by Claudia Pi
The first course had already been served, when Teresa realized that Matías had not yet come downstairs. She looked up at his bedroom window and, seeing that the light was on, asked Sofia to call him down. Sofía scampered off to carry out her mission. She found her brother’s door closed and banged on it. She hammered it with her fists. “Mummy says come down now!” There was no reply. She banged on the door again. “Mummy says come down or…” Matías opened the door.
“Stop it, are you crazy?”
“What’s that smell?” Sofía asked.
“What smell?” he said, and went to open the window. Then he came out of the room, pushing her ahead. “Come on, girl, get a move on.”
Every now and then, above the chatter of the dinner party, the noise of a rocket made itself heard. “Don’t these people realize that the fireworks are supposed to be at midnight?” asked El Tano.
“There’s all sorts of simple things people don’t understand, Tanito, don’t go worrying yourself about it,” replied Alfredo Insúa, staring at his wife, who was chatting to Carla, clutching a bottle of wine and laughing about something.
At half-past eleven, Luisito rang the bell. Teresa started, then peered around the acacia and saw the red suit. She began to shout: “Santa’s here! Come on everyone!” Sofía ran after her mother, but the other young people present, all of them older than her, got to their feet grudgingly. Matías was the first to come closer. “All right, old chum?” he said, slapping Luisito on the back.
Teresa frowned at him. “Off you go, Mati, Sofía wants to see Santa.” Matías stepped aside and Sofía, who was standing a few steps back, was left face to face with the Father Christmas that had been provided for her. She fixed him with a stare. Luisito felt uncomfortable: he thought perhaps the people in Administration had been right and that he should have agreed to say “Ho, ho, ho”, but he already felt like enough of a dickhead dressed up in red, without adding sound effects. He looked at the little girl who kept staring at him and knew that he had failed. For all that, he got on with the job in hand, bringing Sofía’s present down from the truck and carrying it towards the house. Determined to get Sofía caught up in the spectacle, Teresa kept asking questions in a too-high voice. “Have you come from far away, Santa?” “Are you tired?” Luisito did not feel like going along with the game, and said nothing. Matías pretended that he was going to look at the presents that were still in the trailer. Teresa’s nieces and nephews returned to their table and the Insúas started to kick around a football that had been forgotten under the acacia tree. Luisito looked at Sofía again and felt an urge to say sorry. But she was already too excited about the Barbie house to take any notice of him.
“Aren’t you going to give Santa a kiss?” asked Teresa, as Luisito was climbing back into the truck. Sofía left her present for a moment and came over to him. She waited for him to rearrange his hat and beard and then she kissed him. When Luisito had gone, Sofía confided in Matías, “Father Christmas smelled like your bedroom.”
“Really?” her brother said with surprise.
“What is that smell?”
“Forget it, silly, mind your own business.”
“Is it the fireworks?”
“Mind your own business.”
At midnight everyone made a toast. Everyone except El Tano. He had left ten minutes earlier to be there as soon as the fireworks started. He was responsible for making sure that everything went well. At five minutes past twelve, the rest of the retinue made its way to the golf club. Teresa and the children walked, so that they could come back with El Tano in the Land Rover. On the way, they saw the colours of the first fireworks erupting in the sky, which meant, Teresa realized, that she had once again missed her husband’s speech. When they arrived at the golf club, everyone came up to greet them. In a way, the Scaglias were the hosts, because they paid for the fireworks. They sat down with the others to watch. Teresa chose the front row, next to El Tano and his father. Matías walked off to the side, towards a eucalyptus that stood some distance away, almost on the road. It was somewhere he could be as sure of being on his own as he was in his room; no one selects a leafy tree under which to sit and look at fireworks in the sky. He put his hand in his pocket and groped for the joint. He lay back on the grass and closed his eyes. Between the leaves, he could see the sky covered in lights that changed colour and shape with every new explosion. Everyone was clapping. First came a blue flower encompassing nearly all the sky. Three pink flowers followed, smaller, but more elegant. Later there was a seemingly endless golden waterfall. Almost no one remembers what came after that.
Luisito had changed out of his red suit and was going home, when the coloured lights caught his eye, and he stopped for a moment to watch; by the time he got home, his children were going to be asleep, anyway. He nearly stumbled over Matías, who was sitting under the eucalyptus. For a moment they remained like this, one standing and the other on the ground.
“Do you want some?” Matías asked, offering him the joint. Luisito said nothing, but accepted the lit cigarette and took a deep drag on it.
23
He had finished arranging the boxes full of papers in the trunk of his Land Rover. Now it really was “his” Land Rover. When his friends in Cascade Heights said, “That’s a nice Land Rover you’ve got there, Tano,” he did not correct them, but he had always known it was not his. Teresa’s station wagon was, but not the Land Rover.
Now finally it was. El Tano was keeping the car as part of his severance deal with Troost, the Dutch insurance company for which he had worked since 1991 until this very day, at the end of the summer of 2000, until about five minutes ago, in fact, when he had finished emptying the drawers of the desk that would no longer be his. The owners of the company, Dutch shareholders with whom he met once or twice a year, had decided to reduce the level of their investment in Argentina and to increase it in Brazil, where they saw more chances of profitability in the short and medium term. El Tano had neither been consulted nor given any notice of the decision, even though he was General Manager of the company. He found out only once the decision had been made and communicated, not to him, but to the lawyers who would handle his dismissal. The Dutch, three of them who spoke for the majority shareholders, explained the circumstances to him on a conference call. In Argentina, they planned to leave only an administrative base, with medium and low-ranking staff, and the whole operation would be managed from Sao Paulo. El Tano’s conduct had been irreproachable; he had always met their expectations and those of the shareholders they represented and they thanked him for his service and dedication, but they had no job to offer him. In the new structure, everything would be beneath him. They used words like “over-skilled”, “downsizing” and “deserve more challenges”. They spoke a Dutch-accented English that El Tano perfectly understood. It was easy to understand, because the words were universal. El Tano spoke little. When they had nothing left to say to him, he said: “I think it’s the right decision. I would have done the same.” And that same day he began to arrange his departure with the lawyers who had been waiting for his call.
There was no leaving party. El Tano didn’t want one. In any case, he was going to continue to be associated with the company as an external consultant for a couple of months. He could use the telephone, get new cards printed, substituting “General Manager” with “Consultant” or “Chief of Staff” – whichever he preferred; he could ask his former secretary to perform small jobs and work part-time in one of the offices. Not in his old one, in another one, smaller but perfectly acceptable (to avoid sending out mixed messages to the staff who were staying on, so they told him). From this perch, he could plot his reintegration into the market. That was also part of the negotiated settlement. “It’s easier to get a job if you already have one,” said the lawyer. He himself, when he had to choose someone for the firm, distrusted people who didn’t have work; he speculated about the real reasons for their resignation or dismissal that lay behind the official version. His fat
her, an immigrant, who had risen to own a sizeable metallurgical factory, always said: “If people can’t get work it’s either because they don’t want it or they haven’t got the capacity for it.” And El Tano was capable, and he had studied very hard, and he liked his work. He was an industrial engineer. His father had wept in front of him for the first and only time, the day he was awarded his diploma. And this was the first time in El Tano’s life that he had left one job without having another lined up. And the first time that he had felt like weeping himself. But he did not weep.
He drove the Land Rover out of the garage and along the road towards the ramp, just as he had for the last eight years. When he arrived at the exit barrier, the attendant waved him through. “Good afternoon, Señor Scaglia,” he said. It was the same friendly wave as always. And yet El Tano felt it to be different. Perhaps it was the way he looked at him. Or the tone of voice. Perhaps merely a different way of breathing. He didn’t know. But he did know that something had changed. How could it not have done? The attendant had something that he no longer had. And both of them knew it.
He drove, as he did every evening, down Lugones, General Paz and the Pan-American highway, and only there did he feel the air begin to change. He tried all the FM stations, but couldn’t get into the music. He switched to AM. “The president has expressed his deep concern about the floods in Santiago del Estero and Catamarca.” El Tano fiddled with the dial and tuned into the observations of a political analyst on the looming elections for leader of the government in the City of Buenos Aires. He remembered that he would have to vote in a few days; even though he had lived in The Cascade for years, he had never changed his address on the electoral roll. He still voted in Caballito, as he had all his life. He listened to the words of an ex-economy minister who was in the running for leadership. El Tano thought that he would vote for him. Foreign capital has faith in this man, he thought, and that was good for him, because perhaps then his company – as of this afternoon, his ex-company – would throw their hat back into the ring. And if not this company, perhaps it would be another – the important thing was for the outside world to keep believing in this country, to keep investing. He was sure that it would not take him long to find another job. Things weren’t easy, but he had a lot of contacts, a Masters from abroad, an impeccable CV – and, at forty-one, he wasn’t over the hill yet. He pushed a button and it was the political analyst again, this time interviewing a candidate that all the polls showed to be a certain loser. El Tano began to think about this man. Someone sure of his failure, acting otherwise. He pictured him with a wife and children (if he had them), he imagined him trying to sleep and not being able to, he thought of him going to vote, of him speaking on some programme that had not managed to find a more promising candidate, pretending to be unaware of the certainty of his defeat.
He would not say anything yet to Teresa. There was no need, since he was in fact going to continue going to the company, almost like before. If he waited for a while, perhaps he could tell her once he had a concrete offer of work, or even a new job. Teresa gets worked up about the slightest thing, he thought. The compensation would allow them to maintain the lifestyle they had led up until now, without touching their savings. It would not be good for the children to find out either. And Teresa didn’t know how to keep this sort of secret. He moved the dial again. “The president said that the situation in the flooded areas is of great concern.” He looked for any sort of music on FM.
The entrance to The Cascade was close now, a hundred yards ahead. He placed his card against the electronic reader and the barrier was raised to let him through. He waved to the security guard who was stationed at the entrance. And once inside, he felt relaxed for the first time that afternoon. For the first time since he had heard the words: “I’m so sorry but… business is business.” The trees were still intensely green, even though it was autumn. In a few days, this grove through which his Land Rover was slowly passing would become burnished and spotted with yellow. He lowered the windows and took off his seat belt, to make the most of these last blocks before his house. It was a calm and warm evening. Before dinner he would go for a run, as usual. And he would say nothing to Teresa. It was better that way. Now he was driving along the main road bordering the golf course, on which dusk was starting to fall; some adolescents were out on their bikes; a maid tussled with a little boy who didn’t want to ride his tricycle. He passed Carla Masotta, who was coming out of the clubhouse. He wouldn’t tell Gustavo yet either. Not anyone. Perhaps in a few days he might chuck a couple of CVs Gustavo’s way – he had dealings with a few headhunters and could be a good contact. But not for the moment. He let his eyes drink in the greenery that was all around him on both sides of the road. He knew that there were no changes there. The Cascade was just as he had left it this morning, when he had set off to be General Manager of Troost SA for the last time.
There was definitely no need to tell anyone anything.
24
In autumn Bermuda grass goes yellow. It doesn’t dry up, it doesn’t die, it simply remains dormant until the summer, when the grass returns to green, and the cycle begins again. In the meantime there are two options. At least, we have two options in Cascade Heights. The first of these is to look for colour elsewhere: in the red and golden Liquidambar trees, the brownish oaks, the yellow Ginkgo bilobas, the firey Rhus typhina. But this effort has to be made with determination, and if the eye is continually drawn back to the colourless grass, disconcerting, annoying or even depressing the person contemplating it – then the first option has failed. The second option is to plant ryegrass, which lasts only for a season and boasts a colour as false as it is vivid, like cold-storage apples or battery hens. But it looks perfect; it’s not so much a lawn as a carpet.
This was not a ryegrass year in the Uroviches’ house. The year 2000 was well underway; we had a new president. In December 1999, during his inaugural speech – the first of many speeches, so rumour has it, to be written by his son – he had emphasized the need to control the fiscal deficit and promised that this would bring down unemployment through new investment. But autumn arrived, bringing neither investments nor work, and Martín still had not managed to get a job. Lala, practically in tears, told Teresa about it one afternoon, when the latter had gone with her workmen to dig up dead plants from the flower beds.
“I can’t stand it any more. Do you know what it’s like having him stuck in the house all day?”
Teresa understood, but she knew that matters would be even worse if the lawn went yellow. She took Lala to one side, far enough away not to be overheard by one of the workmen, who was kneeling on the earth pulling out weeds. “Do whatever you think best, Lala, but in three weeks the Bermuda’s going to dry up and ruin the look of your park.” And she returned to the workman.
“No! My God! José, that’s not a weed! It’s a pennisetum!” Teresa pushed him out of the way and combed the plant’s foliage with her fingers. Lala came over to have a look at the pennisetum. Teresa smiled at her and said under her breath: “It’s a battle. You explain it twenty-five times and he still doesn’t get it.”
The women walked around the flower bed. The worker stayed a few feet behind, weeding. Teresa made some calculations. “Look, you must have nearly half an acre of land.”
“About a third of an acre,” Lala corrected her.
“Exactly, so one pound per one hundred and fifty square feet, with seed costing, let’s see, about one dollar or one dollar fifty the pound, with all the fluctuations, how much is that?”
“I don’t know, not without a calculator…”
“No, neither do I… I was always dire with numbers, but we’re talking in the region of one hundred… one hundred and fifty dollars… because that’s what Virginia’s just paid me, and her grounds are more or less the same size as yours.”
“Virginia’s re-sown?” asked Lala.
“Yes, she must have made a good commission recently.” Teresa squatted down, pulled up a clod of earth a
nd examined it. “Honey, this border really needs water,” she said, showing her the dry and dusty earth.
Teresa went to get the hosepipe. Lala waited for her. Teresa had been looking after her garden for years and knew very well where all the gardening tools and materials were. The Uroviches had been among her first clients when she finished the three-year landscape-gardening course at a nursery in San Isidro. Until she and a few other women began to study and dedicate themselves to the subject of plants, all you could get in this area would be some unemployed man from Santa María de los Tigrecitos, an odd-job merchant parading as a gardener or a groundsman. The “grass-cutters”, as they are known in The Cascade, came on bicycles, pulling a mower, at best electric, a strimmer, secateurs and chlorine to keep the swimming pool clear all year round – or else they’d lose their jobs. Teresa was offering something quite different. To change the flowers with every season; to combine colours harmoniously, let different shapes complement one another, make sure the vegetation was sufficient; to look out for dead plants or anything rotten; to place the plants with the best perfume in areas close to the house, the ones that dropped leaves and needles further from the pool. “You need an artistic streak for this sort of work,” she liked to say of herself. And all this for a price that was slightly above what the grass-cutters charged. “When everybody else’s grounds are looking perfect, with that spectacular green ryegrass, you’ll want to kill yourself, won’t you? You’ll be driving along… green… green… green… yellow, ugh! We’ve come to the Uroviches! No – that would be too horrible.”
Teresa left the hosepipe to one side and tried to straighten a papyrus that had inclined too much towards the sun, upsetting the symmetry of the border. Lala bent down to help her.