The Buenos Aires Quintet (27 page)

Alma is so surprised at this comment that she sits up, and her as yet unaroused nipples pop out of the sheets.

‘But that’s what I say in my lectures!’

‘Good for you. And after all these questions, are you still naked?’

‘What do you think?’

As Carvalho embraces her bare body, he can feel it bristling all over with electricity; he buries his mouth into the fair curls of her pearly opening. He needed the taste of sex like an exile needs to kiss the ground of his home country on return. Alma does not say a word, does not groan, but her eyes go soft as he penetrates her, and her hands grip his back in recognition and acceptance at each thrust. Then the love-making – Carvalho is scared it is love – leaves them silent and inward-looking. Still half-naked, Alma seems sad as she sits in front of the logs of the fire and watches Carvalho tearing up a book and preparing to place the pages under a pyramid of wood for lighting.

‘My God! Every time I see you, you’re about to burn a book. Would you like the address of a psychiatrist?’

Ignoring her, Carvalho sets fire to the book.

‘Which one was it today?’

‘By Borges.
In Praise of Darkness,
one of his best books, according to his son. Borges’ son, I mean.’

‘Borges’ son? Borges never had any children. They say he died a virgin.’

‘He introduced himself as Jorge Luis Borges’ natural son, and he looked a lot like him.’

‘Where was this?’

‘In Pascuali’s cells. I forgot to tell you he kept me in there for a few hours. He was in two minds whether to crush a Cuban cigar of mine or to arrest me, so in the end he just trod on my cigar and threw me in the cells for a few hours. I was glancing at that book I’m burning now, and it says somewhere that we can never get out of the labyrinth. I already told you that ever since I was a child, I feel I’ll never find my way home...’

‘You’re even sadder than I am, Pepe. Kiss me again, but not like before. Kiss me like an impotent lover.’

‘Having to pretend twice so quickly at my age! First pretending to be potent, now impotent!’

But he does kiss her like an impotent lover, then moves away from her and busies himself with the fire.

In his best down-at-heel style, Don Vito is waiting in his car. He looks down at his watch too often. Then a taxi pulls up a few yards away. A strange being of indeterminate sex, body and face gets out. Pays off the taxi-driver through the window. Then turns towards him. It’s Madame Lissieux, disguised as a women’s rally driver champion of the 1940s, down to the goggles and gaiters. She waves effusively at Don Vito.

‘Take a look at that! It’s Fangio!’

But his expression changes when he gets out of the car and offers her the driving seat, after first kissing her hand in a gesture from a brilliantined gentleman to a somewhat ambiguous racing driver.

‘You always rise to the occasion.’

‘Who are we following? A dangerous criminal?’

‘The most dangerous of all. The state.’

Despite the goggles, Madame Lissieux’s professional concentration is obvious as she pulls out, ready to confront her fate.

‘She drove as if life depended on it – my life more than hers; and overtook cars all the time so that Pascuali wouldn’t get away from us. My only fear was Pascuali would notice and arrest us.’

Carvalho enjoys Buenos Aires cafés, where alongside the wooden panels and polished metal you can enjoy a space where time is on your side. Don Vito is playing the part of a man exhausted after an impossible day. He loosens his tie, and undoes the top button of his shirt.

‘Have you any idea what it’s like to follow a cop in a car driven by someone who is a cross between Juan Manuel Fangio and the Man in the Mask? And someone who, to top it all, is a woman: Madame Lissieux? Have you ever sat alongside a woman who crosses Libertador Avenue and Callao at a hundred and twenty kilometres an hour? Can you imagine what it was like when a cop came alongside at a traffic light to tell us we were speeding, and Madame Lissieux said: “Don’t hold us up, my good man, we’re following that police car”?’

‘And he arrested you?’

‘On the contrary. He cleared the traffic for us to get on with the chase.’

‘Enough of words. Were you successful?’

With a theatrical gesture Don Vito throws a sheet of paper on to the table.

‘It reads like the Argentine rich men’s football team, without Maradona. These people have more money than Fort Knox.’

Carvalho puts the piece of paper in his pocket. Don Vito has recovered sufficient breath to start up a conversation with a young lady who is offering him the price for a night, without bed and board.

‘That was not the reason for my approaching you. I simply wished to have the heady pleasure of sniffing your bosom and your armpits.’

‘Dirty old man!’

Carvalho leaves Don Vito to his fate, and asks the taxi-driver to take him to the Polo Club.

‘The one at Palermo, you mean?’

‘It’s called the Hurlingham Club.’

‘Oh, right, the Hurlingham. That’s where the seriously loaded people go.’

In the darkness under floodlights, their lordships are engaged in the inexplicable pursuit of a white ball. A sport of gentlemen, Carvalho reflects, watching as they finish their last chukkas. He picks out Gálvez Jr. from the other players when he dismounts and with a tired but reluctant gesture hands over the pony reins to a groom. He has spotted Carvalho at the rail, and waves in acknowledgement. As he comes over, he takes off his gloves.

‘I’m going to have a shower. Have what you like to drink. Tell them you’re with me – they don’t like strangers.’

The barman stares icily at Carvalho – he has obviously decided he is not worthy to be in such an exclusive club. But before he can offend him with a far too educated sneer, Carvalho defends himself: ‘Señor Gálvez asked me to wait for him here.’

Although Carvalho’s attire does not permit him to judge just what level of intercourse he may have with the powerful Gálvez Jr., the barman decides it is sufficiently decent for him to be accepted into the sanctum.

‘Would you care for something to drink, sir?’

‘I’d like four fingers of your best whisky, with no ice.’

‘Of the most expensive?’

‘Of the best.’

‘That’s very subjective.’

‘That’s your problem.’

The barman bows and goes off. Carvalho feels a touch of Stockholm syndrome coming on as he examines with affection the stock types filling the room. Well-kept bodies in sporty clothes, but all of them slightly unreal, as if they were extras in a lifestyle shoot strangely out of date in the final years of the century. Then the head waiter comes over to his table with a bottle of whisky and a glass on a tray.

‘The waiter told me your request, and I took it upon myself to interpret it. At this time of day, my choice would be a Glenmorangie, a single malt that is equally good before a meal or after. I’ve chosen this twenty-year-old malt, and allow me to remind you that if you add ice it will gain in bouquet but lose its smoothness on the throat. As you well know, whisky is not like wine, all of whose taste is on the palate and the tongue. Whisky is best judged in the throat.’

Carvalho accepts his choice. The head waiter pours five fingers of whisky, and the glass, bottle and tray are left at his disposition. He picks up the glass, sniffs at the contents the regulation three times, each time swirling the liquid around a little more in the glass, then takes a sip. His throat is well pleased. He nods at the head waiter.

‘Excellent, Señor...’

‘Loroño, at your service.’

‘In my next reincarnation I’ll employ you as my sommelier for whiskies.’

‘Forgive my curiosity, but as what would you like to be reincarnated?’

‘As a member of this club.’

The arrival of an impeccably dressed Gálvez Jr. cuts short the head waiter’s reply.

‘Would Señor Gálvez like his usual?’

Gálvez nods. Looks at his watch.

‘Is your plane waiting?’

‘No. I understand I must look like a stereotype. A plane of my own, and polo. Well, my father brought me up to have a plane and to play polo, to be the perfect English yuppie. In spite of everything, my father was an Anglophile, one of those who thought Argentina’s problems began when we refused to become an English colony. I’m in charge of thirty businesses throughout the length and breadth of this country.’

‘Real yuppies don’t know that’s what they are.’

‘I’ve read a little, not much. Enough to know that it’s not good to be a yuppie – to look like one, anyway.’

Carvalho gives him Don Vito’s piece of paper.

‘Whether he was senile or lucid, these are the people your father was blackmailing. He wanted money to retake the Malvinas peacefully and to fill the world with phalansteries.’

As he reads each name, Gálvez Jr. gives a low whistle. ‘My God, my God, my God...’ When he has finished, he looks up, perplexed: ‘Had he gone completely mad? He wasn’t even blackmailing any middle-of-the-road people. They’re all the hardest cases you can find.’

‘They must have been the ones he had the most damaging information on.’

‘Well, the effect was devastating. Any one of them could have paid for his murder.’

‘Does it happen often?’

‘It happens. They’re dangerous people. You can’t take on the mafias – especially the public one. The public mafia – the people the subversives called the oligarchy – is by far the deadliest. Are there any copies of this list?’

‘Pascuali has been to see them all.’

Carvalho can almost hear the yuppie’s brain whirring as he thinks about this, and quickly comes to a conclusion.

‘I’m going to have to do something similar. I’ll go straight to the top. I’ll call on Ostiz and Maetzu. I think they should know I’m aware of everything.’

The head waiter brings him his usual drink.

‘Your mixed fruit juice, sir.’

Gálvez sees how Carvalho reacts to this, and laughs. ‘A very Robinson drink. When I’m old, when I’m an adult, I want to be Robinson Crusoe.’

But business is business and, after a long, healthy and pleasurable drink, which Carvalho compensates with another unhealthy but no less pleasurable one, Gálvez tells rather than asks him: ‘I want you to come with me to see Ostiz and Maetzu.’

A ray of sunlight picks out bronze glints in Alma’s curls. Muriel stares intrigued at the gleams, as if tongues of the flame of knowledge were really sprouting from the teacher’s head as she concludes her lecture.

‘So Robinson is not an innocent myth, but rather an attempt to explain man’s position in the world as that of an individual who can dominate it thanks to his experience, his intelligence and the support of Providence. Defoe sets out the philosophy of the ascendant, all-conquering bourgeoisie, and as such his proposal in Robinson is more realist than that of Rousseau’s Emile. Rousseau’s world contains the seeds of revolt and anarchist rebellion. Contemporary liberalism has reacted against the father of liberalism and denies the possibility of man as a noble savage influenced by his social environment. What’s happened to didactic literature like this? What writer of today would dare propose a Robinson, an Emile, a Werther or an Ivan Karamazov to his readers? To offer role models like them, you need to have hope, even if it is an angst-ridden hope. Sometimes, hope may be a theological virtue. At others it can be just a historical one, or even a biological necessity. Or in the case of someone like Bloch, his non-religious hope is a bio-historical necessity, which conceives the future like a religion.’

She draws to an end, and the students start to leave. Alma picks up her things as well. She looks up, and sees Muriel standing by her desk.

‘Excuse me.’

‘Of course.’

‘I read Robinson like you told us – or recommended us – to do, but my reading of it was different, an ecological one.’

‘You could also read Robinson as an apology for your average Argentine, free to cook a barbecue in his weekend place. No, I’m only joking. But any great work of literature is open to many different interpretations. The reader is always freer than the author, and has centuries to impose his way of seeing it.’

Muriel whispers ‘Thanks’ and makes to leave. Alma watches her go. Her eyes show her professional enthusiasm, but there is something else in her voice when she calls out: ‘Muriel.’

She is surprised her professor even remembers her name.

‘I really like the way you participate in the class, and the work you do. You write very well, in the papers you hand in, at least.’

The young girl’s voice fails her: she’s so happy she feels like crying. Eventually she manages to stammer out: ‘That’s because I like your classes so much.’

‘Where do you get your interest from? Does your family have anything to do with it?’

‘No. Nothing. My father is a businessman, and my mother isn’t interested in the least.’

‘In the vacation I’d like to get together a literary workshop, nothing too serious, just for fun. Just a few of the students to write, discuss, look at texts. Would you like to join in?’

‘Of course!’ Muriel almost shouts.

Alma is pleased at this, and suggests they leave together. As they are going down the staircase, she has a sudden flashback and sees Robinson haranguing the students a few days earlier.

‘D’you remember the prophet who was here the other day? Robinson?’

Muriel remembers the argument between her and the teacher, and says cautiously: ‘Perhaps I didn’t understand what he was saying.’

‘That wasn’t why I mentioned him. There’s nothing left of any of them: Robinson is dead, Friday is dead, and I wonder...’

Muriel is astonished.

‘Dead?’

‘Yes, and I can’t help wondering: what happened to the parrot? And the llama? What’s become of the llama? Especially her, the poor thing.’

Don Vito has been telling Carvalho how his previous night’s love-making went: ‘She wasn’t a whore, Carvalho. She was simply a merry widow.’

He senses that Carvalho is not in the mood, and has it proved when the Spaniard thrusts a
Clarín
newspaper in front of his face. The headline reads:

‘
Pacho Escámez murdered.