Blood Tango

by Annamaria Alfieri

  Hernán felt guilty, too, for wanting any excuse to escape her tears. When his editor called just as dawn was breaking to ask him to cover the latest political insanities, he took the urgency of his assignment as an alibi to get away. The president had called for the resignation of all of his cabinet except Avalos. The street in front of the Paz Palace, where the military club was housed, was filling up with students shouting antimilitary slogans and calling for the arrest of Perón and the return to a constitutional government. “I am covering the unions today,” he told Claudia. “It looks as if they might call a general strike. If they do, what’s left of the government will go over the cliff. God knows what will happen after that.”

  Claudia blew her nose and touched his shoulder as he went out. “Be careful, querido,” she called after him. She knew how glad he must be to escape her whining. She tried to be angry with him for leaving her, but it was too obvious, even to her in her grief, that she had become totally frozen with self-pity. She needed to do something to expiate her guilt.

  After he left, she felt compelled to run away from her pain. She dressed and went out to see if Lázaro Torres had come to work and to see how he would react to the news of Luz’s death. She convinced herself that she would be able to see the guilt in his face. Nothing could take away her own culpability, but she had to do something to bring the animal who had murdered Luz to justice. The detective, Roberto Leary, was eager enough considering that he was a Buenos Aires policeman, but he remained unconvinced that Torres was his man. He was sticking to his far-fetched notion that whoever had stabbed Luz thought he was killing Evita. If he was right, Claudia could spend the rest of her life overwhelmed with loss.

  She was the catalyst for Luz’s delusions about Evita. She worried that her own insistence on Torres as the assailant was just an attempt to rationalize away her own part in the murder. But there were plenty of reasons to suspect the gardener, regardless of what Leary said. Torres was a man abandoned by a woman. Nice men like Leary always found it hard to accept what Claudia understood very well—that when men killed women it was usually for egotistical reasons. She had heard too many stories of abuse gone overboard, of women’s lives taken to avenge masculine honor. It was part of the air Argentine men breathed to imagine they had a right to sacrifice any female they thought had betrayed them. If it wasn’t Torres who had taken Luz’s sad young life, it was certainly the girl’s father. Hadn’t Garmendia said as much to Pilar’s face in that club where she danced?

  Claudia called Pilar and told her to stay home. There would be no fancy dresses to sew today. Then she went out into bright sunshine that hurt her eyes after all the dull days of the past week. But there was no Lázaro in the garden. She searched out Raul Llorca, the manager of the building, and learned that Torres had not shown up for work—not today, and not yesterday, either. Another indication that he was the culprit.

  “He goes on the drunk,” Llorca said. “If he weren’t the best gardener I’ve ever known, I would have gotten rid of him years ago.” Raul, by contrast, was the worst building manager Claudia could imagine. In the eight years she had lived here, she had never seen him do a lick of actual work, unless one considered it work to stand around watching other people shovel gravel or polish floors.

  Claudia bought some eggs and vegetables from the purveyor who came around with his horse and cart. She delivered them to her father for his lunch and left again. This time to pay a condolence call on Miguel Garmendia—a visit she hoped would ease her guilt and maybe tell her something she could pass on to Roberto Leary.

  * * *

  At that same midmorning hour, the beautiful blue sky of what had promised to be a perfect spring day clouded over. Lieutenant Ramón Ybarra, walking across the leafy grounds of the Campo de Mayo forty-five kilometers north of Buenos Aires, approved of the change in weather. With thousands marching in the streets and violence breaking out in the city center at regular intervals, gray skies were more fitting for the mood of the nation. No one in Argentina was happy, least of all Ybarra, who pulled off his gloves, removed his cap, and placed it under his arm as he entered under the white arched doorway of the officer’s mess. He set his facial expression to neutral.

  In the cool of the high-ceilinged interior, he loosened the wide belt around his waist a notch and unbuttoned the top button of his jacket. How long would it be, he wondered, before the order for summer uniforms would come through? The heavy, dark wool was beginning to tell on his nerves. Older officers said one got accustomed to the scratchy cloth and stifling weight of the uniform, but he doubted he ever would.

  Ybarra was accepting an espresso in a delicate china cup from the hands of a server behind a linen-draped table, when Francisco Rocco, his fellow lieutenant and closest friend, entered the stately room. The gangly Cisco was an ally worth having. He had, more than other officers of Ramón’s generation, reason to join the fight against Perón and the do-nothing policies of the Fárrell–Avalos regime. Just last week, Rocco had endured a dreadful slap in the face thanks to the colonel and his whore of an actress. Ybarra’s Basque temper flared just thinking about it, especially since Eva Duarte was from Basques, too. The blood of the conquistadores flowed in her veins as well as his, but she was a blot on them all—bastard child and puta that she was.

  Rocco had expected to be appointed the next secretary of communications. President Fárrell had promised him the post. But Perón had given it instead to one of his flunkies, Oscar Nicolini, a grunt of a civil servant, and worst of all one who had endeared himself to Eva Duarte.

  Ybarra greeted his friend, took another coffee, and handed it to him. He led Cisco to a table in a quiet corner. With his back to the room, he began the spiel he had been rehearsing through most of a largely sleepless night. “My friend,” he said, “the government is on the brink of collapse. Yet, President Fárrell and General Avalos are doing nothing. It is time for stronger and braver men to take charge of Argentina’s future.”

  Francisco Rocco sat back in his chair. Astonishment and then fear burned in his eyes. “What are you saying, Ramón? You can’t mean what I think you said.”

  Ybarra leaned forward. “Just listen to me before you reject what I am saying. Argentina is at a crossroads. I am with Fárrell and Avalos all the time. They are totally unprepared to handle the situation. In fact, they deny that the nation is in danger. Someone has to save it. Since they will not, I say we have to.”

  “But … but…”

  Ybarra gripped Rocco’s upper arm. “Not buts. We can, and we must.”

  Francisco sat up straight. “But how?”

  Ybarra hiked his chair closer and looked over his shoulder. There were two young officers-in-training across the massive room near the fireplace. A couple of waiters busy setting tables for lunch were the only other men left in the room. “You are in touch with a lot of the line officers here, Cisco. We have to act with dispatch. While I am here, I am going to talk to Novara. I am sure he will see things our way. He was outraged about the Nicolini appointment.”

  “He is outraged about a lot of things.”

  “You see?”

  “Are you sure Joaquín will join in? He is a major.”

  “Yes. I have already had some tentative words with him, but I could not go into detail over the telephone. You should have heard him last night. I could hear the foam in his mouth over the phone lines. You need to talk to Cieza and Garín. They are captains and command tanks and artillery. I am sure we can get them to agree, too. They have both complained bitterly to me in the last two weeks.”

  “A mutiny?”

  “A putsch. It may not even come to that. If we get the right men with troops and weapons behind us, we may very well get Avalos to cave in and give the order he should have already issued.”

  “What about your brother? He’s a major, too.”

  “Forget about my brother.”

  Fear flickered again in Rocco’s eyes.

  “What is it, Cisco? You do think the army needs to c
rack down on the chaos, don’t you?”

  Rocco nodded but not entirely convincingly. “My problem is that I can’t get over being thrown aside in favor of Nicolini.”

  “Right,” Ybarra said. “And look at what’s going on. Perón was pushed out almost a week ago. Has Fárrell or Avalos reversed Nicolini’s shameful appointment? Have they given you what should have been rightfully yours?”

  “No,” Rocco said vehemently. “My wife is pregnant with our second kid. She was already looking for a larger apartment when we got the word that I was out and Nicolini was in. She cried about having to live in such a small place with two children.”

  “So? Are you with us? Are you going to help us force those fools to give you what should have rightfully been yours?”

  Francisco Rocco straightened his back and squared his shoulders like a man at attention. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I will.”

  Ybarra outlined his plan: which troops would go on standby, which officers must be kept out of the plot.

  Rocco drank it all in. “It could work,” he said.

  “It worked for the men who did it in 1943. It will work for us now.” Ybarra rose and looked at his watch. “I have to go meet Novara. Call me at home tonight and let me know what happens with the other two. Cieza will be called ‘the Roman,’ Garín, ‘the tailor.’ Just call me and tell me if the Roman and the tailor have bought tickets to the game.”

  Rocco stood up and for a second Ybarra was afraid he was going to salute. They shook hands, and Ybarra marched out to meet Joaquín Novara near the statue of Manuel Belgrano halfway between the enlisted men’s barracks and the entrance to the post.

  * * *

  By eleven that morning, Hernán Mantell was making the rounds of the union halls, looking for information on whether the workers had any plans to call a general strike and whether they thought they could restore Perón to power by doing so. In the dim offices of the leather workers, Mantell sought out Tulio Puglisi, a man with a mind prone to see beyond the obvious. Tulio greeted him with news that had just come over the radio: a group of students had stormed the Paz Palace and were demanding that the Supreme Court take over interim rule of the country and hold elections at the first possible moment. They wanted their enemy Perón in jail.

  “It kills me,” Puglisi said, talking and exhaling cigarette smoke at the same time. “Every bone in my body despises those privileged sons of the upper classes, but I find I have more in common with the students than I do with my brothers in the union movement when it comes to my opinion of Perón.”

  “Your guys want to strike for the colonel, then?” Hernán asked.

  Puglisi took one last drag and crushed out his cigarette in the overflowing glass ashtray on his desk. “Not quite as bad as that. They are talking about a strike, but they are holding off on the question of whether they should announce that it is in support of Perón.”

  “What do you think will happen, Tulio?”

  “It’s Hobson’s choice. If the skilled-workers’ unions decide to throw their weight behind Perón, we will find ourselves in his pockets. I’ve finally gotten them to consider what a mistake that would be. But if the generals get their way, we will very likely lose the gains we’ve gotten from the bastard. If you ask me, we will—”

  The telephone rang. Puglisi grabbed it. He listened, grunting intermittently, combing his fingers through his dark, unruly hair. After a long pause, he said, “Yes.” And then, “If it works out that way, okay.” He dropped the black receiver into its cradle with a heavy clunk and turned to Hernán. “That was a source of mine. A janitor in the Casa Rosada. Fárrell has decided to issue an arrest warrant for Perón. The justices are doing the paperwork.”

  Hernán wondered at the way spy networks worked so efficiently in Buenos Aires when nothing else seemed to. “What do you think this means for the unions?”

  “I just told you. If we don’t fight back, our pensions, our shorter hours, our safe-work rules could all go down the toilet.”

  Hernán took out his notebook to get the quote. “It’s obvious then. You’ll strike.” It was only half a question.

  “I think you can count on the unions doing something,” Puglisi replied. “But I’m going to fight tooth and nail for us to hold on to our progress despite Perón’s downfall. If we decide to defend our gains by supporting him, we’ll wind up with that fascist not only back in power but single-handedly so.”

  “How, if he’s in jail?”

  Puglisi looked stunned by Hernán’s naïveté. “If you ask me, throwing the bastard in jail might incite the low-level guys out on the periphery to rise up. There are hundreds of thousands of them, and they don’t understand subtleties. They see only one choice. They have been trained by Perón to worship Perón.”

  Hernán wrote down the sentence—a perfect quote, if he ever got to write about this. A big if. He put his pencil behind his ear. “Can the unskilled men get it together without leadership? Who whips up the descamisados if Perón is in jail?”

  “The actress, for one.”

  “The actress?”

  “Can you think of anyone better to stir up the masses? She has that intensity, that little tremble in her voice that makes the commoners believe her. Did you hear that shameless program she did on the radio, praising Perón on his principles? Nothing to entertain. Just glorifying her boyfriend. And people listened to it because that voice of hers beguiled them.”

  “Surely it is more complicated than that.”

  “Not in my book. This is all about Perón. He blames the foreigners, reactionaries, the upper classes for all of Argentina’s problems, and his supporters cheer him in the streets for saying so. But when he criticizes self-centered politicians, he is really describing himself. For me, he is a prime egotist. Everything he does is aimed at increasing his own power.”

  “Come on, Tulio. You talk about the descamisados not being capable of subtle thinking, yet you are acting like a sledgehammer yourself.”

  A man in a gray suit and a brown fedora had come in and was standing nearby. He looked as if he was waiting to talk to Tulio, who didn’t seem to notice but just went on ranting. “I am not saying Perón hasn’t lifted the lives of the lowest-level guys in the slaughterhouses. But if any union resists his so-called leadership, he gets a rival union started that will be loyal to him and puts the recalcitrant group out of business. And sends its leaders out to the prison camps on the Pampas. My family in Sicily had enough of that sort of thing with Mussolini—a man, by the way, that Perón admired greatly. Perón has this friend Freude. He goes to Freude’s house to meet with Nazis. I am telling you he’s a Nazi; he’s so like Hitler he even has a girlfriend named Eva.” They all laughed at that: Hernán, the man in the gray suit; even Tulio saw how over the top he had gotten. He held up his hands to stop the guffaws. “It’s the truth, though. If he gets a free hand, it will be the end of freedom in this country.”

  The brown fedora moved closer, and the stranger chimed right in, without an introduction or even a greeting, “What about the actress? Do you think she will have a role in this?”

  This guy wasn’t any reporter Hernán had ever met.

  Puglisi looked at him. “What the fuck are you doing here, Leary?”

  The man took off his hat and held out his hand to Hernán. “Detective Roberto Leary,” he said. Mantell shook his hand and wondered if this cop was here to arrest the union leaders. If the army was going to crack down, they might very well start with cracking heads in the union halls.

  Leary put that fear immediately to rest. “I was interested in what you were saying about Eva Duarte and the role she might have in bringing back Perón.”

  Puglisi’s blue eyes lit up. “Are you going to arrest her, I hope?”

  “I’m not sure on what grounds I would do such a thing.”

  Tulio grinned. “It’s too bad hypocrisy isn’t against the law. She talks on the radio about Perón and identifies with the poor as if she is still one of them, but she is one of th
e richest working women in Buenos Aires now. Look at her jewels, her expensive clothes. We are on the brink of civil war here and she cares more about how she looks than whether her country will bleed to death.”

  Hernán chuckled at Puglisi’s ardor and said nothing about his lady friend making those expensive dresses “If hypocrisy were against the law, Tulio, Roberto here would be able fill up the jails in half a day with clerics and philanthropists.”

  “To say nothing of every politician who ever lived,” Tulio said, “starting with Pontius Pilate.” The twinkle in Puglisi’s eyes was going full strength now.

  The policeman’s expression turned serious. “Does the Duarte woman’s possible role scare you as much as you were saying when I came in?” he asked.

  Hernán could not resist an opinion. “If she does take a role, it will be clumsy and harsh. If she wants to help her colonel, she should keep out of the limelight.”

  The cop gave his head an almost imperceptible shake and concentrated on Puglisi. “I am interested in what you think, Tulio.”

  The union leader’s smile vanished. “She is a powerful personality,” was all Puglisi said.

  * * *

  Claudia had heard from Luz that her father and her grandmother lived in the part of town where Claudia’s own father had grown up. But during the heavy immigration at the end of the last century, when newcomers packed in twelve to a room, the rents had doubled. Little Gregorio and his mother, a Paraguayan war widow and schoolteacher, had been pressed out by the high prices. Now the neighborhood was considered quite unsavory. Claudia looked at her watch. She wouldn’t want to be caught there after dark, but at this time of year the sun didn’t go down till seven. She still had plenty of daylight to get there and pay her respects before darkness fell. She didn’t care about Luz’s father, but the girl had had a grandmother who must have loved her. Claudia could find out from her where and when Luz’s funeral would be. She bought a bouquet of white peonies at the flower stall next to the Art Nouveau Subte entrance.