to help each other?’

Alma agrees, more tender now.

‘We artists are going to help each other. Norman’s not such a bad guy. In spite of the low blow, he’s an artist too. He’s an actor, always playing some role or other. So we artists are going to help each other. Me, Norman, Pignatari.’

‘Who’s Pignatari?’

‘Perhaps it’s time for you to meet him. But you should also go and see Güelmes, because he has power. He’s almost a minister. He will be one some day’

A thin, statuesque actor, his face painted white and with slicked-back hair, is cutting off a finger on the stage of a tiny theatre which has never seen better days, is somewhere never chosen for the first night of any play.

‘I’m getting rid of you. A quick mutilation. Because you pointed out impossible people, things and desires.’

He redoubles his efforts to cut off his finger. A booming voice is heard offstage.

‘Son of a bitch!’

The actor shakes his head furiously, throws the knife to the floor, tears off the rubber finger and makes to leave.

‘No, no, you’re not getting out of it that easily!’

Norman leaps on stage and throws himself at the actor. He pulls him to the floor, kicks him, puts a foot on his neck.

‘Go on, say it: I’m a son of a bitch!’

‘I’m a son of a bitch.’

‘Louder!’

‘I’m a son of a bitch!’

‘That’s better. Now get up, and pick the knife up again.’

By now he’s got the actor by the hair, and thrusts his face at him.

‘You’re going to cut off your finger properly! Because you’re a son of a bitch! Tell me again what you are?’

Tm a son of a great bitch.’

‘No need to boast about your mother. It’s enough you admit what you are.’

Norman leaves the stage. The actor spits after him and shouts: ‘I hate you, Norman!’

Norman’s voice sounds strangely calm as it floats up from the stalls.

‘That’s more like it!’

The actor can barely hide his hatred for Norman, but he puts the rubber finger back on again, picks up the knife, and shouts with all his might: ‘I’m getting rid of you. A quick mutilation. Because you pointed out impossible people, things, desires.’

Applause from the stalls. Norman’s voice again.

‘That’s great, son of a bitch, fantastic!’

Norman is sitting, elbows on the back of the seat in front, cupping his head in his hands, muttering the lines to himself as the actor speaks them on stage.

‘Obscene reality! If I don’t point you out, do you exist?’

Norman seems a bit happier, until he hears Carvalho’s voice next to him.

‘Is that the Stanislavksi method?’

Carvalho and Alma sit down on either side of him. Alma places her hand on his arm to try to keep him calm. Carvalho is finishing his cigar.

‘It’s my method.’

Alma puts her arm round Norman’s shoulders, as if she is both protecting him and presenting him to Carvalho.

‘Norman is an impostor. He’s an architect, not an actor. When he was in exile in Barcelona he pretended he was a psychotherapist because there were lots of architects but not many therapists.’

‘You can only know about your own nation’s madnesses. Freud could only cure Austrians, because he himself was a crazy Austrian struggling to come to terms with the crisis in the Austro-Hungarian empire and in the bourgeois ego. So how could I hope to cure any Catalans? The only patients I had any success with in Barcelona were two Siamese cats. They had suicidal tendencies because I was sleeping with their owner – and she was a psychobolshie.’

Alma tries to put in a good word for Carvalho.

‘We have to help our friend here.’

‘If you start helping private detectives, you end up collaborating with the police. Private detectives are simply the embodiment of nostalgia for a supposed golden age, an ancient civilization organized around a collective myth and ideology, a way of life governed by unshakeable authorities – the laws of the aristocracy and the Church, or the dogma of a political leader heading a single-party state. There’s no real difference between one of Chesterton’s detectives and a Marxist one. Both of them are reactionaries, nostalgic for a lost order.’

Norman is very pleased with his little speech.

‘I must write that down. It’s fantastic. Remind me, will you? But now I expect you want to see the scene of the catastrophe. Follow me!’

They follow him to the tiny staircase leading to the basement dressing-rooms.

‘Just imagine you’re living a mixture of
Le Dernier Métro
by Truffaut and
Phantom of the Opera!

Norman leads the way, with Carvalho and Alma following. They descend a spiral metal staircase that looks as if no human foot has touched it in centuries. They come to a halt in front of a metal door. Norman lights a match, opens the door, and they find themselves in a tiny space that only has room for a camp bed, a wash-basin, a tiny wardrobe, a few books.

‘Raúl spent almost a month in here.’

Carvalho tries to pick up some trace of the fugitive, some message left imprinted on the objects in the room. But he doesn’t feel the slightest vibration.

‘Did he tell you what he wanted to do, or why he had come back?’

‘He said it was on impulse. Partly it was because he was horrified that the military leaders had been pardoned, but I don’t know if that was the real reason. He talked about getting his daughter back, but I think it was he himself he wanted to rediscover, to find his role in the film of events again. He also talked about his father. The old man surprised me, he said. He didn’t realize that everything came to an end that night. In that freeze frame.’

When Alma speaks, it’s with a bitter voice.

‘Write that down too, it’s brilliant.’

She is caressing some of the books on the table. Picks up
A Universal History of Infamy
by Jorge Luis Borges. Then suddenly puts it down and turns to face the two men.

‘We have to start at the beginning. Some day he’s bound to come back and visit you, Norman, or the other two.’

‘Why not you?’

Alma cannot look Carvalho in the face. Instead, she glances towards Norman, as if they’re sharing a secret. Norman replies for her: ‘It wouldn’t be good for him to see Alma. She looks too much like Berta.’

But Carvalho cannot help staring at Alma’s tortured face, or listening for the words she finds it impossible to say.

The dim lights of the Boca seem to have been reluctantly lit. They illuminate restaurant fronts that would be garish were it not for the eternal damp of the river. Away from the lights, the rest of the neighbourhood is mostly corrugated iron, with rusty patches that speak of having to survive without any sense of greatness apart from the soccer victories of Boca Juniors in a stadium that’s seen better days, and stands in the midst of a desolate hotchpotch of wasteland. The restaurant doors cast oblongs of yellow light on the pavements where Alma and Carvalho are walking. From inside they hear snatches of secret bandoneon music, smell the charcoal embers and the crucified carcasses of roasting lambs.

‘Remember Pignatari’s address, but don’t keep my piece of paper.’

‘We’re in a democracy now’

‘A controlled one. People are frightened of having any memory. Raúl’s return has stirred too many memories. Don’t think it’s a political problem: it’s a fear of remembering.’

‘The victors appropriate the memory of the defeated, and when they finally do get it back, it’s changed beyond all recognition. Do you think someone is really out to get him?’

‘It’s possible. Those rats, the ones he spent so long studying. He wrote a treatise on animal behaviour in completely alien situations. Theoretically, he was the best prepared of all of us to face what happened, but he broke down.’

‘What about Norman?’

‘He broke down too, but we all knew he would; Berta had already foreseen it. She thought she knew as much about militant behaviour as her husband did about rats. Norman was never a threat, and the military understood that. Now he’s abandoned architecture for the theatre. As a student, he wanted to build the utopia
Le Corbusier had imagined for Buenos Aires. He wanted to create the
Ville Verte
here where the soil is so rich and the trees are larger than life. Now he puts on plays in our Off Off theatres, plays that will probably never get a proper audience, and earns his living as a showman, presenting the acts in a tango cabaret in San Telmo: Tango Amigo, it’s called.’