Kamchatka (12 page)

Just the idea of grandma Matilde travelling in the Citroën made the long journey to and from the
quinta
worthwhile. Grandma said she'd prefer to hire a private car, but mamá said that was impossible, that she couldn't give grandma the address of the
quinta
for security reasons. Predictably, grandma was peeved. ‘You don't even trust your own mother,' she protested. Mamá told her it wasn't about trust, it was about security; by not giving her the address she was protecting her. In the face of such a demonstration of filial love, anyone else might have surrendered, but this was grandma Matilde, so the battle was only just beginning. ‘You don't trust my chauffeur?' she argued stubbornly. ‘I've been using the same chauffeur for years!'

Grandma always stank of face cream and hairspray. She never went anywhere without jars of gunk and a huge black can of hairspray in her handbag. (I owe this information to the Midget.)
When mamá suggested she put a headband over her eyes and wear a pair of sunglasses to hide the blindfold, grandma raised the roof. ‘You expect me to ruin this perfect hairdo which, I might add, I had to have done at eight o'clock on Saturday morning since it was the only available appointment?' (Grandma is the sort of person who goes to the salon to have her hair done even if she's going out to the country.) In that case, mamá told her, she would have to keep her head between her knees for the whole journey. Grandma immediately agreed to this, thinking that at least this way her hairdo would be spared. Me and the Midget knew better.

I'm sure that when Houston is training astronauts to withstand changes in gravity, NASA uses an old Citroën. The combination of the car's bizarre suspension and the springy seats subjects the body to a series of opposing forces which, I imagine, are pretty similar to shifting from gravity to zero gravity every minute. And if the person in the driving seat of the Citroën is impulsive – like mamá for example – the effect is multiplied a thousandfold.

Grandma had to spend the entire journey – more than an hour – staring at her shoes as she was buffeted from side to side, and thrown back against the seat every time mamá braked. It was more than even a veteran sailor could take. Me and the Midget giggled every time mamá brutally twisted the steering wheel, especially if grandma happened to be talking at the time, because her voice would be choked off as if someone was bouncing on her stomach; she sounded like Foghorn Leghorn.

But we giggled to ourselves, waiting for the inevitable. It came about halfway on the journey back to the
quinta,
when a truck pulled out of the side street before his light had turned green. Mamá was forced to brake sharply and grandma's hairdo crashed into the glove compartment.

Life may not be fair, but it has its moments.

Grandma Matilde was not born to Contend with nature. Once we had arrived at the
quinta
, she did not set foot in the grounds until it was time for her to go home. She couldn't stand the flies and the ants. She couldn't stand walking on the grass in her high heels. She couldn't stand the sun because it would ruin her complexion. She couldn't stand the toads: even the sound of their croaking made her shudder. To grandma Matilde, the swimming pool might as well have been the river Ganges, dark with ashes and corpses.

She wasn't much better inside the house. Grandma announced that the living room looked like a garage sale with cast-off furniture to be sold to the highest bidder. ‘It's like a gypsy caravan in here,' she would mutter when she needed to express the full extent of her disgust.

But papá and mamá were determined to make the experiment work. Papá quickly gave up his place in the double bed and came to sleep in our room. We were thrilled, but for mamá it was a very different experience. Sharing a bed with grandma, with her face covered in gunk, must have been like sleeping next to a block of provolone cheese.

Worse still, grandma refused to set foot in the kitchen, because, as she saw it, she was a guest and the kitchen is the domain of the hostess. This did not, of course, stop her from commenting on the
food mamá put on the table. While grandma was there, the usual dynamics of dinner changed completely. Usually, when mamá served dinner, papá would altruistically take the first bite, as a good husband should; I would mount a passive resistance and the Midget would swallow anything that was put in front of him like a hippopotamus in Hungry Hungry Hippos. But grandma's presence disrupted everything, resulting in conversations like this:

‘What's this?' grandma would ask, poking at the brownish stew on her plate with a fork.

‘It's goulash,' said mamá, a slight tremor in her voice.

‘Goulash is a Hungarian dish,' papá explained, only for grandma to catch me out.

‘And do you know what the word “goulash” means in Hungarian?'

‘No, grandma.'

‘It means warmed-up leftovers!'

Because although grandma stank of face cream and used too much hairspray, and although she was snobby and scheming, she was also intelligent and refined and she had a tongue like a cat-o'-nine-tails; she invariably stung you in more places than one.

Papá and mamá did their best to ward off disaster. Whenever it looked as though things might come to a head – when, for example, they allowed grandma to take over the television so that we couldn't watch
The Invaders
or cartoons, not even
Superpower Saturday
– they tried to make it up to us in order to preserve the delicate equilibrium. There were sudden offers to play Risk, promises of new comics and trips to the cinema. They offered us everything they had to hand and anything else was entered into the debit column, but by the time the sun set on Saturday, papá and mamá had frankly run out of credit. There was nothing left in the
quinta
for them to give us and we were beginning to suspect that a lot of the debts they had already run up would never be paid.

Then came dinner, and with it, the goulash.

Shortly afterwards we heard the half-time whistle. The home team retired to the dressing room two-nil down with a sense of impending disaster.

We said goodnight to mamá almost guiltily. We left her to the mercy of the lions. And of the provolone cheese.

We had always known that mamá and grandma Matilde didn't get on, but we had never seen them together over an extended period. At birthday parties, there were always other distractions, at least for us. In this respect, that weekend was a revelation. Mamá was clearly suffering from a Matilde overdose.

Against all our expectations, mamá turned out to have kryptonite of her own.

It took a long time for us to get to sleep. What with papá having to sleep in our room, me and the Midget having to share a single bed and mamá in the clutches of grandma Matilde, it wasn't easy to relax. Under cover of darkness, the accusations flew.

‘Grandma is unbearable,' I said. ‘

You think so?' papá asked, half-asleep.

‘Grandma's got jars of smelly gunk in her handbag,' said the Midget, ‘and she sprays Flit in her hair.'

‘What if we wait for grandma to fall asleep and bring mamá in here with us?' I asked.

‘You mean the two of you are prepared to venture into the monster's lair?'

‘There's no such thing as monsters,' yelped the Midget, shrivelling like a prune behind me.

‘There are some monsters I quite like,' I said. ‘I feel kind of sad for Frankenstein. And Dracula in the old movies is funny. But the Mummy is scary.'

‘Which one, Boris Karloff?'

‘The one in
Titanes en el Ring.
Ana took me to see the film and I had to sleep with the light on that night.'

‘Turn on the light!' whined the Midget.

‘One time, when we were on holiday in Santa Rosa de Calamuchita, I thought I'd been bitten by a vampire,' I said. ‘Do you remember me coming to wake you up?'

‘I don't actually.'

‘I found a strange mark on my neck, it looked like two bite marks right next to each other. The whole house was dark, everyone was in bed, the wind was howling …'

‘Turn the light on!'

‘And I went in and I was shaking you and crying “Papá, papá, I think a vampire bit me”.'

Papá was laughing now.

‘And you wouldn't even listen, I swear …'

‘There's no such thing as monsters!'

‘Oh, there is such a thing as monsters,' said papá, ‘but usually they don't have fangs or bolts through their necks. A monster isn't someone who looks like a monster, it's someone who acts like a monster.'

‘López Rega,' I said.

‘For example.'

‘Onganía, the Walrus.'

‘That's two.'

‘And grandma Matilde.'

‘Hold on a minute! Don't go comparing apples and oranges!' said papá.

‘Grandma's not a monster, she's nice!' the Midget protested.

‘There are First Division monsters and then there's the rest,' said papá.

‘But she's horrible to mamá,' I said.

‘That doesn't mean she doesn't love her.'

‘You can't love someone and be horrible to them.'

‘That's not true. Lots of people are horrible to the people they love most.'

‘Well, people like that must be crazy.'

‘Grandma's not crazy!' wailed the Midget. ‘

I know it doesn't sound logical, but that's the way it is,' said papá. ‘There are people who try to control the people they love, or try to make them feel insecure or inferior or unworthy. They can be very hurtful, but they're sad people. They're afraid of being abandoned, they're afraid of not being loved.'

‘Grandma's afraid mamá will abandon her?'

‘In a way.'

‘Well, in that case, she doesn't know mamá.

‘On that point we can agree.'

‘Of course grandma knows mamá, stupid!' yelled the Midget. ‘She carried mamá in her tummy!'

I asked papá about grandma Matilde's life (people usually assume their grandparents were always as old as they are now) and he told me some things. What he told me then, and what I learned when I was living in Kamchatka, I'll move onto next.

On the essentials, all the histories agree: grandma Matilde was not mamá's mother.

I'm not denying that she was mamá's biological mother. As the Midget had pointed out, Matilde had carried mamá in her womb and that was all the labour required for her to earn the title. But the histories point to a more subtle distinction. A woman can conceive, gestate, give birth to and suckle a child; ensure the child is clothed, fed and educated, attend school concerts; she can choose a university, put a roof over the child's head and walk her down the aisle to the altar that marks the beginning of her adult life. Most women who accomplish these things will, in fact, be fully qualified mothers. It is, however, possible for someone to fulfil all the requirements without showing the slightest enthusiasm. Someone who keeps up appearances for the sake of appearances but without the passion we consider inseparable from the task of motherhood.

My grandfather was a timid, conscientious man, overshadowed by my grandmother's histrionics and consumed by the need to accede to her every whim. Everything points to the fact that he lived simply to make money. When he had made a lot of money, he wanted to retire and enjoy it, but my grandmother wouldn't let him; the very idea seemed to her grossly irresponsible.

If grandpa felt any affection for his wife, he suppressed it, because grandma didn't believe displays of affection had any role in the marital equation. And his love for his daughter he measured out with an eye-dropper, invariably behind grandma's back, since she considered affection to be tasteless and inimical to a good education. My grandfather died at the age of forty-eight when mamá was seventeen. Though he was still a young man, the combination of too much work and too little love often proves toxic. When his body finally cried enough, he left two thriving businesses – a Chrysler concession and a garage – and hefty accounts in various banks. For her part, my grandmother considered that her husband had fulfilled his part of the deal and got on with her own life.

After his death, grandma was rarely at home. She travelled a lot, mostly in Europe. When she was in Buenos Aires, she would go out every day, to have tea, to go to the theatre, to play canasta, or on a ‘date' with one of her long list of suitors – many of whom were young enough to have dated mamá. Grandma made no attempt to be discreet. Young men would call and collect her at the house, or ring the doorbell and leave flowers, chocolates, necklaces. In the beginning, mamá often opened the door to them, but she finally gave up and after that, opening the door became the sole responsibility of grandma's maid Mary.

Grandma was too smart not to realize that many of her suitors saw her as a good catch – properties, businesses, bank accounts – which is why she never accepted another proposal of marriage. But she wasn't sensitive enough to notice how much the age of her suitors bothered mamá. My parents had already told me that, whenever mamá had boyfriends over, grandma liked to make a dramatic entrance, wearing a dress copied from Brigitte Bardot or Claudia Cardinale. The quarrels between grandma and mamá were noisy, loud and futile. Grandma would fiercely defend her right to dress however she pleased, go wherever she pleased and see whomever she pleased.
Grandma, I think, saw mamá as a rival and it was a competition she was not inclined to lose. Mamá only wanted a mother.

It was at this point that mamá decided marriage was her only way out. Her famous fiancé was short, boring and almost penniless, ensuring grandma wouldn't flirt with him. But then papá showed up: he made mamá laugh, he listened to her, he loved rather than judged her and mamá realized that she had found much more than a way out.