The Buenos Aires Quintet

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  Carvalho reaches into one of his shopping bags and pulls out the lifeless corpse of a huge fish. When he sees the look of sheer disgust on Alma’s face, he quickly drops it back inside.

  ‘Don’t I have the right to choose the bodies I eat?’

  The Captain is wearing a Nike tracksuit as he performs sit-ups with weights on a mat in his office. A computer and files rather than books; a punchbag, a pulley, a rope hanging down from the ceiling like an upside-down snake. Muriel comes running in, arms full of books. She bends down to give him a kiss on the cheek in mid-sit-up.

  ‘Are you running or flying?’

  ‘I’ll be late for university. I don’t want to miss my class.’

  By now the Captain has got up and is drying his sweaty face with a towel, but still flexing his legs.

  ‘Which class is it?’

  ‘Our lecturer Modotti promised she’d talk to us about Borges. She told us about the fake son who’s appeared, and said she’d talk to us about the Universal History of Infamy. Did you see there’s this asshole who’s passing himself off as Borges’ son?’

  ‘Asshole? Is that the kind of language they teach you at university?’

  ‘He’s a joker. We have to keep our respect for true creators. It’s the only magic we have left. The magic of poets.’

  ‘But there are dangerous poets who infect the blood with the virus of destruction and self-destruction. Some of the subversives were poets. Urondo, Gelman. At least, they called themselves poets, but a poet has to be constructive.’

  ‘I love Gelman! I haven’t read any Urondo yet, but I really like Gelman!’

  ‘You’ve read people like that?’

  Muriel runs out of the room. As he watches her go, the tender smile on the Captain’s face gradually freezes. He goes over to the punchbag and starts to hit it. His blows become harder and harder as he starts to shout: ‘Magic, magic...magic!’

  Muriel rushes to catch a bus, but her watch tells her she is still going to be late. She grows increasingly impatient as the bus nears the city centre and gets stuck behind a crowd of people in the street. When she looks out of the bus window, Muriel sees Borges Jr. on the pavement, enjoying a new-found importance that is confirmed by the passers-by who turn to stare at him as if they recognize him from the television. But the crowd is due to a van with a loudspeaker in the road that is crawling along beside Ariel. A threatening voice can be heard over the loudspeaker:

  ‘That peacock strutting along the pavement claims he is the son of the greatest Argentine writer of all time. He is an impostor who can only exist in an Argentina full of impostors. In the name of our great Borges: spit in the face of the impostor!’

  The bus sweeps Muriel’s astonishment away with it, while Borges Jr. first of all hears the threat as if it had nothing to do with him, then belatedly starts to walk more quickly. An old woman stops and spits at him. Ariel speeds up, pursued by the stares of other passers-by and by the van, which is still calling on them to ‘spit in the face of the impostor’. Eventually he breaks into a run, and scurries several blocks before coming to a panting halt at the doorway to Carvalho’s apartment block. His bulk makes it hard for him to climb the stairs, and by the time he reaches Carvalho’s front door, he is out of breath yet again. He tries to get his breath and his calm back, and finally pushes open the office door. Carvalho is at the far side behind his desk, and Borges Jr. has just enough breath left to walk over to the window beside him, and overcome his fatigue by staring down at the traffic and people in the street below.

  ‘My father wrote in El Aleph: “This city is so horrible, that merely by existing and persisting through time, even though in the middle of a secret desert, it pollutes the past and the future and in some way compromises the stars. For as long as it persists, no one in the world can be valiant or happy...” Doesn’t that sound like a premonition and at the same time a description of Buenos Aires today?’

  ‘All cities pollute the past and the future. Cities and people.’

  ‘I remembered what you told me the other day about your cousin. Papa was a deliberately hermetic writer, and in another fragment from El Aleph there might be a clue to your case. Your cousin is like Ulysses, who returns to Ithaca and finds nothing is like it was, isn’t that right? Perhaps Penelope has simply undone all her weaving, and Telemachus is either dead or is still in hiding. Homer tells the protagonist of El Aleph that, like Ulysses, he lived for a century in the city of the immortals, that city which pollutes the past and the future.’

  Carvalho reacts with surprise at this, and Borges Jr. falls silent.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So there will come a moment when your cousin makes the same discovery as Cartaphilus: “As the end draws near, no images of memory survive: all that’s left are words.”’

  ‘There is something in that. Recently my cousin has been writing anonymous letters, but at least he is writing. His memories have run out. That’s why he’s become aggressive. He wants to stir things up, to cause trouble. No. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to come back to life. He is attacking all those who betrayed him. He’s even writing to some Japanese. He is entering the modern world. And there’s no modernity without the Japanese.’

  ‘My father wrote things about Arabs and the Chinese, but I can’t recall anything about the Japanese.’

  ‘Was your father ever interested in livestock feed?’

  ‘Never!’

  With his eyes and a wooden spoon, the chef is busy stirring the contents of various pans lined up on a xylophone of burners. In the staff changing-room next to the kitchen, four waiters are dressing as butlers with spare, practised gestures that give them the appearance of a group of Buster Keaton look-alikes. A bell rings. It is the service door, and as one of the waiters opens it wearily, he almost falls into Don Vito’s embrace.

  ‘Lorenzo? You are Lorenzo, aren’t you?’

  Don Vito will not take the man’s silent no for an answer, and rapidly squeezes himself inside, asking again: ‘Well, but Lorenzo is here, isn’t he?’

  The waiter is unimpressed.

  ‘We’re all called James here.’

  He turns his head towards the others.

  ‘Anyone here called Lorenzo?’

  One of the other three waiters lifts his head without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Yes, me. My name is Lorenzo.’

  Don Vito pushes into the room, arms open to give another embrace to the real Lorenzo. When he sees the three men dressed exactly the same, he pauses, but keeps his arms out as he identifies the least bored-looking of the three.

  ‘Lorenzo!’

  ‘Vito?’

  ‘The very same.’

  Don Vito embraces him, and Lorenzo begins to remember who he is, while he is being dragged off to talk alone with him.

  ‘Can’t we go somewhere more private?’

  ‘The problem is that this place is going to be in an uproar in a minute, and the club members may be off their heads, but they are very demanding.’

  The other three men are already patrolling the kitchen in their butler uniforms, and in the changing-room Don Vito has to appeal to Lorenzo to keep quiet when he explodes at the detective’s suggestion.

  ‘But...d’you know what you’re asking me to do? This is one of the most private of private clubs. How am I supposed to let you see the club files?’

  Don Vito is a picture of nostalgia as he puts his arm round the other man’s shoulder.

  ‘D’you remember when you used to smuggle stuff and I watched your back? Altofini, your wife used to say, give Lorenzo a hand, he’s always getting into trouble.’

  ‘That’s precisely why I don’t want any now. The club members are dangerous people. True gentlemen, but very dangerous. They’re either in power or friends of the powerful, one hundred per cent oligarchy, and I don’t know what their real game is. To live out literature, th
ey say. To play the fool, I say. But when they take their masks off, they’re real bastards, cannibals. I’m called James, like the other three, and that’s how I want it to stay.’

  ‘Just a little glance at the files, Lorenzo. For old times’ sake.’

  Lorenzo weighs Don Vito up, from perhaps a very personal view of what he is worth.

  ‘I pay my debts, but I’m repaying you not because you helped me stay out of trouble, but because you screwed my wife and gave me the chance to get rid of her, the old bat. I couldn’t stand her any more, the Valkyrie.’

  Touched by this confession, and anxious to cement the bond between them, Don Vito puts his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  ‘To be frank with you, Lorenzo, I couldn’t stand her either.’

  ‘Now get out, and take this key with you. After midnight, this place is deserted.’

  It is more like a quarter-past twelve when the door connecting the changing-room to the kitchen opens again. Don Vito tiptoes through the room. He emerges into a hall leading to the downstairs rooms of the El Aleph club, and guides himself thanks to the dim glow of emergency lights. He takes a piece of paper from his pocket and studies the plan drawn on it. He climbs the stairs to the first floor. Then he heads for the door he wants, checks on the paper it is the right one, and is just about to go in when he hears what sounds like a cough coming from an unknown source. He stiffens, waiting for a confirmation of the sound, but nothing happens, so he steps inside the room.

  Once he is in the office, he can no longer hear how a second coughing sound from the room next door confirms the first one, nor see how a group of club members are clustered there expectantly. They are dressed like boxers from the early twentieth century: baggy pants, shirts with horizontal stripes, heavy leather gloves, hair parted in the middle and plastered down with brilliantine, moustaches in the style of the King of England or the Tsar of Russia. There is only one butler present: Lorenzo. He tells them triumphantly: ‘The son of a bitch is in the office.’

  The boxers are anxious to get on with it: they prance around on tiptoe, throw punches in the air. The chairman gives his verdict: ‘It’s time to give him his just desserts.’

  The posse of boxers leaves the room. They look more military than sporting. As he watches them leave, Lorenzo’s face takes on the imperturbable smile of James. But his teeth are bared, and he snarls as he says: ‘Vito Altofini, now you’ll have something to remember this cuckold by’

  Afterwards, Don Vito can scarcely recall that he had already opened the filing cabinet drawers, had taken out the files he was interested in, and had even put his glasses on to read them by the light of a little torch Madame Lissieux had given him.

  That is because the door suddenly flies open and four boxers of the old school advance towards him, thumping their gloves and breathing heavily. Don Vito tries to regain control of the situation, but his words lack conviction: ‘This is all a misunderstanding.’

  By now the boxers are upon him. All he can do is lash out and try to kick them, as they circle round him and land knowingly aimed punches. There is a gulf between Don Vito flailing despairingly and the four men advancing and retreating as they hit him with deadly force and accuracy. So accurately that he eventually topples to the floor, his face a swollen mess. One of the boxers lifts his head by the bloody roots of his hair, and the others continue their beating. Don Vito, ecce homo, is already unconscious.

  Vladimiro considers the information that a shamefaced Borges Jr. has just given him.

  ‘So Raúl Tourón has come back from the dead and is breaking his old friends’ balls.’

  He starts to laugh. Borges stares at him with his sad hound’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve betrayed those people’s trust.’

  Pascuali’s voice rings out from somewhere behind him.

  ‘Don’t start getting a conscience now. Didn’t you betray the trust of all the people you and your mother have conned over the years?’

  ‘There couldn’t be conmen if there weren’t people willing to be conned.’

  ‘And I suppose there wouldn’t be murderers without people willing to be murdered. Don’t talk nonsense.’

  ‘Those fanatics are still pursuing me. I’m frightened, I need you to protect me.’

  Pascuali is even more scathing than usual.

  ‘Sects. That’s all I needed, literary sects.’

  He waits for the duty policeman to finish the report, flicks his head at his men in a way that Borges does not understand, then heads off down the corridors that lead to the room used by the director-general whenever he comes to the police station. After a few words of muttered greeting, the inspector drops the file in front of his superior’s short-sighted gaze.

  ‘Can’t you tell me what’s in it? In a few words?’

  ‘Sects. Literary sects.’

  ‘Literary sects? What am I supposed to do with that?’

  Pascuali still says nothing, so the director-general is forced to read the file. Afterwards, he peers at Pascuali over his glasses, as if trying to see him without any distortion. Then he stands up. He thrusts his fists on to the desk, and leans forward until his face is close to the inspector’s. The director-general loves to thrust his face only centimetres from Pascuali’s nostrils and shout at him.

  ‘Sects? Have you any idea who the members of El Aleph club are? The crème de la crème of our business leaders. Their chairman is Ostiz. Does that mean anything to you? And there are top university people, as well as people who have a lot of money and a lot of power. What do you want? A search warrant? What else? Would you like me to question Güelmes, who’s just been made a minister, about his business dealings with a Japanese group? What else? Would you like me to declare the constitution unconstitutional? To issue an arrest warrant for the president of the republic? Do you want me to be kicked out of my job? And all because of a two-bit swindler and a lunatic you’re on the trail of? What does that son of a bitch want anyway? What does he want? To drive me mad? Like you do?’

  Pascuali waits for the storm to subside without moving his face away or closing his eyes. Finally the director-general grows weary. He goes back to his desk. Takes an executive blood pressure gauge out of a drawer, and tests himself.

  ‘Fourteen over eleven! Fourteen over eleven! It’s never been that bad before!’

  His words meet only the empty air: the door has already shut behind Pascuali’s back. The director-general takes out his mobile phone and dials a number he has looked up in his personal organizer.

  ‘Güelmes? Pascuali is pressing harder and harder. We have to do something. We must meet. Yes, fourteen over eleven – what about you?’

  The doctor bursts rather than emerges through the door they are staring at so anxiously. Carvalho leaps up to intercept him, followed by Alma. The doctor whispers directions, which they follow until they reach the screen behind which lies a mummified Don Vito. He can hardly even move his swollen lips. Horrified by the brutality of the spectacle, Alma and Carvalho have come to a halt, but Don Vito beckons them forward. They cannot make out what he is trying to say, so Carvalho leans forward to pick up the murmured fragments. Then he nods and turns back towards Alma.

  ‘He says we live in a world full of fanatics. He also says that in films the heroine always gives the injured hero a kiss when she visits him in hospital.’

  Alma smiles at this, but when she leans over Don Vito she sees the only place she can kiss him is on the mouth.

  ‘But I can only kiss him on the mouth.’

  ‘I think that’s what he wants.’

  Don Vito manages to convey the inevitability of the situation. Alma kisses him fully on the mouth, doing far more than her mere duty. The first or last kiss of a true love story. Wet. Deep. Don Vito’s eyes show he is in ecstasy, until they suddenly change to an expression of alarm as he jerks his head to try to tell them something. Carvalho and Alma stare at hi
m, then at each other in surprise, and finally understand. They look round and there is Pascuali standing in the doorway. They follow him out into the corridor, and hear him muttering under his breath:

  ‘I’m sick and tired of you two. Sick and tired. Wherever you stick your noses you stir up shit!’

  They come to the end of the corridor, and in the main hall of the hospital Pascuali grabs Carvalho by the arm.

  ‘I want to know’

  Carvalho sighs to show how patient he has to be with the inspector.

  ‘What do you want to know? Vito Altofini has been savagely attacked by a group of fanatics, Borgesian fundamentalists.’

  ‘Don’t talk such crap! I want to know all the details of Raúl Tourón’s blackmail, including what the Japanese have to do with it.’

  ‘One of the people involved is the Captain.’ He thrusts his face into Pascuali’s and says again: ‘The Captain. Is he too much of a Captain for you, inspector?’

  Pascuali does not respond, even with a gesture. Carvalho and Alma try to take advantage of his disarray to leave the building, but he runs after them, and this time seizes Carvalho by the shoulder, forcing him to turn and face him.

  ‘The Captain, you Spanish asshole, is a military man, a leftover from the military dictatorship. But sooner or later, we’ll be finished with them – all our society needs are policemen, not military goons. We’ll leave that to the Yankees.’

  ‘It’s a point of view’

  ‘It’s the plain truth. I am the future, the only possibility of order we have.’

  ‘There’s the private police as well.’

  ‘Such as you?’

  ‘No. I’m the last of the Mohicans. I mean the private police who are and always will be on the side of order. I am on the side of disorder. I am disorder.’

  Plates and cutlery polished until they shine, and laid out in an order the washer-up faithfully respects. Raúl squeezes out the last few drops of dirty water from the sponge. He surveys the kitchen. Everything is shiny clean. He smiles with satisfaction. Through the window he can see other neon signs advertising restaurants along the Costanera Norte. He slumps on to a stool. Rubs his face in his hands. The swing door opens and the kitchen supervisor comes in. He inspects the washing-up, and nods his approval.