The Secret in Their Eyes (19 page)

He was talking so loudly by the end that the young lovers paused in their conversation and looked at us. Morales fixed his eyes on the tabletop and brought himself under control.

“I don’t know how to help you,” I said. It was the truth. “I sincerely would like to make things easier for you.”

“I know that, Benjamín.”

It was the first time he’d called me by my given name. A few days before, it had been Báez. What strange channels of solidarity did that horrible story open up?

“But you can’t do anything. Thanks all the same.”

“No, don’t thank me. Because I’m serious: I don’t know how to help you.”

Morales shredded the silver paper of the cigarette pack he’d just finished. “Maybe you can on some other occasion. For now, I’ll say good-bye.” He stood up and took a few bills from his pocket to pay for his coffee. Then he held out his hand and said, “Seriously, thank you for everything you’ve done. I’m truly grateful.”

I shook his hand. When he’d left, I sat back down and gazed for a long time at the loving couple, who remained heedless of everything that was not themselves. I envied them profoundly.

F
or whatever reason (and Chaparro has no intention of investigating whether that reason is just an old friendship or something deeper, more encouraging, more personal, and more a great many other things), Irene takes pleasure in his company, and not solely in his descriptions of the fledgling writer’s trials and tribulations. And so, for some reason, they’re face to face again, with her desk between them. For some reason, she’s smiling a smile different from her common, ordinary smiles, which in fact, Chaparro thinks, are never either common or ordinary. But they’re not like this, not like these, which she bestows on him when they’re alone together in her office and evening is coming down.

Because he fears he’s dreaming uselessly again, he gets nervous, looks at his watch, and starts to stand up. Irene proposes another cup of coffee, and he, with the utmost awkwardness, points out that they’ve already drunk all the coffee, that the pot in the electric coffee-maker is empty, and that the machine itself is off. She offers to go into the kitchenette and make some more and he says no, although in the next instant he regrets being
such an imbecile. He could have said, “Sure, thanks, I’ll go to the kitchen with you,” but he didn’t, and he reproaches himself so fervently for missing his cue that he sits down again, as though that might be a method of undoing the gaffe. But then he thinks there may be no harm done; maybe she simply wants more coffee, that’s all, maybe there’s some piece of gossip she wants to pass along, that’s all, because when you consider it, there’s nothing unusual about drinking coffee with a friend and colleague of many years in the court, nothing unusual whatsoever.

But as it happens, they both sit back down, and their conversation revives, a piece of flotsam he can cling to in the midst of all these uncertainties. Without knowing how it happened, Chaparro finds himself remarking to Irene that he spent the other day reading and correcting his drafts; it was raining outside, he tells her, and he was listening to Renaissance music, which he very much enjoys. He stops in embarrassment precisely when he’s on the point of saying, as he looks her straight in the eyes, that the only missing element, the addition he needed to consider himself saved and in a state of perpetual grace, was her, her in the armchair next to his, or maybe reclining and reading at his side, and his hand, his fingertips, gently caressing her head and leaving shallow furrows in her hair. Although he didn’t say that, it’s as if he did, because he knows he’s turned as red as a tomato. And
now she gives him a look, an amused or affectionate or nervous look, and finally she asks him, “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, Benjamín?”

A fainting sensation comes over Chaparro, because he’s just noticed that this woman asks one thing with her lips and another with her eyes. With her lips, she’s asking him to explain why he’s blushing and squirming in his chair and looking up every twelve seconds at the tall pendulum clock that stands against the wall near the bookcases; but with her eyes, besides all that, she’s asking him something else. She’s asking him what’s wrong, what’s wrong with him, with him and her, with him and the two of them, and she seems interested in his answer, she seems eager to know, maybe anxious, and probably undecided as to whether what’s wrong with him is what she supposes is wrong with him. Supposes, or fears, or hopes, Chaparro’s not sure which, because that’s the mystery, the great mystery of the question in her gaze, and Chaparro suddenly panics, he springs to his feet like a maniac and tells her he has to go, it’s getting very late. Surprised, she rises as well—is she surprised and nothing more, or surprised and relieved, or surprised and disappointed?—and Chaparro practically flees down the hall, flees past the tall wooden doors of the other offices, flees across the diagonal checkerboard of black and white floor tiles, and catches his breath again only after climbing into a 115 bus, miraculously
empty at that peak hour of early evening. He goes home to his house in Castelar, where the final chapters of his story are waiting to be written, one way or another, because he’s beginning to find the situation intolerable, not Ricardo Morales’s or Isidoro Gómez’s situation, but his own, which has nearly ruined him, which has bound him to that woman, that woman sent to him from heaven or hell and now lodged inextricably in his heart and his head, that woman who’s still, even at this distance, asking him what’s wrong, with the loveliest eyes in the world.

“O
n July 28, 1976, Sandoval went on a monumental bender that saved my life.” Chaparro rereads the opening sentence of his new chapter and hesitates.
Is that a good way to start this part of the story?
he wonders. He’s not convinced, but he can’t come up with anything better. Of the various objections to the sentence, the strongest concerns precisely the idea he’s trying to convey. Can a single human action—in this case, a monumental drinking binge—be the cause that changes another’s destiny, assuming that such a thing as destiny exists? Besides, what does “saved my life” mean? Chaparro doesn’t like the phrase, which sounds trite to him. And something else: What guarantee is there that what prevented him from returning home on that June night was Sandoval’s drunken rampage and not some other indiscernible series of circumstances?

Be that as it may, the sentence makes a plausible opening and will likely remain. Sandoval was one of the best guys Chaparro ever knew, and he’s pleased to think he didn’t wind up at the bottom of a ditch with two bullet
holes in the back of his neck that night because of Sandoval, even if only because of Sandoval’s weaknesses. And since Chaparro didn’t want to die then, nor does he now, he’ll permit himself to declare unequivocally that Sandoval’s titanic booze-up “saved his life.”

Chaparro finds himself in a predicament similar to the one he was in at the beginning of his novel, when he didn’t know how to start telling his story; now he doesn’t know how to go on. Various images assail him all at once: the spectacle of his trashed apartment; Báez seated across from him in a dive in Rafael Castillo; a shed with a big sliding door standing in the middle of a field; a solitary road at night, illuminated by powerful headlights and seen through the windows of a bus; Sandoval thoroughly destroying a bar on Venezuela Street.

However, he figures his current narrative standstill will be less difficult to resolve than his initial paralysis. After all, he personally lived through the chaos his life turned into, so he doesn’t have to imagine what it might have been like for someone else. And besides, those things didn’t happen to him simultaneously, but successively. They were stunning, in some cases even heartbreaking, but they occurred in a chronological sequence he can hold on to. The best way to continue telling his story, he concludes, is to respect that sequence.

First Sandoval wrecks a bar on Venezuela Street. Then Chaparro finds his apartment in shambles. After that, he talks to Báez in a foul-smelling joint in Rafael Castillo. Then he takes a front seat on a night bus. And later, many years later, he stands before the big sliding door of a shed, in the middle of a field.

On July 28, 1976, Sandoval went on a monumental bender that saved my life.

He’d looked dreadful the entire day. When he arrived at the office, he greeted no one and set immediately to work checking a ballistics report, a triviality he could ordinarily have dispatched in twenty minutes; it took him five hours. At the end of the day, after everyone else in the office had gone home or over to the law school, I tried to engage him in conversation, but it was like talking to a wall. As usual, he spoke only when he felt like it.

Eventually he said, “My aunt Encarnación, my mother’s sister, called me this morning.” Then he paused; his voice was shaking. “She said some men came and took away my cousin Nacho yesterday. They were soldiers, she believes, but she isn’t sure. They kicked down the door in the middle of the night and busted up everything in the place. They were dressed in civilian clothes, she said.”

He fell silent again, but I didn’t say a word. I knew he hadn’t finished.

“The poor old woman asked what could be done. I told her she should come and stay with us, and meanwhile I went with her to the police station to file a complaint.” He lit a cigarette before going on. “What else could I do? What could I tell her?”

“You did right, Pablo,” I ventured to assure him.

“I don’t know.” He hesitated again. “I felt like I was deceiving her. Maybe I should have told her the truth.”

“You did right, Pablo,” I repeated. “If you tell her the truth, you’ll kill her.”

The truth. It can be so fucked up sometimes, the truth. Sandoval and I had a long conversation about the whole problem of political violence and repression, which had grown especially acute since Perón’s death. Currently, fewer bodies were being dumped in empty lots; the murderers had evidently perfected their methods. As workers in the criminal justice system, we were too far removed from the things that were happening to know details, but sufficiently close to guess them. You didn’t have to be a fortune-teller. Every day, we saw people being arrested or heard news of other arrests. However, the people taken into custody were never put in jail, never brought before a judge, never remanded to Devoto or Caseros.

“I don’t know. She has to find out sooner or later.”

I tried to recall Nacho’s appearance. I’d seen him a few times when he visited the court, but his features escaped my efforts to bring them into focus.

“I’m leaving,” Sandoval said, suddenly getting to his feet. He put on his jacket and headed for the door. “See you later.”

Oh, fuck,
I thought.
Here we go again.
I opened the window and waited. Although several minutes passed, I didn’t see him cross Tucumán in the direction of Viamonte Street. I felt a little guilty. I remembered something I’d read: “Flooding in India leaves forty thousand dead, but as I don’t know them, I’m more concerned for the health of my uncle, who suffered a heart attack.” Somewhere in a military barracks or police station, Nacho was being tortured with cattle prods and beaten to a pulp, but I wasn’t as distressed on his account as I was for his cousin Pablo, my friend, who had gone off to drink himself into a coma.

Was I selfish and unfeeling, or were we all? I consoled myself by thinking that I could do something for Sandoval, even though there was nothing I could do for his cousin Nacho. I wonder if I was right. Anyway, I decided to give my colleague the usual head start: I’d go looking for him in three hours. I sat down to correct an order of preventive detention. On second thought, two hours seemed better. Three might be too many.

As I was going down the steps to Talcahuano Street, I hesitated for a moment. I was carrying a good bit of money in my pocket, because I’d planned to pay the final installment on my apartment after work that evening—the notary’s office stayed open late—but out of fear that the detour would take too long and I wouldn’t be able to find Sandoval, I decided I’d look for my friend and postpone my payment until another day. I patted my jacket to make sure the money was snug in the inside pocket and flagged down a cab. We drove up and down Paseo Colón, but I couldn’t locate Sandoval. The taxi driver, who seemed to be in a good mood, offered me a long, off-the-cuff disquisition on the simplest and most expeditious way to solve the country’s problems. If I’d been less worried and less focused on finding the bar Sandoval was in, maybe I would have asked the cabbie for some clarification of the logic linking such assertions as “The military knows what it’s doing,” “Nobody here wants to work,” “They should all be killed,” and “The River Plate club under Labruna is the example to follow.”

I had the driver cruise the side streets and eventually found Sandoval in an extremely nasty bar on Venezuela Street. I paid my fare, handing the money to the enlightened analyst of our national condition and waiting for him to give me change. Somewhat annoyed by my stinginess, he began to dig around in one of his pockets, and while he did so, I savored a tiny taste of revenge. By this point, I was no longer in a hurry. There was little chance that Sandoval would stand for being hauled out of the ugly little tavern before eleven o’clock, and now it wasn’t much past nine.

I sat across from him and ordered a Coca-Cola. The barman offered a Pepsi instead, and I accepted. I’d never seen Sandoval drink like that. It was genuinely frightening, though at the same time, you had to admire his staying power. Evenly, without excessive gestures, he’d lift a full glass to his lips and empty it in one or two swallows. Then he’d stare into the space in front of him and feel the hot liquid as it made its way down to his guts. A few minutes later, he’d fill the glass again.

It was almost midnight, and thus far I hadn’t succeeded in getting Sandoval out of his seat, although I must confess that I hadn’t tried very hard. From experience, I knew he’d go through an initial stage of drunkenness in which he’d become irritable, fiercely concentrated on his own thoughts, and then he’d reach a second level, more placid and relaxed. That would be
the moment for me to carry him off, but on this particular evening, the transition to the second stage was a long time in coming. I got up and went to the men’s room. While I was standing in front of the urinal emptying my bladder, I heard a crash of broken glass, followed by a series of shouts and the sounds of running feet on the wooden floor.

I dashed out of the bathroom, nearly wetting myself in the process. At that hour, fortunately, there was no one left in the place but three or four regulars, who were looking on with more interest than fear. Sandoval was brandishing a chair in his right hand. The owner of the establishment, a short, powerfully built guy, had come out from behind the bar and was stalking Sandoval. Probably because he was afraid of getting whacked with the chair, the bar owner maintained a certain distance between him and his drunken customer. Behind the bar, I could see the broken mirror, the broken bottles, and shards of glass scattered on all sides.

“Pablo!” I called to him.

He didn’t even look at me. He remained focused on the barman’s movements. Nobody spoke, as if the duel the two were engaged in had roots too deep to be reached by words. Suddenly, without further preliminaries, Sandoval’s right arm moved in a wide semicircle and he hurled the chair at one of the windows that looked out on the street. There was another enormous crash, more
running feet, more shouted insults. At this point, the bar owner stopped hesitating. It seemed to him that his drunken enemy, now disarmed, would be easy to subdue, and so he tried to rush him. He didn’t know (as I did) that Sandoval’s reflexes were not so easily dulled, despite his bloated appearance, or that he’d practiced boxing at a gym in Palermo ever since he was a kid. And so, when the proprietor of the bar got within his range, Sandoval caught him with a left hook to the jaw that flung him backward and left him sprawled on one of the empty tables. “Sandoval!” I screamed.

Things were moving from bad to worse. He looked at me. Was he trying to place me in the strange and belligerent context he’d created? He picked up another chair and walked a few steps in my direction.
That’s it,
I thought.
Just what I need to crown the evening: an all-out brawl with my assistant in a lowlife dive on Venezuela Street.
But Sandoval had other plans. With his free hand, he gestured to me to get out of his way. I stepped aside. The chair passed before my eyes at a respectable height and velocity and smashed into a glass sign advertising a brand of whiskey: a mature-looking gentleman sat in an armchair in front of a chimney fire and sipped the liquor from an elegant little glass. We’d seen a sign like that before, in some other bar in the area, and it was a piece of advertising that Sandoval detested, as he himself had informed me in the course of a previous bender.

With this final chair attack, which Sandoval probably considered an act of justice, his destructive impulses seemed to have been exhausted. The bar owner must have made the same assumption, because he jumped on him from behind and both of them fell to the floor and started rolling among the tables and chairs. I went to separate them and, as is the usual outcome in such cases, received several blows myself. I wound up sitting on the floor, clutching Sandoval against my body and shouting to the barman to calm down; I’d make sure my friend kept still, I said.

“We’ll see about that,” the fellow said at last, getting to his feet.

His cold, menacing tone of voice scared me. He went over to the cash register. I figured he’d pull out a pistol and start shooting at us, but I was mistaken. What he pulled out was a telephone token; he was going to call the police. The two or three remaining customers, who hadn’t deemed it necessary to intervene, realized his intention and left the place in haste. I looked around. Was it possible that there was a public telephone in this hole in the wall? There was not. The proprietor of the little bar gave us a series of murderous looks as he headed for the door. The last thing we needed that night was to end up in the slammer. I stood up. Sandoval looked like a man unaware of his surroundings. I went out after the bar owner, who was walking toward the Bajo. I called to
him. Only after my third try did he turn around and agree to wait for me to catch up. I told him there was no need to call the cops; I’d take care of everything. He gave me a skeptical look, for which he had his reasons. The broken storefront window must have been worth a healthy sum, and I seemed to recall a number of splintered tables and chairs, not counting those that Sandoval had turned into missiles. I insisted, and the owner finally agreed to return to the bar. We walked back in silence. When we arrived, I couldn’t fail to understand why the guy was mad. His front window was lying in pieces on the sidewalk, and inside, signs of damage were visible everywhere.

He spread his arms and looked at me as though asking for an explanation, or as if he’d changed his mind and now considered his recent indulgence excessive and unwarranted.

“How much will it cost to repair all this?” My question lacked conviction and emphasis, as he must have noticed.

“Well … a whole lot. Just look around.”

I’ve never been any good at bargaining. I go from feeling like a sadistic exploiter to feeling like a dimwitted sucker, and vice versa. And that situation—with Sandoval sitting on the floor in front of the bar, leaning back against it and calmly drinking from a bottle of whiskey
(he’d somehow managed to get his hands on an intact survivor of the recent disaster), and with the bar owner clinging to the possibility of calling the police like an ace up his sleeve—absolutely surpassed anything I might have imagined.

He named a ridiculously high figure, practically enough to renovate his nasty little dive from the foundations up. I told him I wasn’t close to disposing of that kind of capital. He answered that he couldn’t accept so much as a peso less. A relatively smaller figure crossed my mind: the sum of the roll of banknotes I still had in my inside pocket. In my deluded state, I’d thought the roll represented the cancellation of my mortgage debt, but now, trying to sound final, I offered the sum to him.

“All right,” he said, giving in. “But pay me now.”

He must have doubted that a guy like me, a guy who went around playing guardian angel to a hopeless drunk, could be carrying that amount of cash. I held it out to him. He counted the bills and seemed to grow calm. “Help me put things back in some order. If I leave the place this way, I’ll have to spend tomorrow cleaning up, and I’ll lose the whole day.”

I agreed. We shifted Sandoval off to one side so he wouldn’t be in the way, swept up the broken glass, stowed the broken tables and chairs in a little storeroom located on the far side of a filthy patio, and redistributed the
undamaged furniture. Not counting the mirror and the window, I believe the bar owner came out ahead. After all, that glass advertising sign for whiskey had been an appalling thing to look at. You could almost say Sandoval had been right to pulverize it.