Doctor Criminale (40 page)

And so the discussion began. The British crime novelist spoke about crime and Borges, the British campus novelist-critic spoke about European experimental fiction and Borges, the Argentine
writers talked about Latin American writing and Borges, and the mistress of Borges talked about herself, occasionally mentioning her relationship with Borges. On the rafters above the podium there
appeared a very large rat, evidently a visitant from nature to culture; it strolled along until it was above the speakers and looked down at them with great interest. This delighted the audience,
and by the time the evening was done it seemed clear that cultural relations had resumed in great good humour. ‘But why was it so important to have the mistress of Borges?’ I asked my
journalist friend, as he led me through the crowds again to the official party that was to follow. ‘Maybe in a moment you will understand,’ he said.

Over the next half-hour, in another part of the tent, where writers and Argentinian officials jostled to get to the lavish supply of wine, I slowly did. I’ve no real idea of what kind of
sex life Borges enjoyed, or not, during his lifetime, probably about the same as most of us. But he was certainly enjoying a very remarkable one after his death. Nearly every woman I spoke to in
the wet tent during that evening had at some time or another been the mistress of Borges. Some were beautiful, others not; some were old, like the lady on the platform, and some young enough to
make the final years of the blind old master into utter scandal. Some told me of his tenderness, others of his pure detachment. Some called him generous, others thought him mean. Some celebrated
his artistic wisdom, others bemoaned his political follies. Each one spoke rudely of all the others; every one had a Borgesian tale to tell. Within half an hour I had met at least ten mistresses of
Borges.

I went back to my Argentine friend. ‘How did he manage it?’ I asked, ‘How did he enjoy all these women and write as well?’ ‘Remember, he wrote only forty-five
stories, some poems, never a novel,’ said my friend. ‘But he was also professor at the university, head of the National Library,’ I said, ‘And he changed all modern
writing.’ ‘Also he was a chicken inspector,’ said my friend, ‘Peron made him one. Those bastards have wonderful insults, no?’ I looked across the party at the women.
‘Surely they can’t
all
have been mistresses of Borges,’ I said, ‘Some of them must have been about twelve when he died.’ ‘Perhaps not actual
mistresses,’ said my friend slowly. ‘What other kind are there?’ I asked. ‘I was never in his bedroom, how do I know?’ asked my friend, ‘But don’t forget,
this was a great man, a world writer. He belonged to everyone. Here to be a mistress of Borges is a kind of profession, especially if you are a woman and want to be a famous writer.’

‘So the mistresses of Borges weren’t really the mistresses of Borges?’ I asked. ‘In these matters, what is “really”?’ asked my friend. ‘You sound
like Otto Codicil,’ I said. ‘Please?’ he asked. ‘Oh, no one you ever heard of,’ I said, ‘Someone I met in Vienna. I forgot where I was.’ A little later the
British Ambassador and his lady departed, evidently called to duties elsewhere; after that the party showed signs of rapid deterioration, as the writers began to turn back into gauchos and literary
and political rivalries flared. I moved to leave, and was detained by a quiet, dignified, elderly and very well-dressed publisher I had met earlier. ‘It gets worse now,’ he said,
‘I wonder, do you care to do me the excellent honour of dining with me at my apartment? Some authors I publish will be there, I think they would like to meet you, also you them. And it will
be more select than this, I do promise. Also good food and no rats.’

I accepted, of course; and not much later I found myself standing outside the tented city, getting into one of a row of limousines that was waiting to drive a group of us to a fine modernist
apartment block in an elegant part of town. Soon I was rising up above the dark and dangerous streets in a stainless-steel elevator; at the door of a great penthouse apartment high above the city a
white-coated butler opened the door, a maid in gloves took my coat. The walls were hung with remarkable Impressionist and Modernist paintings; I stopped in amazement in front of a Van Gogh (I think
his
Carnations
). ‘You like it?’ asked my host very quietly, ‘You know I may have paid too much. Fifteen million at Sotheby New York, and now the art boom is over. But I
like it very much. Also in a country like this it is well to have something you can carry away, if things go a bit wrong.’

I moved into the room, filled with elegant and designer-dressed people, talked to a professor from the university who was writing a book on Neo-Platonism in South America (‘Of course I
must include Borges’), and then we moved to table and sat down. As the butler and maid began to serve, I turned to my neighbours on either side. One was a young married woman in diamonds,
clearly passionately in love with her neighbour on the further side, to whom she wasn’t married. My other companion was a fine-featured woman, around sixty, her grey hair wonderfully tinted
and coiffured, her shape very slim. She wore bright jewels and a low-cut dress covered in black beads, and she wanted to talk. ‘You went to this official thing?’ she asked, ‘I do
not think I like book fairs, they are all books. And I have had too many official occasions in my life. But did anything interesting happen?’

So, hoping to be amusing (as I’ve said, from time to time I can be a little amusing), I told her the story of the flag, the writers, the rat, and the mistresses of Borges. ‘You must
be careful when you tell such stories,’ said the woman, ‘Perhaps I also was a mistress of Borges.’ ‘Were you?’ I asked. ‘I was not,’ said the woman,
‘How nice for once to be so unusual. But this is what happens to a famous and distinguished man. He finds one day he does not possess himself. Everyone needs him, so he becomes two people. In
fact Borges himself wrote very well about this, do you know? His essay, “Borges and I”, do you remember it?’ At once I did. ‘Yes, he says he suddenly became not the dreamer
but the dreamt,’ I said, ‘Not the writer, but the reader of himself.’ ‘“My life is a flight, and I lose everything, and everything belongs to oblivion, or to
him,”’ quoted the lady beside me, ‘He no longer knew who he was. Do you know who you are?’

‘I’m Francis Jay,’ I said, ‘Just visiting from Britain.’ ‘And I, well, I am a painter here,’ said the woman, ‘My name is Gertla Riviero.’
‘Gertla, that’s an unusual name,’ I said boringly. ‘You have never heard it before?’ asked the woman. ‘I have,’ I said, ‘One of the wives of Bazlo
Criminale was called Gertla. I don’t suppose you know who I mean.’ ‘The Hungarian philosopher, sometimes called the Lukacs of the Nineties,’ said the woman. ‘You do
know him,’ I said. ‘Better than that,’ said the woman, ‘Maybe I was never the mistress of Borges. But I was the wife of Criminale Bazlo. Is that as good?’ ‘But
Gertla was Hungarian,’ I said. ‘And so was I,’ said the woman, ‘Who do you think they are, the people in this room? Most came from Europe not so long ago. I did too. For
love, of course. Another love. But how do you know all that? You are interested in Criminale Bazlo?’

‘Yes,’ I said, looking up from my soup to examine her, ‘I did some research on him once.’ ‘Another professor?’ she asked, ‘There is a tango about
professors.’ ‘No, a journalist,’ I said. ‘And you are from London?’ she asked, ‘What is your paper? A good one, very responsible?’ ‘Oh very,’ I
said grandly. ‘And you know Criminale’s story?’ asked Gertla. ‘A version of it,’ I said. ‘Whose version?’ she asked. ‘The Codicil version,’ I
said. She looked at me. ‘And you are still interested?’ she asked, ‘I have a weekend place, a hacienda, out on the pampa, quite a way from here. Come out on Saturday, if you like
to talk some more. Friends from BA will come, and they can drive you. But it will take a whole day, maybe your life is too busy.’ ‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘I’d like to
come.’

To be truthful, it wasn’t as convenient as all that. I was flying home the day after, and I’d arranged a farewell lunch with my journalist friend. I cancelled it, of course. In the
middle of a world where most things were unexpected, I had suddenly met my philosopher’s second wife – called something else, doing something else, living a new and amazingly different
life. Yet for some reason she was happy to talk to me, and I would never have such a chance again. In some odd fashion I was back where I didn’t wish to be, but felt I had to be: on the quest
for Bazlo Criminale. And so, on the Saturday (by which time I had, incidentally, met two more mistresses of Borges), I was picked up from my hotel by a middle-aged couple, smartly dressed in
Burberry for a day in the country, and was driven out of town.

It was a strange trip, from the middle of a near-European city into something else. As we drove away, a heavy cloudburst exploded, overflowing the city’s non-existent drains and forcing us
into unexpected routes. We drove through uncomfortable, threatening areas of the city; the couple in front of me locked the car doors on the inside. We passed the Army Engineering School, which
was, they told me, a place of terror during the Repression. Then, out on the autopista, the weather cleared. Parrilla stalls and balloon vendors stood at the roadside. There was a wide flat plain,
grey with eucalyptus trees and scattered with cattle and horses. We were stopped at endless tollbooths, which, my companions told me, had not even been there the previous week. ‘They call it
free market, Thatcherism,’ said my driver, ‘They have sold the roads.’ We drove out somewhere past Hurlingham, founded by the British, weekend land of the rich.

Finally, at the end of a vast long drive, we found Gertla Riviero’s hacienda: a long, low, verandah-ed house, around it paddocks for polo ponies, a pool for swimming, courts for tennis,
enclosures for calves and goats. In cashmere sweater and designer slacks, Gertla came over to the car; either she or her husband was very seriously rich. She led me to the verandah, where a weekend
house-party sat drinking. Children played on great lawns; other guests splashed in the pool. ‘Do you like it, Argentina?’ asked one of the guests. ‘Very exciting,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Gertla, handing me a glass of wine, ‘Inflation 130 per cent. When Menem tries to fight corruption, he has to arrest his own officials first. Here rich are rich,
poor are poor, and only the army holds them apart. It is exciting.’ ‘And what a beautiful estate,’ I said. ‘Very,’ said Gertla, ‘And if you are wondering where
is my husband, he is out riding the estate, by the way. He will not be back for a long time.’ ‘When did you come here?’ I asked. ‘When Hungary became impossible, seven,
eight years ago,’ said Gertla, ‘Now I live very nicely and worry about inflation and cancer from the ozone layer. Enjoy your drink now, and we will take a walk together after lunch, all
right?’

Gertla turned to talk to the other guests; I sat and looked at her, the woman I had, I recalled, seen nude in Budapest. Well, she was no Sepulchra; this one had kept all the grace and dignity I
had noted up there on Bazlo’s walls. No wonder he had been attracted to her; the wonder was he had then gone off with La Stupenda, the Great Ship. Then I recalled what Ildiko had said, about
an affair with the chief of secret police; I wondered if this was the man now out riding the estate. But his name was Riviero, and who knew what to think of anything Ildiko had told me? In any case
that all seemed strangely remote, here on the pampa, a southern sky spreading flatly to a distant horizon, grey eucalyptus trees blowing in the wind. When natural functions called me and I went
inside for the bathroom, I found expensive furniture, and walls covered in flamboyant and experimental paintings, all signed ‘Gertla Riviero’. She was a woman of character; a woman of
wealth as well.

There was a barbecue lunch (beef and some curious black pudding) served by, presumably, a daughter of the house; she bore no Criminale characteristics. Then, while the other guests continued
eating and drinking, Gertla walked me towards the paddocks. If there was something she intended to tell me, she seemed in no great hurry. ‘You were going to tell me about the unofficial
Criminale,’ I said. ‘You know, if you want really to understand Criminale, you must understand first how he was with women,’ she said, stopping to look over the horses,
‘They really possessed him. With each one he had different thoughts. You know about Criminale’s women?’ ‘Well, there was Pia, you, Sepulchra,’ I said, counting them
off on my fingers, ‘And wasn’t there one more?’ ‘One more, many more,’ said Gertla, laughing, ‘But I think you mean Irini. This one he loved but never
married.’ ‘So what should I know about them?’ I asked.

‘Pia you know was a great anti-Nazi, very fierce,’ said Gertla, ‘She helped him a lot, but she died then, quite young, in Berlin. This was before he was well known. I, well, I
am here, you can see what I am. If you don’t mind I say so, with me was his best time, when he grew famous. And then Sepulchra, well, you would not even like to see her. Pretty once, but
silly, and now blown up fat like a fish.’ ‘I have seen her,’ I said. ‘Then I think you know what I mean,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘Yes, I think I do,’ I
said. ‘For him she was a great mistake, of course,’ said Gertla, ‘Bazlo needed someone who was strong, someone with ideas of her own. Sepulchra was his folly, she had no mind, no
politics. But that is what he wanted, that is what he had to have. Always there had to be another woman. But I had other interests too.’ I thought again of what Ildiko had told me, and began
wondering once more whether it might just be true.

I said: ‘So with Pia he began as an anti-Nazi?’ ‘Therefore a good socialist, who believed that society must be changed,’ said Gertla. ‘Then with you he was
what?’ ‘By now a very important Marxist philosopher, famous in his country,’ said Gertla. ‘And also a frequent traveller to the West,’ I said. ‘That is true,
later on,’ said Gertla, nodding, ‘And then with Sepulchra he became, well, what he is today. The big celebrity, the Lukacs of the Nineties?’ ‘That’s what the
newspapers say,’ I said. ‘Well, you are the newspapers,’ said Gertla, turning to look at me, ‘I notice you have not asked me about Irini.’ I somehow knew now what the
question was I had been brought out here to ask. I said, ‘I’ve always wondered what happened to Irini. Didn’t she disappear, around the time he met you?’