All Yours (13 page)

“…”

“It’s nothing to worry about, see, dear? Just another finger…”

“…”

“I’ll be finished in a tick.”

“…”

“Relax please, or I can’t palpate you properly.”

“…”

“Now I’m touching the head.”

“…”

“Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

“…”

“Right, I’m going to get you into a birthing room straight away. You’re nearly three inches dilated. This baby’s coming any minute.”

“I’m very scared.”

“But what’s there to be scared about!”

“…”

“Don’t you worry yourself. This is something that happens every day.”

33

Inés got into a taxi and returned to her house. She went into the kitchen and over to the sink to wash the plates, donning her rubber gloves. They were a medium-size pair, orange, made of thick rubber. She moved her fingers in them, as though trying out different movements. It felt awkward and she tore the gloves off and flung them against the white-tiled wall, striking the shelf where the teapot was kept with the blue-and-white cups. She left the kitchen and went up to her bedroom. Between the third and fourth step, she turned her ankle, but continued limping up the stairs without slackening her pace. She went into her bedroom, flinging open the door, crashing it against the wall, and marched straight to the wardrobe where she searched through everything, ransacking every shelf, every drawer. She didn’t find what she was looking for. For a moment she stopped to think, and she was struck by a memory which sent her hurrying to Lali’s room. She was pleased to see that her daughter had still not come home.

Standing on a chair, she reached into the back of the highest shelf of her daughter’s wardrobe and groped around from one side to the other. When her hand re-emerged, it was holding a plastic bag. She got down, opened the bag and took out a yellowing dress that had once been white. Lali’s first communion dress. She threw it onto the floor, followed by the hair net, the little basket of prayer cards, a rosary. Then she took out a glove. She noticed that it was for a right hand. With difficulty, she put it on. It was small and stiffened by the passing years. Quickly she gathered everything up and left the room. Still wearing the glove, she went into her bedroom and straight to Ernesto’s bedside table, where she picked up the revolver and bullets that had once belonged to Alicia. Which had once been hidden in the spare wheel. With her right hand. Without squeezing it, holding it lightly, so as not to rub off Ernesto’s fingerprints. She needed to load it with her left hand, and she used a handkerchief to help her do this. She put everything into her bag – the loaded gun, the handkerchief and the glove – then prepared to get changed. In her wardrobe she found the sand-coloured suit she had worn the day that she went to Alicia’s flat. It seemed appropriate to finish this story the way it had started, and she put it on. Feeling something weighty in the suit pocket, she put in her hand and found Alicia’s keys, that same labelled bunch she had discovered in the drawer of Ernesto’s desk. She did not dare leave them behind, but arranged them in her pocket in such a way that they were less bulky.

Then she ran down the stairs, slammed shut the front door without locking it and was off.

34

In the city of Buenos Aires, on the seventeenth day of December, 1998, a spontaneous witness appeared before His Honour and secretary for the purposes of giving a
WITNESS STATEMENT
. His Honour required the witness to make an oath or promise to tell the whole truth of all that he knows and to answer truthfully any questions made of him, in accordance with his beliefs, having been advised of the penalties pursuant to the crime of false witness, to which end the relevant judicial regulations from the Penal Code were read to him and he responded, “I swear.” His rights, as set out in articles 79, 80 and 81 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, were made known to him, and the aforementioned articles read aloud to him.

When asked about his personal information, the witness gave his name as
ALBERTO GARRIDO
, and supplied as proof of this his national identity card
DNI 12.898.610
, his profession as waiter and his status as divorced. He was born on 6 March 1960, in Buenos Aires, to Enrique Garrido and Elena Gómez, and lives at number 2341 Calle Yatay in the same city.

When asked to state all that he knows of relevance to the case, he declared: “I presented myself at Commissary Number 31 this morning, from where I was brought to this court to offer information which is important to this case. On the day of Alicia Soria’s disappearance, while working at the bar I served a very agitated lady, wearing a beige-coloured suit, who had just come out of the block where the aforementioned Soria lived, and who proceeded to observe the movements at that building in a suspicious manner. I remember her perfectly well because I was surprised to see her wearing rubber gloves.” His Honour asked: “Rubber?” The witness responded: “Yes.” Asked by His Honour if he knew the identity of the woman, the witness declared, “I didn’t know it until recently, but yesterday one of my regular customers, Señor Ernesto Pereyra, while drinking in the bar expressed to me his concern at being the only suspect in a crime that he had not committed, as well as his worry and fear, because he had begun to suspect the involvement of his wife, Inés Pereyra, in this woeful case, but owing to his connection to the lady, and the affection of people who have been married so many years, he felt that he could not make his concerns known to the law. He showed me a photograph which he always carried with him, and I was one hundred per cent sure that this was a picture of the woman I had seen on the day that Alicia disappeared.” Asked by His Honour why he had not come before the court earlier to present this evidence, the witness replied: “Because sometimes people make judgements without knowing all the facts and I was scared of implicating someone who had nothing to do with the crime, simply on the basis of nervous or unusual behaviour. But when Señor Pereyra revealed his fears and showed me the photo, my conscience told me that I must come forwards and say my piece, and that if it was wrong, or irrelevant, justice would soon show the truth.”

Asked by His Honour if he wished to add, withdraw or amend any of his statement, he replied “No,” and with that the present session was concluded, the declaration having been read aloud by the clerk of court and signed by the witness before the judge, which I hereby certify.

35

I took a bus into town. I don’t like driving, especially when my nerves are on edge. And why deny it – I was really jumpy. I felt as if something inside my body was going to come out of my ears. Something hot, something at boiling point. My insides? I sat down at the front and looked out of the window. Trying to calm myself down. Deep breaths. Why did I ever stop going to yoga? The lights at the junction of Cabildo and Juramento weren’t working. Trees, cars, buildings. I fiddled with Alicia’s keys. Because the yoga teacher talked too much, she made me feel nervous. With the calm, measured voice of an interior light, of Mother Earth, but too much. A group of schoolgirls dressed in uniform went past. Four or five of them. I thought of Lali. What was coming was not going to be easy for her. She had always lived in a bubble. Oblivious to all the problems of the house. Protected from all possible dangers by her father, of all ironies. And suddenly her world was going to fall apart. It already had, to be honest. The worst was to think that it could fall right on her head. But hey-ho, that’s life. I had also taken a hard knock as a child. She was going to have to grow up – no other option. She would have to take the blows, like the rest of us. Trees, buildings, cars. Just as I had to, the day that my father walked out, never to return. You think you have everything, that your family is perfect, then from one day to the next everything changes. I don’t know if Lali would be able to bear it. I don’t think so. But I couldn’t think of her at that moment. It would have been the final straw. A billboard advertising lipstick, cars, buildings. Red, yellow, green. Alicia’s keys in my pocket. The gun in my bag. I kept going over what was going to happen next in my head. Never mind Lali. I took a little diagram out of my bag, without touching the gun. Number one: cash machine. I focused on that. Trees, buildings, cars. Number one: cash machine. I would think about number two later on. And then three, and four. One step at a time. Cars, buildings. People coming and going. I didn’t want to think about him. About Ernesto. The street corners of Buenos Aires, car horns. Number one: cash machine. I arrived at my destination. I got out of the bus by the back door. As you’d expect. The bell wasn’t working. I shouted. So did the driver. I didn’t swear at him because it’s not my style, but I gladly would have done. I walked, bumped into someone, people pushed past. People, so many people. I spotted my first cash machine on the other side of the road. I crossed over. I waited my turn. The people in front of me were taking their time, taking all the time in the world. Then again, of course, they didn’t have a clue. I got impatient. My turn came. I checked the balance. It was nearly ten thousand dollars. I tried to take it out, but the limit was seven hundred dollars. I took out all the money I could. Number two: repeat number one as many times as necessary. When I saw the next cash machine, I again tried to take out the maximum limit of money. The cash machine informed me that the operation was invalid, I couldn’t take out any more money that day. I hadn’t known that; I never used cash machines. I always took the money Ernesto gave me at the start of the month and managed with that. I also had the money from my own bank account, my nest egg – the one that began in a hole between the bricks of the garage wall. But I didn’t want to touch that, in case things got more difficult later on. I tried another cash machine, just in case. It was the same story. I went straight to the bank – to Ernesto’s, not mine. I didn’t want to, but there was no alternative. I got into the queue. I waited. Is there some law that no one else is ever in a hurry when you are? Finally I saw a bank employee and told him that I wanted to close down the joint account for Ernesto Pereyra and Inés Lamas. He asked me if I was an account holder and I said that I was. But after checking, he told me that Ernesto had to sign the papers. I told him that unfortunately Ernesto was travelling. I told him that I needed the money to pay for an operation my mother had to have. An old chestnut you might say, straining credulity. Well, I don’t know – that’s what came out. I cried. Apparently my old chestnut struck a chord with the bank employee. He told me not to cry, that if it was the money I needed then I should simply withdraw it. I asked him how I could do that without Ernesto’s signature. He said that I didn’t need the signature to make a withdrawal, just to close the account. Thinking to myself that, if I owned a bank, I might change such idiotic rules, I smiled at him and said I would like to make the transaction as soon as possible. My mother’s operation depended on it. The employee went off to his office, looking important. He suggested leaving one hundred dollars in the account, to prevent it being closed down by audit. Apparently this was another of the bank’s regulations. I agreed. At the till, they handed me the money. I went to the bathroom to hide it, secreting the notes in my bra and knickers, and the change in my bag. The notes were new and slippery. I left the bank. In a nearby clothes shop I bought jeans and a black leather jacket. I paid in cash. I gave the girl my sand-coloured suit to put in the bag, and went out in my new clothes. The bag I deposited in the first bin I passed. It saddened me, to be honest. I went into a telephone booth, not to make a call, but to consult the guide. I looked under
car hire
and
wigs
; this in fulfilment of points three and four. Then I remembered that Alicia’s keys had been in the discarded suit. It didn’t matter, though – in fact it was a good way to dispose of that macabre souvenir. The nearest car-hire company was three blocks away and the wig shop twenty blocks, but I needed to get the wig first. Point three was to buy a wig. This time I took the underground train; it didn’t take me very close, but it would leave me less time to think than a bus ride. I wasn’t in the habit of taking taxis. “Why throw your money away,” as my mother used to say. I arrived at the wig emporium. A woman went in just before me, to sell her hair, as it turned out. They buy it, to make natural wigs. The assistant was interested and called over the manageress. They haggled over the price for a few minutes. I felt impatient, but fascinated, too. I had never seen someone sell her own hair. Their negotiation concluded; the woman made it clear that she thought she was being offered too little, but she accepted all the same and went on her way. My turn. I picked out a wig of dark-chestnut hair, falling straight to the shoulders. Typically Argentine. Even if we do all wish we were blonde. Or looked blonde. And however much we put in highlights and lighten our eyebrows, to the point of forgetting that our hair was once a different colour. Dirty blondes. Brassy blondes. Drop-dead blondes. Blondes like me. I tried on the chestnut wig. It suited me. But there was another one – really splendid, so dark it was almost black, with long straight hair. Like Charo’s. I tried it on; who knew when I would next find myself trying wigs? I arranged the glossy locks of hair on my shoulders. Like her. If Charo ever came here to sell her hair, they would certainly want to buy it. I bought the other wig – the chestnut one, the one I am and wish that I were not, the average one – and wore it straight away. Outside I watched as the sales assistant returned the dark one to a white polysterene head in the window display. Carefully she separated the locks and arranged them to a shining advantage. It occupied the centre of the display, eclipsing everything else. None of the others existed. Not even the blondes. I took the underground again to the car-hire company. I went inside. I sat down in reception and waited for the only assistant in evidence to finish serving a man who was obviously foreign. It was hot and my legs were sweating on the worn, faux-leather seat. I felt wet. And agitated. The wig was making me hot too. It was itchy, but I thought it would be vulgar to scratch myself. The lyrics of a song floated into my mind:
My shoes are far too tight and my socks are far too hot
… Why do our thoughts fly off in strange directions at times like this?
And the boy who lives across the road
… The foreigner had gone and I presented myself at the counter before the assistant could call me. I asked for a car. The cheapest. The assistant offered me one. I asked him what colour it was. Red. I rejected it straight away – mine had to be grey. A common, cheap, grey car of the kind you see everywhere in Buenos Aires. Average, like the chestnut wig. They had one. With no air conditioning. I didn’t mind – as if I’m going to be worried about a little thing like cool air at this stage in the game. I rented it. I paid in cash. Daylight robbery – hiring cars in this country is legalized theft. I thought that the deal was done but the idiot sales assistant wanted me to sign a credit-card slip as a guarantee. I didn’t like that. I wanted not to leave any trail. That was why I had paid cash. I refused. I argued with the assistant. Actually I take that back: it’s impossible to have an “argument” with an idiot. No, I had never hired a car before – and so what? “It’s the rules,” he said, adding, “I can’t do anything about it.” “Yes you can – you can go fuck yourself,” I replied. I was past the point of being subtle. I felt like killing him. I could have done, in fact. I signed the slip and he handed over the keys and documents. I went down to the underground parking and retrieved the car. Before pulling away, I took off all the stickers identifying the hire company and threw them out of the window.