I suspected that I was going to miss not only the local to Castelar, due to depart in ten minutes, but also several later trains.
“Besides, if you had ever seen her …” He stared intently at a short, young guy who was passing in front of the bar but ruled him out immediately and looked around for another possibility. “Whenever my father watched a fashion show or a beauty contest on television, he’d say that the only way to tell whether those girls were really beautiful or not would be to see them when they got out of bed in the morning, without makeup. I never told her this, but the first thing I did when I woke up every morning was to look at her to see if the old man’s theory held up. And do you know, he was right? At least when it came to Liliana.”
The dreadful voice came through the loudspeakers again to announce the 7:55 train to Castelar, making all stops. I recalled the young woman’s features, and I thought he wasn’t exaggerating about her beauty. By then, I was just about guaranteed to get home extremely late, but I didn’t feel like moving quite yet—at least, not until I could put a name to the emotion I felt, to the feeling that was steadily growing inside me. Compassion? Sorrow? No. It was something else, but I couldn’t manage to identify it.
“You know what’s the worst of all?”
I looked at him. I didn’t know what to say.
“It’s that I’m forgetting her.”
His voice quavered. I didn’t make the mistake of interrupting him.
“I think about her. I think and think about her, all day long. I wake up during the night remembering her, and I stay awake remembering her. But what’s happening is that I tend to remember the same things. The same images. So what am I really remembering? Her, or the memory of her I’ve built up in the little more than a year that she’s been dead?”
Poor guy. Why couldn’t I get past that “poor guy” in my thoughts about him? It was a worthless label.
“I thought about killing myself, you know? Sometimes I get up in the morning and ask myself why the hell I’m still alive.”
At that point, I too was asking myself why I was still alive. How could I reply to him? And at the same time, how could I keep quiet after such a confession, in the face of such distress? I said the first—or only—thing that came to mind: “Maybe you’re still alive so you can get your hands on the son of a bitch who killed her.” Then I thought it over and felt obliged to add, as if distancing myself from his fanatical certainty, “Whether it’s Gómez or somebody else.”
Morales considered my response. Either automatically or methodically, he continued to look at the people passing by on their way to the train platforms. After a while he answered me: “I think so. I think that’s why.”
We both fell silent. If these private stakeouts were what was keeping him alive, that was already a plus. In any case, however, his efforts were doomed to failure. If Gómez was innocent, he couldn’t be blamed for anything. And if he was the murderer, it seemed to me very unlikely that we’d ever be able to arrest him. The guy knew he was being sought, and even if he was careless, it would be practically impossible to pick him out in that sea of people. Seen in this light, Ricardo Agustín Morales’s stubborn train-station vigils seemed touchingly naive.
I asked him, just to say something, “Do you still live in Palermo?”
“No. I still have the apartment, but I’m living in a rooming house in San Telmo. It’s closer to my work and … this,” he added, as if he found it difficult to come up with a name for the extravagant hunt he was on.
I told him good-bye and assured him that I’d call him if there was any news. While we were shaking hands, he looked at the clock and saw that it was time for him to go, too. He took out a crumpled banknote and laid it on the bar. We went out together, but after a few steps he made it clear to me that he was going in the opposite direction. We shook hands again.
I walked to the platforms. At the entrance a guard punched my pass. Another train I could take was about to leave, this one an express to Flores, Liniers, and Morón, and then making all stops. There were no free seats, but I got on anyway. I’d decided that I had to get home as soon as possible. Although I wasn’t completely sure, I thought I’d succeeded in identifying what I’d felt while I was listening to Morales.
It was envy. The love that man had known awakened enormous envy in me, an emotion beyond the pity I felt for him because his love had ended in tragedy. Clinging, not very gracefully, to one of the white hoops that hung over the aisle and swaying back and forth with the movements of the train, I knew I was going to walk home from the station and tell Marcela we had to talk and announce my decision to separate from her. She’d probably stare at me in surprise; I had no doubt that such a move would fall well outside the logical sequence of stages in the life she’d planned for herself. I was going to regret it, because I’ve never liked hurting other people, but I’d just come to the realization that I was hurting her more by staying with her.
When I got home, the table was set and Marcela was waiting for me. We talked until two in the morning. The next day, I put some things into a couple of suitcases and went looking for a rooming house. I took care, however, to avoid the neighborhood of San Telmo.
19
More than two and a half years passed from that day until Monday, April 23, 1972, at 4:45 in the afternoon, when the conductor Saturnino Petrucci hit the switch that closed the doors on the train departing from Track 2 of the Villa Luro station. Petrucci heard the whoosh and snap and saw the incredulous look on the face of a fat, matronly lady as the door slammed shut in front of her nose. Leaning half his body out of the car, the conductor caressed the button with the lettering that read DEPARTURE SIGNAL, but he didn’t press it; instead, he pressed the one marked OPEN. There was another pneumatic click, and all the doors in the train slid open again. Thrilled, the woman made a little skip from the platform to the car and sank down immediately into an empty seat.
Saturnino Petrucci, the conductor—gray uniform, thick salt-and-pepper mustache, imposing belly—congratulated himself on not having stooped to the gratuitous cruelty of leaving the fat lady huffing on the platform. How could it even have occurred to him to pull such a rotten trick? The answer to that question was embarrassing, but extremely clear. It had occurred to him as a way of taking revenge. Not on the fat woman, whom he didn’t know, but on the world in general. He wanted revenge on the world because he blamed it for the nasty mood he’d been in since the afternoon of the previous day, a Sunday, to be exact. And the proximate cause of his spleen had been nothing more or less than the latest defeat suffered by his favorite soccer team, the Racing Club de Avellaneda. In other words, he’d been on the point of causing a poor woman great inconvenience because of soccer, because of futból, that eternal source of joy and torment.
Petrucci felt like an idiot for being so bitter about a soccer team’s performance, but feeling like an idiot did nothing to relieve the bitterness. Almost the opposite, in fact; feeling like an idiot only deepened his gloom. A great load of illegitimate, dirty, and undeserved grief was too much to bear for even such a broad-shouldered, diehard soccer fan as he was. Wouldn’t they ever return, the golden years of his youth, when Racing practically grew tired of winning championships? He considered himself a patient, undemanding man. He didn’t want to be like those unbearable River Plate supporters, who needed victory after victory to be satisfied. He would have been content with much less. But even “José’s team,” the team managed by Juan José Pizzuti, was starting to become a distant memory. How many years had it been since Cárdenas’s goal and the World Cup? Five. Five long years. Would another five pass without a championship for Racing? Or another ten? Good God. He didn’t even want to think about it, as if the mere thought might attract the evil eye and more bad luck.
That Monday had begun with all the repercussions of the previous day’s defeat: the newspaper headlines, the jokes in the stationmaster’s office, the mocking looks from a couple of engineers. The black fury that had risen in him, slow
ly distilled and barely contained, had almost turned the fat lady into his victim. He looked out the window. He’d be on this train until the end of the line—the Once station—and then he’d return on the express. He exhaled through his teeth. He’d reached the level of serenity necessary to spare the woman his senseless revenge, but his foul mood persisted. He didn’t want to go home in such a bad temper, because he was a good father and a good husband. He therefore opted to work out his anger in the most honest way he knew: by going after fare dodgers.
He snatched his ticket punch out of his belt, called out, “Tickets, passes, riding permits,” in a singsong voice, drawing out the last syllables of the words, and turned to the comparatively few passengers in the car with him. Experienced at his job, he gave all the men a quick once-over. Women rarely traveled without a ticket. There were only six or seven scattered males sitting in the green leatherette seats. Several of those passengers reached for their pockets, but two stood up and began to walk down the aisle to the car behind them. In no hurry, the conductor punched a young mother’s white-and-orange ticket; he didn’t need to follow the fugitives with his eyes. A quick glance told him that one of them was wearing a sheepskin coat and the other, a short fellow with black hair, a blue jacket. The train was slowing down. Thanking an old man who showed him his pass, Petrucci made his way to the doors, inserted a key into the panel, pressed the OPEN button, and stepped down onto the platform in the Floresta station. The only thing he had any interest in doing there was to locate the two deadbeat riders, who’d temporarily scuttled out of his sight. He spotted one of them right away: the guy in the sheepskin coat got off the train, played dumb, walked over to a tree, and leaned against it. Petrucci favored him with his indulgence. The punk had left his train, and that was enough for the conductor. But what about the other one, the little pecker in the blue jacket? Where was he? Petrucci felt the fury that had simmered inside him all day long boil up again. Was this twerp trying to be a wise guy? He didn’t find the conductor’s fierce aspect and obvious experience sufficiently intimidating? He felt safe simply because he’d moved to another car? In short, he was taking him for an asshole? Perfect.
Petrucci closed the doors, activated the departure signal, waited for the train to start moving, and released the door he’d blocked with his foot. Then, sensing that it would be a good idea for him to have his hands free, he put away his ticket punch and the key to the door control panel. He began to walk through the car, swaying slightly from the effects of inertia. When he got to the next car, a glance sufficed to tell him that the object of his search wasn’t in it. Petrucci went on to the car after that one, but the blue jacket wasn’t there, either. The conductor smiled. The idiot had parked his sorry ass in the last car. The door screeched as Petrucci flung it open, and there he was: sitting on the left, the picture of innocence, and looking out the window as if nothing at all was going on. Thrusting out his chest and swinging his shoulders, Petrucci walked down the aisle to him. He stopped beside the young man’s seat and murmured gravely, “Ticket.”
Why did this dumbass insist on acting like he, Saturnino Petrucci, was the imbecile? Who did he think he was fooling with that surprised look, that sudden start, that pantomime, I’m looking in this pocket, I’m looking in this other one, I’m acting upset because I can’t find the thing, I’m clicking my tongue to show I’m worried? Did he think the conductor hadn’t seen him run out of the fourth car before they stopped at Floresta?
“I’m sorry, sir, I can’t find it.”
Sir, my ass, Petrucci thought. He gazed at the young man tenderly and said to him, in the tone of a stern father, “I’m going to have to fine you, little buddy.”
And then something happened. Well, right, things always happen. In this instance, “something happened” means that the subsequent conduct of one of the persons involved in the dispute had significant consequences for the story the author of this book is trying to tell. The young man rose to his feet, drew himself up, frowned, looked the conductor in the eyes, and said, “Then you better fine your mama, you fat shit, because I don’t have a fucking penny.”
Petrucci was surprised, but his surprise came wrapped in joy. The kid was a gift from heaven. Racing Club, his glorious team, had gone down to defeat yesterday. His colleagues had spent a good part of today making fun of his sorrow. But this impertinent, foul-mouthed young man was giving him the possibility of unleashing the dark feelings that had been growing in him. He raised an arm and placed it firmly on the kid’s shoulder. “Don’t act smart. You’re going to get off the train with me in Flores, young midget, and then we’ll see how smart you are about paying the fine.”
“The only midget here is your dick, lardass.” The boy was looking at him furiously. Later, Petrucci would say he was caught off guard, which was not at all true. The conductor guessed, perceived, almost wished that the kid would start a ruckus. But the blow the little shit dealt him was so swift and so well aimed that it landed unblocked, flush on his nose, and blinded him for an instant. The kid shook his hand a little, as if he’d hurt it; later, the doctors would diagnose a metacarpal fracture. He twisted himself slightly in order to get into the aisle and elude the conductor’s voluminous body. But when he’d just about escaped, he felt a brutish hand seize the collar of his blue jacket and spin him around deftly, so that he was facing the near window. Then another hand grabbed him from behind, by the belt, and both hands lifted him clear of the floor. As the final step in the sequence, the hands slung him against the aluminum frame of the window, which shattered into fragments under the impact of his forehead. He was a sturdy kid. Although stunned, he remained upright, and now he was free of the conductor’s grasp. He turned toward him and put up his fists, ready to fight. Maybe if the man in the gray uniform had been somewhat lighter, or if he hadn’t belonged to the boxing federation in his youth, or if Racing had won the previous afternoon, the fare-dodging lad would have suffered no further damage in their scuffle. But as none of those was the case, he first received a violent right uppercut in the pit of his stomach that bent him in half, and then a straight right to the jaw that left him dazed. For dessert, Petrucci served him a left hook under the ribs that made tears spring from his eyes.
At that moment, the train stopped. Happy and proud, Petrucci accepted the applause of the small crowd that had gathered since the stop in Floresta. He turned the key in the panel to open the doors and exited with the deadbeat rider, practically pulling him off the train by the hair. Petrucci walked him to the police post that was almost at the other end of the platform. A few curious people stuck their heads out of the doors along the way as they saw the conductor pass, driving the stunned young man ahead of him. Petrucci spotted the duty sergeant, greeted him with a nod, and gave him a succinct account of what had just occurred. The sergeant took the kid into custody.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” the policeman said, after cuffing his prisoner to a heavy wooden chair. “I’ll send him over to the station to check for prior arrests. He probably doesn’t have any, but I want to fuck with him for a while. He’s got to learn to show some respect, the little piece of shit.”
“Sounds good,” Petrucci said, touching his nose for the first time. It was seriously starting to hurt.
“Shouldn’t you get that seen to?” the policeman asked. “I mean, it’s looking pretty nasty.”
“Yeah, he really got me good, the bastard.” They were speaking in front of the young man, who stared fixedly at the floor.
The policeman accompanied the conductor to the door. Outside, the train was still waiting.
“And all because he wanted to play the big guy, the stupid little jerk.” Petrucci felt the need to explain himself. “If he tells me he’s broke, or if he asks me please to let him go, I might not say anything, you know?”
“What are you going to do? Kids these days, they think they’re entitled.”
“Unbelievable,” the conductor concluded.
He waved good-bye, closed the doors, and
sounded the departure signal. The train didn’t start for a few moments, because the engineer was distracted after such a long wait. When Petrucci arrived at Once station, his nose was swollen and bloody. He was sent to the Hospital Ferroviario, the Railroad Hospital, where he was x-rayed and then examined by the physician on duty. “Fracture of the nasal septum,” the doctor said. “You didn’t pass out?” Petrucci shook his head, as if getting his septum cracked was the most normal thing in the world. “Go home,” said the doctor. “I’m marking you down for four days’ rest. Come back in on Friday, and we’ll see how you’re doing.”
If fights with fare dodgers came with so much time off, Petrucci thought, he’d try to get in at least one a month from then on. Overjoyed, he went back to Once station and took a train from there without reporting to security. He had to deliver the medical documents directly to the office in Castelar, and he was feeling extremely weary. When he arrived there with his hospital certificates, some of his colleagues came out to welcome him.
“Step aside, boys, here comes the sheriff,” one of them said jokingly.
“Don’t break my balls, Ávalos,” Petrucci said curtly.
“Seriously, macho man, they didn’t tell you in Once?”
“Tell me what?”
“The kid you busted. The one who fought with you.”
“Yeah, what about him?”
“You know the cops in Flores brought him in to check for priors, right?”
“What? Don’t tell me that little asshole has a record.”
“Better than that. The fucker’s got an arrest warrant out for him. From a court in Buenos Aires, for homicide and I don’t know what else …”
The Secret in Their Eyes Page 13
