The Buenos Aires Quintet

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  The waiter has served lots of meals in this restaurant, but still he asks: ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m only ever sure of myself in restaurants.’

  Alma looks on passively as the table fills and empties with all that Carvalho has ordered. Gradually her astonishment turns to horror: ‘Where do you put it all?’

  ‘I’ve got a bottomless spirit. When my body is full, I eat with my spirit. You’ve hardly eaten a thing.’

  ‘I eat to live.’

  ‘I eat to remember and drink to forget, or perhaps it’s the other way round, I’ve always hated poetic mottoes. This Mendoza wine is excellent: I thought only the Chileans had good wine, although apparently these days there’s decent stuff even in places like New Zealand.’

  ‘It’s all part of the new international order. Are you a leftie?’

  Carvalho looks down at his hands.

  ‘I mean in politics.’

  ‘I used to be. What about you?’

  ‘What sort? I mean what kind of leftie.’

  ‘Marxist-Leninist, gourmet faction. Then I joined the CIA. I killed Kennedy. I overthrew Goulart, and Allende. Then I went home and became a private detective. And you, what kind of a red were you?’

  ‘A left-wing Perónist, I think. Does Perónism seem picturesque to you?’

  ‘There was a long interview with him on Spanish TV just before he came back to Argentina from exile. He said he was a follower of the doctrines of Christ, Marx, José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Che Guevara. The only reason he didn’t mention Mother Teresa of Calcutta was that she wasn’t famous then.’

  ‘I already told you. Some of us were Perónists in spite of Perón.’

  ‘So what are you now?’

  ‘A survivor and a teacher of literature earning a monthly wage that wouldn’t allow me to buy many meals like this one.’

  The waiter is delighted at Carvalho’s appetite and the fact that he’s drunk a whole bottle of Cautivo de Orfila, a sharp wine in the best sense of the word. He’s even more delighted at his tip. Alma approves of neither the appetite nor the tip. ‘What if after I’ve given a class on Steiner or Tel Quel, the students gave me a tip? It’s a petit bourgeois invention to keep waiters as slaves. To ensure the customer is always right.’

  Then they’re by the river again. Carvalho is fascinated once more by the sluggish brown waters. He searches in vain for the far shore. ‘Is Montevideo over there?’

  ‘That’s what they say’

  ‘Have you ever been there?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’re not sure if you’ve ever been in Montevideo?’

  ‘I was in a city called Montevideo once, I was in one called Buenos Aires, and I’m pretty sure I reached another one called Santiago, but...’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘They disappeared.’

  ‘The cities?’

  ‘The cities, that is the cities full of people who mattered to me. A lot of them died, and the survivors are all dead.’

  ‘Do you divide yourselves into those who suffered and those who didn’t?’

  ‘Who do you mean?’

  ‘The friends in your group. I suppose you did form a group.’

  ‘Forty-six of them didn’t live to tell the tale.’

  ‘What about those who did?’

  ‘A bit of everything. Let’s just say they’re a mixed bunch. We’re divided into the holy innocents – literature teachers and failed artists – and those who’ve made it. We have friends who got married to partners from the upper classes. Even some who married sisters of people who’d once been kidnapped in the name of the revolution and historic change.’

  ‘Who are the artists?’

  ‘There’s me, an artist with words; there’s Pignatari, a superannuated rock singer, and Silverstein, who’s a mixture of actor and liar.’

  ‘And those who made it?’

  ‘Güelmes, who’s almost a minister. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘I’ve heard it recently, but I can’t remember who said it or when.’

  ‘It might have been your uncle. My ex-husband Font y Rius has a private clinic and is one of the leading lights in Villa Freud. Only in Buenos Aires could you find a neighbourhood full of psychologists they call Villa Freud. When he started out, Font was all for Ronnie Laing and his anti-psychiatry. He wanted to tear down all the asylum walls. He said madness was nothing more than a metaphor. He was a psychobolshie: did that word ever reach Spain? In those days we used it for people who mixed revolutionary socialism and psychoanalysis, people who combined Wilhelm Reich and what they could take from Marxism. Now he’s rich thanks to madmen: thanks to metaphors, I mean. But madness isn’t a metaphor to him any more. It’s a vein of gold. Raúl’s partner, Roberto, has done the same. He’s a weak type who’s never really committed himself to anything. He continued with the same line of research as Raúl to make money, that’s all. To him, it’s as if nothing has happened. He’s one of those scientists who reckons that science is neutral.’

  ‘And Raúl?’

  ‘He’s a fugitive, always has been. Running from my sister, from his own scientific discoveries, from any commitment, from the military, from me.’

  ‘From you?’

  ‘Well, from my sister really. She was the strongest personality of us all.’

  Carvalho takes the family snapshot out of his pocket. He stares at Raúl’s features. Looks across at Alma. ‘Where do we start?’

  Alma refuses to look at the photo again. Instead she glances all around her with something like amusement. Until finally she stares down at the river in front of them. ‘What about there?’

  The shacks are perched above reed-covered riverbanks that stagnant waters seem to have condemned to an eternity of dismal uselessness. In one of them Raúl is lying flat on his back on a straw mattress, staring up at the ceiling. He turns to look towards the only window, through which float the sounds of nearby music. He gets up and looks out towards the rows of other shacks. A group of outcasts is trying to keep warm round a fire; on a hillock there’s a wretched little bar which is where the music is coming from. Several couples in leather are dancing to rock music. Hundreds of muscular rats cover rubbish tips like a moving carpet. Then four motorcyclists appear. Their faces are invisible, but they look like medieval warriors in their helmets and chainmail. The fat man appears, looking even more monstrous in this wretched landscape and because of the silver-plated luxury of the limousine he’s just got out of. He shouts to the motorcyclists: ‘Make sure you find him! Don’t let him get away!’

  Raúl looks wrapped up in his own thoughts. He’s not exactly clean, hair unkempt, several days’ growth of beard. He’s clasping a steaming iron pot. He turns round startled when the door to the shack opens. Looks to see who it is.

  ‘You have to get out of here. There’s some strange people outside.’

  ‘Are you sure, Pignatari?’

  The shadowy face nods. Raúl’s gaze moves to the window, judging its size. All of a sudden, Raúl Tourón stands up, steadies himself in the window frame, then dives into the open air. The other man watches him fall, roll over and then run off between the maze of shacks. The motorcyclists are trying to search their way among the huts of corrugated iron and cardboard, but their wheels sink into the dank puddles. Oblivious to everything, by the bar the same couples seem to want to go on dancing to the same tune.

  There are photos of Freud, Jung, Lacan and Reich on the walls. An eclectic, Carvalho decides. Font y Rius is a man of around forty, with receding hair that only serves to emphasize what half a century ago would have been called ‘noble features’. He’s smoking a pipe, signing papers and talks to Carvalho without pausing in his task. ‘D’you know what I’m signing? Psychological reports? No. Butchers’ bills. The mad have to eat too.’

  ‘They eat meat? I thought you
were supposed to give mad people fish.’

  ‘If you take meat away from an Argentine madman, it’ll only make him even madder.’

  Carvalho studies the photos of the masters of psychology. ‘What about your masters here? Would they agree you should call mad people mad?’

  ‘I didn’t call them mad either in the days when I believed in anti-psychiatry. By the way, it wasn’t Laing who invented the phrase. It was Cooper who started using it to describe what Laing and other experimenters like Basaglia were doing. But madness does exist. Evil exists.’

  ‘And good?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why did your brother-in-law Raúl come back?’

  Font y Ruis stops signing his bills. He seems to hesitate, looks up suspiciously. ‘I don’t know. He sat in that chair you’re in, and stared at me. He didn’t say a word. Then he left, and never came back. Typically depressive behaviour, a mixture of discharge and concealment; but not necessarily pathological.’

  ‘You mean to say that your former brother-in-law Raúl manages to escape to Spain some years after the death of his wife and the disappearance of his daughter, and then one fine day he comes back. He pays you a visit. And according to you, you say nothing to each other. He gets up and goes, and that’s that.’

  ‘It may seem incredible, but that’s how it was. We didn’t talk of anything because he could hardly get a word out. All he did was shout insults and cry’

  ‘Who did he insult? Why did he come to see you rather than Alma? Why was he in tears?’

  ‘He insulted the murderers of the Process.’

  ‘What Process?’

  ‘In Argentina we invented a euphemism for our dictatorship. The military called it the Process of National Reorganization. To some it meant the process of returning the country to normal. To others it meant the process of extermination. All dictatorships cover their image in a mask, and language is a means to help the cover-up. If you call cruelty firmness, it’s no longer cruelty’

  ‘That’s true. In Spain we had a king who right-wing historians called “The Lawmaker”, and others called “The Cruel”.’

  ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘Who else did he insult?’

  ‘All of us. He’s suspicious of those who survived. Maybe he didn’t go to see Alma because she reminds him too much of Berta, or because he didn’t want to insult her.’

  ‘What or who was he crying for?’

  ‘I think he was crying for himself. Although sometimes it seemed it was for his daughter.’

  ‘Did he make a point of insulting you in particular? Why would that be?’

  ‘Because I refused to disappear. All of them are the disappeared. Have you met Alma? She seems real, doesn’t she? But she’s not. They all disappeared more than twenty years ago. When they refused to grow up.’

  ‘Is that why you separated from Alma?’

  ‘The military separated us. In other words, history. Because all that’s history now. History that interests fewer and fewer people. All you have to do is calculate the difference in numbers between those who disappeared and those of us who didn’t. Those who refused to disappear will always win.’

  ‘And the girl?’

  ‘Alma searched for her desperately. She’s still looking for her through the grandmothers of disappeared children.’

  ‘The mothers of the Plaza de Mayo?’

  ‘No, they’re just symbolic folklore these days. They really are mad.’

  Through the garden window they can see the more conventionally mad people walking round and round. The psychiatrist grasps the association of ideas and images that must be going through Carvalho’s mind. Perhaps he’s sorry for what he said. ‘Those women are crazy from loneliness and impotent rage. Every time they meet up in the Plaza de Mayo it’s as if they were calling up the ghosts of their children. It’s a magic rite.’

  This is Carvalho’s baptism into the culture and love of Buenos Aires cafés. Their wonderful atmosphere is far removed from the ghastly functionality of most Spanish cafés; they’re like serpents biting their tail on past time: art nouveau, art deco, modernist styles abound. And wood, wood, wood. Argentina’s generous forests converted into décor to have tea or coffee in, while the conversation flows along in a musical Spanish that’s full of Italian overtones. It’s Carvalho’s first café. It’s called the Café Tortoni, and when Alma says the name, it’s as if she were describing a temple. In the Avenida de Mayo. Marble, painted skylights, interior lights softened by the carved wood, prints on the walls, romantic mirrors, red leather upholstery, at the back, billiard tables and private rooms for regulars. Also on the walls, pictures of the café through history, in the very place which seems to have managed to impose its own logic on time.

  It’s not far from the Plaza de Mayo where the mothers plod round and round, but emotionally those protests are at the far ends of the earth from these docile-looking ladies chatting over their coffee or hot chocolate. Carvalho wonders if any sense of the demonstrations down below in front of the Casa Rosada has seeped in here. But in among the noble woods perfumed with the smells of excellent coffee, liquors, cakes and ice-creams, there’s no room for History, and as ever men and women seem like nothing more than cheap traders – in their lives, in any other goods. ‘A few yards from here, there are mothers protesting about their dead children, but nobody in here spares them a thought.’

  ‘Nor out there either.’

  Alma seems taken aback at Carvalho’s sense of surprise. ‘As individuals we tend to forget the harm we do or that’s done to us. Why should it be any different for a society?’

  ‘Sometimes I get flashes of my old naïve secondary school feelings of revolt.’

  ‘Ah, the ethics of revolt. They’ll die with my generation, and my generation is on its last legs.’

  They set off down to the square. They come across a small group of women walking round and round. Some are holding placards, others wear photos of their disappeared children on their chests, like medals. Some seem as if they have a whole universe of emptiness on their shoulders. Few local people are looking on; only a few tourists who perhaps are ethical tourists, perhaps not. Feelings of emotion, curiosity and indifference in equal measure; there’s even a certain annoyance in the air among the passers-by, because of the ‘bad reputation’ this insistence on historical memory gives the city.

  ‘Have they explained why they go on doing this? Don’t they know their children are dead?’

  A flash of anger appears in Alma’s eyes. ‘If they accept their deaths, they can’t accuse the system any more. If they accept money in reparation, it would be exonerating the system. How many accomplices did the military have to help them do what they did? But you’re right, the mothers have almost become just another tourist attraction. I work with the grandmothers. They’re searching methodically for all the children adopted – that is, kidnapped – by the military. Like Eva María. Those children exist. They’re not spirits. My niece, for example. She must be twenty years old now. How could anyone recognize her?’

  The demonstration is almost over. Hébé Bonafini, the leader of the Mothers, grabs a megaphone and delivers the political message for today: we will come back again and again so that our children are not wiped from the memory of infamy. They were taken from us alive. They must be returned alive. In other countries of the world, mothers are looking for their children. The system and its barbarity goes on and on. Carvalho and Alma cross the street separating the square from the entrance to the Casa Rosada. Carvalho searches in his memory for everything stored there about one of the most famous presidential palaces in the world.

  ‘Do you want to go in? Or would you rather walk up to the Congress building? The old-age pensioners demonstrate outside it once a week. It’s like a complete collection of fantastic old people. Or would you like to see inside here?’

  ‘Is it that easy to get in?�
��

  ‘It’s full of former friends of mine. Some of them ex-revolutionaries. Menem wanted to undermine the left by incorporating them into the system, like the PRI did in Mexico. All I have to do is give my name in reception and all the doors will be opened, even at the highest levels.’

  ‘I don’t have the time to see any politicians.’

  ‘Well, when you need me just whistle, and I’ll come running.’

  True to her word, Alma turns on her heel and leaves him standing there. She’s strangely annoyed with Carvalho or with herself or with the backdrop of the Casa Rosada and the Mothers. Carvalho catches her up.

  ‘I want to see Raúl and Berta’s place. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Who do you think I am? I’ve had more than enough tragedy for one day. No, thanks. Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than follow you around?’

  ‘What did I do wrong?’

  But by now Alma is far away, running to catch a bus, and it would be too violent to try to catch up with her. A taxi appears from Puerto Madero, and Carvalho tells him to go to La Recoleta. He tries to remember what he’s learnt about it in the book on Buenos Aires he read by Vázquez Rial before leaving Barcelona, with all the mixed feelings he gets when he reads these days. The well-off area of north Buenos Aires comprises more than one neighbourhood, the author says, and several have a very definite character of their own. This is the case of La Recoleta, which is bordered on one side by a cemetery celebrated in a poem by the young Borges. The rich people of Buenos Aires arrived here in the mid-nineteenth century, fleeing the plagues of the port area; later they continued their exodus towards even more select neighbourhoods, as has happened in every city in the world that can lay claim to be something more than a mere city. Carvalho finds himself in front of the huge gum trees mentioned in the book, with their enormous cement crutches holding up the centuries-old branches. And beyond them is the Recoleta cemetery Borges wrote about – Borges here as everywhere else in the imagined world of Buenos Aires. Carvalho goes in, looking for the family pantheon of Eva Duarte de Perón, which contains all that’s left of a body that was embalmed, tortured, broken, even raped by a crazy necrophiliac military officer who hated Perón but fell in love with the icy soul of his dead enemy. The severity of the marble is softened by bouquets of flowers, and two women are talking to Evita as if she could hear them in the depths where she’s been buried to avoid any further desecration. ‘Oh, poor Evita! So far from Chacarita, where Perón’s buried!’