The Buenos Aires Quintet (49 page)

‘It’s a disgrace for a
grand chef
but I’ll have to do it.’

‘They’ll collapse! By the time they reach the table, they’ll look like
quiches lorraine!
It’ll be a disaster!’ Magín shouts at him with increasing desperation.

Drumond thinks this over.

‘That’s true.’

‘What do you imagine?’ Magín scolds him. ‘That you’re the only professional in this city, this country, this world? Do you mean to insult the Argentines by saying I’m not as professional as you? What am I trained to do? Count dead bodies or serve soufflés?’

‘Serve soufflés, of course,’ Drumond replies.

‘And that’s what I intend to do,’ Magín’s voice comes back, encouraged at this glimmer of hope. ‘Everyone gets what they deserve, including all those in here.’

Drumond appears to agree wholeheartedly. He throws away the cleaver, opens the cold-storage door and lets Magín out. He points him towards the restaurant. As soon as he enters the room, Magín is the complete
maître
once more, and he starts to withdraw the empty plates. He gestures to attract the guests’ attention.

‘I propose a forty-year-old port, a Noval grand reserve. The
sommelier
chose it before he went home. But if you prefer, there are chilled liqueurs or Armagnac and cognac.’

‘Excellent! But Magín, what on earth is going on in the kitchen? You’re the only person serving. Whatever happened to the waitress?’

‘She had a sudden indisposition.’

‘I must say, the kitchen is a disaster tonight,’ Dolly complains with a bewildered shrug.

‘If only it were just this kitchen,’ Señora Fieldmann chimes in. ‘Can you find staff in Buenos Aires? They say there’s a crisis in Argentina, but you can’t even find girls from Paraguay. My sister, who lives in Paris, says it’s easy as pie there – her servants are a Polish couple who play the cello. They are extraordinary!’

‘Although it is slightly unorthodox, as a token of the satisfaction it has given him to have such connoisseurs as his guests this evening, the chef and myself will be serving the
soufflés aux fleurs d
’
acacia “Liliana Mazure ”
ourselves.’

Magín considers he has said all he needs to say, and disappears back into the kitchen.

‘The
potpourri
was delicious, but this is undoubtedly the other star dish of the evening. A soufflé with acacia flowers!’ Gorospe enthuses.

‘How wonderful!’ Cari trills.

‘Tango oranges are a dish for pansies that anyone can make, but this is a real invention. It was Troisgros who first thought of it, and I’ve taken the liberty of bringing his recipe along with me.’

Gorospe takes a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to Sinaí.

‘Read this.’

‘Why me? Cari should read it, she’s the actress.’

‘You read it, you’re the poet.’

Sinaí stands up and starts to read.

‘“Preparation time: thirty minutes. Cooking time: eighteen minutes.”’

‘So little!’ Dolly exclaims.

Sinaí gives her a thunderous look and goes on:

‘“A hundred grammes of bunches of acacia flowers, two centilitres of cognac, two egg yolks, five egg whites, a teaspoon of butter, an eighth of a litre of
crème pâtissière.
.. ”’ he pauses. ‘This isn’t enough even to get started.’

‘It’s a recipe for four people. Go on.’

’... “powdered and icing sugar, salt...Preparation – first, take two whole bunches of flowers and put them to one side. Then pluck the rest flower by flower...”’

As Sinaí goes on reading with his practised, professional delivery, Lucho is at the door of his office ready to come down. He is standing to attention, and slips the pistol into his jacket pocket as if about to depart on an epic mission. He turns back to the mirror and confirms how dishevelled he looks. He is past caring. He turns back again and sets off for the door. He opens it, and stares down at the distant guests for a second or two before he begins to walk slowly and stiffly down the staircase. At that precise instant, Drumond and Magín appear from the kitchen loaded with trays of soufflés. The guests receive them with applause. The soufflés are placed majestically in front of each of them.

‘When I think how I love acacia trees, and here I am about to eat the flowers,’ Cari says sadly.

‘When I was a girl I loved little rabbits, but now my favourite meal is rabbit stew,’ Señora Fieldmann adds dreamily.

‘And what about little birds?’ Gorospe asks. ‘Song thrushes have to be drowned in wine for them to have any taste.’

‘And in Brillat-Savarin’s time, they ate a certain little bird raw because it had such flavour,’ Ferlinghetti number two says.

This is a bit more information than Cari needs to know. She starts to retch, and though at first it seems funny, soon the retching is ghastly, uncontrollable, her body arching brutally – until all of a sudden she vomits massively all over Señor Fieldmann’s trousers.

‘Why don’t you do something?’ Señora Fieldmann complains to her husband.

‘What’s that girl up to?’ Dolly asks disgustedly.

Not only are Señor Fieldmann’s trousers soaked in vomit, it has also splashed on to his wife’s Versace dress. Drumond tries to rescue the situation.

‘Please, don’t look! There’s nothing wrong with the dessert!’ He picks up a spoon and tries a mouthful from Sinaí’s plate, despite the latter’s indignation. ‘Don’t look, just eat!’

Everyone screws up their faces in disgust. Drumond and Gorospe go and try to help the increasing numbers of casualties. Magín collapses into a chair and pretends he is not there. Also divorcing themselves from the general panic, Carvalho, the Captain, Sinaí and Sara taste their soufflés, then nod to each other enthusiastically. Gorospe interrupts his humanitarian efforts and takes a mouthful from his own plate.

‘Exquisite!’

Then he rushes off again.

Ostiz and the Captain take advantage of the confusion to talk to each other. The financier does not look directly at the Captain, but he has harsh words for him. Carvalho picks up scraps of their conversation.

‘You went too far.’

To which the Captain replies: ‘So you’re feeding me to the lions?’

Lucho has reached the bottom three steps. He cannot make up his mind whether to complete the descent. He stares at the tragi-comic scene in front of him. Eventually he takes the gun out of his pocket, descends the final three stairs and heads towards what is left of the banqueting table.

‘Lucho! Luchito!’ shouts Dora, the first to have spotted his presence. ‘So you finally decided to join us?’

In a fraction of a second, all the other guests suddenly see the gun and the wild-eyed man wielding it.

‘What’s got into you, Lucho?’ Gorospe asks nervously.

Lucho raises the pistol. He stares at Sara and points it at her. The two of them glare at each other. He takes aim, Sara propels her wheelchair violently backwards, and Drumond is left in the line of fire. A shot rings out, and the chef crumples to the floor. Any of the guests who were not already hysterical take the opportunity to join in now. Sinaí pulls a gun from his shoulder holster and aims at Lucho. The Captain knocks the gun down, and the bullet zings away harmlessly.

‘We shouldn’t be killing each other,’ says the Captain, staring pointedly at Ostiz.

Lucho stares down numbly at the gun in his hand. The Captain strides up to him.

‘Give me that.’

Lucho hands it over. The Captain turns round, gun at the ready. All the guests are sprawled over or under the table. Only Carvalho appears unaffected. He has one hand hidden inside his jacket, and meets the Captain’s gaze defiantly.

Raúl takes charge, even though he is surprised at how easily they enter through the iron gate into the garden and that they are all alone on the avenue of trees leading up to the house, and can see that the quickest way to the secret heart of the beast is by marching straight up to the front door. The three men look anxiously in all directions to try to spot any danger – they even glance up into the sky, in case they should be spotted from there, or suddenly hear the forbidding voice of some god or other; but no, the house grows steadily larger and closer, and all at once they have to do something because they find themselves at the bottom of the steps leading to the main door. Again it is Raúl who takes the lead, and without waiting to see how his companions are faring, presses the bell once and once more: then the three of them wait, trying to sense what is going on inside, until they hear footsteps and a distorted shape behind the bevelled glass. The door opens – and it is Don Vito who welcomes them with a sad, knowing smile.

‘Vito Altofini, Carvalho’s partner. I was expecting you – come on in.’

None of them can think of anything to reply to their surprise host, so he leads them through the wide hall with its flight of stairs to the upper floors, and into a living-room filled with heavy cane furniture upholstered in bright clashing colours, the opposite of the pale, former blonde, former beautiful woman sitting there rubbing her hands on her skirt as if trying to get rid of invisible stains.

‘Doña María Asunción, these gentlemen are here for the same reason as me; and I’d particularly like you to meet Don Raúl Tourón, who is Muriel’s real father.’

At this, the woman stares up at the ceiling, and Don Vito helps her by explaining to the new arrivals: ‘The girl is upstairs. We agreed to talk about what had happened without disturbing her. She’s in her bedroom. But now that you’re here, Don Raúl, you’re the one who has to decide.’

‘Let things stay as they are.’

Don Vito asks the woman to go on with her story. Before she speaks, she has a drink of some dark liquid from a glass on the round lace-covered table beside her.

‘I’m discovering it’s as hard for me to talk as it was to stay silent.’

She has to take another drink.

‘At first I didn’t know what on earth I was doing. He would tell me – do this, do that, and I did it. I was brought up in a military background, where I was educated to be a soldier’s wife, to go from garrison to garrison, first following my father, and then my husband. With my father everything was black or white, but in broad daylight, but living with my husband meant being submerged in darkness. We were not supposed to know or to speak: we couldn’t even say who we were, or where we lived. I’ve been another of the disappeared ever since he became an expert in the dirty war, and though at first he taught me how to behave, soon he did not even bother with that. He took it for granted that I should accept everything, that I was merely there to watch and applaud whatever he did. The truth is I didn’t start to revolt until it was pointless to do so, and so of course I did not bother. I don’t even raise my head when I see them come and go. They come in, go out: they don’t even look at me; they don’t even see me.’

‘The girl, Doña María Asunción. The girl. She was what we were asking you about.’

‘Of course, of course. And that’s what I’m talking about. We used to live in anonymous military installations that could not be identified from outside. One morning he brought the baby. She’s ours, he said. Just like that. She’s ours. I didn’t ask him about her parents. I never asked him about anything that I sensed was happening in the Navy Engineering School and all those other places. He told me that within twenty-four hours we had to move to an address that we could not give out even to our closest family. Not even to your mother, he said. You’ll be able to go and visit her. And whatever you do, don’t say anything about the baby. He gave some sort of confused explanation that she was only mine in legal terms, and that since my real names appeared on the birth register, I would not be able to appear in public with him, and would have to change my name. We could not have friends. Leaving the house became a difficult, nocturnal business. Whenever we went out together it was more or less in disguise, so bit by bit we stopped going out together. I stopped going out altogether. I’ve hardly been out in the past fifteen years – whenever I do, those horrible flies, those motorcyclists follow me everywhere. They’re there to protect me, the fat man says. He’s almost the only person who talks to me.’

‘And what’s your relation with the girl?’

‘I barely have one. I used to, but not any more. When she arrived, it was the end of my life. I’m dozing when she goes out, asleep when she gets back. Occasionally I ask her: is everything all right, Muriel? And she’s learnt from childhood to reply: yes, Mamma, everything’s fine. She’s very affectionate, poor thing, she forgives me everything. I hear her arguing with him, standing up for me. She is the only one on my side. When she was tiny, I tried to be a mother to her, but he wouldn’t let me: he was both father and mother, always. He organized his time and his postings so that he could be with Muriel as much as possible, and when he wasn’t around, the fat man took over. They didn’t trust me.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Perhaps because they realized that deep down I didn’t love the girl.’

‘You didn’t love her?’

‘Are you her father?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m really sorry. But no, I didn’t really love her. I felt sorry for her, and I think I always treated her well, but I didn’t love her. She was your daughter. I’m sorry I know it was wrong, but try to understand – my husband organized everything, he was the one responsible.’

‘She didn’t love her. She didn’t love her.’

Silverstein mutters this to himself, trying to understand, and is inwardly surprised at Raúl’s strength as he continues with his interrogation to the bitter end.

‘The bitter end. The bitter end.’

Silverstein keeps up his running commentary on what’s going on. And all at once Raúl raises what must be the bitter end of the affair.

‘Would you be willing to testify all you have said to a judge?’

Without a moment’s hesitation, she replies: ‘Yes.’

Raúl looks up at the living-room ceiling. Muriel is up there. All it would take would be to climb a few steps, and he would have his daughter back. But Silverstein puts a restraining hand on his arm, and Font y Rius decrees: ‘Not just yet, Raulito.’

Raúl Tourón nods his agreement, and Don Vito adds his weight to the decision – not that Raúl or anyone else has asked him to. Tourón turns to the woman, who is sadly surveying her past in the bottom of her empty glass.