The Insufferable Gaucho (4 page)

One night, sick of hearing the old guys rambling on about psychiatric
hospitals and slums where parents made their children go without milk so they
could travel to support their soccer team in some historic match, he asked them
about their political opinions. At first the gauchos were reluctant to talk
about politics, but when he finally got them to open up, it turned out that, in
one way or another, they were all nostalgic for General Perón.

This is where we part company, said Pereda, and pulled out his knife.
For a few seconds he thought that the gauchos would do the same and his destiny
would be sealed that night, but the old guys recoiled in fear and asked what he
was doing, for God’s sake. What had they done? What had got into him? The
flickering fire threw tiger-like stripes of light across their faces, but,
gripping his knife and trembling, Pereda felt that the shame of the nation or
the continent had turned them into tame cats. That’s why the cattle have been
replaced by rabbits, he thought as he turned and walked back to his room.

I’d slaughter the lot of you if you weren’t so pathetic, he
shouted.

The next morning he was worried that the gauchos might have gone back
to Capitán Jourdan, but they were all still there, working in the yard or
drinking mate by the fire, as if nothing had happened. A few days later the
skirted woman arrived from the ranch out west and Alamo Negro began to change
for the better, starting with the food, because the woman knew ten different
ways to cook a rabbit, and where to find herbs, and how to start a kitchen
garden and grow some fresh vegetables.

One night the woman walked along the veranda and went into Pereda’s
room. She was wearing only a petticoat; the lawyer made space for her in the
bed, and spent the rest of the night looking up at the ceiling and feeling that
warm and unfamiliar body against his ribs. Day was breaking by the time he fell
asleep, and when he woke up, the woman was gone. Got yourself shacked up, said
Bebe when his father informed him. Only technically, the lawyer pointed out. By
that stage, with money borrowed here and there, he had been able to enlarge the
stables and acquire four cows. When he was bored of an afternoon, he would
saddle up José Bianco and take the cows out for a walk. The rabbits, who had
never seen a cow in their lives, stared in amazement.

Pereda and the cows looked like they were bound for the ends of the
earth, but they had just gone out for a walk.

One morning a doctor and a nurse appeared at Alamo Negro. Having lost
their jobs in Buenos Aires, they were working for a Spanish
NGO
, providing a mobile medical
service. The doctor wanted to test the gauchos for hepatitis. When the pair came
back a week later, Pereda did his best to put on a feast: rice and rabbit
casserole. The doctor said it tasted better than
paella valenciana
,
then proceeded to vaccinate all the gauchos free of charge. She gave the cook a
bottle of pills and told her to make sure each child took one every morning.
Before they left, Pereda asked how his folks were doing health-wise. They’re
anemic, said the doctor, but no one has Hepatitis B or C. That’s a relief, said
Pereda. Yes, I guess it is, said the doctor.

As they were getting ready to go, Pereda took a look inside their van.
The back was a mess: sleeping bags and boxes full of first-aid supplies:
medicines and disinfectants. Where are you going now? he asked. South, said the
doctor. Her eyes were red and the lawyer couldn’t tell if it was due to lack of
sleep or to crying. As the van drove away raising a cloud of dust, he thought he
would miss them.

That night he spoke to the gauchos gathered in the general store. I
believe we are losing our memory, he said. And just as well too. For once, the
gauchos looked at him as if they had a better grasp of what he was saying than
he did himself. Shortly afterward, he received a letter from Bebe summoning him
to Buenos Aires: he had to sign some papers so that his house could be sold.
Should I take the train, Pereda wondered, or ride? That night he could hardly
sleep. He imagined people thronging the sidewalks as he made his entry mounted
on José Bianco. Cars stopping, dumbstruck policemen, a newspaper vendor smiling,
his compatriots playing soccer in vacant lots with the parsimonious movements of
the malnourished. Pereda’s entry into Buenos Aires, as he imagined the scene,
had the ambiance of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem or Brussels as depicted by
Ensor. All of us enter Jerusalem sooner or later, he thought as he tossed and
turned. Every single one of us. And some never leave. But most do. And then we
are seized and crucified. Especially the poor gauchos.

He also imagined a downtown street, the quintessential Buenos Aires
street, with all the charms of the capital; he was riding along it on his trusty
José Bianco, while from the windows above white flowers began to rain down. Who
was throwing the flowers? He couldn’t tell, since, like the street itself, the
windows of the buildings remained empty. It must be the dead, Pereda supposed
drowsily. The dead of Jerusalem and the dead of Buenos Aires.

The next morning he spoke with the skirted woman and the gauchos and
told them he would be away for a while. None of them said anything, although
that night, at dinner, the woman asked if he was going to Buenos Aires. Pereda
nodded. Then take care and may the rain fall soft on you, said the woman.

Two days later, he took the train and went back the way he had come
more than three years earlier. When he arrived at Constitución station, a few
people stared as if he were wearing fancy dress, but most were not particularly
perturbed by an old man attired like a cross between a gaucho and a rabbit
trapper. The taxi driver who took him to his apartment inquired where he was
from, and when Pereda, lost in his own ruminations, failed to answer, asked if
he spoke Spanish. By way of reply, Pereda pulled out his knife and proceeded to
trim his nails, which were as long as a wild cat’s.

No one answered the door. The keys were under the mat; he went in. The
apartment seemed clean, perhaps even too clean—it smelled of mothballs. Feeling
exhausted, Pereda trudged to his bedroom and flopped onto the bed without taking
off his boots. When he woke up it was dark. He went into the living room without
switching on any lights, and called his cook. First he spoke to her husband, who
wanted to know who was calling, and didn’t sound very convinced when he
identified himself. Then the cook came on. I’m in Buenos Aires, Estela, he said.
She didn’t seem surprised. When asked if she was happy to know that he was back
home, she said: There’s always something unexpected happening here. Then he
tried to call his maid, but an impersonal, female voice informed him that the
number he had dialled was not in service. Feeling dispirited and perhaps hungry,
he tried to remember the faces of his employees, but the images he could summon
were vague: shadows moving in the corridor, a commotion of clean laundry,
murmurs and hushed voices.

The amazing thing is that I can remember their phone numbers, thought
Pereda, sitting in the dark living room of his apartment. A little later on he
went out. Wandering aimlessly, or so he thought, he ended up at the cafe where
Bebe used to meet his artistic and literary friends. From the street he looked
into the spacious, well-lit, bustling interior. Bebe and an old man (an old man
like me! thought Pereda) were presiding over one of the most animated tables. At
another, closer to the window through which Pereda was spying, he noticed a
group of writers who looked more like advertising executives. One of them, with
an adolescent air, although he was at least fifty and maybe even over sixty,
kept putting a white powder up his nose and holding forth about world
literature. Suddenly, the eyes of the pseudo-adolescent met Pereda’s. For a
moment their gazes locked, as if, for each of them, the presence of the other
were a gash in the ambient reality. Resolutely and with surprising agility, the
writer with the adolescent air sprang to his feet and rushed out into the
street. Before Pereda knew what was going on, the writer was upon him.

What are you staring at? he demanded, brushing remnants of white
powder from his nose. Pereda looked him up and down. The writer was taller and
slimmer and possibly stronger than he was. What are you staring at, you rude old
fool? What are you staring at? The pseudo-adolescent’s gang was looking on,
following the scene as if something similar happened every night.

Pereda realized that he had grasped his knife, and let himself go. He
took a step forward and, without anyone noticing that he was armed, planted the
point of the blade, though not deeply, in his opponent’s groin. Later, he would
remember the look of surprise on the writer’s face, in which terror was blended
with something like reproof, and the words with which he groped for an
explanation (Hey, what are you doing, you asshole?), as if there were any way to
explain fever and revulsion.

I think you need a napkin, Pereda remarked in a clear strong voice,
pointing at his adversary’s blood-stained crotch. Mother, said the coke-head,
looking down. When he looked up again, he was surrounded by friends and
colleagues, but Pereda was gone.

What should I do, the lawyer wondered as he roamed through his beloved
city, finding it strange and familiar, marvelous and pathetic. Do I stay in
Buenos Aires and become a champion of justice, or go back to the pampas, where I
don’t belong, and try to do something useful . . . I don’t know, something with
the rabbits, maybe, or the locals, those poor gauchos who accept me and put up
with me and never complain? The shadows of the city declined to provide an
answer. Keeping quiet, as usual, Pereda thought reproachfully. But when the day
began to dawn, he decided to go back.

Police Rat

for Robert Amutio and Chris Andrews

M
y name is José, though
people call me Pepe, and some, usually those who don’t know me well, or with
whom I’m not on familiar terms, call me Pepe the Cop. Pepe is a benign,
well-meaning, genial diminutive, neither scornful nor flattering, and yet the
appellation does imply, if I can put it this way, a certain affection, something
more than detached respect. Then there’s the other name, the alias, the tail or
the hump that I lug around cheerfully, without taking offense, partly because
it’s never or almost never used in my presence. Pepe the Cop: it’s like tossing
affection and fear, desire and abuse into the same dark bag. Where does the word
cop
come from? It comes from
copper
, he who cops or caps,
that is captures, takes hold of, nabs, in other words, he who has the authority
to arrest and hold, who doesn’t have to answer to anyone, who has
impunity
. And they call me Pepe the Cop because that’s exactly what
I am; it’s a job like any other, but few people are prepared to take it on. If
I’d known what I know now when I joined the force, I wouldn’t have been prepared
to take it on either. What made me join the police force? That’s a question I’ve
often asked myself, especially lately, and I can’t come up with a convincing
answer.

I was probably dimmer than most in my youth. Maybe I was disappointed
in love (though I can’t actually recall being in love at the time), or maybe it
was fate; maybe I realized I was different, and looked for a solitary job, a job
that would allow me to spend hour after hour in the most absolute solitude, but
would, at the same time, be of some practical use, so I wouldn’t be a burden on
anyone.

In any case, there was a vacancy for a police officer and I applied
and the bosses took a look at me, and in less than half a minute the job was
mine. One of them at least, and maybe the others as well, already knew that I
was one of Josephine the Singer’s nephews, although they were careful not to go
spreading it around. My brothers and cousins—the other nephews—were normal in
every way, and happy. I was happy too in my way, but it was obvious that I was
related to Josephine, that I belonged to her line. Maybe that influenced the
bosses’ decision to give me the job. Or not—maybe I was just the first to apply.
Maybe they thought no one else would, and if they made me wait, I’d change my
mind. I really can’t say. All I know for sure is that I joined the force and
from the very first day I spent my time wandering through the sewers, sometimes
the main ones, where the water flows, sometimes the branch sewers, where we are
constantly digging tunnels to gain access to new food sources or provide escape
routes or link up with labyrinths that seem, at first glance, to serve no
purpose, and yet all those byways go to make up the network in which our people
circulate and survive.

Sometimes, partly because it was one of my duties and partly because I
was bored, I’d leave the main sewers and the branch ones too and go into the
dead sewers, conduits frequented only by our explorers and traders, usually on
their own, but occasionally accompanied by their spouses and obedient offspring.
There was nothing in there, as a rule, just terrifying noises, but sometimes, as
I made my way cautiously through that hostile territory, I would come across the
body of an explorer or the bodies of a trader and his young children. In the
early days, when I was still raw, those discoveries terrified me; I would be so
disturbed it was as if I became someone else. What I would do was carry the body
out from the dead sewer to the police outpost, which was always deserted, and
there I’d try to determine there the cause of death as well as I could with the
means at my disposal. Then I would go to fetch the coroner and, if he was in the
mood, he’d get dressed or change his clothes, grab his bag and accompany me to
the outpost. Once we were there, I’d leave him alone with the corpse or the
corpses and go out again. When our police officers discover a body, instead of
returning to the scene of the crime, they generally make a vain effort to mix
with civilians, working alongside them and participating in their conversations,
but I’m different, I don’t mind going back to inspect the crime scene and look
for details that might have escaped my notice, and retrace the poor victims’
steps or sniff my way, cautiously of course, back up the tunnel from which the
attack had been launched.

After a few hours I’d return to the outpost and find the coroner’s
note tacked to the wall. Causes of death: slit throats, loss of blood, broken
necks; and there were often lacerations to the paws—our kind never give in
without a fight, we struggle to the last. The killer was usually some carnivore
that had strayed into the sewers, a snake, sometimes even a blind alligator.
There was no point pursuing them; most died of hunger before long anyway.

When I took a break I’d seek out the company of other police officers.
I met one who was very old and withered by age and work; he had known my aunt
and liked to talk about her. Nobody understood Josephine, he said, but everyone
loved her or pretended to, and she was happy—or pretended to be. Those words
were Chinese to me, like a lot of what that old officer said. I’ve never
understood music; it’s not an art that we practice, except on rare occasions. In
fact, we don’t practice (and therefore don’t understand) any of the arts,
really. Every now and then a rat who paints, for example, will appear in our
midst, or a rat who writes poems and takes it into his head to recite them. As a
general rule, we don’t make fun of those individuals. On the contrary, we pity
them, because we know that they’re condemned to solitude. Why? Well, because
creating works of art and contemplating them are activities in which our people
as a rule are unable to take part, and the exceptions, the
mavericks
,
are very few, so if, for example, a poet or even just a reciter of poetry comes
along, it’s most unlikely that another poet or reciter will be born in the same
generation, which means that the poet may never encounter the only individual
capable of appreciating his efforts. Which is not to say that we won’t interrupt
our daily occupations to listen to the poet or applaud him, or even move that
the reciter be granted a pension. On the contrary, we do everything in our
power—or rather what little we can—to provide the
maverick
with a
simulation of understanding and affection, since we know that, fundamentally,
affection is what he or she requires. Any simulation, however, collapses
eventually, like a house of cards. We live in a collective, and what the
collective depends on is, above all, the daily labor, the ceaseless activity of
each of its members, working toward a goal that transcends our individual
aspirations but is nevertheless the only guarantee of our existence as
individuals.

Of all the artists we have known, or at least of those who remain in
our memories like skeletal question marks, the greatest was, without a doubt, my
aunt Josephine. Great in the sense that she made exceptional demands on us;
incommensurably great in the sense that our community acquiesced or pretended to
acquiesce to her whims.

The old police officer liked to talk about her, but his memories, I
soon realized, were as flimsy as a cigarette paper. Sometimes he said that
Josephine was fat and tyrannical, and that dealing with her required enormous
patience or an enormous sense of sacrifice, two not unrelated virtues, both
quite common among us. Sometimes, however, by contrast, he said that all he had
glimpsed of Josephine—he’d have been an adolescent, just starting out in the
force—was a shadow, a tremulous shadow, trailing a range of odd squeaking
noises, which constituted, at the time, the entirety of her repertoire, yet
could, if not transport her listeners, certainly plunge some of those in the
front row into a state of extreme sadness. Those rats and mice, of whom we have
no record now, are perhaps the only ones to have glimpsed something in my aunt’s
musical art. But what? They probably didn’t know themselves. Something
indefinite, a lake of emptiness. Something resembling the desire to eat,
perhaps, or the need to fuck, or the longing for sleep that sometimes overtakes
us, since those who work without respite must at least sleep from time to time,
especially in winter, when the temperature falls, as they say the leaves fall
from the trees in the outside world, and our chilled bodies yearn for a warm
corner to share with our kind, a burrow full of hot fur and the familiar
movements and sounds—such as they are, neither coarse nor gracious—of our
everyday nocturnal life, or the life that we call nocturnal for the sake of
convenience.

The difficulty of finding warm places to sleep is one of the main
disadvantages of being a police officer. We generally sleep alone, in makeshift
holes, sometimes in unfamiliar territory, although of course, whenever possible,
we try to find an alternative. Sometimes, but not very often, we curl up in
holes that we share with other police, all eyes shut, ears and noses on alert.
And sometimes we go to the sleeping quarters of those who, for one reason or
another, live along the perimeter. As you would expect, they are quite
unperturbed by our presence. Sometimes we say goodnight before falling exhausted
into a warm and restorative sleep. Sometimes we simply mumble our names; our
hosts know who we are and know they have nothing to fear from us. They treat us
well. They don’t make a fuss or show any sign of joy, but they don’t throw us
out of their burrows. Occasionally someone will say, in a voice still thick with
sleep, Pepe the Cop, and I will reply, Yes, yes, good night. After a few hours,
however, while all the others are still sleeping, I get up and start again,
because police work is never done, and our hours of sleep have to be fitted in
around the incessant demands of the job. Patrolling the sewers is a task that
requires the utmost concentration. Generally we don’t see or meet with anyone;
we can do the rounds of the main and branch sewers, and go into the disused
tunnels originally dug by our people, all without coming across a single living
being.

We do, however, glimpse shadows, and hear noises—objects falling into
the water, distant squeaking. At the begining, when you’re new to the job,
you’re hypersensitive to those noises and you live in a state of perpetual
fright. As time goes by, however, you grow accustomed to them, and although you
try to stay alert, you lose the fear, or build it into the daily routine, which
is the same as losing it, in the end. There are even police officers who have
slept in the dead sewers. I have never met one personally, but the old guys
often tell stories in which an officer, back in the old days, of course,
overtaken by fatigue, would curl up and go to sleep in a dead sewer. How
seriously should we take those stories? I don’t know. No police officer today
would dare to do such a thing. The dead sewers are places that have been
forgotten for one reason or another. When the tunnel-diggers reach a dead sewer,
they block the tunnel. The water in them barely flows at all, so the
putrefaction is almost unbearable. It is safe to say that our people only use
the dead sewers to flee from one zone to another. The quickest way to get into
them is by swimming, but swimming in such places involves greater risks than we
are usually prepared to take.

It was in a dead sewer that my investigation began. A group of our
pioneers who, over time, had multiplied and settled just beyond the perimeter
came and told me that the daughter of one of the older rats had disappeared.
While half the group worked, the other half went looking for this girl, who was
called Elisa, and who, according to her relatives and friends, was very
beautiful and strong, as well as possessing a lively intelligence. I wasn’t sure
exactly what possessing a lively intelligence meant. I associated it vaguely
with cheerfulness, but not curiosity. I was tired that day, and after examining
the area in the company of one of the missing girl’s relatives, I conjectured
that the unfortunate Elisa had been the victim of some predator roaming in the
vicinity of the new colony. I looked for traces of the predator. All I found
were old tracks, which showed that other creatures had passed that way, before
the arrival of our pioneers.

Finally I discovered a trail of fresh blood. I told Elisa’s relative
to go back to the burrow and I continued on my own. The trail of blood was
curious: it kept stopping at the edge of a canal, but then reappearing a few
yards further on (and sometimes
many
yards further), always on the same
side, not the far side, as one might have expected. Whatever had left that trail
clearly wasn’t trying to cross the canal, so why had it kept getting into the
water? In any case, the trail itself was barely detectable, so the precautions
taken by the predator, whatever it was, seemed, at first, to be excessive. After
a while I came to a dead sewer.

I got into the water there, and swam toward a bank of accumulated
rotting trash, and when I reached it I had to climb up a beach of filth. Beyond
the bank, above water level, I could see the thick bars at the top of the
sewer’s entrance. For a moment I was afraid I might find the predator huddled in
some corner, feasting on the body of the hapless Elisa. But I could hear
nothing, so I kept going.

A few minutes later, among cardboard boxes and old food cans, I found
the girl’s body left in one of the few relatively dry parts of the sewer.

Elisa’s neck was torn open. Apart from that, I couldn’t see any other
wound. In one of the cans I found the remains of a baby rat. I examined them:
dead for at least a month. I searched the surroundings but couldn’t detect the
slightest trace of the predator. The baby’s corpse was complete. The only wound
on poor Elisa’s body was the one that had killed her. I began to think that
perhaps it hadn’t been a predator. Then I put the girl on my back and picked up
the baby in my mouth, trying not to damage his skin with my sharp teeth. I
retreated from the dead sewer and returned to the pioneers’ burrow. Elisa’s
mother was large and strong, one of those specimens who can face up to a cat,
but when she saw the body of her daughter, she burst into long sobs that made
her companions blush. I showed them the body of the baby and asked them if they
knew anything about him. No one knew anything, no child had been lost. I said
that I had to take both bodies to the station. I asked for help. The mother
carried Elisa’s body. I carried the baby. When we left, the pioneers returned to
work, digging tunnels, looking for food.