The Buenos Aires Quintet

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  ‘That’s hard to say. Somewhere between seventy and seventy-two?’

  ‘Eighty-two!’

  It sounds almost like a shout of triumph at her capacity to defeat the ravages of time.

  ‘And that’s despite not being able to look after myself, like a lot of others do. My husband was a military man, on horseback, the cavalry, though it became a tank regiment. I know every barracks in Argentina where there are tanks and armour. My five children were born in them – and the youngest is María Asunción. I named her after an aunt of mine who was from Santander in Spain – do you know it? I loved her a lot, the way children always love spinster aunts. It’s true, isn’t it? The way they love grandparents too. Just like I loved my grandparents, and my children love me, except the ones María Asunción has had. It’s as though I don’t exist for her. I haven’t seen her in twenty years. She writes to me, calls me on the phone. Though less and less. I don’t even know where she lives, but I know she must be very unhappy, because her letters are increasingly sad and odd. Would you like to read the latest?’

  Freedom of movement in the Leopoldo Lugones geriatric facility depends entirely on the old people’s ability to get about, and when Doña Lina stands up she reaches for a stick hanging from the arm of her chair and accepts Carvalho’s assistance. As they shuffle along the corridor to her room, she recalls her absent daughter.

  ‘My other children come to see me sometimes, although it’s not very often. They never write or ring me. María Asunción never visits me, but she writes all the time.’

  The room is for two people, and in the other bed lies the statue of an old woman who does not move, but stares endlessly up at the ceiling tiles.

  ‘She’s a vegetable. She doesn’t feel anything, or remember anything. She doesn’t even cry.’

  She reaches for María Asunción’s letter in a sandalwood box which starts to play the ‘Barcarolle’ when she lifts the lid. She hands it to Carvalho, and while he reads it, her lips repeat the words she seems to have learnt by heart:

  Dear Mother,

  I know you are well, and I’m taking advantage of feeling a little better in my own mind to write to you and tell you I’m fine too and that I love you, although I can’t come and see you for the usual reasons of not being able to get there. Ernesto’s job takes up a lot of his time, and I’m part of that. You are a military widow, so you know we do not have the same freedom of movement as civilians do, and on top of that, Ernesto has always had very special tasks assigned to him.

  Next time I’ll send you a photo of me. One day when I’m feeling pretty – do you remember how you used to say I was the prettiest girl in Rosario when we were in the barracks there, and the prettiest in San Miguel when we were stationed in Tucumán?

  A million kisses,

  Your daughter

  MARIA ASUNCION

  ‘Her handwriting isn’t as nice as it used to be. You can see her hand shakes. I reckon my poor María Asunción is ill, and she doesn’t want me to worry. She was such a lovely girl. Her father used to say it was all planned: I started with her feet and kept on right up to her head.’

  ‘Do you know her husband?’

  ‘No.’

  She is not trying to hide anything. She really never has met her son-in-law.

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Doñate, I think he’s called Doñate.’

  ‘Don’t they have any children?’

  ‘I don’t know. María Asunción never told me so.’

  ‘Where does your daughter live?’

  ‘All I know is, it’s somewhere in Buenos Aires. She must live in a part where there are lots of trees and birds, because she often mentions them in her letters.’

  She insists on seeing him to the door. How did you find me? Mutual friends. He does not want to tell her that in the document where María Asunción is listed as a single mother, she is said to be the daughter of Antonio Pardieu Bolos and Adelina Sánchez Fierro. Before Carvalho leaves the old people’s home in Mar del Plata, he telephones Don Vito and arranges to meet him as soon as he gets back to Buenos Aires.

  ‘I haven’t got long. I don’t want to miss my dinner tonight at the Gourmet Club.’

  In the Patio Bulrich, Altofini recalls the days when he was a conspicuous consumer, even before buying was known as consuming, and being rich was not yet called having great purchasing power. He looks himself up and down in the shopfront mirrors, after examining button by button and stitch by stitch almost all the goods in the tailors, the imported shirt shops, the delicatessens and champagne stores which evoke for him nights of splendour and tango.

  ‘It was a good idea of yours to meet here, Pepe. The Patio Bulrich is the symbol of the new consumer Buenos Aires; but I still don’t understand why we couldn’t meet where we always do, in our office.’

  ‘I didn’t want anyone bursting in on us, or people overhearing what I have to say. We’re at a very delicate moment, Don Vito.’

  ‘We are personally, or the world is?’

  ‘The world doesn’t exist, but we do. I’m talking about the real reason for me being here in Buenos Aires. My cousin. I’ve come to the conclusion I’ve been looking in completely the wrong direction. I think I didn’t want to know the truth because deep down I didn’t want to go back to Spain. I know who kept Raúl’s baby when she was abducted, and I have to find his lair before Raúl does. But I have to do all this without Alma knowing, because either I do find the people responsible and things come to a head, or I’ve got it all wrong, and I’ll have created false expectations in her.’

  ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘We have to follow the girl so she can lead us to her home.’

  ‘Have you identified her?’

  ‘I think so. She’s one of Alma’s students.’

  ‘Good God!’

  Don Vito’s face takes on an expression of theatrical amazement, which it keeps through all their journey and through the thousand times he expresses his astonishment before they pull up at the faculty exit where they expect to see Muriel. Carvalho leaves it to his partner to philosophize on the paradoxes of Buenos Aires: ‘Twelve million inhabitants, and we all know each other!’

  ‘The girl now goes by the name of Muriel Ortínez Ortínez. But on her birth register she is Pardieu Pardieu, and there is no record of a home address. That is confidential information, which gives some idea of what kind of VIP her father or parents must be.’

  He parks his car close to the faculty. In the fifteen minutes before the end of the lecture, he goes over Muriel’s personal details with Don Vito. As he does so, he realizes he is emotionally affected, as if he were describing a very special member of his own family, someone who needed protection.

  ‘She shouldn’t know you’re following her. I don’t want to scare her. Don’t get her worried. Don’t arouse her suspicions.’

  ‘Why are you talking to me as if I was an idiot?’

  ‘I can’t do it, she knows me.’

  Muriel comes out in a group of students, though it is Alberto she is closest to. He has tied his long blond hair in a ponytail with a black band, and is explaining something with a show of great affection.

  ‘She does have a family likeness,’ Don Vito concedes.

  In the soothing kitchen of Chez Reyero, a meeting of cooks and kitchen assistants is taking place. In amidst the shouting and gesticulating, one man is noticeable for his passivity. His large starched hat and his haughty expression mark him out as a French chef, not merely because he is sneering so openly at his companions, but because his mouth is shaped that way because of the millions of times it has had to pronounce the diphthong ‘eu’. His scorn is more than matched in return by that of his workmates, and in particular by the union representative Magín, who is the one addressing the meeting.

  ‘Brothers.’

  ‘What about us women?’ sh
outs one of the female kitchen workers.

  ‘Brothers and sisters. I understand your position, but as I see it, the only mistake is that the management did not inform you that on your day off there would be this special dinner.’

  ‘They’re taking away our only day off for a miserable extra payment!’ one of the chefs protests.

  ‘Why don’t the gourmets’ wives do the cooking?’ the first woman adds.

  ‘You’re perfectly right, but the owner committed himself to the dinner, and he can’t pull out now, just a few hours before it’s due to take place.’

  ‘How about a compromise solution: those who want to stay can stay, and those who want to leave can go,’ another chef suggests. ‘What’s the grand chef going to do?’

  ‘He’s a frog-eating French scab of a strikebreaker,’ a strident second female voice declares.

  The grand chef replies disdainfully:

  ‘Mot, je suis un artiste. Ce soir je deviendrai heureux de pouvoir faire la cuisine pour les plus importants gourmets de Buenos Aires. Je ne comprends pas des actitudes gremialistes, corporativistes par rapport à l’art magique de la cuisine.’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ everyone else shouts in unison.

  ‘Hands up all those willing to stay,’ Magín says, leading by example.

  Three others follow suit – two assistant chefs and a woman.

  ‘Brothers, it’s a promise we should keep. In times like these, when workers are more or less defenceless, we shouldn’t give our boss the excuse he needs to throw us all out on the street. If tonight’s a success, he won’t be able to get rid of us. I don’t know whether we’ll be able to cope if I’m on my own as the maître and in the kitchen there are only the grand chef and three assistants.’

  ‘Tell the Great Exploiter that he can count on the grand chef the grand maître and three great potlicking, arselicking sons of bitches.’

  The words are from the same irascible woman assistant, and they cause uproar. Several of those who are planning to stay try to get at her, but Magín soon leaves them all to it, and sets off through the restaurant in search of Don Lucho, the proprietor. He is an elegant man in his forties, dressed somewhere between Milan and London, standing in his office which is carpeted in green and has a practice golf hole in it. When he hears tapping on the door, Lucho Reyero reluctantly lowers his putter. Magín pokes his head in.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Well? What has the Supreme Soviet ordained?’

  ‘I’ll be in charge of waiting on table, the grand chef is keeping his word, and so are three assistants. That’s all you can count on.’

  ‘The others aren’t going to last long here. I want you to make their lives hell so they leave as soon as possible.’

  ‘I’ll do what I’ve said I will, but I’m no bounty-hunter. It was their day off, and they’re entitled to decide what they do with it.’

  ‘OK, Lenin. Just make sure everything goes perfectly, otherwise the day after tomorrow I personally will organize a lock-out, and they can all go and run hotdog stands.’

  Reyero waves the other man out. Left on his own, he goes over to a bar, takes out a cut-glass decanter and serves himself a large tumbler of whisky, which he downs like water. Then he stares out of his office window down into the restaurant, pleased at the impression of harmonious luxury created by the wooden panelling inlaid with white and purple, the heavy curtains and the rest of the décor.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to start.’

  Magín has made his way back to the kitchen and casts an eye over the different courses. First course, seafood papillote with scallops and crayfish with coriander (scallops, crayfish, onion, spring onions, butter, white wine, tomato sauce, chopped coriander, pepper; salt and pepper to taste). Main course: Pantagruel potpourri (knuckle of beef, ox and lamb, with shoulder of salt lamb, chicken legs, oxtails, carrots, turnips, leeks, sticks of celery, French beans, red beans, rice, vinegar, peanut and walnut oil, butter, shallots, cloves of garlic, parsley, chervil, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, sea salt, pink pepper, sugar, bouquet of herbs, mustard, gherkins). Desserts: tango oranges (oranges, grenadine, Grand Marnier, powdered sugar), kiwi sorbet (kiwis, freshly-squeezed orange and lemon juice, in a chilled glass), Mont Blanc aux marrons glacés (marrons glacés, Chantilly cream, Chartreuse) and soufflé aux fleurs d’acacia ‘Liliana Mazure’ (bunches of acacia flowers, Armagnac, eggs, butter, confectioner’s custard, caster and icing sugar, salt). Magín likes to see work well done, even though this spirit of perfection is not shared by his trade union colleagues – but Magín himself does not identify with what he sees as the grand chef’s abject submission.

  At that very moment, chef Drumond is inspecting the different preparations with the satisfied look of an emperor’s quartermaster general. He claps his hands in childish delight, and dances a waltz with a whisk for partner. He waltzes over to the giant freezer, and opens the door. Great hunks of meat hang down – sides of beef, whole lambs, pigs’ carcasses, and on the marble slabs a whole array of produce from the galactic supermarket. Then, despite the freezing temperature, chef Drumond’s face turns bright scarlet.

  Güelmes accepts the Havana cigar Ostiz proffers him half-heartedly, as if he might change his mind at the last moment. They are in the most private room of the newly rebuilt El Aleph Club. On one wall an inscription in gold script by Borges reads: ‘In republics founded by nomads, the contribution of outsiders is indispensable for all building tasks.’

  ‘I can’t spare you much time. I have a pressing engagement this evening.’

  ‘Dinner at the Gourmet Club.’

  Ostiz is forced to accept that the Development Minister is aware of one of his weaknesses. He waits for the minister or Morales to make the first move. It is not going to be the director-general of security who does so; he is taking his orders from Güelmes, and the minister takes orders from no one. He has got everything calculated in his mind, in his eyes, and in the measured way he goes on.

  ‘One of the guests at that dinner is Captain Doñate. I believe that is his real name. He only uses it on occasions like this: but I’ve no need to tell you anything about Captain Doñate, have I? Captain Doñate is your own personal household cavalry, and you are his bedside financier.’

  ‘Captain Doñate is a hero of the Malvinas war.’

  ‘And of the dirty war.’

  ‘I still prefer to call it our war against subversion.’

  ‘A foreign writer who came to the first book fair under democratic rule in 1984 told me it felt as if Argentina hadn’t changed at all. Of course President Alfonsín, a democratically elected leader, made the speech, but alongside him were the same president of the writers’ union who had been there through all the years of the dictatorship, the same cardinal, and in the second row, the same virtual head of the employers’ association, namely yourself.’

  ‘Videla and the other military men have already paid the price for their dictatorship.’

  ‘But not their civilian backers.’

  ‘What do you want to do? Put eighty per cent of the population in jail?’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate. By the end it was only a few of you.’

  ‘Right at the end. But I don’t think you came here to discuss the ins and outs of the military government with me.’

  Güelmes stays silent, knowing his silence and sense of security will unnerve Ostiz, however much he is used to playing Russian roulette.

  ‘A weak link has appeared in the chain you and your friends formed during that military government. Captain Doñate kept the daughter of a “disappeared” couple, and it was you who organized the operation to conceal the fact. It was you who financed Doñate and his group, you who organized the splendid isolation which he abandons now and then to commit acts of kidnapping, torture, murder, all with complete impunity...’

  ‘Prove it.’

  ‘For now we can
prove the relationship between María Asunción Pardieu, Ostiz and Captain Doñate in the case of Eva María Tourón, daughter of Raúl Tourón and Berta Modotti. Eva María Tourón was registered as the daughter of a single mother, María Asunción Pardieu, and given the name Muriel Pardieu Pardieu. In fact, María Asunción Pardieu was married to Captain Doñate. And now she no longer calls herself Pardieu, but Ortínez, and Muriel believes her own real name is Muriel Ortínez Ortínez. And even the false birth certificate has disappeared. Are you beginning to remember now?’

  Ostiz avoids Güelmes and appeals directly to the director-general.

  ‘Is there any proof of all this?’

  ‘It’s been collected by someone who doesn’t much like you, Ostiz. And with good reason.’

  Ostiz closes his eyes, then stares indignantly down at his cigar. It has gone out. He takes three deep breaths, then relights it. He puffs on it a few times to make sure it is properly lit, then addresses the two men.

  ‘Before I accept any of what you are saying, I’d like to know what I stand to gain from this.’

  ‘It’s more what you don’t lose.’

  ‘You aren’t after me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Only Captain Doñate?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Can you get to him and keep my possible involvement a secret?’

  ‘We want nothing better.’

  ‘So what use am I to you?’

  ‘We want concrete proof of the Eva María Tourón case so we can start legal proceedings against Captain Doñate. In exchange, your name will not appear anywhere. No one will find out that you created the infrastructure for the Captain to continue to operate under civilian rule – the New Argentina Foundation, the house you bought him registered in the name of one of your front men, the security system that has made him invulnerable. No one will find out you had a few awkward disappeared people killed, and most recently – only yesterday it seems – you arranged for the death of Gálvez, also known as Robinson Crusoe.’

  ‘That idiot started to spoil everything. It was his son who told you all this, wasn’t it?’