I went upstairs. The smell of incense drifted from under Beatriz’s door. On a whim, I knocked. She answered in a fluffy bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, her eyes as red as usual.
“What’s up? Need some physics help?”
“I was wondering if you had marijuana.”
She blinked at me. “I’m seeing someone,” she said.
“I am too,” I said. “I really just want to buy if you have any to sell.”
Beatriz pulled her robe more tightly closed and nodded slowly. Then she went to her dresser. Putting a dent in my allowance, I asked for enough to last me the week.
* * *
I came down with a cold and had to fight off the temptation to skip class and stay in bed. Not that it did me much good; I was so distracted that the notes I took turned out to be useless. In the evening I went for a walk, telling myself it would help clear my sinuses. But the truth was, I felt I had to put off calling Isabel until at least that night, and I worried whether I could restrain myself if I stayed home.
When I finally rang, Pichuca answered. Isabel wasn’t home, she told me, and, sick as I sounded, I shouldn’t be trying to see her then anyway. “Stay home, have some tea,” she said. “Be kind to yourself, Tomás.”
Isabel didn’t call me back the next day or the day after. I tried to blame it on her classes, and once even loitered on the steps of the School of Engineering, pretending to wait for a friend under its daunting white columns, but there was no sign of her. I started replaying our afternoon together, analyzing it for mistakes I’d made, gestures of hers that in hindsight felt off or disappointed. You’re the monkey . . . I just need to wash my hands . . .
I went through another day of classes. When I ran into Rodolfo at the Cambridge Institute after my English class, I proposed going straight to a bar for drinks. We barely ate, and after a few Fernet and Cokes, during which he lectured me about Mao, I was insisting we go to a boliche.
“I want to pick somebody up.”
“And what, sneeze all over them, boludo? It’s barely dinnertime and you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick.”
“What about you and Isabel, eh? I’ve seen how you look at each other.”
“It’s—you don’t—” I stammered incoherently. “You don’t know her like I do.”
“I know women, though!” he exclaimed, a typical machista porteño. “Isa’s like any of them. Likes playing games. A bit crazier than most too, you ask me.”
“I’m going,” I said, sliding from my stool and stumbling out. Rodolfo must have followed me, since some blacked-out interval later, I was sitting on a curb bent over a pool of vomit with his hand rubbing my back.
“It’s okay, boludo,” he said soothingly, with a lilting intonation that made me think he’d been saying so for a while. “It’s okay. I’m sure she loves you plenty, boludo.”
He put me in a cab. I’m not sure how I got into the pensión or upstairs, only that I brushed my teeth for ten minutes before going to sleep.
* * *
On Friday, I went to a confitería to eat and recover, then spent an hour trying in vain to make sense of a spinning set of organic chemistry diagrams. When I returned home, Beatriz told me I’d gotten a call from my girlfriend.
“My what?” I said, before I remembered my lie. I went back downstairs and found the phone free.
“I was hoping you’d call,” I said, too breathlessly, when Isabel came on the line.
“So I heard,” she replied with a mocking, flirty edge.
“Rodolfo told you?”
“Rodolfo? Nerea told me. You don’t remember calling last night?” Suddenly I felt nauseous again. To my relief, Isabel laughed. “Don’t worry, boludo, you didn’t say anything bad. I should have called you sooner anyway. I’ve been meaning to, I just—I had to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said.
* * *
Pichuca was there—I forced a nod when she asked reprovingly if I was taking care of myself—and directed me to the basement. When I went downstairs, I found Isabel on the couch, picking uncharacteristically at one of her nails. Her hug was quick and loose, with what felt like deliberate space between us.
I sat down beside her, lacing my fingers in my lap.
“I’ve been feeling guilty, Tomás,” she said.
“About the other day?”
“We’re friends. It’s high stakes. Not to say I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s just—that’s not always a good thing, me knowing what I’m doing.”
“Is this where you enigmatically tell me about your dark side again?” I teased, but Isabel didn’t laugh.
“I’ll try not to be enigmatic this time,” she said, giving me such a steely, unwavering look that I felt a flutter of nervousness in my stomach. “I’m not just a member of the Peronist Youth anymore, Tomás. I’m with the Montoneros.”
The guerrilla group. All those news bulletins about raids and shoot-outs with officers came back to me, the photos of dead “terrorists” usually left in their wake. My mother’s anxieties about them too, how preposterous they’d seemed to me. Yet here was a Montonera sitting next to me, her beguiling eyes intently awaiting my reaction.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“My role is low-level,” she assured me. “Gatherer and distributor of information only. Reports about government activities, that kind of thing.”
“What’s so bad about that?” I asked sincerely.
“It can put people in uncomfortable positions. You, for instance,” she continued regretfully, as if she were not the one about to put me in such a position. “You’re close to Colonel Felipe Gorlero. I’m sorry, Tomás, but I have to ask: Would you be willing to collect information from him for me?”
“Collect information,” I repeated slowly. “You mean spy on him?”
“It’s okay, Tomás, I understand if you don’t feel comfortable. Forget I asked, forget everything I just said. We’ll go back to being innocent cousins. No compromising secrets or sneaking around. It’ll be safer, I think. In more ways than one.”
“I don’t want safe,” I said. With Isabel, I never had.
She smiled. Then leaned closer, inquisitively almost, her face halting inches from mine, as if she wanted to see what I would do. I did nothing, and after another instant, she closed the distance between our mouths entirely.
Almost instantly our legs were entwined, our hips thrust out toward each other. Our fingers clasped and grabbed, and sofa cushions slid to the floor. Isabel guided my hand underneath her dress, and I slid it past her underwear, listening to her ragged breathing until the rhythm of my own movements mirrored it, and both sped and swelled, and I felt nearly the same dizzy rush she did. She covered her mouth when she came.
“Thank you,” Isabel said quietly as we disentangled our bodies. “Thank you so much, Tomás.”
* * *
We sat side by side on the couch again afterward, Isabel stretched out jelly-like with her legs resting on the table while I stroked her hair.
“Do you want to tell me what you need?” I asked.
“I think you just gave me what I needed,” she said languidly, taking a deep, relaxed drag of her cigarette.
I smiled. Her hair was so soft under my palm, so soothing. “Tell me,” I said.
A minute passed. She moved the ashtray to the armrest and slid one of the fallen cushions under her feet. “We’re just looking for little things, really. At what stations he puts in time, what their relationship is with other bases. Does he mention speaking with police, federal or municipal? Gossip can be useful, unsavory characters with political ties, tensions between the branches of the armed forces.”
“And I’m supposed to just ask him these things?”
“More
or less. Be subtle, work your way toward them. Pay close attention to your conversations and report what you hear, that’s all. Leave it to us to do the interpreting.”
“Anything else?”
“You stay over at his house sometimes, don’t you? If you feel comfortable, and the chance arises organically, maybe you could see what kind of papers he has lying around. I’m not saying pick any locks or anything—just check whatever’s on his desk or in his drawers, you know. Reports on counterintelligence tactics and campaigns, classified memos, personal notes from other officers—you know,” she said again, though it should have been clear I didn’t know a thing.
“And us?” I asked.
“Us,” she repeated, with a sigh and a laugh, as if the notion were hopelessly romantic. She pushed herself up with a hand on my thigh, then put out her cigarette and kissed me. “Don’t worry about us, Tomás.”
NINE
I already had dinner plans with the Colonel and Mercedes the following week. When I called the day of to confirm them, Mercedes told me to come over at nine thirty, adding the caveat that the Colonel might be held up a bit later at work.
I was nervous. Out of both fear of reprisal and the more ordinary concerns that come from prying into another’s affairs. I knew the Colonel would be a slippery target, what with all his tangents and topical cartwheels, and I could easily imagine getting tripped up.
Despite Mercedes’s warning, he was the one who met me at the door, and my greeting came out sounding shaky and unnatural to my ears. “But I thought—didn’t you have work to do?”
“Mercedes thought I’d be coming from a base an hour’s drive from the city. Usually I do. But today I was just downtown.”
“There’s an army base downtown?”
“It’s a police station, technically. Coordinación Federal. The tangles of bureaucracy, all very complicated.”
He handed me a glass of wine, and, steeling myself with a sip, I asked, “What’s your normal base again?”
“Campo de Mayo.” The Colonel laughed. “Though I don’t know that I’d call it normal necessarily.”
Mercedes emerged from the dining room and hugged me, sidetracking our conversation. We sat down to shrimp and hearts of palm with salsa golf. Soon the first bottle had been emptied and the second opened, and in the convivial, safe mood of the evening, I almost forgot what I’d come to do.
Their new housekeeper cleared our plates, and Mercedes followed her into the kitchen. Alone with the Colonel again, I imagined having to explain to Isabel how I’d let this opportunity slip. “In talking to you about the bases,” I began tentatively, swishing my wine, “I realized I don’t know much about what your work entails.”
“And do you think that an accident, Tomasito?” the Colonel said. “You know I’m in counterintelligence. I told you about the School of the Americas, joder!”
“I know, but”—I tried to reroute my effort—“but what does that mean, exactly? James Bond missions? Censorship?”
“No James Bond for me, rather unsurprisingly. And I’m quite against censorship, truth be told. Gives us nothing to work with. It’s boring, too. Like so much to do with literature in this country, alas. Borges, Cortázar—so brainy! None of the Argentine flair for drama. What are you reading these days, Tomás?” he continued without pausing. “Don’t say the news! Tell me about that English class you’re taking.”
“We’re—I’m behind on Moby-Dick,” I answered, feeling somewhat turned around. “I had exams last week, and the old-fashioned language is hard for me.”
“Now Ahab, he had a flair for the dramatic. Do you read any contemporary authors? I hear the kids are mad about Lawrence of Arabia. What’s that book? Seven Pillars of Wisdom?” Recalling Rodolfo’s grandiose discussion of it in Isabel’s basement, I nodded as nonchalantly as I could. “I think I’ll pick up a copy. I like to be up on all the latest trends, you know.”
Mercifully, Mercedes returned just then with the dessert, before any tension could settle over us. “Him and his trends—you should see him in a clothing store, Tomás. The way Felipe spends money to be fashionable, my God.”
“Such a tyrant, this one,” the Colonel replied, scooping up a large, jiggling portion of flan. “Mercedes would impose martial law in this house if she could.”
“I imagine we’ll be having that countrywide soon enough,” I said, regaining some of my nerve amid their banter. “Martial law, I mean.”
“Yes, Mercedes will be dictator any day now,” the Colonel said.
“Actually, I was being serious,” I said.
“So was I. Be careful with these porteña women, Tomás. They’re almost as mad as porteño men.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mercedes said, rolling her eyes. “It’s how much personality we have that scares men like him.” She fixed her perfectly mascara’d eyes on me. “And what’s going on with your extracurricular life, Tomás? Do you have any crushes on anyone?”
“A bad one,” I admitted. Smiling, Mercedes made a gesture of zipping her lips, and I decided to follow her lead.
Not long after, I got the expected invitation to stay over. We said good night, and I pretended to get ready for bed.
* * *
For two hours I kept myself awake in the guest bedroom trying to read Moby-Dick. It felt incomprehensible—all those nautical terms and rambling paragraphs about whales’ heads and spermaceti. I gave up and picked a random Silvina Bullrich novel off the shelf, but that proved no better—the sentences drifted over me like background noise. It’d be my excuse, I decided, my reason for going to the study in the middle of the night; I had to find something to read.
It was almost three in the morning. I got out of bed and made my way to the door. Listened a moment, then quietly turned the knob and stepped barefoot into the shadowy hallway. I tiptoed to the Colonel’s study, anxiously going over my explanatory speech if discovered—insomnia, you know how that goes, Colonel, no rest for the wicked. The study door was ajar, and I slipped past. I approached his desk and opened the top drawer as softly as I could.
What I found I glanced at too swiftly to make sense of—unmarked clippings, what looked like leases for rental properties, lists of locations with check marks whose connection I couldn’t fathom: brigada de investigaciones de banfield. planta de ford motor argentina. unidad penal no 9. escuela superior de mecanica de la armada.
It was too dark, too nerve-wracking. I sprang away as if the words had been shouted at me, and hurried back to my room, where I lay short of breath and frantically attuned to every creak down the hall, however minute.
Over breakfast the next morning, the Colonel placidly read the paper without saying anything. But Mercedes kindly inquired if I’d had trouble sleeping.
* * *
When Isabel was slow in calling me back again, I tried to be more sanguine about it. It’s just how she is, I reminded myself. Don’t worry. (Don’t worry about us, Tomás . . . )
But then she called and asked me to meet her at an appliance store.
“An appliance store? Why?”
“There’ve been stories about walls and light switches being bugged in people’s homes.”
“A café then?”
“Will you just come? I have to buy something anyway.”
I had trouble finding the place, and Isabel was outside smoking when I arrived, framed by a display of shiny new washing machines in the window. In her hands was what looked at first like a wide brown box, until I saw the stylus and plastic casing.
“They didn’t have what I needed. But look!” she cried, overly enthusiastically. “I bought you a record player! I remembered you said you didn’t have one.”
“Thanks,” I said uncertainly, as I took it from her.
“How did it go with the Colonel?”
“You want to talk about it out here?”
“Safer than a café
. Shall we walk?” Isabel said, going ahead. The turntable heavy in my hands, I followed her and started giving my report.
Mostly she just nodded along, giving me occasional taps on the arm when other pedestrians passed so I’d pause or lower my voice. But here and there she added commentary. “Great to know he puts in time at Coordinación Federal,” she replied to that detail, and to the anecdote about the T. E. Lawrence, “It’s probably about code breaking, he figures we’re using the book to send each other messages. Or maybe it’s just getting to know the enemy.” Neither explanation was especially comforting. “Did he mention anything about international cooperation?” she followed up. “Foreign funding?” Both times I shook my head.
“Those weren’t the kinds of things you told me to fish for,” I defended myself.
“Of course not, don’t worry, Tomás. You’re doing great,” she said. “Did you stay the night?”
After navigating a construction crew, I relayed what loose phrases I’d gathered, as well as my reluctance to search any harder. “They’re light sleepers,” I explained.
“Well, what if you asked the Colonel to host a dinner party? That way you could sneak off with the lights on while they’re distracted. You could tell him my mother and Ceci want to meet your patron or something—it sounds like the wife would want to have them over, no? And who knows, he might invite someone useful. I could come too, help you look.”
“You’re not coming,” I told her. An instinct told me to keep these worlds separate to whatever extent I still could. That their overlap was dangerous—who knew what Isabel could get up to in the Colonel’s presence? Or what might transpire later with her presence in his recollection, this fervent, irrepressible Peronista?
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