Thursday Night Widows

by Claudia Pi

  “Ronie!” I screamed. I searched frantically for him downstairs, then I went into the garden, as far as the street, looking in all directions. He could not have got very far with one leg in plaster. I went back into the house. I shouted his name again. I couldn’t make sense of it – until I saw the staircase. Ronie was up on the terrace, clutching the balustrade, holding up his plastered leg and shaking from the effort of having hopped his way upstairs on the uninjured leg. He was looking at the Scaglias’ swimming pool, behind the poplars. I approached him quietly, almost noiselessly. I put my arms around him. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since I had last embraced my husband. He caught my hand and squeezed it hard. He began to sob, softly at first and then harder. Then he made an effort to calm down. He turned to face me, looked in my eyes and, still holding my hand, took me back to that night, the 27th of September 2001, when he was eating dinner with his friends at El Tano’s house.

  They had eaten pasta, home-made and cut into ribbons by El Tano himself. With tomato and basil. Afterwards they played Truco8 – one game, two, three. And they drank, a lot. Ronie doesn’t remember who was winning, but he does remember that Martín and Gustavo were playing against El Tano and himself. While they played, the subject of Martín’s move to Miami came up. He doesn’t remember the context, but it was El Tano who raised the subject. You have to stay, he said. What for? To die with dignity. I stopped feeling any dignity a long time ago. Because you’re not going about things the right way. I’ve got the worst luck: just when I decide to go to Miami, they blow up the Twin Towers. Shall we play a trick? What are you going to Miami for? So that they can put anthrax in your water? Truco. To blow the few savings you have left? Pass me the wine. You’re going to end up getting any job you can, while your wife cleans the house. Quiero. And if it comes to it, someone else’s house too, for extra cash. I’ve got no choice. Yes you do. What? Stay here. You can’t make a life here any more. Who said anything about life? Who wants more wine? If you can’t live with dignity, die with dignity. Silence. Whose go is it? All four of us have the chance to make a grand exit. An exit? To get out of this. I don’t understand you. I’m planning a grand exit and I’m giving you the chance to join me. Hey, I’ve still got a job, Gustavo laughs. And dignity? El Tano asks. Envido. Envido. Why do you say that? Twenty-nine. For no reason. What do you know? Me about you? What’s important is what we all know about ourselves. Voy callado. And what each of us does when no one sees us. Truco. Or when we think that no one sees us. Quiero retruco. Why do you say that? I am going to die with dignity, tonight, alone or with you all. Tano, you’re having a laugh, right? Me? Not at all, Ronie. Parda. No one here lacks a motive to do the same as me. Silence. It’s in your hand, Tano. I have a five-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. That’s a pretty dignified sum… Truco. If I die, my family can claim the premium and continue to live as they always have done, exactly as they always have done. No quiero. You’re well prepared, Tano. You also have life insurance, Martín, worth less money, but still more than enough. You’re wrong: I don’t have life insurance. Yes you do, I pay for it along with your health insurance. Maldón. Silence. For how much did you take it out? Hey guys, can you stop this fucking around? Envido. I’ve never been more serious in my life. Real envido. No queremos. It’s important that people don’t suspect. Suspect what? That it was a suicide – otherwise they won’t pay out. It has to look like an accident. Shall we go for a truco? No, we’re folding. So have you forked out for life insurance for me, too? Gustavo asks. No, in your case it’s better not to have a policy. Is this some sort of wind-up? Exactly what is my “case”? Hit your wife for real. Silence. Ronie takes a drink. The way you hit her at the moment is nothing; hit her hard, where it hurts: in her pocket. Gustavo throws his cards on the table. He gets up, walks around the table. He sits down again. Everyone in the club knows, Gustavo; your neighbours lodged a complaint in the duty room the last time, because of the shouting. Pick up the cards and deal, come on. I’ll deal. Cut. I don’t hit her. Envido y truco. No quiero el primero, quiero el segundo. Quiero retruco. I don’t hit her. Quiero. There was one time, things got out of hand, but I don’t hit her. Quiero vale cuatro. At least five off-the-record complaints have been lodged with Security. That’s not me, it’s not like that, she makes me do it… Have you got the ace, too? Shit. Pour me some wine. So how would it be? Come on boys, change the subject, Ronie insists. It’s not me that wants to go to Miami – I’m doing it for them. Kill yourself for them, and leave them more money than you would ever make in the rest of your life, in Miami or anywhere else. Gustavo drinks: one glass, then another one. Let’s make this good, says El Tano. I really don’t appreciate this kind of wind-up. It’s not a wind-up, Ronie. I don’t believe you. So, how would it be? We die electrocuted, in the pool. First we go for a swim, we’re drunk, we listen to music and when I want to pull the stereo closer, from the water, the extension lead falls out and slips into the water. Two hundred and twenty volts shoot through the water at the speed of lightning. We’re killed outright. We all have to be touching the side, to be grounded. I’ve over-ridden the trip switch so that when the thermal overload jumps on the external circuit, we’ll be home and dry. In the pool, but dry? Urovich laughs. You’re all out of your minds. Don’t make the wrong choice, Ronie. And you’re the craziest of all. The craziest can also be the most clear-sighted, Ronie. Sometimes only a few of us see the reality: companies collapse, foreign capital leaves, more and more people fight over one managerial position – and you say I’m the madman? Have a drink. You should read up on oriental culture – the Chinese, the Japanese – they certainly know the value of ending one’s life at the right moment. And since when have you been a fan of oriental culture, Tano? Ever since he started growing the goatee beard, jokes someone, not Ronie. Perhaps one day, one year, when this country is run by other people, things will change and we’ll become a serious country. But by then it will be too late for us; we’ll be too old to enjoy it. We can’t save the house or the car, but we can save our families from falling. I’m not falling. You’ve already hit the ground, Gustavo. You’re already broken into pieces. Shall I deal? I’m not playing any more. Don’t leave us like this, Ronie. Go on, one more hand. Cut. And if the plan doesn’t work? If they find out? Flor. About what? About the deception? Four victims of electrocution can’t be suspected of suicide. Quite apart from being mad, you fancy yourself much more intelligent than everyone else, says Ronie. I don’t know if intelligent is the right word, but this isn’t Guyana and I’m not Jim Jones. No one will suspect. Truco. Are you in or not, Ronie? You’re sick in the head, Tano. Is that it, or do you not want to confront your own reasons for suicide? I’m not as scared of falling as you are, Tano. True, I do believe that falling doesn’t worry you, and that’s why you don’t want to face up to your own motive for killing yourself. It doesn’t interest me: it would be your motive, not mine. It must at least interest you. You’re unhinged. Do it for your son, Ronie. Don’t get my son involved in this shit. Your son’s already deep in shit. Ronie stands up and grabs him by his shirt collar. Martín and Gustavo separate them as best they can. They make them sit down. El Tano and Ronie watch each other. You’re a failure, Ronie, and that’s why your son takes drugs. Ronie moves to grab him again. You fucking son of a bitch. Let him go, Ronie. I’ll beat the crap out of you. That’s enough. Never mention my son again. He lets him go. How far do you plan to take this, Tano? There’s no further to go – I’m already there. Don’t get me wrong, Ronie. You’ve got no limit. No, that’s true. You’re a bastard. I’m not the one selling drugs to your son. Neither am I. But you’re showing him the way to failure. And what is failure, Tano? Am I a failure? What about you? Is electrocuting yourself going to save you from being a fraud? He looks at the other two. And you, what kind of failures are you? My kind, or El Tano’s? You should leave, Ronie, says Martín. That would be best, Ronie, says Gustavo. Off you go, Ronie, they tell him. They’ve given you their answer. They’ve given me thei
r answer. You’re not equal to the circumstances. No, I’m not. What about you two? You can go home, Ronie, seriously, says Gustavo and he accompanies him to the door. Ronie goes. To his house, to his terrace. Ours. Convinced that they’re mad, drunk, idiots but that – when it comes to it – they won’t do it, that this will all have been hot air, that when the moment comes a jot of sanity will prevail and there will be no swimming, or music, there will be no cable, or electricity, or suicide. He’s sure of it. They were right to ask him to leave; Gustavo and Martín will handle El Tano better than he could. Or perhaps the three of them have all conspired in this ruse and now they’re laughing about it and pouring another drink. Ronie reaches his home and climbs the stairs. He sits down and waits, certain that events on the other side of the road will take a different course. However, upstairs on the terrace, while he drinks and the ice slides on the tiled floor, while Virginia talks to him and he fails to listen, while that sad, contemporary jazz plays and the poplars whisper in the heavy night air, what he sees through the trees shows him how wrong he was.

  47

  A week after the funeral, Ronie and Virginia invite the widows to their house. They needed this lapse of time to prepare themselves for the meeting. Carla and Teresa arrive punctually. Lala comes twenty minutes later. The first exchanges are difficult – impossibly painful – the first glances, the first words, the first silences. Virginia serves coffee. The women ask about Ronie’s plaster cast. He tells them about the operation, the treatment, the rehabilitation. About his fall. He tells them about his fall without yet telling them why he fell. But it’s enough to introduce the subject of that night. The moment has come, and he begins, once he has told them about the broken bone and the endless blood and how Virginia got him into the car and how they crossed paths with Teresa on the way out of the club. “I didn’t think they were capable of it,” he says, “I didn’t think they would really do it.” And they don’t understand him. So Ronie tells them, as best he can, about El Tano’s plan, about Martín Urovich’s depression, of how El Tano had begun to tell a story, the story of his own death, to which Ronie had not given any credence. He does not mention the motives he used to convince Gustavo. There’s no need. Carla weeps. Lala repeats “son of a bitch” several times, without clarifying whether she is referring to her own husband or to El Tano. Or to Ronie. Teresa cannot take it all in.

  “But then, it wasn’t an accident?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did they commit suicide?”

  “Yes, they committed suicide.”

  “That can’t be, he never said anything to me,” says Teresa.

  “Son of a bitch,” says Lala again.

  “He must have thought that it would be best for you and the kids,” says Virginia.

  “He didn’t think; El Tano’s the one who does the thinking,” says Lala, in the present tense, as though El Tano were still alive.

  “I don’t think any of us realized early enough how sick El Tano was,” Ronie tries to explain.

  “But he wasn’t sick; we had projects – we were about to go on holiday,” says Teresa, still without understanding.

  “What about me?” Carla asks. Nobody answers. “How did El Tano persuade Gustavo?” she asks again.

  “I don’t know,” says Ronie. “I thought that he had failed to persuade him.”

  “My God,” she says, sobbing.

  “I’m sorry. I would have preferred to spare you this distress, but you needed to know,” says Ronie, as though justifying himself.

  “Who says we needed to know?” asks Lala. Carla can’t stop crying. Virginia goes over to her and takes her hand. They embrace. Lala leaves the room, slamming the door.

  Teresa still cannot fit all the pieces together. “He wasn’t ill. I swear he wasn’t ill.”

  The four of them fall into a long silence that is interrupted only by Carla’s sobbing. And then Teresa asks, “Are you sure of what you’re saying?”

  “Absolutely sure.” Silence again and then El Tano’s wife wants to know: “And does this change things somehow?”

  “It is the truth,” answers Ronie. “It doesn’t change anything else but this: that now you know the truth.”

  Not two hours have gone by since the meeting in which Ronie told the widows about the events of that night, when Ernesto Andrade and Alfredo Insúa arrive at the house. They want to speak to him alone. They make this clear without actually saying it, so Virginia goes to the kitchen and takes longer than necessary to make coffee, hoping to avoid the disagreeable intimation that this conversation is “not for ladies”. They begin by talking about something else.

  “Does anyone know what level the country risk reached today?” Nobody knows.

  “Things are getting sticky. If you’ve got money in the bank, take it out, Ronie – I’ve got it on good authority.”

  “All I’ve got in the bank is debts.”

  “I hope they’re in pesos.”

  “Did you hear anything about safety deposit boxes?”

  And so on, until finally they arrive at the subject they’ve come to discuss. “Does anyone else, other than you and Virginia, know about this business of the supposed suicide?” asks Andrade.

  “Up until now I’ve only spoken about it to Lala, Carla and Teresa.”

  “Why do you say up until now?”

  “I don’t know – because that’s the way it is, because that’s what I’ve done up until now.”

  “Ronie, it can’t have been a suicide.”

  “Yes, I know it’s hard to understand.”

  “Never mind understanding, Ronie, it’s just a fact: there simply was no suicide.”

  “But I was there, I heard them plan it – except that I didn’t believe it, otherwise…”

  “Then don’t believe it now, either – that suicide helps no one,” says Insúa. “Tell me: do you realize that if it was suicide, those women will be left with no roof over their heads?”

  Ronie does not answer.

  “You understand what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “How would I not understand when El Tano himself explained it to me?”

  “Of course, you’re right. We’re giving the widows a hand sorting out all this mess they’re landed in. Ernesto with the legal stuff and me with the insurance.”

  “Not with Carla, because she’s been very distant and won’t accept any help,” Insúa clarifies.

  “What it comes down to is this: if they can’t cash in the insurance, they’re completely screwed, Ronie,” Andrade resumes. “If there’s the slightest suspicion of suicide, however absurd, the company will start checking, the floodgates will open and those poor women will never see a penny, as long as they live.”

  “I never even thought about the insurance.”

  “That’s understandable. You’ve been deeply affected by this business. It’s no wonder you’re not seeing the whole picture, but this requires a lot of clear thinking and luckily we’re here for that.”

  Virginia brings in the coffee. The three men clam up. She passes each one his cup, exchanges a glance with her husband and goes back out with the empty tray. “So, do you see how things stand, Ronie?”

  “I only wanted them to know the truth.”

  “Yes, we realize that, but the world is full of good intentions, Ronie, and, leaving aside the question of whether or not you did the right thing, because – what do I know if it’s better for those women to think that their husbands were electrocuted accidentally or deliberately, right? But leaving that aside… leaving that… now I can’t remember what I was going to say… It’ll come back any minute.”

  “What’s paramount is that the women get their hands on the insurance right away, Ronie.”

  “That’s what I was going to say.”

  “I thought that they deserved to know the truth.”

  “Maybe they do – who knows? – I’m no expert on psychology. Maybe knowing that truth can help them turn the page on this incomprehensible trag
edy and realize that their husbands were almost… well, heroes.”

  “What do you mean?” says Ronie, astonished.

  “You’ve got to have balls to do what those boys did.”

  “They killed themselves to leave their families with something. Isn’t there something heroic about that?”

  Ronie listens as each one says more or less the same thing, repeating themselves. He says nothing. He stirs the sugar into his coffee and thinks. He thinks: I was not heroic – I was a coward; or rather – he corrects himself – they were cowards because, otherwise, what does that make me? Another kind of coward, or a failure, like El Tano said, someone clutching pathetically onto life. Or – what? All of those things; none of those things.

  “We need to know we can rely on your silence,” says Andrade firmly. Ronie looks up from his cup and catches sight of Juani, who is watching them from the landing. The men follow his gaze and see him too. “And on the silence of all your family.”

  “The widows are depending on it. We can’t let them down.”

  “The worst thing would be for those men to have killed themselves for nothing.”

  Ronie stands up as best as his cast will allow. He looks at Juani and then at the men sitting opposite. “I’ve got the message; now I need to rest,” he tells them.

  “We can count on you, then.” Ronie doesn’t answer; the men don’t move. Juani comes down a few more steps. “Is it fair to say we can leave it at that?”

  Juani walks towards his father. Ronie tries to walk towards the door on his cast, hoping to steer his guests out. He stumbles and Juani catches him. The men still have not moved. “Didn’t you hear my father? It’s time to leave,” says Juani.

  Andrade and Insúa look at him and then at Ronie. “Think about it, Ronie. You don’t gain anything by broadcasting the details.”