On Heroes and Tombs
Martín’s eyes finally came to rest on the Mirador: towering above the house, it seemed to him to be as lonely and mysterious as Alejandra herself. Good heavens! he said to himself, what have I gotten myself into?
In the light of day, the night that he had spent in that house seemed like a dream to him now: the old man who appeared to be practically immortal; Major Acevedo’s head inside the hatbox; the mad uncle with his clarinet and his wild eyes; the ancient Indian woman, deaf or indifferent to everything to the point that she had not even bothered to ask who he was and what a stranger like him was doing coming out of the bedrooms and then going up to the Mirador; the story of Captain Elmtrees; the incredible tale of Escolástica and her madness; and above all, Alejandra herself.
He began slowly to think things through: it was impossible to get on a bus at Montes de Oca; the transition would be too much of a shock. So he decided instead to walk down Isabel la Católica to Martín García; the old street would allow him to put all his conflicting thoughts in order little by little.
What most intrigued him and preoccupied him was Alejandra’s absence. Where could she have spent the night? Had she taken him to see the grandfather in order to get rid of him? No, because if that had been her intention all she would have had to do was let him leave when he had wanted to after hearing her story about Marcos Molina, the scene on the beach, and missions to convert the Indians in the Amazon. Why hadn’t she let him go home after that?
But it might be that everything was unpredictable even to her. Perhaps she had taken it into her head to go off somewhere while he was with Don Pancho. But in that case why hadn’t she told him so? In the final analysis, her way of going about things mattered little. What did matter was that she had not spent the night in her Mirador. It was only natural, therefore, to presume that she had had somewhere else to spend it. And frequently stayed overnight there, wherever it was, since there was no reason to think that anything out of the ordinary had occurred the night before.
Or had she simply gone wandering about the streets?
Yes, yes, he thought, suddenly relieved: no doubt she had gone out walking around the neighborhood, so as to be able to think, so as to clear her head. That was how she was: unpredictable and tormented, strange, capable of wandering about lonely suburban streets in the middle of the night. Why not? Hadn’t they met in a park? Didn’t she often return to those park benches where they had met for the first time?
Yes, all this was quite possible.
He walked along for several blocks, his mind at ease now. Then suddenly he remembered two things that had attracted his attention at a certain point and that now began to prey on his mind once more: Fernando, that name that she had uttered just once, only to immediately regret having done so, it seemed to him; and the violent reaction that she had had when he had happened to refer to blind people. What was her connection with blind people? It was something important, he was certain, because it had been as though she were suddenly paralyzed with fear. Could the mysterious Fernando be blind? And in any event, who was this Fernando whose name she appeared to be unwilling to utter, overcome by that sort of awe which causes certain peoples to avoid uttering the name of their divinity?
He began to think once again, sadly, that he was separated from her by dark abysses and doubtless always would be.
But then, he thought with renewed hope, why had she come to him in the park? And hadn’t she said that she needed him, that they had something very important in common?
He hesitantly walked on a few steps more, and then, halting and looking down at the pavement as though questioning himself, he said to himself: but why should she need me?
He felt a dizzying love for Alejandra. She on the other hand felt no such thing for him, he thought sadly. And even if she needed him, her feeling toward him was not the same as his toward her.
His mind was in a whirl.
14
For many days he had no news of her. He went prowling round the house in Barracas and several times kept watch from afar on the rusty gate in the iron fence.
His discouragement reached its low point the day he lost his job at the printing company: there wouldn’t be any work available for a while, they had told him. But he knew very well that the real reason for letting him go was altogether different.
15
He hadn’t gone there consciously: but there he was, standing outside the big window looking out on the Calle Pinzón, thinking he might faint at any moment from hunger. The word PIZZA seemed to bypass his brain; instead it was his stomach that reacted directly, as with Pavlov’s dogs. If only Bucich were there inside. But still he didn’t dare go in. Anyway, Bucich was bound to be in the south; heaven only knew when he’d be back. Chichín was there inside, with his cap and his colored suspenders, and Humberto J. D’Arcángelo, better known as Tito, with his toothpick stuck in his mouth like a cigarette and Crítica rolled up in his right hand, “distinguishing marks,” so to speak, since only a vulgar fraud could pretend to be Humberto J. D’Arcángelo without the toothpick in his mouth and Crítica rolled up in his right hand. There was something birdlike about him, with his sharp hooked nose and his little eyes set wide apart on the two sides of a flat, bony face. As terribly nervous and restless as always: picking at his teeth, straightening his threadbare tie, his prominent Adam’s apple continually bobbing up and down.
Martín looked at him in fascination until Tito caught sight of him and with his infallible memory recognized him immediately. And signaling to him with the rolled-up Crítica, like a traffic policeman, he motioned him to come in, sat him down, and ordered him a Cinzano with bitters. As he unfolded the paper, which was open to the sports page, he tapped on it with his skinny hand, and leaning over to Martín across the little marble table, with the toothpick shifting about on his lower lip, he said to him: Do you know how much they paid for this guy? At this question, a scared expression came over Martín’s face, as though he were a pupil who didn’t know his lesson, and although his lips moved he couldn’t manage to get a single word out, as D’Arcángelo, his little eyes gleaming with indignation, with his Adam’s apple stuck in the middle of his throat, awaited the reply: with a sarcastic smile, a bitter irony before the fact as he awaited the inevitable wrong guess not only on the part of the youngster but on the part of anybody with five cents’ worth of brains. But luckily, as Tito’s Adam’s apple remained momentarily stuck, Chichín arrived with the bottles. Then turning his sharp face toward him, tapping the sports page with the back of his bony hand, Tito said to him: Come on, Chichín, tell me, just take a guess, how much did they pay for that broken-down cripple of a Cincotta?, and as Chichín served the Cinzanos he answered: How should I know? five hundred, maybe?, to which Tito replied ha, smiling a bitter twisted, yet happy smile (because it demonstrated that he, Humberto J. D’Arcángelo, was somebody really in the know). Then after folding Crítica up again, like a professor who puts the apparatus back in the case after the demonstration, he said Eight hundred thou, and after a silence befitting such an enormity, he added: And now just try and tell me we’re not all batty in this country. He kept his eyes fixed on Chichín, as though searching for the slightest sign of disagreement and everything remained frozen in place for a few seconds: D’Arcángelo’s Adam’s apple, his ironic little eyes, Martín’s attentive expression, and Chichín with his cap and his red suspenders, holding the bottle of vermouth in the air.
The strange snapshot lasted perhaps one or two seconds. Then Tito squirted soda water into the vermouth, took a few sips, and fell into a gloomy silence, staring out the window at the Calle Pinzón, as he usually did at such moments: an abstract gaze and in a manner of speaking an entirely symbolic one, since in no case would it condescend to take in external facts as they really were. Then he went back to his favorite subject of conversation: There was no more soccer these days. What could you expect of players if they were bought and sold? His gaze grew dreamy and he began to hark back, once more, to the Golden Age of the ga
me, when he was a lad “this high.” And as Martín, out of sheer timidity, drank the vermouth that after two days without eating he knew would have a terrible effect on him, Humberto J. D’Arcángelo said to him: You’ve got to sock dough away, kid, take it from me. It’s the one law of life: make yourself a pile, even if you have to raffle off your heart, as he straightened his worn tie and pulled at the sleeves of his threadbare jacket, a suit and tie that were ample proof that he, Humberto J. D’Arcángelo, represented the categorical denial of his own philosophy. And as out of sheer kindness he urged the youngster to finish the vermouth, he talked to him of the old days, and it soon seemed to Martín as though the conversation were taking place on the high seas, for he was feeling queasier and queasier.
And D’Arcángelo sat there lost in thought, chewing on his toothpick and looking out at the Calle Pinzón.
“Those were the days,” he murmured to himself.
He straightened his tie, tugged on the sleeves of his suitcoat, and turned toward Martín with a bitter look on his face, like someone coming back to hard reality, and tapping on the newspaper he said: Eight hundred thou for a lousy no-good like that. That’s how it is in this world. With his little eyes gleaming with indignation, he straightened his worn tie. And then, pointing vertically with his index finger, as though he were referring to the table, he added: People in this country have got to wake up. And looking at the youngsters who had gathered round but addressing Martín symbolically (as Martín began to see Alejandra sleeping before his eyes, as in a vague poetic dream), brandishing the newspaper that he’d rolled up again, he added: You read the paper and find about about a shady deal. And maybe you go on dreaming about the moon or reading those books of yours. And then, straightening his tie, he looked with wrathful eyes at the Calle Pinzón. Turning around after a brief instant of (raging) philosophical meditation, he added: You go ahead and study, make an Edison of yourself, invent the telegraph or be a Christian priest and take yourself off to Africa like that old German with the big handlebar moustache, sacrifice yourself for humanity, sweat bullets, and you’ll see how they crucify you and how others end up rolling in dough. Haven’t you ever noticed that the real heroes of humanity always end up poor and forgotten? None of that for me, thanks, and directing his furious gaze toward the Calle Pinzón once again, he straightened his worn tie and tugged on the threadbare sleeves of his suit jacket and the youngsters laughed or said Ah, come on, do we have to listen to bullshit from you too, and Martín, in his lethargy, again saw Alejandra lying all curled up fast asleep before his eyes, breathing raggedly through her half-open mouth, her large, scornful, sensual mouth. And he could see her long straight hair, blue black with reddish glints, spread out on the pillow framing her angular face, the features that had the same harshness as her tormented spirit. And her body, her long, abandoned body, her breasts beneath the clinging white blouse, and those beautiful long legs curled up touching him. Yes, there she was, within reach of his hand and his mouth, in a certain way defenseless, but how far away, how inaccessible!
“Never,” he said to himself bitterly and almost aloud, as somebody shouted Perón’s doing the right thing and all those oligarchs ought to be strung up together in the Plaza Mayo, “never,” yet she had chosen him, but what for, in heaven’s name, what for? Because he would never know her most intimate secrets, he was quite certain, and once more the words blind and Fernando came to his mind as one of the youngsters put a coin in the Wurlitzer and they began to sing “Los Plateros.” Then D’Arcángelo exploded, and grabbing Martín by one arm he said to him: Let’s clear out, my boy. A person can’t stand it any more even here at Chichín’s. What’s this country coming to with all these clowns shattering your eardrums with their damned foxtrots?
16
The cool wind cleared Martín’s head. D’Arcángelo went on muttering and it took some time for him to calm down. Then he asked Martín where he worked. Martín replied shamefacedly that he was out of work. D’Arcángelo looked at him.
“Have you been out of work long?”
“Yes, a fair time.”
“Do you have a family?”
“No.”
“Where do you live?”
Martín didn’t answer immediately: his face was red, but luckily (he thought) it was dark. D’Arcángelo looked at him intently once again.
“To tell the truth …” Martín murmured.
“What’s that?”
“Ah … I had to give up a furnished room I had …”
“And where are you sleeping now?”
Embarrassed, Martín stammered that he slept most anywhere he could find. And as though to make light of the fact, he added:
“Luckily the weather hasn’t turned cold yet.”
Tito halted in his tracks and looked at him in the light of a street lamp.
“Do you at least have money to eat on?”
Martín didn’t answer. Then D’Arcángelo burst out:
“Why in the world didn’t you say something? Me rambling on and on about great soccer players and you sitting there nibbling on the free appetizers. Damn!”
D’Arcángelo took him to a cheap restaurant and as they ate, he looked at Martín thoughtfully.
When they had finished they left the restaurant, and as D’Arcángelo straightened his tie he said to Martín:
“Don’t worry, my boy. We’re going to my place now. And we’ll see what happens after that.”
They entered an old building that in days gone by had been the coach-house of some splendid mansion.
“My old man was a coachman, you know, till some ten years or so ago. But he’s got rheumatism now and can’t get around any more. And who’s going to hire a coach these days anyway? My old man’s one of the many victims of urban progress. All he had left was his health, and now that’s gone.”
The coach-house was now partly a tenement and partly stables: one could hear cries, conversations, and several radios blaring at once, amid a strong odor of manure. One could hear the sound of horses’ hoofs pawing. In the old coach-stalls were several delivery vans and a small truck.
They walked to the back of the place.
17
He waited for several days in vain. But finally Chichín motioned to him to come in and handed him an envelope. He opened it with trembling fingers and unfolded the letter. All it said, in Alejandra’s huge, uneven, shaky handwriting, was that she’d be waiting for him at six o’clock.
A few minutes before six he was sitting on the park bench, restless but happy, thinking that now he had someone to tell his troubles to. And someone like Alejandra—it was as incongruous as though a beggar were to discover Morgan’s treasure trove.
He ran toward her like a child, and told her what had happened at the printer’s.
“You mentioned somebody named Molinari to me,” Martín said. “I think you said he was head of a big corporation.”
Alejandra raised her eyes toward him, arching her eyebrows in surprise.
“Molinari? I spoke to you of Molinari?”
“Yes you did, right here, when you found me asleep on this very bench, remember? You said to me: ‘You surely don’t work for Molinari,’ remember?”
“I may have.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
Alejandra looked at him with a sarcastic smile.
“Did I say he was a friend of mine?”
But Martín was too hopeful at that moment to attribute any hidden meaning to the expression on her face.
“What do you think?” he said, doggedly pursuing the subject. “Do you think there’s a chance he might give me work?”
She looked at him the way doctors size up recruits reporting for military service.
“I know how to type, I can draft letters, correct proofs …”
“One of tomorrow’s winners, eh?”
Martín’s face turned red.
“But do you have any idea what it’s like to work in a big company? With a time clock and all that?”
/> Martín took out his white penknife, opened its smallest blade, and then closed it again, with his head bowed.
“I have no false pride. If I can’t work in the office I can work in the shop, or as a day laborer.”
Alejandra looked at his threadbare suit and his worn shoes.
When Martín finally raised his eyes, he saw that she had a very serious expression on her face and was frowning.
“What’s the matter? Would it be hard for you to arrange?”
She shook her head, then said:
“Anyway, don’t worry, we’ll find some solution.”
She got up from the bench.
“Come on. Let’s walk around for a while, I have a terrible stomach ache.”
“Stomach ache?”
“Yes, it hurts lots of times. It must be an ulcer.”
They walked to the bar on the corner of Brasil and Balcarce. Alejandra asked for a glass of water at the counter, took a small bottle out of her handbag and poured a few drops out of it into the glass.
“What’s that?”
“Laudanum.”
They walked through the park again.
“Let’s go down to Dársena for a while,” Alejandra said.
They walked down Almirante Brown, turned down Arzobispo Espinosa and Pedro de Mendoza and finally came to a Swedish freighter that was taking on cargo.
Alejandra sat down on one of the tall crates that had come from Sweden, looking toward the river, and Martín sat down on a lower one, as though he felt himself to be merely a humble vassal in the presence of this princess. And both gazed at the great tawny river.