The St Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires

by Eric Stener Carlson

  The door, the grey door!

  I ran to the grey metal door on my side of the tracks, the one that’s always locked. But now the large shackle was missing, and it was slightly ajar. I looked across the tracks. There, too, the twin door on the other side was missing its lock.

  Without thinking, I made a dash for the door. As I rushed inside, the smell like an open sewer grate almost completely overpowered me. But I couldn’t stop. I swallowed the vomit in my mouth and pushed on. There were two corridors, crack-crackedly lit by the dim, fluorescent tubing, one leading left, the other straight ahead. No time to doubt, I turned left.

  The corridor opened up into a small alcove lined with lockers. There was a cement bench in the middle of the room and nothing else. A dead end! In desperation, I flung open one of the lockers. There was an old subway uniform stained with grease, twisting on a metal hanger and a pile of rags below. Inside the locker door, was a sticker of Saint Anthony hanging upside down, his bony body riddled with arrows.

  In that moment, how I hated Saint Anthony! So peaceful, so serene and pretty in his martyrdom! Beating in my brain, came the second stanza of the poem on the subway wall: ‘How pretty is the rose/ That’s on the rose tree./ Prettier still is the boy,/ Who’s on the altar.’ I spat on the image of Saint Anthony. I spat three times, and I kicked the locker again and again.

  Then, something moved in the rags, something that seemed to be waking up. A rat? A large rat? I pushed away from the locker and fell down, banging my knee on the cement bench, cutting open my shin.

  Bleeding, I hobbled back to the entrance and then down the second corridor. That must be the way in . . . Yes, it was leading somewhere. Crack-crackedly went the tubes. There was another opening, small this time, a bit wider than a closet door. Breathing hard, I strained my eyes in the almost nonexistent light. My glasses began to fog.

  To my left was a radiator, hissing, years of thick paint burning and flaking off it, on top of which was an aluminium tea kettle, boiling with a high whistle. To my right, was some sort of makeshift counter wedged into the wall. On it was a hotplate, an aluminium pot filled with a bubbling, oily stew. And just ahead, where the light utterly failed, I saw the first few steps of a staircase going down.

  I took a deep breath in—the air oily and thick with the steamy smell of meat mixed with sewage—and squeezed between the radiator and the hotplate. I heard the sound of the flesh on my old man’s hand sizzle, before I felt the pain. Even then, I kept going forward, and then, down, down into the darkness. The metal railing was hot and wobbly. My temples were throbbing. My shin bleeding. The words pounded in my head as I descended, ‘Good-bye my little boy,/Good-bye now I go,/May God wish you grant me/A blessing.’

  But I didn’t want a blessing. I wanted a curse! I wanted to curse Gutierrez, to send him straight to hell for all he’d done to me, for all the years of pain and suffering he’d caused me. And I prayed. I prayed to the gods of all dark things. ‘Mandinga, Pythagoras, Saint Perpetuus protect, defend me now. All I want is to catch the Black Train. All I want is to catch the Black Train. All I want is to catch the Black Train.’

  I stumbled to the bottom of the stairs, everything pitch black. I stepped into some sort of ooze that covered the tips of my shoes. I reeled, because the stench was overpowering. I grabbed for the wall I hoped was there. It was slimy but solid. It sustained me, but I was so light-headed, I felt like I was going to collapse into the darkness, fall into the slime and die.

  But just on the point of unconsciousness, the image of Gutierrez came floating towards me. Those bent and twisted guanaco teeth, that awful comb-over that wrapped round and around his head like some evil satrap’s woven turban. I could see him mouthing the words, ‘You studied all that philosophy and shit. See if you can philosophise yourself out of this one!’

  My hatred filled me with strength. Like a strong dose of adrenaline, the idea of destroying him gave me the energy to stagger forward . . . into the nothingness.

  Things wriggled about my feet. I heard a deep humming, and the walls and floor began to vibrate and shake as with the chorus of many, mad voices. From the rumbling and the dust falling down on top of me, it felt like the train was pulling into the station above. How long had it taken me to go down the first hall, then the second, then down the stairs and into this tunnel? Time and distance seemed all mixed up.

  But I no longer cared. I would have my revenge on Gutierrez, no matter what it took. I didn’t care whom I destroyed. Myself, my family . . .

  My family . . . Suddenly, I had a vision of Julieta when we were expecting Miguelito. After all the recriminations following the miscarriage, after all the fights, that day at the doctor’s office with the ultrasound, when I saw the outline of Miguelito’s elbow, the shape of his head, I fell totally in love with him. I realised conceiving him was the best thing I’d ever done, probably the best thing I’d ever do . . .

  Suddenly, I struck something with my foot. I felt with the tips of my shoes and found it was the first rung of a ladder going up. I forced thoughts of Miguelito from my head, as I pulled myself up, rung after rung, towards a crack of dim, almost imperceptible light.

  I stumbled through the doors, the fluorescent lights almost blinding me. I staggered on and saw the light of the train approaching. I could just see the front of it puffing in, an old boiler, pocked with metal rivets, red fire breathing under the grate. I had done it! I had crossed over to the far side of the track. I had found the Black Train, and I was going to wrest from it the secrets of Time Travel.

  I stumbled toward the moving train . . . and that was when I felt the crushing blow against the back of my head. I immediately fell flat on my face, breaking my nose on the cement. Rolling over, I saw the outline against the fluorescent lights of a man wielding a huge wrench. He slammed it into my chest, and forced all my breath out of my body.

  Trying to defend myself with my hands, I wheezed, ‘Edgardo, don’t do it. Your father wouldn’t want you to do this.’ Then, against the blinking lights, I could just barely make out a face. ‘Gutierrez!’ I gasped. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Beating the shit out of you!’ he yelled and swung the wrench down again, hard, onto my right leg.

  ‘Why? Why?’ I moaned, writhing on the platform.

  He threw down his wrench. Bending down towards me, he gripped me by my collar and said, ‘Who did you think’s been followin’ you the whole time?’ Then speaking in that weird, high-pitched voice, he said, ‘Who do you think was in the owl mask at the orgy?’ He slapped me across the face. ‘For years, I been screwin’ that old lady at that fancy nut house. And I been gettin’ it up the ass from every bureaucrat from the Civil Registry to the DMV, and ain’t nobody never given me no information. And you show up, your first time, and you get away with the book! You lucky shit!’

  I began to pass out from the shock of the blows, but he shook me awake. ‘And that shit-head, Pendleton, was a complete waste of time. A stubborn shit like you right ’til the end.’

  ‘You . . . ?’ I suddenly realised with anguish, ‘You killed Professor Pendleton?’

  ‘For a college boy, you sure do catch on slow,’ he said and kicked me in the groin. I doubled over on my side, and he said, ‘Just like you, a fuckin’ waste of time. I kept on hittin’ him and hittin’ him, and he wouldn’t tell me where the diary was. And all he did was go on and on about his books and his little ideas, and how much you meant to him. Well, I got a big idea for you. I’m gonna get on board that train, and I’m gonna become the fuckin’ master of the universe. How do you like that, Professor? Or is it too uncomprehending for you?’

  I struggled to stand up and swing at him, but all I could do was reach his knee and as my fist came down, I scratched my knuckles on the floor. ‘I think you mean, “incomprehensible”,’ I spat at him. ‘Gutierrez, how are you going to be the master of anything, when you can’t even fuckin’ speak right.’

  ‘That’s the last time you correct me, Ibañez,’ he screamed and
picked up the wrench. Holding it high above his head, he said, ‘But I’ll do my best to comfort that little widow of yours with the cute ass.’

  With the beating I was taking, I hadn’t noticed the large figure pad up noiselessly behind him. Neither did Gutierrez, until it drove a heavy fist between his shoulder blades, making him drop the wrench. Then the figure beat him again and again, grabbing his wrist and snapping it easily with an oversized hand. Then he gave him a kick in one of his knees with tremendous boots that made it bend the wrong way.

  I didn’t have time to register who this new arrival was or to notice Gutierrez’s howls. I just rolled over on my belly, seething with pain, and crawled slowly in the direction of the train. The solitary passenger car was still arriving, in a weird sort of slow motion, but also at an incredible speed, slow and fast at the same time.

  Then the two men stumbled past me in an awful sort of dance, each locked in each other’s arms. It was Edgardo, Bernardo’s demented older brother (or, rather, his son), who had intervened and was now kicking the shit out of Gutierrez. Each was fighting tooth and claw to be the first one to board the Black Train. Gutierrez head-butted Edgardo and scratched deep, red furrows down his cheeks.

  Bleeding but unfazed, I saw Edgardo slowly draw Gutierrez’s struggling head towards his open jaws, like some stone-faced fisherman from hell reeling in his human catch, and then he bit off the tip of his nose. Gutierrez screamed, blood streaming down his face, and, as he jerked backwards, he fell onto the tracks just as the train was screeching to a halt, sending up a shower of red sparks.

  Gutierrez’s screams echoed throughout the cavernous station, mixing with the grinding of the wheels. The train slowed, bumpy for a moment as it smoothed out what remained of Gutierrez and stopped. I got up on my knees, but my head was swimming, and my legs gave way on the platform. I saw Edgardo spit Gutierrez’s nose out into the trough and approach the subway car.

  Perhaps it was because I was delirious, but I swear, when the subway doors opened, I saw a thick, black mist spread out, enfolding Edgardo, enveloping him in a tattered shroud. The shadows drew him into the car like wraiths, like Death itself. I tried to scream, ‘Wait! Wait! Take me too!’ But I could only utter a low, choking sob, spitting up blood on the platform in the process.

  Then Edgardo entered the train—or floated into it?—and the doors sprang shut with the permanence of a rusty lock that is forced closed, never to be opened again. As the train pulled out of the station, my head fell against the platform, and I lost all consciousness.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I came to in a fog that swirled around my head. I could just make out a blurred image sitting beside me, its arms wrapped around me, but my eyes went in and out of focus, and I couldn’t tell who it was. I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain pierced my side. My head throbbed terribly, so I lay back down.

  As the daze began to slowly fade, I recognised her . . . it was Bernardina, holding me on her lap! Suddenly afraid she was trying to strangle me, I tried to push her away. But I felt broken and bruised all over and couldn’t move a centimetre.

  To my relief, I soon saw she wasn’t trying to kill me. She was just stroking my cheek softly, singing a lullaby under her breath. After a few minutes, she saw I’d regained consciousness and, with a look of embarrassment on her face, she helped me sit up. Fighting off a wave of nausea, I realised we were sitting at the top of the stairs at the entrance of Bulnes station. Except for a few neon lights buzzing here and there behind the grills of closed-up shops, the street was absolutely dark.

  ‘You dragged me upstairs?’ I whispered, feeling inside my mouth with my tongue for a missing tooth.

  She nodded, long streaks of tears streaming down her cheeks.

  After a moment, she asked, ‘They took my brother, didn’t they?’

  I nodded, painfully.

  ‘Well, then,’ she sighed and wiped her nose with her sleeve, ‘he’s gotten what he wanted.’ Then she ran her fingers through my hair, combing it at its natural part. Given my overall physical condition, this little attention to detail made me grimace.

  Then she said, ‘I saw him follow you from the shop.’ She paused and said, ‘He saved you, you know that, right?’

  I looked up at her, feeling the blood running from my nose to the back of my throat. ‘Well, lady’ I replied, ‘he sure did one hell of a job.’

  She kept talking as if she hadn’t heard me, ‘Those awful books, that awful society, they took everything from me. When I lost my father, when he turned into that hunched-over thing reading Proust, it was bad enough. But then to lose Edgardo . . .’ she burst into tears and cried in jags for I don’t know how many minutes. I’d completely lost track of time.

  She continued, ‘Edgardo loved his Papi so much. It broke his heart not to touch him. And when he did, when he aged, thirty, forty years, all in the space of five seconds! I’ve given everything to them, and now they’re both gone. In an instant, I went from daughter and sister to caretaker of them both. One chose never to talk to me again, preferring to sit inside his little world of books, and one never could talk again, because the shock had made him mute. I guess, deep inside, they’re still both little boys.’

  Hearing her speak so tenderly of Edgardo made me think of Miguelito. I thought of how you don’t need to be trapped in a loop of time to fuck up everything with your kids. It’s enough just being a selfish bastard.

  Bernardina blew her nose against the back of her hand and then helped lift me to my feet. Shockwaves of pain went off throughout my whole body. I gripped the railing, trying to keep my balance and not tumble down the stairs.

  ‘Well, I’d best be off,’ she said.

  ‘Where to?’ I wheezed.

  ‘Back to the store. Dad’ll be there, still reading that same, damned book. Someone’s got to close the curtains, or the nosy neighbours will see him sitting in the same position all night long, and they’ll start asking questions. And, who knows, maybe Edgardo will show up. Maybe . . .’ she stifled a sob, ‘maybe he’s found a way to set our father free. I want to be there waiting for him with a hot cup of tea, if he does. Bye, now,’ she said simply, and shuffled off into the darkness.

  I peered around uneasily, trying to see if there was anyone else around. But there was no one. There were no busses or taxis. There wasn’t a living, moving thing on all of Santa Fe Avenue.

  I dragged myself towards a payphone just a few metres away. It took all my strength to extract a coin from my front pocket and to stop the index finger on my good hand from trembling long enough to dial the phone.

  It rang and rang and rang, and then, finally, she picked up.

  ‘Who’s this?’ Julieta demanded, ‘Do you know what the hell time it is?’

  ‘It’s me . . . Miguel’ I said, and then I had a wracking cough that sprayed a fine mist of blood over the payphone’s keypad.

  ‘You sound like shit,’ she said. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Beaten up . . . kicked a lot. Got a few broken ribs, maybe a concussion.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, a hard tone in her voice. ‘You sure as shit deserve it. I hope it knocked some sense into you.’

  ‘You’re right. It did. It . . .’ I was beginning to feel woozy again, so I gripped the phone until my knuckles turned white. ‘You’re all that matters to me . . . you and Miguelito. I’ve been a shit, a complete shit.’

  ‘That’s the first thing you’ve gotten right in months.’

  ‘Oh, Julieta, my love, I want to come back. I want to make things right. If you’ll have me, I’ll do anything. All I want to do is to make up for all the lost time. I . . .’

  She cut me off, her voice sounding dead and distant, like she’d given up caring a long time ago, ‘After all your philosophy, Miguel, you still don’t get it, do you? You don’t make up time. You either use it or lose it . . . and you lost it.’ Then there was silence.

  ‘Juli? Juli?’ I said, but there was no response. I heard a clicking noise on the line, and that
was all.

  Still holding on to the receiver, I slid down the phone booth and sat on the cold pavement. I cried and cried. With every sob, the broken ribs pierced my flesh, making me involuntarily twist in pain, but I didn’t care. I wished I’d been crushed by the train instead of Gutierrez. I wished that the tunnel beneath Bulnes station had collapsed in on me and swallowed me whole.

  What good was a soul, what good was anything without Julieta and Miguelito? By the events I’d set in motion, I’d killed Professor Pendleton, just as surely as if I’d beaten him to death myself. Now the only woman I’d ever loved hated me. And the idea that my son would never know his father—except on sad weekend visits, forcing him to kick a football around the plaza for an hour or two—hurt me more than anything Gutierrez had done to me. I thought of throwing myself in front of a bus, but I saw, with a sinking feeling in my stomach, that there was still no traffic on Santa Fe. I realised I was a failure even in planning my own suicide.

  I cried so much, snot running down my face, mixed with blood, mixed with tears. Just as I was about to black out, I heard a voice from far away, a distant buzzing in the receiver! I pressed the phone close to my ear, and I heard Julieta whisper, ‘Now, come home, Miguel. We miss you,’ and the line went dead.

  I sat on the pavement, stunned for a few minutes, unable to process what I’d just heard. Then, gathering my strength, I grabbed the metal telephone cord. Somehow, I pulled myself up by it as if it were a life-line and I was escaping from a dinghy being battered by the waves. She wanted me back, and that was all I needed. I stumbled along Santa Fe in the direction of my apartment, stopping every metre or two to catch my breath and to rest my hands on my knees.

  I arrived at the door to our apartment building, my lungs on fire. Just as I reached up to buzz our apartment, the first rays of the sun were showing on the horizon.