Betty Boo

by Claudia Piñeiro

  This show on which they were appearing followed the model of most cultural programming: it was well-intentioned, low-budget, with two armchairs and a desk as a set and each segment devoted to one guest. The first was filled by a dramatist who had recently taken a version of Copi’s Eva Perón to a theatre festival in Berlin and won great acclaim for it. Nurit arrived on the set as this segment was ending, and as she opened the door the technicians and assistants fixed her with a look that said, Make any noise and you’re dead. Rinaldi, glued to his mobile on Silent mode, didn’t even look up, and she took a chair directly behind his, as if they were travelling in a bus. He smelled of perfume or shaving lotion; a good one, expensive, definitely French, Nurit thought. After the first ad break it was his turn. His presence filled the space, his confidence so innate that you might have wondered who was the presenter and who the guest. Nurit watched him from her seat in the studio’s darker reaches, surrounded by cables and miscellaneous stuff – tables, stools, a set of cutlery, a plastic fried egg and steak – that had come from the disassembled sets of programmes probably long since gone off-air. Rinaldi spoke about the prize, journalism, his new book and politics; though at that time he was a less bitter opponent of the president than he later became, so the interview was friendly and not as heated as Rinaldi gets nowadays when he starts talking about “el Señor Presidente”, spitting out the words with that rasping contempt she knows so well. Nurit was drawn to his strong, wide hands, which sprang into the air whenever some part of his story particularly enthused him. And to the grey hairs that were beginning to show at his temples. And to his voice: thick, firm, but deliberate. She thought of her husband – she can’t remember now exactly what she thought, but Rinaldi’s voice, his hands and the memory of his cologne brought him to mind for a moment. An assistant asked permission to run a microphone line under her clothes, distracting her, and when Nurit looked up again the interview had ended and Lorenzo Rinaldi was taking his leave with a kiss, holding both the presenter’s hands and looking deep into her eyes. If the woman hadn’t been ten years older than him, Nurit would have sworn he was making a pass at her. Later, when she got to know him better, she discovered that he often looks like that; that Lorenzo Rinaldi is the kind of person who seeks to seduce whomever is front of him: man, woman, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin. As Rinaldi walked past her on his way out of the studio, Nurit faltered, caught her foot in a cable lying across the gangway and had to grab his arm to avoid falling. Careful, Betty Boop, Lorenzo Rinaldi said with a smile. What? she asked. Hasn’t anybody ever told you that you look like Betty Boop? And without answering, Nurit Iscar wondered if this might also be meant flirtatiously. Look, I don’t know if you wear suspenders, I’m saying it because of your black curls and your figure – especially the curls, he clarified, looking her in the eye, and instinctively she reached up to touch them, as though checking they were still there. Next time get them to do your lips redder and then you’ll be the authentic Betty Boop, he said, tracing the outline of her lips in the air, and then he took a business card out of the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. At your service, he said. Nurit asked him to wait while she looked in her bag for one of her own cards, but this was a much less graceful manoeuvre than the one with which Rinaldi had extracted the card from his pocket. If there was one area of Nurit’s life where disorder reigned it was in her handbag: supermarket tickets; three packets of paper handkerchiefs, all open, plus more lying loose; tampons – because even though her period had started to be irregular since she turned forty-eight, it hadn’t yet abandoned her altogether; two lip pencils; three pens, two of which worked; her house keys; a toothbrush; tweezers; pliers; an electricity bill that needed to be paid within the week; a book; a diary; her phone; and a pair of silk tights in case she got a ladder in the ones she was wearing. She blushed again, fearing for a moment that Rinaldi may have seen the tampons or the tights, but this time she knew there was no need to make excuses: in that murky part of the studio and with the foundation they’d put on her, nobody would notice. Over the speaker came the irritated voice of the director: Guys, why is nobody bringing Nurit Iscar on set? Nurit looked up when she heard her name and realized that while she had been rummaging in her bag Lorenzo Rinaldi hadn’t been the only one waiting for her; there were also two assistants, a producer and even the presenter, who had come over to see what was going on. Don’t worry about it now, Lorenzo said, we’ve got your contact details at the paper. He said goodbye, then the assistant walked her over to the relevant armchair and she sat down. The presenter greeted her with the same smile she had used to dismiss Rinaldi. You look lovely, she said. You’ve lost weight, haven’t you? I don’t know, Nurit said. Maybe. Yes, yes, you’re looking great, said the woman, and arranged the books on her desk for the camera to take a close-up. It seemed as though they were about to start, but the presenter made a sign to the cameraman then looked intently at Nurit as though something were wrong. It’s your lips, she explained. They’ve put on way too much lipstick. They’re very shiny, and a lot of shine doesn’t look good onscreen. Tissues, please, she yelled, apparently to someone miles away, and then, turning to Nurit: Do you mind if I take a bit off? No, of course, if you think that’s best, Nurit said, and obediently pressed down on a paper tissue the woman placed between her lips. That’s better, the presenter said. Then the woman pulled her suit jacket straight, fluffed out her hair a little with her fingers, checked her reflection in a monitor and finally called: Bring my lipstick and a mirror over here for a second, please. An assistant sprang up to get these things for her, then the presenter touched up her own lips until they were as glossy as Nurit’s had been before she had made her clamp down on the tissue. Ready? she asked, when she had finished perfecting her make-up. And without waiting for Nurit to reply, she got on with the show: In this final part of the programme we’re joined by the writer Nurit Iscar, who has just published her new novel Death by Degrees, a book I devoured and which I guarantee you viewers will also relish. Nurit was struck by that word, “devour”. What would it mean for someone to devour a book? That they chewed it up? Swallowed it? Digested and expelled it? It reminded her of that Fontanarrosa story, “A Literary Soirée”, where the protagonists, two scholars of literature, roast classic books in the oven then eat them with potatoes. As Nurit imagined the shiny-lipped presenter sinking her teeth into Death by Degrees, tearing off the cover and first few pages in one bite, she completely missed her own short biography being shown on the screen. She was still trying to banish the image as the presenter asked her first question: Do you mind being known as an author of bestsellers? No need to think about the answer; yet again, almost automatically, she rolled out the stock responses she habitually used to answer that question – a stock phrase in itself – which she had been asked too many times: that some of her books have been bestsellers, not all of them; that no, it doesn’t bother her, that Saramago, Cortázar, Piglia, Murakami and Bolaño also have published bestselling fiction and that they represent very different kinds of writing and readers; that it is always an honour to be chosen by a reader. That writers themselves never think in these terms – at least she doesn’t; that these are marketing concepts that have no bearing on the writing itself, etc. etc. But as she reached the end of her answer she seemed to find herself once again apologizing in some way, for being a bestselling author and for the fact that her books were quick reads, popular with people who generally don’t read much. And at the presenter’s prompting, she had to take some time to consider if a book that can be read quickly is better or not than one that requires many hours of reading, as if any one single quick-read is comparable to any single slow-read. To which she ended up replying: The truth is that I don’t know. She lied just once, when asked, Do you mind what some literary critics say about you? No, I don’t mind at all. It was only at the end of the interview, when she gesticulated with her right hand, rounding out some elusive observation, that she realized she was still holding Lorenzo Rinaldi’s card. A
nd once again Nurit Iscar thought of her husband.

  Later that night, as she ate dinner with him and their children, she felt strange, at fault, as if aware that the afternoon’s clumsy manoeuvres had concealed some feeling within her that wasn’t appropriate given the circumstances. Circumstances aren’t set in stone, Lorenzo Rinaldi said, some time after that day, just before kissing her. And they weren’t. Soon after that kiss Nurit Iscar told her husband that she wanted to separate. It took a while; he wasn’t ready for it. But neither was he in love with her, any more, by that stage in their marriage. And these days she tends to think that he should be grateful to her. Rinaldi’s sudden arrival in Nurit’s life served only to prove that their marriage had been over for longer than she’d realized. Juan, her elder son, had been living with a friend since he went to university and Rodrigo, the younger one, who was also starting university that year, soon went to join them, sparing him the decision of which parent to live with. Nurit was close to both her sons, but their meetings were much less frequent than she would have liked and usually prompted by calls from her and invitations to weekend meals which, as the boys grew increasingly independent, became less and less regular, with last-minute absences backed up by different excuses.

  The relationship with Lorenzo Rinaldi lasted two years, the first of these sustained by Nurit’s desire – and his promise – that he would separate from his wife as soon as possible. Even once she’d realized that would never happen, it took all of the second year for her to leave him. The end of their affair coincided with the death of Gloria Echagüe. And with the publication of Only If You Love Me. After Echagüe’s death, Rinaldi asked her to write a series of articles for the paper. But what kind of article? I’m not a journalist. Nonfiction, he replied, like Truman Capote. Capote interviewed two men convicted of murder, she said, and here not only is there no conviction, there’s also nothing known, only confusion. That’s why it’s a job for a writer, Betty Boo. It’s always the same in the first stages of a crime case: there are no concrete facts, or they don’t come to light and the only option is to invent, imagine, fictionalize. That sounds rather cavalier, she said. It would be cavalier for a journalist to take that approach, but you aren’t one. All the same, it doesn’t seem right for a newspaper to publish something invented about a real case. People may get confused. People always get confused. Well, I don’t want to be responsible for their confusion. Betty Boo, don’t go looking for moral arguments where there aren’t any. It’s not about morals, it’s about ethics. Aren’t they the same? No, I’m agnostic. Don’t overcomplicate this. All I want is for you to sit down in the clubhouse at La Maravillosa and listen to what people are saying, to shop in the store where they shop, to jog down the streets they jog on, to play tennis. I can’t play tennis! So take lessons. No, Lorenzo, that’s enough. I’ve got my new novel coming out, and that’s my priority now. I’m committed to readings, festivals, interviews – I haven’t got time. Ask some other writer who’s interested in doing this, there’s bound to be someone. But I want the “Dark Lady of Argentine literature” to do it. No. I want my Betty Boo to do it, he said, coming nearer and kissing her. And she felt that it was the kiss of Judas. A few days later Nurit Iscar left Lorenzo Rinaldi for good. The same day El Tribuno ran a long article by Jaime Brena on the Gloria Echagüe crime in La Maravillosa, accompanied by an opinion piece from a young novelist considering what story might lie behind this as-yet-unsolved death. A death that never was solved.

  A month later the first review of Iscar’s novel, Only If You Love Me, appeared in the cultural supplement of El Tribuno. The first, and the worst, paving the way for those that followed. They weren’t together any more, but Lorenzo Rinaldi called to warn her anyway: Looks like the reviewer didn’t like your book, Betty Boo, but if I stick my oar in it’ll make things worse. No, don’t do anything, she told him, and waited anxiously for Sunday to arrive and with it El Tribuno’s cultural supplement. The review’s heading was: “Only If You Love Me, Nurit Iscar’s new novel, fails to deliver”. The byline was Karina Vives, a name she had never heard before. A name Nurit may never forget. These days Karina Vives is the editor of El Tribuno’s Culture section and sits to the left of Jaime Brena. And every so often goes out to smoke on the pavement with him.

  6

  During the two years of her relationship with Lorenzo Rinaldi, Nurit Iscar put a lot of thought and a fair bit of research into the character of Betty Boop and the significance of her image. And although she didn’t share all her thoughts with her friends, some of their sessions ended in spirited arguments about the character. Nurit’s doubts weren’t so much about whether the nickname chosen by her married boyfriend (she never liked the word lover) was affectionate or not, but whether she appreciated being called it in the first place. She was familiar with the drawing, of course, both as a cartoon strip and in its animated form, and she could see that the woman with the round face, black curls and big eyes was similar to her in a way. But she was also interested in knowing what Betty Boop represented, now and in previous eras. And if that represented her, because every symbol stands for something and no representation is innocent of associations. Don’t complicate everything, Rinaldi told her. You look a bit like the cartoon, that’s all. But Nurit Iscar was, and is, complicated, and has no problem acknowledging this. If I weren’t complicated I wouldn’t still be going out with you, was her riposte. Complicated and prickly. That too, she agreed. In her immediate circle, the nickname Betty Boo had both defenders and detractors. Her children liked it, though of course they had no idea where it came from. Her friends were either for or against, depending not only on their own criteria but on their opinion of Lorenzo Rinaldi and the confusion in his love life, which meant that all aspects of their own friend’s life, and not just the love bit, were kept perpetually in limbo. Nurit could never wholly commit to any arrangement in case Rinaldi contrived a last-minute escape from his wife and was free to do something with her: planning holidays or a weekend break, or a trip to the cinema. Carmen said the man was a waster, and that giving this nickname to Nurit was not only akin to branding cattle but also a way to avoid leaving traces of his lover’s real name that might be discovered by his wife. You are my wife, Rinaldi would reply to Nurit’s misgivings, and she wanted to believe him. Paula Sibona agreed with Carmen, though with her own, choicer vocabulary: That bastard son of a thousand whores. She wasn’t so bothered about the cattle or the traces, but she did mind watching her friend wait miserably for Rinaldi to make decisions it was increasingly obvious he had no intention of making. She liked the nickname Betty Boo, though: Because it’s true that you look a bit like her. I like her as an archetype of the sexy, submissive woman, and it’s definitely better that he should call you Betty Boo than Daisy, Minnie, Barbie or Olive Oyl. And even the bastard son of a thousand whores can occasionally have a good idea, so why not run with it? That was Paula’s take. Viviana Mansini, on the other hand, had no opinion on the nickname, limiting herself to saying every now and then: Poor Nurit, and what about the poor woman he’s married to, right? Let’s not forget her. To which Carmen Terrada replied: The person who shouldn’t have forgotten her is Rinaldi.

  So intrigued were they by Betty Boop that, on one of their third-Sunday-of-the-month newspaper-reading sessions, the friends agreed to put aside their cuttings and dedicate themselves exclusively to exchanging whatever information each had managed to glean about the cartoon. The best prepared, as always, was Carmen, who had not only brought a sheaf of ordered and highlighted texts, but whose readings came with citations and sources, usually Wikipedia. But don’t they tell schoolchildren to do research instead of getting everything off Wikipedia? I don’t, retorted Carmen. Wikipedia gets a bad press because it’s the most democratic website there is: made by everyone, for everyone, with no editorial line. That’s the real issue, that’s what annoys people: who owns knowledge, information. And then she started reading what she had found on Betty Boop: She was born – or whatever the word is for the b
irth of a cartoon character – in 1930. She appeared for the first time in August that year in the cartoon strip Dizzy Dishes, in the series Talkartoon, produced by Max Fleischer. She was created by Grim Natwick, an established animator at that time, and modelled on the singer Helen Kane – the one who had a hit with “I Wanna Be Loved By You” – who died at the age of 62 from breast cancer after a ten-year struggle through which she was accompanied until the very end by her husband of twenty-seven years. Poor Helen, said Paula Sibona. Kane was working at Paramount Pictures, the distributor of Talkartoon, when Betty Boop was created, Carmen went on. Natwick’s drawing began as a French poodle and gradually took on human form. It wasn’t until 1932 that the character – as yet unchristened – became unmistakably female, when the long ears morphed into her characteristic hoop earrings and the black snout was replaced by her little button nose. That same year, the producers realized that she was much more popular than her boyfriend Bimbo, and she grew from being a supporting character in Talkartoon to a central figure bearing the name our friend here would later inherit in its phonetic form: Betty Boop. Betty Boo.