Holy City

by Guillermo Orsi

  The service-station employee calls the clinic, but it is a police car that turns up.

  “We’ll take him,” says the cop behind the wheel. He does not bother to get out, simply points toward the office where Pacogoya is still flat out on the floor.

  “But you aren’t doctors or nurses,” the attendant points out. As a poor Bolivian, he detests the police.

  “And you’re not Argentine. Bring that turd out here and put him in the back of the car, if you don’t want me to take you in as well, you asshole.”

  The asshole does not need to be told twice. He knows that if the cops feel like it they can take him to the station. If he is lucky they will only slap him around a bit and let him sleep the night in a cell. Otherwise they might kick him in the liver until it bursts, and then say he fell and hurt himself, that he was drunk when they found him—“asshole Bolivian, be careful because we’ve got our eye on all your lot.”

  The Bolivian asshole already feels sorry for the hell that those two and others are preparing for the Che Guevara lookalike. They were in such a hurry to come and get him before the ambulance did they must want something from that human wreck. Drugs, what else could it be? “Every pig wants a share of that,” the owner of the gas station always says. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees his employees loading Pacogoya into the police car: “One addict less, they should put them all onto that boat that got stuck in the river then sink it,” he tells them, happy, relieved, apocalyptic, white.

  *

  So where is he? He is not in the Pigs’ Trough, he does not reply to his mobile or on the line in his den in calle Azara, which rings and rings.

  Scotty feels weary. He ought to sleep: he was on duty all Sunday and although he does not have to go in on Monday, someone will call him early in the morning—someone always calls to piss him off, everyone at headquarters needs his advice and wants it before he has had any breakfast, like a urine sample.

  But Scotty does not want to sleep. If he went to sleep now he would only have nightmares, awake with a start, reaching for his revolver and aiming it first at nothing, in the darkness and then by the dim light of his bedside lamp. The bed of a lonely cop, of course, a cop living on his own, no woman can stand to live with a cop, unless she too is one and women cannot be cops.

  “Where the fuck have you got to, Yorugua?” he asks the shadows around him, all on his own.

  He has to share what he has discovered with Carroza. Or rather, his intuition, because he has not really discovered anything. Yet he has no doubt about it: that is why they are always ringing him from headquarters. They consult him like an oracle, believe him even if he talks nonsense, stammers rubbish, or even says nothing. Above all, they believe him when he says nothing. They have a religious belief in his silences, like people believing in a dog that does everything but speak, “look how he’s looking at you,” even though all the dog is doing is staring at its fleas, has no thoughts in its mind, does not remember a thing, dozes off without revealing a thing.

  Finally someone picks up in the Azara den. But not Carroza.

  It is a woman’s voice.

  “Verónica?”

  “No, Ana.”

  “Who the fuck is ‘Ana’?”

  “And who are you? A pervert, I bet, one of those late-night maniacs. Jerk off if you like, I’ll squeal if it excites you. Or are you a queer? If you are, wait a minute, because a real man will be here soon.”

  Ana is having fun. Verónica is tied up and gagged, lying on the floor in a fetal position, still staring defiantly up at her. She ought to have blindfolded her, or torn out her eyes, thinks Ana as she listens to the caller panting as if he really is jerking off.

  Scotty carries on panting. He has transferred the call to his mobile and is breathing heavily as he leaves his apartment, goes out into the street, gets into his car. He loses the line as he sets off, but calls again.

  “I thought you must have come already, pervert,” says Ana. “Take your time, we’ve got all night. The man you need is on his way, if you want it up the ass.”

  That voice.

  As he drives and pants, Scotty tries to stay true to his intuition. Sometimes the desire for everything to fit in neatly has led him to make huge mistakes. And every mistake, in the job he has that can never be paid enough, means at least one death. A cop is like a surgeon. A surgeon opens up bodies, is a pathologist of people who are still alive; a cop digs around in the intestines of a disgusting city. He does not linger over squares or avenues, or eat fine steaks in Puerto Madero or Las Cañitas: a cop steers his way through the guts like Scotty is doing now, on his guard and filthy, and, as always, on his own. He may be applauded by two-timing rats who brown-nose him in private but who, as soon as the television lights go on, start bawling about civil rights, how barbarous it is to beat up a child-killer simply to cut short a life he does not deserve to have, or demand information that always arrives too late, like ambulances or firemen, after death and fire are already dancing their gray tango, the really last one this time, not in Paris but in the still cobblestoned streets of Barracas, in the dirt roads of Mataderos, or in the center, the city which by day is full of people and finance, and at night is deserted, on the prowl, searching for sex.

  “Your real man is here, pervert, he’s opening the street door. Jerk off hard now, imagine you’re throwing yourself into his arms and coming, do it, do it.”

  Ana is not lying.

  He has arrived. He closes the door and comes into the apartment on calle Azara. He is not surprised to find Ana there. With the phone nestling on her shoulder she touches herself. She stares at him while she encourages the other man panting into the receiver, the other man who has the mobile against his mouth as he stops the car, switches the engine off, then hangs up.

  “The pervert’s hung up,” says Ana, still staring at the man who has just come in.

  17

  A surprise party. Like a birthday party, when friends and relatives wait in the darkness, whispering to each other, “Here he comes, don’t make any noise, we don’t want him to find out now.” And when finally the birthday boy arrives, comes in and switches the light on, surprise! “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow!”

  Oso Berlusconi smiles. It does not even occur to him to think that it is not his birthday, that he is not being rewarded for some outstanding deed, that this is not his house and that there is nothing to celebrate. It is good when people applaud you, when they shout “Brilliant, Oso, we love you.”

  Yet someone warned him on the radio in his gray Toyota. “We’re expecting you,” said the voice. “We have to think of something, we don’t want to be put through the mincer or to be crushed.” To Oso it seems logical they have to think of something. The rescue operation was a disaster, they will be talking about his “elite police corps” even in the United Nations tomorrow, he will be the butt of jokes in Interpol, the Sureté, the Italian and German police forces. “Are we in Russia?” the headlines will scream. “Who governs Argentina, Putin?”

  So he went to meet them, at the colonial mansion in the middle of the pampas, ten kilometers from Exaltación de la Cruz. He has to grin and bear it, he cannot run away if he wants still to be part of the business. Even if he wanted to, where could he go? He is a cop. Corrupt and a murderer, but a cop—or perhaps because of that. He would be writing reports about raids on brothels or arresting delinquents and pickpockets if he had not decided a long time ago to join up with them. He was never interested in who they really were, what their faces were like, what interests they were defending. Nor did he believe in the speeches they came out with over the years: they were no defenders of Western civilization, or democrats, or fighting for God and the Fatherland. Power, money, that is what they wanted. So did all of these people, he says to himself when he enters the darkened room and then is hit by the brilliant light from the enormous chandelier, the shouts and applause, “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s a jolly good fellow …”


  Nobody had ever told him he was meant to be a jolly good fellow. That is what they are singing to him now, roaring with laughter, God knows when they started celebrating. “Here comes Oso Berlusconi, switch the light off, he’s almost here,” the whisper ran round all of them gathered there, most of whom could no longer remember why they came out to this mansion, brought here by someone who in his turn obeys others higher up than him and so on up the pyramid, the tip of which is lost in thick, dark, inaccessible clouds.

  They look like an Italian family from a film about the Mafia. Some of them probably are mafiosi, born on both sides of the Atlantic, in Balvanera, Argentina or in Sicily, in Corsica or San Telmo. The older ones proud of their origins in the worst neighborhoods, boasting about childhoods stunted by misery—stealing food in the post-war years, empty pockets, wallets with more pictures of people killed in combat than banknotes—among unemployed passengers on trams and buses in Rome, Turin, Naples and Milan.

  But those are the patriarchs, the ones dying a natural death, who grow nostalgic and reminisce about their memories of the war, disguising their age in the remote past, a hideout from time where they can protect their decadence and prepare to die.

  They would not have condemned Oso Berlusconi for the kind of mistake he made that night. They know, because once upon a time they fought against powerful enemies, that all wars are fought blindly, that there is never enough time. Still less second chances. As soon as they heard of the massacre, the patriarchs came out in defense of Oso. “It was an ambush,” they said. “Oso knows what he’s doing, but he was betrayed.”

  “We’ve been talking a lot about your performance last night, Oso.”

  By now they have finished singing and drinking glasses of the best champagne, its bubbles like golden gems, although Oso did not manage to get any. Now the man at the head of the table is asking them all to be quiet—“or did you not see that Oso is here?”

  It is an old, very old estate. It belonged to a patrician with one of those double- or triple-barreled surnames you see today as the names of streets or avenues in the most elegant neighborhoods. The original owner benefited from the handout of land the military who conquered the desert rewarded themselves with after they had cleared it of the filthy, ragged, smelly and barbarous indians living there. Of the many chieftains calling for vengeance, the extravagant gods of capitalism must have listened to some Pampa or Tehuelche chief. Decadence is a kind of justice, administered without meaning to by the unjust. And the selfishness of the descendants, who turned on each other when there was no-one else to destroy, and who ended up serving the banquet at the mafiosi’s family table.

  The new owners stored away the fine furniture made by French craftsmen, smashed all the Italian glassware in nights when it rained alcohol, and vomited all over rugs imported from Iran in the days when it was known as Persia and the Yankees were betting on Rehza Palevi’s eternal life. There are too many of these newcomers, and they are as barbarous as the Tehuelches and the Pampas. They even have their chieftain.

  “We’ve brought you here for you to tell us what happened last night, Oso,” says this chieftain. He has managed to obtain silence and is stroking a Rottweiler, one of those dogs that every so often eat a child, then lick their lips and wag their tail. “But obviously we don’t want to hear the nonsense that appeared in the press. We want the truth. Even if it’s painful, Oso, even if after you’ve finished telling us what really happened we find it unbearable.”

  The Rottweiler growls, licking its whiskers with its long, red tongue. Its jowls are covered in saliva; it is as if he is the one Oso has to justify himself to because he does not take his eyes off him.

  *

  So as not to startle her, he did not use the entry phone. He wanted to warn her a few minutes ago, a couple of blocks before he arrived, but Verónica’s mobile is off and nobody replies on his land line.

  He has to admit to himself that he is not sure what to do. It has been years since he had any women in his home, he has not even had a home: what little that has happened to him has all taken place outside, in the street, in other people’s houses—although most often nothing happens, simply meetings, words, sex without caresses.

  Sometimes, Carolina is with him. But who is Carolina? Nothing, nobody, loneliness without caresses. Besides, he is never at home, always in darkened bars, other people’s faces, a mask covering the exhausting chaos that is his memory.

  So he preferred to go upstairs like this, silently, without a word. By the time he gets to the corridor, then comes to a halt outside the door to his apartment, he already knows Verónica is not alone. It is his cop instinct, what makes him a moving target in the sights of thieves, murderers, drug traffickers, work colleagues.

  Even so he opens the door. It is not that he is confident about what he will find, more an inertia he does not have the strength to resist. Before he sees her, he knows it is her from the cheap perfume she covers herself in, the one she is so proud of because she says it attracts men. They fall at her feet and all she has to do is humiliate them a little more, to gain control of them slowly, not violently the way she did with Verónica. She has forced her down onto her knees to receive their visitor. Later she will have to slit her throat and then eat her head.

  Carroza stares down at the tip of the barrel of his .38, so intently that the rest of the room is a blur. He knows it is her, because of the perfume, the voice, the disappointment she never bothers to hide whenever they meet.

  “I told you not to open for anyone,” he reproaches Verónica, before he lowers his weapon and allows Miss Bolivia to throw her arms round him.

  18

  It is not her. Or in any case it is a force she cannot control, an uncontrollable chemical reaction that alters her cell by cell until she does not recognize herself. Even her voice sounds strange when she tells the taxi driver the address, says it’s urgent and that she’ll pay him double if they get there in half the time.

  “I’m working, lady, and I have to respect the regulations,” the driver protests, but accelerates all the same. It is late on a Sunday night, the avenues are almost empty apart from a few groups of Boca fans wandering down the center in their T-shirts, carrying banners and drums they are no longer playing, on their way home after celebrating victory away to River Plate. “Hooligans,” the taxi driver shouts scornfully.

  What is she doing? She does not know Ana Torrente and could perfectly well go on living without ever meeting her. Who or what is she obeying, then?

  Five minutes down Tacuarí heading south, speeding through junctions where by some miracle they do not collide with any other vehicle. It is as if the taxi driver has been taken over by the same force that leads him to forget all about regulations. From time to time he casts a quick glance into his rearview mirror, as if to reassure himself his passenger is still there, has not got out or vanished into thin air.

  “Is someone sick?” he ventures to ask as he slows up for a red light, looking right and left before accelerating again. Laucha does not answer. She does not hear him, apart from a low murmur, sees only a distant blur rather than the driver’s face. The only thing she sees clearly is that she has to get there as quickly as possible, even though she is sitting there unrecognizable to herself, with a voice, a body that is not hers, filled with memories of a world in which she has never been. “Here we are. That will be eighteen pesos times two: that makes thirty-six. But I’ll settle for twenty, I don’t like to take advantage.”

  She gives him thirty and the world keeps turning. The taxi driver cannot decide whether to thank or insult her; he thinks it must be urgent, there is a sick person about to pass over, something serious that can explain why he has to humiliate himself and pick up the banknotes Laucha has tossed on the floor of the taxi before getting out without so much as a thank-you or good night.

  *

  He removes Verónica’s gag with the steady hand of a surgeon removing stitches. She does not shout or make any reproaches, merely gives a dry cough
out of pure anxiety. Her eyes burn into his face.

  “Romano trusted you so much,” she says at length.

  Carroza says nothing. He cannot bear her look and turns to watch the street through the curtainless window.

  “She’s here,” he says.

  He steps back from the window so that Laucha will not spot him. She is studying a piece of paper, making sure it is the right address. She has never been here before, nobody has ever been to any of the lairs he chooses at random in the nameless city only he inhabits.

  “Don’t hurt her,” says Verónica. She knows who is coming because she heard Miss Bolivia talking to her, although she has yet to understand why. “What are you after, what do you two want from us?”

  Verónica knows there are no answers to her questions. When someone is in control of a situation, a country, the tiniest piece of hell, then there are never any answers. At most there are orders, which can be contradicted if things go wrong. But no remorse.

  Carroza’s mobile throbs again at his back. Veronica watches as he moves away, whispers something forcefully into it. Skeleton man is so sure of himself it as if he knows every single one of the supposed laws that control the universe.

  “We’re leaving,” he says to Ana when he gets off the phone.

  “What do you mean, ‘we’re leaving’? What about them?”

  The entry phone buzzes.

  “Open the door for her. You take care of her; I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  He slips out of the apartment before Miss Bolivia can protest. He passes Laucha on the dark stairway. She thinks she recognizes him but cannot be sure. Carroza does not pause, but plunges on head down, his eyes and soul heaven knows where.