The Buenos Aires Quintet

by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

  Carvalho hands him his business card. It reads ‘Altofini and Carvalho. Partners in Crime.’

  ‘...someone called Altofini-Carvalho.’

  He is given the all clear, so he quickly frisks Carvalho, then says: ‘Follow that path down to the lake, and Señor Honrubia will be waiting for you at the landing stage.’

  The Captain is observing all that has gone on from a distance. He sees Carvalho go down the path to the artificial lake and the small pier. A bulky man is sitting there, staring down at the waters as if they were gently calling him to a gentle suicide, or were concealing a drowned man that only he can see. As Carvalho draws closer, the sheer bulk of the man and his sad bloodhound look impress themselves on him.

  ‘Señor Honrubia?’

  Honrubia looks him up and down. His melancholy turns into suspicion.

  ‘Don’t you like asados? Why are you all on your own down here? Are you from Gourmet magazine?’

  Carvalho hands him his card.

  ‘Yes, Alma already told me about you. How is she?’

  ‘The other day we went to our own asado – Girmenich, Silverstein, Güelmes, at the Baroja place.’

  ‘What a collection of dinosaurs! Do you know why the dinosaur became extinct? It’s a joke. A Russian joke. You don’t? The dinosaur became extinct because it was a dinosaur.’

  ‘Well, these dinosaurs were remembering the days when they used guns and plastic explosives. They talked a lot about you.’

  ‘All of it bad, I’m sure. I’m the traitor who married a young senorita from the oligarchy we were fighting against.’

  ‘It seemed more as if they were very jealous of you. You married the sister of someone you kidnapped when you were a revolutionary, and you’re about to be made general manager of your father-in-law’s businesses.’

  Honrubia gets up. His arm moves out towards Carvalho in what at first might be a threatening gesture, but finally settles on his shoulder and steers him back towards the other guests.

  ‘I’ve been a guerrillero, an exile, a beggar in exile, a thief, a corrupt top official, unemployed, and now I’m an oligarch. But I’m still faithful to those lines by Pavese: “A man who has been in prison goes back there every time he takes a bite of bread”.’

  He’s moved by his own eloquence, and raises a hand to his eyes. Then he points to the people waiting for their asado. ‘Look, they’re all posing for Caras, our big fashion magazine. If that didn’t exist, neither would they. From here they look like monkeys, and when they talk it’s like chattering monkeys. But deep down inside, a revolutionary will always be a revolutionary. Anyone who fought on the side of history will never lose that identity’

  ‘Güelmes says the opposite.’

  ‘He was never a revolutionary. He was always a shit.’

  A young and studiously attractive woman comes loping down to them.

  ‘Before my wife gets here, what is it you want from me?’

  ‘I’m looking for Raúl, Raúl Tourón.’

  Mistrust quickly replaces all trace of melancholy in Honrubia’s eyes. The young woman drapes herself affectionately on his arm, and the three of them walk up to the barbecue. They arrive just as Brucker is holding forth on the science of a good asado. ‘Roasting meat is for waiters. It’s one thing to plan it, quite another to do the cooking.’

  ‘But I just love putting on my asbestos gloves and doing the roasting.’

  Señor Brucker shouts out: ‘The lambs are mine! Nobody knows how to give them the final touch like me!’

  Several of the guests murmur their agreement.

  ‘Nobody can roast lambs like papa!’ Honrubia’s wife exclaims, and her husband nods, back with his bloodhound look. Carvalho, Honrubia and his wife follow the other guests to the spot where the lambs have been cooked. Five crucified Christs facing the glowing embers.

  ‘Agnus Dei tolis pecata mundi!’ Honrubia entones.

  ‘You even know Latin!’ his wife enthuses. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Lamb of God who wipes clean the sins of this world,’ Honrubia translates, with his Old Testament prophet’s head.

  ‘Ora pro nobis,’ Carvalho completes the response.

  The sunset seems put on especially for Honrubia and Carvalho as they sit in the library on sumptuously rich armchairs made from the best leather of the best Argentine cattle. In the hearth the best logs from the best forests of Misiones or Bariloche are burning. But Honrubia is drinking from a full glass of second-rate whisky. Carvalho the same.

  ‘What makes you think I might have hidden Raúl?’

  ‘You own half of Argentina.’

  ‘In fact, only zero point zero nine per cent of it.’

  ‘That’s still not bad, considering how little the rest of the Argentines have.’

  ‘Some day this house and all the others like it will burn. The revolution is bound to happen. The world can’t go on being divided between a tiny majority of people like us and millions of others dying of hunger.’

  ‘In the meantime...’

  ‘In the meantime,’ Honrubia butts in, ‘I thought this was an excellent whisky until you told me otherwise. You’re one of the few people who really appreciate a good malt, and this isn’t one.’

  ‘It’s not even a malt.’

  ‘Are you a revolutionary?’

  ‘I used to be. Now I simply drink and smoke as much as I can, and from time to time burn books.’

  Honrubia points to the bookshelves with a sweeping gesture.

  ‘Burn away! They belong to my father-in-law, to his father or his grandfather. Who cares? They never read any of them.’

  ‘Do you mean it?’

  Honrubia shows him he does by getting up, taking out an obviously very expensive book, and throwing it onto the fire. Carvalho does the same, then Honrubia again, and Carvalho a second time. Before long, the smoke from this incineration of a good part of Western culture billows from the fireplace. Some servants shepherded in by Señor Brucker and followed by a few remaining guests burst into the room. They find it empty, but for a pile of books still smouldering in the hearth.

  ‘Thank heavens. It’s only books,’ Brucker says.

  The first to smile at this is the Captain.

  Carvalho, meanwhile, is following Honrubia down stairs that lead to the wine cellar. When they get there, he’s astonished and moved at the spectacular collection of bottles.

  ‘We have some Bordeaux 1899. To look at, not to try’

  Honrubia leads the way through a small door out into the garden. At the far end of a track stands an elegant summerhouse.

  ‘My study. A sacred place.’

  They go in, and as soon as he crosses the threshold, Carvalho feels he’s entered another world. The walls are covered with posters of Evita, Che, Castro; there are revolutionary books and pamphlets everywhere, and a showcase full of weapons. Honrubia tells Carvalho to sit down, and disappears through an inner door. Carvalho casts a sceptical glance over the iconography. Then he spots a telescope pointing up at the stars through a glass canopy, which opens in the roof as he approaches. The starry night sky extends above him. He hears a noise at his back. When he turns round, Honrubia and Raúl are staring at him.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Honrubia warns him, before leaving the room again.

  Raúl remains standing, Carvalho stays in his chair. For a few seconds, neither of them speaks.

  ‘How is my father?’

  ‘He goes on living because he wants to see you.’

  ‘It’s all about his inheritance. He’s scared my aunt and cousins will suck his lifeblood from him. That’s what I’ve been doing all my life. I managed to become what I was thanks to him, and then lost it all no thanks to him. It’s too late now’

  ‘Everything would be so much easier if you returned to Spain with me.’

  ‘Everything is hard.
I’ve discovered I’m Argentine. In Spain I felt like a dirty South American – that’s what they call us, isn’t it? Here, somewhere or other, is my daughter. I know there’s no chance now with Alma. But my past is here, my nostalgia for the past. In Spain I had no future, and I had lost my past.’

  ‘I’m not the only one looking for you. There’s the Captain. There’s Pascuali. I could do a deal with Pascuali for you to leave the country.’

  ‘I’d be happy with just one thing: to be allowed to live here, not to leave again. And you’re the one who worries me the most. You’re a rescuer. You want to rescue me from myself.’

  ‘I’m a professional. If I return you to Spain, I get paid.’

  ‘And I’m looking for my daughter. I’m on the right track.’ Raúl studies Carvalho, and eventually adds: ‘In a fortnight there’s going to be a big family asado.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘All asados are the same but different. This is at the house of a distant uncle of mine, in Villa Flores. He’s a cousin of my father’s. I won’t be there. But I will give you my final answer. And by the way, I won’t be here either – 1 can’t stay here any longer, so don’t even think of coming back.’ He hands Carvalho a scrap of paper. ‘This is where you’ll know for sure whether I’m going or staying.’

  Carvalho leaves the Brucker mansion in the most luxurious Mercedes imaginable. The uniformed chauffeur presses a remote control, and the imposing wrought-iron gates glide open, revealing open country beyond. As they leave this garden of Eden, the chauffeur asks: ‘Did you like the asado, sir?’

  ‘It was excellent.’

  ‘Every asado is different. I make mine in the patio I share with neighbours in the old tenement buildings where I live – every free Sunday I have. It’s really soothing, and calms me down: you get back to the really important things in life – killing and eating.’

  Carvalho studies the back of his neck with great interest. ‘Were you a guerrilla too?’

  ‘I was one of the foot soldiers, you might say. I studied in a shit-awful school in Barracas, and that’s where Señor Honrubia recruited me. He’s brought a lot of the old comrades to work for him here.’

  ‘Plotting the unfinished revolution,’ Carvalho mutters to himself. ‘The Bruckers have no idea what’s in store for them.’

  Several motorbikes come zooming along the outside wall of the residence. They all gather outside one of the entrances. Their riders dismount without taking off their helmets or their masks. The two guards on the door do nothing to get rid of them. Instead, one of them opens it, after he’s pressed an alarm bell.

  ‘It’s disconnected in the sector around Señor Honrubia’s study’

  The motorcyclists nod. They make for the lighted windows of Honrubia’s summerhouse. One of them looks inside. Honrubia appears to be reading in front of the wood fire. He’s also singing. The motorcyclists surround the building. One kicks in the door, another dives through the window. In less than a second, the six of them have their guns trained on Honrubia. He still has his bloodhound look, although there’s a glimmer of anxiety in his eyes. Two of the intruders barge their way into the other room, and give a thumbs-up sign. A third man follows them. They seem reluctant to go into the bathroom, but their attitude changes abruptly when they see the bidet has been turned to one side, showing a dark hideaway underneath. They turn it round completely, revealing a gaping hole. A powerful torch shows just how big it is. When they are all back in the study, a neutral voice orders Honrubia: ‘Stay where you are for fifteen minutes. Don’t move; don’t even go to the window’

  The group withdraws to the gate they entered through, where the guards who had helped them are waiting. Two of the motorcyclists pull out bottles and handkerchiefs from the depths of their leather jackets; the guards lean forward meekly to receive their dose of chloroform. As they lie unconscious on the ground, the attackers beat them with their gun butts. Then they get back on their bikes and head off towards a car hidden in the woods. The fat man is at the wheel. One of the motorcyclists takes off his helmet and the goggles covering his face. It’s the Captain.

  ‘That bastard oligarchic guerrillero got rid of his little friend.’

  ‘Shall I put the screws on him?’ fat man suggests.

  ‘How stupid can you get?’ the Captain says, collapsing on to the back seat. ‘He may not be a real Brucker, but he’s a Brucker all the same.’

  Carvalho has the notebook he took from the Latin teacher’s apartment open on the desk in front of him. The neat handwriting on the cover continues inside, where it establishes a Manichean list: the students who pay, and those who don’t. Carvalho sorts out the group: Juan Miñana, post office employee; Mudarra Aoíz, student retaking his exams; Carmen Lavalle, dancer and classical philology student; Enzo Pasticchio, teacher.

  ‘From what they paid, if he hadn’t been killed, he’d have died of hunger.’

  ‘These old-age pensioners have got amazing resistance,’ comments Don Vito, seated opposite Carvalho. ‘You only have to see them demonstrating outside Congress. Some of them look like skeletons because all they eat are bones. Others look tanned and fit from all the marches they’ve been on. Some of them are stripped to the waist, showing off muscles that the dignity of work has given them. But most of them are just surviving. Now my fifth wife’s left me, I have to buy meat sometimes in the local butcher’s, and I often see the old guys: “Can I have half a pound of scrag end please, it’s for the dog.” Get it, Don Pepe?’

  ‘Let’s split the list between us. Carmen Lavalle is dead. That leaves Mudarra Aoíz and Enzo Pasticchio for you, and Juan Miñana for me.’

  ‘That’s two to one.’

  ‘I’ve still got my cousin. Or perhaps he’s got me. Sometimes I think he’s the one watching me.’

  At that moment, Alma comes into the office, so Don Vito quickly adds her to the list.

  ‘And you’ve got your other cousin here.’

  Carvalho looks at Alma so scornfully she is taken aback, before she returns his stare defiantly. Don Vito notices the duel between them.

  ‘Well then, I’ll be off. We’re up to here with work.’

  After excusing himself in this way, he nods to Alma, and she responds. Carvalho speaks to her sharply, and points to the visitors’ chair.

  ‘Take a seat, please.’

  ‘Are we going to play the game of detective and client?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Alma sits down and crosses her legs, staring at Carvalho as though she was hanging on his every word.

  ‘Have you come to employ me to find your husband – sorry, I mean your brother-in-law?’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s yours as well, after the fantastic night you spent making love in your apartment a few nights ago. The whole night.’

  Alma gets up indignantly.

  ‘Were you spying on me?’

  ‘Not me. Pascuali was though, and Raúl only escaped by the skin of his teeth.’

  ‘What of it if Raúl was with me? Why should I tell you?’

  ‘He was in your apartment the night before that balls-breaking asado with your ex-revolutionary comrades, when you cynically asked them all to help find him: “We have to get to him before the Captain does.”’

  ‘Don’t try to imitate my voice. I don’t talk like a queer.’

  ‘You even managed to convince me when you said: “The best thing would be for his cousin to take him back to Spain.”’

  ‘Why is that so ridiculous? The best thing would be for him to go to Spain, and for you to go with him. The sooner the better.’

  She picks up the nearest thing to hand – a file on the desk – and flings it at Carvalho. She storms out of the office, but when he runs after her and catches her on the stairs, she doesn’t try to escape.

  ‘It was all so sad. It was like the end of
something that had lasted twenty years, but had never really existed. I told him the best for everyone would be that he went with you.’

  ‘So you’re trying to get rid of me as well.’

  Alma smiles a little forlornly.

  ‘I’m not sure whether Raúl will go or not, but you, Don Pepe, are bound to leave some day or other, and get back to your Biscuter, your Charo, your Ramblas. You’ve got the face of a man frightened he’ll never find his way home.’

  This hits the mark.

  ‘I’ve never found my way home. And the worst of it is, I can’t remember when I left, or what home I left when I did.’

  Alma gives him a hug to make up for his loss.

  ‘Since when? Since you were a little boy? This high?’ She measures a few feet from the floor with her hand.

  ‘Why don’t we have something to eat in a badly lit bar I know near here?’ Carvalho says, recovering his composure.

  ‘Why not? I’m ravenous.’

  Carvalho pushes his way through sacks, trolleys, postmen and foremen until he reaches the personnel manager’s office.

  ‘Juan Miñana? He doesn’t work here any more. He was a novelist in his spare time. He won an important literary prize and left for Europe. He had an uncle there. Before, Argentina was full of Europeans, and now everyone wants to escape to Europe.’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘He was like a son to me. I encouraged him to go on writing and studying. What’s better: to be a postman or a writer?’

  ‘Being a postman is more secure; and anyway, where would writers be without postmen?’

  Carvalho does not give him time to be amazed. ‘Do you know he studied Latin? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?’

  ‘I can see you’re not a writer,’ the personnel manager says, doubly amazed now. ‘What else would he study? Quechua? The only word we get from Quechua is chinchulines. Why study Latin? Do you think you can write good Spanish without knowing Latin?’

  ‘Do you know Latin?’

  ‘If I did, do you think I’d be here?’

  Carvalho cannot be bothered to consider the possible destinies of Miñsana’s bad-tempered intellectual mentor, so he leaves to meet up with Don Vito in the place where they first met.