The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

by Carlos Gamerro

  She was a man! At first Marroné was as taken aback as the two commissars, but unlike him they soon recovered from the initial shock and, egged on by the drink, began to vie acrimoniously for the transvestite’s company, while the woman, altogether forgotten, smoked a cigarette and watched the events play out with a seen-it-all-before expression. To stop her feeling left out Sansimón took her by the hips and manoeuvred her naked titties onto the glass top of his desk, pulled down her panties with a tug and entered her, while Espínola, pretending to hide underneath, licked her nipples through the glass and Viale diligently crammed rolls of ham into her mouth, which she could only chew and swallow; meanwhile, Garaguso and Cerbero had commandeered the tranny and, as the former inserted a prodigious erection into her mouth, the other, with a good deal of snorting, took her from behind. Yet there was something contrived and – why not? – even theatrical about the whole scene; something that suggested a live number performed by the company’s executives for the benefit of their underlings, like in those progressive schools where the teachers dress up as children for the annual graduation party and play-act at behaving badly. Marroné had been to many a business convention and private party at which alcohol, sex workers and even drugs were freely available, but in this instance it was obvious that such histrionics were put on for the exclusive benefit of the two plebs, who were clearly having the worst time of it: the confirmation that all their fantasies about the dissipated and licentious lives led by their bosses at their expense were actually pretty accurate seemed to have robbed them of their capacity for reaction, or even righteous indignation, leaving instead two mere husks trembling with mute, affronted desire; so by the time the whore and the transvestite had gone from executive prick to executive prick and it was their turn, all that was left standing of their moral scaffolding was the requisite proletarian modesty to ask, after much tentative throat-clearing and shuffling of soles, if they could have their slice of the pie somewhere a bit more private, a mercy most graciously granted them by the conclave of executives.

  No sooner had the two of them retired to Garaguso’s office with their sexual partners (their objection apparently only went as far as doing it in the presence of their bosses, not in front of each other) than Sansimón pounced on one of the phones on his desk and Cerbero on the other one, any trace of befuddlement or intoxication evaporated as if by magic, and while the big boss phoned the general secretary of the union, the other got on to a trusted police chief of his acquaintance:

  ‘Just a second, Babirusa, what do I stick in the envelope for you every month? Sugar-coated peanuts is it? Your people… a den of subversives, Turco, this strike thing’s a smokescr… You’ve disaffiliated them? Ah, well, that makes me feel a lot better. Made them go without pudding too, did you?… The delegates are all from the Montoneros and the ERP, and the shop stewards are armed to the teeth… do I know who they are? Wasn’t it you who said we’d sacked them all? Besides, the trouble started in the old workshop, Christ knows what those sonsofbitches have done with my poor old… I don’t think the police will be enough, what we could do with here…’

  Garaguso had been acting as look-out while they were on the phone and, when the hand that was tracing windmills in the air became a pair of urgently slicing scissors, they hung up in perfect unison and settled back into the pretence with their whisky glasses. Whether it was their uncontrollable excitement or because the conditioning of assembly-line production had affected their sexual behaviour too, the workers were done quicker than it would have taken Marroné, leaving their bosses little more than the absolute minimum to organise the factory’s recovery with their allies on the outside. The problem now was that post-orgasmic relaxation, coupled with a misplaced egalitarian feeling induced in all likelihood by the promiscuous cohabitation of bourgeois and plebeian spermatozoa in the democratic innards of the transvestite and the whore, had stirred a geniality and over-familiarity in the two strikers, which their bosses, now that the objective of making contact with the outside world and setting the wheels of the rescue operation in motion had been achieved, treated with indifference and at times even disdain. Baigorria in particular, who had accompanied the whisky with an inadvisable mix of champagne, was going around hugging everyone, a situation exploited by the ever-alert Garaguso, who stuck to him like glue and continued his efforts at seduction: ‘The rate you’re going, Baigorria, your blessed revolution’s going to take how long… ten, twenty years? And who’ll pay your bills in the meantime? Fidel Castro? Who’ll buy your medicine when the kids are ill? Che Guevara? Who’ll pay for the iron your missus saw in that ad on the TV, or the dress your neighbour’s daughter wears the day you finally get round to banging her? Chairman Mao? They bang on to you about our children this, our children that, future generations the other… Life’s for living now, Baigorrita. Think about it, we’re all after the same thing: a decent life. And what do you need for a decent life? Money, Baigorrita, nothing but money. The rest is fairy tales. Now, if it’s money you need…’ The party was by now approaching the moment of maximum entropy: so drunk they could barely hold the putter between them, Viale and Espínola giggled oafishly as they tried to get a hole-in-one in the prostitute’s vagina, who, sitting on the floor with her legs spread, looked a lot like one of those weird contraptions you find at crazy-golf courses; meanwhile the sales manager, whose name Marroné hadn’t managed to jot down in his notebook, clocking the gawping mugs of Baigorria and Saturnino, shouted at them every thirty seconds ‘You two can use her to practise your pool on when we’re done!’; and the transvestite, who had swapped clothes with Sansimón and now looked like a lesbian from the 1920s, owned in a quite unprovoked fit of sincerity to being called Hugo and to doing all this to support his sick son, news that was received by all present – excepting Marroné and Saturnino – with gales of laughter, which, after a few seconds of puzzlement, Hugo himself joined in on, laughing most shrilly of all. Faring worst on the slippery slope was Sansimón himself: the combination of post-coital gloom, hangover and humiliating captivity at the hands of his own employees had wreaked havoc with his moral framework. Still got up in corset, stockings and suspenders, he fell prey to a bout of the drunken mopes and began to brood on his discontent:

  ‘Everything, everything… Nothing’s enough for them. They always want more. They start with the soap in the toilets and, when you agree, they want you to bend over and pick it up as well. You hold out your hand and they take your arm. Arm my foot! Shoulder. Neck. Head. And then they want more. More and more. So here you are. Yours for the taking. Eh? What are you waiting for?’

  Finally cottoning on, Baigorria and Saturnino slowly turned their heads – Saturnino from gazing on his invisible member lost in the cavernous depths of the hooker’s throat, Baigorria from the insidious drip of Garaguso’s words in his ear.

  Legs akimbo, grazing the carpet with the crown of his head, Sansimón pulled apart his hairy buttocks, separated by the narrow strip of panty fabric. In his inverted face his mouth opened and closed like the giant eye of a Cyclops:

  ‘You want my arse? Here it is! Roll up! Roll up! First the union delegates, then the shop stewards, then health and safety, then hygiene! Then the union lawyer! And all the members! And while we’re at it, everyone that’s been fired for labour or political reasons since ’55! Will you be happy then? Will you let me do my job in peace?’

  He had dropped to his knees, head between his elbows, keeping his arse up high. To spare himself the rest of this sorry spectacle, Marroné grabbed his folded jacket and briefcase, and left the office without so much as a goodbye to those who wouldn’t notice his absence anyway.

  As he stepped into the corridor, he was enfolded by the hot, slightly gelatinous summer-night air and, in a matter of seconds, his face was moist with sweat. The windows were all open to let in the breeze (the air-conditioning had doubtless been turned off by the strikers on an egalitarian whim that for some reason excluded the management) and, rolling up his sleeves and undoing a coup
le of buttons on his shirt, Marroné went over to a window that overlooked the garden and the street beyond.

  The front garden was coated in the plaster dust produced by the factory’s round-the-clock schedule, and in the moonlight the talcum-powder paths, silver trees, wax flowers and flour-dusted lawn conjured what the landscape would look like if there were life on the Moon. Here and there, their light made all the brighter by the surrounding pallor, burnt the bonfires of the worker guards, and, as if riding the soft breeze, now and then there came the sound of voices, the occasional burst of laughter, the ham-fisted but resolute picking of a guitar against the rich chorus of frogs and crickets, which had surely turned albino to survive in this white-hued world. All of a sudden the pastoral calm was shattered by the sound of sirens, and the faint whiteness beyond the main gate was filled with a blinding blue haze. Half a dozen patrol cars, their headlights blazing, had pulled up en masse and, before taking up position, six or seven uniformed officers and another two or three in plain clothes had leapt out. For a second Marroné thought they would attack straightaway, but his hope soon died. Perfectly synchronised, black-helmeted strikers came running from all directions, the moonlight glinting on the metal of their drawn guns. Police and strikers spread out, facing each other in a precarious stand-off, with nothing between them but the flimsy wire fence – the police, for the time being, going through the motions with no other purpose than to show their faces and intimidate; the workers letting them know the factory wouldn’t be retaken without a fight.

  Marroné looked at his watch: it was quarter past four in the morning, and it occurred to him he might be able to find a phone and call his wife to reassure her and ask her to let the company know his whereabouts; but, anticipating just such an eventuality, as they had everything else, the strikers had locked all the offices except the main one, where the office workers captured at the start of the occupation were sleeping, guarded by two other commissars. After asking him where he’d come from and accepting his hushed explanation, one of the guards told him to find somewhere to lie down.

  There were twenty odd people in the room and, despite the ample space available to them, they lay huddled on the carpet, the men in one group, the women in another, like sea lions on a beach, their heads resting on rolled-up jackets, imitation-leather cushions or even stacks of files. On several desks were scattered the leftovers of a frugal dinner: the ubiquitous ham and cheese rolls, many of them half-eaten, empty pop bottles, cellophane wrappers and bits of foil from biscuits and sweets, little plastic cups half-full of coffee and sodden dog-ends. The air-conditioning was off here as well, and as the windows looked inwards to the shop floor, the night breeze was even feebler than in the corridor, and the faces he could make out were sweating in their sleep. The more daring of the menfolk were sleeping in their vests, someone was snoring, a portable radio crackled into a slumbering ear and there was an acrid smell of cigarettes, sweat and sit-in.

  Besides worrying about not telling the company his whereabouts, the mild displeasure caused by his colleagues’ rebuff and the nuisance of not being able to brush his teeth, the situation wasn’t as grave as it had first appeared. They’d probably let them all go tomorrow, except perhaps the senior management; and if they didn’t, they’d at least let them make a phone call. Such events had become commonplace in recent years, and Tamerlán & Sons had had to deal with occupied construction sites on several occasions – and not just the sites of mere apartment blocks either, but mega-ventures like dams, freeways and airports. What worried him most was the possibility that the delay would put Sr Tamerlán in danger. What if the deadline expired while Marroné was locked away in here? If his boss died, he’d get the blame. Marroné’s heart skipped a beat as it dawned on him that Sr Tamerlán’s imprisonment was infinitely harsher than his own, and had lasted not just twenty-four hours, but more than six months. Only now that he was experiencing something similar first-hand did he feel close, not so much to this abstract person, the company’s CEO, but to the fragile, frightened man nestling within, and he swore to himself that he would remain at his post for as long as necessary if it helped shorten such an inhuman captivity.

  * * *

  It was nine in the morning but the heat made it feel like noon, and Marroné lay sprawled in a chair surrounded by dejected office workers, waiting for the breakfast they’d been promised by the worker guard. He’d been awake for about an hour and, after a cursory glance at his fellow captives, had begun to toy with the idea of returning to his executive peers, to enjoy the air-conditioning and other creature comforts. But they wouldn’t be released until it was all over, not to mention the possibility of all hell breaking loose and the worker commandos taking it into their heads to shoot the management: in that event the fact that he was from another company might be thought a subtlety worthy of little consideration. This lot, on the other hand, would be offloaded any time now and, concealed in their midst, he might be able to make his escape.

  Breakfast arrived, borne by two workers in red helmets. It consisted of some stale bread rolls from the day before and a pan of weak, boiled coffee that every office worker worth his or her salt took as a slap in the face.

  ‘This tar’s a bit weak, lads and lasses.’

  ‘Was it just the one bat they got to piss in the pot?’

  ‘Hey, what have they been boiling? Shoes?’

  ‘No, one of their own!’

  Soon, after taking an incoming call, one of the commissars made an announcement that helped calm the general mood a little:

  ‘You can use the phones!’

  They had a minute each, but there was no need for the commissars to keep an eye on them: as soon as the second-hand had gone round once, the next in the queue would start chanting ‘Time’s up! Time’s up!’ and the receiver would change hands. So, despite being at the very back of the queue (a second’s distraction and they’d beaten him to it), it took Marroné just fifteen minutes to reach the receiver and dial the number of the red telephone.

  Govianus picked up at the fourth try.

  ‘Marroné! Where the bloody hell are you? We thought you’d been kidnapped too! Have you got the busts?’

  He gave Govianus a brief update.

  ‘You’ll have to look elsewhere,’ he concluded. ‘Ochoa has a list of suppliers…’

  ‘What suppliers, Marroné? All the plasterworks in the country have come out in solidarity. I’d place the order abroad if I could, but imagine what they might send us. An Eva with Doris Day’s face, or Faye Dunaway’s,’ said Govianus glumly.

  ‘Production’s at a standstill here. But I’ll try and persuade them to make an exception for Evita,’ he ventured without much conviction.

  ‘Try, Marroné, try. It’s our only hope.’

  Marroné assured him he would do everything in his power and, before hanging up, asked Govianus to please ring his wife. The morning promised to be a tedious one, so he thought he’d make the most of it and have a quiet sit on the toilet, but when the cleaning staff had joined the strike, matters of hygiene had been left to individual users, who, unwilling to lower themselves to such a lowly task, had opted to let nature take its course. To make matters worse, Marroné had no reading matter with him, so to pass the time there was little else for it but to sit up in his chair and, notebook in hand, lend an ear to the chatterings of the office workers, who, with the artfulness of prestidigitators, had set about organising an alternative breakfast, whisking out of their drawers heaters, kettles, Thermos flasks, coffee pots, sugar bowls, mugs and spoons.

  ‘Want me to whip yours?’

  ‘Oh, go on then, I’ve got a bad wrist.’

  ‘They aren’t half dragging it out. Why won’t they just let us go?’

  ‘God, it ain’t half funky in here!’

  ‘If they don’t put the air-conditioning on again for us, there’ll be a right to-do here, matey.’

  ‘Come on, Fernández, don’t hog the biscuits. Food’s for sharing, as the comrades downstairs say.’<
br />
  Marroné jotted down his first name, ‘Fernández’, adding beside it the aide-mémoire, ‘little old man, 70, 1950s fine-check suit, hogs biscuits’.

  ‘Tsk, too much water. Pass the sugar, will you, Nidia.’

  ‘Go easy on it boys and girls, we’re running a bit short.’

  Nidia was a secretary with lipstick stains on her teeth and one of those seen-it-all-before expressions only earned after thirty years working for the same company – observations that Marroné conscientiously jotted down beside her name in his notebook.

  ‘Waiters in white gloves, caviar, lobster, champagne, god knows what else – the works. And here are we with pop, and ham and cheese rolls! And for dessert? Whores, five of ’em! Hostages? What hostages? They’ve got them up there living the life of Riley. And then they bang on to us about equality!’

  ‘You’re just miffed ’cause you weren’t invited, Gómez.’

  Marroné hastily wrote down the name of the man with long sideburns in the wash-and-wear shirt, grey and burgundy paisley tie, and blue bell-bottoms, who carried on railing at the joint iniquity of management and workers.

  ‘And the lads got a slice of the pie too, don’t you know? Get my drift, Ramírez?’ he said to a young man, who went straight into Marroné’s notebook, along with his moustache and long mane of hair, pink shirt and green-check tie. ‘It’s always the same old story in this country. It’s either the sharks or the darkies that get the goodies, and we always end up looking on. We’re piggy in the middle, the stick in the mud, take it from me,’ clamoured Gómez. ‘Now it’s the lads are calling the shots. Have you heard what they’re saying? They’re going to turn the factory into a cooperative and bring in a standard wage. Managers to operators, everyone earns the same. Anyone doesn’t like it… out on their ear.’