‘Did anyone see or feel anything they’d like to share with the rest of us?’
They exchanged the usual ‘who’s going first?’ glances.
‘Well, I…’ began the woman who had joined the group just before the exercise, a tanned thirty-something in a tailored blue suit and peach blouse. ‘When I opened the cast, there was like this light coming out of Eva’s eyes. And out of her mouth, and her ears as well. There was like this light streaming out of her. What does it mean?’
‘Hold that image for now. It’s important. We’ll come back to it later,’ he said, nimbly sidestepping the claptrap. ‘Anyone else?’
‘The worker had my father’s face,’ piped up González, his voice about to crack. ‘He died two years ago,’ he explained. Ramírez gave his shoulder a firm squeeze and González pressed his lips together and nodded several times in thanks.
‘It was beautiful,’ ventured Dorita, gazing at him with wide eyes, in which welled two deeply emotional tears, like spilt water reaching the table’s edge. ‘It had never occurred to me to actually go to the workshop and see what we make in this factory.’
‘That’s it!’ Ramírez the rebel addressed his comrades, now highly motivated after the exercise. ‘Let’s go there right now! Let’s join our brother workers!’
‘How about this?’ Marroné joined in, mentally rubbing his hands. ‘What if I go down there now and have a word with them? If they agree to lift the restrictions on production in the interests of shop floor–office unity and to make an exception for Comrade Eva, we can get to work after lunch. Meanwhile, you can divide yourselves into two groups and suggest new ways to creatively and – why not? – entertainingly tackle the predicament we find ourselves in.’
‘Like falling off a log,’ Marroné thought to himself on his way down in the service lift, accompanied by one of the black-helmeted commissars, who gestured vaguely towards the gate and answered his question about who the leaders were with an ‘Anyone in a white helmet’. On the way he came across three green-helmeted workers heading for the canteen and shouldering half a side of beef, a bulky sack of bread rolls and a crate of oranges; one worker in a red helmet and kitchen apron; and two in yellow helmets, twirling brushes and mops; the guards, he noticed, all wore black helmets. The strikers were clever: instead of doing away with the colour coding and letting everyone merge into chaotic egalitarianism, they had kept the coloured helmets but changed their meanings. A prime example of the efficient reallocation of existing resources.
Above the replicas of Michelangelo’s Moses and David that guarded the entrance they had hung a white sheet with an inscription painted in broad red brushstrokes: ‘Factory Occupation – Day 2’. The front gate and adjacent areas were a hub of feverish activity: the patrol cars of the night before had been joined by two assault vans and even a water cannon, and the uniformed police by another twenty-odd men, sporting the helmets and batons of riot police. A crowd milled about in the free space, brightening the work-day monochrome with holiday colours: the lorries and vans of the suppliers bringing in victuals for strikers and hostages were joined by paper-boys touting their newspapers at the tops of their voices; the strikers’ wives and girlfriends had come, children in hand, with clean clothes and packed lunches, and exhorted their husbands not to give up the fight; street-hawkers wandered through the crowd peddling cigarettes, lighters, razors and razor blades, batteries, packs of cards and other trinkets; at one end of this seething human mass a choripán stall had begun to smoke and sizzle; a popcorn seller and an ice-cream seller were stationed at the other, and two Bolivian cholas had parked their stately anatomies on either side of the gate – one selling fruit and veg, the other ladies’ underwear. There were also two press units – one from Canal 13, another from Radio Mitre – as well as a swarm of journalists, who tried to force their way inside every time one of the gates opened. After studying this colourful animated tapestry for a while, Marroné found what he was looking for: at the north corner of the factory a throng was gathering, in which the brightly coloured helmets stood out against the shade of the trees like Smarties on the icing of a cake. Marroné took a deep breath and set off to join it.
4
The Proletarian Bourgeois
In the ghostly shade of a plaster-shrouded ombú his old acquaintance Baigorria addressed his comrades from a wooden crate. Not a white helmet in sight.
‘Comrades… We are living a historic moment here at the Sansimón Plasterworks… Our occupation has been a huge success… We’ve shown the bosses what we can do, and if we did it once we can do it again… But the fact is, comrades, if we keep this up we’re playing straight into the management’s hands. The storehouses are packed to the gunwales with goods going nowhere; you know that better than me. This strike’s a godsend to them: they can stop production and not pay us a cent. I want to believe – want to believe – that those insisting on continuing this occupation are acting in good faith, thinking they’re doing what’s best, but it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve pulled a fast one on us, comrades, that those who say they’re our friends turn out to be at best useful idiots and at worst management spies, not to mention our old friends the infiltrators, those wolves in workers’ clothing…’
Marroné was truly impressed. Garaguso the personnel manager wasn’t just quick, he was subtle – Machiavellian even. In a matter of hours he had not only won over one of the strikers to his cause, but had turned Baigorria into a skilful orator capable of ensnaring his listeners unawares. Marroné felt like going up to him and giving him a few tips on making the most of body posture, auditorium layout and, above all, lighting, but some of his listeners had started speaking their minds.
‘Shut it, scab! You blackleg bastard!’
‘How much is Garaguso paying you, you fucking sell-out?’
‘Go back to Babirusa, you turncoat!’
Imperturbable, Baigorria tried to go on with his speech.
‘Comrades, comrades! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the occupation was a mistake, I’m not saying we should back down. I’m saying enough’s enough, that we’ve got what we wanted. There’s a time to sow and a time to reap, and if we don’t gather it in time, what happens to the harvest, comrades? It rots! If we go on with this occupation, we’ll gain nothing else and might lose all we’ve gained so far. The only thing we’ll achieve is more wholesale firings and a small rise at most for those who stay on. So if you’re willing to pay that price, then go ahead! You, Pampurro… Will you enjoy your match tickets knowing they’ve taken food from the mouths of Alfieri’s hungry children? And you, Zenón, will you enjoy buying your wife that new dress knowing El Tuerto will be forced to work as a rag-and-bone man again?’
Out of reflex Marroné had already seized his notebook and quickly jotted down the names – ‘Pampurro… Alfieri… Zenón… El Tuerto’ – adding the essential aide-mémoires, and so bent on his task was he that he didn’t react when a voice at his back exclaimed:
‘Oy, you… What you writing?’
Before looking up, he instinctively tried to finish the sentence he was on, which turned into a black scrawl when a hand landed on his arm and gave it a violent tug.
‘Comrades! I got a pig here! A grass!’
Giving him no time to explain, half a dozen strapping proletarian hands had pinned down his arms and shoulders, and a dark-complexioned man in a blue helmet and thick, black-framed glasses was scanning his notes with a calloused finger, spelling out each word with his lips.
‘It’s all here, comrades. We’re all down here, one after another. Got ourselves an informer here we have, boys and girls.’ Then, bringing his face to within centimetres of Marroné’s, ‘Who sent you, Cerbero or the pigs?’
‘No, no,’ stammered Marroné, overcome at the absurdity of the mistake. ‘I read How to Win Friends and Influence People, I’m trying to please others…’
A hand closed over his face and he could no longer speak or see. It wasn’t so much fear he felt as befudd
led outrage. Had he been spared death in the crossfire yesterday only to get lynched over a ridiculous blunder?
‘Now then, comrades, calm down, comrades…’
Marroné realised they had let go of him when his struggles met with no further resistance than gravel and air. He opened his eyes to see a worker in a white helmet – at last! – squatting studiously over him, his body blocking out the sunlight, his face encircled by a corona of flame-red locks. A second later Marroné’s eyes had adjusted and taken in his features too.
‘So, matey, what’s all this the comrades are saying about a notebook?’ the worker began, with quiet authority. If Marroné had had any doubts, the voice did away with them.
‘Paddy? Paddy Donovan?’
The panic shifted, lodging itself for an instant in the newcomer’s honey-coloured eyes as his milk-white skin reddened to rival his hair. He pulled himself together with a visible effort and gave him a jaunty smile, which he immediately bestowed on the rest of the audience.
‘Must be mistaken there, chief.’ Then, to the others, ‘Hey, if this one’s from the secret service, he should be sent back to spy school.’
Marroné had sat up and was mechanically dusting off the plaster that covered his jacket and trousers – and no doubt his face too – thinking it might be preventing Paddy from recognising him. All the anxiety of the situation had dissolved into stupefaction at such an improbable reunion.
‘No, no, I’m certain,’ he insisted with a smile. ‘It’s me, Ernesto, Ernesto Marroné, we were at St Andrew’s together, remember? I used to sit at the desk behind you. We used to play rugby together; you were in Monteith and I was in Dodds.’
For a second he toyed with the idea that Paddy had lost his memory in a car crash and, having been rescued by a working-class family, now took himself for one of them. Perhaps he needed more basic sensory stimuli.
‘Monteith, green shirts? Dodds, yellow shirts? The scrum? “Push, St Andrew’s, push!”’
Fists pumping the air, Marroné froze in mid-war cry. Struck dumb, Paddy’s eyes were on him, but the other workers, half-puzzled, half-wary, had fixed theirs on Paddy, who this time spoke with less conviction, almost tripping over his tongue.
‘I… I… dunno what you’re t… talking about, chief.’
Unable to tell if his friend’s eyes were shining with confusion or entreaty and making the most of the fact that his exhortations, if failing to restore Paddy’s memory, had at least led the others to suspect they were dealing with a harmless loon rather than a dangerous intelligence agent, he decided to beat a hasty retreat.
‘I’m sorry. My mistake.’
Smiling insistently he backed away until he reached the statue of Moses at the entrance gate and sat down in its shade to study the man he had taken for his old schoolmate. The two were as similar as the replica now looming over him was to the original…
If Marroné had one hero in his youth, it was Paddy Donovan, whom the eye of memory always haloed with light in a sunny postcard of the rugby pitch; it was as if fate itself had made him captain of the green house of Monteith just to set off the blaze of red upon his head, and the games against Monteith were the ones Marroné always found hardest to win, at least until fourth year, when Paddy Donovan, to the despair of directors and trainers, abandoned rugby for the more plebeian football team, a symbolic gesture he would complete in fifth year by handing back the brown and turquoise prefects’ tie in favour of the navy-blue and silver stripes of the regular school tie. Paddy, the first to smoke marijuana. Paddy, who wrote articles for the school magazine that the school authorities had invariably to censor. Paddy, who bedded the rector’s daughter, a petite, liberated English blonde everyone wanted but nobody dared. They hadn’t been friends, exactly, though less out of reticence on Paddy’s part than timidity on Marroné’s. The latter had never felt altogether worthy of such a friendship, a feeling that perhaps dated back to an episode in first grade, when, alone in the classroom, Marroné had amused himself by taking coloured chalk to the homework written on the blackboard – thinking it would please Miss – turning the drab white letters into pretty rainbows. But the scowling teacher demanded the culprit reveal his identity, and Marroné, paralysed and dumb on one of the desks at the back, found himself incapable of uttering the words of explanation. When she threatened to take away their trip to the cattle show at La Rural, Paddy Donovan, who had already cast two or three suspicious glances in his direction, raised his hand and confessed to the crime. The teacher thanked him for his honesty and gave him no other punishment than to clean the blackboard, which only further aggravated Marroné’s sense of guilt: he’d behaved like a coward and let someone else pay, and all for the sake of an insignificant risk. He never admitted the truth to Paddy, so he could never thank him for stepping into the breach, and the suspicion that he knew and, out of delicacy, hadn’t pressured him into speaking up, filled him with gratitude and bitterness in equal parts. On another occasion, when they were at seventh-grade summer camp, Marroné had been the victim of a case of quite gratuitous and unjustified bullying: he had accidentally set fire to a sixth-grader’s tea towel and, just to annoy him, all the younger boy’s companions, fired up by the impunity of the mob, had taken the side of the crybaby and set upon him – all except Paddy, who had sent them packing with a few choice words; and once again Marroné was unable to find the words to thank him. As soon as he had finished school, Paddy had gone away for a year to travel the world and Marroné had heard nothing more of him than the occasional rumour, which included all the forbidden words: hippies, drugs, communes and attempted suicide. They hadn’t seen each other again, as Paddy never attended the annual old boys’ dinners at the Claridge Hotel, but word reached them that on his return Paddy had settled down, studied law, carved out a career in his father’s business and married a model who was on TV… No, Marroné concluded, he was seeing things, hearing things: this couldn’t be his old classmate, not this red-headed proletarian striding towards him after sealing what looked like a challenge or a wager, exchanging a high-five with the blue-helmeted worker in glasses.
‘Look,’ Marroné began, ‘I swear I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s me, you arsehole,’ muttered Paddy out of the corner of his mouth, with his back to the group so his face wouldn’t be visible. ‘What are you trying to do? Are you trying to ruin me? I’ve told them I’m playing along with you to find out who you are.’
‘But, Paddy, I swear I didn’t know a thing. What’s happened to you? You should have come to see me, there’s always something at the company…’
All five of Paddy’s fingers clamped shut on Marroné’s hand to stop him reaching for his wallet.
‘All I’m short of is them thinking you’re trying to bribe me.’
‘Forgive me, Paddy, but… Can you explain to me what you’re doing here?’
‘I’m prltrnsng myself,’ he said through clenched teeth.
‘What?’ shouted Marroné. ‘You’re problematising yourself?’
‘Proletarianising,’ Paddy spluttered in exasperation. ‘Making myself a proletarian.’
‘But why? Has your family fallen on hard times?’
‘No, no. We aren’t on speaking terms. It’s a personal decision, you understand, a renunciation. I’ve taken the vow of poverty.’
‘You’ve become a priest?’ Marroné asked with some relief. Paddy’s family had always been devout Catholics.
‘No. A Peronist.’
Paddy smiled. Now that the imminent danger of exposure had passed, he was beginning to sound like his old self again: warm, charismatic, the leader of the picket line, as once he was of the rugby team. He took Marroné by the arm.
‘Let’s walk.’
Skirting the car park, which rippled like jelly in the heat that radiated from the white gravel and the overheated bodywork of the cars, they reached the loading bay, where the drivers were relaxing over an asado, swigging wine from demijohns by their parked trucks. Gesturing to Marroné to
follow him, Paddy went up to them and, after the usual round of friendly greetings, both men were offered a choripán and a glass of red.
‘Are you still in touch with anyone?’ asked Marroné, spraying crumbs, as they wandered off. ‘I ran into Robert Ermekian with his wife and kid the other day at a performance by The Suburban Players, and what do you know, he only asked if I’d heard from you…’
Paddy gave him an oddly compassionate smile.
‘What about you, Ernesto? Are you married? Have you got any children?’
‘Yes,’ he answered, beaming, ‘two. A boy of two and a half and baby girl of a few months.’
He pulled the relevant photos from his wallet. The one of Cynthia was just after she’d been born: with her deformed head and lobster-red complexion, she looked more like Sr Tamerlán than ever, but he always forgot to change it for a more recent one.
‘They look like you,’ said Paddy, without a trace of irony, handing them back to him.
‘What about you, Paddy?’
‘There is no more Paddy. He’s dead and gone. Call me Colorado, or Colo: everyone else does here. No, no I haven’t got children, yet. My partner and I have discussed the issue and we’ve decided to wait till after the Revolution. That way they’ll be raised differently.’
‘Course,’ nodded Marroné, who, beginning to get the picture, decided it was time to apply the rules of How to Win Friends and Influence People. ‘There’ll be plenty of day-care centres under socialism, won’t there. It’s a boon because it isn’t always easy to find a decent nanny or a baby-sitt…’
Paddy was scowling at him. No, that wasn’t it. He had nearly put his foot in it.
‘I don’t want them to be like us, Ernesto: raised to despise people with less money, less status or darker skin. Treating people like things and things like gods. Worshipping all things English and American, and despising all things Argentine and Latin American. “Command and obey”,’ he snorted in conclusion.
The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón Page 10