by Claudia Pi
A woman playing at the table by the window that looked onto the winter garden complained that her rivals were signalling to each other. The other pair got annoyed. There was an argument. Everybody watched, but no one intervened. Carmen rang Alfredo’s mobile again. One of the women got up from the game and stormed off. This time the mobile did ring. The annoyed woman’s partner tried to stop her leaving. Alfredo said “Hello,” but Carmen couldn’t think what to say and hung up. Both women ended up leaving – the annoyed one and her partner. Alfredo was going to know that it had been her ringing. The abandoned players now came to the table. Carmen was alone, Teresa having left the tea room in order to organize the prize-giving.
“What incredible cheek those women had – did you see them? Put down that we won by a walk-over. You can get walk-overs in this, just like in tennis, can’t you?” Carmen’s phone rang and she answered it without responding to the woman. It was Alfredo. “Yes, it cut out – there must be a bad signal here.” Alfredo told her that he would be home late and that she shouldn’t wait up for him. Carmen crossed off her chart the names of the couple who had left. “Yes, all right. I still have quite a lot to do here anyway, and then we’ll have to count up the takings… Yes, it’s gone really well…”
The winning ladies each went away with a necklace made of silver and zircons, donated by the Toledo jewellery shop. Everyone applauded, while Teresa and Carmen helped them to fasten the necklaces. The women posed for a photograph, one alone and one with the organizers. The tea seemed to go on for ever. Carmen called home and talked to the maid; this one had been with them for several months but, ever since Alfredo had made her sack Gabina, who had always worked for her, she hadn’t been able to find anyone as trustworthy and, for different reasons, none of them lasted long.
“Has anyone rung to ask for a fax signal?… OK… if they call and ask to send a fax, you stay beside the telephone and, as soon as the page has come through, you tear it off, fold it and put it in the drawer of my bedside table. Do you understand? OK, repeat that back to me, please.” The maid repeated her instructions. Carmen couldn’t hear part of it because one of the participants had come to ask for some change she was owed. She hung up. She looked for the change. She was two pesos short. “That’s fine, give it to the children’s centre.”
Later on, the room was left empty and smelling of cigarette smoke. Two cleaning ladies were sweeping up and arranging the tables. Teresa and Carmen were counting up the money. Carmen’s mobile rang. It was her maid; the fax had arrived, she had stayed beside the telephone while the paper came out – no, the children weren’t there – she had torn the page off, folded it and put it in the drawer of the bedside table. Carmen hurriedly put their takings in the metal box and locked it. It was more than they had been expecting. A little more than her husband had spent that night in the hotel. “It’s heartening to know that there are so many generous people around, isn’t it?” said Teresa. “Yes,” she replied. “There are a lot of generous people around.”
They switched off the lights and went out. She was about to get into the car, then had an idea and went over to Teresa’s car. “Do you want to go and get something to eat? Alfredo’s back late tonight.”
15
1998 was the year of suspicious suicides. There was the man who had paid bribes to the Banco Nación, the navy captain who had brokered sales of weapons to Ecuador and that private mail empresario who had been photographed by the murdered photographer. None of these events had a direct impact on our lives, or on the life of The Heights, other than to draw the eye, briefly, of someone reading about them in a newspaper or watching them on the television news.
We had our own things to talk about. Like Ronie Guevara, for example. By now we all knew what Virginia would not acknowledge – just as a cuckolded husband is always the last to hear the news: Ronie was never going to contribute anything more to the family finances than a few very expensive pipe dreams. She was the bread-winner, and keeping her estate agency secret was damaging her prospects. People were apt to confuse her work with “favours” and, on more than one occasion, someone had expressed surprise, or even taken offence, when she tried to charge a commission. “I know the owner too, so why should I have to give you a commission?” they reasoned. One man, instead of paying her, turned up with a handbag made in his own factory, which came nowhere near covering Virginia’s costs and was “really ugly, too”, in Teresa Scaglia’s words. “When the moment comes to put money on the table, one’s ‘friend’ enters straight away into another category, for which I have yet to find an adequate name,” Virginia wrote later, in her red notebook.
The price of land was climbing in line with the economic euphoria of the 1990s, and Virginia wanted a piece of that euphoria. Everyone wanted a piece. All of us speculated on how much the value of our houses was rising each day and how much higher it might go. When we multiplied the surface area of our homes by the value of a square foot, we experienced a euphoria unequalled by almost any other: the pleasure principle of an algorithm. Because we weren’t planning to sell our houses to anyone. It was the maths alone, that simple multiplication, that caused us joy.
The time had come for Virginia to establish an official estate agency. Cascade Heights regulations forbid members to carry out any sort of commercial activity on the site itself and, although many do, it is on the tacit understanding that this be discreet. In places like this, envy leads to complaints, and complaints to penalties. To put a sign outside her house saying “Mavi Guevara, Estate Agency” would have breached the tacit agreement. On the other hand, operating discreetly was no longer enough for her. The solution was to put her sign up outside the perimeter fence, close enough to be seen by people who were coming to look for property in Cascade Heights, and for her to expand the business that way.
Ronie agreed with the plan, and at that time he could often be heard talking enthusiastically at gatherings of friends about the future of estate agency in the area and the growth potential of his wife’s business. But that was as far as his commitment went: he did not accompany her in the search for premises that would help her “make the leap”. She got in the car and drove around the area scanning each block for the closest thing to a commercial lot she could find. All of us pass back and forth through these streets, at least once a day, but we never pay attention to them until we need something from them. Now, for the first time ever, Virginia looked closely.
The area outside Cascade Heights’ perimeter fence is quite different from a commercial neighbourhood. There are vacant lots, areas of wasteland. In some cases buildings have been abandoned half-built, then left to the ravages of time and dereliction, people carting away anything that could be useful to them. Three properties, all next to each other, have been deserted because of burglaries and maintenance costs which were too high to be justified by their infrequent use. Diagonally opposite the entrance to The Cascade, there is a small house owned by a young couple who could not afford to live inside the barrier. They built their home with an eye to the development they believed would transform the area around Cascade Heights (this has yet to take place) and in the shadow of a security guard booth which faced the other way but was nonetheless reassuring.
A little further down the road that leads to the highway, the neighbourhood of Santa María de los Tigrecitos begins. This district is characterized by simple, jerrybuilt houses, almost all of them made by the people who live in them – or by their relations or friends. Residents in this area depend on the work that we provide for them at Cascade Heights. The reports published by our Security Committee – which recommend supporting these neighbours – refer to it as a “satellite community”; their work opportunities fluctuate in line with the growth rate of our community and that, according to reports, directly affects our own security.
The houses in Santa María de los Tigrecitos spring up in as unruly a fashion as the shrubs in Cascade Heights, but their disarray is not a matter of surreptitious design, as it is in our gardens. In L
os Tigrecitos people do what they can: they throw up a house that bears no relation to the ones on either side; in some cases there is no relation even between one room and the next. You can make out the different stages of construction from outside: a window that was made after a room was finished, and which does not fit with the dividing wall; the upper floor that was built on top of what had originally been intended as a roof; the bathroom that could finally be accommodated, but without adequate ventilation. A railing might be painted violet and the wall beside it red, or bright blue. And next door there might be another house with unrendered brickwork. The more substantial houses have a parking area at the front and the humble ones make do with earth floors in every room, while their owners wait for the work that’s going to pay for the cement.
There’s a little market: a butcher, a baker, a bar with pool and table football. Santa María de Tigrecitos amounts to no more than six blocks on either side of a paved street which leads to the highway. We paid for this street ourselves through a supplementary charge on our expenses. On both sides of the street, the density and quality of the housing seem to evaporate the further you venture down its dirt side roads. Every so often the river, which is covered once it emerges from The Cascade, overflows, flooding the dirt roads.
On the main street leading to the highway, there are pavements, but not outside every house. They are not paid for by the municipality, but by the home-owners themselves, so some are broken and others have been repaired with slabs of different colours. Outside the butcher’s – next to the blackboard offering the kind of bargain cuts of meat that we in Cascade Heights never eat – the locals sit together on wooden benches to drink maté. On the next block there are more locals, apparently waiting for something. Or nothing. And more of them sit on the other side of the road. They’re watching the cars go by. Some of them can tell immediately who is driving through, just from the model and number plate. “You drive a blue BMW 367, right?” said an assistant to the carpenter working for Eduardo Andrade – who immediately reported the comment to the Council of Administration, for consideration by the Cascade Heights Security Committee.
At the heart of the neighbourhood, by way of a civic centre, are the football pitch, the school and a chapel that belongs to the same parish as the chapel inside Cascade Heights, with the same priest presiding over mass. Further on is the Health Centre, which houses a vaccination clinic and crèche. And all over the place, sprouting willy-nilly like mushrooms after a rainfall, there are houses. And more houses. A lot of houses crammed into a small area. They are home to large families, one of whose number travels the ten blocks to our security barrier every day, to work within our confines as a gardener, caddie, domestic servant, builder, decorator or cook.
It was in the block next to the Health Centre that Virginia spotted a small unit, once a video club. In its window there was a hand-made sign contrived out of an old poster for a Stallone film, on which someone had added a blue moustache and the words: “For Rent”. Its size and state of repair made it a viable option for her agency. Some people say she gave it serious thought, that she came close to leaving her contact details. But Teresa Scaglia made her reconsider. “Do you really think that someone with the kind of car we drive is going to stop there and dare to get out?” Any one of us would have given similar advice. Perhaps in a more roundabout way, employing a few euphemisms, or dropping our voices, for we are less brazen than Teresa Scaglia. But it was obvious that that place wasn’t going to work. It’s unusual for anyone from Cascade Heights to stop off in Santa María de los Tigrecitos. Generally we get out of there as fast as the speed bumps will allow. The people who live there use the shops; not us. If we keep our distance, it is because of the dirt streets, the lack of adequate parking places and, above all, the distance from the security booth at the entrance to Cascade Heights. Every day you hear about robberies in Santa María de los Tigrecitos. Some people say that they steal from each other. They themselves say that the thieves come from outside the area. Hard to know for sure.
In the end, Virginia’s problem was resolved by a stroke of luck. The husband of the woman who lived in the cottage diagonally opposite the entrance gate, with its back to the security post, walked out on her and their three small children. The woman opted to move in with her mother and Virginia rented the cottage from her at a minimal rate, on the understanding that she would quit it as soon as a buyer turned up. A buyer that she herself would procure, as soon as she found a more suitable venue for her estate agency. The cottage was habitable, with an acceptable kitchen, two rooms that she would ignore for the moment and the living/dining room in which she would install the office. A desk, three chairs, a sofa, a rattan table that Teresa Scaglia wasn’t using and gave to her, and a wardrobe with drawers, which she converted into a filing cabinet. A rug that she no longer used at home and a pair of ethnic vases gave the office a “Cascade feel”. Before moving in, she replaced the burned-out bulbs, got the office painted white and exchanged the old oven for a portable stove. The only thing she was unable to change before her launch day was the front door, which was wooden, heavy and so swollen from damp that it would only ever close if you kicked it.
16
Finally, just as people had given up thinking it possible, a suitable rival appeared for El Tano Scaglia: Gustavo Masotta. He pulled up outside my newly opened business, opposite the entrance to The Cascade, after hours, and found me kicking the hell out of the warped front door to make it close. My method was to aim a sharp knock at the latch and a kick at the base, almost simultaneously, and next to turn the key, which would then move smoothly in the lock, as though the difficulty had never existed. It was a daily ritual, performed automatically and so often that I now hardly cared about the carpenter not turning up to shave off the excess wood. In a way I quite enjoyed it, in the same way that it can be enjoyable to recognize a defect in oneself and to keep it secret from everyone, hoodwinking them.
Up until that afternoon, the deception had worked well – I had been careful not to kick the door in front of any clients. So I felt really peeved when I became aware of Gustavo Masotta’s presence. I first saw him when he came forwards to help me pick up some things I had left on the ground, in order to dedicate myself more comfortably to the door ritual. My red notebook, a pile of folders, my mobile, some loose papers, the keys for houses that were up for sale or rent, envelopes containing my own and my clients’ amenities bills, hand cream (I hate to have dry hands) and a yogurt that I hadn’t had time to eat. All this clobber amounted to a fairly accurate display of my habitual disorganization. Neglecting preliminaries, I said, “It’s warped,” and pointed at the door. He didn’t say hello either. “I need to rent a house for a year or two,” he said, picking up my things from the ground.
“An estate agent’s commission, no matter how small, should be so desirable, fortuitous and unforeseeable a prize that it merits working out of hours” – that’s what is says in my red notebook, under the chapter heading: “Commissions and other Headaches”. However, that afternoon I had an appointment at Juani’s school and I had been worrying about it all day. At the end of the last term they had been reluctant to let me register him for the next academic year. Juani was going into the eighth grade, but the school psychologist felt that he was less ready than his classmates. She had been vague about this, not saying exactly in what respect he was different. I believe that that episode of the drawing showing Fernández Luengo on top of his dog (some years old now) still counted against him in the files. Although she would never have dared mention that. I should have listened to Ronie at the time. He had insisted that we ought to go to the school and tell the truth of the matter, but I hadn’t wanted that. What Fernández Luengo got up to in his own house was his business and there was no justification in Juani spying on him through the window. That’s what I said to Ronie. But it wasn’t the whole story. I was scared. I knew that it would be no small thing to fall out with my neighbour. On the index card for his house I had written his na
me in red letters. He was a powerful lawyer, one of the country’s top authorities on contraband. On how to avoid imprisonment for dealing in contraband. He knew everyone important at Customs and Excise and at the Federal Courts. I feared that he could do something to harm us, if he found out about what our son had done. I didn’t know what that might be – I mean, I don’t even shop in Duty Free – but I was scared, all the same. He could slander me and make it impossible for me to sell any more houses in The Cascade. Or he could talk down Ronie and sabotage the few business possibilities he had. Or he could invent something terrible about Juani: make a victimizer of the victim. I persuaded Ronie not to say anything. In any case, there was no fear of Juani ever repeating the incident. We had taken pains to explain the consequences. “If you ever draw anyone starkers again – I don’t care who – I’ll break your nose,” said Ronie. And we moved him into another bedroom, smaller, but overlooking our garden. That episode aside, there were no concrete reasons not to let us enrol Juani for another year. His Spanish grades may not have been brilliant, but they didn’t deserve this punishment. In English he had problems only with geography and history. I must confess that I hadn’t paid much attention to that: I never realized that knowing which king succeeded which other one in England, or what the climate is like in Northern Ireland, could be so vital to his development. But exclusion from this school certainly would matter, because, for better or worse, it meant exclusion from the world that we inhabited. Technically, they could not make him retake the year because he had passed in Spanish, so, after much beating around the bush, they suggested I move him to another school “so that neither you nor he have to suffer the sacrifice of making him study during the holidays”. Neither Ronie nor I agreed with that. We made him study English geography and history all summer long. He refused to have a tutor but got help from Romina – the Andrades’ daughter – who, to her mother’s surprise, was one of the brightest among the girls. They had become good friends since she first appeared in the neighbourhood and at school. “Birds of a feather flock together,” the mother said to me one day and I wasn’t bold enough to ask her to explain the comment.
