Gradually Schiaffino began to acquire something of a media profile. He took part in a television program on soccer gangs, and was the first to defend their right to violence, on grounds such as honor, self-defense, group solidarity, and the pure and simple pleasure of street fighting. Invited as a defendant, he assumed the role of prosecutor. He participated in radio and television debates on all sorts of subjects: fiscal policy, the decadence of the young Latin American democracies, the future of the tango on the European music scene, the state of opera in Buenos Aires, the exorbitant prices of couture fashion, public education in the provinces, widespread ignorance about the nation’s extent and borders, Argentinean wine, the privatization of the country’s leading industries, the Formula One Grand Prix, tennis and chess, the work of Borges, Bioy Casares, Cortázar and Mújica Lainez (about whose work he made bold pronouncements, although he swore he had never read it), the life of Roberto Arlt (for whom he professed his admiration, although the novelist had “belonged to the enemy camp”), border incidents, how to end unemployment, white-collar crime and street crime, the inventiveness of the Argentineans, the sawmills of the Andes, and the works of Shakespeare.
He attended the 1990 World Cup in Italy, one of a group of thirty Argentinean fans classified as potentially dangerous aliens. Prior to the trip he had expressed a wish to meet with the British hooligans for a reconciliation ceremony consisting of a mass for the casualties of the Falklands War, followed by a barbecue. Although it was never anything more than a wish, the news spread around the world, and by the time he returned to Argentina, Schiaffino’s renown had increased considerably.
In 1991 he brought out two books: Chimichurri Sauce (self-published, forty pages, 100 copies), an unfortunate imitation of Lugones and Darío, lapsing occasionally into pure plagiarism, which left all but a few readers wondering why he had written and, having written, published it; and The Iron Boat (La Castaña, 50 pages, 500 copies), a series of thirty prose poems whose central theme is the phenomenon of friendship between men. The book’s trite message, that friendship is forged in danger, seems in retrospect to foreshadow the life that Fatso was to lead in the coming years. In 1992, commanding a substantial group recruited from his gang, he orchestrated the ambush on a public highway of a bus carrying River Plate supporters, resulting in two deaths from gunshot wounds and numerous injuries. A warrant for his arrest was issued; Argentino Schiaffino disappeared. In phone calls to various radio stations he vigorously declared his innocence, although he did not condemn the ambush—on the contrary—and several witnesses, including more than one ex-member of Schiaffino’s gang, said they had seen him near the scene of the crime. In the media he was soon identified as the mastermind and instigator of the incident. Here begins the shadowy phase of his life, especially propitious to all kinds of speculation and mystification.
While on the run, he is known to have attended soccer matches: photos he set up himself showed him rooting for the team like any other fan. The gang, the inner circle of the gang, those who had stood by the Schiaffino boys from the start, protected him with a fanatical devotion. His life on the run inspired awe among the youngsters. A few read his works; some imitated him and tried to follow his literary lead, but Fatso was inimitable.
In 1994, when the World Cup was being played in the United States, Fatso gave an interview to a Buenos Aires sports magazine. Where was he? In Boston. A major scandal broke out. The Argentinean sportswriters became suspicious after being subjected to special security measures—slights, so they felt, to their professional dignity—and commented sarcastically about the North American police procedures. The other Latin American journalists, plus a few from Spain, Italy and Portugal, echoed their mockery. The story, just one of the many generated by the event, was repeated around the world. The Boston police and the FBI swung into action, but Schiaffino had disappeared.
For a long time, his whereabouts were entirely unknown. The gang even publicly admitted to being in the dark, until Scotti Cabello, who was in prison, received a long poem entitled “Terra autem erat inanis” in a letter from Fatso, postmarked Orlando, Florida. The epistle, which Dr. Morazán hastened to publish, obliging the Boca fans to pay a subscription, begins with a comparison, in rhythmic free verse, of the open spaces of North America and those of Argentina, at opposite extremes of the continent, continues with detailed reminiscences of the prisons that “the author and his friends” have come to know through their “enthusiasm and innocence” (a clear allusion to the two-year sentence that Scotti Cabello was serving at the time) and ends in a chaotic blend of threats and idyllic visions of a childhood paradise regained (mamma, the smell of fresh pasta, brothers laughing around the table, playing soccer in vacant lots with a plastic ball until nightfall) and irreverent, off-color jokes, a characteristic trait of Schiaffino’s late manner.
There was no further news of him until 1999. The gang observed an absolute and perhaps ingenuous silence. In spite of Dr. Morazan’s insinuations—his deliberately enigmatic utterances and ambiguities—it is probably the case that no one in Argentina had any idea what had become of Fatso. It was all speculation. Even so, in 1998 the die-hard fans set off to France for the World Cup, convinced that they would find him cheering on the boys in blue and white, as always. But they were entirely mistaken. Fatso had turned away from the first of his two great loves and devoted himself to the second: he read everything he could lay his hands on, especially history books, crime novels and best-sellers; learned English to a rudimentary level (which he would never surpass); and married a North American, María Teresa Greco, from New Jersey, twenty years his senior, thereby obtaining US citizenship. He was living in Beresford, a small town in southern Florida, working as chief barman in a restaurant owned by a Cuban, and unhurriedly concocting what was to be his first novel, a five-hundred page thriller set in various countries over several years. His habits had changed. He had become orderly, and was leading an almost monk-like existence.
In 1999, as mentioned above, he reemerged. Scotti Cabello, who was out of prison and had more or less withdrawn from the turbulent world of the soccer gangs, received not a letter but a telephone call from Fatso. He was flabbergasted. Fatso’s voice, sounding just the same as ever, reeled off plans, projects and strategies for revenge, with the undiminished enthusiasm of his early years, giving Scotti the disturbing impression that, for his old hero, time had stopped. Fatso didn’t seem perturbed by the news that he was no longer the leader of the Boca gang. He had instructions still, and hoped that Scotti would carry them out. First, let the boys know that he was alive; second, trumpet the news that he was coming home; third, start looking for someone to publish his great North American novel in Spanish . . .
Scotti Cabello loyally satisfied the first two demands, but could find no takers in Argentina for Fatso’s literary opus. In the end it was Schiaffino who failed to fulfill his promise: after raising hopes of his return—if only among a few followers—he lapsed once again into sullen silence.
During the 2002 World Cup in Japan, a few Argentinean supporters scanning the Osaka stadium with binoculars thought they saw him in a side row, near the south end. They made their way towards the spot, uncertain and excited, but when they got there, he had gone. Three years later the Bucaneros publishing house in Tampa brought out his Memoirs of an Argentinean (350 pages), a book full of gangsters, car chases, gorgeous women, unsolved murders, bars where private eyes meet with honest cops, adventures in the ghetto, corrupt politicians, movie stars receiving threats, voodoo rituals, industrial espionage, etc. The book was relatively successful, at least among the Hispanic community in Miami and in the U.S. Southwest.
By then Schiaffino had been widowed and married again. According to some sources, he had links with the Ku Klux Klan, the American Christian Movement and the Rebirth of America group. But in fact he was dividing his time between business and literature. He owned two barbeque restaurants in the Miami area, and was immersed in the elaboration of a major work in progress, w
hich he was keeping strictly under wraps.
In 2007 he self-published a book of prose poems, The Horsemen of Repentance, in which he relates, although in a muddled or deliberately hermetic manner, some of his adventures in North America, from his arrival as a wanted man up to the moment when he met Elisabeth Moreno, his third wife, to whom the book is dedicated.
Finally, in 2010, the long-promised, long-awaited novel appeared. Its title was laconic and suggestive: The Treasure. The plot is a thin disguise for a memoir in which Argentino Schiaffino discusses and analyses his life, taking it apart, weighing good and bad, seeking and finding justifications. In the course of the book’s 535 pages, the reader is made privy to undisclosed aspects of the author’s existence, some of which are genuinely surprising, although as a rule Schiaffino’s revelations are restricted to the domestic sphere: we learn, for example, that since they were unable to have children of their own, he and Elisabeth adopted a six-year-old Irish boy named Tommy, and a four-year-old Mexican girl named Cynthia, whom they renamed Cynthia-Elisabeth, in accordance with Fatso’s wish, etc. Schiaffino makes his political position clear. From his own point of view, at least. He is neither on the right nor on the left. He has black friends and friends in the Ku Klux Klan (among the photos in the book, one shows a barbecue in a back yard; all the guests are wearing Klan hoods and gowns, except for Schiaffino, who is in chef’s garb, using a spare white hood to wipe the sweat from his neck). He is against monopolies, especially cultural monopolies. He believes in the family, but also in a man’s “natural right to have a bit of fun on the side.” He trusts in the United States, of which he has become a citizen, while drawing up a long list of trivial things that ought to be improved.
The chapters devoted to his life in Argentina, and especially to his leading role in the soccer gangs, are sketchy compared to those about his experiences in North America. The book contains historical inaccuracies, which may, however, be deranged metaphors for truths of another kind. For example, he says that he took part in the Falklands War as a private, was awarded the San Martín Medal for his bravery in various engagements, and promoted to Sergeant. His description of the battle of Goose Green is full of blackly humorous details but is not always believable from a strictly military point of view. He says almost nothing of his long career as the head of the Boca fans. He does, however, complain that in Argentina his books were never given much attention. On the other hand, his life in the United States, both real and imaginary, is recounted with zest and in minute detail. Many chapters of the book are devoted to women, among whom a place of honor is reserved for his second wife, the “beloved and sorely missed companion” who opened the doors of “her personal library” to him. As to sports, he is interested only in boxing, and the characters who haunt the boxing world provide him with a wealth of material: Italians, Cubans, melancholic old black men, friends and tireless storytellers one and all.
After the publication of The Treasure, Schiaffino seemed to have settled down for good. But it was not to be. Bad management or bad friends bankrupted him. He lost his two restaurants. Divorce was not long in coming. In 2013 he left Florida and moved to New Orleans, where he worked as the manager of a restaurant called El Chacarero Argentino. At the end of that year, he self-published his last book of poems: A Story Heard in the Delta, a collection of melancholic but nonetheless outrageous jokes, in the vein of the best verse from his Boca period. In 2015, he left New Orleans for reasons that have not been ascertained, and a few months later an unidentified individual or individuals killed him in the backyard of a gambling den in Detroit.
THE INFAMOUS
RAMÍREZ HOFFMAN
CARLOS RAMÍREZ HOFFMAN
Santiago de Chile, 1950–Lloret de Mar, Spain, 1998
The infamous Ramírez Hoffman must have launched his career in 1970 or 1971, when Salvador Allende was president of Chile.
He almost certainly attended the writing workshop run by Juan Cherniakovski in the southern city of Concepción. At that stage he was calling himself Emilio Stevens and writing poems of which Cherniakovski did not disapprove, although the stars of the workshop were the twins María and Magdalena Venegas, seventeen- or perhaps eighteen-year-old poets from Nacimiento, who were studying sociology and psychology respectively.
Emilio Stevens was going steady (an expression that gives me goose bumps now) with María Venegas, although in fact he often went out with both sisters, to the movies, concerts, plays or lectures, that sort of thing; sometimes they went to the beach in the girls’ car, a white Volkswagon Beetle, to watch the sun sink into the Pacific and smoke some dope. I suppose the Venegas girls went out with other guys, and Stevens probably had other friends too; at the time, we all thought we knew what there was to know about each other’s lives, a fairly stupid assumption, as events were soon to demonstrate. Why did the Venegas sisters get mixed up with him? It’s a trivial mystery, an everyday accident. The man known as Stevens was, I suppose, handsome, intelligent, sensitive.
A week after the coup, in September 1973, in the midst of the reigning confusion, the Venegas sisters left their apartment in Concepción and went back home to Nacimiento. That was where they lived with their aunt. Their parents, both painters, had died before the girls turned fifteen, leaving them the house and some land in the province of Bio-Bio, which provided a comfortable living. The sisters would often speak of them, and their poems often featured imaginary painters lost in the wilds of southern Chile, embarking on hopelessly ambitious works and hopelessly in love. Once, and once only, I had the opportunity to examine a photo of them: the father was dark and thin, with a certain look of sadness and perplexity peculiar to those born on this side of the river Bío-Bío; the mother was taller, slightly chubby, with a sweet, easy-going smile.
They went to Nacimiento and shut themselves up in their house, one of the biggest houses in town, on the outskirts, a two-storey wooden house that had belonged to the father’s family, with more than seven rooms, and a piano, and the powerful presence of the aunt, who kept the twins safe from all harm, although they were not what you would call faint-hearted girls, quite the opposite.
And one fine day, say two weeks or a month later, Emilio Stevens turned up in Nacimiento. It must have happened something like this. One night, or perhaps it was earlier, one afternoon, one of those melancholic southern afternoons, in mid-spring, someone knocks at the door, and it is Emilio Stevens. The Venegas girls are pleased to see him; they bombard him with questions, invite him to dinner and then say he’s welcome to stay the night; and after dinner they probably read out poems, not Stevens, he doesn’t want to read anything, he says is working on something new, smiles in a mysterious, knowing way, or perhaps he doesn’t even smile, just flatly says no, and the Venegas girls approve; in their innocence, they think they understand, but they don’t understand at all, and yet they think they understand, and they read their poems, which are dense and very good: a blend of Violeta and Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn, if such a thing is conceivable, a mind-blowing distillation of Joyce Mansour, Sylvia Plath and Alejandra Pizarnik, the ideal cocktail with which to bid the day farewell, a day in 1973, fading irretrievably. And during the night Emilio Stevens gets up like a sleepwalker, perhaps he has slept with María Venegas, perhaps not, at any rate he gets up without hesitation, like a sleepwalker, and goes to the aunt’s room, hearing the motor of a car approaching the house, and then he cuts the aunt’s throat, no, he stabs her in the heart, it’s cleaner, quicker; he covers her mouth and plunges the knife into her heart, then he goes down and opens the door, and two men come into the house that belongs to the stars of Juan Cherniakovski’s poetry workshop, and the fucked-up night comes into the house and then it goes out again, almost straight away, the night comes in, and out it goes, swift and efficient.
And the bodies vanish, but no, years later one will appear in a mass grave, that of Magdalena Venegas, but only hers, as if to prove that Ramírez Hoffman is a man and not a god. Many other people disappeared at that time, l
ike Juan Cherniakovski, the Jewish poet of the South, and no one was surprised that he had disappeared, the Red son of a bitch, although later, following in the footsteps of his putative Russian-Jewish uncle, he turned up in all the trouble spots of Latin America, becoming a legend, the model of the itinerant Chilean: there he was in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, with his rifle and his fist in the air, as if to say Here I am, you bastards, the last Jewish Bolshevik from the forests of southern Chile, until one day he disappeared for good, possibly killed during the FMLN’s final offensive. And Concepción’s other poet, Martín García, Cherniakovski’s friend and rival, who held his workshop in the medical faculty, also disappeared. The two of them were always together, talking about poetry. If the sky over Chile had begun to crumble and fall, they would have gone on talking about poetry: the tall, fair-haired Cherniakovski and the short, dark Martín García; Cherniakovski mainly interested in Latin American poetry, while García was translating French poets no one else had heard of. This of course infuriated a lot of people. How could that ugly little Indian presume to translate and correspond with Alain Jouffroy, Denis Roche, and Marcelin Pleynet? Michel Bulteau, Matthieu Messagier, Claude Pelieu, Franck Venaille, Pierre Tilman, Daniel Biga . . . who were these people, for God’s sake? And what was so special about this Georges Perec character, published by Denoîl, whose books García was always toting around, pretentious bastard. Nobody missed him. Many would have been glad to hear of his death. Writing this now it seems hard to believe. But García reappeared in exile, like Cherniakovski (whom he no doubt never saw again), first in East Germany, which he left as soon as he could, then in France, where he scraped together a living teaching Spanish and translating for small presses, mainly books by offbeat, early twentieth-century Latin American writers obsessed with mathematical or pornographic quandaries. Later on Martín García was killed too, but that is an entirely different story.
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