‘Sr Tamerlán’s kidnappers have set new demands, Sr Marroné.’
Seated on the other side of the desk, Marroné slid his eyes over the polished cranium of Govianus the accountant, who rarely looked up, preferring instead to follow the vague gestures with which his own languid hands accompanied the conversation. Within hours of the news of Sr Tamerlán’s kidnapping by the Montoneros, Govianus had taken possession of both the imposing metal desk – which looked for all the world like an over-turned safe – and the immense sealed vault in which it lay. From here he had, for the last six months, directed all the negotiations, in close liaison with the victim’s family, yet in all that time he still hadn’t grown into the place. The room was too big for him, the desk was too big for him, even the gold fountain pen with the monogram ‘FT’ finely engraved on its base looked too big between his fingers. A dwarf – that was what Govianus the accountant reminded Marroné of: a bald, bespectacled dwarf usurping the dominions of a giant.
‘What do they want now? More money?’
‘If only, Marroné, if only. I sometimes regret the fact that kidnappings in this country aren’t performed by the Mafia. At least with them you know where you are; we speak the same language. But all this nonsense about improving the conditions of our workers – always the workers, mind you; the office staff be damned, as if we didn’t suffer too – all this welcoming like lords the delegates that yesterday we spurned like dogs, all this dishing out of food in the shanties… Give me a break! You know what they want now? You know the latest thing they’ve come up with? They want us to put a bust of Eva Perón in each of our offices. Even in this one! Can you think of anything more absurd?’
Marroné didn’t answer, as he was already mentally totting up the number of busts needed to meet the new demand. Eighth floor: the ‘Valhalla’, the meeting room and two other offices; seventh floor: nine offices, a hallway…
‘The hallways too?’
‘What do I know? You’d better include them, can’t be too careful. Maybe they want them in the bathrooms as well, so she can watch us whip it out. I’m telling you, Marroné, I’m at the end of my tether. First Sr Fuchs – may he rest in peace – now Sr Tamerlán… Are we the only company in the country with presidents to kidnap? These boys ought to practise a more effective system, like crop rotation… They have it in for us, I reckon. Rather unfair considering our staff are 100 per cent Argentine. Fuchs had been a citizen for years and Sr Tamerlán has lived here since he was ten. No need to remind you that he arrived on the 17th of October 1945 of all days… But these boys don’t know a thing about history. Oh well. Just so long as they don’t take it into their heads to torch us, the way they do the foreign companies…’
Clearly Govianus the accountant needed to get this off his chest, and Marroné instantly recalled Principle Four of the ‘Six Ways to Make People Like You’ listed in Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People: ‘Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.’
‘But you and your family have very tight security, don’t you?’
‘Regrettably. Do you know what it’s like having guards in your living room from dusk till dawn? One of them never flushes. They’re taking over the house bit by bit. Now they’ve commandeered the remote control. Think about it. The Mod Squad, Police Woman, Starsky & Hutch… I only get a break on matchdays. My wife and I had to buy ourselves a telly set for the bedroom. And no one dares ring the bell any more. The other day they pulled a gun on the soda-man and had him drink a squirt from each of the siphons he was delivering. In case they were trying to poison me, they explained later. You could hear the belch all the way to Burzaco. But my problems are insignificant next to Sr Tamerlán’s. Time is running out, Marroné. It’s been six months. The kidnappers are losing their patience. Look.’
Govianus was holding out a rectangular stainless-steel box, the kind used to sterilise and store hypodermics in, coated with a thin film of frost. Marroné took it. It was ice-cold to the touch, as if it had just been taken out of the freezer.
‘Open it, open it.’
Marroné tried, but his fingers kept on slipping on the frost and the steel wouldn’t yield. Eventually he managed to work a nail into the groove and lifted the lid. The moment he laid eyes on the contents he let out a yell and flung them in the air.
‘A finger! It’s a finger!’
‘Of course it’s a finger, Marroné! It’s Sr Tamerlán’s finger! Thank your lucky stars its owner isn’t around to see the way you treat it. Well don’t just stand there gawping. Help me find it!’
They had to crawl about among electricity and phone cables, chair legs and wheels, to find the two halves of the box and its grim contents. Marroné was unfortunate enough to find the finger. It was livid, mottled with yellow and grey, and the nail, despite being neatly manicured (‘as if deliberately spruced up for its big day’ was the gruesome thought Marroné’s mind whispered in his ear) had a menacing air about it, like one of those amulets made out of animal claws. He looked around queasily for something to pick it up with and, when Govianus looked away, he pulled a plastic bag out of the waste-paper basket, slid his hand in and bagged it like a dog turd. Through the plastic the cold of the dead flesh played up and down his spine like a xylophone. Carefully he replaced the finger in its hollow of cotton wool and returned the box to the surface of the desk. An incisive question flashed across his brain.
‘Can we be sure it’s Sr Tamerlán’s finger?’
‘It’s tested positive with police forensics, which I needn’t tell you is no guarantee in this country. But I daresay all of us in this company know that finger well. Correct me if I’m wrong, Sr Marroné.’
Govianus had tilted his head slightly and lowered his glasses to the bridge of his nose, his naked eyes staring at Marroné over the frames as if daring him to disagree. He wasn’t wrong of course. Until that moment Marroné had not truly been aware of the degree of savagery or fanaticism of the men they were up against. Cutting off Sr Tamerlán’s index finger was like cutting off Samson’s hair, Cleopatra’s nose, Caruso’s tongue or Pelé’s legs; like kicking Perón’s teeth in or castrating Casanova. These men were capable of anything! Nothing was sacred to them! They were no doubt aware of the profound significance that Sr Tamerlán’s finger held for all the employees in his company, and by mutilating him they had struck right at its innermost core. There had been no better-guarded secret in the company, yet they had uncovered it. But then again it was common knowledge that the subversives had infiltrated the government, the trade unions, even the army. Why should they be the exception? They’re everywhere, thought Marroné with a shudder; you never really know who you’re talking to. While Govianus answered a phone call, Marroné let his gaze rest on the once vital finger that had until recently ruled their lives and now lay inert in its steel sarcophagus, and for an instant his eyes welled with tears. It was the same one, no doubt about it. How could he have been in any doubt? He remembered the exact day he had made its acquaintance, together with the man it was still attached to, because it was, amongst other things, the very day that marked the onset of the inveterate constipation that had afflicted him ever since: the day Sr Tamerlán had interviewed him in person and offered him the post of head of procurement, which he still held. That meeting had changed his life, had had a profound effect on him. Thanks to his MBA in Marketing from Stanford and certain family contacts he had sailed comfortably through the pre-selection process, but it was common knowledge in the business world that the final requirement for joining any of the companies in the Tamerlán Group was a personal private interview with the great man himself. It was rumoured that, when it came to selecting management staff for his companies he had an infallible method for separating the wheat from the chaff, though none of the applicants – successful or otherwise – had wanted to divulge what it consisted in: a tacit pact of silence that only deepened the mystery and added grist to the mill of rumour and speculation. It was known that, after the kidnapping and death of Sr Fuchs, Sr Tamerlán had completely restructured the company, secretly sifting through the entire management staff, orchestrating rises and falls, and removing those whose loyalty to the new president was not what it should be, in order to create many a vacancy like the one Marroné had aspired to.
The week before the interview he had spent in eager anticipation of the meeting, which would mark a watershed in his life – if, that is, all went smoothly; if he could say the right thing at the right time, sit back and let Sr Tamerlán take the floor, smile a lot, offer condolences for the demise of his late partner, try to strike the proper balance between sincerity and formality. He could think of nothing else: each and every night of that interminable week he had bombarded his wife at dinner with stories of the mythical Tamerlán; he would dandle his son on his knees, and instead of ‘horsey-horsey’, would come out with ‘tam-tam-Tamerlán’; and in bed, before going to sleep, he and his wife would get embroiled in all kinds of monomaniacal speculation about the traps Sr Tamerlán might set him at the ever-so-mysterious interview, which he sought to pre-empt by reading and rereading Warren P Jonas’s Are You Ready for Your Job Interview?, until the pages dropped out. It was rumoured that many who had smoothly negotiated the hurdles of Rorschach, handwriting, psychological and a battery of other tests bit the dust on this final strait, Marroné would remark, fairly quaking with the thrill of it. And far from getting bored, his wife would feed the flames with newspaper and magazine cuttings about Sr Tamerlán. And, at night, in the breaks afforded them by the boy’s night terrors, they made love with an ardour unknown even in their early days – although, as often happened in moments of great anxiety, Marroné usually came early. But once, almost without trying, he must have got a hole-in-one, for, exactly nine months later Mabel gave birth to little Cynthia, and when he first clapped eyes on her, Marroné thought he could make out the unmistakeable traces of Sr Tamerlán’s features in the little girl’s, as if at the delicate moment of conception the mental image that never left his head had been imprinted on the malleable surface of her cells.
In those fraught days not even such releases of tension would allow Marroné to sleep: he would spend the rest of the night awake, running through all the possible variations of his impending conversation with the great company man, planning strategies and evaluating possible scenarios and outcomes. The most important thing – the real trick – was to stay off the beaten track, to dare to innovate – to be, in a word, creative. There could be nothing more tedious for a restless man of genius like Sr Tamerlán than the tawdry routine of a job interview. But this one Marroné would make unforgettable. He would seize the initiative from the off: for instance, he would find something in the office to praise sincerely – a picture, an antique lamp, the wood panelling – as had James Adamson, president of the Superior Seating Company, in his interview with Mr Eastman, as he had read in How to Win Friends and Influence People. Sr Tamerlán’s stern face would immediately light up and he would go on to tell him the history of the object in question: ‘It has been in my family for generations. My father, at the start of the Great War…’ The conversation would at once assume a relaxed, informal tone: with jubilation they would discover common interests, like big-game hunting or Wagnerian opera – interests that, if truth be told, had recently been acquired by Marroné after acquainting himself with Sr Tamerlán’s tastes, through reading old issues of sporting magazines and listening to The Valkyrie till he dropped. Won over by the open smile and sincere interest of his aspiring head of procurement, Sr Tamerlán would gradually lower his guard and confess his most intimate fears: of not being the efficient storm pilot his fleet of companies needed to navigate the unpredictable climes of the national economy; of not being able to compete with the ghost of his late partner and predecessor in the efficient handling of the intricate conglomerate; or – prophetically – of becoming the victim of an attack by the very people who had kidnapped and murdered his partner. By degrees the conversation would shift from the personal to the managerial: one by one Marroné would drop in suggestions on how to streamline the company’s management, taking the precaution to pass these off as ideas of Sr Tamerlán’s own, which he, Marroné, was merely plucking from the air and making explicit, as recommended in Raymond Schneck’s Sit Your Boss on Your Knees. On the spot he would be offered the post of marketing manager, which he had secretly longed for, with the promise of the vice presidency, which Sr Tamerlán’s rise to the presidency had left vacant, glimmering almost within reach like a ring on a merry-go-round – at which moment Marroné’s fantasy reached the dizzying summit of this stairway of imaginary questions and answers, and dropped him back on the twin realities of the as-yet-unconsummated meeting and the scorching bed, on which he feverishly tossed this way and that, buffeted by the elbows of his sleeping wife, until the cogs and gears of his desires and fantasies meshed again, and Marroné’s mind once more started the laborious ascent of the seemingly endless spiral staircase of his waking dreams. His brain glowed like a lump of burning coal, and he turned the pillow over and over in futile attempts to cool his head. The ironies of fate: his innards had him running to the bathroom that week at all times of day and, as D-Day approached, at night too, as if they knew such irresponsible freedom would end for ever upon the fateful day of the feared and longed-for interview.
Which did not take place in the as yet non-existent bunker – in those days a mere archive and storage space in the basement – but at the antipole of the building, under the bulging dome of amber crystal that crowned the stately turn-of-the-century construction’s upper floor, baptised by Sr Tamerlán himself with the poetic name ‘Valhalla’.
Sr Tamerlán’s desk, an imposing mahogany catafalque, was placed precisely beneath the crystal dome and, being a sunny day, Marroné was met on entering by the sight of his future employer submerged in a nimbus of golden light that isolated him from the surrounding atmosphere, as if he inhabited a reality of a different order and as if the desk, the objects strewn about it and the man himself sitting erect on his curved-armed throne were made of a more refined material, of gold and light.
‘That desk…’ Marroné began his well-rehearsed routine.
‘Drop the pants, please.’
Sr Tamerlán had spoken without looking at him, without even looking up from the folder he had been leafing through – a bid for tender perhaps – and on hearing this unusual request, Marroné’s eyes scoured the enormous room in case the words had been intended for someone else and he was about to make a fool of himself. No, they were the only ones there. Marroné undid the buckle, loosened his belt, then the inside button of his James Smart trousers. As they were a wide fit he had no trouble pulling them over his shoes, except for the left heel, which got caught, forcing him to hop briefly on one leg. He folded them carefully, but having nowhere to put them, he hung them over his bent arm. His underpants, however, were worn and cheap-looking, and he was glad his shirt tails hid them from view.
‘Those too,’ said Sr Tamerlán without so much as a glance, as if taking it for granted that Marroné’s initial response would be dictated by modesty.
Marroné obeyed, recalling at that instant an enigmatic phrase attributed to Sr Tamerlán by a reliable source: ‘Anyone who wants a career with us has to wear the company’s underpants.’ It was no doubt a reference to whatever it was that was about to happen. Sr Tamerlán closed the folder, rose from his chair, rounded the desk and walked towards him with his hands clasped behind his back, looking him up and down. For a moment Marroné feared Sr Tamerlán would open his mouth and examine his gums. Outside the enchanted circle of light Sr Tamerlán might pass for an ordinary human being, until he fixed his eyes on yours. Then, what the yellow light had softened leapt at you like a dog loosed from its muzzle: two eyes as blue as icebergs, and as hard. But it was only when Marroné looked down at his hands that sheer terror enabled him to wrest back the words that his surprise had taken from him: with his left hand Sr Tamerlán was pulling a proctologist’s rubber finger-stall over his right index finger.
‘I’ve already had the medical,’ stammered the terrified Marroné.
‘Don’t be stupid, Marroné, or I’ll regret hiring you before I do. It isn’t your prostate I’m worried about, let alone your haemorrhoids; in fact, all my most efficient executives have them: makes them edgier, more aggressive. Like ulcers. No, Marroné, it’s a different part of you I want to reach. Move forward a few steps, please. That’s it. Now rest both hands on the desk. Put those down there. Have no fear, we’ll give them back to you on your way out.’
Marroné deposited pants and underpants on the glassy wooden surface. The warmth of the golden light caressed his face and the back of his hands, and its brightness made him half-shut his eyes. Through the cracks he managed to see what Sr Tamerlán had been flicking through. It wasn’t a bid for tender as he had first supposed but a magazine called Queen Studs. A naked, hairless hunk stared out from the cover with come-hither eyes, one slack hand draped casually over his crotch. As if both ends of his body were connected by a single taut thread, Marroné’s pupils dilated as fast as his sphincter contracted to a full stop.
‘As you must surely know, Marroné, physicians and philosophers have for centuries been searching for the physical seat of the soul. Pythagoras, for example, contended that the soul is air or, put another way, breath – which led him to locate it in the lungs; Democritus would complete the idea with an intricate atomistic lucubration to explain why the soul doesn’t come out of our mouths every time we exhale. The Stoics fluctuated between placing it in the heart or the head, but they agreed that it then extended through the body in seven polyp-like tentacles that informed our five senses, our speech and our organs of generation; from there it was but a short step, taken by Sir Thomas Browne amongst others, to the notion that the soul is handed down to the child in the father’s seed, and thence to its relocation in the balls. The mystical, theosophical or spiritualist traditions, on the other hand, usually favour the cardiac zone; The Upanishads situate it beautifully in a small chamber in the shape of a lotus-flower at the very centre of the heart. The Assyrians, however, located it in the liver. Stupid race. They deserved to die out for that if for nothing else. Then there were those who spoke of several souls, such as the Egyptians, who counted seven, distributed around the body; whilst Plato, always thrifty where material reality was concerned, cut them down to three: the rational, located in the head; the thumetic or spirited, in the chest; and the appetitive, between the diaphragm and the navel. Now, with that last one he really hit the post. Descartes, on the other hand, went completely the other way: he claimed the soul was housed in the pineal gland, this being the only single rather than dual structure of the brain and sense organs; which is why some have tried to link it with the third eye of the Buddhists – the eye of the soul.
‘This last notion, though essentially wrong, would eventually help me to see the truth. As you can see, many of the scholars, poets and thinkers in the history of East and West have devoted their days and nights to pondering or even scientifically investigating this tricky point. What a bunch of incompetent cocksuckers! Five thousand years of culture and I always end up having to do it myself! Still. All that effort may not have been in vain; the truth is sometimes nothing more than the qualitative leap forward that springs from an accumulation of blunders. Yes, Marroné. The third eye – the eye of the soul – does exist, hidden within us, waiting to be awakened; just not in the middle of your forehead. So where is it? With due modesty I think I can safely say that I have solved the riddle. Legs a little wider, please.’
Marroné felt the first, tentative contact between his buttocks, then an increase in pressure as the rubber surface began to work its way inside. All the words hoarded over the last week completely evaporated from his mind. At that moment, had someone asked him his name, he couldn’t have answered with any certainty.
‘It was pretty obvious, though the answer lay not in anatomy, but in language. Why do you think they always talk about the “seat” of the soul? Why do you think the phrases “save your soul” and “save your arse” are so closely alloyed? Why do you think we say “I can’t be arsed” to express flat refusal? Didn’t it ever strike you as odd that we locate the seat of integrity not in the head or the heart, but a fair bit lower down? And what, Marroné, is the organ of our integrity but the soul? That’s why when your soul won’t bend, your arse won’t budge. As long as you own your arse, you own your self. That’s why if you’re going to work for me, there’s one thing you need to be very clear about. In this company we applaud freethinking, creativity and imagination; you’re free to have your own ideas and feelings, but your arse is ours. We aren’t asking much. We can’t get into your head, true, but we can get into your arse. And once we’re in, we give you the freedom to think whatever you like. That orifice is our most sensitive organ for perceiving errors, and there’s no better antidote for idiotic leanings towards independence or rebellion than a nicely puckered arse. From now on, Marroné, when you’re in any doubt, consult your arse and it’ll tell you what to do. Remember: your arse is your best friend.’
While he spoke, Sr Tamerlán kept his finger still but rigid. Once his monologue was over, he began to withdraw it, and that was perhaps the most humiliating moment for Ernesto Marroné, when by reflex his sphincter contracted on Sr Tamerlán’s finger as if he were trying to keep it there just a little bit longer. It was the final proof, if any were needed, that Sr Tamerlán was right: Marroné could no longer call his arse his own. But the stupefied blank that the removal of Sr Tamerlán’s finger had left in his mind was not to be filled by such elaborate sentiments as offence or humiliation, not even when, terminating the interview, Sr Tamerlán tossed the used finger-stall into the waste-paper basket like a spent condom.
‘I expect great things of you, Marroné. Be here for work first thing on Monday.’
As he left, he thought he caught ill-concealed smiles in every glance, stifled laughter behind his back, and, that night, when his wife, eczematous with impatience, asked him the moment he walked in through the door, ‘And? How did it go? Did you meet him? Did you meet Sr Tamerlán?’, Marroné opened his mouth to speak and stood there staring until he found the words to deny all personal contact with the great company man. ‘I got the job,’ was all he managed to say.
‘So? Think you can do it?’ The weary voice of Govianus the accountant, who had finished his telephone conversation, brought him back with a thud from dome to basement, from glaring past to murky present. He cast around as if the eye of his mind had also to grow accustomed to the change of light. If the top-floor office and its vicinity to the heavens, its blinding light and bracing wind blowing in from the river, had always conjured for Marroné a majestic galleon in full sail, this office, with the unflagging ultramarine and emerald green of its windowless walls, the fish-tank lighting of its fluorescent tubes, the armoured metal furnishings and the refrigerated air descending motionlessly from the vents in the ceiling, resembled nothing so much as a submerged submarine in wartime. And wartime it undoubtedly was when proud men like Sr Tamerlán, accustomed to leading the nation’s economic destiny from the prow, were forced to dig lairs and hide underground like hunted animals. Construction work on the bunker had been completed shortly after Marroné joined the firm, and the engineer and labourers Sr Tamerlán had imported had been flown back to the USSR: only the big man himself would be privy to the secrets of its construction. But the office they now found themselves in was just the tip of the iceberg, the semi-public space of a much vaster subterranean complex: some hidden point of the mute surfaces surrounding Marroné concealed the entrance to the secret chambers that only a handful of the elect had seen, though rumours circulated in the company about the treasure accumulated in the vault, enough to buy wills (‘arses,’ his mind corrected) and to finance acts of sabotage; about the communication equipment powerful enough to jam all the radio and television sets in the country and commandeer the airwaves; about the power plant with supplies for several months, the weapons and explosives depot, the larders and freezers overflowing with the choicest produce of five continents; and especially about the executive bedrooms, entirely covered with mirrors, and complete with rotating waterbeds, jacuzzis and fat catalogues of products from the ports of Northern Europe and the Far East. The bunker could accommodate the company’s top executives, and their sexual partners of choice, male or female (wives and children were strictly banned as counter-effective to the ruthless exercise of power). If a communist revolution was ever victorious in Argentina, capitalism could hole up here and hold out for months. Months! Ha! Sr Tamerlán had been kidnapped in broad daylight by the guerrillas before he was able to see his super-sophisticated lair completed, and maybe now, locked away in dungeons more primitive, dug by his captors, he would be reflecting on the vanity of the insatiable human longing for security.
‘All we have to do is contact our usual supplier and place an urgent order,’ answered Marroné. ‘No big deal. That’s why I’m head of procurement, isn’t it? But as you know…’
‘Please, Marroné, not that again. You know all promotions are frozen until Sr Tamerlán gets back. Help me rescue our president and I promise you that, when all this is over, I will speak to him myself in person about your promotion to marketing and sales.’
‘When all this is over,’ Marroné mentally retorted to the unmannerly Govianus, who, without waiting for him to go out, had plunged his nose back into his paperwork, ‘I may not need a middleman to speak to Sr Tamerlán and ask him for what he’ll no longer be able to refuse.’ As he waited for the lift to take him back to his office on the sixth floor, he looked up at the model of the Monument to the Descamisado, which stood in the lobby: sheer forehead, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, right hand on chest, left clenched in a sinewy fist. The monument had been commissioned during the golden years of the first Peronist government and, at a purported 137 metres, was intended to be the tallest in the world. But by the time Perón fell from power in 1955 the building work hadn’t even started, and the model was shunted discreetly to the basement where it gathered dust until Perón’s return to power two years ago, when they had decided to move it into the lobby. Instinctively Marroné adopted his plebeian counterpart’s posture of Herculean determination, as befitting someone who has heard destiny knocking on his door. This, he said to himself, was the opportunity he had so longed for to prove to Sr Tamerlán his personal devotion, to show him he wasn’t just another employee (‘Just another arsehole,’ the devious side of his mind said in a whisper that the saner side dismissed with a mental grimace) and to join the inner circle of Tartars, as Sr Tamerlán had taken to calling his personal guard of samurai executives. ‘The arrival of those busts, Marroné,’ he would say when it was all over, the two of them lounging in the plush white armchairs of his living room (a living room he could relax in, thanks to Mabel’s collection of magazine cuttings, as comfortably as in his own), each warming a glass of cognac in their cupped hands, ‘was providential. They’d already pronounced my sentence, the murder weapon of the chosen one was already pointing at my temple – they draw lots, Marroné, such is their bloodlust that they will fight each other for the privilege. But tell me something… The idea of concealing a transmitter in the sample bust, was it really the police’s or… ? Of course. I knew it. What is a man like you doing vegetating in procurement? Marketing? Don’t be modest, man. Look, I need to recover, have some time to myself, travel the world in the company of my darling wife. And Govianus, we can agree, much as we acknowledge his efforts over these last few months, isn’t the man for the job… He lacks fibre, grit, drive… If it had been down to him, I wouldn’t have enough fingers left to warm this glass. Besides, Ernesto – mind if I call you Ernesto? – I needn’t tell you that the doors of this house are always open to you. So my daughter Clara won’t feel so alone while we’re away, will you, Clara, darling?’
By the time the lift reached the sixth floor it was the day of his wedding to Clara Tamerlán and the bubble of his imagination burst with the rarefaction of the reality around it: Sr Tamerlán had no daughter, and Marroné was already married. But despite his right hemisphere’s natural tendency to such tangential flights of fancy, it didn’t escape the notice of his more sober left side that this wasn’t the time for dreaming but for living up to the name of executive and executing.
‘Busts? Of Evita? No, what problem could there be?’ the jolly voice of the owner of the Sansimón Plasterworks, the company’s main supplier, answered him good-naturedly. ‘A few years ago it would have been a different story, but these days… They’re going like hot cakes. How many did you say? No, not that many in stock, but I’ll have them run off for you before you can say “Evita Perón”. Why don’t you drop round first thing tomorrow and I’ll show you the different models. Will you be wanting some of the Governor too?’
After hanging up, Marroné gazed out of the window of his deserted office at the crawling columns of vehicles as they drained from the city centre, and indulged in two more flights of fancy: the short version, in which he passed himself off as a member of the guerrilla to rescue Sr Tamerlán and fled with him through the slums at night, carrying him through a hail of zinging bullets; and the longer version, in which beneath Govianus’s unimpeachable mask he discovered a guerrilla leader who had infiltrated the company years ago and bled it to swell the coffers of subversion. Knowing he had been exposed, Govianus holed up in the bunker and asked Marroné – named sole negotiator by mutual agreement of the parties – for a plane to take him and several political prisoners to Cuba in exchange for Sr Tamerlán’s release; in the end, realising the game was up, he bit the cyanide pill carried by every subversive and died in Marroné’s arms, but not before revealing Sr Tamerlán’s whereabouts and whispering his final message. ‘Been in their power for years. Wasn’t all my doing. Took me to the Soviet Union, had me brainwashed. In death I can be the man I used to be: Ulrico Govianus, accountant, loyal servant to the company and its president and director general. Sr Tamerlán’s finger it’s… in the freezer, in the bunker, third shelf down, under the beefburgers,’ Govianus would reveal before breathing his last, his penchant for the prosaic breaking the spell of Marroné’s second daydream. But it wasn’t just Govianus’s impertinent coda that brought him back to reality: a distant voice that seemed to reach him from his innermost being was calling to him, as if hesitating before the gates of his consciousness, and as it became more audible, the initial chill that had gripped his body on seeing the severed finger gradually thawed to a warm and pleasant inner glow. The sensation was unmistakeable, but so many months had passed since he had felt it with such intensity that it was like bumping into an old friend you never expected to see again. At once incredulous and grateful, with the hypnotic certainty of a dream, he pulled out a half-read copy of The Corporate Samurai and the key to the executive bathroom from the second drawer of his desk, and stepped out of his office and into the corridor.
His deep-seated constipation had accompanied him like a faithful dog ever since he had started working at the company. No sooner was the post of head of procurement his than his intestines, as if unbeknownst to their owner, had turned against him and tangled themselves into a perverse Gordian knot that he could only cut with the aid of powerful laxatives. It was a problem of timing more than anything, but also of setting, and ultimately of that rare commodity in the life of the efficient executive: relaxation. It was getting harder and harder in the morning to find the necessary peace and quiet: his wife wouldn’t let him use their en suite bathroom because the smell would, she claimed, pervade her morning ablutions; and the children’s bathroom was prey to all-important needs – use by their son, a change of nappies, toothbrushes, medicines, nebulisers – rendering any prospect of relaxation utopian. Last, the downstairs guest toilette was besieged by the fervent Doña Ema, the enormous maid who, advised by Sra Marroné of her husband’s early-morning needs, had immediately decided, with her impregnable common sense, that it was merely a naughty habit and purposely chose that time to clean it or, if Marroné did manage to evade her vigilant eye and take cover within, she would decide to wax the floor outside and charge at the bolted door, first with the waxing cloth, and then – her coup de grâce – the wailing floor-polisher, until he gave up. But if going to the toilet at home had become a mission nigh on impossible, things weren’t much better at the office. Rarely was there time amid the daily rush to enjoy that much-needed oasis of peace and quiet, and anyway, Marroné was incapable of feeling at home in the toilet without a book in his hands – not only to make the most of his time, but because a pleasant and instructive read had the virtue of soothing him and steering his performance to a successful outcome; what’s more, he felt embarrassed at the thought that some employee or colleague – especially if it was a woman – should see him entering or leaving the bathroom with reading matter, and although he had perfected a posture of camouflage to that effect, which involved wedging the book under his armpit and cleaving his arm to his side in order to conceal it from prying eyes, the average size of books on management made any dissimulation unviable. Hence the office was far from ideal.
But this time things were different: in spite of its immaculate hardback binding, The Corporate Samurai was a pocket edition, and Marroné could walk the empty corridors with utter impunity. And although he crossed paths with no one on the short walk, it was with a sense of triumph that, once the bathroom door was closed and bolted, he sat down on the toilet seat and opened the volume at the bookmarked page.
The Corporate Samurai belonged to a select minority of texts that had successfully applied the principles of millenary oriental wisdom to the modern art of management: titles like Dwight D Connoly’s The Art of Competition, adapted from Sun Tzu’s celebrated The Art of War; or The Tao of Management by Dean Tesola, who brought the immemorial wisdom of Laozi to the conference table of a modern corporation. True, The Corporate Samurai lacked the astonishing relevance of the former and the philosophical depth of the latter, and sometimes lapsed into mere pedestrian substitution, mechanically replacing ‘samurai’ with ‘executive’ and ‘battle’ with ‘competition’, giving rise to entire paragraphs such as: ‘When the company enters into competition the executive must camp out day and night in the office, developing competitive strategies without a moment’s rest. It is necessary for employees of all ranks to dig any ditches, strongholds or outposts needed to protect the company from enemy attack and prevent them invading their markets and making off with their clientele.’ But it also contained paragraphs that could be described as sublime, such as its majestic opening, which Marroné always reread before embarking on the rest of the book: ‘What every executive must have constantly in mind, night and day, is that they will die. Death is their goal, their north, their main occupation.’ Marroné had meditated long and hard on this astonishing idea, which he had first taken for a rather melodramatic variant of the executive’s maxim ‘Go to work every day expecting to be fired’, but subsequently, after reading further, had discovered a deeper meaning. For a samurai executive, following the Way of the Executive involved subordinating personal achievements and goals to a higher end: the good of the company, the honour or, as in his case, the very life of its president. European or American readers of The Corporate Samurai were lucky enough to be able to take the phrase figuratively, but in this antipodean reality the idea of death was no metaphor for demotion or dismissal, but a palpable and concrete possibility; nor was the battlefield merely that of commercial competition, but also that of the streets where modern executives had to fight it out day and night against bombs, machine-gunnings and kidnappings. Nonetheless, the essential virtues of The Corporate Samurai were its accessibility and reader-friendliness, and Marroné, who knew from experience that the effort of disentangling the meaning of a complicated text might prolong rather than facilitate the task he was engaged in, started to read:
Though the Way of the Executive first and foremost entails developing the qualities of strength and efficiency, he who develops only in these respects shall reach no further than becoming a rustic executive of little consequence. Therefore, even a lower-ranking executive will do well to try his hand at music – clumsy though he may be – at painting or literature or some other art, albeit in moderation. For he who becomes completely absorbed in it and neglects his professional duties shall turn soft of body and mind, and lose his martial qualities to become a self-absorbed, second-rate artist. If one should grow too passionate about an art, it is easy to behave like some bright and witty chatterer in the company of your serious and reserved fellow samurai. This may be amusing in terms of social life, but it is an attitude that does not befit the Way of the Executive.
At this point a number 3 interrupted the flow of the text and Marroné, who was always extremely punctilious when it came to footnotes, skipped to the bottom of the page to read the note in question:
3. Although modern western executives have not adopted the tea ceremony practised by samurai knights, they have developed other forms of professional and social contact. Golf, for example, has been highly popular with company people since the days of the big tycoons. Hence, the executive who wishes to progress in the world of business must at least be familiar with the correct way of gaining access to the golf course, and know how to choose his clubs and keep score correctly, for which it is recommended that he take a few lessons from a pro. The golf club is a most suitable place to close deals and forge personal relationships, far from the distractions of the office, and the spirit of golf, properly cultivated, can do much to sweeten the Way of the Executive.
Accompanying the downward motion of his eyes, as if a blockage had finally been removed, Marroné’s innards voided themselves placidly in one, and he closed the book and gave a sigh of relief. He hadn’t had such a good bowel movement since he’d started working at the company, he told himself, contemplating the profuse fruit of his belly while doing up his trousers and reaching for the flush button. There could only be one explanation for it: something deep inside him, something the meaning of which he wasn’t yet able to unravel, had loosened when he had set eyes on the mortal remains of what had in life been Sr Tamerlán’s index finger. Leaving the bathroom and advancing down the corridor with the buoyant stride of a moon-walker, Marroné felt like a new man, as if – how else could he put it? – his soul had returned to his body, and not without a secret frisson of impishness he smiled to himself: maybe the Montoneros had ended up doing him a favour after all.