by Martin Kohan
Señor Biasutto thrusts his arms forwards in his jacket sleeves, then undoes one of the buttons. That is all: he undoes a button. The jacket falls open, to reveal a white shirt. He is not wearing a pullover. That is all. Some people do not feel the cold. Some men never wear their jacket buttoned up. Perhaps now Señor Biasutto will feel more at ease, better able to put up with the lack of space. But no. Instead he thrusts his arms forward again several times, and his shoulders start to twitch once more. It is hard, if not impossible, to tell how old Señor Biasutto is. This is what María Teresa is thinking; she also wonders, aware that her mind is wandering, if he has another Christian name, and what month he was born in.
He takes her by the shoulders and turns her round. Firmly, insistently. She finds herself facing the tile-covered wall, her face almost flattened against it. She can make out every detail: every slight discoloration, the smallest roughness. Some of the chill of the tiles spreads to her cheeks. Señor Biasutto is now directly behind her. María Teresa still manages to tell herself, for no apparent reason, that after all he is the supervisor of the class assistants at the National School of Buenos Aires.
Señor Biasutto fumbles with her skirt. As he lifts it, she feels the cold on her legs and starts to feel afraid. Unless he keeps hold of it with one hand, her skirt drops again, making Señor Biasutto even more awkward and frantic. Pulling her skirt back up, he sees her thighs, the outline of her concealed buttocks, but finds he needs both hands and so lets go of the material. He starts panting, struggles desperately with his own clumsiness. He is not expecting María Teresa to do anything, except to be there, his assistant, his subaltern, one side of her face pressed against the tiles. Finally he manages to undo himself, although he is still caught up in his trousers. Pushing up her skirt once more, he uses one hand to hold it up on her back. María Teresa feels his cold, damp fist on her; she remembers how when he said farewell that night on the street corner opposite the church Señor Biasutto bent forward, as if in the hall of a great palace, and brushed her fingertips with his lips. It was cold in Buenos Aires that night too.
With his free hand, Señor Biasutto tears down her knickers. Since he is only pulling on one side, the right-hand side, the knickers become twisted. He has to reach over with this hand, underneath the other one, to straighten them up. He does this with great difficulty. By now María Teresa’s knickers are down round her knees, the elastic looser than when they were round her waist, where they ought to be worn and where they ought to be now. In pulling so roughly he has rolled them down, so that they look like sheets rolled by someone wanting to use them as a rope to escape out of a window. María Teresa’s most intimate parts must now be on view.
María Teresa squints back at the bolt on the door. It is firmly locked. She wonders if the bolt in the other cubicle that broke when Señor Biasutto forced his way in a few days ago has been repaired.
She could have checked, but did not do so. It cannot have been very difficult to put the screws back in. They might even have replaced the missing one while they were at it. But if the wood was split when the metal fitting was torn from the door, it would not have been so easy to repair. Anyone using that cubicle to relieve themselves would find the door would not lock. If they had no time to change cubicles, they would have to try to keep their balance by putting one hand on the side wall, and stretch the other out in front of them to stop another unaware person coming in while they were in mid-flow. Why, for what reason, is María Teresa thinking things like this when the bolt of the cubicle where she is looks perfectly sound, and the door is locked? She can hear Señor Biasutto panting behind her. He pushes a hand inside her. Then he uses his other hand to help him, no longer worried that the skirt could fall again, because his arms will stop it anyway. One hand helping the other. One opens, the other pushes. María Teresa is terrified at the thought of Señor Biasutto’s thing. She wills herself to look sideways and down. As yet Señor Biasutto’s thing is not part of what is going on. As far as she can tell, it is still some way from her, and not responding. It is his hand that is doing everything, forcing its way inside her. A cold, clammy hand. The other one, just as cold and wet, is helping out. It pushes her flesh to one side and opens her up, makes it easier for the other hand to slide its way in. María Teresa cannot cry out or escape. She stares at the bolt: it is drawn, the door is locked. She is not thinking of opening it. No, that is not what she is thinking: she is remembering the brutal way in which the other bolt snapped off a few days earlier from the blows that Señor Biasutto rained down on the door. The screws shot out as if they had exploded, and the wood splintered all over the place. That is what she thinks as she sees the intact bolt behind her. She thinks of this and of Señor Biasutto’s thing, which is not in sight: if only it stays that way.
She suffers the thrusting of his hands in silence. One hand plucks and pinches; the other simply thrusts. These actions are so blind and unfocused that it is hard to make out what their real intention is. She does what she can with her own hands: she spreads the palms against the smooth wall to stop the heaving behind her making her head hit the tiles. She cannot shout or moan. For some reason, her cautious instinct to go unnoticed in the toilet remains with her. She tightens her lips and clenches her teeth as she feels Señor Biasutto’s dusty breath far too close to her ears and the back of her neck. The rummaging around continues for a while, apparently with no definite aim, until suddenly one of Señor Biasutto’s hands, the most agile one, the one that has forced its way inside, changes direction. It changes like one of those strange tracked combat vehicles that can go immediately into reverse or swing to one side or another according to the demands of battle. Until now that hand was being used more or less as a fist, a bunch of clenched fingers, which did no more than push forward blindly. Now though one finger emerges from the rest, the middle finger: or perhaps it is better to say that four fingers withdraw, leaving this one to press home the attack. With a shudder, María Teresa again starts to think of Señor Biasutto’s fearful thing, but she can see it is still apart from the fray. It is the wounding finger that is plunging deep inside her. A humiliating finger forcing its way in.
Afterwards, when she is able to, María Teresa will burst into tears over all this, but for the moment no tears come. To stay calm, she thinks: afterwards I will be able to cry, I will be able to shout. For now she clenches her teeth, screws up her eyes, tenses her hands, presses her whole body against the wall. Señor Biasutto stabs at her with his middle finger. To stay calm, María Teresa thinks: I am not losing my virginity. The finger penetrates her thirstily, greedily. Desperate, she thinks, tells herself: this does not mean I am no longer a virgin. Señor Biasutto’s finger is not yet all the way inside her. He pulls it out a little, which hurts still more. Is he going to remove it altogether? No, he is not: he is merely gathering momentum. He pushes it back in as far as he can, as offensively as an insult. Afterwards, later that night when she is back at home, in her bed or under the shower she will want to take as soon as she arrives, she will be able to release the cry that is stuck in her throat now, the tears that are welling up in the corners of her eyes.
Nobody comes into the toilet, and that would be no use anyway. Señor Biasutto is in charge. He has stuck his finger in her. He plunges it inside and leaves it there: inside her. All of a sudden he starts to moan. Señor Biasutto gives a thin, high-pitched moan that does not seem to come out of his mouth. Yet it does: it comes from his twisted, saliva-covered mouth. There is something not right about his teeth. It is as though he wanted to appropriate her pain, as if he can take over the expression of pain she cannot permit herself. He moans, snivels: she plucks up courage and glances back at him while he is beside himself in this way. She sees how his features are racked with sobs, how he is gripped by a strange suffering. His face is contorted, shiny with sweat. His moustache is like a scratch that has left a line of black blood above his crumpled mouth. Although his eyes are not shut, he cannot see anything. María Teresa looks directly at them
and sees they are blind.
The finger inside her forces her to stay as still as she can. If she moves, it will only hurt more. She wonders how long this will go on, what the outcome will be. She knows from her brother how this ends. But the other, that thing down there, when will that be over? Señor Biasutto’s face is continuously changing in ways she cannot interpret. Most of the grimaces seem to indicate pain. María Teresa observes him and waits, biting a finger of her own hand to help bear it. She no longer feels the cold.
The automatic flush goes off in the urinals. There is the sound of water gushing, falling, collecting. It goes off even when there is no-one there, and has a single function: to clear away any residues. On this occasion, however, it also does something more, unforeseen and in no way deliberate: it offers María Teresa a sign (which is also a relief) that the world outside still exists and is still going on, that she can return to it, that what is happening to her has not destroyed her, is not everything.
Señor Biasutto finally relaxes (his features and the whole of his body relax), and he decides to remove his finger. He pulls it straight out, as he had seemed to be doing before but did not complete. It hurts a lot, more than before, more than ever. It hurts. María Teresa moans for the first and only time: a faint, short moan. Señor Biasutto’s finger is outside now, outside her. It is as if it is part of its master’s hand once more: a released attack dog that now returns wearily to the pack.
María Teresa senses that relief may be on the way, but immediately shudders and wonders if the thought is something she cannot yet allow herself. The only one who knows what comes next is Señor Biasutto, with that enormous thing of his. He is the head of the assistants. She cannot cry out. It could be that at this very moment, just when she thinks the pain and the humiliation have finished, Señor Biasutto returns to the attack, and with nothing less than his fearful thing. Then all this will not be the end, it will only be the beginning.
But Señor Biasutto’s thing remains as uninvolved as it was at the start. Nothing of what has happened seems directed towards it, or if it was it has taken no notice. Although she is terrified at the sight of it, it has not grown at all, has played no part. The finger-substitute is Señor Biasutto’s last resort. Besides, now that he has pulled away from her, Señor Biasutto looks so dazed and unwell that it does not seem possible he could take any kind of initiative. His eyes slowly recover their link to the real world. As they do so, by chance they come into contact with María Teresa gazing at him: she quickly turns and stares ahead of her once more. Señor Biasutto’s face twists in yet another grimace, and he laughs the laugh of an idiot. This real or pretend idiocy is the safe-conduct that masks his desire for impunity. Or perhaps it is not even that: nothing more than a hidden truth that surfaces for a second. The effect is the same: Señor Biasutto withdraws. Hunched and silent, he makes to leave the cubicle. His hand is shaking, his fingers knot as he tries to draw back the bolt. He eventually succeeds, opens the door, leaves María Teresa still inside. She quickly pulls up her knickers and straightens her clothing. She will not leave until he has gone. He will only leave without her. Señor Biasutto does up his jacket, and his torso is forced lumpily back into shape. He regains the air of a supervisor. His face also recovers the composed look of a person in authority. He strides out of the toilet, stamping his feet as if he were marching rather than walking, as if he too were practising for the parade in honour of Manuel Belgrano. He pushes so hard at the swing doors that they continue to oscillate and creak far longer than usual. His footsteps resound along the corridor.
He has not washed his hands.
15
María Teresa no longer visits the boys’ toilet at the school. She stops going there. She is busy with her duties as a class assistant, as hard-working and conscientious as ever. A whole day goes by without her going anywhere near the boys’ toilet, but also without her even thinking about it. This is not like the previous occasion, when she did not go in there but was aware all the time that she was not doing so. Now she has given up on everything: doing what was once so important to her, and above all thinking about it. Her unconfessed wish is to alter the past, to delete what happened. It is not enough for her that it is no longer happening, or may not happen again: she needs it never to have happened. For this reason she does not even venture into the part of the cloister where the toilet is, and tries as far as possible to avoid the grim presence of Señor Biasutto.
The next day it is third year class ten’s turn to practise parading round the quad outside the school library. María Teresa has to go with them to keep an eye on their behaviour, and so wraps up warm in a neutral-coloured woollen top her mother knitted for her at the start of the year. Two other classes from year three are also taking part in this rehearsal: class eight and class nine. Their assistants, Marcelo and Leonardo, also go out into the quad and exchange pleasantries with her as they keep watch unobtrusively.
The chief difficulty the pupils face is that they inevitably bend their knees with each stride. That is fine when they are walking, but not when they are marching. In order to march, they have to behave as though their knee joints were completely arthritic and stiff, and keep their legs straight, not bending them at all, jerking them forwards and backwards.
—You’re not out for a stroll, ladies and gentlemen! This is a parade!
Despite the metallic echo from the megaphone, Mr Vivot’s exasperation is plain for all to hear. Their legs should stay straight not only as they step forward, but when they are raised more than usual: this also causes problems (especially for the girls) because they tend to repeat the same movements they employ in normal life and cannot seem to understand that they are acquiring fresh skills.
—You’re not in the park, ladies and gentlemen! You are in a parade!
They ought to think of the war films they all must have seen. If they concentrated on those they would respond better and satisfy Mr Vivot, who occasionally seems to be so enraged he will bite the end off his megaphone. Those war films clearly show what he is now trying to get the pupils to do: that from a side view like the one he adopts, all their legs and arms should always rise and fall together.
—As if you were one man, ladies and gentlemen! As if you were one!
He is doomed to failure. There is always one dunderhead who is either ahead or behind the rest, spoiling the rhythm. He also has his work cut out trying to correct their habit of letting their arms hang by their sides. The pupils allow them to swing on their own, with their fingers also hanging down, instead of doing what Mr Vivot wants them to do: to hold their arms rigid and swing them vigorously (also to stop swinging them immediately, making sure they are not still waving about, when they have come to a halt).
—Don’t walk, march! Don’t walk! March!
The patriotic event will reach its climax with the swearing of the oath on the national flag. Could there be any more fitting homage to Manuel Belgrano, the man who created it? Argentinian children of the new generations, from the school for patriots he founded, will swear to give their lives for the flag. Their mothers almost always burst into tears at this point in the ceremony, while the fathers click away on their Kodak Instamatics, recording the scene for posterity. But the oath on the flag has also got to be rehearsed: it is not simply a matter of the pupils going up and saying, yes, they will die, they will give their lives for that flag, then muttering an oath, applause, and everyone on to the next thing. This is a solemn moment, comparable only to Christian baptism or communion, and it takes place around the hero’s tomb. The pupils need to rehearse: eyes front means exactly that, none of them is to get distracted or so much as blink. An entire building could collapse on the pavement opposite them, but they are not to turn their heads for even a second, not even a centimetre. Eyes front means eyes front. And when the moment of swearing their oath to the flag comes, they all have to stare at the flag.
—Anyone I catch looking elsewhere can look for another school!
But worst of all would b
e if that swearing of the oath came out ragged or sounded unenthusiastic. Mr Vivot knows he already has enough on his hands trying to get the girls’ voices to sound martial. He harangues all the pupils, with and without the megaphone. He asks them to consider the oath they are swearing: that they will honour the flag, give their lives for it. He asks them to respond from the heart, to feel in their souls what it means to be Argentinian. He gets them to practise.
—Yes, I swear!
—Again.
—Yes, I swear!
To make certain, Mr Vivot shouts encouragement; he tells them not to be so feeble, to be such namby-pambies. Loud and clear. Let the sound echo. Echo all round the quad. He seizes the megaphone. He chants the formula. He separates the words (that separation is vital: on no account must it seem as though they are simply swearing for its own sake, that they are responding automatically). He listens closely.
—Yes, I swear!
—Again.
—Yes, I swear!
—Once more.
—Yes, I swear!
—The last time!
—Yes, I swear!
Señor Biasutto appears at the door in the corner of the quad leading to the cloister. He appears interested in the parade rehearsal. He carefully checks the ends of each row of pupils, lends the sharpest of ears to the harmony of the collective oath-swearing. He goes over to Mr Vivot and exchanges a few words with him. From afar he waves to the assistants: Marcelo and Leonardo. To María Teresa as well. A brief but friendly gesture. Then he disappears back through the doorway where he first appeared.