by Maxine Swann
“Opera, dance. There’s wonderful dance.”
“Oh, you’re Isolde! Did you see Tristan and Iseult? It was just playing at the Colón.”
“Of course. Did you go?”
“No, I couldn’t.” Leonarda looked horribly disappointed, then enraptured again. “But I have the music. I’ve been singing it.” She sang a line from an aria, really quite loudly. “But you should sing. Your voice is amazing. You must be a mezzo. Have people told you that?” I could see her dreaming up the scene, Isolde, internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano, quivering in the footlights. These infatuations of hers always made me nervous.
“I have been told that, yes.”
“And are you going to stay here? You must stay. We can study singing together,” Leonarda went on, as if nothing else had ever mattered to her in the world.
Isolde laughed, touched and surprised. I, on the other hand, felt annoyed. For one thing, I couldn’t sing.
“What else have you been doing?” Leonarda asked.
Misinterpreting the question as “What do you do?” Isolde adopted her upright posture, forceful, as if exerting her will. Were it not such a sensitive issue for her, Isolde would have undoubtedly understood by now that most Argentines would never pose a question like that, considering it bad manners, and would be perfectly content to learn weeks later, for example, that a newfound friend was responsible for assuring the security systems of the U.S. government or worked in a Turkish restaurant as a cook.
“I’m developing a project related to art and charity for children,” Isolde said.
“Sounds fantastic,” Leonarda answered, her enthusiasm taking an abrupt nosedive. Neither “charity” nor “children” were at all her thing.
“Good, good,” Isolde said, relieved not to have to elaborate.
In the end, things never worked out between Leonarda and Isolde. The three of us attempted to meet a few times, but something always went wrong. For starters, Leonarda was always afraid that people would find her weird.
“She’s sort of weird, right?” Isolde asked me right away.
I shrugged, as befitted my role as the cipher, the malleable, mediating one.
Unsurprisingly, in Leonarda’s case, it was more complicated. She would go into raptures, dreaming up her image of Isolde, the innocent Austrian woman in distress. “She’s adorable, her accent. She’s so alone. I can picture her so well wearing a dirndl.” But when face-to-face with Isolde, something always jarred. Isolde did not cooperate with the dream. She kept getting in the way, asserting her will. “No, let’s meet at this restaurant instead.” “Let’s only speak in Spanish.” “I’m not going to be ordered around by some poorly instructed Austrian” was Leonarda’s conclusion.
On seeing Leonarda at the party, a slim man with dirty-blond hair got down on one knee.
Isolde, on my right, appeared agitated. “Do you know that guy, Alfonso?” she whispered in my ear.
“No,” I said. “Do you?”
She put her hand on my arm, a bit flushed. “Here,” she said. “Can we talk over here?”
“Sure.”
We moved backward toward the bookshelves. “I’ve made out with him a few times at parties, always drunk, of course,” Isolde said, her eyes half on me, half on Alfonso. “And then he asked me on a date. I knew about his family. You know, he’s from a very old Argentine family.” It seemed that Isolde had memorized this whole new set of nomenclature, so different from the European one. “He plays the role of the upper-class eccentric. But what I hadn’t realized was that the family was poor.”
“They are?”
“Can you believe it?”
“How did you find out?”
“Because I got all wet. There was a big storm and the car window wouldn’t close. Alfonso got out one of those tools, what is it, a screwdriver. He told me to put it in the door handle and turn, while he went around outside, getting soaked of course, and pulled the window up with his hands. But it wasn’t a new thing. The window had been broken like that for years.” She looked up and gazed at Alfonso again, still mooning over him. “He never called again. Someone told me that Alfonso only likes dark-skinned women, so maybe that’s what happened, I don’t know.”
Leonarda rejoined us, as a shaggy-haired man sauntered in the front door.
He wore a long dark green leather coat and a thin scarf around his neck. It was an interesting concoction, cool dude mixed with dandy.
“Oh, gross,” Leonarda said. “Look who it is. Hi, pig.”
The guy turned. “You’re looking rather monkey-ish yourself,” he said. He pointed to the tufts of hair under Leonarda’s arms.
Leonarda turned to us. “This is Diego, a horrible guy I used to date.”
Diego snickered. “I don’t think ‘date’ is the word. That sounds pretty harmless. What you did was much worse.”
Leonarda scowled. “Given the material, I think I was kind.”
“I don’t believe you,” Isolde said to Diego in her luscious voice. “What did she do?”
Diego made a hex sign. “You don’t want to know.”
“No, really, I don’t believe you. She seems divine.”
“Maybe so. Maybe that’s the explanation. Divine wrath.”
A little while later, as I was coming in from the balcony, I happened to catch a scene. Isolde was standing with a small contingent by the front door. Several guests were leaving. The standard greeting in Argentina, both hello and goodbye, is the one-cheek kiss and you’re pretty much required to give it to everyone in the room. Bettina, the designer, had done her rounds. Diego, who had only stayed briefly, was just finishing his. He arrived at Isolde and, instead of turning his cheek sideways, aimed for her lips and stuffed his tongue into her mouth.
ten
That Mercury stuff’s going nowhere,” Leonarda said. “It’s all talk, but they don’t do anything. Like I presented them with this whole project to do cultural terrorism, but nothing came of it.”
“What’s cultural terrorism?”
“Whatever. I’ll tell you later. Listen, I’ve decided we have to go it alone. I think it’s time we embarked on the Master Plan.”
We had just passed the prison on Las Heras Avenue, now turned into a park. The prison had been of the panoptic variety—I’d seen photographs—a central point, with wings radiating outward, architecture as vigilance strategy, the idea being that from that central point, you could see what everyone was doing at any given moment anywhere on the premises. Now there were patches of green, flowering trees. The purple jacaranda blossoms dropped down, translucent trumpets. The pink palo borracho ones were star-shaped, slightly rubbery.
“What’s the Master Plan?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
She was carrying a stick of nardo in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other. She smiled. “You’re a very important part of it,” she said.
“I am?”
“Yes,” she said. “So is someone else, the prey. See that building?” Up ahead on the corner was a building in gray stone, with a semicircular entranceway on pillars. “It’s called The Palace of Pigeons. This was one of the few buildings historically where it was okay to retire into aristocratic poverty. The prey lives there.”
“Another aristocrat?”
“No. Just a snob. He’s a famous writer. But he’s more than that. He was, like, a member of a leftist group in the seventies, a TV personality in the nineties. He’s done everything. He’s our Argentine Renaissance man.”
“And why’s he the prey?”
“Because I have a plan.”
We stopped at a light. “To seduce him?” I had to admit I didn’t like the idea.
She shrugged. “If necessary. I want to control his mind.”
Due to her changeable aspect, Leonarda possessed entrance to all kinds of scenes, the upper-class and foreigners circles, the underground art world, university student parties. Often, in the course of an evening, we’d pass from one circle to the next—Leonarda
was particularly skilled at the quick exit. Shortly after this conversation, Leonarda and I made our first foray into the literary crowd. The prey was winning the National Argentine Prize for Literature.
Leonarda came by my apartment to pick me up. Knowing that we were going to a bookish event, I had dressed bookishly. She looked critically at what I was wearing. “No, no,” she said, “we have to look fabulous.”
“I feel like my butt is very prominent in this dress,” I said as we got out of the cab on Parana Street.
“That’s good,” Leonarda said. “Because your butt is also part of the Master Plan.”
On her side, she was perfectly naked under her corduroy coat, which stopped just above the knee. Or at least that’s what it looked like. Not a stitch of other fabric was showing.
I followed her through a wrought iron doorway. The place was a converted mansion. Inside was a plaque on the wall that said “Built in 1913 by the Allemand family.” We entered a passage lit with low yellow light, what had formerly been a garage.
“The hunt is on,” Leonarda said.
I tried to suppress a giggle. I had never done anything like this before.
She looked over her shoulder, then back. “I don’t want to wound him right away. This is just about letting him know that I’m out there, that I’m after him. I want him to start getting scared.
“Oh, wait, lipstick,” she said. She got out a mirror and a lipstick tube and began reapplying a deep red. She had already explained to me that lipstick was meant to represent blood on the mouth of women, making them attractive.
“Why would that make them attractive?” I had asked.
“It goes back to primal times, when a red mouth showed you were lucky and healthy, having just devoured prey.”
Was this hunting metaphor actually getting us anywhere? I wondered, as I applied more lipstick too. Yet in another part of my brain, I heard drumbeats. I pictured us strapping on weapons. We resumed walking. We were two against one, but she didn’t see it that way.
“I don’t need you here,” she said. “I want you here. I can handle the guy perfectly well on my own.”
We reached the far side of the yellow passage and stepped out into a garden. Ivy covered the walls. There was a bathtub to one side full of water, with goldfish flitting around inside. Champagne was being served on a table along the wall. A white stone staircase led upward from the garden to the second floor. Leonarda stood, a bit slouched in her high heels, checking out the scene. She suddenly changed her posture and moved into action. This was the point where her social fears, her pathological shyness, collided with her ambition. The shock could yield some interesting results. “Come on,” she said, “let’s check who’s here.”
We got glasses of champagne and climbed the staircase so we could look down from the terrace above. She pointed out heads, trashy history writer, novelist, filmmaker, right-wing journalist, backs of heads, tops of heads, a face just turning, dark, gray, curly.
“Okay, I’m bored,” Leonarda said. She turned around. The house rose up behind us. “Come on, let’s look inside.”
From the terrace we stepped into several large, open rooms, where the Allemand family used to entertain. There was a DJ set up beside the piano, a service area to one side. Above on the wall was a projection of a large rose-like flower, pink, white, red, circling slowly.
A set of steep stairs led to the next floor. It was darker here, quiet. This was where the family had had their private rooms, slept, dressed. We went through a door, then crept down a hall past a bathroom. We heard giggling voices. A couple in a corner room was smoking a joint. We passed through. In the adjacent room we stopped. A dark window looked down on the garden, a whole other view. We were high up here. Vines bounced in the wind.
“We have to go back down there,” Leonarda said, as if it were a condemnation.
“Do we?” I asked. “Why?”
I felt it too, dread.
She looked at me. She didn’t have her glasses on. She had her exposed look, then didn’t.
“Because we have to,” she said. “The plan dictates that we have to. Come.” She took my hand in her little hot one. We went back downstairs. “Let’s smoke,” she said.
We asked a woman at one of the tables inside for a cigarette and stepped out on the terrace to smoke.
Down below was a cluster of people posing for a photo op. “That’s the artistic literary establishment, though they’d never call themselves that,” Leonarda said. “In their minds, they’re still the avant-garde. He belongs there too.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s not there. He must be preening for his prize.”
There was an announcement at the back of the garden, a woman at a microphone.
“This is a show event, you realize. The prize is all rigged,” Leonarda said.
We were watching from above. The bald head appeared, glinting. “There he is,” Leonarda said. She seemed to rise up like some animal. The guy stepped out, receiving the prize. But it was like on a battlefield, you couldn’t see anything, a blur of movement, a body part in the way, then just in front of you a head looming, it ducked, you had a squinted view into the distance, but then there were people moving one way in a herd, stopping, turning, forced the other way.
Though we couldn’t see him, we could hear his voice now. The prize, he received it, was accepting. His voice was remarkable, as everyone knew. He’d done radio, television, politics, literature. “He’s done everything, everything,” Leonarda said. “That’s the whole point of him.”
And then it was over, dispersion, milling.
“We need to meet him.” She was thinking. I could see it, I had faith in it, entirely, the rapid firing of her brain. “He’s going to go off somewhere now with his friends. We have to find ourselves where he is.” She spotted a cluster of people down below. “We have to step into the inner circle,” she said.
“The inner circle?”
“I’m sure they’ve reserved one of those upstairs rooms.”
I felt that our lives had gotten suddenly complicated, after that glorious position of floating above.
“We do?” I asked.
“Yes, we do.” She seemed nervous, even full of trepidation, but also eager.
We were approaching the inner circle, we’d already greeted some of them in passing. Now we were getting nearer, plucking fresh glasses of champagne on the way, standing, installing ourselves.
“Are you naked under that coat?” a woman asked Leonarda.
“She’s important, the Madame of the social group,” Leonarda whispered afterward to me. “That’s her husband, a filmmaker,” she said, nodding toward the handsome, younger man standing just left of the Madame’s shadow.
Oh, but soon, he’d arrive, the monster. Soon we’d all be gathered here, the monster in our midst.
I turned to look and, lo and behold, there he was, tall, chest puffed out, the shiny head. He had some scars on his face. His language was absurdly eloquent, his eyes sad. He had just won the prize, the biggest prize for literature in the country. He was probably more puffed up than usual.
Where were we going, now that he was here?
We were with them, following them up the stairs. We made it to the upstairs room, on the corner, overlooking the garden. It was small, crowded now with all of us inside. There were red plush couches and chairs.
Yes—the inner circle all looked at each other—finally we’re alone.
Leonarda and I were being tolerated as anomalies. But, faced with the challenge, not of the group but of this man, Leonarda was in her prime.
We sat down for drinks at a table.
I was talking to the handsome husband. On her side, Leonarda was directing herself to the others, and most precisely to the prizewinner. He was sitting, his long thin legs out of sight under the table, his body puffed out. Leonarda faced him, talking.
Then she was saying it—it was her line—others listening. “The Left has behaved so cowardly. When ar
e they going to examine their own actions? It’s disgusting, it’s degrading, the way they take on the victim role. We’re all waiting, my whole generation is waiting, for some act of recognition, that would represent true valor. We want heroes we can believe in, not these sniveling wretches. Oh—” She paused and covered her mouth with her hand, looking at him. She giggled. “Well, anyway, that’s what I believe.”
There was silence. No one spoke. The prizewinning leftist looked at her bedazzled. He was the one to answer, who was supposed to know the answer, the war hero, yet he was speechless before her. She knew it. Never had she been so powerful. It was in her face, eyes, the tilt of her head, the way she held her shoulders, her whole delicate frame. Then the moment passed. He rose, puffed up again, laughed at her.
Still the door had been opened, the moment occurred. She turned to me. Triumph, her green eyes fiercely glowed green. Looking back at her, I too felt it, a mixture of exhilaration and the chills.
eleven
Okay, tell me more,” Gabriel said. We were in my apartment. He had had a long night and was lying back on the chaise lounge. I had been telling him about the Master Plan.
“Do you know this guy?” I asked, referring to the famous writer.
“Of course I know him. Everyone knows him. There’s no way not to know him.” He seemed amused, indulgent, if a bit wary. “So the plan is to hunt him down?”
“Yeah. Can you believe it? I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said.
“Me neither,” he said. “I’m wondering how it works. And what the end result’s supposed to be?”
“We catch him, I guess.” I laughed. “I don’t really know. You’re the one who said I should try everything.”
“You’re right, I did.” He thought for a second. His face, tired like this, had its mournful look. “This Leonarda sounds very compelling.”
I flushed. “She is.”
He hesitated, looking down, then up again. “I guess my only point would be to make sure you’re trying things for yourself, not other people.”