Back inside the house, Nurit makes herself a coffee. Paula Sibona and Carmen Terrada are practically sisters to her, but tonight she would prefer to be on her own. Their conversation drifts over her as though it were the English dialogue on some television drama with subtitles she can’t quite read. She decides to make her apologies – I have to go and write a piece for El Tribuno – and goes to her room. She switches on the computer. Nothing she writes holds her attention because now the only important thing, really, is that missing photograph and the people in it. And she can’t say anything about the photo. Not yet. So she sets to writing about Chazarreta’s house: inside and out, all the details, everything she saw, the colour of the walls, the texture of the fabrics covering chairs or hanging at windows, the smell of the house, the sound and weight of its emptiness: the hum of the fridge, which is still connected, and an alarm clock on Chazarreta’s bedside table that marks the time with a dry tick-tock. Everything. Except for the empty photo frame. She reads over what she’s written, dissatisfied: it isn’t as good as the previous pieces. She knows why: it’s the silence, what’s unsaid or hidden, that part of the iceberg which Hemingway, talking about fiction, said stays submerged beneath the surface of the ocean, enriching the story, but which, in the case of reportage, a piece of journalism for a newspaper, simply highlights the impossibility of saying what she should be saying. It’s what there is, she thinks. This is what there is today. She types two or three lines more before rounding off the piece, which is almost exclusively a description of Chazarreta’s house, with the following:
If houses could speak, we would know who murdered Pedro Chazarreta. Because this house was the sole witness to that crime committed within its walls. The truth is in there. In its floors, its walls, in the furnishings and ornaments that still grace it. All of them silent witnesses.
If the ghost of Pedro Chazarreta could come before us, as the ghost of Hamlet’s dead father appeared to speak his truth, we would know who killed him. Assuming that the ghost wanted to tell us, which, in a case as riven with secrets, lies and obfuscation as the one in which the deceased was involved, seems less clear even than in the case of the King of Denmark, Hamlet’s father.
If the murderer were to crack, if the person who killed Pedro Chazarreta couldn’t keep his secret any longer, if he came before us and said, with or without remorse: “I did it”, once again, we would know the truth.
Which of these three alternatives is the most likely and which the least?
This kind of murderer rarely cracks.
Houses don’t have voices.
Ghosts don’t exist.
After meeting the ghost in Act I of Hamlet, Marcellus declares that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”. And after being in Pedro Chazarreta’s house, I say the same. Something is rotten; something smells bad.
Houses may not have voices, but can they find another way to speak?
Something smells bad, and not only in that house. Something smells bad in La Maravillosa.
She saves the file. She’d like to send it to Jaime Brena for his opinion. But Nurit Iscar realizes that she doesn’t have his email address, or even a telephone number. Nothing. Nor does he have hers. If she wants to get in touch, she’s got no option but to call him at the paper on Monday. But why would she; what excuse would she use? Actually, does she need one? Does she need an excuse to call him? No, Nurit tells herself; after all, they’re in this imbroglio together. And she tries to think of something else. She attaches the file to a new email and sends it to the Crime boy. This time she entirely forgets to send it to Lorenzo Rinaldi.
At the moment that Nurit is shutting down her computer and going downstairs to have supper with her friends, Jaime Brena is in the kitchenette of his apartment grilling a steak he found lurking in the fridge and which, though it looks grim, is going to save him going out to buy something for supper. The lunchtime empanadas and the afternoon’s banana fritters are a distant memory, and his stomach is once again demanding attention. He leaves the steak cooking and wanders over to the dresser which houses the few books he’s bought or been given since the separation, along with his DVDs. The DVDs are something he was able to hang onto after the separation, doubtless because Irina never liked the same films as he did. Then again, what sort of films would appeal to his ex-wife? Does she even like cinema at all? He isn’t sure any more, and it surprises him how he’s gradually losing the memory not only of Irina’s face but also of her mannerisms, her taste, the anecdotes they shared. Is that what people mean by “the grieving process”? Or has he finally come through that? At any rate, he can’t let go of the fact that she still has his books. No way. Jaime Brena rummages in the disordered pile for the DVD he wants and stands looking at the cover for a moment. He reads: Betty Boop and Friends: 90 Minutes of Cartoons. He turns it over and looks down the titles: “No, No! A Thousand Times No!”; “Poor Cinderella”; “Betty Boop and Little Jimmy”; “Betty Boop and the Little King”; “Swat the Fly”; “Musical Mountaineers”; “Mother Goose Land”. The steak is spitting on the hob and Jaime Brena walks back to it, still reading the DVD: “So Does An Automobile”; “Cupid Gets His Man”; “Pudgy the Pup in ‘Happy You and Merry Me’”; “Grampy in ‘House Cleaning Blues’”. Smoke and the smell of cooking meat fill the kitchen; Jaime Brena salts the steak, flips it and salts the other side. He pours himself a glass of wine, then leaves a plate beside the griddle, ready for the steak, and puts the Betty Boop DVD to one side. In a while, when he goes to bed, he’s going to smoke a joint, put on this DVD and let himself drop off to sleep with Betty Boop singing “Boop, Boop a Doop” to him like a lullaby. Will he ever be bold enough to tell Nurit Iscar that he was the one who thought of that name for her? Will he tell her that he used to have her photo stuck to his desk – the one that came out in the paper’s weekend magazine when she brought out Death by Degrees, his favourite novel? Will he tell her that Rinaldi was only copying him? Will he ever tell her, Nurit Iscar, Betty Boo, that he has loved her from afar – like someone in love with a movie star – and not only the curls but the head that invented those stories, that chose those words, that created those characters? No: he doesn’t believe he ever will tell her. And he certainly won’t tell her that on the afternoon he learned that Rinaldi and she were lovers, he tore the photograph off his desk and threw it into the bin.
As Jaime Brena settles down to his steak, pouring more wine and casting sidelong glances at the DVD still lying on the work surface, the Crime boy is starting up his computer. He opens his mailbox and sees that Nurit Iscar has sent a piece. He reads it. For all her qualms, of which he knows nothing, the Crime boy thinks it’s good. He forwards it to the newsroom to get it in ahead of the deadline. Then he forwards it to Jaime Brena, adding a postscript: The guy who died skiing was called José Miguel Bengoechea – I found it on the Internet, obv. But Jaime Brena never looks at his emails at home, not unless someone calls specifically to say that it’s something needing urgent attention and he has no choice but to oblige. And the boy doesn’t call, just sends on Nurit Iscar’s email. He, in contrast to Brena, finds it hard to walk away from his computer once he’s switched it on. For him it represents unconditional company, like Jaime Brena’s fantasy dog. The boy logs on to Twitter to see if there’s anything new and important. He scrolls through the tweets quickly; most of them, as on any weekend, are more egocentric than interesting. Then he clicks on Google to look for information about Pedro Chazarreta’s school. He types “Chazarreta + Gandolfini + Collazo + secondary school” into the browser. Nothing useful comes up. He decides to remove one of the variables, a surname first. Still nothing. He takes out another surname instead. Still nothing. He removes two surnames together. It doesn’t work. He swaps “secondary school” for “college”, then “institute”, then puts in “school” on its own, then “secondary” on its own. No. Changing tack, he searches for all the schools that have a saint’s name. The list of results is endless, even if he limits himself to the ones within
Buenos Aires. He refines the search by excluding schools named after “known” saints, as Gladys Varela put it. That leaves San Ildefonso, San Bartolome, San Anselmo, San Viator, San Silvestre and San Hermenegildo. Now he tries these, looking at each school’s website in turn, but without finding any lists of leavers. The boy gets up to make a coffee, looks out of his apartment window, stretches and thinks. It occurs to him that his girlfriend hasn’t called all day and that he doesn’t care. Night has descended on the street, and traffic going in both directions makes a muddle of car lights. He’d like to go out for a walk. The night is generous, he thinks; it always throws you something. That’s what Cynthia, his ex-girlfriend said a while ago, a long while ago. What became of Cynthia? he wonders. He ought to go out for a bit. He’s spent all Saturday working, after all. Back at the computer he logs onto Facebook to see if anyone has organized anything for this Saturday night. He answers two or three surveys, watches a video, looks through the album photos of a friend he hasn’t seen for years. And through the photos of a friend of his friend. Nothing interesting. What if he just goes out to see what’s happening, without any particular plan or destination in mind? No, he’s not much given to those sorts of spontaneous nights out. They can end in tears. He doesn’t think to ring his girlfriend. Or rather he does think of it, but rejects the idea immediately, almost with contempt. Can he really feel contempt for someone he slept with less than twenty-four hours earlier? No, it must just be that he’s still annoyed with her about that business with the bikini, or tired. Or generally hacked off. Actually, perhaps he really does feel contempt for her. He types Cynthia’s full name into Facebook’s search box and locates her among various other possibilities. He knows it’s her from the photo, because she hasn’t changed at all. Perusing her “wall”, he sees that she’s in a relationship and decides not to add her as a friend – what would be the point? What about asking Karina Vives out, though? Stupid idea – he hasn’t even got her telephone number. And she must be about five or six years older than him. Is that a problem, though? He looks for her on Facebook too, finds her and checks her birth date: seven years older. Well, it’s not that much, he thinks, but he doesn’t dare ask her to be a friend, or at least a friend on this social network. Sometimes he gets the impression that she thinks he’s an idiot. He looks at her wall, looks through her photos; it surprises him that these aren’t restricted to her friends. If he were brave enough to admit that he’d been looking her up, he’d advise changing her security settings. But he doesn’t send a friend request. He refreshes the page to see if there are any new updates – and there are. A friend of his has joined the group “I’m a Fan of Agent 99 and I hate Agent 86”. It makes him smile, but isn’t it a bit childish? If so, what does that say about him? Is he childish too? There’s a group for anything you want on Facebook, he thinks. And for things you don’t want. He types into the search engine: “I studied at San…” and a list of 28 possibilities comes up. Leaving out once again the more popular saints, he selects San Ildefonso, San Anselmo, San Jerónimo Mártir and a few other schools. All the comments are from users looking for old school friends, trying to organize reunions, get-togethers, tributes. There’s nobody from Chazarreta’s generation. As he scrolls down through old stories, the Crime boy remembers his own secondary school. It’s frightening to think that his contemporaries may be trying to plan a reunion. He can’t think of anything worse. Secondary school was not a happy time for him. Two or three old school friends have tracked him down on Facebook, but he didn’t reply to their friend requests. If he only ever hung out with them at break times, or on a handful of stultifying evenings out, why look them up now? He looks them up. And there they are. Reading a few of their comments is enough to confirm what he thought at the time: he’s got nothing in common with these people and no interest in their news. And yet he keeps reading it all the same, and looking at their photographs and thinking “what a bunch of pricks”. He returns to the list of Chazarreta’s potential schools, and on San Jerónimo Mártir’s page a comment catches his attention. It’s not the comment itself that’s arresting – “Go for it, San Jerónimo Mártir, for fuck’s sake!!” – but the person posting it. It’s one of the members of the group: Gonzalo Gandolfini. Gandolfini. Going into his page he sees that the guy is young; according to his profile he was born in 1983. He doesn’t understand why people put their birth date in with the year and everything; he always leaves that out, along with the city where he lives and his relationship status. This 1983 Gandolfini could be a relation of the dead man, maybe even his son. He scans the comments for more information or familiar names and finds nothing else. But under “Friends” is another Gandolfini – Marcos. He goes onto Marcos’ page. This person also went to San Jerónimo Mártir, and was born in 1987. Brothers? Cousins? He’s starting to suspect that this is one of those schools that educate successive generations from the same family, that pride themselves on “traditional values”. He sends a message to Gonzalo. Hello, how are you? I used to be friends with a Gandolfini who went to this school (if the Crime boy knew the first name of the dead Gandolfini he’d put it in the message, but he doesn’t know it), a man who would be in his sixties now. Then I left the country and lost track of him. Do you know him, or is he a relation of yours? He used to hang around with Pedro Chazarreta and Luis Collazo. I’d like to get back in touch. I’ve got a lot of memories of those guys. The boy presses Send and waits for a while to see if there’s a reply. In the meantime, he looks at some other pages. It occurs to him that it would be better if Gonzalo turns out not to be Gandolfini’s son; if he is, it won’t be pleasant for him to get a message enquiring about his dead father. But he doesn’t regret sending it, despite this risk; in fact, he feels that he’s finally putting some of Jaime Brena’s teachings into practice. If Brena asks him again, “Have you ever disguised yourself?”, or “Have you ever posed as a policeman and called the house of a murder victim?” he’ll be able to answer that yes, he has made a start. In his own way. The new technologies have made thousands of disguises available. Time goes on and the Crime boy begins to feel the weight of his long day. Gonzalo Gandolfini still hasn’t answered his message. He’s a young guy, the boy thinks, he’s probably got plans on a Saturday night. For his own part, the Crime boy thinks it’s time to go to bed, that the most logical thing to do on this Saturday night, still glittering through his window, is to close his eyes and sleep.
He stretches, turns out the lights, draws the curtains. But he doesn’t shut down the computer. He leaves Facebook open on the screen, in case Gonzalo Gandolfini, returning in the early hours from his night out, checks his page and answers the message. There’s always a chance the Crime boy will get up to go to the bathroom during the night and, checking his computer on the way back to bed, find what he’s looking for, there on the glowing screen.
17
Sunday dawns rainy. It’s not torrential rain; in fact the stuff that’s falling couldn’t strictly speaking be described as rain at all. It’s barely drizzle. But it’s thick and unrelenting, the sort that soaks you through. Nurit gets up and looks out of the window. She notices that, far from making the landscape less beautiful, the spray enhances it: the colours look more intense with myriad greens; even without opening the windows, she can smell the wet earth. Or is she intuiting it? Can you conjure a smell, evoke it as if it were there? Water runs along a tin gutter bordering the roof and down a drain. At the point where it finally falls, it has formed a puddle. The sound of water in the gutter is dimly reminiscent of something. As if she had heard that same rain in another place, a long time ago. Or had dreamed of it. It would have been a rainy Sunday much like this that Gloria Echagüe was murdered; even though Nurit didn’t accept the commission that Rinaldi offered her at the time, she remembers clearly that on that day, the day Chazarreta’s wife died, it was also raining. Now she goes to the room where her friends have spent the night, opens the door and peeps in at them. They are both still asleep. She makes herself a coffee and picks up
the copy of El Tribuno that the newspaper boy left on the front step this morning and every morning – just as she arranged when she first came to La Maravillosa. On Sundays Nurit Iscar likes to read the other papers too, nearly all of them. On other days she’ll settle for the online editions, it’s less wasteful, but on Sundays she wants paper, ink, fingers that get grubby from turning pages. A proper newspaper. All the newspapers. She knows that if she rings the newsagent they’ll take ages to bring them, especially with this weather and the fact that it’s a Sunday, so she decides to walk, telling herself that it may be raining but it isn’t cold, and that it will do her good to move a bit. Besides, she’s promised Jaime Brena and the Crime boy that she’ll make an effort to socialize more with the neighbours, in the hopes that one of them may have information about Chazarreta’s schooldays and his friends from that time. She didn’t pack an umbrella when she came here, not thinking that she would need one, but she does have a light anorak with a hood. No book this time; it would only get wet. No sunglasses, either. She steps out with determination and, less than a hundred yards later, sees Luis Collazo jogging towards her. Nurit looks at him, but he runs past deep in concentration (or so it seems), breathing deeply in and out not because he’s out of breath, but as an explicit part of his training routine. He runs at a steady pace, and on his arm is something Nurit initially takes to be a radio before realizing that it’s one of those gadgets for monitoring your heart rate. She walks on a few paces then turns back. He, without slackening his pace, has also turned to look at her from a distance that lengthens with every step. As soon as their eyes meet, however, he turns round again and continues as though this awkward exchange had never happened. Nurit feels tempted to follow him. Very tempted. So much so that she does just that, running a few yards behind Luis Collazo, with short fast strides, like someone running to catch a bus in Buenos Aires. The ground is slippery and she’s nervous of landing spilled like an oil stain on La Maravillosa’s asphalt. She drops the jog in favour of a lighter, safer trot. He hasn’t managed to get that far ahead of her, but still she loses him at a bend in the road. Then, even though it makes her feel ridiculous, she starts running again. By the time the bend and all the vegetation bordering it allow her a view of the street ahead, she realizes that Luis Collazo isn’t on this road any more. And yet he can’t have jogged fast enough to reach the next bend. Impossible. Nurit Iscar keeps running, but at a slower pace, wondering what to do next. She pulls her hood tighter so that her hair won’t get soaked, tucking a few errant curls inside. Humidity makes her curls, her Betty Boop curls, springier, and she likes that. But the last time she let herself get soaked in the rain she caught a cold that took ages to shake off. She zips her coat right up, the zipper almost touching her face, then keeps walking. She wonders if any of the houses she can see on both sides of the road belong to Luis Collazo and inspects them openly, looking for clues and finding none. Nurit Iscar fears that if she keeps walking in this direction she’ll get lost; she forgot to bring the map of La Maravillosa with her and none of the few walks she’s been on so far have brought her to this part of the compound. Better to go back, she decides, and turns on her heel, only to be confronted by Collazo, who must have been hiding somewhere behind her. What do you want? he demands. Nurit doesn’t answer, her heart pounding from the shock. I asked you what you want! Collazo shouts at her again. Nothing, I was just out for a walk. You were following me, Señora, I’m not a fool. OK, I admit that I was. I wanted to ask you a question. I don’t answer questions. It’s something silly: I just wanted to know which school Chazarreta went to – you and he were classmates, right? Something silly, Collazo repeats, with an implication Nurit can’t grasp. What do you know, Señora? he says, and grabs hold of her arm. She stares at the man’s hand squeezing her above the elbow but makes no move to free herself, and replies: Nothing, but I would like to know. If it’s for my sake, don’t waste your time, says Collazo, letting her go. I’m not scared of anything, not even of getting killed, but don’t you or anyone else expect me to talk, because I will never do that. Nurit is still trying to understand when a guard drives by in his electric buggy. He looks at them as if wondering whether or not he should stop, but waves instead and asks: Everything OK? while continuing at a slow speed. Everything’s fine, Collazo replies. But the guard doesn’t appear satisfied with this and pulls up a few yards further on. Then Collazo warns Nurit in a low but firm voice: Don’t get involved, and immediately sets off again. Nurit Iscar is left standing, watching him go. The guard puts his buggy into reverse and draws up alongside her, sounding a continuous beep to warn that the vehicle is reversing, which Nurit can’t help but find ridiculous in the circumstances. As he glides to a stop beside her, the guard asks: Are you all right? Would you like me to take you home? She skips the first question and goes straight for the second: Not to my home, but to the newsagent. Would that be OK? Yes, of course, the man says, and Nurit climbs in beside him.
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