El Gordo realises something’s wrong, the eyes of his acquaintances confirm it but can’t explain what. With a shrug of his shoulders, as if to say too late to turn back the clock, he waits for me to sit back down before he answers:
“Couldn’t abide Ezcurra Echezarreta. That’s common knowledge isn’t it?” he asks his table companions. “I don’t know if it was the other one’s idea or his, but when Neri came up with that plebiscite on Ezcurra our beloved mayor was one of the most enthusiastic defenders of the yes vote. And if you don’t believe me ask Sacamata what he went to buy from him a few days later. Champagne. The mayor sent out for a box of champagne. What were they celebrating? Wasn’t Christmas or New Year or anybody’s birthday. Find who drank those six bottles of champagne and you’ll find who killed Ezcurra, or who wanted him dead at least.”
“AND WHAT ELSE was he going to tell me?” I answer in exasperation. “He knows I’m his grandson. What else was he going to say? Yes, I sold him the champagne, a box of Chandon Extra Brut seventy-seven?” We’ve just left Don Alfredo Sacamata’s general stores-cum-minimarket, we walk down the sidewalk under the cowering, indecisive sun, nodding to the greetings of acquaintances, most directed at Guido but a few by now evidently at me as well.
“Fefe”—Guido tries to calm me down—“why believe Gordo Bartolo over him? I’ve told you, Gordo’s a nasty piece of work, I’ve already had a word with my old man a couple of times to give him his cards, sets himself up as a union delegate he does and fills the others’ heads, but my old man says he prefers him because he’s a fraud and at the end of the day he can be bought unlike someone who takes it seriously …” He pauses realising the gist of his obsessions has led him away from my own.
“It’s all right, Sacamata probably said he doesn’t remember to protect me, or to cover my grandfather, or himself. Supposing there was no box of champagne. That it’s just another piece of Malihuel folklore. My grandfather didn’t toast with champagne, he toasted with a bottle of Chianti he’d been keeping for the occasion since his last trip to Europe. What’s not in doubt is that he was one of those who sent Ezcurra to the wall right? The whole town knew and tried to hide it from me. Isn’t that right? You too.”
Guido walks beside me but doesn’t reply.
“YOU’RE SURE, you’re dead sure, he doesn’t know I’m Echezarreta’s grandson?” I grill Guido and let go of his arm when I notice him wince in pain.
“Yes Fefe, I’ve told you,” he answers wearily. “And I’ve told you what I think. Why don’t you leave things the way they are?”
“Because things are for shit the way they are. Come on, let’s just ring now we’re here.”
“Here” happens to be the neighbouring town of Elordi, where Professor Alfio Scuppa, erstwhile head of Fiscal School No 16, which included the high school too in those days, has retired to enjoy—so to speak—his autumn years in the company of his children, who at least as many years ago again left Malihuel in search of broader, or at least more lucrative, horizons. The house, with its flat corrugated-iron roof, its white stippled plasterwork and its railings of iron lozenges, is not unworthy of the prosperous architectural and phonic ugliness of Elordi, which, rather than a typical rural town, looks like a chunk of suburbs transplanted en masse to one of those points of the pampas whose only distinguishing features are latitude and longitude. I ring the bell once, twice, three times, with no result, not even the muffled echo of the ring from inside; having more local expertise than myself, Guido claps, listens, warns me he’s half deaf the old man is, claps again until the door opens noiselessly and through the crack a tiny flap-eared old man with a blotchy face like a Jackson Pollock done in melanin on parchment pokes his head out. How angry I am, I think to myself.
“Hullo Don Alfio, remember me?” Guido shouts at the figure that staggers smiling towards us.
“Matías? Is that you?” he asks, his voice tremulous with emotion. Was this the man, I ask myself, who was the terror of schoolchildren, who personally combed the streets hunched over the wheel of his Citroën 3CV in search of truants? “I drop in at least once a year but it’s no use, he always gets me mixed up with my brother, the model student, who’s never been to see him,” Guido tells me without bothering to whisper in my ear.
“No Don Alfio. It’s Guido his brother, remember me?”
“Of course I’ve forgotten”—he gives himself away—“I never forget a single one of my old students, every year when Matías comes I ask about you. You used to put me through the mill in your day,” he says, then fastens his eyes magnified by the lenses on me. “And you are … Peralta?”
The inside of the house I find pleasanter, and it isn’t hard to see why—on a yellowing plastic imitation-lace tablecloth at an optimum distance from a gas fire that hisses emphatically and keeps the kettle on for maté, shine the beloved and eminently caressable forms of a state-of-the-art computer. Throughout Don Alfio’s account I’ll cast the longing glances of a castaway in its direction.
“They came to look for me,” he explains, his eyes opening wide like a child’s. “Dr Alexander, Mendonca the pharmacist, Casarico, Don León, the Banco Nación manager what was his name … Moneta, yes, thank you, you see what old age does to you, there was a time when I could reel off all the classes from fifty-three on, student by student … and Don Julián Echezarreta of course, the mayor, leading them. We’re going to talk to the chief of police, they told me, about this Ezcurra boy. We can’t sit around with our arms folded with what’s going on. Well what can I say?”—he answers a question from Guido—“I was a little alarmed, they’d already killed a nephew of mine in Rosario, but well Ezcurra had been a student of mine as you all had and besides I thought if such important people from town are going there must be some reason for it so I went along. I can’t quite remember, Thursday or Friday it must’ve been, what I am sure about is that classes hadn’t started yet because otherwise I couldn’t have made it at that time. Somebody’d asked for an appointment beforehand, I don’t know who. Neri was waiting in his office with his feet on the desk, that much I can remember, I mean how rude, and his gun too, feigning indifference; if he was trying to put the fear of God in us he succeeded with me. He didn’t even invite us to sit down, there were two or three chairs on our side and they stood there a waste of space till the end of the meeting. Up till then we’d been full of resolve, marching along like a platoon under that ferocious sun, who does this Neri fellow think he is, he’d have to listen to us now, us Malihuenses aren’t the sort to get pushed around, some of us may even’ve cast a glance at the statue of Comandante Pedernera in the middle of the square to give us strength before going into the gloomy headquarters, well I don’t know if you’ve been told about the Comandante …” he says and I tell him I have. “So far so good,” he goes on, “but once we went into Neri’s office our momentum evaporated, nobody dared to start, a lot of clearing of throats and shuffling of shoes and nudging till the Superintendent decided he’d had enough fun and spoke. Gentlemen … How can I help you? To what do I owe the honour of this visit? he said and the mayor summoned his courage and says Listen Superintendent, we’ve come on behalf of the community to bring to your attention the need to do something about this situation we’re all so concerned about, or words to that effect, and Neri, his eyes twinkling with amusement, And what situation would we be talking about, Don Julián, who getting bolder said The one you’ve been consulting us about constantly over the last week, we sincerely hope in good faith, which is why we’re here, and the Superintendent as if it were just dawning on him said Ahh … so that’s it, you’ve come about Ezcurra, you should’ve said, and he frowned—What about Ezcurra? What have you come to tell me? You want me to leave things the way they are? No can do. A decision has to be made and time is of the essence, he snapped at us. The atmosphere was quite suffocating with all of us crammed in there,” Don Alfio recalls, “and the ceiling fan barely moving the air and there was me having to stand on tiptoe to see over people’s heads, the
mayor of all people standing there gulping, Superintendent, I think we can stop beating about the bush, all of us here are figures of some standing in the community and as such we’ve more than once been obliged to take difficult decisions”—Don Alfio repeats what he remembers of my grandfather’s words—“but the idea is not to burden people with problems who’ve got quite enough of their own, rather to solve them for them. Can you imagine if I bothered you every time I had to dismiss a member of staff? Or if Don Alfio were to ask us one by one for permission to expel a student?” And then Don Alfio says, “At that everyone turned round to look at me but as I couldn’t think of anything to say, Casarico or Dr Alexander intervened I can’t remember which, Superintendent, they said, what our mayor’s trying to tell you is that we don’t approve of all this discussion. Shouldn’t we be more discreet? There was no need to consult us in the first place, we fully trust your judgement, but now things have got this far let’s hope they don’t go any further. What are you up to, do you want the whole town to find out?” Don Alfio recalls and adds, “and I still didn’t catch on. The mayor took up the baton and went on, Superintendent we’ve specifically come to ask you to put a stop to the whole affair and Neri says Fine, I get the picture. But who’s going to take responsibility where the military authorities are concerned. You? Because I can’t see Don Manuel Rosas Paz taking it lying down. Unless of course you risk talking to him yourselves. That’s not a bad idea eh? What do you think? You have a word with him and I promise I’ll talk to the authorities. Deal? It didn’t sound like a bad idea to me what the Superintendent was saying,” says Don Alfio, “but in the faces I could see I discovered not relief but panic. I don’t think we’re seeing eye to eye Superintendent, the mayor stammered and only then,” says Don Alfio, “did the penny drop. Had I realised, I’d never have been party to it, but I was already there and it was too late to turn back,” he stammers, the growing trembling of his jaw and hands perhaps illustrating his disquiet at the time. “I believe, I want to believe that at that moment they all wanted the earth to swallow them up but it was too late to turn back and Mendonca the pharmacist said Listen Superintendent, this may be a small town but we’re aware of what’s going on in this country. Malihuel isn’t an island, danger lurks here too. Are we going to put our heads in the sand and be grateful that only the neighbouring towns have been affected for the time being? And what do we do when they come for us? It’ll be too late. We can’t take things lying down. We can’t afford to miss the train of history yet again. You know better than anyone Superintendent how much pressure there is to move all the public offices—including your own—to Toro Mocho or Fuguet. A lot of people say this town is dead, and if they take away our status as the administrative centre of the county it’ll be dead and buried. Think about it Superintendent. It isn’t much they’re asking of us when you come down to it, just adding our grain of sand. And the Superintendent had to fight to keep a straight face and then, all innocence, he says to us Oh good heavens. You’ve come to ask me to kill him then. You should’ve said. Fine. How do we do it? He sprang it on us and this time it was Dr Alexander with his customary sangfroid who pulled the chestnuts out of the fire. We’ll leave that up to you Superintendent. I think I speak for everyone when I say that from now on the less we know about the matter the better. The Superintendent must’ve decided he’d had enough fun for one day and after thanking us sarcastically for our civic-mindedness he said goodbye and shook hands with us one by one,” says Don Alfio and looks in shock at his fragile right hand as if it still bore the traces of the offending imprint. “On our way out,” he adds, “we quickly dispersed by some tacit agreement, in case anyone should spot us. I don’t remember saying goodbye to anyone.”
“And that’s all.” Don Alfio takes a loud and futile slurp on his empty maté and sits there staring vacantly at it. To escape from myself for a little while, from the boundless disquiet in my chest and the anguish garrotting my throat, I ask him if I can borrow his computer for a while. Delighted to have found a kindred spirit he opens the gates of paradise for me and over the hour I spend checking my mail and answering messages I manage to shake off the asphyxiating feeling that the universe ends at the edges of this quadrangular patch of Santa Fe pampas. Guido sticks around and keeps up a conversation with Don Alfio that this time next year he’ll attribute to his brother, and, before we leave, Don Alfio asks me for a favour—can I sort out some problems he’s been having opening a short cut to a Web address, which turns out to be a Hungarian website devoted to child pornography. On the way back Guido drives the delivery truck in silence through the brown fields untransfigured by the sunset. “They went to look for my grandfather too, but he wouldn’t go,” he says at one point. “Not in working hours he told them,” Guido adds and I nod as if I understood.
MENDONCA HAD ALREADY MENTIONED something to me about the delegation that rainy afternoon I’d been to see him at his pharmacy: “But there came a point when we drew the line. A delegation of us went to see Superintendent Neri. To ask him to abandon his designs. The cream of the community were there: Don León Benoit, Eugenio Casarico, Don Honorio Moneta, whom I don’t know if … oh you do, Sacamata, Senior of course, and your grandfather naturally. Let me see, have I forgotten anyone, erm … I shan’t give the names of those who declined to take part so that their memory won’t even live on in local gossip … We assembled outside the door of the headquarters as a man, and knocked, demanding an immediate appointment with the chief of police. He agreed to see us when he found out who it was. We want to know what you’re up to Superintendent, we began without further ado, and very soon the room was ringing with the yells of half a dozen people heatedly arguing, the Superintendent banging his fist on the desk saying Who are you to tell me how to do my job and us answering If we don’t who will and demanding he give his word that things would go no further. He gave it us after a bitter verbal exchange and I now realise our greatest mistake was to trust him, to treat him as one of us, to consider him … a gentleman. He abused our good faith you understand. Gave us guarantees.
It’s easy in retrospect to say the military and the police back then lacked any sense of honour, but in those days most of us still thought … I reproach myself bitterly anyhow. Our gullibility cost the boy his life. It’s hard to forgive yourself … The chief of police has listened to reason, we informed the town when we left. That may have been a mistake too. We made everyone drop their guard as it were. But we were acting in good faith. Our most serious crime was naivety.”
“OH,” says Don Alfredo Sacamata senior that night, when our paths cross at the bar table after we’ve got back from Don Alfio’s, “I didn’t go. They came looking for me that they did. I don’t want any trouble with the police I told them. If you want to go you go. You have to walk on eggshells where things like that are concerned,” he pours into the scathing ears of Iturraspe, the indifferent ears of Porfirio Dupuy, the uncomfortable ears of Don León, the irked ears of Guido, the ulcerated ears of yours truly. “It was none of my business after all. I didn’t have anything against the Ezcurra boy but—”
“We’re not going to start with that again are we Alfredito,” Don León interrupts him. “Everyone did what they thought best and your own conscience is the best judge of any mistakes you might’ve made. The only thing I will add,” he says looking right at me, “is that I was there and I saw how your grandfather did everything possible to get Superintendent Neri to change his course. You have my word,” he adds unnecessarily, and not knowing what to reply I sit there staring at him for a while; but he doesn’t say any more. I thank him for the white lie with a nod of the head and leave my head tilted slightly until they’ve left.
WHAT I REMEMBER MOST about my grandfather was his ability with his hands, the grace and ease with which he connected with the material world; it was people that were always the problem for him. At the end of the backyard by the chicken coop, with which it shared the same long corrugated-iron roof, stood the shed where he worked. The cem
ent floor always covered in a fine layer of sawdust and dirt, the carpenter’s workbench with the edges bitten by countless missed sawstrokes, the lone green lampshade dangling on a long flex strung from the ceiling, the walls and corners invisible behind the profusion of objects hanging or leaning on them, the peculiar quality of the sunlight coming through a dusty window … Entire siestas I could spend studying the various traces of my grandfather’s handiwork, like an archaeologist excavating some ruins to deduce from them the characteristics of a world that would never be mine. It was as if I already knew that that ability, that familiarity with the purely material side of things, was forbidden to my purely mental intelligence, not for now but for ever. I, who slip in and out of impregnable software as smoothly as a hand into a silk glove, have always been incapable of hammering a nail without bending it, sawing a plank other than in a zigzag, or unravelling a tangle of string without feeling that it’s a living thing whose only reason for existence in the cosmic scheme of things is to exasperate me with an obstinacy I can’t help but take personally. So I’d sit and watch him as he worked—I wanted to locate that knowledge, discover what there was in the movement of his hands that made the block of rough wood an eddy of dark water flowing beneath his eyes and fingers, or whether it was his eyes or his hands that possessed the gift of ordering space into precise geometries using just nails and bits of wood and chicken wire. Nothing inert was strange to him—he was equally at home welding and riveting wrought-iron gates and lamp posts as carving a piece of marble for a tabletop or night table, or bending a wooden plank as if it were soft to make a mailbox. And that was why the encyclopaedia of that knowledge, the visible sign not only of everything he’d made, but also of everything he was capable of making, was his shadow board—a vast sheet of wood made vaster by memory, as long as a school blackboard and twice as high, on which all the instruments of his trade were hung within reach of his sure hand, some with shapes so recondite that I could spend hours developing theories about their potential functions, and beside whose complexity, the frequently ordinary use my grandfather’s hands put them to at my request was usually rather disappointing. Each one had a precise place assigned to it on the board, a cast patiently moulded by my grandfather that it and only it could occupy. Where someone of a more practical bent would make do with a nail, he’d place a wooden block whose convexity would snugly receive the inner curvature of a saw handle or the concavities of a hammerhead, or he’d cut and bend some sheet metal to provide a made-to-measure resting place for a wrench or a pair of pliers. I sometimes think that nothing in this world represents him as well as that shadow board—it says more about him than all the papers he signed as a provincial lawyer and politician; and I know we never had a better time than when he used to let me watch him work and without any explanation whatsoever, without uttering a single word, he’d show me what the different tools were for and the particular way of bringing out the best in each material. But I’ve never got to grips with the mute obstinacy of the material world, which must be why I ended up devoting my life to computers, every bit as irrational, capricious and crafty as their makers. And what’s true of me, capable of howling insults at the flush button on a toilet because it refuses to stop hissing and dripping, was true of my grandfather, Don Julián Echezarreta, with people. The lowliest member of staff on the ladder was just as likely to drive him to distraction as the provincial governor; his reactions were always disproportionate and turned out to be the death of him. Apoplexy, diagnosed Dr Alexander, not without elegance, and at the funeral, which wasn’t here but in Rosario, I can remember my grandmother’s stern expression as she told my mother, “Cry all you like but stop repeating ‘Papuchi Papuchi’ out loud,” and how snugly the wax doll fitted into the wood and satin bed made to measure for it. His face wore an almost happy expression; perhaps—a secret kept even from himself—he’d always wanted to rejoin the peaceful existence of inert matter, which had never let him down. He almost always cared about me, but I think he knew I secretly found him a disappointment. He was barely capable of being a grandfather and, for the three long months of summer at least, I asked him to be a father to me as well.
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