The Secret In Their Eyes Part 1

The Secret in Their Eyes.

A NOVEL.

EDUARDO SACHERI.

To my grandmother Nelly for teaching me how valuable it is to preserve and share memories.

Retirement Party.

Benjamin Miguel Chaparro stops short and decides he's not going. He's not going, period. To h.e.l.l with all of them. Even though he's promised to be there, and even though they've been planning the party for three weeks, and even though they've reserved a table for twenty-two at El Candil, and even though Benitez and Machado have announced their willingness to come from the ends of the earth to celebrate the dinosaur's retirement.

He halts so suddenly that the man walking behind him on Talcahuano toward Corrientes barely manages to avoid a collision, dodging past with one foot on the sidewalk and one on the street. Chaparro hates these narrow, noisy, light-deprived sidewalks. He's walked on them for forty years, but he knows he's not going to miss them after Monday. Not the sidewalks and not a great many other things in this city, where he's never felt at home.

He can't disappoint his colleagues. He must go, if only because Machado is coming all the way from Lomas de Zamora just for the occasion, despite his bad health and advanced age. And Benitez likewise. It's not a terribly long way from the Palermo neighborhood to Tribunales, but the fact is that the poor old guy's pretty much a wreck. Nevertheless, Chaparro doesn't want to go. He's sure about very few things, but this is one of them.

He looks at himself in the window of a bookstore. Sixty years old. Tall. Gray-haired. Aquiline nose, thin face. "s.h.i.+t," he feels obliged to conclude. He scrutinizes the reflection of his eyes in the gla.s.s. A girlfriend he had when he was young used to make fun of his compulsive way of looking at himself in shop windows. Chaparro never confessed the truth, neither to her nor to any of the other women who pa.s.sed through his life: his habit of gazing at his own reflection has nothing to do with self-love or self-admiration; it's never been anything but another attempt to figure out who the h.e.l.l he is.

Thinking about that makes him even sadder. He sets out again, as if motion could save him from being p.r.i.c.ked by the barbs of this new, additional sadness. From time to time, walking without haste on that sidewalk forever untouched by the afternoon sun, he checks himself in the shop windows. Now he sees the sign for El Candil, up there on the left, across the street and thirty meters on. He looks at his watch: 1:58. Almost all of them must be there by now. He himself sent off the people in his department at 1:20 so they wouldn't have to run. The coming court session doesn't begin until next month, and they've already closed and archived the cases from the previous session. Chaparro is satisfied. They're good kids. They work hard and learn quickly. The next thought in the sequence is I'm going to miss them, and as Chaparro refuses to squelch around in nostalgia, he comes to a stop again. This time, there's no one behind to crash into him, and the people coming his way are able to navigate around the tall man in the blue blazer and gray trousers who's now looking at himself in the window of a lottery office.

He turns around. He's not going. He's definitely not going. Maybe, if he hurries, he can catch the judge before she leaves for the restaurant, because he knows she stayed behind to finish an order for someone's release from preventive detention. It's not the first time the idea has occurred to him, but it is the first time he's summoned the modic.u.m of courage needed to act on the idea. Or maybe it's just that the other prospect-the prospect of attending his own retirement luncheon-corresponds to his notion of h.e.l.l, and he wants to avoid infernal torments. Him, sitting at the head of the table? With Benitez and Machado beside him, forming a trio of venerable mummies? Listening to that pathetic de alvarez pose his traditional question-"Let's do it Roman style, all right?"-so that he can spread around the cost of some high-end wine and knock back most of it himself? Or Laura, asking everybody in sight to split a portion of cannelloni with her so she won't stray too far from the diet she just started last Monday? Or Varela, meticulously descending into his trademark alcoholic melancholy, which will move him to tears as he embraces friends, acquaintances, and waiters? These nightmarish images make Chaparro increase his pace. He goes up the courthouse steps from Talcahuano Street. They haven't closed the main door yet. He jumps into the first available elevator. There's no need for him to tell the operator he's going to the fifth floor; in the Palace of Justice, the very stones know him.

With resolute steps, the soles of his tan loafers resounding on the black and white floor tiles, he walks along the corridor parallel to Tuc.u.man Street until he stands before the tall, narrow door of his court. He hesitates mentally over the possessive "his." Yes, why not? It's his, it belongs to him much more than to Garcia, the clerk, or to any of the other clerks who preceded Garcia, or to any of those who'll succeed him.

While he's busy with the lock, his immense bundle of keys jingles in the empty corridor. He closes the door behind him rather forcefully, letting the judge know that someone has come in. Wait a minute: Why "the judge"? Because she's a judge, sure, but why not "Irene"? Well, just because. He's got enough with asking for what he's going to ask for without the extra burden of knowing that he must address his request to Irene and not simply to Judge Hornos.

He knocks softly twice and hears her say, "Come in." When he steps into her office, she's surprised, and she asks him, "What are you doing here?" and "Why aren't you at the restaurant already?" In posing these questions, she uses the familiar tu form-or, to be more precise, since they're in Buenos Aires, the familiar vos form-but Chaparro wants to avoid getting bogged down in forms of address, because those, too, can be a source of confusion, liable to sabotage his clear intention to make the request he decided to make outside on Talcahuano Street, not far from Corrientes Avenue. And it's disheartening that this woman's presence throws him into such turmoil, but in a spasm of self-discipline, Chaparro concludes that there's nothing for it, that he absolutely, definitely, totally, must cut short the process of psyching himself up, stop s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around, and make, once and for all, the request he's come to make. "The typewriter," he says, blurting it out with no preamble. Brute, wretch, oaf. No subtle lead-ups. Nothing like You know what, Irene, I was thinking that maybe, that in one of those, that it could be that, or what would you say if, or any other colloquial formula that might serve to avoid precisely the look Chaparro sees on Irene's face, or the judge's, or Her Honor's, that perplexity, that uncomprehending speechlessness caused by surprise at his abrupt manner.

Chaparro realizes he's put his foot in it, not for the first time. He backs up to the beginning and tries to respond to the question madam asked him in the first place, the one about the retirement luncheon, at which, considering what time it is, they must be paying tribute to him right now. He tells her he's afraid of getting maudlin and nostalgic, afraid he'll wind up talking about the same old things with the same old people and dissolving into pathetic melancholy, and since he looks into her eyes as he tells her all that, there comes a moment when he starts to feel his stomach sinking toward his intestines and a cold sweat breaking out on his skin and his heart turning into a snare drum. Because this emotion is very deep, very old, and very useless, Chaparro dashes back into the outer office to close the window, thus peeling himself away, as best he can, from those dark brown eyes. However, the window is already closed, so he decides to open it, but then a blast of cold air makes him decide to close it again. In the end, he has no alternative but to return to Irene's office, prudently remaining on his feet in order to avoid any obligation to look at her directly as she sits at her desk with the file open in front of her. She follows his movements, his looks, and the inflections of his voice with the same very attentive attention she's always given him. Chaparro shuts up for a while, knowing that if he keeps on going down that path he'll end up saying irreparable things, and then, just in time, he returns to the subject of the typewriter.

Although he has no idea what he's going to do from now on, he tells her, he'd love to take a stab at his old project of writing a book. As he speaks the words, he feels like a fool. An old man, twice divorced, now retired, and he thinks he'll be a writer. The post-retirement Hemingway. The Garcia Marquez of Buenos Aires's western suburbs. To make matters worse, Irene's-or, preferably, the judge's-eyes sparkle with sudden interest. But he's already gone too far to turn back, and therefore he expatiates a little on his desire to try writing, it's something he's wanted to do forever, and now he'll have more time, so maybe, why not. And this is where the typewriter comes in. Chaparro feels more comfortable, because here he's treading on firmer ground.

"As you can guess, Irene, at my age I'm not going to learn how to use a computer, you know? And I've got that Remington in my fingers like a fourth phalange." (Fourth phalange? Where does such idiocy come from?) "I know it looks like a tank, and it's got that minuscule ribbon, and it's olive green, and it makes a sound like artillery fire every time you hit a key, so I'm taking a chance and hoping no one will need it, and naturally it would only be a loan, absolutely, a couple of months, three at the most, because believe me, I'm not up to writing a very long book, as you may imagine" (and there he is again, doing his self-deprecation number).

"And besides, all the new kids use computers, and there are three other old typewriters stored on the top shelf, and if you need it, you can always let me know and I'll bring it back here," Chaparro declares, and he's not through.

But he stops talking when she raises a hand and says, "Don't worry about it, Benjamin. Just take it, it won't be a problem. It's the least I can do for you."

Chaparro swallows hard, because that "you" at the end, the vos reserved for family and friends, sounds very familiar and friendly indeed, and then there's the tone she's using, the one she uses on certain occasions, occasions that have been engraved, one by one, in his memory, bright feverish slashes in the monotonous horizon of his solitude, despite the fact that he's dedicated almost as many nights to forgetting them, or trying to forget them, as he has to remembering them, and therefore he finally gets to his feet, thanks her, gives her his hand, accepts the fragrant cheek she offers him, closes his eyes while he grazes her skin with his lips, as he always does when he has a chance to kiss her-with his eyes closed, he can concentrate better on the innocent, guilty contact-practically runs into the small adjacent office, picks up the typewriter with two rapid movements, and escapes through the tall, narrow door without looking back.

He retraces his steps along the corridor, which is even emptier now than it was twenty minutes ago, takes elevator number eight to the main floor, goes down the hall toward Talcahuano, exits by the side door with a nod to the guards, walks up to Tuc.u.man Street, crosses it, waits five minutes, and climbs, as best he can, onto the 115 bus.

When the bus turns the corner at Lavalle, Chaparro twists his head around to the left, but of course at this distance he can't see the sign for El Candil. By now, Irene-or rather, the judge-must be walking to the restaurant, where she'll explain to the others that the guest of honor has skipped out. It won't be so bad-they're all gathered together, and they're hungry.

He pats his rear trouser pocket, pulls out his wallet, and puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He's never had his pocket picked in his entire forty-year career, and he has no intention of being ripped off for the first time on his last day in Tribunales. Walking as fast as he can, he reaches the Once railroad station. The next train is leaving on Track 3, bound for Moreno and making all stops in between. In the train's last three cars, the ones closest to the platform entrance, all the seats are occupied, but from the fourth car on, Chaparro finds many available places. He wonders, as he always does, if the pa.s.sengers standing in the crowded rear cars choose those spots because they're getting off soon, because they've been sitting all day and want to stretch their legs, or because they're stupid. Whatever their reasons, he's grateful. He wants to sit in a window seat on the left-hand side, where the afternoon sun won't bother him, and think about what the h.e.l.l he's going to do with the rest of his life.

1.

I'm not sure about my reasons for recounting the story of Ricardo Morales after so many years. I can say that what happened to him has always aroused an obscure fascination in me; perhaps the man's fate, a life destroyed by tragedy and grief, provided me with a chance to reflect on my own worst fears. I've often caught myself feeling a certain guilty joy at the disasters of others, as if the fact that horrible things happened to other people meant that my own life would be exempt from such tragedies, as if I'd get a kind of safe-conduct based on some obtuse law of probability: If such and such a catastrophe befalls Joe Blow, then it's unlikely that it will also strike Joe's acquaintances, among whom I count myself. It's not as though I can boast of a life filled with success, but when I compare my misfortunes with what Morales suffered, I come out well ahead. In any case, it's not my story I want to tell, it's Morales's story, or Isidoro Gomez's, which is the same story but seen from the other side, or seen upside down, or something like that.

Although the morbid interest my subject arouses in me isn't the only reason why I'm writing these pages, it carries some weight and plays some part. But mostly, I suppose, I'm telling the story because I have time to tell it. A lot of time, too much time, so much time that the daily trifles whose sum is my life quickly dissolve into the monotonous nothingness that surrounds me. Being retired is worse than I'd imagined. I should have known it would be. Not because of anything I knew about retirement, but because things we fear generally turn out worse when they happen than when we imagined them. For years, I saw my older colleagues in the court bid farewell to their working days in the naive expectation of enjoying their newfound leisure. I saw them depart in triumph, each of them convinced that retirement would be the closest thing to paradise on earth. But disappointment would make quick work of them, and it wasn't long before I saw them return in defeat. In two weeks, in three at the most, they had exhausted all the supposed pleasures they thought they'd been postponing during their years of routine and work. And for what? To drop by the court of an afternoon, as if by accident, just to chat or drink some coffee or even lend a hand with some moderately complicated case.

Because of that, because of the many, many times I'd found myself face to face with one of those guys whose retirement years were empty and therefore wretched, because of the many, many occasions when I'd looked into eyes imploring an impossible rescue, I swore a vow never to fall so low when my turn came. There would be no useless time-wasting for me, no nostalgic visits to see how the kids in the office are doing, no pathetic spectacles put on to extract a few seconds' worth of compa.s.sion from fortunate people still able to function.

So now I've been retired for two weeks, and I've already got time on my hands. It's not that I can't think of anything to do. I can think of a lot of things, but they all seem useless. Maybe the least useless is this one. For a few months, I can pretend to be a writer, as Silvia used to say when she still loved me. Actually, I'm mixing up two different periods and two distinct modes of address. When she still loved me, she'd talk confidently of my future as a writer, most probably a famous one. Later, when her love had wilted and died in the tedium of our marriage, she would say I just pretended to be a writer, and she'd say it with scathing contempt, speaking from the tower of irony she'd chosen to occupy, a fortification from which she liked to fire missiles at me. I can't complain, because I'm sure I said equally evil things to her. How terrible that after ten years of marriage, what chiefly remains is the shameful inventory of the harm we did to each other. But at least it was possible to quarrel with Silvia. My first wife Marcela and I couldn't even talk about my writing ambitions, or-come to think of it-about anything else. It hardly seems possible that I shared such large chunks of my life with two women of whom I retain, not without difficulty, a handful of hazy memories. Then again, my blurry recollection is yet more proof (as if more were needed) that I'm getting old. I've survived two marriages just to find myself facing a good stretch of time alone, roaming the arid plateau of bachelorhood. Life is long, all things considered.

Anyway, I was never that serious about being a writer. Not when Silvia spoke the word admiringly, and not later, when she spat it at me sarcastically. I did have dreams (some dreams impose themselves on even the most skeptical hearts) that featured idyllic scenes of the writer at work in his study, preferably in front of a large window with a view of the sea, preferably in a dwelling built high on a rocky outcrop buffeted by wind and rain.

Evidently, the habit doesn't make the monk, because even though I've transformed my living room into a prototypical working writer's sanctuary-I'm sure there's a better way of saying that-it hasn't yet done the trick. I can affirm, however, that I've made things quite pleasant in here. Of course, I don't have the sea and the storms, but I've got a well-ordered desk: on one side, a ream of typing paper, blank, almost new; on the other side, a notebook that contains no notes; in the center, the typewriter, an imposing olive-green Remington barely smaller than a tank and made of equally thick steel, or so my colleagues in the court used to joke, years ago.

I step over to the window. It overlooks, as I've said, no stormy sea, but rather a tidy little yard, twelve by fifteen feet. I gaze out at the street. As usual, there's not a soul in sight. Thirty years ago, these empty streets were full of people, young and old, but now the young people have gone away, and the old ones have gone inside. Like me. It may sound funny, but maybe there are several of us; our desks are thoroughly prepared, and we're going to write a novel.

Deep down inside, I suspect that this page, which I'm resolutely filling with words, is going to wind up like its nineteen predecessors, crumpled into a ball and thrown into the opposite corner of the room, where there's a wicker umbrella stand I inherited from I no longer know whom. After every false start, I yield to a lingering athletic impulse and try to toss my wadded rejections into that stand, with an elegant flick of the wrist and indifferent success. I get so excited when I score, and the small frustrations of my missed attempts increase my determination to such a degree, that I'm almost more interested in my next shot than in the remote possibility that this will be the page on which the story I allegedly intend to tell will at last begin. Sixty years old, and I'm clearly as far from being a writer as I am from playing basketball again.

For the past several days, I've sought to resolve certain questions crucial to my project. My plan was to start the actual writing only after I found the answers, because I dreaded the exact situation I now find myself in: sitting in front of the typewriter and chasing my tail while the last vestiges of my resolve evaporate. Early on, I realized that I don't have enough imagination to write a novel. My solution was to write without inventing anything, that is, to narrate a true story, to give an account of events to which I had been, although indirectly, a witness. And so I decided to tell the story of Ricardo Morales. I made this decision because of the reasons I gave at the beginning, because it's a story that needs no additions from me, and because, since I know it's true, I may dare to recount it all the way to the end. I won't have to incur the shame of telling lies in order to fill in gaps or enhance the plot or persuade the reader not to chuck the book away after fifteen pages.

Having decided on a subject, I consider the first practical difficulty: What grammatical person am I going to write this thing in? When speaking of myself, should I say "I," or should I say "Chaparro"? It makes me gloomy to think that this single obstacle suffices to dampen all my literary enthusiasm. What if I choose to tell my story in the third person? Maybe that would be the best choice, as I wouldn't be tempted to make use of excessively personal impressions and experiences. I'm quite clear about that. I'm not trying to reach or provoke any kind of catharsis with this book, or (to be more exact) with this embryo of a book; nevertheless, the first person feels more comfortable. That's because I'm inexperienced, I suppose, but in any case, it feels more comfortable. And what do I do about the parts of the story I didn't witness directly, those parts I can intuit, even though I have no certain knowledge of them? Do I include them in the story, just like the parts I know about for sure? Do I make them up from A to Z? Do I ignore them?

Let's simplify things and go step by step. I'll begin in the first person. That's hard enough; I don't need to go looking for more difficulties. And it will be better to tell what I know or presume to be true; otherwise, no one's going to understand a f.u.c.king thing, including me. Another problem is my vocabulary; the word "f.u.c.king" jumps out of that last sentence like a neon light surrounded by darkness. Should I use everyday coa.r.s.eness and crudeness? Should I eliminate such expressions from my written language? Ah, f.u.c.k it, too many questions-and there I go again. The only logical conclusion I can reach is that I've got a foul mouth.

And here's something even worse: I'm going to write Morales's story, that's clear, but it means I have to begin at the beginning. And which beginning would that be? Although I think my narrative skills are pretty pedestrian, I've got enough discernment to see that the old "Once upon a time" formula isn't going to work here. So what am I to do? Where's the beginning? It's not that this story doesn't have a beginning. The problem is that it has four or five possible beginnings, all of them distinct from one another. A young man kisses his wife good-bye at the door of their apartment, walks with her down the hall, kisses her again, and steps out into the street, on his way to work. Or two guys, dozing at a desk, jump at the sudden, strident ringing of a telephone. Or a young woman who's just been awarded her school teaching degree poses for a group photo with other graduates. Or a judicial employee, namely me, thirty years after all those possible beginnings, receives a handwritten letter from an unlikely correspondent.

Which of these scenes am I going to use? All of them, probably; I'll pick one to start with and insert the rest in the order that seems least risky, or maybe just as I go along. I've already dedicated several afternoons to this endeavor, but the prospect of failure no longer seems so devastating. After all, the more pages I reject, the more my long-range shot will improve.

2.

May 30, 1968, was the last time Ricardo Agustin Morales had breakfast with Liliana Colotto, and for the rest of his life he'd remember not only what their talk was about but also what they drank, what they ate, the color of her nightgown, and the lovely effect produced by a ray of sunlight that lit up her left cheek as she sat there in the kitchen. The first time Morales told me this, I a.s.sumed he was exaggerating, because I didn't think he could really remember so many details. But I was wrong; I didn't know him well enough yet, and I misjudged him. I didn't yet know that Morales, who had the face of a confirmed idiot, was a man endowed with intelligence, memory, and a power of observation the likes of which I'd never encountered in my life before and would not encounter again. Morales's faithful memory had a single focus: the guy remembered with an equal abundance of detail anything and everything that had to do with his wife.

Later, when Morales consented to talk to me about himself, I listened as he described what he once was: a bland, colorless fellow destined for a bland, colorless life. He showed no compa.s.sion for that fellow, identifying his former self as the kind of guy who pa.s.ses through family, schools, and jobs without leaving any trace in the consciousnesses of those around him. He'd never had anything special, nor anything good, and he'd always found that perfectly fair. And then he'd met Liliana, who was, to an enormous degree, both special and good. That was the reason why he remembered that morning so well, not because it was their last. He kept it in his memory just as he'd kept all the other mornings in the little over a year that had pa.s.sed since their wedding. Afterward, when Morales described to me, in meticulous detail, everything that had happened at that last breakfast with Liliana, he didn't go about it the way an ordinary person would. In general, people cobble together memories of their experiences from the hazy vestiges that have remained in their minds, or from fragments recalled from other, similar experiences, and with those vestiges and fragments they try to reconstruct circ.u.mstances or feelings they've lost forever. Not Morales. Because he felt that Liliana gave him happiness he wasn't ent.i.tled to, happiness that had nothing to do with his life before he met her, and because the cosmos tends toward equilibrium, he knew he'd have to lose her sooner or later so that things could return to their proper order. All his memories of her were tinged with that sense of imminent disaster, of a catastrophe lying in wait around the corner.

He'd never stood out for any reason whatsoever. At school, in sports, and even within his family, he'd earned nothing but occasional words of praise for qualities that were basically trivial. But on November 16, 1966, he'd met Liliana, and that meeting had sufficed to change him and his life. With her, through her, thanks to her, he'd become different. When he first saw her coming through the bank's revolving door, while he watched her ask the guard which window to use to make a deposit, and as she approached Number Four with short, firm steps, Morales had known that life would never be the same again. Clinging to the desperate certainty that his fate was in this woman's hands, he'd dared to suppress his shyness, drawing her into conversation as he counted her money, smiling at her with his entire face, looking into her eyes and withstanding her gaze, and hoping aloud that she'd come back soon. After she left, he'd quickly checked the records to verify the name of the company whose account she'd deposited money into, and he'd even gone so far as to phone the company with some invented excuse in order to obtain a few details about the young woman.

Some time later, after they were officially engaged, Liliana had confessed to him that she'd liked his boldness, the methodical audacity of his pursuit, his refusal to take no for an answer, and that those were the reasons she'd finally decided to accept his invitations. When she got to know him better, she said, when she'd come to know his essential shyness, his lack of confidence, his eternal shame, she'd arrived at a deeper understanding of how much courage it had taken for him to pursue her, and she considered that courage the best proof of his true love. Liliana said that a man capable of changing the way he is for the love of a woman is a man who deserves to have his love returned. Ricardo Morales didn't forget this conversation, either, and he decided to stay that way forever and for her. He'd never felt himself worthy of anything, much less of such a woman. But he knew that he was going to make the most of the situation, for as long as he could-until midnight should come, and the spell would be broken, and everything would turn back into mice and rats and pumpkins.

For all these reasons, Morales would always remember that on May 30, 1968, Liliana was wearing a sea-green nightgown, and that she'd gathered up her hair into a simple bun, from which a few dark brown strands had escaped. He remembered that a sunbeam had entered the kitchen window obliquely and lighted up her left cheek with a glow that made her even more beautiful, and that they'd drunk tea with milk, and that they'd eaten b.u.t.tered toast, and that they'd talked about which pieces of furniture should stay in the living room, and that he'd risen from the kitchen table and gone into the dining room to fetch the plans he'd been drawing up for arranging the furniture in the most harmonious way possible, and that she'd laughed at his mania for drawing up plans for everything, and that she'd looked deep into his eyes and smiled and said he shouldn't spend so much effort on their old furniture, poor thing, because sooner or later they'd have to convert the living room into a bedroom anyway, and that he, slow and distracted or rather beclouded in his adoration for this woman who'd come to him from another galaxy, hadn't understood her allusion but had nevertheless managed to slip his arm around her waist and walk down the hall with her to the street door and kiss her slowly on the threshold and step out, waving his hand in good-bye, not knowing that it was forever.

Cinema.

With several strokes of the carriage return lever, Benjamin Chaparro ratchets up the typed sheet and frees it from the typewriter. He takes the page by its edges, holding it with his fingertips as if it were a live hand grenade, and lays it on top of the sixteen or seventeen others that have likewise escaped being balled up and thrown at the umbrella stand. He's mildly thrilled to notice that the typed pages have already attained a minimal thickness and become something of a stack.

He gets to his feet, satisfied with himself. Two days previously, he was in despair, confounded in his search for a beginning and overwhelmed by the certainty that he'd never be able to write his book. And now, that beginning has been written. Well or badly, but written. The thought contents him, even though he remains anxious. He's anxious about how to continue, how to recount what happened to those people. He wonders if that's the feeling writers have when they tell a story, a certain sense of omnipotence as they play with their characters' lives. He's not sure, but if that really is how it feels, he likes it.

He consults his watch and sees that it's seven o'clock in the evening. His back hurts. He's been sitting at his desk almost the whole day. He decides to reward himself for his initial progress with a bit of a celebration. He finds his wallet on a shelf, determines that he's got enough money, and goes to see a movie. What he most enjoys about moviegoing isn't so much the pleasure of seeing one film or another as it is the knowledge that he'll talk to Irene about it the next time he's with her. He'll refer to the movie by the way, in pa.s.sing, as though reluctantly, and she'll ask him questions about it. They like talking about movies. They have similar tastes. And something tells Chaparro that Irene would like it if they could go to a film together. They can't, obviously. It wouldn't be right. And maybe it's all in his head, anyway. Where did it come from, this idea that she'd like to see a film with him? From his wish that she would. Does he have any reason to be sure she would? No. None. Never.

3.

When the telephone in the judge's chambers rang at five minutes past eight in the morning of May 30, 1968, I was so deeply asleep that I incorporated the sound into the dream I was having, and only at the fifth or sixth ring did I manage to open my eyes. I didn't pick up the receiver right away, as my entrance into the waking state was traumatic enough without the added strain of carrying on a telephone conversation.

Besides, I was quickly distracted by Pedro Romano, who began leaping and whooping all around me. The said Pedro was celebrating, and with a certain perverse logic I accepted my role in his celebration, miming annoyance and rubbing my eyes before answering the phone. We'd spent the night there, in the judge's office, sometimes sprawled in the big, dark, leather armchairs, sometimes dozing at the desk, faces down, heads on arms. When he started jumping around, Romano kicked the tray with the dinner dishes, and one of the cups we'd used bounced off the tray and rolled to the foot of the bookcase. Before answering the phone, I hesitated for a few more seconds, which I spent hurling mental insults at our jacka.s.s of a judge, because he insisted on making us man the office all night during the fifteen days when his court was in session. One week fell to Romano's section and the other to mine, but what to do about the problem of the fifteenth day? Judge Fortuna Lacalle, the dumb p.r.i.c.k, had reached a Solomonic decision: he would f.u.c.k up both our lives. Each case was a.s.signed to one of our court's two sections according to the police precinct where the case originated, except when serious crimes-namely homicides-were involved. Those were the responsibility of the section on call, but on the fifteenth day, serious cases were a.s.signed to the sections based on the time when the first police notification came in. Romano was raising his arms in victory and shouting, "Eight-oh-five, Chaparrito, eight-oh-five!" because if the telephone in the examining magistrate's office was ringing at that hour, it couldn't be for any reason other than to report a homicide, and what Romano was celebrating was simply the fact that it was after eight o'clock, and so, since the odd hours were his and the even hours mine, he'd avoided taking on a complicated, laborious investigation by five short minutes.

Now that I think about it, and now that I'm writing it down, I can see how profoundly cynical our att.i.tude was. You would have thought we were in some kind of athletic contest. Not for a moment did we stop and think that if that telephone was ringing, whether five minutes before or five minutes after eight, it was because someone had just killed someone else. For us, it was simply a matter of office compet.i.tion, and the loser had to bust his b.u.t.t. We'd see which of us was the lucky one, which of us was cool. As things turned out, it was Romano. And although in those days I hadn't yet come to loathe him-a period of time, not very long, was to pa.s.s before he started showing me what a despicable creature he was-I felt a burning desire to swat him across the head with the telephone. Instead of doing that, I a.s.sumed a look of exasperation, coughed to clear my throat, picked up the receiver, and solemnly said, "Examining magistrate's court. Good morning."

4.

I went down the steps to Talcahuano Street, cursing my fate. In those days, I was still pondering my reasons-or rather, reproaching myself-for not having finished my law degree. On such occasions as this one, my reproaches sounded pretty convincing. I'm twenty-eight, I'd tell myself; had I completed my studies, I'd have ten years' experience in the Judiciary, and I could already be the clerk in charge of some other court, instead of being stuck, bogged down, mired in that G.o.dd.a.m.ned examining magistrate's court as deputy clerk and chief administrative officer. And then, later, a prosecutor, why not? Or a public defender, just as good. Wasn't I sick of watching as whole battalions of cretins started out from positions like mine and then moved up through the judicial ranks, making careers, climbing the ladder, taking off? I was, indeed I was.

My complaint ought to have a medical name. "Deputy Clerk's Complex. Attributed to a judicial employee who, because he lacks a law degree, can rise no higher than deputy and chief administrator to a clerk and, although he exercises considerable power over secretaries, underlings, and interns, will never in his f.u.c.king life ascend beyond that position in the hierarchy and therefore grows thoroughly frustrated from seeing others, sometimes more capable than he but generally, and to an infinitely greater degree, a.s.sholes, pa.s.s him by like rockets on their way to jurisprudential stardom." A pretty definition, worthy of being submitted to specialized legal journals, though they'd probably reject it because of that part about the guy's "f.u.c.king life," or because of that other part about "a.s.sholes," or-most probably-because the editors of those publications are lawyers themselves.

Adalberto Rivadero, a deputy clerk who was my first boss when I started out as an intern, told me a supreme truth: "Look, Chaparrito. Courts are like islands; you can land on Tahiti or Alcatraz." The old master gazed down at me from the height of his grizzled years, the same sad elevation that I have now attained, and his face clearly indicated that he felt more like an inhabitant of the latter island. "And another thing, kid," he added, looking at me with the sorrow of one who knows he speaks the truth but knows also that the truth, in this case, is useless. "The island depends on the judge you get. If you get a nice guy, you're saved. If you get a son of a b.i.t.c.h, things get complicated. But the worst are the a.s.sholes, Chaparro. Watch out for a.s.sholes, my boy. If you get an a.s.shole, you're screwed."

As I went down the steps, trying to figure out which bus I should take, Adalberto Rivadero's maxim-which deserves to be cast in letters of bronze and prominently displayed next to the blindfolded statue that stands in front of the Palace of Justice-was echoing inside my head. Because on May 30, 1968, I already knew I was screwed. I worked in an examining magistrate's court, formerly well run, but now in the hands of an a.s.shole. And an a.s.shole of the worst kind: an a.s.shole eager to make a rapid ascent. The a.s.shole who believes he's reached the apex of his possibilities tends to reduce his actions to a minimum. He senses, at least obscurely, that he's an a.s.shole. And if he thinks he's at the peak of his career, he feels satisfied, and at the same time he's afraid. He's afraid others will see, simply by looking at him, that he's an a.s.shole. He's afraid of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up in such an obvious way that others will notice, if they haven't already, that he's an a.s.shole. And so he gives himself over to stasis. He reduces his movements to a minimum and lets life carry him along, and therefore the people in his employ can do their jobs in peace. They can even couple their knowledge and experience with his inertia and make him appear to be smart or, at least, a little less of an a.s.shole.

But the a.s.shole who wants to advance his career poses two difficulties. To begin with, he's bursting with energy, filled with enthusiasm, abounding in initiatives, which flow from him as from a fountain and which he wishes to present to his superiors openly and frankly, so that they will realize what an undervalued diamond they hold in their hands, a man relegated to a position inferior to his moral and intellectual deserts. And this is where the second difficulty arises: this particular category of a.s.shole compounds temerity with obliviousness. For if he cherishes the dream of advancement, it's because he feels worthy of it, and he may even go so far as to consider himself unjustly treated by life and by his fellow men if they deny him the fulfillment of his intrinsically legitimate aspirations. That's when the a.s.shole's obliviousness and drive make him dangerous. They raise him to the level of a threat, not so much to himself as to others-and, more specifically, to those others who are under his orders, one of whom, to take a random example, must abandon the warm hospitality of his office and betake himself to the scene of a crime. And it's precisely for that reason that he leaves by the Talcahuano door and goes down the steps spewing a stream of expletives.

That was me, the victim, harboring deep in my heart the suspicion that the judge who wanted to play the diligent schoolboy before his superiors on the Appellate Court wasn't the only a.s.shole in this story, no, but that there was another a.s.shole, who-because he was pusillanimous, or because it was convenient, or because he was distracted-had failed to complete his legal studies and as a consequence was never going to advance past deputy clerk, and who was therefore like a train up against one of those big wood-and-metal buffer stops, an unequivocal sign that tells you you've come this far but you'll go no farther, my man. Shunted off, end of the line, that's it. And from then on, he knew, he'd see a long parade of clerks, who would give him orders he'd have to obey, because the clerks, lawyers as they were, would be his superiors, and there would be a long parade of judges, too, who would give the clerks orders they would then pa.s.s on to him. I was complying with just such an order, according to which, whenever a homicide case came in while we were on duty, the deputy and chief administrator of the clerk's office whose turn it was had to betake himself to the scene of the crime in order to oversee the work of the police.

Once and only once, trying not to seem arrogant, had I dared to consult my ill.u.s.trious magistrate about the usefulness of such diligence, since the Federal Police were responsible for carrying out the first phase of the investigation. No matter, His Honor declared; that was the way he wanted it done. This was his entire response, and in the ensuing silence, I felt the special wretchedness of one who must not so much as allude to what everyone in the room knows, which in this case was that our new judge was an imbecile, and that the clerks weren't going to say a word. The clerk of Section No. 18 hasn't got the slightest intention of opposing the judge, I thought, because having discovered, and how, that his new boss is a first-cla.s.s, black-belt a.s.shole, the said clerk is preparing to bring to bear all the influence he can muster so that he can set sail for some other island, where calmer breezes blow. And as for Julio Carlos Perez, I said to myself, your immediate superior, the clerk of Section No. 19-your section-he's highly unlikely to notice that the judge is an a.s.shole because he's one as well, and to a superlative degree, and consequently, you are screwed. So what can you do? Nothing. You can't do anything. Or you could, at most, make a novena to San Calixto and pray that the chief a.s.shole may succeed in his ambitions and get a quick promotion to the Appellate Court, and perhaps, once he's there, he'll calm down, he'll feel fulfilled, and he'll pa.s.s into another category of a.s.shole, accomplished, satisfied, peaceful, and contemplative, the kind that can be found occupying some of the most ill.u.s.trious offices in the Palace of Justice.

But that hadn't happened, and there I was. As I asked the vendor at a news kiosk which bus would take me to the corner of Niceto Vega Avenue and Bonpland Street, I started feeling sick in antic.i.p.ation of the scene I was going to have to witness. I tried to buck up my courage, if only out of shame, telling myself that I couldn't get weak in the knees in front of the crowd of cops who were sure to be milling around in that apartment, even though it would give me the creeping w.i.l.l.i.e.s to see a corpse, a new corpse, a fresh corpse, a corpse produced not by the natural law of life and death but by the categorical and savage decision of a murderer who was on the loose somewhere nearby, and then I had my bus ticket out, making sure to keep it so I could get reimbursed for the expense when I got back, and since it would be a while before we reached the barrio of Palermo, I walked all the way to the rear of the bus and took a seat, still cursing myself between my teeth for not having had the drop of discipline, the ounce of fort.i.tude, the dollop of willpower I would have needed to become a lawyer.

5.

When I turned the corner and saw the first signs of the vain commotion the police display in such cases, my stomach began to churn. There were three patrol cars, an ambulance, and a dozen cops, coming and going with nothing to do but determined to keep on doing it. As I wasn't inclined to give them the satisfaction of detecting my queasiness, I walked up to the group quickly, reaching for my rear trouser pocket. I held my credentials under the nose of the first officer who barred my path, declared without condescending to look at him that I was Deputy Clerk Chaparro of Examining Magistrate's Court No. 41, and told him to take me to the officer in charge of the operation. The uniformed policeman acted according to a rule whose iron logic allowed him to follow his chosen path without undue difficulty: everyone who had one more stripe on his sleeve than he did must be obeyed; everyone who had one less stripe must be treated like dirt. Although I was totally unadorned by epaulets, my peremptory tone placed me in the first category, and so he saluted me awkwardly and asked me to follow him "into the interior."

It was an old house divided up into several apartments, all of which opened onto a side corridor, ugly but tidy. Geraniums in flowerpots had been placed here and there in the hall in a failed effort to beautify it. Two or three times, we had to move to one side to avoid running into more policemen, all of whom had come out of the second-to-last apartment. I calculated that there must be more than twenty cops on the scene, and once again I was appalled by the morbid pleasure some people find in the contemplation of tragedy. Like train accidents, I thought. I was more or less accustomed to those, because I traveled on the Sarmiento Line every day, but I could never begin to understand the curious onlookers who would crowd around the stopped trains and peer between the wheels and the rails, hoping to glimpse the victim's mutilated body and watch the firemen's b.l.o.o.d.y work. Once, suspecting that what was actually bothering me was my own weakness, I forced myself to move closer to an accident site, but soon I was horrified beyond recovery, not so much by the atrocious spectacle of death as by the jubilant, festive expressions on the faces of many in the crowd. It was as if the accident were a free show put on for their enjoyment, or as if they had to take in every single detail of the scene so that they could describe it properly to their colleagues at work; they stared with unblinking eyes, engrossed, spellbound, their lips slightly parted in a half-smile. Well, as I crossed the threshold into that apartment, I was sure some of the men inside would be looking out from under the visors of their blue peaked caps with just such expressions on their faces.

The tidy living room I entered contained many decorative objects on the walls and bookshelves. The dining set in the small adjoining room, six chairs and a table crowded together into too narrow a s.p.a.ce, had little to do with the small armchairs in the living room and no relations.h.i.+p whatsoever to the style of the decor. "Newlyweds," I guessed. I walked a few steps toward the door that opened to the rest of the apartment, but my way was blocked almost at once by a wall of blue uniforms arranged in a semicircle. Not much brainwork was required to deduce that the corpse was lying in there. Some of the men were silent, others commented loudly to demonstrate their manliness in the face of death, but they all had their eyes fixed on the floor.

"I want to talk to the officer in charge, please," I said; it didn't sound like a request. I searched for the right tone, a little hard-edged, a little weary, to show this bunch of lazy gawkers that I represented a higher authority and they owed me a modic.u.m of respect. My idea was to take the experience gained from the command/obedience tactic I'd used on the cop who blocked my way outside and apply the method at the group level. They turned around to look at me, and the voice of Police Inspector Baez responded from the other side of the room. A couple of the policemen stepped aside, and I could see Baez, sitting on the double bed.

It was still going to be hard to get to him, because the bed took up almost the whole room, and the body was lying on the floor next to the bed. I couldn't see much more through the narrow pa.s.sage the cops had made for me, but I figured that if I didn't want to look soft, I would have to stop and contemplate the dead woman.

I knew it was a woman, because the policeman who'd made the call to the court at five after eight had told me-using the strange jargon the police seem to delight in-that the victim was "an unidentified young female." Their supposedly neutral language, their conviction that they were speaking in forensic terms, occasionally struck me as funny, but in general I found it annoying. Why not just come out and say it? The victim was a young woman whose name we didn't yet know and who seemed to be a little over twenty years old.

I guessed that she'd been beautiful, because despite the ugly bluish color her skin had taken on when she was strangled and the predictable distortion of her face, frozen into a grimace by horror and lack of oxygen, there was a majesty about that girl that not even a horrible death had been able to obliterate. I was disturbingly certain the place was crawling with so many policemen precisely because of that, because of her beauty, and because she was lying naked at the foot of the bed where she'd been flung, face up on the bright parquet floor; and I knew some of the men standing around her were thrilled to be able to gaze at her body with impunity.

Baez stood up and walked over to me, skirting the big bed. He shook my hand without smiling. I was sufficiently acquainted with him to know that he liked his work, but he didn't enjoy the suffering from which his work usually arose. If he hadn't thrown the blue crowd of curious cops out of the room, it was simply because he hadn't registered their presence very clearly, or because he knew they were part of police folklore, or maybe a little of each. I asked him if the forensic team had arrived yet. Time would show me that I was never in my life going to meet a cop half so honest and clear-thinking as Alfredo Baez, but that morning, among the many things I didn't know, I didn't know that one, either, and so I took the liberty of becoming indignant about how little care he seemed to be taking to preserve the evidence at the scene of the crime. Had I been a little better acquainted with him, I'd have understood that what looked like indolence in Baez was, in fact, resigned fort.i.tude at finding himself, once again, surrounded by a bunch of dimwits on a one-way trip to nowhere. Baez paged through his notebook and informed me of what he'd been able to determine so far.

"Her name's Liliana Colotto. Twenty-three years old. Schoolteacher. Married since the beginning of last year to Ricardo Agustin Morales, teller at the Provincial Bank of Buenos Aires. The neighbor in the next apartment told us she heard screams at a quarter to eight this morning and looked through the peephole in her door. Since her apartment's the last one, her front door's not on the side, it's on the end, and so she can see down the whole length of the hall. She saw a young man come out of this apartment. A little guy. Black hair, she thinks, or maybe dark brown. At this point, she had to blather for a while about the distinction between black hair and dark brown hair. I guess the old bird doesn't have much opportunity for conversation. Anyway, she said the husband left for work, as usual, very early in the morning, 7:10 or 7:15, and so it caught her attention when she heard sounds coming from next door sometime after that. When the man came out of this apartment, he didn't shut the door behind him. So the old lady waited a few seconds until the street door closed and then stepped out into the hall. She called to the girl, but there was no answer." Baez flipped over the last page. "That's it. Well, except that she peeked through the door and saw the girl lying there, as you see-very still, the neighbor said-and then she called us."

"The guy who went out-could it have been her husband?"

"According to the old woman, no. She said the husband is fair-haired and tall, while this guy was short, and his skin was very dark. By the way, the whole time she was positively itching to badmouth the girl for letting a visitor in twenty minutes after her husband left. Ah, right, he hasn't been notified-I have to give him the bad news. If you want, we can go together. He works in the ... I've got it right here ... in the Capital branch."

We heard steps entering the apartment and a few murmured greetings.

"Well, there you are," Baez said to an obese man carrying a briefcase. "Start whenever you like, we don't have a thing to do."

It didn't look as though the other was going to answer, because he took his sweet time about it. He stared at the body for a good while. He squatted down. He stood up again. Then he laid his briefcase on the bed and took out a few instruments and a pair of rubber gloves. At last, speaking without emphasis, he said, "Why don't you go f.u.c.k yourself, Baez?"

"Because I'm hanging around here like an a.s.shole waiting for you, Falcone."