He finds them in the studio with their clothes ruffled and looks of fear on their faces, just getting off the couch—his couch! An insane fit of jealousy takes hold of him: the sacrilege, the profanity committed by these backstabbers boils his blood. He opens the top drawer of his desk and takes out a pistol, points it at Rita, then Ascanio, and then the witch. He stares at each of them, and then looks back at the boy.
“You coward, you traitor. I’m going to kill you.”
Ascanio doesn’t lift a finger to defend himself, but pleads and sobs for his life. Maese decides to finish him off, and then do the same with the mother and daughter, yet he falters. He’d get his revenge, but he’d probably fall into the hands of Filipuzzi, lose the favor of the minister, and also lose his freedom. Reason drowns out his fury. But what to do? He can’t stand here threatening them forever. He decides to get his revenge slowly. He looks at Ascanio and, with a smile, demands, “Take off this ring of mine and give it to her,” gesturing to Rita, “because you’re going to marry her.”
Ascanio obeys immediately. “Don’t kill me. I’ll do anything you say.”
Maese sends Memo to hunt down a notary, and then points the gun at the mother and daughter. “A notary is coming, as well as some witnesses. I’ll immediately shoot whoever utters a word.” He turns back to Ascanio.
“Just promise that you won’t kill me and I’ll do anything you say.”
Before the notary and witnesses, the terrified couple signs the nuptial contract and legally marries. As soon as the officials leave the house, Maese pulls Rita into his room by her hair, smacking and cursing her along the way. Then he rapes her, over and over, beating her all the while.
The next day he gets back to his sketches, picks up his favorite, adds a few lines, touches it up, and orders Rita to pose for him, for hours, in the most painful positions he can think of. Afterward, he punishes her with more forced sex. Days and days thus pass, as he begins to form the mold of clay that will become the fountain promised to Gladys and the minister.
The maid, Roberta, who tends to Rita’s wounds after each of her beatings, approaches Maese one afternoon and glares at him.
“What?”
“You shouldn’t treat that girl so cruelly.”
“Roberta, don’t you know how she and her mother betrayed me under my very own roof?”
“But señor, that’s typical in this country. There’s not a single husband that, as the saying goes, doesn’t have a pair of horns on his head.”
* * *
Maese covers the mold in wax and then covers the wax in clay. He fires the whole thing and pours copper alloy into the space left by the melted wax. Once it is full of bronze, he leaves it to cool, chips away the clay covering, and reveals the frieze of Rita, naked in all of her beauty, amidst a landscape of beasts, trees, and the fruit of the earth. Reclining back, the figure holds in one hand a pitcher pouring water, while her other hand is wrapped around the powerful neck of a stag, whose impressive pair of antlers has eighteen points bursting out of the frieze. The artist smiles contentedly—the sculpture is perfect down to the smallest detail. He calls Rita to his side, puts one arm around her, and pats her butt.
“Look how well your husband came out, Rita. He gave me horns once. I give him horns not every day, but for all of eternity.”
You’ve Spoken My Name
by Enzo Maqueira
Almagro
Translated by John Washington
The promoter goes into the church because it’s the only place she can hide, because she thinks the priest might be able to help her, because she’ll be safe. What she never expected was that she would walk right into a Mass.
The church, the House of Jesus, is connected to her old school. It is Saturday. Seven thirty in the evening. Outside it is autumn, cold, almost nobody in the streets. A memory comes to her from when she was little and used to attend this same church. The reminiscence only lasts a second, no more, because it doesn’t matter, nothing matters anymore. The only thing she asks for is that the priest stop talking, that the narcos don’t come into the church to kill her, that she can catch her breath before she has a heart attack. She asks for all this while looking up at Jesus on the altar, peering into his eyes and clenching her fists in her pockets, squeezing the last of her cash in her sweaty hand.
“The paths that lead to Christ are narrow, but they are narrow precisely because they lead to Christ,” the priest says, and then, hands held out, pauses. She hates that the priest is taking his time, but she can’t do anything about it, she has to stay unseen, she doesn’t even want to raise her head, not that she has the strength to, and the priest intones, “Salvation, the sons of God, his sheep . . .”
She doesn’t need a sermon. What she needs is another bag of cocaine, and if she doesn’t get cocaine, then at least she wants to hear something to calm her down, something to convince her that she’s not going to die, that the narcos aren’t hiding behind the palm trees and waiting for her anymore. She’s always liked the patio at the House of Jesus, ever since she started going to school in the same building and her mother walked with her the two blocks from their house. She would imagine that paradise looked just like that patio, with those big palms, those jungle plants in pots, the little birds digging after worms. But now, more than ever, she knows that paradise doesn’t exist, that the drug dealers could be waiting somewhere on that patio, aiming their guns at the church door, waiting for her to come out.
“Though,” the priest continues with a voice that booms off the walls and high ceilings, “the path to the devil is wide, full of colorful lights . . .” He opens his arms, palms up. “It is the path of the devil.”
She starts thinking of all the mistakes she’s made, one after another, her situation sinking in, deeper and deeper. The first mistake was not paying the money she owed to her dealer. She owed him so much that she couldn’t even call him anymore. So she tried calling a few other people she knew, but nobody was around. It was a long weekend. She was the only one who had stayed in the city, so she was going to have to find a dealer in some other neighborhood. She decided she’d ask some of the black men. Or the Peruvians, Bolivians, the indigents who make a living day-laboring. It seemed like it would be easy, but now here she is, sitting through Mass, a cold sweat running down her back, surrounded by old women and girls her age. In the pew behind her there is a guy with a mustache, two old women, one half asleep. Any of these Bible-thumpers might work for the narcos. The narcos have their reach everywhere, as she well knows. She knows more than anybody. She grips her head, squeezes her eyes tight—she has to make it through, anyway she can, she has to make it.
It started with marijuana, then LSD; there was a period of Ecstasy. From Ecstasy to cocaine was just a single step. Was that her first mistake—starting to use coke? Because there was a time when she didn’t even want to be with anybody that wasn’t using. It got even worse, to the point where she never wanted to leave her room; she’d spend an entire week locked in her apartment, snorting line after line until she’d snorted all of her drugs and had spent all of her money. And when she wanted to return to work, none of the agencies, which she’d left hanging so many times, returned her calls. Her mom and dad were far away, she didn’t have any girlfriends left, no guy to lend her money without having to pay him with sex first. She needed to find a new job, but first she needed to find some money to get some coke. She scoured the corners of her apartment until she came up with two hundred pesos in the bottom of a drawer. It was enough to buy another bag. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing. She called her dealer, though she knew he wasn’t going to answer; the last time they talked he’d told her that if she didn’t pay he was going to run her over with his car. Which is why the promoter, dressed as inconspicuously as possible, went out to score in her neighborhood. She started at the Peruvian market, making a fool of herself: she’d never been to Peru, she told a woman working a market stand, but she’d always wanted to see Machu Picchu . . . in Peru
they chew coca leaves, right? The Incans chew coca. The market woman squatted on the ground and arranged the tomatoes; she didn’t even turn her head to look at the promoter. What do they eat over there? the promoter asked. I mean in Peru. Is there good beef? But the woman said that she didn’t know what they eat in Peru because “we are from Bolivia, señorita,” and then she looked up into her eyes and the promoter said that she was sorry, and left, embarrassed. She was just about to head back to her apartment and deal with the comedown, but no, her second mistake: she kept looking.
The priest finally finishes the sermon, a blond girl plays a guitar and sings, the priest is moving as if in slow motion, and she can barely stand it. She looks up at the ceiling: babies with wings, an old man with a beard pointing his finger, the lights of the street coming in through the stained glass; and she’s shaking again, the song of the blond girl with the voice of a transvestite ringing in her ears, the House of Jesus falling down on top of her.
* * *
She recalculated: she couldn’t keep running up and down the neighborhood until she found a dealer. It was too dangerous. Better to hit up the bars in the Guardia Vieja neighborhood. The hip area of Almagro. She’d been there a few times. The bars were always filled with musicians, writers, theater people. And the inevitable mama’s boy selling dope. Maybe she’d find one of the kids she used to see with her dealer. It might turn out to be an easy fix, except when she showed up she realized that it was still early and the bars weren’t even open yet. She felt that cold humidity of the Buenos Aires autumn, the sidewalk carpeted with dry leaves, pigeons resting on the power lines cutting apart the sky above her. She felt like she was the last person in the world. She looked through the windows of the apartments she was passing and imagined the couples cuddling inside, under warm covers, caressing each other’s feet. But not her. She was alone. But even in this she was wrong. She wasn’t the only one in the street; on the opposite corner she spotted an old beggar woman, who was always asking for monedas from passersby. Monedita, the promoter had nicknamed her, though she had never actually spoken to her. Whenever Monedita approached to ask for her change she would walk faster, scared that the old woman was going to rob her. She did the same thing this time: she crossed the street away from Monedita, just as three Peruvians stepped out of an old house she was passing.
* * *
The priest is smiling now, the old women in front of her bow their heads, the wood of the pews creaks. How much longer is Mass? she asks herself. She can’t stand it any longer, her comedown making her feel like she is falling, uncontrollably spinning.
She should have given up when those black men looked her up and down after she approached them.
“The young woman thinks we have drugs, does she? Just because we’re Peruvian?” one of them sneered.
She shook her head no, even waved her hand, and then held up a finger: not at all, she swore, she just asked because they seemed like they might know where she could get some.
“And why did it seem like we might know?” the man had asked her. “Next time, just give us a kiss.” He approached her and tried to smack her on the ass, but she ran, one block, two, until she couldn’t run any farther and she bent over, put her hands on her knees, sucking in air on the corner of Corrientes and Medrano. Traffic was a mess. A truck had run into a taxi and the cops had blocked off half the road. The promoter had crossed Corrientes, weaving between the buses, through the blasting car stereos, the motorcycles cutting in and out of lanes. There were so many people. It had been too early to score. She was about to give up, ready to spend the rest of her Saturday sinking into a comedown when she felt something tug on her arm. It was Monedita. She was breathing heavily, looking up at her from her creased eyes. Her reaction was automatic. She reached down into her pocket to see if she’d been robbed.
“Relax, mami,” Monedita had said. “What are you looking for? A little pigeon shit?”
The promoter didn’t understand.
“A little pigeon shit,” Monedita repeated, and then tapped the side of her nose with a finger. “Do you want a little pigeon shit or don’t you?”
She hadn’t expected Monedita to have what she wanted. She was too desperate, and couldn’t afford that luxury. She followed her toward the train tracks, to the bridges and the squats on the south side. In one of the shacks lining the edge of the cliff above the tracks, Monedita knocked on a couple doors, but nobody opened. She knocked again and a woman pointed her to another house.
“We’re almost there. Are you going to make it?” Monedita asked, peering at the promoter, who had felt as if her legs were going to give out—everything was spinning and it seemed like the spinning would never stop. Somehow, she was able to walk all the way to Rivadavia. Monedita rang the bell of an old house whose door was covered in graffiti. The promoter didn’t think anybody would answer. Another mistake: not to take off running right then, go to a hospital to get a shot to end her suffering. Instead, she’d stuck with Monedita, following her down a dark hallway, climbing a set of stairs. A few doors opened as they passed: Peruvians, Bolivians, homeless, looking at her and then slamming their doors shut, pushing out wafts of fried food. Monedita climbed the stairs, complaining about her knees, saying that they were almost there as she stopped to rest. They had climbed up to the third floor. A spoiled mama’s boy, bearded, not more than thirty years old, was waiting for them next to his open door. Monedita walked into the apartment, whispering something to him as she passed. The mama’s boy wore a Rolex on his left wrist. Though he seemed like trouble, the promoter had felt a tenderness toward him. Her fifth mistake. Or maybe sixth. She couldn’t keep track of them anymore.
* * *
“We pray that this sacrifice, which is mine and yours, be accepted by Our Father the All Powerful,” the priest says with the host held high. She’s uncomfortable in the pew, not knowing where to put her hands, occasionally placing a palm on her chest to slow down her heart. For a moment it seems to stop beating, and then the next moment it is beating too fast. She squeezes her chest with her hot hand. She doesn’t want to die in the company of these old women, the old man with the look of pity, the girls her age who have probably never even smoked a joint. They pray, all of them, and though she remembers how to pray, she can’t bring herself to do it.
* * *
“So you’re looking for some coke?” the mama’s boy had said, leaning forward and down into the face of the promoter, who had taken a seat in the room’s only chair, with Monedita standing in the corner biting her nails. “Okay, little lady,” the man said, staring into her eyes, “I have good news for you.”
Who is this idiot? She knew skinny guys like him, but he was especially ridiculous. Her quick dismissal of him had been yet another mistake. The promoter explained that she barely had any money, that she could get more soon, but right now she was desperate, and she stopped to think, and then continued: so desperate that she was willing to do anything to get a little coke. She meant it too. She was trembling in fear, but she was serious: anything, she had said, but also regretting it as soon as the man smiled at her, nodding his head slowly, still nodding, and then checking the time on his Rolex and taking out his phone to make a call.
“Get it ready,” he said to someone on the other end of the line. “I found someone for the job.”
When he got off the phone he turned back to the promoter, looking into her eyes, getting close enough so that she could smell the alcohol on him. The bad boy told her it was her lucky day, that he was going to give her a lot of coke, just as long as she did him a favor.
“How much coke?” she asked him.
How much coke? the guitar repeats over and over, the blonde singing another eardrum-shattering song, a line of Bible-thumpers filling out the central aisle, the old ladies up front, then the girls her age, and then guy in the back who walks past the promoter, gives her a look, licks his lips, and then enters into the communion line.
“A brick,” the bad boy had said to her.
A brick. A kilo of cocaine. The man took a baggy out of his pocket, dipped his fingernail inside, and offered a bump to the promoter. She sucked in as deeply as she could. She felt the cocaine pass through her nose, tingle her mouth, and then shoot into her veins. Now, yes, she was ready to do whatever it took. She’d told him twice, so that he would believe her, but now the bad boy wouldn’t even look at her. He’d grabbed his phone again, was making another call, telling someone to send “that dude” to the Medrano station. He hung up and then made another call, asking for two men to go along with “the young lady” to Medrano.
“And you’re going to stay here,” he told Monedita, putting his phone back in his pocket. The promoter hardly believed what was happening. A kilo of coke. Nothing else mattered. The guy told her they would explain to her what she needed to do once she got to the station. “My boys,” he said, “my boys will take care of everything.”
She was instructed to meet a man underneath the second ventilator located on the downtown track in the Medrano subway station. That was it. The boy promised her that when she came back to the apartment the brick would be waiting for her.
“We know where you live,” he told her, and he pointed at her with his finger, showing off a fat silver ring with two initials on it that she couldn’t make out. He got up close to her again, even closer than before. “Do I need to tell you what will happen to you if you don’t do what we tell you?”
The promoter looked him straight in the eyes: the guy was starting to scare her. Two black men approached out of nowhere and stood on either side of the door. They were both short, with sharp jaws. It was only in this moment that the promoter started to realize how much danger she was in. She started shaking, in part because the coke was reaching her brain, but also because she knew that she was so close to scoring. “Take it easy,” Monedita said. “They’ll take care of you.” And then one of the black men closed the door.
Buenos Aires Noir Page 12