News of the expropriation of the Eva Perón Plasterworks (formerly the Sansimón Plasterworks) by its workers spread through the neighbourhood and local factories like wildfire, and very soon went nationwide on radio and television, which pitched the story under the sensationalist banner ‘ARGENTINE SOVIET ERA DAWNS’. So no one was surprised when the number of men and vehicles in the police guard surrounding the premises doubled, and any workers not on Eva production were consigned by their white-helmeted comrades – which now, of course, included ‘El Negro’ Ernesto – to beef up the military supplies and defence divisions. When he wasn’t lingering in dewy-eyed contemplation over the moist Evas accumulating on the drying racks, he would don the brown helmet and assist in the gathering or production of items for the defences: filling bottles with ball bearings and marbles, learning to manufacture caltrops and Molotov cocktails, rolling barrels of fuel or paint stripper to the factory’s entrances, confiscating all the pepper supplies from the kitchen or scrounging reserves from neighbouring grocers, inspecting the fire-extinguishers and fire-hoses, which one very hot day he and his comrades ended up turning on themselves, knocking each other over in rowdy cowboy duels, tripping each other up with jets of water as hard as iron bars, in an impromptu carnival romp from which they emerged grinning and drenched.
The episode perfectly encapsulated the general atmosphere that reigned in the liberated factory: they all knew an attempt to take back the Eva Perón Plasterworks was on the cards, but no one believed it was imminent. There were too many of them for one thing, and to a man they were ready to fight to the bitter end in order to defend it. The barrels of fuel and paint stripper stockpiled at the four entrances had been put on display as a gesture for the benefit of the presiding judge, just to let him know that, were the police to attack, they would at best recapture a pile of smoking ruins. And then there were the hostages. It wasn’t that the workers meant them any harm, but in the event of an attack they might be tempted to use them as human shields – and who would thank the government for recovering the factory if the owner and its chief executives had to attend the reopening in body bags? The strikers also had the people behind them, as demonstrated by the support of the locals, who cheered them every time they set foot in the neighbourhood, often lavishing provisions on them and waving the strikers away when they offered to pay with what little money they had, and generally egging them on (it was a humble neighbourhood, practically a shanty town in parts). Statements of support kept pouring in from neighbouring factories; student associations and political parties; improvising orators, of whom there was never a shortage at the gate, spoke of the Eva Perón Plasterworks as the vanguard of the proletariat and the spearhead of the Revolution. And as if that weren’t enough, Marroné had been going with unprecedented regularity since the day of the assembly. Something of the reigning euphoria must have infected him when he spoke with Govianus the accountant on the phone.
‘Is something the matter with you, Marroné? You sound different…’
‘It’s the joy of knowing I’ll soon have those ninety-two busts for you, Sr Govianus,’ he answered exultantly.
And to some extent it was true. At this rate they’d be packed and loaded by the 24th, a day late, true, and cutting it pretty fine, because, being Christmas Eve, they only worked a half-day; but the assembly had voted to celebrate the recovery of the factory by throwing a big asado, open to all – except, of course, police and bureaucrats – and Marroné felt it wasn’t the right time to spoil their fun and blow his credit with them by being a stick-in-the-mud and insisting they finish the job first.
The day of the asado dawned bright and sunny, albeit on the warm side, and the workers were up early to get everything ready for the big bash. They set up tables from the canteen and workshop in the front gardens, watched over by the now companionless David and, realising there weren’t enough, supplemented them with trestles and planks, desks from the offices and even with doors they’d taken off their hinges, draping them with tablecloths of various patterns and colours, contributed by local women, many of them strikers’ wives. Makeshift parrillas cobbled together from gratings, railings and chicken-wire had to be added to the existing ones, and the vast horseshoe of grills was lined below with beds of glowing coals and above with a lorry load of meat – a gift from the workers at a nearby meat-packing plant – which in no time at all was hissing and crackling over the coals, enveloped in the clouds that rose from the sizzling fat, and emitting the most mouth-watering smells in the world: whole sides of beef trimmed with garlands of black puddings, pork sausages and chitterlings; armies of chickens whose skins crisped and goldened; whole sucking pigs, butterflied and gleaming like polished leather, smiling at the thought of how delicious they’d taste; and there, wielding the long knife and fork of the asador, stood El Tuerto, presiding like a grinning Cyclops over this general holocaust of roasting animal flesh. Under a stand of willows, to keep the morning sun off them, stood two tall pyramids of demijohns – one of white, one of red – which had either been donated or sold by local shopkeepers at cost price. There, too, sat heavy wicker baskets lugged by two men apiece and heaped with bread rolls, which, bisected by a brigade of slicers, gaped in anticipation of the sausages and black puddings that would soon fill their jaws. The salad committee were hosing down tubs of lettuces, and slicing tomatoes and onions, then chucking everything into enormous troughs into which others poured bottle after bottle of corn oil and wine vinegar, and tossed it with trowels and wooden spatulas. The blue hats had spent the day before handing out leaflets and sticking up posters, and the news had been spread through a double megaphone atop a Fiat 500, which drove round and round the station square; and all this, coupled with word of mouth and especially the smell that wafted over the brick-and-mortar shacks and corrugated-iron-roofed hovels, and drifted maddeningly in through windows and chinks – passengers were even said to have jumped the train at the station to try their luck – meant that a throng of neighbours and gatecrashers joined the contingents of worker delegates, students and sympathisers, all of whom began milling about among the smoking grills, sitting at the tables or on the lawn, and cadging the first swigs of wine in wax-paper cups. Dozens of children played among the trees, most of them the sons and daughters of workers from the factory, hugging the legs of parents who in some cases hadn’t seen them for days, and Marroné looked on at them with a touch of healthy envy. He had called Mabel the night before, suggesting she should drop in with the children to enjoy a day in the country with his new-found friends, an invitation she had not only most emphatically declined but had followed through with a flurry of recriminations and tears for all the time he’d been away, which segued seamlessly into the subject of the seasonal festivities: ‘Mum and Dad are expecting us on Christmas Eve like every year, and I’ve already made arrangements with yours for…’ Marroné had been non-committal, and Mabel took a breath before launching into a second tirade, ‘I knew it! I knew it! I knew this was all an excuse for you to snub them! I know you, Ernesto Marroné!’ ‘No, you don’t,’ he said to her, after he’d hung up, ‘and if you think things are going to be the same when I come back – if I do come back – you’ve got another thing coming.’ Still, all in good time; for the moment he could just wander and gaze at the kites overhead, listening to the crackle of their paper and the snap of their tails every time the hovering police helicopter flew off, watching any of three football games taking place in the unwooded parts of the grounds, listening to the music from the bands playing on the podium that had been Marroné’s stairway to glory, now reassembled under the shade of the pines. A four-piece was onstage; siku, quena, charango and bombo, played by swarthy young men in ponchos with vicuña and cactus motifs: it was The Atahualpas.
‘Through the jungles of Bolivia
Always watchful, never trivial,
On a mule called Rocinante
Rides this new knight-comandante.
He’s the Revolution’s tiara
And his name is Che… ?’
… they asked, pausing and pointing at the audience of wised-up youths, most with long hair and haversacks, who chorused back ‘Guevara!’, and yelled ‘Presente!’ and ‘Viva!’ Another coincidence, or rather sign, mused Marroné, who hadn’t missed the unmistakeable reference to his colleague from La Mancha.
But most of the time he simply strolled about, enjoying the transformation of the factory’s green lawn into a public park, now and then issuing directives or dealing with workers’ queries: the comrades standing guard in the factory were asking to be relieved (‘Time up,’ he answered); should we take the hostages something to eat (‘What hostages?’), or invite them to join in? (‘Screw them, the exploiting scum!’); the people wanted to cool down with the fire-hoses, could they? (‘Water to the people!’), and every query concluded with the invariable ‘What should we do, Ernesto?’, which became the badge and catchphrase associated with the new Marroné. At one point in this constant toing and froing he ran into Paddy, who had also been rushing back and forth, fielding people’s questions. They stood together for a moment, looking on at the spectacle unfolding before their eyes.
‘Now you see why I became a proletarian?’ his friend exclaimed exultantly. ‘Just look at this. Where else do you find fervour like this?’
Marroné recalled the stands back in St Andrew’s celebrating Paddy’s try against St George’s, but for some reason he felt it would be unwise to bring it up.
Out of sheer contentment Paddy put his arm around Marroné’s shoulder, shaking him, then squeezing him tight. Marroné felt a lump rise to his throat and for a moment he was on the verge of confessing to his part in the coloured-chalk episode, but then he thought it might ruin the moment and let it pass.
‘We’ll beat those sonsofbitches with sheer people power! This is what our Revolution’s all about, Ernesto! Look at their faces! Who’s going to stop us now, for Christ’s sake!’
‘Comrade…’
They both turned round at the same time. The man in mirrored sunglasses who had spoken was dressed in a light leather jacket, zipped up to the collar in spite of the heat, his hair slicked behind his ears into an astrakhan of tight curls at the nape.
‘Miguel!’ Paddy said with pleasant surprise. ‘How’s it going?’
He made to embrace him, but Miguel held out his hand coldly, ignoring the one Marroné had politely extended in his direction.
‘What’s all this, Colorado?’ he said to Paddy.
‘This? It’s the people in power!’
‘But Colorado… I waltzed in through the front gate like I owned the place. No one to stop me. Your security… it’s a mess! Haven’t you seen the pigs outside?’
Paddy gestured at the factory gardens, which looked like a public promenade on a bank holiday. The thunderous thudding of the helicopter overhead again drowned out part of his reply, ‘… enough people power!’
Marroné still stood beside them, biding his time. Only then did the newcomer seem to notice his presence.
‘And who’s this?’
‘I thought you people had sent him,’ answered Paddy, looking at Marroné with dawning perplexity.
The time had come to seize the initiative.
‘Ernesto,’ was all he said, having been aware for some time now that guerrilla leaders never gave their surnames, and, with his best How-to-Win-Friends smile, held out his right hand again, this time right in the face of the ill-mannered Miguel, who had no option but to shake it. He even responded by cracking a tense smile.
‘Ah, yes. A pleasure, comrade. Heard a lot about you. You saved the occupation in injury time. You’re from the North Column, aren’t you?’
Marroné’s own house being in Olivos and his parents’ in Vicente López, he felt authorised to answer in the affirmative. Ah well, in for a penny… Miguel turned back to Paddy, his tone and facial expression hardening perceptibly.
‘Well, Colorado, for a start you can tell your happy people to up and leave right now. The party’s over.’
‘But…’
‘Are you questioning a direct order?’
Marroné watched the colour rise to Paddy’s neck and cheeks. He had seen him like this at school when some master or other was giving him a mouthful. The newcomer’s high-handedness made Marroné smile to himself. At school no one could keep Paddy down. How much less now that he had the whole of the people behind him.
‘No,’ said Paddy, bowing his head.
Marroné was dumbfounded. He was in the presence of something unheard of, or at least beyond his ken. Paddy taking orders, meekly and obediently.
‘Maybe I’m wrong, you tell me. You reckon there’s a lot to celebrate? You liberated a factory, true… but 99.9 per cent are still in the hands of the capitalists and the bureaucracy. And by making the workers owners of the company, you’re actually deproletarianising them… giving them a taste for capitalism. A typical liberal, petit bourgeois deviation, and proof that the proletarianisation process in you is only skin-deep… Scratch your surface a bit and all that good old English education shines through. You’ve been fraternising with the unions too long, Colorado. Our organisation does not pander to trade unions: it dictates to them. We can’t afford to fight for the workers’ creature comforts in this one and then let them go all bourgeois on us: they have to be toughened up and made ready to seize power. We’re not asking for soap for the toilets any more; we’re making the Revolution not just for the happy few,’ he said, taking in the motley throng with a sweep of his hand, ‘but for everyone. So now, if you haven’t got the balls for the Revolution, just let us know and we’ll sort it out no sweat, because there are hundreds of comrades willing to lay down their lives in your place. A strike’s no laughing matter, Colorado. As long as there’s a single Argentine that suffers, it’s our duty to suffer with them. What are you celebrating here? The fact that, while you’re stuffing your faces, the underfed minors working in the Tucumán sugar mills are starving to death? Or that you’re getting pissed here while our comrades fighting in the mountains are drinking their own, just like they had to in Che’s column?’
Paddy made the most of the pause to collect his scattered thoughts.
‘The strike, the occupation, the recovery… it was decided by all of us, in assembly. We should hold another one if we’re going to suspend the celebrations. And I don’t think the vote will go in our favour…’ he countered. ‘Me, I don’t give orders to anyone here.’
‘I know, Colorado. I do. Look,’ he said, resting one hand on Paddy’s shoulder, who tensed visibly as if someone had just jabbed him with an awl. ‘I know that at the end of the day you’ve done important work here. Even your deviations weren’t the product of bad intentions. So I’ll make an exception and let you in on a couple of things. If Ernesto agrees, that is.’
Marroné nodded and acknowledged the courtesy with a curt smile.
‘The leadership has something big up its sleeve… First, we’re going to get the union back… You know what I’m talking about. Babirusa’s one block we can’t afford to stumble over again, you know that better than me… Meanwhile, mingling with all these lovely citizens strolling in through the gates you so generously left open, the big cheeses from the union are wandering around taking notes on the means of access, the cracks in the defence and the folk they’re going to whack – with you top of the list. That’s one reason to wrap this carnival up: it’s a serious breach of security. Easily fixed though. I’ve sent for our people; they’ll be here before nightfall. But your liberal antics have called for a stronger remedy. I’m relieving you of your duties, Colorado. You’re being moved to the military front. That way you’ll still be fighting for all of… them.’ He gestured vaguely towards the factory building. ‘Just in a different arena. Look on it as a promotion if you like. We have to move forward, Colorado, take the leap to the next stage. The days of the specialist cadre are over; what we’re looking for now are all-rounders who’ll tackle anything we throw at them. Every militant has to be a soldier prepared to lay down his or her life.’
Marroné was about to chip in with a helpful quote from The Corporate Samurai, but thought better of it, as it might give him away. Paddy frowned, more concerned now than annoyed, until in the end he ventured to ask:
‘You’re going to whack Babirusa. And you want me in on it.’
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No… But… Is it necessary? We’ll wipe the floor with them at the elections. Just look at all this.’
‘I have. You said the same thing last time. And two days before the election Babirusa got into bed with the management and they fired all the comrades on the rival list. Babirusa’s a traitor to the workers’ cause. And he has the blood of several of your comrades on his hands, in case you’d forgotten.’
Paddy had starting to fume again.
‘Course I haven’t forgotten. Are you suggesting…’
‘I never suggest; I say. So? You’re scared?’
‘No, Miguel. It’s just that your way we erase all differences. Even if that traitor Babirusa bags the elections with fraud – or with blood – he’ll still be branded a traitor. But if we whack him, what does that prove? You can whack anyone, makes no difference if it’s Tosco or Vandor.’
‘See what a petty petit bourgeois you are? All we need now is for you to start carrying on about the sacred value of human life. Know what, Colorado? In case you hadn’t heard, our objective here isn’t to end up moral champions, but to make the Revolution. The Revolution isn’t for the faint-hearted, in case you didn’t know. Now, let’s get the job done because I’m starting to get a bit pissed off. We’ll have tea and scones together another day if you want to go on talking. Right, you’ve a five-o’clock appointment on the last bench at the station, downtown platform. Meanwhile we’ll pull the plug on this little shindig. Coming, Ernesto? People still don’t know me around here, so I’ll leave the talking to you.’
Marroné nodded because he was in no position to refuse, though he’d rather have stayed with his dejected friend. He grabbed him firmly by one arm all the same and gave him a hearty slap of encouragement on the other, but then turned round out of reflex to make sure he hadn’t stained Paddy’s white overalls with coloured chalk.
‘I like El Colorado,’ Miguel said to Marroné as they walked away. ‘Give him time and I think he’ll make a helluva cadre. Trouble is, he was a bit old when we got hold of him. Certain vices are very deep-rooted after a certain age… You can’t wash the stigma of English school away with a bit of elbow grease. Training a real worker cadre takes years, as you well know. Ah well… A bit of the old hand-to-hand won’t hurt him. So there’s no need for you people to worry because, as you can see for yourself, everything here’s right on track…’
At these words Marroné almost slapped his forehead. So that was it! Miguel had taken him for an observer sent by the upper echelons, and he’d gone to town on Paddy’s reprimand in order to ingratiate himself. It had felt familiar from the start, a paranoia, commonplace enough in the world of business, that became attached to every newcomer to the office. Oh, well. Miguel’s misunderstanding could work to his advantage if he was careful not to put his foot in it.
‘You work at Tamerlán, don’t you?’
Had Miguel rumbled him? Marroné’s heart skipped a beat.
‘Keep your friends close…’ he mumbled.
‘Brilliant,’ concluded Miguel. ‘Always need somebody on the inside. Impeccable operation from start to finish… ran like clockwork. Did you come up with the plan?’
‘I just sent in the intelligence,’ answered Marroné with a false modesty that Miguel took as a yes, as Marroné had expected him to.
Joined by Miguel, who followed him everywhere like his shadow, Marroné went about waking up the workers sleeping it off under the trees, ordering them to down some coffee and don the right hat; he had the entrance gate closed and gave the gatekeeper strict instructions to open it only for those who were leaving; he had the embers doused, the unopened demijohns stored in the warehouse, the footballs rounded up, the tails of the kites rolled up, and the general shower of paper cups and plates, serviettes, plastic bottles and butt-ends that had fallen on the green lawn raked into piles and swept into binbags. It wasn’t a pleasant task but it had to be done, and a sign of the new-found discipline and influence among the workers was that, although a few grumbled and others answered him with a reluctant ‘Now, Ernesto?’, not one argued or shirked when it came to doing their jobs. His companion was more impressed by the minute, and Marroné, who was bursting with pride, could see himself in the not-too-distant future sharing his rich experience with a spellbound audience in a leadership seminar. ‘A born leader will lead no matter what,’ was the byword that formed magically in his mind, and he made a mental note to jot it down in his notebook as soon as he found time for a breather.
The people Miguel had promised arrived in a minibus that same night. There were six of them: four men and two women, all young, thought Marroné, though he never got to see them up close. They wore jeans or work trousers, training shoes and t-shirts or open-necked work shirts, and carried long bags so heavy they seemed to stretch their arms; their load clunked with hardware when they set it down. Miguel spent five minutes whispering to them, after which they melted into the shadows.
‘If you agree,’ Miguel said to Marroné as soon as they’d gone, ‘I’ll take over the military command, so we don’t get under each others’ feet. But we’ll plan the overall strategy together.’
They decided to set up the command post in Sansimón’s office, which had been vacated at Marroné’s suggestion ‘to put an end to unfair privileges’. The moment they set foot in it, they reeled from the stink of confinement: the sweat, the fags, the spilt beer, the stale food and yes… even rancid semen. In the space of just a few days the top brass had shed their veneer of civilisation, which apparently included basic hygiene. Marroné gave the cleaning committee a stern telling-off: just because they were bosses and exploiters of the working class didn’t justify their having been kept in degrading conditions. We don’t want to come down to their level, he told the committee, taking inward delight in the squalid scene; and, quick as a flash, they opened the windows to let some fresh air in, took out the rubbish, sprayed the place with deodorant and vacuumed the floor. He and Miguel stuck around sipping maté until dinner-time, with lights off to be on the safe side as the broad window looked onto the street, making them sitting ducks for any crack snipers posted out there. Bringing all his business acumen to bear, Marroné said little and listened hard, asking precise questions and giving open-ended answers, constantly reminding himself it was Miguel not him who was under examination, which his counterpart did indeed seem absolutely convinced of and talked a blue streak in his efforts to ingratiate himself with the superiors who had sent Marroné in to spy.
‘The idea is that each occupied factory acts as a trap for the union’s bully boys, the Triple A and the police. We plant a platoon of fighters in each, under heavy cover. Then we whack some union bureaucrat, see, to provoke them. When they waltz in thinking all they’re up against is workers with small arms and no target practice, they’ll cop the surprise of their lives. They won’t catch us napping again; this’ll be their Ezeiza massacre, you can be sure of that. And when the people see them running out, they’ll realise we’re the only ones who’ll stand by them.’
Marroné nodded at everything in agreement and even permitted himself the luxury of implying that none of this would be overlooked when the comrade came up for promotion. But that night, after taking a shower and donning clean overalls – a garment he now felt as comfortable in as if he’d been wearing it all his life – and lying down on the sofa bed in what had once been Garaguso’s office, he found it impossible to get to sleep: every little noise made him jump, imagining as he did that it might be the crunch of a boot, the hammering of a semi-automatic rifle, the sound of a grenade rolling across the floor; so he decided to get up and do the rounds of the pickets on guard duty to make sure they were all alert and at their posts. The night was as cool and clear as the day had been hot and radiant and, remembering that tomorrow would be Christmas Eve (or rather today, as it had just struck midnight), he looked up at the sky, as if searching for a new Star of Bethlehem to announce the birth of… who? The new Ernesto Marroné?
The armed guards at the main gate were clearly visible, silhouetted against the police floodlights; low voices could be heard at the sentry posts on the eastern perimeter and at the northern corner, and the night fires burnt brightly; only at the southern corner did darkness and silence reign: there lay El Tuerto and Pampurro, fast asleep, having been at the bottle throughout. Pampurro was leaning against a tree trunk with a certain decorum, and El Tuerto was sprawled on the damp grass, snoring, saliva dribbling from his open maw. Marroné stooped to pick up the fallen weapon, which turned out to be Sansimón’s Smith & Wesson, and cocked it by El Tuerto’s ear, but got no more response out of him than a resounding grunt. Pushing him with the tip of his shoe, he rocked him back and forth until one sleepy eye opened.
‘I think you dropped this, comrade,’ he said, swinging the gun on one finger by the trigger guard.
Hauling himself upright, El Tuerto gave him a roguish grin and held out his upturned wrists as much as to say ‘It’s a fair cop’, while Marroné slowly uncocked the gun and laid it on El Tuerto’s open palms. He gave him a quick two-fingered salute and walked away whistling, making a V for victory at the whispered ‘Thanks, Ernesto!’ behind him. They were good men after all, just a bit short of training.
He hadn’t run into any of the Montoneros Miguel had sent for, but that came as no surprise: professionals of their standing wouldn’t let themselves be spotted that easily. But the exception proves the rule, Marroné confirmed yet again as he crossed the entrance to the right transept and made out a figure beyond the green machines, sitting with its back to him under one of the many lights that hung from the roof, orbited by insects. It was one of the two girls, he found out as he approached stealthily and saw her long, chestnut hair tumbling loose down her back. As he walked around her, he discovered what it was that had her so engrossed: on her lap lay an open book. In his surprise – she was the first reader he’d come across since he’d arrived – he must have made a noise, for a second later the girl had dropped the book with a startled shout and was pointing her FAL straight at his head. But this wasn’t what left Marroné paralysed and open-mouthed; it was the face of the young woman now staring into his, her eyes bulging with fright. Marroné had recognised her immediately. It was Eva. She too seemed to recognise him, because she instantly lowered her gun and saluted.
‘Forgive me.’
Marroné said the first thing that came into his head.
‘At ease, comrade.’ He pointed to the fallen book. ‘Reading, are we?’
Impulsively Eva made to grab it, but Marroné stopped her with a chivalrous palm and crouched to pick it up. It was a paperback with a fuchsia-pink cover, from the base of which rose a forest of raised hands, two or three with open palms, but most with index fingers pointing upwards; Marroné’s almost physical sensation of discomfort was so intense that he couldn’t help glancing at Eva’s face to see if she had noticed. But she only seemed concerned about the book, whose predictable title, The Wretched of the Earth, meant nothing to him, even though the name of its author, Frantz Fanon, was vaguely familiar. Out of sheer curiosity he opened it at random.
‘Please can I have it back?’ begged Eva, holding out her hand. ‘I swear it won’t happen again…’
‘Don’t worry,’ Marroné said, all condescension and bonhomie. ‘Guard duty can get pretty tedious, I know. But I don’t need to tell you what could have happened if it had been the enemy instead of me.’
She nodded contritely, brushing the hair from her face. There was no doubt about it: she was the Eva in the photonovel and, with her light-brown hair down like that, she reminded him especially of the young woman posing cheerfully in her polka-dot bathing costume: he would have liked to make her laugh, see her smile again, this time in the flesh.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.
‘María Eva,’ she answered, after a slight hesitation.
Of course, thought Marroné. It was her nom de guerre, obviously, and it would have to do, because a guerrilla leader would never ask for her real one.
‘So María Eva’s a reader, is she?’ he said in a tone that was trying to be pleasant but, he realised too late, made him sound like a secondary-school teacher ticking her off. ‘Don’t worry,’ he hastened to correct it. ‘We’ll keep it just between you and me this time. I’m an avid reader too, I read whenever I can, even on the… er… the bus,’ he said, nimbly negotiating the hurdle he had inadvertently set himself. ‘May I?’ he said, opening up the book at random and starting to read:
To begin with, the impossibility of going up to a woman, the risk of never seeing her again another day, suddenly lend her the same charm as illness or poverty will to a place they prevent us from visiting, or the fray in which we shall surely die to the dull days we have still to live. So that, were it not for habit, life should seem delicious to those people who may at every hour be in danger of dying – all mankind, that is. Then, though the imagination is carried away by the desire for something we cannot possess, its flight is not held back by a reality fully perceived, in these chance meetings in which the charm of the passer-by generally stands in direct proportion to their briskness. The night may fall and the coach go fast, in the country, in a town, but there is no female torso, mutilated like an ancient marble by the speed which draws us on and the dusk which shrouds it, that, at every corner of the road, in the depths of every lighted shop, does not fire Beauty’s arrows at our heart – Beauty, which tempts one to wonder at times if it is anything in this world but a makeweight added by our imagination, overwrought as it is by regret, to the fleeting and fragmentary shadow of a woman passing by.
In his astonishment Marroné checked the top of the page: In the Shadow of Young Girls in Bloom. Intrigued, he looked at the first page: 127. Then he clicked: what he was holding was a fragment of a larger work, torn from the original and stuck inside another book’s cover.
‘Please, don’t tell my superior,’ he heard María Eva’s voice say. ‘Last time he caught me reading Proust, he made me write a self-criticism. If he finds out I’ve lapsed again…’
‘So that’s why you hid it inside the Fanon, is it?’ he asked with a smile.
María Eva flashed him a smile, at once shy and impish. The first. She was definitely the Eva in the photonovel. But he decided to wait until they were on closer terms, before he asked her.
‘So, do you like him?’
‘Fanon? Well, sure, he’s right about everything he says, of course: the culture of the coloniser and the colonised, right? Of course, the situation in Africa’s a bit different from ours… I mean, when he wrote it, they really were colonies…’
‘No, Proust,’ he cut her short.
She spoke quickly, almost apologetically, as if ashamed of her own enthusiasm.
‘Aaaah. Sure! Well, I mean, he’s a real bourgeois; no, if only, not even a bourgeois; he’s an out-and-out oligarch: all those princesses and marquises, and their residences… They’re all such snobs… It’s almost embarrassing at times. You’d think there’d never been a revolution in France. And he’s sooo European… I know the comrades gave me funny looks when they found out, but I dunno, it’s kind of like a vice… And there are other things about him… his relationship with his mother – wanting her to tuck him in and all that, and Swann’s love for Odette, and the walks around Méséglise and Guermantes… You’re reading and suddenly you’re there, in the countryside… Oh, I’m sorry… I’m talking as if everyone had read him. That’s so rude of me, I’m always doing that. Comrade, have you ever… ?’
‘Please, call me Ernesto,’ he reassured her, desperately scrabbling in his memory for scraps of information about Proust: he’d written In Search of Lost Time; there were several volumes; and it had something to do with memories… But, as far as he knew, there wasn’t a single business title along the lines of In Search of Lost Profits or In the Shadow of Young Markets in Bloom.
‘No, I can never find the time for things like that,’ he quipped. ‘As you know, being an officer isn’t a part-time… er… But you have to take a break occasionally, don’t you. You can’t be reading Marx and Lenin and Mao all the time, now, can you. At the moment, for example, I’m reading…’ He took a breath before saying, ‘Don Quixote.’
This time he was rewarded with the full, radiant, eternal smile of the photo.
‘I don’t believe it. I finished it a couple of months ago. I can still remember the day. Oh, when he died all huddled up and shrivelled like that, it made me feel so sad… I wept like a little girl.’
Marroné looked at her sternly.
‘Now you’ve told me how it ends.’
María Eva clapped her hand over her mouth and opened her eyes wide in horror.
‘Only joking. I know how it ends,’ he lied to reassure her.
María Eva suddenly seemed to recall where she was and looked anxiously around her.
‘I should be getting back to my post, shouldn’t I? If Miguel were to see me…’
‘I’ll take the rap,’ said Marroné, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest to assert his rank.
‘Thanks.’ That smile again. ‘It’s just that… Miguel isn’t just my superior… he’s my partner, you see?’
Marroné did see, and intercepted the downward rictus of his mouth just in time.
‘Right,’ he said, trying not to let his disappointment show. ‘Maybe we’ll find more time to talk tomorrow. I just wanted to ask you one thing: are you the Eva in the photonovel?’
This time she reacted differently: she blushed in shame, like her biblical namesake, but covered her face rather than her sex.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve read it,’ she said through her fingers.
‘Yes. You’re the one who plays Eva, aren’t you?’
María Eva took her hand from her face and gave a tight-lipped nod.
‘Why are you embarrassed about it? You look great.’
María Eva stared at him for a second, as if trying to guess the reply expected of her.
‘Yes, I know. I really admire Eva, and I loved playing her; I took it really seriously. Course, I had to go on a diet for the part about her illness… The Reason for My Life can be a bit daft in places, like this little fairy tale, but then we all know it was ghosted for her when she was ill… We tried to bring out the real Eva. The original script was really good, I don’t know if you’ve read it… It was by a comrade, Marcos, you know. They rewrote bits of it later, to make it more militant, beef up the slogans.’ It suddenly seemed to dawn on her that, as a leader, Marroné may well have been the one who’d ordered the changes in the first place, because she abruptly interrupted herself. ‘It isn’t a criticism, eh. I know what we need isn’t armchair literature, but books for the trenches. Still, I dunno, I find the whole idea of these militant photonovels a bit hard to swallow. They’re bourgeois prejudices of mine, aren’t they. As a girl I was taught they were just pulp for the pig-ignorant, because they were read by proles. But why shouldn’t a well-made photonovel ultimately be as valuable as a film, or a comic? I’m not talking about El Tony or Intervalo; I’m talking Oesterheld, right?’
Marroné nodded, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. He was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all: a beautiful young woman dressed in worker’s clothes, packing an FAL and discussing Proust was nothing his previous life had prepared him for.
‘So, you aren’t going to ask a worker to read this,’ she said, holding up the copy of Fanon, although she may also have been referring to the Proust within. ‘But there’s one thing I don’t get… I mean, I’m told not to read Proust because he’s bourgeois, because he’s European, because the people won’t understand him… Yet everyone in Cuba reads Lezama Lima, or Carpentier, and neither of them have a trace of the worker about them… And that’s ultimately why we’re leading the Revolution, isn’t it? The Russians didn’t burn the Hermitage. They opened it up to the people. I don’t know… I suppose you have to renounce Proust at this stage… and reclaim him after the Revolution, when we can read him properly – all of us, not just a select clique. I felt the same when I used to act.’
‘You’re an actress?’
‘Couldn’t you tell, from the photonovel?’ she said with a coy laugh.
‘Film or television?’
‘No, just the theatre.’
‘So what made you give it up?’
‘Well, you guys don’t leave us much spare time, actually. Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m only kidding. Let’s see… how can I put it? One day… I saw the face of the audience. I was playing Nora, and I slammed the door and rattled the wings night after night just so that all those good married ladies could go home happy. Antigone too: I buried my brother to keep the spectators from being alarmed by all those corpses they were reading about in the papers. Then I read Brecht and realised I was falling into the trap of cathartic theatre. I realised I was acting to soothe the guilty consciences of the bourgeoisie. I took my act to the shanties, but the feeling just wouldn’t go away… What I was doing wasn’t getting through because my acting was still bourgeois. That was when I realised that, much as I loved it, I had to give up the stage… But then, everything we renounce now the triumph of the Revolution will give us back a thousandfold, won’t it? So that’s how I went from acting to action. Just like Evita. Goodness! Now I really do have to get back to my post. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you… er…’
‘Ernesto,’ repeated Marroné, who, if truth be told, had barely said a word, this time not because he was applying the sixth rule of How to Win Friends and Influence People, but out of dumbstruck devotion.
He bade her goodbye with a vaguely military salute, but gave it a nonchalant air as if to say ‘We’re bigger than all this’, and began to climb the spiral staircase to avoid the service lift, which was too noisy. He spent a while leafing through the photonovel, looking for photos of María Eva, tenderly caressing the polka dots on her bathing costume and the breasts beneath her uniform, then switched off the light and lay there turning over their conversation in his mind; only when bars of dawn began to filter in through the shutters did he manage to catch a couple of hours’ sleep.
First thing in the morning he found himself in the canteen, sharing the breakfast of rolls and maté cocido with his comrades, when Zenón, his transistor radio glued to his ear, raised his voice over the general hubbub to announce:
‘Babirusa! They’ve taken him out!’
Instantly, like a goal celebration at the Sunday match, a deafening victory roar shook the canteen windows and helmets flew into the air, landing on heads and feet, smashing plates and cups. The workers hugged and kissed, or pinched each others’ cheeks, and some even climbed onto the benches, jumping up and down as if they were on the terraces, and singing:
‘Babirusa, you brass whore,
Say Hello to old Vandor!’
Zenón, who still had his ear glued like a plunger to the radio, interrupted the revelling to relay the devil in the detail.
‘Mown down outside his house. Got one of his bodyguards too. Hasn’t checked out yet, but they’re saying he won’t make it.’
But Zenón’s running commentary didn’t seem to make any difference to the mood of the diners, who gave another raucous cheer and carried on regardless with the old chants. At least, thought Marroné, the workers didn’t pull their punches when it came to expressing themselves. He thought it unlikely that, if anything similar happened to Sr Tamerlán, the office staff would dare to be so open about their feelings, even if many in private wished him the worst that fate could throw at him. How very petit bourgeois!
Amidst occasional laughter, jokes like ‘Heard the new song about Babirusa? Which song? The one that goes “And though the holes were rather small… ”’ and the odd little sing-song, the workers slowly dispersed to their respective posts. As soon as the Evas were finished, they’d be off to their homes to get ready for Christmas Eve; and after Christmas – a working-class Christmas at last – they’d be back to full production: no more exploitation, no more capital gain, no more alienated labour; the Eva Perón Plasterworks was liberated territory and in it the socialist utopia was very much a fait accompli, Marroné told the workers as he bid them goodbye with a pat on the back or – the more trusted ones – a slap on the buttocks. They were still leaving and he was about to join them, when he came face to face with a ghost. It was Paddy. All expression had drained from his face and his eyes were dead.
‘Pa… Colo! Come here, sit down. Have you had any breakfast? Fancy a bite to eat?’
‘Not hungry. Gimme something to drink.’
Marroné clicked his fingers for Pampurro, who was in charge of the kitchen today, to bring him a maté cocido. Paddy gulped it down thirstily, his throat bulging at every swig.
‘Everything all right?’
Paddy shook his head.
‘Want to talk about it?’
Paddy repeated the gesture.
Marroné sat beside him for a few minutes, watching him, keeping him company. It pained him to see his friend in this state, although, if he were being truly honest with himself, part of him envied him too. He’d been in a shoot-out; he’d fired at other people – maybe he’d even killed someone too. Would he have the guts if he found himself in Paddy’s shoes? He didn’t think so, but life sometimes had surprises up its sleeve. If someone had told him the morning he’d left his house, as he did every day, on his way to what was then the Sansimón Plasterworks, that in little over a week he would have become a strike leader and be taken for part of the top brass in a guerrilla army… what would he have replied? That they be locked up without delay, no doubt. It was one of the lessons he’d learnt from reading about the life of Eva Perón. Who are we really? Who really knows what they’re capable of under certain circumstances and what they aren’t? Perhaps his friend was asking himself the same questions right now. Or perhaps, he corrected himself, looking again at the expression on Paddy’s face, he’d found some answers. Which didn’t seem to be to his liking.
‘All right… I’m going to see how production’s going,’ he said eventually, slapping his knees.
Paddy barely looked at him as, in a broken voice, he said:
‘They saw me, Ernesto. Babirusa’s people are looking for me right now. Look at me.’ A flap of his hand took in the flaming beacon of his hair and beard. ‘You can spot me a mile off. I’ll have to go underground for a while.’
‘You’re safe here,’ Marroné reassured him in all confidence. ‘The comrades and I will look after you. Miguel’s brought in six specialists…’
‘Yeah, I know. But I never wanted to go underground. I’m a born front man, me. My thing is to be among the people. But if I stick around here I’m fucked.’
‘Now you’re being melodramatic,’ said Marroné jovially. ‘If you ask me, it sounds like they’re the ones whose days are numbered. Just like the whole capitalist system, right?’ he said, thumping him on the back.
When he stepped outside, he came across a bizarre sight, even by recent standards. A vast cloud of butterflies was crossing the factory gardens; it must have been some kind of migration, for they were all flying in the same direction, approximately due west: they were coming from behind the workers’ quarter, beyond the entrance gate, pouring through the gaps in the ever-tighter cordon of police cars and policemen, or flying straight over their heads and then crossing the wire fence, in which some got caught and fluttered for a few seconds. The ones that made it through crossed the entire premises of the factory and, after negotiating the wire on the other side, disappeared into the first outcrops of the shanty town beyond the black waters of the stream. As far as he could tell, they were all the same size and pattern, but wore a variety of colours: rust-tinted orange, lemon yellow, greeny yellow, immaculate white and sky blue, and when he managed to catch one in his fingers – it wasn’t hard, all he had to do was put his hand in the air and they would fly into it – he could see at closer quarters the hairy body, the iridescent eyes, the bright-green buttons of the antennae and the grey rim at the apex of the wings. He let it flutter off and gazed with curiosity at the coloured dust it left on his fingertips, and it was as if a distant memory were trying to come back to him. Rubbing his hands on his overalls, he set off back to the workshop. On his way, he ran into two workers swatting butterflies like houseflies as they walked, but a third – the man he had christened Edmundo Rivero – had stopped whatever it was he’d been doing and was gazing at them transfixed, his mouth half-open under the weight of his jaw, his great hands hanging motionless at his sides.
In the workshop everything was running like a dream. The workers greeted him without looking up from their tasks, which they tackled with renewed glee and determination now that everything was theirs; and Sansimón Senior, who was still directing operations, came over to welcome him in person and, taking him by the arm, steered him in the direction of the workbenches. The last of the Evas had just come out of the drier and was waiting alongside nineteen companions to be packed away in its nest of tow and wood, and loaded onto the van with the seventy-two others. He ran his fingertip over the delicate, slender neck and rounded chin, slowly traced the outline of the enigmatic smile, ascended the slight curvature of the nose, the open forehead, the hair pasted to the skull and the intricate, tightly tied bun that would reveal the fate of the country to the hero who could unravel it. They were his. He’d done it. In a couple of hours at most he’d be back at the office, Govianus would congratulate him, Sr Tamerlán would be released, Cáceres Grey would be sacked, and Marroné would be handed his job or any other he asked for.
It was all too good to last, he realised a second later when he heard the first dull bang and knew without needing to be told that things had returned to their usual state of catastrophe. The first shot set off a string of others, and several smoke grenades came crashing in through the windows in a hailstorm of broken glass, and ricocheted into two busts of Eva, splitting one of them open on the table and sending the other crashing to the floor. The men in the workshop ran back and forth willy-nilly, the way ants do when their nest has been kicked; some had tied handkerchiefs over their noses against the smoke, but most were just groping their way towards the exit, pushing and shoving and trampling everything in their way, including of course the odd bust that had fallen from the rocking shelves. Wearing the black hat of the defenders, El Tuerto climbed onto the table in a heroic attempt to stem the pandemonium, but managed only to play Godzilla to the few Evas still left intact on the table.
‘Remain calm, comrades! Fall back in orderly fashion! The factory is yours! Defend it!’ he shouted in between the coughing fits that tore through his throat. A single idea was hammering on the anvil of Marroné’s brain: the van. Save the van! Get in the driver’s seat, put your foot down, drive through the hail of bullets, hunched over the wheel, straight through the wire if necessary and don’t stop till you’ve reached 300 Paseo Colón and delivered the seventy-two busts, packed and parcelled, and later, in some other life, worry about the twenty that were missing. As soon as he put his head round the door, he knew that not even that grace would be his: hit by some projectile or set alight by the workers as a barricade, the van was now an orb of fire, its precious cargo aflame on its pyre of tow and wood. The heat forced Marroné to back away.
‘They’ve sent in the Air Force! We’re being bombed!’ a boy running past shouted to him, his eyes bulging with fright. But it wasn’t true; at least, when he looked up at the sky, Marroné could see no aircraft raking across it, hear no roar of jet engines; all he made out were a few lost butterflies, straggling and directionless, which, smothered by the fumes and smoke, fell to the ground as if gassed.
Coughing up his lungs and groping blind and swollen-eyed, Marroné made his way back to the now empty workshop. If he was quick, he kept repeating, there was still time to save a few; he could charge back and forth from workshop to car with an Eva under each arm, through the crossfire and explosions, until he’d saved the last remaining bust, but no sooner had the thought taken shape in his brain than a tank came crashing through the brick wall, knocking all the Evas off their shelves, its caterpillars proceeding to grind the few unbroken by the fall to dust.
‘Back to the factory! Back to the factory!’ shouted a distant voice in the fog, and Marroné, whose brain was too battered to think for itself, followed the order, dragging himself out of the workshop on all fours.
On his way to the factory he came across the young rebel office worker, Ramírez, running along the outer wall of the transept clutching a machine gun. They took cover at what had been the inner corner of the left transept of the building and crouched down together for a moment.
‘What are you doing here?’ Marroné asked him in amazement.
‘To Die in Madrid!’ came back the cryptic reply and, planting one knee squarely on the ground, he started firing on the tank, which was pivoting in search of a target. Two bottles came from nowhere and smashed over its skin of iron, bathing it in fuel but failing to burst into flame. ‘What are they trying to do? Clean it? The bloody incompetents spout World Revolution and don’t even know how to mix a bloody Molotov,’ spat his mind in contempt. To avoid being blown to pieces together with Ramírez, Marroné staggered off, his arms wheeling like a drunk. What was all this? What was Ramírez, the paper-pusher who’d been wearing a pink shirt and green tartan tie when they’d met, doing firing on an armoured car with a machine gun? Who was in charge of the casting in this ridiculous film?
No sooner had he emerged from the smoke and the entrance was in sight than a giant’s hand slammed into his chest, sending him flying backwards, skidding wildly on his backside. As he flailed to free himself from its grip, he realised he was soaking wet.
‘Whoa, hey! It’s Ernesto!’
His own men had hit him with the fire-hose. ‘At least we didn’t plug you one,’ said the arms that picked him up off the floor and dragged him inside by the armpits. Before he could even attempt to regain his senses, he was surrounded by half a dozen workers asking for all sorts of instructions and, as he peered over the ring of heads, he caught sight of the face of María Eva, her FAL slung over her shoulder; she saluted gravely when their eyes met. She had tied her hair back for combat, making her look even more like the Eva in the photonovel.
‘Comrade María Eva is in charge of defence operations,’ he said off the top of his head to wriggle out of it. ‘I want you to obey her every command as if it were my own,’ he said, with more composure, and headed into the factory to find a safe place to hide until all this madness had blown over.
Grenades came through the skylights and windows with monotonous regularity and, if you looked up or weren’t wearing your helmet, the vicious rain of glass could leave you badly cut, or worse still, quite blind. But no sooner had they landed than they were picked up and launched back by the ever-vigilant workers, usually with unerring aim, and controlled fires were dotted about, their smoke neutralising the gas and making the air still just about breathable.
His first idea had been to take refuge under a desk or sofa bed in one of the offices, but then he called to mind the fuel barrels and garlands of grenades, as well as Miguel’s promise to blow the factory sky high if it was attacked, and it no longer seemed like such a good idea. He was in the grip of these deliberations, crossing the central nave in the direction of the apse, when a hand deposited a jar of marbles and ball bearings in his, and a voice yelled in his ear:
‘It’s the Cossacks! The Cossacks are coming!’
His sense of reality was so badly shaken by now that he wouldn’t have been at all surprised when he turned round to find himself face to face with a host of fierce, bearded faces wielding sabres and wearing fur caps; but as usual the reality was even worse: in through the entrance to the atrium, whose barricades of furniture and beams had been swept aside by the personnel carrier, charged a troop of mounted police on monstrous brown steeds, galloping at full tilt and wielding what might have been truncheons or whips. Again the sense of unreality trumped common sense, and Marroné just stood there in the middle of the nave, as if, by staring hard at them, these figments of the enchanters who were pursuing him would pop and vanish like bubbles into the air. What was wrong with all these people? How on earth could a fucking cavalry charge be bearing down on him, a St Andrew’s graduate and head of procurement at Tamerlán & Sons, as if they were back in the Middle Ages? Luckily for him, someone else, of a more practical, less metaphysical turn of mind, hurled a paper grenade at the wall of jostling steeds, whereupon it promptly burst, sending clouds of pepper into the air and making the horses rear and prance, forcing their riders to halt the charge to bring them under control.
He was running for the apse when the voice of command reached his ears once again.
‘The marbles! Throw the marbles!’
Blindly, he obeyed. Maybe too blindly, for instead of throwing the jar backwards between himself and the horses, Marroné flung it forwards, and when the jar shattered on the floor and the coloured marbles scattered in all directions, it was Marroné that went skating uncontrollably and fell flat on his face. The pain as he hit the floor was unspeakable and for a moment he thought he’d swallowed some of the marbles, which now floated in his mouth in some kind of thick soup, and it was only after taking cover behind one of the brown machines and spitting a spurt of blood into his palms that he understood he’d split his lip, bitten his tongue and broken God knows how many teeth. ‘With everything I’ve got on, and I have to make a dental appointment!’ grumbled the old part of his mind indignantly, still obstinately running about bumping into the walls of his skull like a headless chicken.
Still, there must have been enough marbles rolling about to have come between him and the horses, for they had gone into a stiff-legged Holiday on Ice routine, bumping into and falling over each other with great thuds, squashing at least two riders against the cement floor or the machines.
‘Nice one! Way to go, Ernesto!’ he heard someone shout. He poked his head out of his hiding place; an iron hand closed over his arm like a mantrap and hauled him to his feet.
‘Don’t hurt me! I’m a hostage!’ he was about to scream, but he recognised Saturnino’s features just in time and saved the disclaimer for the right occasion.
‘Ernesto! You been hit?’ he asked him in concern, and then, in reply to the burbling sounds coming from Marroné, who discovered he could barely talk for the blood pouring from his mouth, he shouted, ‘Come on! We’re falling back!’
Saturnino led Marroné towards the barricade, which followed the line of blue machines. They crouched low as they ran, because shots could now be heard inside the factory too. Manning the barricade were a couple of workers with small-arms, and a guerrilla with a light machine gun, while most of the others had only catapults and bolts; three men lay on the ground, their white overalls stained with blood. Two weren’t moving: one, unrecognisable for the burns to his face, giving off the pestilential stench of charred flesh; another, fists clenched, as if someone had been trying to prise something away out of them, and teeth bared, as if they too had been summoned in defence of it. It took Marroné a couple of seconds to realise that what he was looking at was a corpse; and another to notice that this was – or had been – the young worker called Zenón. The third, eyes half-closed, was fat and very tall, and was frothing at the mouth, his forearms flapping back and forth, like one of those wind-up bath toys; him too Marroné recognised, for he had got to know all of them by now: he was a River Plate supporter like himself, and they’d spent a morning chatting about the championship they might win after eighteen years without a trophy. ‘We won’t let it slip away this time,’ the young, fair-haired giant had assured him with a slap on the back that almost broke his spine. Kneeling beside them, Edmundo Rivero hid his heavy face in his great hands and wept.
‘Let’s go, comrade. We don’t cry over dead combatants, we step in for them!’ the guerrilla shouted to him, and Marroné was tempted to pull rank and tell him to shut his mouth. Something had quickened inside him when he saw those bodies lying there. He’d also noticed the looks his men had been casting in his direction as much as to say ‘Do something!’ Absurdly, and quite inappropriately, the indifferent features of Tamerlán as he donned the finger-stall appeared before his eyes. All this was for that sonofabitch? No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than the jumble of emotions distilled to a clear, burning rush that rose through his chest and throat, and flooded into his tingling arms. Marroné was suddenly very angry.
‘Gimme a fucking gun!’ he shouted.
He’d barely got the words out before he had one in his outstretched palm. He recognised it immediately: a Browning 9mm. Once he reached puberty, his father would regularly take him to the Federal Firing Range, so he knew how to handle a gun and didn’t think twice as, quick as a lizard, he took a peep over the barricade, pinpointed the advancing forces taking cover behind the machines and emptied the remaining contents of the clip at them. Back on the floor, while – his hands barely trembling – he banged in a fresh clip a guerrilla had tossed to him, he realised what had happened: ‘I can do it too. I am brave after all!’ He’d tell Paddy the moment he saw him.
But for now he had other fish to fry. The man at his side gave a cry and rolled away, tiny objects were bouncing all around him as if being hurled with great force from above.
‘Snipers! Up in the roof! Let’s get out of here!’
Marroné looked up and saw what was going on. The aggressors had set the yellow chair-lifts going again and were zooming about, gunning them down like fish in a barrel. Only the enveloping smoke, especially thick up in the roof, prevented them from being picked off one by one, like olives stabbed with toothpicks. He fired a few shots upwards, but no joy as far as he could see, then dragged himself under a heavy machine to shield himself from the death raining down from the sky.
From his hiding place he watched a patrol led – or at least headed, because the real leader, a fifty-something with a face as red and meaty as raw steak and hair as white as fat, had him firmly by the arm – by a terrified Baigorria and made up of heavies carrying clubs or chains, as well as several revolvers and at least one sawn-off shotgun. ‘That one,’ Baigorria pointed suddenly with a trembling arm, and the men behind him leapt on a wounded striker dragging himself across the floor and, when they hauled him up by his hair, Marroné recognised Trejo, who was no longer wearing his white helmet, perhaps to escape detection; a ruse that, thanks to Baigorria’s untimely intervention, hadn’t worked.
‘Where’s El Colorado, the sonofabitch? Where’s El Colorado!’ they screamed at him in unison, and his reply – if he gave one – apparently didn’t satisfy them, because without asking twice they’d let go of his hair and, before he even hit the ground, they’d laid into him with sticks, chains, lengths of lead-filled hose, and knuckle-dusters, which glinted with every raised fist. One even wielded a spade.
‘This is for Babirusa, you lefty cunt!’ said the man with the white hair when they were done, and Marroné shut his eyes and covered his ears to drown out the shotgun’s thunder that finished the sentence off.
When they were at a safe distance, Marroné felt a wetness between his legs and wondered if he’d been hit. He touched it, looked at it, smelt it. It wasn’t blood; it was urine. Feeling not so much shame as detached surprise, as if it had happened to someone else, he began to drag himself towards the exit that led to the service lifts, which would allow him to get up to the offices and hide until the worst was over; he now regretted binning his James Smart suit and Italian shoes, for even in that state they would have served to identify him as one of the hostages (wasn’t he, after all?) and minimise the risk of being gunned down before getting a word in edgeways, should he have to give himself up.
But the assailants seemed to have chosen this as their meeting point, and the apse was swarming with riot police looking like armoured beetles, union thugs and security personnel. Like a praetorian guard, they rallied round the recently freed Sansimón, who, dishevelled and bald (he must have been wearing a toupee), with blackened face, torn shirt and sporting only one shoe, was screaming wildly at the top of his voice:
‘Get me Macramé! I want him dead! No! I want him alive. I want to torture him!’
There was only one thing for it. In his flight from the workshop he’d caught a glimpse of one of the huge vats brimful of fresh plaster, ready for use in the first batch of products from the newly liberated plasterworks. A team of fire-fighters was patrolling the corridors, dousing the fires with their extinguishers, and under cover of their white clouds he managed to dodge from one machine to the next and finally reached the edge of the vast pool of white. A thin crust had formed, like a crème brûlée, which Marroné broke with his boot and the thick watery paste folded itself coolly around him as he slid silently into it. He had picked up a piece of half-inch tubing on the way and, gripping it firmly in his teeth like a snorkel, he sank back in the thin gruel until he was lying flat. His plan was to stay submerged in this white mire until night fell, though exactly how he would check the light with his eyes closed under all this plaster was a riddle he hadn’t yet solved. Maybe if he counted the seconds, he could get an approximate idea of the passing of time. But he soon lost count, as keeping track of the seconds on the one hand and the minutes on the other sent his brain into a tailspin, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe too, either because the density of the liquid, far greater than water, was compressing his lungs, or because… the plaster was setting! Panic welled within him at the thought. What if, by the time he decided to get out, it was too late, and he wound up buried prematurely in a sarcophagus of calcium sulphate? The claustrophobia flooded through him in wave after wave of sheer, breathless panic, and, by raising his knees and levering himself up onto his elbows, he pressed with his forehead until he felt the fresh crust give, and, with the gingerliness of an old man extricating himself from a slippery bathtub, he lowered himself down from the vat and took two faltering steps, dripping like a pat of butter in the summer sun. Before he could take a third, he heard voices approaching. He couldn’t run in this state: he was a target with arrows pointing at him and a big sign saying ‘PLEASE SHOOT ME’. Utterly at the end of his wits he froze where he stood. He gazed blankly around the jungle of corbels, amphorae and columns, looking for anywhere to hide – and then inspiration struck. He puffed out his chest, put his hand to it, clenched the other into a fist, and raised his forehead proud and high to the future. Then he shut his eyes: if he could resist the urge to open them, there was an outside chance they would take him for a model of the Monument to the Descamisado and walk straight past.
It worked like a dream: the patrol or whoever it was he’d heard approaching walked straight past without noticing him, one of them panting the mantra ‘Motherfuckincunt! Motherfuckincunt!’, which gave Marroné no clue as to whatever or whoever it was they were looking for. He opened his eyes a crack: the coast was clear. The plaster must have set on contact with the air, which no doubt improved his camouflage; all he had to do was remain perfectly still, like one of those living statues you see in squares or in the street. Luckily, the blood had stopped dripping from his lips.
That was when he saw them coming back, led by the white-haired man whose face looked like an Arcimboldo of raw steaks, and Marroné shut his eyes tight so they wouldn’t see him as they passed. They didn’t, but stopped right in front of him, puffing and panting and all talking at once, muttering, ‘Take that, you sonofabitch, motherfuckincunt, fucking lefty scumbag, Happy Christmas,’ and with every phrase came a whish of air – dull and muffled from the clubs, dizzying and sibilant from the chains – invariably climaxing in a thud and a moan, a cry, sometimes a crunch. ‘Come on, come on, finish him off!’ urged a hoarse voice full of hatred or maybe just weariness, and then came another: ‘Whoa, don’t be in such a hurry, I want to enjoy this.’
Unable to stop himself, Marroné began first to loosen his eyelids without actually unsticking them, then separated them very slightly until a filigree of pale light filtered through the crack, the way you loosen a closed shutter in the morning with the first tug. He kept his breathing shallow – very shallow and very slow; inside he shook with every blow, but outside – he hoped, he prayed – there was nothing to see. By the light now coming in through his eyelids he could distinguish shapes and colours through a faint mist. To see more clearly he had to open his eyes still further, but he remembered having heard or read that the eye of a predator is hard-wired for movement; but no predator – not even these – would spot the stop-motion of his eyelids. He could now make out the thugs’ faces: they were red and sweaty, and they huffed and wheezed from the effort; they spat as they swore but, lucky for Marroné, they were intent on their victim, who he couldn’t make out, because his forehead was still tilted upwards. Stage by stage, his eyes abandoned faces for shoulders, shoulders for chests, chests for bellies and bellies for knees, until his gaze reached their feet and the thing that lay between them.
It was face down, and the blood made the white overalls looked like a slaughterman’s; he wouldn’t have recognised him if it hadn’t been for the unmistakeable copper tone of his hair. The instant he did, his legs nearly gave way. He heard a gasp of horror escape his lips, but the thugs mustn’t have heard it above their hoarse wheezing. Or had he only gasped to himself? Paddy was still moving, his arms and legs bending and stretching as if trying to carry him away from the pain, but his body wouldn’t budge. His friend was being murdered before his eyes and he was powerless to do anything.
They went about it with a methodical slowness, like a long, physically demanding job for which you have to save your strength, and every so often one of them would stand up, arch his back with his hands on his kidneys and, after wiping his forehead with his forearm or a handkerchief, return to the task in hand. Arcimboldo didn’t take part, but merely supervised, hands on hips, and every now and then gave curt instructions or checked his heavy Rolex. A police officer came over to see how they were getting along.
‘Gonna be long?’
‘Nah. Five minutes tops.’
It felt like five hundred years to Marroné. He had to keep his eyes half-open now, for if he closed them the tears would roll down his cheeks, carving broad, skin-coloured furrows through the white plaster, and his disguise would be blown. But if he kept his eyes like this and concentrated every ounce of his being on fighting back the tears, he could just about swallow them. His greatest fear was that he might start sweating from the heat and the effort of keeping still, and it occurred to his mind – not to him – that every minute Paddy took to die increased his chances of being caught.
Arcimboldo checked his watch again and, true to his word, though the policeman had walked off by now, he called a stop to it and bent down to check Paddy, now face up from the kicking, for a pulse. Attempting to stand again, his downturned palms charlestoned in the air two or three times before he held them out to be pulled to his feet. They walked off in silence, pulling the knuckle-dusters off their swollen fingers, rubbing their red-raw knuckles and looking around for something to wipe them on.
Cracking with every step and flaking like old plaster, Marroné began to move: he went over to his friend and touched his face with one outstretched finger. The one remaining eye suddenly popped open, and Marroné leapt backwards, barely able to contain his scream. The eye cast desperately about itself in all directions: there was no way to get him out of here or ask for help, and he was next on their list. But there was something he owed his friend, and it was now or never.
‘Paddy…’ He crouched down and whispered in his ear. ‘That time with the coloured chalk… remember? It was me. I did it.’
Staring into his two, Paddy’s one good eye widened visibly, as if he were trying to absorb the enormity of what he’d just heard. Then it closed for ever.
* * *
Darting between the smoking ruins and freezing statue-like every now and then, Marroné made it to the right transept. The door was just a stone’s throw from the perimeter fence, which had been breached in places by the attackers. Moving cautiously through the scattered barricades, he ran into El Tuerto, who took one look at Marroné and crossed himself.
‘I’m still alive, you idiot,’ he whispered to him, when he understood.
‘Jesus Christ, Ernesto. I thought you was a ghost,’ said El Tuerto with one hand on his chest.
‘They’ve killed Paddy.’
‘Who?’
‘El Colorado,’ he corrected himself.
‘Yeah, I know. And Trejo. And Zenón. And at least two others.’
‘Hey… What about the lads from the… Montos?’
‘Ah. Dead meat the lot of ’em.’
Marroné’s heart skipped a beat.
‘The girls too?’
‘Them first.’
‘Both of them?’
‘I ’ope so, coz them as they take alive… You know. They took the lot of ’em. It’s just you and me left.’
‘Shouldn’t we turn ourselves in?’ asked Marroné.
‘Are you shitting me? They’ll fucking murder us. You first.’
Marroné swallowed. It was exactly what he feared he’d hear.
‘So what do we do?’
‘It’ll be dark in a bit. My house is on the other side of the stream. If we make it across without ’em seeing us, we can hole down there for a bit.’
By heaving the sacks around, they managed to make a tiny cubbyhole in the wall and, after dragging themselves inside, they blocked up the entrance with another sack and crouched there, not daring to say a word until the crack of light darkened from yellow to mauve to purple and black. Then they moved the sacks again and stuck out their snouts like a couple of armadillos in their burrow. A strong wind had picked up, whipping handfuls of plaster dust into the air, which blinded them and made them cough, but at the same time veiled their movements. The gardens had returned to the ghostly whiteness of the early days and, in the radiant light of the police spotlights, once again resembled a snow-covered landscape. Fortunately for Marroné and El Tuerto, the factory wall cast a long shadow that reached all the way to the wire fence and, groping their way along it for some distance, amidst the blinding dust clouds, they eventually came to a hole just large enough to crawl through. El Tuerto went first, getting stuck because of his girth, and Marroné had to find a firm foothold and push him through by the arse.
They forded the stream – more of an industrial sewer flowing with oil – from whose swampy depths, with every squelch they took, came protracted gurgles of foul-smelling gas. With difficulty they made their way up the steep slope of the opposite bank, composed entirely, Marroné discovered, of layer upon layer of garbage, which crumbled under their feet as they climbed. A little further on they could make out twinkling lights from what appeared to be not electric bulbs, but flickering candles, and clutching El Tuerto’s hand so that he wouldn’t get lost, Marroné set off towards them.