‘Oh. What about Señor Ocampo?’
‘When we have tasted our wine I will explain.’
It arrived in long-stemmed glasses and she proposed a toast to their friendship, to which he agreed uncertainly.
‘I first met Bernard Ocampo over forty years ago,’ she explained. ‘I was seventeen and ambitious and everybody told me that I was beautiful. I took a job as waitress in this very restaurant, but Mercedes Goyeneche was meant to be the name of an actress, not a waitress! Now, Bernard was a successful businessman and politician here. He was expanding his empire into Buenos Aires and intended to make movies. He had all the contacts, and he was rich. He discovered me, and Mercedes Goyeneche was going to be his first star. But he had enemies and his business and political rivals combined to ruin him; he lost everything. At the last minute he transferred ownership of the restaurant and this building to me, and kept it out of their hands.’
‘He wasn’t able to build his business back up?’
‘Yes, slowly. He has some power again, but he is not the man he was.’
‘And you kept the restaurant?’
‘Yes. I would have transferred it back to him but he did something to hurt me so badly that I refused to. He’s never forgiven me. And he has an attachment to this place.’
Galman wasn’t certain that in the dim light she hadn’t shuddered as she had used the word ‘attachment’.
‘I wouldn’t normally discuss such matters with a stranger,’ she pointed out.
‘Well, I have been coming here for thirty years…But I wasn’t quite sure who I had to thank for the continued orders, and the refreshment. But now I see that it is you.’
The champagne had relaxed him. He licked his finger and picked up the crumbs of his cake from his plate. As he transferred them to his mouth he realised how uncultured he must appear.
‘Señor Ocampo does still have a minority share in this place. You have him to thank for the fact it hasn’t changed in all these years.’
‘I’m glad of that. I’m wary of change. When I took over my family business I was afraid of changing anything for fear of it leading to failure. I allowed myself to be counselled by older and wiser heads. For nearly a decade the company stood still and in business that’s not always so good. Competitors gained advantages over us and I was at a loss to know what to do. But then people started to value how old-fashioned we were. We stressed that we had been using the same recipe for years, and only selected the best local fruit. Now we are appreciated precisely because we never changed.’
He was worried that again he had said too much about his business. However, that was not the reason why she was shaking her head; ‘I’m not sure if keeping everything the same is good for the restaurant.’
‘But it is. I love it! Although I’m old-fashioned, I suppose.’
‘Nothing has changed here because Señor Ocampo and I will never agree on how to change it. We are sworn enemies,’ she said, her gaze penetrating his own eyes. He looked down, embarrassed, and saw that she had put her hand very close to his on the table. He took up his glass and sipped the champagne.
‘The world around us changes,’ she said.
‘It does.’
‘It does not get better. It does not get worse. It just changes.’
‘The secret is to hold on to the good things, and to embrace changes that are worthwhile. The secret is in being able to identify what is of value, and not simply expedient in the short term.’
‘Yours is a philosophy, but my position is not so dignified.’
‘I am told that I am too conservative; too unwilling to embrace change.’
‘But some things do not need to change…’
‘I’d like to think so, but perhaps it is inevitable. I’ll retire in a few years and pass the company on to my son, Gato. He’ll change things. Maybe he’ll ruin Galman’s Conserves, or maybe it’ll expand and he’ll export our jams and pickles worldwide. He’s already talking about franchising our name.’
‘Señor Galman,’ she said, not interested in his business. ‘I wish to talk to you in private. It is a personal matter.’
‘Oh?’
‘Will you come to my apartments upstairs? Like the restaurant, they has changed very little in all these years. You might be interested to see them. And the matter I wish to discuss is a rather delicate and personal one.’
He felt uneasy. Being asked upstairs by a woman he didn’t know worried him. He had to tell himself that he was an unlikely target for a femme fatale. Thirty or forty years ago he was indeed quite a handsome fellow, but he had put on weight, and he knew that he was now a little stooped. This elegant woman had suggested it was a personal matter, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything untoward.
‘Elegant’ was the precise word he decided, following her across the restaurant. Three steps behind he marvelled at her figure and still could not guess at her age. They passed through the door through which the waitresses came and went, and there was a small lobby with a dumb-waiter and stairs leading down to the kitchens. There was also another door which she opened and he was invited into a surprisingly narrow and dilapidated hallway with a rickety staircase. A further door to the busy street was slightly open and she walked over to close it, obviously annoyed.
In the moment that she stood in the thin shaft of glaring sunlight, looking outside suspiciously, he was able to get a better idea of how old she really was. The bright light did not flatter her; he realised that she had to be at least sixty. She slammed it shut and turned to him, forcing a smile. Galman knew from his wife’s efforts before the mirror every morning that the judicious application of cosmetics could hide a decade of aging, and Señora Goyeneche had excelled herself in the art. However, in that instant of revealing light the deeper wrinkles had not been hidden and the tone of her skin had been too matt and even. Even with the street door closed, now in semi-darkness, he could see that her eyes and lips were heavily made-up and he knew that much could be masked by that.
He followed Señora Goyeneche as she climbed the stairs, her shoes loud on the uncarpeted treads. She waited at the half-landing for him to catch up and then they climbed to a door on the next floor. She unlocked it and he unwillingly followed her into a very large, dark room that was very comfortably and probably expensively furnished. The heavy damask or brocade curtains were drawn across the windows and swept over the dimly patterned deep-pile carpet. The furniture was ponderous and upholstered in similar fabrics, and even the flock wallpaper seemed to be of a great weight.
She explained:
‘As with the restaurant, nothing in here has been changed for many, many years. Señor Ocampo lavished money on this place in the hope that I would become his mistress.’
Galman found himself wanting to know if that had come to pass.
The woman turned on a lamp at a table and from everywhere came hints and reflections of dull gold from gilt mouldings, fittings and decorative features.
She wanted him to look at a photograph in a frame that was standing on the table. It was an old-fashioned studio shot that must have dated to the very early sixties.
Señora Goyeneche appeared to be about twenty in the photograph and she looked stunning. He turned to her and she was smiling at him. She was still the good-looking woman of the photograph, with the same fine bone structure, but he remembered that he had recently seen her in the unforgiving sunlight.
‘I am a very uninteresting, vain and shallow woman, Señor Galman.’
He replied that she had to be wrong.
‘No, that is what I am. When I was seventeen I was effortlessly slim and beautiful. I was so beautiful that a man I did not know gave me this whole building! I didn’t deserve it. I never earned it.
‘He couldn’t get me into the movies, so I lived a life of idleness. I didn’t worry about anything. After his business collapsed he was always worried, afraid of his enemies. He was annoyed that I would not be his mistress; resentful that I had the restaurant and the building. I j
ust lived up here, lazy, indulgent, spending the profits earned downstairs. I never once lifted a finger.’
She walked over to a table on which stood a decanter and glasses. Pouring them both a glass of wine she continued:
‘I still wanted to act; to make a name for myself, but I never got a part. I auditioned, but Bernard told me that his enemies were to blame. I think, though, he was trying to be kind. I looked the part, but I just hadn’t the talent. It took a long time to accept that. And then I took a lover…’
She looked wistful and Galman wondered if, or when, she would resume her explanation. He could not understand why she wished to share these confidences, or what she wanted him to do. He enjoyed being in her company, though, and found her voice mesmerising. Eventually she continued.
‘I became pregnant and Bernard was enraged. I still do not know what happened to my lover, what Bernard did to him.’
‘Did Señor Ocampo threaten him?’
She looked Galman straight in the eye: ‘Bernard Ocampo isn’t the kind of man who threatens anyone. If my lover was lucky then Ocampo will have simply have had him beaten up and driven out of the city. If he was unlucky he will have killed him.’
‘Surely not?’
‘I know what the man is capable of. He married another woman even younger than me and on his wedding day he had me beaten up as a punishment. I think he hoped I would miscarry my child, but my lovely daughter was born alive. I was in the hospital for months and my child was there for many more years. She has grown to be the most beautiful young woman but she is very disabled; incapable of doing anything for herself. She lives as a reminder of my folly and Ocampo’s hatred. She mocks me by her beauty and by her youth. She looks just like I did at her age, but her looks are wasted.’
‘I am very sorry.’
‘Ocampo has designs on her. I have to protect her from him. He no longer desires me because of my age, but she is beautiful and helpless.’
‘That is very cruel.’
‘After her birth, and my beating, I came home and looked in the mirror. I was not only scarred by what he had done to me, but I had lines around my eyes and my mouth. I had aged. I was horrified and knew I had to do something about it. It was then that I realised there might be some purpose to my wasted life. I decided to dedicate myself to looking young. It became a full-time concern. And today that is all I do. My one and only interest in life is my appearance. I diet meticulously, I exercise, I have a regime of beauty treatment that would tire a Hollywood actress.’
‘You have succeeded,’ Galman said automatically. He swirled the wine around in his glass but did not want to drink it. He didn’t really want to be discussing any of this.
‘I still manage to attract younger men,’ she said. ‘I have a lover at the moment who is so young that he could be your son. In fact, he looks a lot like you!’
‘And Señor Ocampo?’
‘He suspects. He is insanely jealous. In fact, I am expecting him here at any time. I arranged for word to get to him that my lover is up here with me at the moment.’
‘But why? There is only me up here!’
‘He will assume that you are my lover.’
‘That is ludicrous!’
‘Of course it is. My lover is his own son!’
Galman tried to take all of this in. ‘But what will he do when he discovers me?’
‘He has a gun that he always carries with him.’
‘A gun?’
‘Yes, he will try to shoot you. And me as well, possibly. But don’t worry. Here…’
And from a drawer she brought out a silver handgun which she tried to pass to him. He refused to take it.
‘There!’ she announced. ‘I heard the door open downstairs! He will haul himself up here and hope to catch me in your arms.’
‘I don’t understand why you are doing this.’
‘Señor Ocampo will try to kill you,’ she said levelly. ‘Though not before he has delivered an interminable monologue. It will be kill or be killed.’
Galman had not heard the door open downstairs as Señora Goyeneche had done, but he heard the heavy tread of a man outside of the apartment door. It crashed open a few moments later. In walked Ocampo, elderly and very overweight, sweating profusely and holding before him a black, ugly gun.
‘Mercedes!’ he bellowed. ‘Now I have caught you!’
He looked at Ernesto with pure hatred in his eyes.
‘You!’ He spat. ‘You! You will die.’
He aimed the gun at Ernesto who looked to the woman for help. In a moment her gun was in his hand and he aimed at Ocampo who was letting forth a string of insults but still not pulling the trigger. Ernesto did not know what to do. Was the man really going to shoot him? Should he shoot the man first?
‘I will kill you both!’ Ocampo was saying, now moving the gun from Galman to the woman and back again. And then the gun was trained on one position in the room because Señora Goyeneche had moved behind Galman and was pressing herself against him. Her hand reached along his arm to his hand as it held out the pistol. He closed his eyes and felt the pressure of her hand over his as Ocampo continued with his threats and insults.
There was a sudden roar as the gun jumped violently in Galman’s hand, making him drop it. He opened his eyes only a moment later but already the great bulk of Ocampo lay lifeless on the carpet.
‘My God! What shall we do?’ he asked helplessly.
The woman was by his side, apparently quite calm.
‘I will say he was killed by an intruder.’
‘Who? Me?’
She walked over to Ocampo and picked up his fallen gun.
‘You are the obvious candidate, I’m afraid. I suppose I will be forced now to shoot you in self defence.’
She lifted the gun, and in a reflex action he stooped and picked up the one he had dropped. He aimed it unsteadily at her.
She smiled:
‘But I know that you don’t have the strength to pull the trigger. I am so sorry. You are obviously such a nice man.’
He thought that she was probably right and he felt an infinite sadness come over him. He closed his eyes, waiting for her to fire, but like Ocampo she was still talking. Being unable to see her he found it quite easy to put pressure on the trigger. He increased it slowly, unwillingly, and suddenly it went off, jarring his hand again and causing him to drop the weapon for the second time. He waited for the sound to stop echoing around the walls. He waited for her to take a turn at shooting him as if in some old-fashioned duel, but nothing happened. Reluctantly he opened his eyes, expecting her knowing smile to be the last thing he would see but she had fallen back on top of the body of Ocampo.
Galman moved towards her, then backed away. Both of them appeared to be dead but he could not bring himself to touch either of them to feel for a pulse. Besides, the side of the man’s head seemed to have been shattered and she had a wound in the centre of her chest. He looked around in vain for a telephone and then realised that he did not want to be found there, to be in any way associated with what had happened. He made himself walk around the bodies before running to the door to the stairs and then bounding down the rickety stairs three steps at a time. The street door would not immediately open but after some desperate scrabbling at the catch he was able to run out into the bright street and kept on running. Later he realised that he must have looked a wild sight, and he wondered how he had found the strength to run all the way up to the Cerro de la Gloria. At the monument dedicated to the Army of the Andes he plunged off into the trees and buried himself in the undergrowth. He hid his face in his hands and hummed loudly as a child might do so as not to confront what had happened.
Much later that night he made his way wearily down to the bus station. He felt weak and was beyond caring about himself. As he waited for an early morning bus to take him back to San Juan he remembered that his fingerprints would be on the gun that had shot Ocampo and his mistress and it seemed inevitable that he would be found by detectives. Th
e prints would be on the glass that she had given him, he realised, but he decided not to dwell on that. He looked around him, wondering from which direction the police would approach to apprehend him.
He remembered that the waitress had seen him with the woman. So, they would have a witness. He looked down at his hands and knew that the police could do tests which would show that he had recently fired a gun.
Still the police did not come for him, and finally the bus arrived and he pulled himself up the steps and found a seat.
Señora Galman called a doctor to her husband the following day when he refused to get out of bed, but the doctor could find nothing wrong with him. Galman was tempted to explain that he was simply waiting for the authorities to knock at his door, but a feeble desire for self-preservation prevented him.
The following day Galman did get up, although he refused to go into work. He decided that he would retain some dignity by presenting a decent appearance to the police when they inevitably appeared. Señora Galman was pleased to see him shaved, bathed and dressed, but her patience was already at an end and she berated him for his apparent laziness.
On the third day he went in to work to escape his wife’s questions and complaints. The police might as well find him there, he reasoned, as anywhere else. And so he found himself very half-heartedly back in his old routine, killing time.
As more days passed he hardly dared think that he might have got away with it, but after a couple of weeks he awoke one morning and decided that he might possibly be able to get on with his old life for a while. And after a few more days he found himself savouring every moment that he was a free man because it seemed inevitable that they would come for him in time. Still the days passed as though nothing had ever happened, and still he waited.
In almost every waking moment he replayed the events in the woman’s apartment in his mind, trying to make sense of them and after a while they became almost unreal. He was reminded of when he had taken a school examination and had wanted to write the simple word ‘extranjero’; the more that he looked at it the more unlikely, bizarre and meaningless it had become. As the weeks now passed he did not once forget what had happened, but he could not quite believe that it had been real; that it had happened to him. It seemed too outrageous and unbelievable.
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