‘But at least I have a position – you don’t have one at all! You’re all running away, like Raúl, but there’s no way you can get back to the lost homeland of your memories!’
Alma stands up, angry with herself.
‘Do a deal, do a deal!’
She turns her back on Font y Rius and leaves, but not before she hears him calling to her.
‘Berta, Bertita.’
‘Don’t call me Berta, and especially not Bertita.’
‘Alma, just remember, please. Either we did a deal, or we wouldn’t get out of there alive. You did a deal too.’
The private club El Aleph, or the English Royal Academy of Borges Studies. A villa in a residential neighbourhood, wooden beams, and waiters who are wooden copies of English butlers but in flesh and blood, as if they were all called James. And James is what they are all called by the assembled guests, who are also dressed up, mimicking illustrations of Victorian life at the turn of the twentieth century. They are grouped in a circle around the man who is obviously their leader – a man who looks even more like an English aristocrat than the rest of them.
‘This villainy has plumbed the depths: consider just how preposterously Borges’ style has been satirized, when the master’s work is the supreme example of how to avoid commonplaces. And what a commonplace! The grandson of a dancer from Samarkand and an English lord, and the son, no less, of Borges himself!’
One of the academics draws his own conclusion.
‘Ostiz. The cur has no right to live!’
The chairman calls for silence and gestures for another academic to speak. This one is dressed up as a lord. Fair-haired and pale, he speaks slowly and carefully.
‘In agreement with our chairman, Doctor Ostiz, this morning I disguised myself as Jude the Obscure from the novel by Thomas Hardy, and took up my position opposite this charlatan’s house. I didn’t leave a single window intact – I’m a good shot with a stone. Through the windows I could see the impostor’s ashen face – even more disturbed, I imagine, now he is coming to realize the consequences of his actions.’
‘James, bring me a scotch would you – an eighteen-year-old Langavulin in a brandy glass, with no ice or water,’ the chairman orders, provoking an admiring reaction among the other club members.
‘James, I’d like a sarsaparilla with water and a slice of lemon.’
Third academic to the same waiter.
‘And I’d like a mulled wine with a little honey’
But something is worrying the chairman. He is staring quizzically at the young lord’s disguise, and asks him: ‘Why are you dressed up as a nineteenth-century English peasant?’
‘The master was a great admirer of English realist writers of the nineteenth century, especially Thomas Hardy. He told me one day,’ he says, putting on Borges’ most cavernous voice: “Martínez, nearly all realism is ghastly, and the worst of all is Spanish realism. In Latin America it is not so bad, because the realist writers from this side of the Atlantic wrote out of the fear they felt at having been abandoned over here. But English realism is something else, whether it is Hardy and his rearguard action, or Kipling – in it one can sense the energy of Empire. In every Empire there is a moon shining somewhere.”’
This is followed by murmurs of approval, moist eyes. A few restrained gasps of ‘wonderful, wonderful!’ The chairman stifles a ripple of applause.
‘Dirty wars have to be met with equally dirty measures. Our own history proves it, whatever the subversives or the riff-raff who protect them – all those people who call themselves defenders of human rights – might say. We have to give this impostor a fright. Yes, first we frighten him, and if he carries on...’
A lord draws his hand across his throat and gives a meaningful gurgle. Then he asks another waiter who has arrived to help the first James:
‘A tea, James. Put the hot skimmed milk in first.’
Someone who to judge by his shyness must be a lesser lord comes up and whispers something into the chairman’s ear. The chairman does not bother to excuse himself, but gets up and follows his informant out of the room. Waiting for them in a side-room that is as heavily wood-panelled as the rest of the house are Pascuali and Vladimiro.
‘Inspector Pascuali has some information about the impostor.’
Pascuali is not just looking at his surroundings – he is positively smelling the carved wood, the polished metal, the rough gaucho beams and ceiling, as if they all gave off a very special perfume. He is holding a photograph of Borges Jr. reciting. The chairman clears his throat, and the inspector turns to show him the photograph.
‘Is this the face of the intruder into the Borges universe?’
‘Yes, the face of the faceless one.’
Vladimiro laughs at the inspector’s wit, but none of the Borges archangels follows suit.
‘I hope the police will take appropriate action.’
‘I believe so. As long as he doesn’t harm anyone, we will leave him alone.’
‘But this man must have a criminal record.’
Pascuali points to a thick folder that looks out of place on a far too splendid desk.
‘He has eighteen attempted frauds to his name. Some of which succeeded. It’s like a game to him. He once pretended to be Lindbergh’s son, the one who disappeared.’
‘He’s nowhere near old enough. So you aren’t going to arrest him?’
‘No. A short while ago I kept him in the cells because he was going around claiming to be Eva Perón’s younger brother.’
‘What are you going to do then?’
‘Open file number nineteen.’ All of a sudden, Pascuali loses his temper. ‘What world do you live in? We have to make some distinction between real fraudsters and petty ones.’
Doctor Ostiz wrinkles his whisky connoisseur’s nose. ‘What you’ve just said smacks of demagoguery’
The jersey is growing steadily as the old woman knits away, pipe clenched between her teeth. Borges Jr. sitting in the middle of bits of antique junk, holds up a piece of paper he has just taken out of an envelope. As he reads it, his hands start to tremble:
‘“...cease your fraudulent activities forthwith, or the executors of the Borges universe will despatch you to the hell of infamy. The walls of your disgusting den will not protect you. Up to now we have smashed your windows. If you continue, we will smash your soul, if indeed you have a soul...you are no more than a thing, not even an animal.”’
‘Bad news?’
‘An anonymous letter.’
‘I must finish this jersey before they kill you.’ The old woman pauses, thinks about what she has just said. ‘Before they kill us.’
‘How much have we got saved?’
‘Enough for two funerals.’
The same sad expression with which he greets his mother’s news accompanies him out of their house, along the streets, and up into Carvalho’s office. He introduces himself to Don Vito, who is seated in Carvalho’s chair, and explains why he has come.
‘I know Carvalho, you see.’
‘If you know him, you know me. As Confucius said: know your partner and you will know yourself
‘Papa always thought Confucius was an invention. That every age put words in Confucius’ mouth that he had never said, ideas he hadn’t ever had.’
‘The classics! Ah, the classics! That’s what they are there for. Your father, Confucius, Gardel. My partner won’t be long.’
Don Vito casts an impatient glance towards the door separating the office space from the rest of the apartment. Carvalho has just sat up in bed. He’s slept in his clothes. He looks down at his body, feels it, grabs a fold or two of flesh.
‘Too many asados, too much chimichurri.’
He gazes down and discovers an empty bottle of Knockando whisky on the floor by the bed, with a glass on its side next to it.
�
�Too much whisky’
He has a foul taste in his mouth. He stands up, nearly falls over.
‘Hangover, my old friend. At last we meet again.’
In the bathroom, the light from the bulb over the mirror shows Carvalho’s surprise at seeing his own reflection: several days’ growth of beard, dark circles round his eyes, toothbrush dangling from his mouth. He reaches out and touches the bulb. It burns his finger.
‘Sun, suns inside. I wonder what the weather’s like in Barcelona?’
He continues talking to the person reflected in the mirror.
‘You’ll never find your way home.’
He decides to rinse his mouth. Then he smears his cheeks with shaving cream out of a spray. He looks down at the container angrily, then up at the bathroom ceiling, as if trying to gaze at the distant southern heavens.
‘I’ve just made another centimetre hole in the ozone layer.’
He surveys the ceiling as if he might find the ozone layer there. It’s full of flaking plaster and patches of damp. He draws a furrow in his lathered cheek with a disposable razor. By the time he opens the door to the office, he feels somewhat restored, though a little weary. He studies the composition offered by Don Vito and Borges Jr.
‘Señor Altofini, would you mind checking your paper to see what the weather is like in Spain?’
As if this were the most natural thing in the world to do at this time of day, Don Vito picks up a carefully folded newspaper from the desk, and stands up to let Carvalho sit down while he carries out his task. Carvalho sinks into the chair and listens as Borges Jr. launches straight into his story.
‘I’ve come to ask your professional help on the strength of our long-lasting friendship. We met in one of those places where people really get to know each other: jails, police stations, lifeboats.’
‘Now I remember. It was in a lifeboat.’
‘It was in a police station. Do you remember Borges’ son, who helped you through your moment of despair? A group of Borges fanatics who call themselves El Aleph are threatening me. They sent me this anonymous letter.’
Carvalho reads it. ‘What does Aleph mean?’
‘It’s the letter alpha, the “a” of the Hebrew alphabet. But my father used it with lots of meanings, and no meaning at all.’
Don Vito has found what he was looking for.
‘Here it is. There’s an anticyclone over southwestern Europe. Do you want to know the high and low temperatures?’
‘That’s not the weather. What on earth has the weather got to do with temperatures?’
Carvalho nods thoughtfully. Waves the sheet of paper in the air.
‘There are no fanatics worse than those addicted to a cultural myth. Especially nowadays, when nobody believes in anything. When they do find something to believe in, they can commit any crime in order to defend their belief. It will be an expensive investigation.’
‘Very expensive,’ Don Vito echoes him.
‘Incredibly expensive,’ Carvalho says, raising the adverbial stakes even higher.
‘These fellows probably spend the whole day reciting quotations from your father’s work.’
‘Degrading them, you mean. Money is no object. My mother, and even I, have some savings put by after two long lives of forced labour. Mamma was the queen of contortionism at a time when her clients smothered her in mysteries and jewels. It’s a shame she’s so small, or there would have been more jewels.’
Don Vito thanks God that mysteries pass and jewels remain. Ariel Borges is suddenly carried away, and clasps one of Carvalho’s hands between his two huge paws:
‘I can prove I am my father’s son!’
‘You don’t say’
‘When I was a little boy, my mother used to take me to see him in his apartment in Calle Maipú, though she always kept it from Aunty Nora and the Borges mafia. But papa did recognize me. He wrote as much in The Self and the Other, from 1964, when mamma went to see him to remind him of his paternity. It’s a poem called “To The Son”.’
It was not I who begot you. It was the dead –
my father, and his father, and their forebears,
all those who through a labyrinth of loves
descend from Adam and the desert wastes
of Cain and Abel, in a dawn so ancient
it has become mythology by now,
to arrive, blood and marrow, at this day
in the future, in which I now beget you.
I feel their multitudes. They are who we are,
and you among us, you and the sons to come
that you will beget. The latest in the line
and in red Adam’s line. I too am those others.
Eternity is present in the things
of time and its impatient happenings.
Borges Jr. finishes his recital and looks expectantly towards Carvalho and Don Vito to see the effect. Altofini is truly amazed.
‘You recite wonderfully’
‘Yes, wonderfully. It may be that my partner can take your case,’ Carvalho adds. ‘To investigate this club of fanatics who are threatening you. We’re up to our eyes in work.’
‘Up to our ears,’ Don Vito insists.
‘I am on the trail of an eternal fugitive, my cousin Raúl Tourón, who is no ordinary man. Perhaps you have run into him?’
‘I don’t leave home much.’
‘Don’t be surprised by my question. I ask everyone the same.’
‘Questions like that may seem silly, but they can be effective, I know. My papa used to say...’
He is unable to finish, because an imposing figure suddenly looms in the office doorway. His gestures are offhand, but his eyes put a price on everything they encounter. When they have totalled up everything in the room, the newcomer’s face assumes a sardonic grin. His disdain as he hands a business card to the attentive Don Vito is in direct proportion to the detective’s unctuous charm.
‘Getulio Merletti, Boom Boom Peretti’s manager.’
Borges Jr. leaves the office, promising to stay in touch and to dedicate special editions to them. He bows his massive head to the newcomer, who does not even deign to notice him. Then he gropes his way down the unlit staircase, worried that his outsized body will betray his spindly legs. The violent sun outside brings him to a halt, but he is more concerned at the violent voice he hears.
‘Are you blind like your father then?’
Borges recognizes Inspector Pascuali. Behind him he sees the two other policemen who always accompany him.
‘You’ve got nothing on me.’
‘So now you call yourself Ariel. That was your name ten years ago too, when you were Ariel Carriego.’
‘There’s no point you pursuing me. I’ve retired. I’ve recovered my true identity’
‘And how’s your mother, the contortionist?’
‘She’s too old for contortions, poor thing.’
‘It’s in her blood. Do you remember when your mother Dora la Larga sold some poor fool a Philips shaver, telling him he could use it to contact UFOs?’
Pascuali motions towards the doorway Ariel has just come out of.
‘Since when did a fraudster like you need a private detective?’
‘He’s an old friend. It was thanks to you I met him, in one of your cells.’
Too short to reach the shoulders of this Percheron man, Pascuali puts an arm round his waist and pushes him along the pavement. He falls in beside Ariel, who all at once looks sad and defeated.
‘Borges – let’s say your name is Borges, just for now. Today I want us to talk about Pepe Carvalho. But you’re looking very pale. What’s wrong?’
‘I’m hungry. I always get hungry at this time of day. I’m a big man with a big appetite.’
Pascuali steers Ariel into the nearest bar. Half an hour later the policeman is staring fascinated at the rem
ains of an ample asado for four, of which he has only had two sausages. He watches intrigued as Borges Jr. uses another huge hunk of bread to wipe up the remainder of the oil and meat juices.
‘If I’d known, I’d have bought you a pair of shoes instead.’
‘Don’t be so sure. I eat a lot because there’s a lot of me. I take size twelve in shoes.’
‘But did you understand what I was saying? I’ll forget your record. You can play at being a writer. I’ll even protect you from those fanatics if you get close to Carvalho, Alma and Silverstein. You’ll soon meet the others. They’re looking for the same thing as me.’
‘Raúl Tourón. It sounds like one of those nineteenth-century writers my father used to invent.’
‘So your father made things up as well, did he?’
At this, Borges stares down at the remains of his food like a sad, forlorn puppy.
‘Haven’t you ever read anything papa wrote?’
‘I’m one of the many Argentines who has never read Borges, and one of the few to admit it.’
In Carvalho’s office, Altofini is giving a boxing exhibition while Carvalho looks on doubtfully.
‘He leads with the left, but it’s a feint. It’s the right hook that explodes. Peretti’s right and boom! There’s no chin that can withstand it, believe me. He’s an intelligent boxer – intelligent twice over, because there have been boxers who were only intelligent inside the ring. Outside, they were idiots. Peretti is...boxing’s intellectual, like Menotti is football’s intellectual.’
‘Calm down, Don Vito, calm down before you have a heart attack!’
‘I’m passionate about art. There are butchers who are artists – you can be an artist in any trade.’
‘Yes, there have been some unique hangmen. And torturers who were perfectionists.’
‘Don’t try to twist what I’m saying. You and I for example are artists in our line of work.’
At that moment, Alma comes in.
‘What about me?’ she wants to know.
The Buenos Aires Quintet Page 26