“The Council slaughterhouse,” Guido remarks.
“The very one,” nods ex-corporal Sayago with an oily grin. “That was where the Super’d chosen.”
“AN IDEA OF YOUR GRANDFATHER’S to sell people cheaper meat,” Guido will remark as we stroll down a little track barely visible through the weeds. “They’d put a live cow in there and stick a knife between two shoulder vertebrae with everyone watching, and it would go sprawling, both eyes and all four legs wide open, without even so much as a moo. Then they’d slit its throat and stick the buckets under for the blood and start carving it up before the poor animal was dead. The butchers took the best cuts, which they’d reserved in advance, and when they were done, the second-in-line paupers’d move in. They used to pick up the last bones for a few cents, lots of families’d’ve starved otherwise I tell you. I saw it a couple of times, and I swear within the hour there was nothing left of the cow except a few bloodstains on the tiles. Look, here they are—he’ll point to some fragments of tiles, with contrasting colours and designs like a Roman mosaic, visible here and there through the undergrowth and the grass, no doubt salvaged from the remains of the various demolitions piling up in the Council yard. He never threw anything away my grandfather didn’t. “The roof and walls were made of corrugated iron”—Guido presses on with his guided tour—“and over here were some gutters—look, there’s one here—that drained the blood into the ditch—the rain washed it away into the lagoon. This ditch was the best place for worms for miles around. To go fishing. Remember?”
“Do I!” I reply. “Caught an eel this big once,” I’d say, measuring out half a metre with my palms. “I’ll never forget it.”
“AND THAT WAS WHEN the shit hit the fan just before we go in. To be honest I don’t know if the Super was already onto Greco or what, he was no fool but the other one was the wiliest old devil you ever seen me he didn’t fool me though I saw right through him right from the start and I told that old baldy Chacón We can go next door to the kiosk now and ask him if you like I told him this one with a gob like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth he’ll have us dancing to his tune when he gets promoted we watch out and start what do they say watching our arses and lo and behold wiser than me old baldy Chacón turned out to be, stuck to the Subsuper like a stamp which was how he got enough cash together to retire and set up the kiosk which is what I should of done if I’d been cleverer. But I never was any good at sucking up, chip off the old block me, and I’m no stoolie like other people whose names I could mention, where was I oh so we got there and the door stroke of bad luck the slaughterhouse door was chained and padlocked fuck me if it wasn’t. And now what we going to do we can’t get the mayor out of bed to ask for the key a padlock this big yer granddaddy’d put on even though there was nothing to nick inside not even mice very careful he was about everything not like the mayor nowadays who only shows up to beg us coppers for funds at election time spend longer at headquarters than in their offices mayors do ain’t that the truth. No, got to be quick off the mark around here, the things I’ve seen in there if I squealed about everything I know not a soul in this town’d be spared right. And the Super who must of been pissed off with the whole business by now takes out his regulation gun and points it at the padlock and pow! and the padlock just sits there and again pow! pow!, and all he managed to do was wake the guy up ’cause by that stage he’d nodded off and when he heard the shots he got hold of the queer first corporal’s knees and started crying like a girl, the first corporal couldn’t get him off he didn’t really try maybe he liked it eh? And in his fury the Super forgot the padlock and pointed the gun at Ezcurra and the first corporal goes Don’t shoot Superintendent shitting himself he was I’m telling you looked to me like things was getting a bit out of hand, and when the first corporal the one as was a bit homosexual I’m telling you manages to break loose and the Super does have a clear shot he points the gun at him and I don’t know if he’s looked into his eyes or what, my old man who knew all the tricks used to say to me if you ever have to do it do it but don’t let them look into yer eyes because you’ll never get their eyes out of yer head after that, but anyroad we can all see the Super hesitate and that famous steady hand of his starts shaking.”
Sayago pauses dramatically, conscious of the spell which, not his words as he believes, but the horrific events they drag behind them have cast on us. I take a last toke on a cigarette I seem to have been smoking for hours and, when I stub it out, I see all the others in the ashtray. I feel really sick and fight to turn my oncoming retch into a mere belch. Through the veil of nausea and hatred and alcohol I watch the features of the ex-police corporal as he orders another drink without waiting for my nod.
“To tell you the truth,” says Sayago, downing his drink in one the moment it hits the table, “till then I had full confidence in the Super but well like, to be honest he went down a bit there. I mean a chief say sends you into a confrontation go go go with the bullets flying and watches his own arse what do the troops do then? And I tell you the moment Greco realised he was on him like a wolf on a sick lamb I’ll take care of it if you like sir like that he said it to him in his little arse-licking voice but let’s not kid ourselves at that moment it was the worst insult he could of come out with. And at first the Super stands there struck dumb his eyes bulging, still had his finger on the trigger, and when he gets his voice back he goes You think I can’t do it. So it’s you who’s giving me classes now is it Sonny? What’s wrong, got an itchy arse and think you can scratch it better in my chair do you? You’ll sit in my chair the day the Virgin bangs her son you little dumbfuck, you’re hurrying me up? What if I just don’t fucking feel like it now? eh? What if I feel like waiting a bit? Got a problem with that have you? the Super yells this close to him and Greco sort of pauses and says to him in a different tone Not me Superintendent, but Colonel Carca will, and that was it, the Super couldn’t of stood there stiller if he’d been hit on the head by the slaughterman’s hammer. That was when the man went down in my eyes, me I knew him but he suddenly looked, how can I put it, ten years older, more … Looked like an old-age pensioner he did. Myself if he’d reacted at that moment and stood up to that Judas I’d of stood by him I swear, guns blazing if necessary but the Super he … was gone, vanished, poof, it was suddenly like he wasn’t there any more. But well, no wonder right? Greco, his protégé, his man, his right-hand man, had just fessed up to him he’d been working for the military behind his back,” says the ex-corporal, and for a few seconds he sits there staring into space, his mouth slack, before picking up the drooling thread of his speech. “That’s what Greco was like, soon as yer back was turned he’d stick the knife in, like a woman, ’cause he didn’t have it in him to do it to yer face, you need eyes where the sun don’t shine with his kind, sometimes not even that’s enough I mean look what happened to me and the Super,” mumbles Sayago sinking deeper and deeper into the muddy bottom of self-pity. “From then on the Super may have still been giving the orders but Greco was calling the shots, blew the padlock off with one bullet he did and kicked the door open and if I’m not wrong he went in first then the Super and he says to us Greco does Surround the place he says to us and make sure nobody comes near and closes the door so we can’t see.”
“What about Ezcurra?” I ask.
“What about Ezcurra?” asks Sayago forgetting to disguise his annoyance at the interruption.
“Did they leave him outside?”
For a second Sayago narrows his grim-looking eyes even more, then they swivel back to the empty glass and decide to smile again.
“If they left him outside why would they of gone inside? To give each other some tongue? I told you, the arse bandit stayed outside.”
“With you,” says Licho, and realises too late that his clarification sounds like an insinuation.
“What do you mean?”
Without waiting for my order Nene Larrieu fills Sayago’s glass and diverts his attention just in time. Sayago drains it before g
oing on:
“I swear I can remember it like I was there, sun’d just come up and it was getting warmer, looked like another scorcher, no sign of the storm, blew straight past us in the end, can even remember a chimango on a tree branch, flew off at the shot, the metal walls made twice as much noise. People today still argue about which one pulled the trigger, for me it was the Super ’cause he had more blood on his clothes and besides he was an incredible shot, once went out partridge-hunting with him and he’d bring them down with a twenty-two, and when I counted them he’d hit them every one in the head or the neck, one shot, not one of them did I have to finish off.”
“It’s difficult to miss at five centimetres,” remarks Guido, hating him. Sayago’s too drunk to notice.
“But I can’t get Greco’s face out of my head. He was looking down so the Super wouldn’t realise but I saw he had this grin on him from ear to ear. I reckon if it hadn’t of been for him the Super wouldn’t of done it. Did it ’cause Greco provoked him he did. But there you go … Nene, I ordered another shot of caña for Christ’s sake, are you going to take all night! You tell him not to pour me any more Don? Come on then, what you waiting for? So there they were. It was just getting light and people’d just started walking the streets, not many, it was Sunday luckily, and we hadn’t brought spades or kerosene or anything. Then Sergeant Chacón got this bright idea. My brother-in-law’s smallholding, he says to Greco, it’s just down the road. Off the Fuguet road. We’ll have everything we need there and we won’t have to go through town. So that’s what we did. I didn’t go ’cause after we loaded him in the trunk of the first patrol car—me without looking ’cause the sight of blood makes me queasy—the Super sent us back, me and the Inspector … Bonfanti!”
“Inspector Bonfanti?” asks Nene Larrieu, taken aback.
“No, the one from Leopardi! Told you I’d remember! His name was Bonfanti!”
“Like I give a fuck,” mumbles Guido, audibly grinding his teeth.
“The inspector I can’t remember what his name was, and the Super says to the inspector, his name’ll come to me any second … Bonfanti, sonofagun! errr the Super says to him I did hear that properly ’cause he was right next to me he says to him Call Rosas Paz and wish him bon appétit from me, he’ll understand said the Super and after that they drove off down the highway in the other cars.”
“I’m going home for a lie down Fefe,” says Guido straightening up. “To get some kip before I drive you to the terminal.” He says goodbye to everyone except Sayago, who, if he realises, is doing a good job of hiding it, and as he leaves the cold gusts in from the street until the door closes again. I don’t blame him. A few short blocks away the body of his lovely wife warms the bed, and here he is, reliving a horror that’s none of his concern, only out of respect for the whims of his childhood friend who hasn’t had the common decency to explain to him why. If I were him, I’d have left some time ago. I’m not much good at playing the faithful friend.
“Yous leaving too?” Sayago says to me, a hint of panic in his voice.
“Can’t speak for the others,” I say. “You all know the drinks are on me so don’t worry.”
“We’re not staying to freeload but we do appreciate it,” says Iturraspe with a smile and Licho nods. “The most urgent thing I’ve got on tomorrow is reading the paper, after the Sacamatas’ve finished with it, ’cause I can’t even afford that. What about you Licho?”
“Waiting till you’re through with it,” he smiles.
“Well if you thought I haven’t got much more to tell you Buenos Aires get a load of this,” ex-corporal Sayago says to me in an altogether different tone of voice. His familiarity, which until recently had come and gone, is now systematic, even insolent. “That same day in the afternoon lo and behold Chacón’s brother-in-law shows up scared witless asking to talk to him. They tell him he’s gone to Rosas Paz and just then the Super walks past and sees him. What can I do for you Villalba my friend, anything wrong? And Villalba looking like he’d die there and then starts stammering and almost in tears he eventually plucks up the courage to explain that his dogs and pigs of started digging around there and ate off one of his hands and he don’t know what to do, he don’t want to move him without permission but if he leaves him there and the Super goes It’s all right Villalba, well done, we need more citizens like you, don’t worry, we’ll take it from here. Before you go there’s something I always meant to ask—you wouldn’t have anything to do with the Villalba they say ran our founder Comandante Pedernera out of town would you? And Villalba stammering again They’re just stories Superintendent sir, the Villalbas have always been law-abiding folk who respect authority, and Neri goes All right, go and put the kettle on, we’ll be right over, and then from the doorway to his office so as everybody could hear Jeez, they’ve gone soft on me the people in this town have, where’s that famous reputation for bravery? and sent for the Subsuper to discuss what to do. They needed to find a final location for him, somewhere even if people found out later they’d never get him back, somewhere safe from all the bleeding hearts, the telltales and the nosy parkers. Guessed where?”
“Yes,” I say, loathing him.
“So on our way back from Villalba’s place we asked the Sub what next and he goes you’ll have to ask the Superintendent you’ve seen how much he takes this business to heart said it like he was having a laugh enjoying himself like I sometimes wonder if he didn’t set the whole thing up just to bring the Super down, just like he did with me right, over the watch.”
“Which watch?” asks Nene Larrieu, pricking up his ears like a gun dog every time he got wind of some new-sounding information.
“A Casio digital, gold wristband, stopwatch, lovely it was, and Subsuperintendent Greco turned round and said I’d pocketed it. When, say I, as yous know I wasn’t alone with … for more than a few minutes and he didn’t have a ring any more or even a hand and they weren’t going to bury him wearing his watch and jewellery were they if only ’cause of identification right? So I really don’t know what happened to that watch, ’less Villalbas pigs ate it.” He chuckles at his own joke before going on. “If you ask me it was Greco himself as took it and comes along later accusing me so nobody’d suspect, You don’t know well maybe you do what that man was capable of. Let’s go and ask Chacón if you don’t believe me I never saw that watch in my life I swear to God, but Greco was already digging a hole for me, first he got me labelled as a thief over the watch and then soon as he could—”
“So it was you,” I interrupt.
“What do you mean it was me?” His eyes narrow, without actually focusing. “You calling me a liar? I told you I never touched that watch.”
“No no, I know. You just helped to kidnap and kill him and …” I can’t pronounce the sharp, clear words tearing my mind apart, so I just say, “… get him out … of Villalba’s.”
“Oh. Yeah right. Yeah. Why?”
He’d blurted it out all on his own, but he was looking at me as if I’d made him do it on purpose.
“All right, all right,” I mutter through the livid strips of aggression hanging between us. “Nobody’s keeping you here. You can leave when you like. We’re not in headquarters here.”
“Kicking me out are you?” His attempt to make his voice sound butcher rises to a cackle that makes him spin round in fury to see who’s laughing at him. I keep out of the others’ attempts at calming him down. Sayago knows that when he reaches the end of his tale the happy hour’s over, and it occurs to me his constant digressions might be a ruse to delay the fateful moment for as long as possible. He looks more upset than Scheherazade and it takes another glass to calm him down.
“What the Super wanted was to find the right spot”—he addresses not me, but the general audience. “I’ve already told you Superintendent Neri liked to do things properly. Very particular he was, very well organised. So he spent the time reading some report or other he’d been sent till well into the evening.”
The genes
is and evolution of Malihuel’s lagoon must not be interpreted using a localist approach, for such an interpretation would, per se, be lacking the indispensable bases of its rational understanding. We must view it as the result of processes affecting our entire plain, and it is of interest to us from the point of view of Applied Geography. We believe, however, that, even extending the study to the entire Pampas, such an approach would still be one-sided, and it must therefore be seen in its precise dimensions in relation to phenomena on a continental or even planetary scale that …
Viewed on a continental scale, the problem of the subsidence of one small block is minimal and would not appear to be of any great interest, but from the point of view of human facilities and the works of man, it is important. In the investigation of a plain such as ours, methods used in areas where outcrops and structures are visible cannot be applied. In the sector in question, we see an almost total lack of them, and must therefore sometimes focus exclusively on the behaviour of the surface waters and of …
The observations must be megascopic in nature, as they have to cover wide areas, and the drops—almost always of several metres or even decimetres—and the gradients, however insignificant they may seem must always be taken into consideration, as they may or may not be indicative of differential movements, the immediate consequence of which may be deviations in the courses …
Its broadest diameter runs W-E, its narrowest, N-S, ie not parallel to the sides of the block. Between those two isohypses (WSW, SE and NE of the basin) stretch semi-permanent floodplains and gullies from the last paleo-hydrogeological model …
Rising water levels are not solely due to precipitation, but also to groundwaters. The annual peaks for precipitation are reached in the storage period of monthly rainfall, aggravated by the fact that the basin is served by a single evacuator (ie evaporation), which is minimal in the months of maximum rainfall. According to official data, the highest levels recorded were those of the years 1941 and 1965, with peaks of 84.88m and 84.91m respectively, as measured by the Military Geographical Institute.
An Open Secret Page 14