Thursday Night Widows

by Claudia Pi

  “She’s crying like a baby,” said Antonia.

  “She’s howling like a banshee,” corrected the hairdresser.

  The girl was afraid. So was Mariana. Even though a month had now passed since that first afternoon together, every time Mariana brushed her hair, the girl trembled.

  “Keep still, or I can’t brush your hair,” was all she said, and the girl made such an effort not to move that she was soon tired and aching.

  Mariana secured her hair with a tartan ribbon that matched her school skirt and tortoiseshell clips that were no match for the girl’s gleaming tresses. She wondered where the girl had been born, and who her parents were. The fact that she and Ernesto had gone to Corrientes to get her meant nothing. She knew that the boy had been born there, at the hospital in Goya. But people had said that their mother was not from the area. The girl might be from Corrientes, but could also be from Misiones, El Chaco or Tucumán. Mariana thought most likely Tucumán. She could imagine that in a few years she would be as sturdy and strapping as the Tucumana woman who cleaned her friend Sara’s house. Pedro was also sturdy, but would gradually show it less. With any luck they had different fathers and he had got better genes, she thought. Half-siblings. Now, with his shaven head, he hardly looked like her. While he was a baby they would keep shaving it, every week if necessary. When he was grown up he could keep his hair short like Ernesto and, if he turned out to be stocky, well then he would make a good prop in the school rugby team. At any rate, he was always going to get the best and healthiest food, she thought, and that would help. And sports, loads of sports. As for the girl, no matter how much you made her diet or killed her with exercise regimes, she was always going to have thick ankles and Mariana knew that there was no solution for that.

  She took out the hair clips and put them in again a little higher up. The girl watched her almost without blinking. Mariana told her about the new school, about this wonderful opportunity unfolding before her, about how you’re a nobody if you don’t speak English and that she was going to have to try very hard. She picked up the girl’s backpack and left the room. The girl followed a few steps behind, but when she reached Pedro’s room she slipped inside. “Goodbye, baba,” Mariana heard her say from the passage. She went back to get her.

  “Don’t wake him up. He’s been coughing all night,” she said. When they had reached the bottom of the stairs, she added: “It’s ‘baby’, not ‘baba’.”

  “Baba,” the girl repeated and Mariana said nothing. The children were to line up in the playground. Mariana found out which was the first-grade line and left the girl in it. She watched her from a distance. Romina was the tallest. The biggest. And the darkest. The morning sun ricocheted off her hair. Mariana stood to one side. Some of the parents were going to stay to watch the flag being raised. A woman beside her was talking. She was also new and, it turned out, they had also just moved into the area.

  “What school have you come from?” she asked, and Mariana pretended not to hear. She counted the heads of the girls waiting in the line for 1A : six blondes, eight light-browns, two brunettes. And the girl.

  “Which one is yours?” persisted the woman beside her.

  “That one,” said Mariana, without pointing.

  “The little blonde girl with the blue bow?”

  “No, the great big dark one.”

  The woman started looking but before her gaze could alight on the girl, Mariana added: “She’s adopted.”

  The opening bars of the national anthem rang out.

  7

  The first sign that we were going to be included in the Scaglias’ inner circle of friends came a few months after they had moved in. I was stepping into the shower, in a hurry, because I had an appointment to show a client around a house that was just coming up for sale, and I had over-slept. The Convertibility law had breathed new life into the market for reasons I couldn’t explain: the plots were even more expensive now that they were in dollars; I never was much good at economic variables and cross-effects, but the people with money to invest were happy – and so I was too. The telephone rang. I ran from the shower to get it, thinking it was my client. My feet were so wet I nearly slipped over. It was Teresa. “We’d like to invite you over for dinner on Wednesday night, Virginia, at about nine o’clock. There’ll be ten couples, friends of ours, and we’d love you to come. It’s Tano’s birthday.”

  Ronie had crossed paths with El Tano a couple of times at the tennis courts before we received that first invitation, and once they had had a drink together after a game. I had not seen them since they had signed the contract; during the building work, one only ever saw them surrounded by architects and, although I was tempted to approach them several times, their demeanour, especially El Tano’s, was not encouraging. I got the impression that I was not the only one to feel put off. El Tano was obviously someone who liked to pick and choose his friends. You couldn’t take the initiative and approach him unless he had given a clear signal first. And rejecting an invitation of his wasn’t something you would do lightly either.

  On the day they moved in, I had taken flowers round to them with a card that said: “Don’t hesitate to ask me for anything you need – your neighbour, Virginia”. I sent the same card with flowers to all my clients after they moved. It was a way to step away from the role of agent, once all the details were finalized, and for that reason I liked to sign as Virginia, not “Mavi”, the shortened version of María Virginia which I used for professional purposes. Otherwise friends never stopped being potential clients, and clients never became anything more than potential friends. I’ve written about this in my red notebook. Everything’s weirdly mixed up at The Cascade. It must be because the definition of the term “friendship” is too wide here, to the extent that it actually ends up being narrow.

  Ronie is punctual by nature and we were the first to arrive at the Scaglias’. El Tano opened the door to us, with a welcoming smile that made us feel reassuringly expected. “So glad you came!” Ronie gave him the present. It was a tennis shirt, very classical, bought in the pro shop down by the courts. I bought it, as a matter of fact. I always give this sort of thing. As a gift, a T-shirt is both politically correct and easy to change. I find it hard – not to mention dangerously risky – to buy a present for someone I don’t know well. I would never buy a book, especially not for a man, because, if men read at all, it tends to be essays on current affairs, politics and economics, rather than novels. What if you give a book proposing “A” to someone who believes in “B”? It would be like giving a Boca football shirt to someone who supports River: a nightmare. It’s the same with music and, anyway, I don’t really know enough about music. Juani knows, but he gets annoyed if I ask his advice and anyway, at that time he was just a boy. He’s still just a boy. A T-shirt always saves the day. If the person celebrating is a golfer, I get him a polo shirt with buttons – never a round neck: they’re not permitted on the links. If he runs, it’s a training shirt in Dri-Fit, absorbent fabric. If he plays tennis, it’s the classic white shirt, with blue edging, perhaps, but fairly plain if it’s someone I’ve only recently met. And I get it from the pro shop at Cascade Heights, where they don’t bother with receipts and you can easily change things without even taking the bag back.

  One of the few things I knew about El Tano on that day he celebrated his first birthday at The Cascade was that he had a passion for tennis. In fact, most of the guests at his party were linked to the sport in some way: Roberto Cánepa, the president of the Tennis Committee and his wife, Anita; Fabián, El Tano’s coach, and his girlfriend; Alfredo Insúa – who was The Cascade’s number-one player until El Tano arrived and was now taking up golf, after losing three matches on the trot – and his wife Carmen. She and Teresa organized Burako2 tournaments in aid of the poor children’s centre, in Santa María de los Tigrecitos. The only people there who had nothing to do with tennis were Malena and Luis Cianchi, a couple who lived in a neighbouring country club, who had become friends with Teresa be
cause their children went to the same school. Also Mariana and Ernesto Andrade, who were new to our community but known to El Tano because of some business deal Andrade had arranged for him. There was no relative or friend who did not live in Cascade Heights, or in a country club less than two exits down the highway from ours.

  “It’s just a mistake mixing people up,” said Malena, selecting a canapé from the tray that the Scaglias’ maid was holding in front of her. “Some of them end up in one corner and some of them in another; they don’t mingle and you’re left doing all the work – going from one corner to the other without having any fun.”

  “No, and you put them in an awkward position, too,” said Teresa, watching how her maid performed her duty, “because to come all this way, in the evening, on a weekday, just for two or three hours… better to do an asado3 for them at the weekend. Bring some more wine, María.”

  “You say that now,” someone added, “when you’ve only just moved in. A few months down the line you won’t be inviting anyone. You ask people over for an asado at lunchtime and they take over the house and stay all day – you’re lucky if they don’t spend the night, too. They treat your house like their own place in the country. Where did you get this china?”

  By this stage in the evening, the women had already drifted to one side of the room and the men to the other. Apart from me. I’ve always liked to mix it up. When I’m with women, I want to know what the men are talking about, and when I’m with men I wonder what’s making the women laugh. I could just as easily get stuck into a conversation about shoes and handbags as one about the rise in the stock market and the fall in interest rates provoked by the Convertibility Law, or the pros and cons of Mercosur.4 Equally I could be bored by all these things. I was sitting on the arm of Ronie’s chair – he was telling Luis Cianchi about the financing of some new project he was working on at the time – when I noticed Teresa leaving the group of women with an air of exaggerated mystery. I watched her leave by the corridor that leads to the maid’s room. Five minutes later she made a triumphant re-entrance. She was followed by a clown.

  “Darling, since you already have everything, my gift to you this year is a little magic.” Teresa smiled and the magician, behind her, smiled too. El Tano didn’t smile. I felt uncomfortable, as though I were to blame for some part of what was happening, simply by being a witness to it. It may be that we are responsible only for our own actions, but to watch is an action, too (or so I wrote that night in my red notebook). There was a moment’s silence that seemed to last a lifetime. Then I made the decision to applaud, as though at the end of a speech. I glanced around, looking for fellow clappers. The others followed my lead, less vigorously, but with conviction. Even El Tano ended up clapping. I felt a certain relief, in spite of the fact that my hands were hurting: the ring I had won in the latest Burako tournament had slid round and was biting into my palm with every clap.

  The magician began his show and Teresa went to sit with her husband. I was close by, sitting opposite him, and I read his lips: “Who asked you to bring that? Next time clear it with me.” He spoke calmly but firmly, looking straight ahead. I guessed at the rest of their conversation as I poured myself some wine. Even without hearing him clearly, I sensed the steel behind El Tano’s calm and measured tone, just as I had that time that he had said, “I want this land.” And it made me think of my own voice. And of my tendency to shout. I had known for a long time that shouting had no effect either on Ronie or Juani. But I shouted all the same. Doubtless it was more a way to let off steam than to make myself heard. “If only I could learn from El Tano,” I thought, at that first birthday party. As I walked past them, with my replenished glass, El Tano smiled at me and I returned the gesture. I sat on the floor, in the front row. The show was OK although the magician wasn’t up to much. His suit was shabby and he raced through his set of stock jokes with little regard for intonation or timing. I clapped anyway, and the others followed suit. This time I removed my ring and put it in my trouser pocket. Every so often I turned to look at Teresa and El Tano, who were sitting together; El Tano had put his arm around her shoulder in an ambiguous gesture that could have indicated affection or control.

  “I wonder if we’ll be lucky enough to have the guest of honour come up and take part in a trick,” said the magician. El Tano made no move – as if he were not the person to whom this invitation was extended.

  “You’re the birthday boy, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said El Tano.

  The magician was disconcerted; Teresa glanced uncomfortably at her husband, but still he said nothing. El Tano, meanwhile, was riding out the situation without any sign of discomfort. The others didn’t know whether they should laugh or show concern, and no one was going to risk jumping the wrong way. I thought I knew what to do, but I didn’t dare do it. Ronie was braver. And it struck me then how our personalities still complemented one another even while there seemed no other obvious reasons for us to stay together. We functioned as though all that had once held us together was lost, apart from a precise and tacit distribution of roles and jobs which supported the lifestyle we had put together by force of will, rather than with passion or feeling.

  Ronie stood up and said: “I am the birthday boy.”

  The magician pretended to believe him, although he knew otherwise. His face softened and he offered up silent thanks. Everyone else went along with the joke. “The show must go on,” said the magician, more to himself than to his audience. That was what they were paying him for, after all.

  I clapped again, with even greater gusto, and more than one person may have concluded that I was drunk. The magician got Ronie to cut a rope into several sections, which were then joined again, then once more cut up, with knots and without knots and so on, many more times than the remaining tension in the rope ought to have allowed. Then there was a trick with rings which prompted the inevitable joke: “Ronito sure knows his way round a ring,” said Roberto Cánepa, with no subtlety whatsoever. “For God’s sake,” muttered his wife by way of reproach, but she laughed along with the rest of us.

  Then it was time for the last trick. The magician asked for a note. Ronie put his hand in his pocket and produced only coins. “Look who got paid today!” cried Insúa, and he laughed heartily to leave no doubt that this was meant as a joke, and that no one should take offence. Someone in the audience moved to open his wallet, but El Tano motioned him to stop. Without moving from his seat, he took out a one-hundred-dollar bill and held it out towards the magician; it was rolled up lengthways, like a bill that is destined to be tucked into the cleavage of a dancing girl. To reach it, the magician had to weave his way around the spectators while El Tano made no effort other than to hold the note in the air. The magician’s hands were sweating, and the note stuck to him. “Thank you, sir… that’s most kind,” he said, and he returned to the improvised stage, trying not to step on anyone.

  The trick consisted of noting down the bill’s serial number, folding it, placing it in a box and burning it by inserting a cigarette into the box. The note would then reappear, completely undamaged.

  “Years ago, instead of this trick, I used to do the one where the lady assistant gets sawn in half,” said the magician as he placed the note into the box. “But I’ve come to realize that the dollar-bill trick creates much more tension in certain audiences.”

  We laughed. It was the first joke that had hit the mark. Even El Tano laughed, and some of the tension dissipated. The magician went on with his work. He asked Mariana Andrade for the cigarette she was smoking. He inserted it into the little box that held the note; the smoke became darker and denser. The cigarette passed through the box and emerged on the other side, slightly crushed. A bead of sweat ran down the side of the magician’s face and I feared that the trick had failed. But no. The magician returned the cigarette to its owner, then made Ronie open the box, take out the note, unfold it and show it to the audience as it should be: perfect, intact, valid. He checked the serial number: i
t was the same bill. This drew hearty applause, inspired less by the trick itself than by a certainty that the show was approaching its end. The magician extended the note to El Tano, who said: “You may as well keep it. I’m sure all this is costing me a pretty penny anyway.” The note hovered in the air between them for an instant, then the magician folded it more neatly and carefully than he had when he was doing the trick, and put it in his pocket. He bowed and said once more: “Thank you sir, that’s most kind.”

  We were the last to leave and they took us to the door. As they stood in the doorway, El Tano had his arm around his wife – as he had all night – and the gesture still seemed ambiguous.

  “We’ve had a great time – thanks,” I said, as one does.

  “It was really nice, wasn’t it?” replied Teresa.

  I looked at Ronie, waiting for him to say something and, when he didn’t, I quickly covered his silence. “Yes, it was really nice, thank you.”

  It annoyed me that Ronie could not make his own contribution – even a monosyllabic one – to the pleasantries. I looked at him again, and gave him a little kick. There was another short silence, then he said: “Do you know what your problem is going to be here, Tano?”

  El Tano wavered.

  “You’ve got no rival.”

  The three of us were quiet; I don’t suppose any of us understood what he intended by this remark and I even felt a bit frightened.

  “There’s no one here to give you a good game; you’re going to end up getting bored. We need new blood, people who can play tennis at your level, Tano.”

  El Tano smiled, then. So did I. “I expect you to bring this up with prospective buyers, Virginia. Item one on the admissions form: excellent standard in tennis. Otherwise, no deal.”

  And so for the last time, before the night ended, we all laughed at a joke that none of us found funny. We made our final goodbyes, then walked slowly away, barely making a sound on the dewy grass. Behind us, we heard the click of the Scaglias’ door closing. A heavy door with a lock that sounded like some piece of precision clockwork.