The Buenos Aires Quintet
Page 35
like an old, longed-for music,
like a welcome downward path.
Ariel skips along in the fine rain, leaves the park and charges down several streets like a prodded elephant until he catches up with his mother, who is struggling with a trolley piled high with books. The old woman scolds him for being so late, but then falls in behind him as he pushes the cart through San Telmo to the Plaza Dorrego. The square is already full of stalls and vendors, so the two of them have to make do with an adjacent street. Ariel tries to attract the attention of the passers-by, while his mother holds out books like a passive doll.
‘The complete works of Jorge Luis Borges’ natural son. Letter to My Father! A Universal History of Commonplaces!’
He repeats himself endlessly like a stuck record, although each time his voice sounds different. The old woman also continues obstinately with her half-hearted attempts at selling, the pipe dangling from her mouth as ever. Buyers are scarce, Borges goes on shouting, time goes by, the rain comes on harder than ever and the two of them shelter themselves and their books under a tarpaulin. Borges Jr. pushes the cart still piled high with his books. His mother helps as best she can, even though she seems to be leaning for support on the trolley rather than pushing it. The weight and the weather annoy Ariel, and his tango ruffian’s grimace only eases when he abandons the cart in the entrance to his house and can finally return to his world of books and collected objects. He asks his mother for the money they have earned, straightens out the notes and carefully piles them on an old chest. While he is counting their savings, his mother knits and puffs on her pipe at the far end of the room.
‘Barely four thousand pesos in two months. I’ll have to eat the edition. It cost almost as much to have them printed.’
‘Did you pay the printer?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was a mistake. You should have told him: if I don’t sell them, I won’t pay you.’
‘But mamma, why should the printer suffer if the publisher and author can’t sell the books?’
‘He has to accept some risk.’
The old woman stops knitting and contemplates her son.
‘Literature will be the death of you.’
‘But I’ve always wanted to be a writer.’
‘But the Borges idea is old hat. Finished. How about changing fathers?’
Taken aback, Ariel tries to find words that will chime in with his mother’s ideas. ‘You always told me I was Jorge Luis Borges’ son.’
‘The important thing to know is who gave you birth, not who helped with it. The writer they’re all talking about now is Sábato. Why don’t you write something like him and present yourself as Sábato’s son?’
‘But I don’t look like Sábato. He’s skinny, and tiny. He’s a sad figure, in life and in literature.’
‘Jorge Luis was no great tango dancer either. Let’s see. Come here a minute.’
Borges Jr. trots resignedly over to his mother. She takes his hand, and looks him up and down.
‘No two ways about it, you’ll have to shave your head. Lose a lot of weight – it’ll do you good. Grow a bit of a moustache. Make sure you look sad. Very sad, all the time. “The natural son of Ernesto Sábato”: how does that sound?’
‘I’d prefer Cortázar.’
‘Cortázar! Cortázar!’
The old woman is upset. She picks up her knitting, and puffs again on her pipe.
‘I don’t know what people see in Cortázar. I couldn’t get beyond page five of Hopscotch.’
Borges stares gloomily down at the street through the repaired windows.
‘Today I met a man people are desperately searching for. Sitting on a bench in the rain. I know who he is. I could inform the people looking for him, but he doesn’t want them to find him.’
The old woman has not heard him, and he does not insist. She goes on knitting and smoking her pipe, but throws her son a pitying glance and comments: ‘Julio was very demanding. He liked to put his women into his books, and I was always ashamed to have so many people I didn’t know reading about me.’
Chapter 5
Murder at the Gourmet Club
Carvalho’s client is expensively dressed, although his sagging body, droopy cheeks and thick, ill-fitting glasses tend to undermine his rich man’s image. He signs the cheque with a gold Carrier pen, and his other wrist reveals a Carrier watch and a gold identity chain of the same family. He looks up and hands Carvalho the cheque.
‘I’ve never paid with so much pleasure.’
‘Señor Gorospe, if it gives you that much pleasure, I’d be very happy for you to pay me the same amount again.’
Carvalho’s satisfaction at the size of the cheque is obvious, and he makes no attempt to conceal the fact.
‘Paying and eating are two things one has to do with pleasure and without fear.’
‘Bravo! That’s exactly how I feel! Do you like to eat well?’
‘I like to know everything about what I am eating.’
‘But our memory is selective: I can only remember the outstanding meals I have had. I can’t even remember my wife. By revealing her adultery, you’ve saved me the maintenance I would have had to pay that cow. So you see, thanks to your investigations, I’ve saved a lot of money. Anyway, as I said, I always remember the outstanding meals, for example the ones I ate at Girardet’s every time I was there. Have you ever been to Girardet’s?’
Carvalho shakes his head.
‘Well then, when you get back to Europe you must make a point of going. Although the great Girardet is talking of retiring, as Robuchon did. He’ll also be retiring young. I can remember a papillote of scallops and crayfish I ate there that was truly remarkable, as was Troisgros’ Pantagruel potpourri and the chicken in salt that Bocuse prepared. Something as simple as that! Chicken in salt! Girardet is the best all-rounder, but Troisgros has some wonderful recipes too. Did you know he invented something called tango oranges?’
‘How do you make it? How do you eat it?’
‘It’s wonderfully simple, like everything Troisgros does. Oranges, grenadine, Grand Marnier, powdered sugar...but is it true you’ve never tried Troisgros’ Pantagruel potpourri?’
Carvalho shakes his head a second time.
‘Would you like to?’
‘I wouldn’t say no.’
‘Fantastic! Tomorrow we’re having one of our Gourmet Club dinners, and the pièce de résistance is Troisgros’ potpourri. You must come! It’s at Lucho Reyero’s restaurant. He’s a great professional and a gentleman. A black sheep from one of the oldest families of the oligarchy who’s finally come to his senses and become a restaurant-owner.’
Delighted to have found a kindred spirit in the detective, Gorospe takes a card out of his pocket and hands it to Carvalho with the most Carder of his collection of Carder hands.
The curtains open on the small stage at Tango Amigo, and a shimmering, pearly Adriana Varela appears, only a few feet from her audience. The bandoneon imposes silence.
They eat to forget
They drink to remember
A Croesus salad
Rich as cheesecake,
Woodcock in December.
Stendhal aubergines!
Tango oranges!
Slices of orange
A glass of Grand Marnier
Pomegranate juice
Sugar glacé.
Strips of orange peel
Pomegranate syrup
To create the perfume
Boil them up.
Stir the orange slices
In the Grand Marnier
A pink coulis on top
Decorate in your own way.
If anyone wants to know
What this has to do with tango
If you have to ask the question
You pay for the creation.
They eat to remember
What they’ve eaten in the past
They drink to forget
All they ‘ve lived and lost.
Lemon tangos
Vinegar tangos
Because nobody wants
Tangos sickly-sweet
Because the true gourmet
Eats to fill his fantasies
He doesn’t count the cost
Of disguising the dead meat.
They eat to remember
What they’ve eaten in the past
They drink to forget
All they’ve lived and lost.
They drink to forget
They eat to remember.
Croesus salad
Rich as cheesecake,
Woodcock in December,
Stendhal aubergines.
Tango oranges!
Splendidly drunk, Alma is surveying Muriel’s frustrated efforts to nibble at Alberto’s ear. Carvalho and Norman have decided to pay no attention, and sit watching Adriana acknowledge the applause after her song. Alma’s face reappears over the top of her glass, as she rediscovers her two companions:
‘So she said to me: “Don’t meddle in my life!” Fine, that’s just fine. From then on, I dropped all the friendly stuff. I said: “I hope you hand in your comparative essay on Neruda’s Canto General and Archibald MacLeish’s Conquistador on time,” then I turned my back on her and left.’
‘Left who?’ Carvalho replies, finally tearing his attention away from the night-club stage.
‘So I talk and I talk, and it’s like I’m speaking to a plank of wood. I was telling you about my fight with Muriel. She’s become hysterical, unbearable. She’s scared of standing up to her father, and scared of sorting out her relationship with Alberto. Just look at the pair of them. They’re dying to go to bed together. And sooner or later they will. Why do I have to get involved in all this?’
‘But are you talking about a student or a daughter?’ Norman asks.
Carvalho does not much like this observation, and frowns at Silverstein.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Alma wants to know.
‘That Muriel is only one of your students – intelligent, very nice, and so on, but only a student after all. It’s not as if she’s your daughter!’
‘Norman,’ Carvalho insists.
‘You stay out of this, Pepe. I know that, Norman: I don’t need you to remind me. What are you doing talking to me like a stranger, anyway? I’ll give you a good kick in the balls.’
She thrusts her face challengingly at Norman.
‘I don’t want a fight, Almita,’ Norman says, backing down.
‘But I do.’
Norman leaves the bar laughing, and Alma lunges after him, but Carvalho holds her back. She instantly collapses in his arms, looking for comfort. Carvalho hugs her, and strokes her cheeks. He needs to feel her skin, and when she speaks, her voice is thick with emotion too: ‘I’m more lonely than a lighthouse.’
‘You’ve got us, your friends.’
But Alma bursts into tears. Carvalho does not know what to do with her, so he hugs her more tightly.
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘That bastard Norman! He said Muriel wasn’t my daughter, that she was only my student!’
‘But that’s true, isn’t it?’
‘What is it to him if I see her as a daughter, as the daughter I lost?’
Carvalho leans on the bar, lifting his hands to his head, then cradling his head on his hands and elbows.
‘What’s wrong? Your head falling off?’
‘I don’t have the brain or the stomach for all these melodramas. And I’m sorry, I don’t feel like drinking to catch up with you. I’m going to dinner at a gourmet club tomorrow night and I want to have the liver of a choirboy’
‘There are choirboys with cirrhosis.’
Carvalho laughs despite himself, and Alma joins in. Norman comes back over to them, relieved to see them both in good spirits. He puts his arm round Alma’s shoulders.
‘So Almita, have you got over your little fit of bad temper?’
A centred, central, bull’s eye of a knee homes in on Norman’s groin. He doubles up in agony, his groans made all the more theatrical by his white face paint and the black eye make-up, make-up that darkly condemns the continuing laughter from Alma and from Pepe, although the latter is busily protecting his own crotch with both hands.
Norman is twisting and turning in his sleep, sweating and panting. Suddenly he sits up and cannot believe what he thinks he sees: Carvalho standing at the foot of his bed. He looks round to make sure he really is in his bedroom. He is.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to talk to you, but without Alma.’
‘What’s wrong? Has something happened to Almita?’
He leaps out of bed, and Carvalho stares at his erect penis. Norman realizes, and covers himself with his hands.
‘Just look how it gets while I’m asleep, but then when I really need it, it all shrivels up.’
Carvalho does not seem particularly interested. Norman pulls on a pair of jeans that float around his skinny hips. He fills a cup with coffee that has obviously been in the pot for days. Coffee and coffee-pot are the usual brands. Norman has not bothered to wash. He rubs his eyes and yawns, waiting for Carvalho to explain.
‘So, what’s up?’
‘Last night you had an argument with Alma over her relationship to Muriel.’
‘She was hysterical, and so was 1.1 became hy-ster-ical.’
‘It’s true. Sometimes you seem like a pair of hysterical old women.’
‘You can be quite hysterical yourself too.’
‘OK, so I’m a hysterical old woman as well. But that’s not the problem now. I have an idea who Muriel really is.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Muriel is the Captain’s daughter.’
Norman’s jaw drops, leaving his mouth at the mercy of all the flies in Buenos Aires. He gradually recovers as Carvalho goes on: ‘Muriel has never wanted to talk about her father or her family. Alma always thought it was because it was a difficult relationship: a father who was very authoritarian but who she loved, a mother who is sick or incapacitated in some way or other. When I went to the Boom Boom Peretti fight with Alma and Muriel, I could see that there was some link between the Captain and her. Afterwards Muriel herself admitted she had seen her father at the boxing club. She told us so.’
‘This is like a Brazilian soap opera!’
‘At first I was worried that Muriel was a spy planted by the Captain in our – well, let’s call it our group. But if she had been a spy, she wouldn’t have said her father was at the boxing match.’
‘Have you said anything about this to Alma?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not quite so simple. Muriel appears to be the Captain’s daughter – but is she really?’
Norman buries his face in his hands.
‘That’s enough, I think I know where you’re heading.’
‘Don’t come the Method actor with me. It’s not the moment. I went to see the grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. All I wanted to know was whether the Captain had been a normally registered father, with everything above board.’
‘Well?’
‘There are no records. It’s impossible to tell even whether he is married or not, or when the marriage took place – it’s as if a screen has been put up to protect the private life of a Captain who has too many names. His real one is Doñate, but Muriel is registered for Alma’s classes as Muriel Ortínez. There is no trace of where he lives either, simply the mention: “classified information”. Muriel is registered as the daughter of a single mother, and her surname is meant to be her mother’s: Ortínez. But she is exactly the age that Alma and Raúl’s daughter would be
.’
‘I don’t want to hear it! I don’t!’
‘I haven’t proved anything yet. How could I without blood tests? But at the very least, it’s curious. I asked the woman who attended me if I could take away the Captain’s dossier, but she would only let me look at it there. There was one scrap of paper that had fallen out of all the rest, where it talked of a meeting between Captain Gorostizaga – and that’s one of the names our Captain uses – and all the members of the Tourón-Modotti family. There’s nothing unusual in that, except that in this case there is a specific mention of a grandfather trying to establish what happened to his granddaughter. Can you guess the grandfather’s name?’
Norman cannot and will not guess it. Carvalho shrugs and turns to leave the room.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to have dinner at a Gourmet Club.’
‘Don’t make fun of me. Aren’t you going to tell me the name of the grandfather who was in touch with the Captain?’
‘Evaristo Tourón.’
He does not need to ask, but Norman nevertheless repeats the rhetorical question several times: ‘Raúl’s father?’ Carvalho does not reply, and Norman does not really expect him to.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve called my uncle in Barcelona and left him several messages. He doesn’t seem to be in his nieces’ house. But I left the question for him: “why were you in touch with the Captain?”’
‘You should ask Raúl that as well. Have you still heard nothing from him?’
‘Not a thing. Vanished into thin air. And if he does reappear, I can’t create false hopes. Just imagine if all this is mere coincidence and mistaken intuition on my part – and then it all explodes in the faces of Muriel, Raúl and Alma herself.’
Carvalho makes for the door.
‘What, you’re going just like that?’
‘Just like what?’
‘Aren’t we going to have a bit of a cry together?’ Norman asks to no avail, because Carvalho has gone, and Norman is left to shed his tears in utter solitude.
Doña Lina Sánchez de Pardieu purses her lips primly as she asks: ‘How old do you think I am?’
Carvalho knows she is eighty-two, but also knows he cannot tell her that.