“AH, THE BLESSED LETTER,” Don León Benoit had smiled understandingly, who’d turned up a while after Sacamata had left. “Yes, I heard about that too. There was no letter, least as far as I know. The lengths some people’ll go to to salve their consciences. If you asked back in those days people would swear on God, the Virgin Mary and all the saints of the year that the letter didn’t exist but that anyhow somebody else’d written it. Ask people nowadays, the way you are, and they were queuing up outside the Ezcurras’ front door, all clutching their envelopes to slip underneath.”
“SO AS SHOWTIME APPROACHES like the Super sends out a car and we get in me, him, Sergeant Chacón and some cop from Leopardi driving his name’ll come to me in a minute. The lagoon says the Super and there’s me well chuffed ’cause I wouldn’t miss Sandro for the world. The causeway was like this, bumper to bumper it was and we radioed ahead to the unit stationed on the island che set up a roadblock this way and the Super goes stick the siren on and off we set down the oncoming lane. The grain of sand as we called him look at that eh I just remembered they had him located at the hotel bar, put a man on all the exits and if he moves stick close to him the Super said, we’ll be right there.”
“Ezcurra’d gone to review the show,” Iturraspe supplies rather gloomily.
“Why grain of sand?” I ask.
“Dunno, it was the Super’s name for him God knows why, and we all started using it ’cause he seemed quite fond of it. The grain of sand, good God. The things you remember eh? And we sat there waiting for I don’t know what, the Superintendent said we wait and nobody was going to ask why, then we spotted Mayor Echezarreta approaching through the window, he was yer grandfather am I right in thinking? Gor my throat’s drying up with all this talking. Not used to it.”
Nene Larrieu responds to my nod. Without looking at anyone in particular as he pours he remarks:
“Looks like the drinks are on tap tonight.”
Sayago grins happily at him then turns his eyes back to his glass. Once again he bows his head with devout lips to the trembling golden rim.
“I WROTE HIM A LETTER,” Clara Benoit had confessed. “I don’t know if it’s the one they’re talking about. Probably never opened it, he was used to getting letters from his … I even tried to change my handwriting so he wouldn’t recognise me, tried to write like a man. I’ve never understood why men’s handwriting comes out one way and women’s another.”
“So you didn’t sign it,” I’d said to her, trying not to let my disappointment show.
“No,” she’d replied. “If he’d known it was from me he wouldn’t have believed what it said. He’d’ve thought it was another one of my desperate ruses.”
“NEARLY CALLED OFF it was the Los Churrinches’ set, they used to be called Los Atahualpas and they must’ve changed their name to get off the blacklists, but someone recognised them and went and told your grandfather,” Iturraspe takes advantage of the lull in the conversation to insert, “remember Los Atahualpas Licho?”
Licho begins to whistle a catchy tune and Nene Larrieu supplies the missing lyrics.
“Through the jungle of Bolivia
he advances with his rifle
A new knight ups the ante
no lord the Comandante
He’s the revolution’s armour
And his name is? …”
“Che … what was it called?” asks Licho.
“Zamba rebelde,” Iturraspe replies. “So when your grandfather found out the Superintendent was at the lagoon he went right up and asked him What shall we do and the Superintendent goes Not now Don Julián and your grandfather went on blaming the artist’s agent saying he’d acted in good faith till the Superintendent got tired of telling him all right and yelled you can play the bloody communist march for all I care, I’ve got more important fish to fry today.” Sayago has weathered the interruption by taking off one sneaker and, with a pained expression, fiddling with a toe sticking out of his holey sock:
“Anything the matter?” Licho enquires politely.
“This ingoing toenail’s killing me.”
“Better kill it first then,” quips Iturraspe. “Once a cop always a cop eh?”
Sayago works out from his tone that it’s a joke and laughs without getting it. He takes the opportunity to regain the limelight.
“And there we were still waiting when we see one of the doubles approaching from behind and Subsuperintendent Greco gets out on the passenger side—”
“One of the what?” I ask.
“Doubles. Unlicensed vehicles. This one was a Dodge Polara Greco’d confiscated for his own personal use, a set of wheels that’d of won more than one race with a guy with balls at the wheel, so anyroad like Greco comes over to the window and says Excuse me Superintendent I was held up but I haven’t been briefed on the operation, maybe the Superintendent didn’t tell him on purpose, It’s all right Arielito don’t worry about it or something like that actually I didn’t pay much attention ’cause I was looking through the back window to see if Sandro was coming, pink limousine with real diamonds on the tyre covers I’d been told though some said he was coming straight by helicopter which was going to land on the hotel roof, sounded odd to me though ’cause to do that they’d of needed permission and we hadn’t been informed; everybody on tenterhooks ’cause the support acts had finished and I reckon I’ve never seen so many people at the lagoon, and I was thinking let’s leave it for another day or else they might lynch us Superintendent sir I was thinking when I hear the Subsuper insist The men are at their posts sir and the mark has returned to the hotel bar do you want me to give the order all grovelly and sucking up like and Neri goes to him It’s all right Arielito, Arielito, that’s what he used to call him, It’s all right Arielito we’re going to get this over and done with and we headed to the hotel the Super and Arielito go inside with Sergeant Chacón and me and this other guy stand lookout on the door outside just in case but nothing happened can’t of been inside two minutes they can’t when the three of them come out with Ezcurrita sandwiched between them looking more lost than a dog in a bowling alley I mean if so many people’d warned him he must at least of seen it coming right? If he really was as cute as people say he was. The moment he sets foot outside he starts spotting familiar faces What’s wrong don’t let them take me he tells them Whatsisface tell Mamá, Soandso tell Thingumajig to come over to the headquarters with Dr Someoneorother and them all going Yeah yeah take it easy while they were looking for somewhere to scarper, but of course it was hard going for them with the pressure of all those people, worse with the ones furthest away fighting to see, ’specially the ones who were from out of town and didn’t know, they wanted to get a closer look at what was going on and then as usual some big mouth starts shouting Sandro! It’s Sandro! and then there’s no stopping it when the running starts and the jostling that tell you the avalanche is coming right? Operations with crowds are the most difficult see they get out of hand at the drop of a hat we get special training at the academy but anyroad like at the ground right I’d like to see you cope with thirty thousand monkeys screaming their heads off, enough to make a brave man piss himself I was saying my prayers I tell you I’m not ashamed to say it right then we were more scared than Ezcurra you can bet yer life if you like and I reckon that must of been when it got pretty much impossible for us to find a way through ’cause we’d left the car by the causeway with the guy from Leopardi his name’ll come to me in a minute and the people were pushing us the other way somebody’s attention lapsed somebody tripped and before we know where we are Ezcurra gives us the slip and shoots off towards the stage and the stalls where all the people he knows are the town’s VIPs here’s a riddle for you chief tell me what they did you’ll tell me they shielded him with their bodies they hid him they yelled at him to at least escape? Did they fuck! What they did was scarper, couldn’t run fast enough they couldn’t, and to make matters worse they was tripping and falling over all the chairs there like a possum in a henhouse
Ezcurra was with all the commotion he caused,” the ex-policeman recalls with a throaty laugh. “When you tell it like that it makes you laugh, I swear it does sir, but it was pretty nasty too to be honest.” He pauses for a moment to recover his gravitas and drains what’s left of his caña while he’s at it.
“You see anyone laughing?” says Guido gruffly. “Apart from you I mean.”
Sayago gives a servile smile, laughs off his remark, senses a warmth and goodwill in the atmosphere that are merely the product of liquor in his bloodstream, looks hopefully first at me, then at Nene Larrieu, who goes and gets a fresh bottle off the shelf.
“I HAD THE CAR NEARBY,” Clara Benoit had recalled, biting her cuticles, looking out of the window and down at the table in the freezing half-finished building of the new beach resort, “and when I saw what was happening I started to shout Over here Darío, this way, don’t let them take you, but there were so many people screaming and shoving that he couldn’t hear me, I don’t even think he noticed me except one moment when a swirl of people brought us a little closer and I shouted to him again to come with me, that if he let them take him they were going to kill him. This time he did hear but they must’ve been the very last words, because instead of following me he made a break for it and tried to climb onstage.” Clara’s voice was at breaking point and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and offered her a cigarette in the hope of heading off her crying jag in time. It worked. “That was down in the stalls, almost everyone there was from town or at least members of the Yacht Club, he knew them all personally, a lot of them all his life. Why didn’t anyone else try to help him?” she asked me after two or three drags. I looked at her without answering.
“AND THEN I dunno what must of got into him to make him climb on the stage, from where we were fighting our way through the crowd we could see him trying to jump up onstage and then he makes it and stands there like he’s dazzled by the spotlights, missing a shoe he was and one sleeve off his jacket, but the people in the crowd, particularly the ones too far away to see properly, started shouting San-dro! San-dro! ’specially the birds, you know how they get over the Gypsy Man some of them were already waving their knickers round their heads shouting Get yer kit off Roberto! Fuck me! stuff they usually save for the end of the show and then I reckon it was Greco and Sergeant Chacón and the guy from Leopardi his name’ll come to me they get up onstage too and they go and pull Ezcurra to the floor and start laying into him. That did it. People thought we was beating up Sandro and wanted to arrest him or something and launched themselves to the rescue, and once the avalanche come there was no stopping it nearly brought the stage down they did, we was lucky to get out alive mind, you ain’t got no idea what it was like.”
“We were all there,” Iturraspe remarks, including me out of politeness. “There were several casualties. Good thing the sand was there to cushion the falls otherwise there’d have been a lot more.”
“My uncle broke a leg,” Guido says to me. “Remember?”
“Who? Talito?” Of the three brothers he was the one I had least to do with.
“No,” exclaims Guido, a little more perplexed. “Vicente, Vicentito’s dad, who was with us. Don’t you remember?”
Now it’s my turn to look surprised. But I still manage to get out:
“You know what, all this you’re telling me, you can’t expect me to remember every—”
“But Fefe, you were there. You were with us that night. You saw everything.”
He hasn’t finished his sentence, but I already know it’s true. That and not the dubious narrative gifts of the ex-corporal was the reason why the scene was so vividly painted in my imagination. It wasn’t imagination. It was memory. I’d been there, just like the rest of them. I too had witnessed what happened. Not just that night, the night they removed Ezcurra from the lagoon. I’d been there all summer. How could it have been otherwise—I used to come every summer as a boy and spend three long months of the summer holidays, at my grandparents’ house by the lagoon. How could I have forgotten? When I finally come out of my daze, I notice the silence that’s fallen around the table. Stunned, with everyone waiting for me to say something, I’m barely able to ask:
“What about Sandro’s show? I can’t even remember that. What happened to the show?”
“Sandro couldn’t make it,” says Licho softly, squashing a butt end against the ashtray.
IDOL FAILS TO SHOW,
BUT GOOD TIME HAD BY ALL
Once again a good time was had by all yesterday at the booming beach resort of Malihuel, with yet another of its famed musical offerings, whose fame has jumped the borders of the province time after time. Once again the responsibility of opening the soirée fell on the square shoulders of well-known Coronel González LT 29 Radio announcer, Sr Elbio Limongi, who introduced the show in brief but heartfelt words, thanking the plentiful throng for turning out. With a quite outstanding performance at the last edition of the Cosquín Festival, the outstanding musical ensemble Los Churrinches brought us all the colour and joy of the traditional music of our northern lands, playing classic compositions from their repertoire like El quirquincho and Diablito carnavalero, which the audience accompanied with enthusiastic clapping. Given the profusion of insects blanketing virtually the entire stage—a problem we have raised in our column on other occasions—it’s unfortunate they didn’t perform a stomping malambo as well. Next up was comic Ziggy Estrella, who delighted old and young alike with his famed imitations, the most applauded of which were those entitled Fasting with Mirtha Legrand, The Pink Panther Strikes Again and Raffaella’s Party. And so we came to the most keenly anticipated moment of the night, the return of the incomparable “Gypsy Man” to the stage that saw his debut as an artist. And, as our headline suggests, our idol may have failed to show up, but it didn’t dampen the general jubilation. Only a series of stampedes and jostling, which the efficient security operation of our forces of law and order successfully contained before it escalated, was the all-too-understandable outcome of the audience’s disappointment on finding out they would have to postpone—hopefully not for long—the long-awaited reunion with their elusive idol. It would, in any event, be extremely gratifying if the show’s authorities and impresarios were to inform the population through this or any other medium they deem fit about the fate of our absentee. Where was he when everyone was looking for him? Where is he now? What does the future hold? Will we ever see him again? These and other questions disturb the peace of our daily comings and goings. For we are all aware that, where information is lacking, rumour runs rampant. We hope that Malihuel Festivals’ next offering will afford us no such similar surprises.
“Who on earth wrote that?” I’ll ask a few days later.
“Iturraspe,” Don León will reply. “The newspaper editor had come all the way from Toro Mocho for the show and offered him the job as editor of the section there and then.
Iturraspe accepted, on a temporary basis, to cover for his friend he explained, and the editor, going along with him, said Right, sure, by all means. That was how he ended up with Ezcurra’s ‘Malihuel Page’, it was his till the newspaper folded donkey’s years ago now.”
“And there was no reaction to this article?”
“No, people were expecting it. I reckon they could’ve waited a little longer right, at least till the Ezcurra boy was … I mean the patrol cars hadn’t finished crossing the causeway yet at least as a matter of form don’t you reckon?”
“No, I mean because of what it says at the end. It isn’t talking about Sandro at the end.”
Don León will stare me in surprise, then grab the stained photocopy I hold out to him and, donning his spectacles, will read it laboriously, following the lines with his finger and mouthing the words as he goes. When he’s finished, he’ll hold it out, take off his glasses and say:
“You’re right che. Well I’ll be … What a crafty old fox Beto turned out to be. No nothing happened. Nobody picked up on it.”
THE PLACE
where the events took place is long gone. The island, the causeway, the concrete pavilions are part of the bottom of the lake, from whose surface all that sticks out is the power-plant building, a few upright pillars, which at a distance could be dead tree trunks or lamp posts, and of course the three-storey hulk of the hotel, one of whose lateral walls has given way, leaving the halls, passageways, corridors and rooms open to view, like a doll’s house. Emerging from the rocky base of its own rubble, its angular forms and the sunken cubes of the windows suggest more a prison or fortress built on a bluff than the hotel where I had dinner so many times with my grandparent—the tango orchestra or jazz band playing on the bandstand in the dining room, the marble staircases and the velvet curtains. It’s difficult now to believe any of it actually existed; not even my memories feel like my own—maybe they belong to my friend, Gloria, who told me them four years ago, the day we met quite by chance and discovered our common past in Malihuel.
“SOON AS WE GOT HIM in the car he went quiet and we’d barely laid a finger on him eh. He was sat there between Chacón and me mind, not on the floor or in the trunk, sat on the back seat the way it should be, and the Super in front not saying a word, the whole causeway dead quiet, and only when we was on the road into town did yer man decide to say anything: What am I being charged with? he comes out with and the Super Being a dickhead he says to him and didn’t say another word. We entered headquarters directly through the jailhouse gate and that’s when I thought you’re a goner lad ’cause that’s what’s done if they don’t want a new prisoner to be entered in the warders’ log. I’m not saying the Super had already made up his mind to waste him just that he was covering his back in case he had to. Told us to throw him in the pigsty and just as me and Chacón was about to give him some the Superintendent tells us to stop. Anyone lays a finger on him while I’m not here’s in for it he said and headed off to headquarters. Superintendent, wait, Ezcurra said to him. Aren’t I entitled to a phone call? I want to speak to my lawyer and without turning round Neri goes You’ve been watching too many movies lad and walked out. I was at headquarters all night ’cause the sergeant’d given me detention for some daft thing or other can’t even remember what it was now, you know what cops are like, and poking my head round the door I could see the Carnival parade heading down Veinticinco de Mayo and the music and the lights of the party and I got to thinking about the poor guy locked up there and all his friends out on the razz like nothing’d happened, if there’d been just one who’d of come to see him or ask about him not that they’d of been let in mind ’cause officially there were no records of Ezcurra—he wasn’t there—but anyroad nobody tried. Nothing surprises me nowadays, life’s shown me too that when you’re down on yer luck people treat you like a dog, just look at me I mean. While I was in the force everyone wanted to be my friend, bought me drinks, laughed at my jokes, and I’m not saying the birds were all over me but they did look twice, but it’s all water under the bridge now. Ended when Superintendent Neri left town, if I’d been a bit cleverer I’d of gone with him. Now he did appreciate me, liked me to brew a maté for him and have a chat, not just like a boss to his subordinate, it sometimes felt more like a father to his son. He didn’t have any children you know. If the Super’d stayed on a while longer at headquarters I could of been a very different person than what I am today. Someone everybody respected,” he says, scanning the audience to test their reaction. Only from me does he get a look of hypocritical understanding. He empties his xth glass, only Nene can keep track by now, and with his next one I replenish my whisky glass and Licho his vermouth. “Greco’s the one to blame”—Sayago harps on the same string—“Greco fucked my life up. I swear sometimes I feel like going and finding him and sticking a forty-five right here in his gob and telling him Come on then, say what you used to say about me to my face eh? I swear I wouldn’t give a toss what happens after that long as I see that shit Greco shit himself I’ll take what’s coming to me. Once—”
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