His deep-seated constipation had accompanied him like a faithful dog ever since he had started working at the company. No sooner was the post of head of procurement his than his intestines, as if unbeknownst to their owner, had turned against him and tangled themselves into a perverse Gordian knot that he could only cut with the aid of powerful laxatives. It was a problem of timing more than anything, but also of setting, and ultimately of that rare commodity in the life of the efficient executive: relaxation. It was getting harder and harder in the morning to find the necessary peace and quiet: his wife wouldn’t let him use their en suite bathroom because the smell would, she claimed, pervade her morning ablutions; and the children’s bathroom was prey to all-important needs – use by their son, a change of nappies, toothbrushes, medicines, nebulisers – rendering any prospect of relaxation utopian. Last, the downstairs guest toilette was besieged by the fervent Doña Ema, the enormous maid who, advised by Sra Marroné of her husband’s early-morning needs, had immediately decided, with her impregnable common sense, that it was merely a naughty habit and purposely chose that time to clean it or, if Marroné did manage to evade her vigilant eye and take cover within, she would decide to wax the floor outside and charge at the bolted door, first with the waxing cloth, and then – her coup de grâce – the wailing floor-polisher, until he gave up. But if going to the toilet at home had become a mission nigh on impossible, things weren’t much better at the office. Rarely was there time amid the daily rush to enjoy that much-needed oasis of peace and quiet, and anyway, Marroné was incapable of feeling at home in the toilet without a book in his hands – not only to make the most of his time, but because a pleasant and instructive read had the virtue of soothing him and steering his performance to a successful outcome; what’s more, he felt embarrassed at the thought that some employee or colleague – especially if it was a woman – should see him entering or leaving the bathroom with reading matter, and although he had perfected a posture of camouflage to that effect, which involved wedging the book under his armpit and cleaving his arm to his side in order to conceal it from prying eyes, the average size of books on management made any dissimulation unviable. Hence the office was far from ideal.
But this time things were different: in spite of its immaculate hardback binding, The Corporate Samurai was a pocket edition, and Marroné could walk the empty corridors with utter impunity. And although he crossed paths with no one on the short walk, it was with a sense of triumph that, once the bathroom door was closed and bolted, he sat down on the toilet seat and opened the volume at the bookmarked page.
The Corporate Samurai belonged to a select minority of texts that had successfully applied the principles of millenary oriental wisdom to the modern art of management: titles like Dwight D Connoly’s The Art of Competition, adapted from Sun Tzu’s celebrated The Art of War; or The Tao of Management by Dean Tesola, who brought the immemorial wisdom of Laozi to the conference table of a modern corporation. True, The Corporate Samurai lacked the astonishing relevance of the former and the philosophical depth of the latter, and sometimes lapsed into mere pedestrian substitution, mechanically replacing ‘samurai’ with ‘executive’ and ‘battle’ with ‘competition’, giving rise to entire paragraphs such as: ‘When the company enters into competition the executive must camp out day and night in the office, developing competitive strategies without a moment’s rest. It is necessary for employees of all ranks to dig any ditches, strongholds or outposts needed to protect the company from enemy attack and prevent them invading their markets and making off with their clientele.’ But it also contained paragraphs that could be described as sublime, such as its majestic opening, which Marroné always reread before embarking on the rest of the book: ‘What every executive must have constantly in mind, night and day, is that they will die. Death is their goal, their north, their main occupation.’ Marroné had meditated long and hard on this astonishing idea, which he had first taken for a rather melodramatic variant of the executive’s maxim ‘Go to work every day expecting to be fired’, but subsequently, after reading further, had discovered a deeper meaning. For a samurai executive, following the Way of the Executive involved subordinating personal achievements and goals to a higher end: the good of the company, the honour or, as in his case, the very life of its president. European or American readers of The Corporate Samurai were lucky enough to be able to take the phrase figuratively, but in this antipodean reality the idea of death was no metaphor for demotion or dismissal, but a palpable and concrete possibility; nor was the battlefield merely that of commercial competition, but also that of the streets where modern executives had to fight it out day and night against bombs, machine-gunnings and kidnappings. Nonetheless, the essential virtues of The Corporate Samurai were its accessibility and reader-friendliness, and Marroné, who knew from experience that the effort of disentangling the meaning of a complicated text might prolong rather than facilitate the task he was engaged in, started to read:
Though the Way of the Executive first and foremost entails developing the qualities of strength and efficiency, he who develops only in these respects shall reach no further than becoming a rustic executive of little consequence. Therefore, even a lower-ranking executive will do well to try his hand at music – clumsy though he may be – at painting or literature or some other art, albeit in moderation. For he who becomes completely absorbed in it and neglects his professional duties shall turn soft of body and mind, and lose his martial qualities to become a self-absorbed, second-rate artist. If one should grow too passionate about an art, it is easy to behave like some bright and witty chatterer in the company of your serious and reserved fellow samurai. This may be amusing in terms of social life, but it is an attitude that does not befit the Way of the Executive.
At this point a number 3 interrupted the flow of the text and Marroné, who was always extremely punctilious when it came to footnotes, skipped to the bottom of the page to read the note in question:
3. Although modern western executives have not adopted the tea ceremony practised by samurai knights, they have developed other forms of professional and social contact. Golf, for example, has been highly popular with company people since the days of the big tycoons. Hence, the executive who wishes to progress in the world of business must at least be familiar with the correct way of gaining access to the golf course, and know how to choose his clubs and keep score correctly, for which it is recommended that he take a few lessons from a pro. The golf club is a most suitable place to close deals and forge personal relationships, far from the distractions of the office, and the spirit of golf, properly cultivated, can do much to sweeten the Way of the Executive.
Accompanying the downward motion of his eyes, as if a blockage had finally been removed, Marroné’s innards voided themselves placidly in one, and he closed the book and gave a sigh of relief. He hadn’t had such a good bowel movement since he’d started working at the company, he told himself, contemplating the profuse fruit of his belly while doing up his trousers and reaching for the flush button. There could only be one explanation for it: something deep inside him, something the meaning of which he wasn’t yet able to unravel, had loosened when he had set eyes on the mortal remains of what had in life been Sr Tamerlán’s index finger. Leaving the bathroom and advancing down the corridor with the buoyant stride of a moon-walker, Marroné felt like a new man, as if – how else could he put it? – his soul had returned to his body, and not without a secret frisson of impishness he smiled to himself: maybe the Montoneros had ended up doing him a favour after all.
2
Marroné by Marroné
To offset the day’s highs with an unquestionable low he was forced to share the lift to the car park with Aldo Cáceres Grey, the executive usurping the chair that Marroné yearned with all his heart and soul to sit in: marketing and sales at Tamerlán & Sons. Cáceres Grey was a perfect specimen of an endangered species: the high-born executive who owes his post less to his curriculum vitae than to his pedigr
ee, and more to his golfing handicap than to his academic scores. Sr Tamerlán wasn’t in the business of hiring fops on the strength of their double-barrelled surnames, but as one of the surnames also happened to be his wife’s, and as his little nephew was only a minor pain, and his assistant manager obsessively efficient but a social liability, the balance between the demands of business and those of high society might appear quite sensible. But for Marroné, whose head teemed with new ideas fresh from the US, Cáceres Grey was nothing but a bar to the company’s progress, an obstruction blocking the new thinking that was changing the face of business across the world. And to cap it all his rival had had the cheek to bang Mariana, the twenty-year-old secretary that Marroné, hobbled by scruple and guilt, had timidly, almost cryptically, been wooing all spring. Screwing your colleague’s secretary violated the executive’s tacit droit de seigneur over his subordinates and was nothing short of an act of war, a gauntlet thrown in his face. Marroné had taken it up, unbeknownst to Cáceres Grey, and had secretly been choosing his weapons ever since. Which didn’t stop him answering his rival’s condescending smile with a frank and open one, as recommended in How to Win Friends and Influence People.
‘Well? Are the tower blocks selling or aren’t they?’ he asked with a toothy grin.
‘There’s a sucker born every minute. Hey… What about Uncle? Any news?’
‘Who?’ asked Marroné, knowing perfectly well that Cáceres Grey was referring to Sr Tamerlán, but feigning ignorance to parry what he saw as an obscene exhibition of kinship.
‘Come on, don’t be silly. If you’ve been called to the bunker, it can’t have been to talk about the price of airbricks.’
‘Oh. You meant Sr Tamerlán’s kidnapping. No, we didn’t discuss the subject,’ he lied, with a thrill of private delight. So word had already got round of his descent into The Nibelheim. If this busybody only knew… he couldn’t even suspect the extent to which Marroné was not only in the know but in the core, the nerve centre… at the very helm.
‘Auntie is out of her mind; visiting her’s an ordeal. And my two little cousins aren’t far behind. We try to give them support, you know, over the phone; but there comes a point when you don’t know what to say. If you ask me, they’ve already offed him. They don’t usually keep them this long. Remember the head of Fiat?’
He gave Cáceres Grey a non-committal smile. Why bother telling him that he, Marroné, had irrefutable evidence to the contrary? Though, now that he came to think about it, the arrival of the finger didn’t prove Sr Tamerlán was still alive. The latest hard evidence – the customary photograph with that day’s newspaper – was over a month old, and while it wasn’t the standard pose (Sr Tamerlán had turned round at the last moment to show himself wiping his backside with it), the still visible headlines had left no room for doubt. But, on the other hand, he could easily have been executed since the photo was taken and kept in the freezer to be chopped up like a chicken and the chunks posted in instalments. No, they wouldn’t do that, he corrected himself; he’d be a lot harder to cut up frozen; they’d have chopped him up beforehand.
‘It must be hard for her…’ Marroné began.
‘That’s the least of our worries. The trouble is she’s out of control. Uncle used to keep her in check, you know, and now there’s no one to stop her. Only the other day she was being interviewed for Gente magazine, and she tried to mount the photographer. He asked her to lie on the conjugal bed, you know, to hit just the right tear-jerking note, and she says she got all misty-eyed and next thing she knew… I know six months is a long time, but what are staff for? You have to watch your step with journalists. They’ll publish anything.’
Marroné didn’t know what to say, and it galled him all the more. It was another of Cáceres Grey’s famous put-downs: from his position of privilege as a member of the Family he revelled in disclosing embarrassing private details and talking with over-familiarity about people his colleagues were obliged to refer to with the utmost ceremoniousness.
They got out of the lift at the car park and, after bidding each other farewell with formal courtesy – Marroné sincere and emphatic, extending his sinewy right hand in a virile American handshake; Cáceres Grey with Parisian nonchalance and a hint of irony, his slack hand floating palm down as if he were expecting a subject’s kiss – they each headed for their cars: Cáceres Grey to his orange ’68 Mustang Coupé; Marroné to his champagne-coloured Peugeot 504. Before he got in, Cáceres Grey shouted to Marroné over the roof of his car:
‘Be a good chap and remind Mariana to call me tomorrow!’
The phrase hadn’t finished ricocheting around the bare cement columns and walls before Cáceres Grey slammed the door and started his engine, and for a split second Marroné yearned with every fibre of his being for a gelignite blast to blow him out of existence for ever, before reminding himself that at that distance it would catch him too, and the last thing he wanted was to share another journey with his hated enemy, even if it was to the Hereafter. Marroné was more cautious: as he had been taught on the survival course (given by a retired French colonel and Algerian War veteran) he examined the locks to see if they showed signs of having been forced or displayed traces of plastic explosive, inside or out. Once – he still shuddered to remember – he had discovered the feared pink gunk inside the lock but, after the alarm and evacuation of the building, it had been identified by bomb-disposal experts as ‘masticated Bazooka bubble gum’, and for several weeks Marroné was the butt of his colleagues’ jokes: they would offer him chewing gum at all times of day, or blow bubbles and burst them in his presence – all except Cáceres Grey, who was unusually attentive and understanding with him, congratulating him on his sense of responsibility and so confirming Marroné’s suspicions about the authorship of this unforgivable prank. He then checked under the chassis, kneeling on his handkerchief to protect his trousers, and on getting up he said a quick Our Father and slid the key into the lock. Nothing. Once inside he examined the wiring and, opening the hood, got out again to check the engine: everything seemed to be where it should be. Even so, before starting the engine, he said two Our Fathers one after the other – first in English, then in Spanish – and gave a sigh of relief when the friendly purring of the Peugeot’s motor told him he had won another victory against death.
It was the same issue with this routine check as when he took his books to the toilet: he was embarrassed to be seen, particularly since, with the violence of the times, Tamerlán’s Tartars had apparently adopted a philosophy resembling the one expressed in The Corporate Samurai. Whenever two of them went down to the car park together, they would make a whole ceremony out of the simple act of leaving work in their cars, with remarks like ‘See you in the celestial spa’ or ‘Tamerlán or death’ and then counting ‘One, two, three!’ before whirling their keys like sabres and plunging them into the locks of their cars. After exaggerated laughter (and private sighs of relief) they repeated the burlesque ceremony by starting up their engines, and at no time – they would have seen it as an unpardonable breach of the warrior’s code – did they lower themselves to following the safety procedure, even though they knew that what was at stake wasn’t just their own physical integrity, but their colleagues’, and – if the bomb was big enough – the entire building’s. They’d even given the game a name: ‘Montonero Roulette’. Marroné knew that there was little or nothing of the bushido code and a good deal of the most vulgar and pedestrian Latin American machismo in all this horsing around but, incapable of withstanding peer pressure, in the presence of a colleague he would affect identical behaviour, so, if he had to go down to the car park with one of them, he would delay his departure with petty excuses – stopping the lift on the pretext of talking to someone, claiming to have forgotten important papers, or as a last resort the infallible ‘What a bloody fool, I’ve left my car keys upstairs’ so he could go through his procedure later, safe from sarcastic glances. As of today he would have to take more precautions than ever, for
, as a key player in the negotiations, he was now a target for the assassins: his name might at that very instant be passing from mouth to mouth at a meeting of the Montoneros’ Central Committee: ‘Marroné? Marroné? What do we know about him? Bring me all you’ve got on Ernesto Marroné.’
The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón Page 3