The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

by Carlos Gamerro

‘Of course,’ Marroné conceded with a TV presenter’s smile, ‘and of nature too, of all new things that grow… The one wearing the green hat has a very tough, a very special mission.’ He paused until Edmundo Rivero’s face had taken on the required gravitas. ‘He has to be creative. He has to contribute new ideas. Even if they’re absurd, even if they sound ridiculous, even if they seem to go against reason and experience.’ It would have been quicker and simpler to say that the one in the green hat had to apply lateral thinking, but he doubted whether a single one of his audience was familiar with the concept. ‘That leaves us the brown hat.’ He hadn’t the slightest idea what to do with the brown one; he had one colour left over and he’d run out of ideas. Why not let them be a bit creative too huh? ‘Let’s see now… What can the brown hat do, comrades?’

  ‘Spread the shit!’ shouted another voice in the crowd, and they all celebrated the witticism with laughter and raspberries.

  ‘Exactly! At every meeti… at every assembly there’s always a trouble-maker, a party-pooper, a shit-spreader. That, comrade,’ he said, slapping El Tuerto on the back, who was laughing in anticipation, making his bombastic pot-belly ripple with delight, ‘will be your task. But mind you don’t mess it up. There’s a difference between spreading bad blood – sowing doubt and discord – and alerting us to risks or keeping an eye out for all that can go wrong as we draw up our plans for the struggle ahead. That’s the job of our friend in the black hat,’ he said, turning to Saturnino, the corner of whose mouth barely twitched in acknowledgement. ‘Right. I think we’re all set, aren’t we?’ he asked, and paused to see if they noticed his mistake.

  Several hands went up and waved at him insistently.

  ‘The blue hat! The blue hat, Ernesto!’

  ‘Huh? You what?’ Marroné played stupid, eventually rolling both eyes upwards to ‘discover’ with pretend embarrassment the blue hat sitting atop his own head. He took it off and slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  ‘Blue. The colour of the sky, which is all-seeing because it’s above and beyond us. The one wearing the blue hat – in this case, me – is the conductor of the orchestra, the organiser. And also the one who sums up and draws conclusions. But we’ve still a way to go before we get to that. Like any other game, the best way to learn is by playing. So I suggest we get cracking and just see as we go along. So, let’s kick off with the white hat. How are things going, Pampurro, my friend?’

  ‘Eeeh… Well… Errr… The occupation’s been on for a week now, and most of our demands have been met. The morale of the comrades is still high, though a few of us are getting a bit tired, actually…’ began Pampurro, rubbing the sole of his work-shoes on the rough boards of the stage.

  ‘Hold on a second,’ Marroné interrupted him politely. ‘I think we’re encroaching on red hat territory here. Zenón?’

  ‘I reckon we’ve been too soft… Sr Sansimón here’s been exploiting the workers for years… If we set him to work in the Blue Sector eight hours a day, with the noise those machines make so you can’t hear yourself think, breathing in that dust all day long so you can’t sleep at night for coughing, with that lot shouting at the workers through their megaphones to work harder and charging them for every piece they break… I reckon he’d give us everything we’re asking for before the day’s out, comrades.’

  ‘A wonderful green-hat type of proposal!’ Marroné intervened. ‘See? We’ve only just started and we already have a new idea. Get the bosses to do our jobs, so they can experience what the workers have to put up with first-hand. Anything to add, comrade?’ he said, turning to Edmundo Rivero, who stared back at him in asinine bewilderment. He clearly wasn’t the most suitable candidate for the green hat; Marroné would have to find a way to get it to change owners asap.

  ‘We’re getting there, we’re getting there. We’re getting some positive energy now. Well then, yellow hat: what do you say? Shall we give it a go?’

  The question was a loaded one: up until now Baigorria had been the staunchest opponent of the occupation. Would he be capable of playing along and seeing things from the other side?’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, comrades,’ began Baigorria, all nonchalance, ‘I reckon things are going brilliantly. Get a load of old Sr Sansimón there, how contented he looks. Lean over the wire fence and give our old friend Plod a wave. They’re so busy looking after us they wouldn’t leave their post, not for hot pizza. What I reckon, comrades, is that they won’t just grant us all our demands, but a whole lot more, so let’s get asking: a twenty-hour week, three months’ paid holidays, four meals and a siesta with an optional slag thrown in for anyone who isn’t feeling sleepy…’

  Some celebrated his wit; others booed him. But the fact was that, irony apart, Baigorria had understood perfectly how the game worked. Garaguso’s influence had awoken in this once apathetic and unimaginative man latent qualities of leadership. He could be an adversary to be reckoned with if you got on the wrong side of him.

  ‘Now,’ said Marroné, rubbing his hands contentedly, ‘let’s hear the other side. The black hat.’

  Saturnino contemplated his former partying companion with a wicked look in his eye.

  ‘All I’ve got to say is that, if we don’t lift the occupation soon, they’ll blow us to kingdom come and we’ll lose everything we’ve gained so far. The government was listening to us at first: sent us a representative and two big mouths from the Ministry of Labour they did, and now they won’t even answer the phone. They’re calling us anarchists and communists on the radio, and saying we’re full of infiltrators and subversives. Any night now they’re going to throw everything they’ve got at us, and if the police don’t succeed, the army will. At best we’ll all be sacked; at worst we’ll all get whacked.’

  The audience’s response was instantaneous. ‘Coward! Traitor! Sell-out!’ And that wasn’t all they said.

  ‘Just a moment, just a moment!’ mediated Marroné. ‘Sounds like you’re all doing the job of our comrade in the brown hat.’

  ‘The fact is that you’ve sold out to the management,’ El Tuerto lashed out at Saturnino without warning. ‘You and that one,’ he said, roping in Baigorria with a flick of his finger, ‘are traitors to the workers’ movement.’

  ‘Me? A traitor? Say that again if you’ve got it in you!’ said Saturnino, working himself into a lather and advancing, fists clenched, on his colleague, who puffed out his chest (or rather his belly); had the others not restrained them, the fists would have flown. Far from daunted, Marroné decided the time had come to up the ante.

  ‘All right, all right. Now you’ll really see what this game’s about. Change hats.’

  The two of them stood and gaped at him.

  ‘You heard me: Saturnino, you take the brown one, and El Tuerto, you put on the black one.’

  This time they complied. But they went no further.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Fucking arsehole,’ the now brown-hatted Saturnino spat at El Tuerto.

  ‘You’ll come to a bad end you will, sonny,’ reacted El Tuerto, after donning the black hat, then, including the audience with an arc of his finger, ‘so’ll you lot.’

  Even El Tuerto and Saturnino ended up joining in with the general cackling that ensued, then they both shook hands, and everyone cheered. They’d got the idea: the exercise was turning out to be a triumph. The positions were nothing more than that – positions; their identities weren’t involved; they could change them as easily as putting on and taking off a hat. And this was just the start. Leaving behind their fixed roles and seeing things from the other’s point of view were steps that led up to the game’s ultimate goal: opening the doors to the green-hat proposals; finding new, creative solutions to old problems. Even Paddy now looked at him differently. Marroné felt a secret warmth run through him.

  ‘Well, now it’s time to open the game up a bit. Anyone who wants to say something can come up, or speak from where they’re standing. But before you speak, just make quite sure you’ve th
ought about what you’re going to say and that you’ve got the right hat on.’

  Several hands in the audience went up. One of them belonged to Sansimón Senior, who had been whispering throughout with the young sculptor from his workshop. Marroné decided to risk it and invited him up.

  ‘Which hat, comrade?’

  ‘White,’ said the old man.

  The workers regarded him with curiosity, though without hostility; his son’s face, however, was contorted with suspicion. The old man studied the array of coloured helmets at his feet like a seabed covered with coloured snails. Then he spoke:

  ‘I’ve chosen the white one because it’s the information hat, and I’ve got something new to tell you. You all know that, when I founded the Sansimón Plasterworks, I was just like you. It was just a little workshop in a house in Constitución: there were three assistants and myself, and the four of us did everything. Then, thanks to God and the hard work of the people, we started growing, until we became what we are today. The current CEO, who is here with us today, claims he was the one who built this great company from its humble origins, but that’s his way of looking at things. I know that the reality is very different. I know that the ones who made the Sansimón Plasterworks what it is today are you – all of you.’

  His first pause was filled with a general ovation. The old man could certainly deliver a speech, that was for sure.

  ‘The CEO’s chair isn’t a throne,’ he went on once there was silence again, ‘and a factory isn’t a kingdom handed down automatically from father to son. When I saw that the time had come to step aside and leave the leadership in more capable hands, I had a very different idea of how the company should be run. In my youth I read Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin – and this hand shook the right hand of the Spanish Civil War hero, Buenaventura Durruti… I learnt a lot of things back then… That man must not be a wolf to man, that dignity is worth more than a full stomach…’

  Marroné was beginning to get impatient: if the old man started banging on about his socialist past, all that he’d accomplished so far would fly out of the window. Just then he spotted the young sculptor wading through the sea of comrades waving a sheaf of papers over his head, and when he noticed old Sansimón Senior’s smile, Marroné understood it had all been just a ruse to buy some time.

  ‘Most of all I learnt that the land has to belong to the peasant who works it and the factory to the worker!’ declared the old man, stretching out a hand to take the papers his assistant held out to him. ‘And here’s the proof!’ he exclaimed, bearing them aloft and letting them flutter in the breeze. ‘These documents prove that I’d decided to hand the factory over to all of you! And this exploiter – this fruit of my loins! – who only the virtue of his poor mother prevents me from calling something else, had me legally declared mentally unsound, presenting these papers here as proof! Only a madman, argued his lawyers to a judge he’d bought off, would want to give his factory away to his workers.’

  Marroné couldn’t believe his ears. It was as if the will scene from Julius Caesar were playing out before his eyes. But then again, in the world of applied creativity, stranger things than this happened every day. Once the floodgates were open, it was impossible to predict what might pour out of them.

  ‘So he took the lot!’ the old man went on, unable to contain himself. ‘But it’s time to tear off the mask! You are my true sons! You are my heirs! What you’re doing here is nothing more than taking back what belongs to you!’

  There was pandemonium: hard-hats flying up in the air, effusive hugging and kissing, and in the midst of it all, unnoticed or almost unnoticed, came the brief, disconsolate remark addressed by a glassy-eyed Sansimón Junior to his father, who, arms folded, loomed giant-like high up on the stage.

  ‘You too, Dad?’

  Marroné felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Paddy, who had climbed up. For a few seconds they looked on in silence.

  ‘It’s like I said, see?’ said Paddy eventually. ‘There you have a perfect example of revolutionary consciousness. Old Sansimón is breaking the family ties and class conditioning, and making a stand with the vanguard of the proletariat and the working class.’

  ‘You reckon?’ Marroné answered him with more sadness than he would have wished. ‘I thought he was just doing it to humiliate his son.’

  ‘You don’t have to go on pretending, Ernesto. I’m onto you. You aren’t what you seemed either. You never cease to amaze me. Did you have this all worked out with the old man?’

  Marroné shook his head. His eyes were on the patriarchal, almost prophet-like posture that Sansimón Senior had struck, and he was too busy with his new idea to answer his friend.

  ‘Fetch me the Moses.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The big one, at the gate. Oh, and a sledgehammer, too.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘It’s green-hat time for me.’

  As he waited for the statue, Marroné gestured for silence. It didn’t take long: by now he had all these fierce strikers eating out of the palm of his hand. Mark Antony himself couldn’t have done better.

  ‘Comrades!’ he said, and the effect of his voice on the crowd was like oil on troubled waters. ‘We have all of us, here at the Sansimón Plasterworks, just been very privileged: we have been shown a glimpse of a new society, a new Argentina, where capital and work can march not in conflict, but hand in hand as General Perón and Comrade Eva wanted them to. What Sr Sansimón Senior has done here today is a landmark, and an example to us all, including his son, although right now he doesn’t look too happy about it.’ They all cheered except the butt of the joke, who had been studying Marroné’s face with a frown and redoubled attention ever since he’d taken the floor again. Was he about to recognise him? Well, there wasn’t much he could do about it: the die was cast. ‘This, comrades, is the real, deep meaning of the word revolution: when those who only yesterday were enemies meet today in brotherhood. And now, comrades, the factory is ours. And not because it’s been given to us, even if we are grateful to Sr Sansimón Senior for his gesture; they have merely given back to us what was ours in the first place: this is not an act of charity, but of justice, as Comrade Eva would have wished. The question now is what to do with it? A factory in the hands of its workers… Can it be the same factory as before? A new world has opened up before us. What do we want to do with it? The same old thing… or something new? Time to get creative, comrades. Let’s all put the green hat on for a minute.’

  The workers all looked at each other, or rather at their different-coloured helmets with mounting puzzlement.

  ‘Metaphorically speaking,’ Marroné clarified. ‘Imagine you’re wearing it.’

  And that was when Sansimón pounced.

  ‘I know you! You’re Macramé you are! Tamerlán’s head of procurement!’ Then to the others, ‘Don’t listen to him! This man’s deceiving you for his own wicked ends!’

  A spectral silence fell. The eyes of the crowd went from Sansimón to Marroné and back to Sansimón, as if they were watching a game of tennis. The spell was broken by a timid voice, which, preceded by a raised hand, rose from the heart of the expectant throng.

  ‘That’s not a green-hat proposal.’

  There were murmurs of approval for the keenness of the observation, and a ripple of faint applause. The thin-boned, timid-looking young man who had made it smiled with pleasure and even blushed slightly. Again the note of discord came from Sansimón.

  ‘Green hat my arse! This man’s an executive from a rival company! Now I get the picture! They want to put me out of business and then buy us for peanuts! They’re using you! Can’t you see?’

  ‘Brown hat, brown hat!’ several of those present demanded. ‘If he’s going to spread the shit, he should be wearing the right hat!’

  An obliging hand landed the right hat on Sansimón’s head with such force that the peak came down to the bridge of his nose. Like some circus clown act, they had to help him wrestle it off and p
ut it on again properly.

  Still a little befuddled, he began to rant and rave again, but Marroné milked the pause provided by the gag for all it was worth. He spread his arms wide and opened his fingers to call for silence. A couple of elbows to the ribs got the message across to Sansimón.

  ‘White hat reply,’ enunciated Marroné, and traded his blue hat for the white of Pampurro, who was still on the platform. ‘White, the colour of facts. What Sr Sansimón says, comrades, is all true.’

  A sigh of dismay rippled through the congregation. It was exactly what he was looking for. Like stealing candy from a baby, he thought to himself.

  ‘It’s true, comrades, because, like all good manipulators, Sr Sansimón deals in half-truths. It’s true that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth… But it’s also true that I’m adopted and came from a home more humble than many of you. It’s true that I came here as an executive of Tamerlán & Sons… Who have I kept it from? But taking part in this occupation has changed me, and today I feel like one of you! Just look at me… Is this the face of a boss, an oligarch, an exploiter of the working class?’ (‘No, no,’ several people shouted back.) ‘It’s true that I was posh… a little bourgeois… a… All right, let’s hear it, brown hats!’

  ‘A nob! A ponce! A toffee-nosed git!’ they supplied enthusiastically, with broad grins.

  ‘Thank you, comrades… I expected no less. As I was saying, every word is true… But it’s also true that Perón was a soldier and Evita was an actress, and if it’s rich kids we’re talking about, Che Guevara knocks me into a cocked hat!’ he concluded just in time, as a fork-lift truck came trundling through the crowd in the direction of the stage, with the imposing bulk of Michelangelo’s Moses wobbling in its metal maw.

  The Sansimón incident had been a godsend: it had allowed him to inject a little excitement into what otherwise would have been idle time. All those who were with him on the stage, including an increasingly dumbstruck Paddy, helped unload the plaster colossus with the utmost care so that it wouldn’t topple over and end up in smithereens on the floor. ‘If they only knew what I had in store for them,’ thought Marroné, smiling inwardly. After thanking everyone, he asked them all to climb down, as he needed as much space as possible for the next stage. At his request an obliging comrade had laid the sledgehammer at his feet for when he needed it. All eyes were fixed on him; the green helmet was back on his head. Rolling up the sleeves of his overalls, Marroné took a step forwards. The time had come to show these amateurs what a decent audiovisual presentation was all about. If only Sr Tamerlán were there to see it, he thought, before launching into his speech.