“Why don’t they join parties or form new ones? Why not do things democratically?”
“Because they don’t.”
I had spent more than twenty years selling bathroom appliances, but I still had better reflexes for shooting two men with a gun I had never fired before than I did for selling a bathroom suite. We never change, we cannot expect anything new from what seems new, we are suspicious of promises because we have made them before. We know perfectly well we always let down anyone who believes us.
“Here it is!” Quesada shouted from the kitchen.
I ran to see what he had found. He was standing in a small pile of rubble. He had spotted a tile projecting slightly from the wall, had pulled at it, and half the tiles in the kitchen had come down around him.
“Congratulations, you found the treasure!”
“Thanks. But it isn’t going to make us rich.”
10
On the road again. This time Quesada was driving. About a hundred kilometers from Mediomundo we stopped at the service station where I had filled up on the way down. This time the cafeteria was open. The magistrate looked at me intently as we ate our sandwiches. I asked him if I had food on my chin, and he said no.
“So what is it?”
He hesitated. He had seen me in action and was probably having some difficulty trying to overcome his fear and repugnance. He could not bring himself to ask how I could be eating when I had killed two people barely an hour earlier.
“It’s been a long time since I killed anyone,” I said out of the blue. He choked on his ham, cheese and tomato special. “You don’t get to do that sort of thing when you sell bathroom appliances. That’s why I changed my job.”
He insisted that perhaps they had only been trying to frighten us.
“Were they only trying to frighten Edmundo?”
“Your friend was one of them.”
“Well, if that’s how they treat their own people, what can the rest of us expect?”
“I don’t think your friend called you at midnight and asked you to drive four hundred kilometers just to kill you.”
“If you have a gun barrel pressed to your head, you’re apt to betray even the noblest feelings, including friendship. You’re right about one thing, though: I don’t think he was luring me into a trap. He needed me. But I got there too late.”
“Do you want revenge?”
I swallowed the last bit of my sandwich.
“Not at all. He did what he did. But he never intended to hurt the people he cared for. Now look: his daughter has been kidnapped, his former wife is too scared to go out, and here I am dodging bullets.”
“The people he worked for are not going to get away with it that easily,” the magistrate said.
In addition to dyeing what little hair he had left, Quesada was having trouble chewing his sandwich. His false teeth wobbled when he spoke, and he must have been taking bucketfuls of pills for rheumatism and impotence. Yet he still thought he was the masked avenger of Gotham City. I could just see the board of C.P.F. in London quaking in their boots at the thought of Patricio Quesada launching his crusade against them.
“Let’s go,” he said forcefully.
“Show time,” I said.
We did not know if the two corpses in Mediomundo had been alone, if they had seen us arrive, or if an obliging neighbor had sent word. There might be others following us, I warned Quesada. “Make sure you pay as much attention to your rearview mirror as to the road ahead. It’s another two hundred kilometers until our next stop,” I told him. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
The magistrate woke me in Tres Arroyos. The journey had been quick and peaceful, the road empty, with nobody behind or in front of us. Argentina was like some huge, sleeping beast, a mythical elephant like those the ancients believed held up the world. It had just shaken off a president and all his ministers. It got rid of them because they did not know how to steer it, could only torment it with their absurd decisions on a journey to nowhere. Today the beast was resting, digesting, occasionally regurgitating its favorite, its only nourishment: madness.
Quesada parked in the main square and began to study the papers he had found, his treasure trove. An inventory, a complete list of names, the organizational structure, confidential reports and even proclamations written by a famous T.V. journalist. It was a shame to throw all that effort and talent down the drain.
“They’ll deny everything,” I said. “Nothing is signed. Anyone can write what they like and then attribute it to anybody else. It’s one person’s word against another’s, and there are too many of them for my liking.”
Quesada admitted it would be ridiculous to accuse them of trying to overthrow the constitution. People would laugh in his face. We were in the third millennium now, there were no more military coups in Argentina. But he said they could be tried for their everyday activities: trafficking, bribery, buying favors from the state so that they could profit time and again, always at the cost of the people.
“Oh, sure,” I said.
“Will you help me?”
“I suppose I’ve got nothing better to do, have I? Let’s go.”
This time I took the wheel and drove slowly out in the direction of the farmhouse where they had shot the dog. It had been a long detour, I told myself, I should never have left that night. But I was on my own then: not that I was exactly coming with competent reinforcements this time.
I could scarcely recognize the route in daylight, but fortunately among Quesada’s papers there was a map showing the way. Everything was in the documents, although there were only pseudonyms, noms de guerre. The journalist who had written the group’s unused communiqués was probably at that very minute presenting his radio show, editorializing, pontificating, counting the dead, sowing the greatest doubt possible among an audience spellbound by the tricks played to avoid the endlessly slow, complicated processes of democracy. I tuned in to his station, and yes, there he was, criticizing both the government and those who had risen against it, quoting Greek philosophers, unfavorably comparing Argentina to the civilized nations of the earth. He condemned the irresponsibility of those who stoked the fires of easy solutions, but also inveighed against a government that cheated ordinary citizens of their hopes, behaving with impunity and arrogance in its bubble far from life as lived on the street. When we reached the first gate, I switched off the radio.
“What are you looking for?” I said, and since the magistrate did not seem to understand, I repeated: “What is it you’re looking for?”
“If only I knew.”
“If you tell people what we find here—if we do find something and you live to tell the tale—nobody is going to believe you.”
“You’re good at boosting morale, aren’t you, Martelli? You should have been a soldier.”
“I’m a policeman, not the Pied Piper. There’s the farmhouse.”
A low building with a wind-pump next to it. Nothing like the luxurious main building of a rich estancia. There were no vehicles in sight, nor any living dogs. Nor were there any trees, still less a hillock to hide the car behind, so I drove on slowly and parked in front of the veranda as calmly as if I were a stranger stopping to ask for directions.
The first bullet smashed the windscreen. Quesada and I had got off to a bad start. Both of us were already bleeding.
I threw the car into reverse and roared back, away from the hail of bullets. All of a sudden the only word I could utter was “Bastards.” I tried to steer backward up the track, but too late saw a tractor pulling out of its hiding place, blocking our escape. I had no time to brake, and the impact jerked the two of us like dummies in a simulated accident. I cannot tell you what happened next, because I was unconscious.
I came to in a room lit only by a bedside lamp that stood on the floor. I was also on the floor, although someone had been kind enough to throw a blanket over me. My whole body ached, but the pain was so diffuse it felt almost pleasurable. I guessed I had been drugged, and
immediately wondered why I had been kept alive.
I sat up and checked my body. I was not seriously wounded, it was mostly cuts from the shattered windscreen. My clothes were stuck to me with blood, so gingerly I pulled them away from my skin.
The lamp and I were all alone. The room was empty and cold, hence the blanket. After trying to kill me, it seems they did not want me to catch a chill. When I looked up at the roof, I saw that there wasn’t one, only stars.
It was like the old neighborhood cinemas I went to as a kid. They had sliding roofs, so that on summer nights we watched Westerns beneath real stars. Sometimes, if we had just fallen in love with the blond girl down the road, we forgot all about the shoot-outs between Palefaces and Indians, and plunged contentedly into distant galaxies, certain we could reach the far ends of the universe. Isn’t that what childhood is: throwing yourself into an exploration of the impossible with complete disregard for all distance?
The door opened and someone looked in at me from a dark corridor. I recognized the voice of the man who had shot the dog.
“He’s awake,” he said to someone beside him.
A shadow whose outlines I could dimly make out—thanks to the starlight—came into the room. Soft outlines, curves which anticipated a woman’s voice.
“Leave me alone with him.”
“He’s dangerous,” the man warned her.
“We’ve given him a horse tranquilizer. I’ll be alright on my own.”
The door closed behind her, and as she stepped into the pool of light I realized who she was.
I don’t believe it, I admitted to myself, for once being honest. Who would have thought it?
PART FOUR
Hired Brains, Unpunished Hearts
1
“Mireya.”
“Shhh … Not Mireya. Not even Debora. Here I’m known as La Negra.”
She pressed her finger to my lips to silence me. Her finger was all I managed to kiss before she pushed me away with the flat of her hand.
I made an effort to sit up, but she used the same hand to signal I should stay where I was.
“What are you doing here? What is this?”
Her only reply was a smile.
Her flowing hair covered her otherwise bare shoulders and cascaded down the front of the short, flimsy dress she was wearing. The outline of her breasts was like an abyss. When she leaned over me I felt them calling out from the depths. She saw the glint in my eye.
“None of that,” she said. “There’s a man out in the corridor who gets nervous if he hears noises.”
“I called you. Christ, I called you so many times.”
“But you never said a word, Gotán. You never spoke, even when you should have. I had to find out from others.”
“I’m not Gotán any more, I’m Martelli.”
“You’re a bastard, that’s what you are.”
There was no furniture in the room, and no roof. She strolled up and down, circling me like a tiger that has already caught its prey.
“I didn’t expect to find you here.”
“But I expected you.”
“This was the last place on earth I thought I’d see you, even though I’ve no idea what all this is about.”
“Yes, you do. That’s why you came. That’s why I was expecting you.”
I could not help but feel pleased. It always gives one’s self-esteem a boost to be expected, even if it is only to be killed. Eventually she came to a halt and sat cross-legged in front of me. Her scent enveloped me like a huge, beautiful spider’s web. I would not have minded dying then and there.
“We’re going to seize power anyway,” she said, before I had asked her a thing. She really thought I knew more than I did.
“‘We’re going to …?’ I thought you weren’t interested in politics any more.”
“Not politics as politicians practice it. You know how much I despise that clique.”
“They are our representatives.”
“Yours, you mean.”
Talking about politics aroused her. Her nipples hardened, her lips came to life. To her, hatred was like passion.
“Where’s Isabel Cárcano? What have you done with her?” I asked her point-blank. The surprise in her eyes seemed genuine. She seemed to have no idea who I was talking about, she must have thought I was trying to trick her. “She’s the reason I’m here, not to try to wake you from some kind of revolutionary nightmare.”
“Nobody here knows our comrades’ real names,” she said reluctantly.
“From the way she was ‘recruited,’ I don’t think Isabel was exactly a comrade.”
With the same calm authority as a surgeon calling for a scalpel, she opened the door and asked the man on guard outside for a chair. She sat astride it in a masculine pose which did not fit my memories of her, but it excited me nonetheless.
“I can see it,” she said, amused.
“My fear?”
“No, your erection.”
“Can only be the side effects of your ‘horse pill.’”
“That’s your most potent weapon, Gotán, your incredible instinct for self-preservation. You just go for it, no matter who you leave in your wake.”
“Why am I here, Mireya?”
“You should know.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Why else would a horse gallop happily to the slaughterhouse?”
“I’m such an old, weary horse. I confuse alfalfa with straw, love with desire.”
“But you always leave chaos in your wake. You shoot first. You wouldn’t have killed our comrades in Mediomundo if all you wanted to do was sell toilets.”
“News flies, I see. But is it so wrong to put a couple of trained criminals out of action, Mireya?”
“La Negra, Gotán, La Negra.”
I could not help smiling: my old need to distance myself whenever I felt threatened by something, even if that something was happiness. I scarcely believed any longer in what was happening to me, still less in what people told me was happening.
“If I’d known I would find you here, I wouldn’t have come.”
“You knew, Gotán, you knew. The cry of the wolf has been haunting you since that other night. That’s why you came back.”
“Was that you?”
“There you were, scuttling along like a cockroach in the dark. Stumbling along as ever, spying on love, scuttling away.”
“Who were you …?”
“Fucking? I don’t even remember. There was no light, a poor dog had been killed, and a blind man was shuffling around with his eternal white stick. Why didn’t you kill us then? I don’t think you would have flinched, unless you really have grown old.”
Again, I tried to get up, but Isabel’s .38 appeared like magic in her hand.
“Stay still. Let’s talk: we need to.”
Sitting on the floor, I picked up the blanket and wrapped it around me. A drop of blood trickled from my left eyebrow to the corner of my mouth. I licked it.
“I’m cold and I’m wounded,” I said.
“You could be dead, Gotán. Thank La Negra you’re not. And start talking.”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“The truth.”
2
But which truth? The one I had been constructing as a sparrow builds its nest, twig by twig? A short-term truth, simply to shield me from the storm, the most convenient truth, composed of small, everyday details, a superficial, promiscuous kind of truth?
No, it was the other truth you wanted, Debora, Mireya, or La Negra.
That was why there was so much tango, so many promises of eternal love, so much rowing upstream to discover the sources. You knew all this. Once I had thought you were on the journey with me, but you were here expecting me all the time.
“The good thing about being part of a plot in Argentina is that you have access to all the archives,” you said, playing with the revolver once owned by Isabel, whom you said you had never met. Every so often, the barrel of the g
un was pointed directly between my eyes, but it was only for a moment, there was nothing premeditated about it. It would have been pure coincidence if the gun had gone off.
“You’re right, Mireya. Some of the bigwigs found out too late that you gain power from the inside, not from the other side of the street. By the time they decided to do a deal with the dictatorship they had already lost. A couple of bastards succeeded in making the deal, then vanished with all the loot, stepping on a stageful of corpses on the way.”
“What’s all this historical revisionism for, Gotán? Who cares?”
“I do. I was a policeman in those days. And yet, when the shooting started, I was on the other side of the street.”
“As now.”
“Now I’m not even part of the picture.”
“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”
You found it hard to understand that the pawns could be taking other pawns who were on their own side, or that bishops betray, or that the king is a cuckold, or that the queen sleeps with the opposing knight.
“I’m here because I’m an idiot. I’m here because I answer the phone after midnight, because I believe in nostalgia, because I wanted to help the widow of a friend who was killed like that poor dog here the other night.”
“You’re good at it, aren’t you, Gotán? I’m in tears.”
You stood up and went to the door a second time. This time it was documents you were after. The person outside must have been very close, because it was only seconds before you were back, holding a thick, orange-colored file.
“Do you know what this is?”
“Only from hearsay. Gaddafi’s Green Book, Chairman Mao’s Red Book, President Chávez of Venezuela’s colorless Constitution, and now the Orange File. I never read bestsellers.”
No One Loves a Policeman Page 21