The Buenos Aires Quintet (10 page)

‘Doctor Font y Rius, please. He’s not there? D’you know where he’s gone?’

The voice does know, and Güelmes hurriedly gets rid of it so he can make another call, one he needs to make as desperately as a fire needs water.

‘Captain. Things are getting complicated. Font y Rius is nervous : he’s gone to New Argentina to talk to Roberto. The son of a bitch. Both of them are sons of bitches. We don’t want to bring attention to ourselves.’

But the Captain has already hung up.

Roberto casts an expert glance over his animals. He calls out to several couples by name. ‘Hermann and Dorotea, you’re noisy this morning. Yeltsin and Gorby, I hope that’s the last time you’ll fight. Galtieri, Galtieri... you drunk again? Raúl, Raúl, where do you think you’re going?’

He tries to prod the rat out of its hiding place with a glass rod. A shadow appears over his shoulder. He turns round.

‘You?’

He doesn’t get to say any more because an iron bar crashes against his skull, splitting it and the room into two hemispheres. His head is chopped open like a ripe fruit, and the scientist’s body topples over, though his hand inside the glass tank full of rats prevents him from falling to the floor. The rats scurry about, terrified, and then start to climb up the arm, searching for a way out. Someone opens the laboratory door and calls out: ‘Roberto? Roberto?’

Font y Rius looks in, trying to make out the scientist.

‘Roberto? Roberto?’

Font y Rius enters the laboratory cautiously, as if afraid he will break some of the fragile glass apparatus, or as if trying to calm down the rats’ compulsive movements.

‘What’s the matter with you, damned rats?’

In the darkness he notices Roberto’s body slumped across the bench.

‘I think Raúl knows about the report. Roberto?’

Roberto’s body does not move. As Font y Rius takes a step back in alarm, a motorcyclist fills the scene and punches him hard in the face. Font y Rius gasps with pain and tries to protect himself. The motorcyclist stands over him menacingly. Takes off his helmet and goggles. It’s the Captain.

‘You haven’t seen a thing.’

Alma has her glasses on. She’s sitting at her desk, gathering up scattered notes and books, then adjusting a small computer until it’s exactly right for her. She sighs briefly, satisfied that everything is in order before she begins work, but just then she is interrupted by the doorbell, and goes to open it. She is about to say something, but a towel thrust over her face and suddenly anxious eyes makes it impossible. When she comes to, she finds she is sitting naked, tied to a chair, with a motorcyclist standing each side of her. In front of her there is a sheet with a light shining on it. Behind the sheet there’s a shadow figure of someone sitting comfortably, so comfortably this in itself is a threat. Alma’s eyes try to compensate for being unable to move her body, and rove desperately around the room. She cannot make anything out. The gloved hand of one of the motorcyclists is pressing a screwdriver to her throat. Then she hears a voice from the far side of the sheet.

‘Alma? Do you remember my voice? It’s me, the Captain, Alma! We meet again. The world turns and turns, and here we are again. We’ve arranged everything so that you can forget what’s happening. And we’ve stripped you naked so you’ll remember what happened in the past. You were lucky. Your sister died. Poor Berta: she was so sure she could change history and all she did was lose her life! But you spent a few months in prison and then years of golden exile.’

‘My baby!’

‘Your baby?’

‘My niece.’

‘She’s disappeared, unfortunately, but I’m sure she’s in better hands than yours or her mother’s.’

Alma tries to look down at her body, seeking out the feeling of freezing cold that has invaded her, but the screwdriver point jabs into her neck, and the impotent fury in her eyes gets her nowhere.

‘Where is Raúl Tourón?’

Alma wants to say something, and swallows, finding it hard to get the words out. Finally she says in a broken voice:

‘I don’t know’

‘I believe you, Alma. Do you remember how we became friends? How often my voice consoled you in those difficult times? I believe you, Alma. Perhaps you know what Tourón is looking for? Who is he looking for? His daughter? Me? Who am I?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’

Alma has raised her voice, and suddenly the screwdriver breaks her skin and a drop of blood appears. Alma bites her lip, and expresses all her despair through her eyes.

‘I believe you, Alma. I believe you. I’ve always believed you. But listen carefully to what I’m going to say to you. If Raúl Tourón does get in contact with you, hang the blouse we’ve taken off you in the window – just the blouse. What colour is it, Alma?’

Alma tries to remember. The hand of one of the motorists thrusts it in front of her eyes.

‘It’s blue. Light blue. Sky blue on a fine summer day. Sky blue, the same blue as you’re going to see in a few seconds. Remember, put the blouse in the window. That’s all, Alma. Goodbye. See you soon.’

The shadow figure disappears, and Alma waits for the sheet and all it stands for to fall to the floor. Then a towel covers her face, stealing reality from her instead.

Pascuali stares lengthily at Font y Rius’ horrified face. The psychiatrist appears to have suffered a momentary paralysis which prevents him moving backwards or forwards, from thinking or talking.

‘You stated you came here looking for a report. What report is that?’

Slowly, Font y Rius lifts his eyes to Pascuali, who is standing next to the legs of the dead man, which are dangling from the laboratory bench as if counterbalancing his head and arm, still plunged inside the tank full of rats.

‘It’s an old story’

Pascuali is on the point of saying something but hesitates, waiting for Font y Rius to emerge from the depression that hangs heavily in the air of the room.

‘We’re the only ones here. You can talk.’

Font y Rius starts to speak, at first overcome with emotion, but gradually recovering his calm.

‘It all happened twenty years ago. We were already one year into the military government and what had at first seemed like just another routine coup had clearly turned into a “dirty war”. We heard news of all the atrocities being committed. Torture. Disappearances. I wasn’t really involved, but my wife, my sister-in-law, Raúl and Roberto decided to draw up a detailed report on mental and physical resistance to pain and brutality. They had been working on it for years. They knew everything about pain in rats so they drew up a comprehensive list of situations. They looked at every possible variable that could help resist interrogation. The report was meant to be kept a complete secret. After they read and memorized it, people were supposed to destroy it. Nearly all the group were captured. I was there the night they raided Raúl and Berta’s apartment in La Recoleta. But Roberto and I were only there by chance.’

‘And the report?’

‘Someone handed it over to the military’

‘Roberto?’

‘I’m not sure. Nobody knew what was going on. I could swear it wasn’t me, but it could have been any one of us, trying to buy our freedom. The fact is that all of us who were in the Berta Modotti group saved our skins, apart from her. She was killed in the shootout. And there’s something else.’

Pascuali doesn’t ask him to go on, but he does anyway.

‘I helped the goons interpret the report.’

‘And the others didn’t?’

‘I couldn’t say. We’ve never talked about our experiences in the Navy Mechanics School, which is where we all ended up.’

‘Nobody’s perfect. Everyone has something to hide.’

‘Some more than others. I suddenly thought maybe Raúl believed it was Roberto who gave the military the report. I wanted to talk it over with him.’

‘You haven’t had time for that since 1977?’

The forensic scientist comes in, and Pascuali signals to Font y Rius to follow him. They walk down a corridor full of curious onlookers; both Font y Rius and Pascuali note with surprise that the director of The Spirit of New Argentina is among them. But whereas Font y Rius tries to avoid contact, Pascuali stares at him, racking his brain to try to recall where he’s seen that angular face and its disdainful look before. The two of them reach the police car. Pascuali uses the car phone.

‘Headquarters? I want you to put out a call for the arrest of Raúl Tourón as the prime suspect in the murder of Doctor Roberto Améndola Labriola. Dig out the most recent mugshots from the files.’

‘D’you think Raúl did it?’

Pascuali turns towards Font y Rius and growls: ‘If you’re sure you didn’t see the murderer, then yes, I do. For the moment, he did it. Strange, I thought I recognized the New Argentina director. He said his name was Dónate.’

Font y Rius doesn’t seem interested.

The blinding light hurts Alma’s eyes. She thinks she can see a dirty blue sky: a sky that’s immensely dirty, intensely blue. She hugs her body as if she were naked. But her clothes have been thrown on. Her blouse is unbuttoned, she has no stockings, her skirt is undone. She can feel the indents of the ropes she was tied up with on her arms. She gets up from the sofa, turns her head, can smell or taste chloroform. The chair she was tied to stands there alone. Everything else is where it should be: her books, her notes. She cries with a mixture of panic and joy. The door bell rings. She bites her fist to avoid shouting out. Then hears Carvalho’s voice.

‘Alma? It’s me. The Masked Galician.’

She laughs tearfully and runs to open. Carvalho has to hold her tight until she can recover the thread of what she wants to tell him: the words, her breathing all come out in a rush, her eyes are still rolling with fear. He sits next to her on the couch and hugs her again. He conveys sympathy, she her need for protection.

‘Are you going to tell me the truth once and for all?’

‘I don’t know what the truth is. There are so many different versions. I’ll tell you my own. I told you what happened the night of the raid. But it didn’t really happen exactly like that. When they burst in we were having dinner and doing political work. But most of all, I’m not Alma. I’m Berta.’

Carvalho cannot and will not hide his stupefaction.

‘Let me speak. I was Berta. Now I don’t want to be her any more. That night, I tried to fight back against the people raiding us.’

Deep down inside her, the film of those events reels out as she describes what happened. Her voice changes with each character: ‘Raúl shouted at me from the other room – “don’t be such a fool! They’ll kill us all! The baby!” Alma stood up to grab hold of her, and was cut down by a machine-gun burst. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Alma’s body, her husband Font y Rius and I were all lying on the floor in one room. My brother-in-law shouted, “Get the baby and escape through the bathroom”. I turned Alma’s body over. Her face was destroyed by the bullets. My brother-in-law was insisting: “Get out with the baby! I’ll tell them it was you they killed. Save the baby! Do it for her! I’m surrendering! Don’t shoot!” I crawled to the bedroom where my baby was. I picked her up: she was such a delicate thing, and smelled so sweet, but she was such a weight. I climbed out of the window and down a folding fire escape we’d put up for an emergency like this. I carried the baby down. She was so heavy! She weighed so much I was scared I’d drop her! The street was blocked off by more soldiers. There was a light on in the porter’s apartment. I went in there. He confronted me. He stared at me, then at the baby: at first he was angry, then sympathetic. He pushed me inside a big wardrobe, but not before he told me, “I haven’t seen a thing. If they find you, I haven’t seen a thing.” The rest is pretty much as I told you. Now I’m Alma, and glad to be her. It’s the only way I can fight off my sense of guilt. My baby Eva María is the only one who really disappeared. I hate Berta. I hate myself. I know I shouldn’t, but I do hate myself when I remember what I was like then.’

‘Memory sometimes doesn’t deserve us, sometimes we don’t deserve it.’

Alma throws herself into the haven of Carvalho’s arms and chest. But her relief is short-lived. The door bell rings again. This time it’s Carvalho who goes to open it. He finds himself faced by a sarcastic Pascuali and a worried but scowling Vladimiro.

On the way to the police station, it’s Vladimiro who gives the orders. Pascuali doesn’t deign to speak, even when they reach his lair: he walks up and down in front of Carvalho, Alma and Font y Rius, who are sitting on benches opposite each other. Alma and Font y Rius try to communicate silently with their eyes. Pascuali signals for the three of them to follow him. His office smells of metal furniture and ketchup. Pascuali stares each of them up and down slowly: three complete idiots, his look says. He frowns at the other cops to leave the room. When he’s on his own, he remains silent for a few moments, then growls: ‘A murder. A raid on an apartment, with the owner kidnapped in her own home! It’s like something from a sado-porno film. What are you hiding from me? What’s this all about?’ Pascuali bangs his fist on the desk. ‘I’ve had it up to here with your stories! First we’ve got a madman who’s trying to recover his past, his own discoveries. And he arrives at the worst moment, just when none of you needs him.’

He stands up, beside himself. Goes over to Carvalho.

‘And you, you snooping asshole, why don’t you get out of here, get back to Europe and stop making things even more difficult for us!’

Then it’s Alma’s turn.

‘And why don’t you go for a trip down to the Plaza de Mayo, like a nice little old widow, a history widow! Just don’t give me any more headaches! And when your brother-in-law does show up, make sure you hand him over to me, for his own sake, for all our sakes! Or do you want the hunting season to start again?’

For a few minutes, Pascuali says nothing more. Finally he shouts: ‘Get out of here!’ As Font y Rius passes by him, he hisses: ‘Psychiatrists!’

‘What’s the weather like in Barcelona, Biscuter? Are the Olympic Games over yet? Five years ago? I’ve lost all track of time. Has Charo phoned? No. I’m cooking. Well, it’s an Argentine dish that nobody in Buenos Aires makes any more. Its called
carbonada argentina.
It’s like a beef stew with maize, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and peaches. The city here? It’s fine. Still full of depressed Argies.’