‌8

‌The Foundation

Marroné dropped the baby unceremoniously into its cardboard box and sped out of the shack, oblivious to its cries, to pursue her down the pitch-black streets. Her dress was embroidered with rhinestones and sequins, her wrists, neck and ears shone with blinding white stones, her platinum hair was tied back in a severe bun and her violet halo banished the impenetrable darkness as she went: it was impossible to lose sight of her. She crossed the mud – furrowed with tyre tracks and pitted with fetid puddles – without so much as staining her lace hem, her feet barely touching the ground. It was definitely her and, more out of an urge to share his astonishment than to corroborate the obvious, Marroné said to a boy of around twelve, the only mortal within earshot out there on the edge of the shanties:

‘It’s Eva!’

‘Course it is. Who do you expect?’ the boy answered phlegmatically.

He thought at first it might be the ghost of his own María Eva, killed in combat and returning to earth in all her pomp and glory to lead the oppressed in the last battle against the forces of the anti-people; but when she looked about her at a particularly complex intersection of alleyways, and her glowing profile was silhouetted against the surrounding darkness, the difference in features became apparent; if this floating, glow-in-the-dark Eva wasn’t his very own, she could only be the real one. Dazzled, he followed her light like a moth, leaving behind the squalid shanties and crossing a dark wasteland, then climbing a long embankment – Eva with no apparent effort, Marroné slipping and sliding on the trails of muddy clay and the long water-combed grass. For a while now the chorus of frogs and crickets and the occasional barking of a dog had been joined by a continuous, monotonous hum, which he knew to be the high-speed contact of tyres on tarmac: he couldn’t be far from the freeway.

He saw her silhouette crest the embankment and nimbly vault the guard rail, pausing for a moment at the hard shoulder as if, more than the risk itself, she feared the shock her spectral apparition might cause the unsuspecting motorists; then one of her diamond-dusted shoes stepped boldly out onto the asphalt, and she strode decisively across. Haloed in the strobes of frantically flashing headlights, she shone like a comet, and, as they swerved to avoid her and the lurid red eyes of their tail lights vanished into the vaporous fog, the echoes of their horns hung in the air like ships’ sirens over water. As he followed her, meticulously treading in her footprints, he could see himself – his consciousness split like two halves of an apple – behind the wheel of one of those cars, knuckles white, eyes bulging, heart thudding in his throat. What was that? Did you see it? Was it a woman or a ghost?

Once he had negotiated the last guard rail, and before skittering down the slope of wet grass, Marroné saw where it was she was headed: about fifty metres away, brilliant white against an arc of dark cypresses that cupped them like a hand, gleamed the monumental forms of a neoclassical temple, complete with a ghostly array of statuary. Avoiding the freeway exit and the car entrance, Eva made resolutely for what turned out to be a door concealed in the privet fence surrounding the premises, and shut it behind her. Upon opening it, Marroné discovered that it led to a path laid with white gravel, which crunched softly beneath the soles of his espadrilles, and was lined with privets too tall to see over. The faint light from the waning moon gave the path a satiny sheen, and every dozen steps or so glaring Martian-green spotlights lit the bushes from below. Afraid he would lose first Eva and then himself amid this intricate maze, he quickened his pace; sometimes she would disappear for a few moments around a sharp corner or unexpected bend, but if he didn’t let her get too far ahead, her halo still shone above the privet to guide him on his way. But as luck would have it, just as he had felt confident enough to let her get a few steps ahead, a clump of grey clouds scudded across the sickle moon like a drawn curtain, and Eva’s faint phosphorescence was blown out like a candle flame. Marroné began running to catch up with her, taking the right-hand path at a fork and then, in the irrational certainty of having taken the wrong turning, retraced his steps and plunged headlong down the left-hand one, sprinting now and scratching his arms on the briars; he was still running when the maze came to an abrupt end, and he emerged onto an open lawn dotted with topiary, across which Eva glided, borne up on the dome of her skirt like a woman in a Monet painting, in the direction of the Greek temple, so close now that its imposing Doric columns seemed to lurch out at them. At this distance the resemblance, which had been clear from afar, was all the more striking: the place they were making for was a simplified scale reproduction of the Foundation named after the woman whose ghost was now climbing the broad steps to a solid bronze door. Just as she reached it, the moon reappeared, allowing Marroné to take in the topiary of privet, elaborately pruned into motifs from Peronist iconography: medallion profiles of Perón and Eva, a Peronist Party badge, a pair of hands raised skywards as if waiting to embrace all visitors. He looked away only for a few seconds but, when he turned back, he could see no trace of Eva. She had vanished, along with her halo. Marroné’s steps rang hollow among the bare columns, which turned out to be not marble, but plaster; the whole façade – including, high above, a Venus de Milo with arms, a Botticelli Venus with clothes, a Victory of Samothrace with smiling head and a Virgin Mary – bore all the familiar hallmarks of the Sansimón Plasterworks. Descending a couple of steps to get a better view of their faces, he instantly recognised in each and every one the unmistakeable features of Eva Perón. This discovery fanned a hesitant, almost extinct flame of hope: if Eva had appeared to him just when he’d thought all was lost, it was to act as his guide. But why him? Had she, too, been fooled by his current proletarian looks? Or was it precisely the opposite: that being not of this world, she could see into his soul – the soul of the Peronist child he should have been?

Fortified by these thoughts, he gave two or three firm knocks on the solid door, on which Perón’s head was sculpted in bas-relief. A peephole in the General’s face promptly opened, and when two suspicious, beady eyes peered out at him, he felt as if the General himself were inspecting him.

‘What you want?’ asked the voice within.

‘I’m looking for Eva,’ replied Marroné, without hesitation.

As if he’d hit upon the password, he heard the sliding of heavy bolts, and the door squealed open.

‘Step inside, please. Eva is expecting you. Please join the line.’

The doorman was wearing the livery of a footman in Peronist colours: light-blue Tyrolean suit embroidered with gold thread, frilly white open-necked shirt with the Party badge on the chest pocket, silk stockings and black patent-leather slippers. Marroné took his place at the end of the line. Two things surprised him. The first was the ragged appearance of his companions: there were plebs like himself, beggars and slumdogs; peasants and farmhands too, even a gaucho in full regalia; a few workers in overalls and helmets; a fat man in a leather jacket who looked like a trade unionist; and, last, a couple of toffs in impeccably tailored suits – each of them clutching a letter. The second thing he noticed was that they were all men, and adults: no women or children in sight. Oh, they must have shown in the women and children first, thought Marroné. Like the Peronist slogan went. Did it? Or was he getting it mixed up with the safety procedures for evacuating a ship? The queue wound round the corner of a corridor, then climbed a few stairs, at the top of which Eva’s office surely awaited. At first the queue hardly budged, which didn’t surprise him because Eva, as he well knew, had only just arrived; but after a few minutes she must have settled in because they started to shuffle steadily forwards.

So it was true, thought Marroné to himself. All those rumours, all those legends. Evita is among us, Evita is back. Evita is alive, just as the graffiti he’d always found so absurd claimed. She hadn’t died in ’52 – her cancer had somehow been cured; or maybe it was all a ruse to trick her enemies into believing her dead, and so the much-trumpeted corpse that had been paraded everywhere had been nothing but a simulacrum. But if that were so, Eva should be over fifty by now, and the woman he had followed down the narrow alleyways of the shanty town looked not a year older than Eva when she died – or even several years younger – but then again, many people claimed her illness had shrivelled her to the likeness of a doll. Might she have been frozen? Perhaps that had been the job of the famous Doctor Ara: to keep her dormant until a cure for her illness was found. Or what if she had actually died but her impeccably preserved body had been reanimated intact by the Umbanda rituals of Minister José López Rega, much given to dabbling in the occult, and the sleepwalking Eva he had been following was in fact a zombie? He was only too aware of how deranged these thoughts were (though in fact they were less outrageous than the tangible reality they scrabbled to explain).

He had reached the top of the stairs now and was through the doors to Eva’s office, and there she sat, in her Louis Quinze chair, behind an imposing mahogany desk, legs crossed, bun bunched, answering the requests whispered in her ear by each petitioner and reading their letters with radiant smiles, every inch the Eva he had followed. Save for one detail: instead of wearing her white dress, dripping with jewels, this Eva was nude.

Marroné looked ahead, at the line of men standing between them, then behind, at the newcomers. No one else seemed to have noticed the anomaly, or they were all turning a blind eye out of politeness or embarrassment. Or was this a case of the Empress’s new clothes? He looked again at those ahead to see how the procedure worked. Like fettered galley slaves, the men shuffled forward in single file, heads bowed, hats in hands (those wearing them, at least), their postures and contrite expressions redolent of the faithful taking communion. On reaching her desk, they would each hand her their letter and she would open it, read it, write something on a card, hand it to them with a smile and let them in. Only with those in authentic English or Italian suits did the procedure vary somewhat: she responded to their letters not with a fresh smile, but with an indignant scowl, pointing a compelling arm to a corner, where others of their ilk stood and waited. The man in front of him, a tramp with dishevelled hair and grubby, foul-smelling clothes, prostrated himself before her and asked to kiss her hand, to which Eva graciously consented. And finally it was Marroné’s turn, and such were his embarrassment and her composure that he was the one who felt naked and exposed.

‘Welcome to the Eva Perón Sexual Aid Foundation. All your desires will be satisfied. Did you bring your letter?’

Marroné tried to keep his eyes on her face, but they kept slipping downwards to the violet nipples and the dark bush peeping out from between her crossed thighs. There was another reason, apart from the ones on view, for his bewilderment: this Eva was not the same one he’d followed through the alleyways of the shanty town. The darkening of her complexion could at least be blamed on the change from moonlight to electric light, but her ears stuck out like a chimpanzee’s and were made doubly prominent by the severely tied hair, whose style was different again: rather than the usual high bun, this one, as befitting her attire, wore an altogether less austere, more bouffant chignon.

‘Well?’ said Eva encouragingly.

‘No… er… the letter no…’

‘Not to worry,’ said Eva nonchalantly. ‘You can ask me for whatever you want, don’t be afraid. Whisper it in my ear if you’re embarrassed,’ she concluded, aligning one of her radio dishes in his direction.

‘Busts,’ blurted Marroné in the end. ‘I want busts of Eva.’

Eva jotted something down on a card with the letterhead of the Foundation and handed it to him with a smile. Marroné made for the door through which those ahead of him had exited.

More surprises awaited on the other side. The door led to a vast lounge decorated in the official Peronist style: a soft blend of Soviet Constructivism and Californian Provençal, with touches of neoclassical stucco; around this fantastic décor strolled as many as a dozen and a half Evas. There were Evas with chignons and Prince of Wales-check suits; Evas in veils and hats; Evas in summer dresses with their hair down; a Dior queen bejewelled from head to toe; another wrapped in sumptuous furs; another encased entirely in black vinyl; one wearing nothing but stockings and suspenders, and another not even that, both with stern-looking buns. Upon closer inspection the variety of builds and features became apparent: they were unified in a general ‘Evita’ look by the high or low heels to even up their differences in height, the make-up to lighten their skin tones, the clothing to flatten the bustier ones and, above all, the dyed hair: it wasn’t for nothing that the naked ones with no distinguishing features wore the obligatory bun. A crowd of men swarmed about each, like drones about a queen bee and, try as he might, nowhere could Marroné spot the Eva who had led him there.

His nostrils filled with the scent of cheap eau de cologne and his ears with a shrill voice before his eyes located the source of both.

‘First time, am I right?’

Slick as butter in a hot pan, a footman had slid up to him wearing an embroidered jacket that barely covered his backside, tight torero trousers and bright satin slippers, all in light blue and white and gold. Marroné nodded, still speechless.

‘Well? What do you think?’

He groped in the recesses of his stunned mind for something to say.

‘Well… At long last… the happiness of the people.’

One particularly insistent worker kept sticking his nose under the bell-shaped Dior skirt, trying to crawl under it on all fours, while Eva waltzed around him with amused giggles, tapping him with her fan in mock discouragement.

Marroné’s companion gave a brief forced laugh, followed by a hirsute handshake:

‘Aníbal Vitelo at your service. As is everyone here at the Foundation. What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like to… look around.’

‘Allow me then. I shall be your cicerone.’

One of the three waitresses swept by, serving cider from a bottle with the profiles of the presidential couple on its label: she was wearing high heels and a sober tailleur that, when she turned round, he saw was held together by nothing more than two satin cross-straps, leaving her back, buttocks and legs totally exposed. Marroné’s guide took two glasses and handed one to him to toast Eva.

‘Cheers… Here’s to all of this… What have you ordered? Can you show me your card?’

Marroné held it out to him in a daze, only now noticing what it said. The naked Eva had scrawled ‘’ in an illiterate hand. Aníbal clapped his palms in the air. The three nearest Evas turned around as one.

‘Let’s see, girls…’

One was wrapped from head to foot in a sumptuous sable coat that rippled over her in superb folds like the skin of an animal too big for its body; Marroné’s eyes took in the marbled pallor of her complexion, the purplish lips, the dainty feet shod in still daintier shoes. Another, the tallest, floated over in a gold lamé dress, like someone out of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film: train fanning out behind her, wasp-waisted sleeveless corsage pushing up her breasts, gold sandals with pearls, and banana curls. The third wore a simple floral-print summer dress, flat-soled sandals and loose chestnut hair and, for one hopeful moment, Marroné thought his own María Eva had come back to life. But when he looked more closely, he realised it wasn’t her.

‘This poor little greaseball wants to see Eva’s bust.’

The Eva in furs had only to open her sable coat wide, as she hadn’t a stitch on beneath; her large, marmoreal breasts were pear-shaped and stretch-marked, lined with faint little sky-blue veins. The Eva in the floral dress first helped the Hollywood Eva unfasten the hooks that girded the corsage to her body, then, while her companion levered first one then the other white breast from her bra cups, she had only to loosen one shoulder strap then the other to pull the dress down to her navel and display her small, round breasts.

‘So, comrade? What do you think? Does Eva deliver or doesn’t she?’

In his infinite tiredness and confusion Marroné felt he was slowly coming apart, separating into his component parts: while his mind waved its legs in the air like an upturned beetle, searching for words to clarify the ridiculous misunderstanding, his nether regions responded to the display of female flesh with a pulsing erection and waves of sexual obfuscation that rose to his cheeks and clouded his sight. He clung to his sense of duty as to a mountain ledge.

‘No. I… I meant a bust… like a statue… in stone… or plaster…’ he concluded, his voice growing smaller with each word.

Puzzled, his chaperone stared at him, but only for a moment. Then, with a knowing look, he gestured to the three Evas to cover up.

‘Oh. Busts. As in… busts… Like the ones they have in schools you mean, don’t you? We haven’t any… no demand for them. We do have a statue, though. Would you like to see it?’

Marroné nodded in relief, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because a statue was something graspable in all the confusion.

The fountain was round and lined with coloured tiles. At its centre stood the statue of Eva, naked: her long hair loose in the breeze, one slack, cupped hand barely covering her sex, the other raised above her head, innocently holding out an apple, from the core of which flowed the water that enfolded her arm like a transparent fabric; her small, not-too-pert breasts; her belly with its taut roundness; her exquisite buttocks and dreamy thighs. All this enthralled him with its beauty. But it was on her features, her smile that belied the stiffness of the marble, that his gaze dwelt. Because he had recognised her: it was his very own María Eva.

‘It’s… it’s her,’ he stammered.

‘Yes, it’s a pretty good likeness, isn’t it? We’re all very proud of her here. And she has her admirers. There are those who come just to see her. A number of people have wanted to buy her. But she isn’t for sale. Real Carrara marble, mark you,’ he clarified, making her right buttock ring with a flick of his nail. ‘Go on, feel her.’

Marroné stretched out a trembling hand, which his companion caught in mid-flight.

‘Marble dolls it is then. Come with me. I think I have just the thing for you.’ He’d started getting pushy as soon as he thought Marroné had a weakness for kink. ‘You sound like you’re looking for something really special.’

Marroné took another sip of cider and nodded. It must have been either fatigue or confusion that made the bubbles go to his head like champagne, and he felt the onset of a wild euphoria that was no less pleasant for being quite out of place.

‘This, for example,’ said his guide, pointing to a large red brocade sofa on which a few perfumed toffs were sniffing panties and evening shoes, stroking silk stockings and plunging their noses into thick mink coats, ‘is Fetishists’ Corner. We provide only the very best. See that sable coat? It’s the one Eva was wearing when she received her decoration from the hands of the Generalísimo. Franco, I mean. And that salmon pink and blue feather cape is a Dior exclusive.’

‘Are they all the real thing?’

‘The ones that aren’t, are perfect replicas. Not even Dior himself could tell the difference. The blokes in suits,’ he said, taking in the throng of punters with a gesture, ‘are masochists. More than anything they like spending hours in the waiting room, seeing her minister to the needs of the darkies and the workers first, right under their noses. They’d stay there for ever if it was up to them; when morning comes, the cleaning staff have to shoo a lot of them out with their brooms. They love that too.’

A hairy bald man in a light-blue tutu was dancing on tiptoe, holding a magic wand with which he would, now and again, daintily tap his companions, who would lift their snouts from Eva’s undergarments in reply, give a low growl and then go back to their ferretings.

‘Dior again. Some aren’t content just to touch them. The Good Fairy costume was so popular we had to make five replicas. So, if that’s your thing, you’ll have a ball. Now, if you ask me, I’d recommend the ones of flesh and bone. We cater for all tastes, as you’ll see. I’ll give you the price list: lady with whip, ten thousand pesos, yes, the one in boots and black leather; Eva in furs, the one you’ve just seen, twelve thousand; horsewoman in white pleated shirt, riding crop and riding boots with spurs, ten thou – doesn’t that bun look deliciously tight?; governess with cherry lips, stiletto heels and pointer, also ten thou – she comes with a class in Peronist Party doctrine; Admiral Evita, that one, no, the one in the tailleur with the gold buttons, braid and epaulettes, eight grand, and that’s pretty much it in our disciplinary line. Next up are the princesses and Hollywood stars: The Prodigal Woman, that one over there in velvet, with dark ringlets, twelve thousand – the dress is authentic, isn’t she a dead ringer for Hedy Lamarr?; the one over there… no, no, the one in the peasant costume, with the plaits behind her ears… she’s the one from The Circus Ride – a little on the dull side, she’s on special offer at seven, but I wouldn’t recommend her. The one in gold lamé, twelve thousand – get a load of the tits on her…’

‘And… the one in the flowery dress?’

‘Ahh… You fancy her, do you? Delicious little pair of funbags as well. That one’s Perón’s lover, Tigre island model, ten thousand – good enough to eat. In the Evita Duarte line – which won’t burn a hole in your pocket – there’s the little rising star, the one rolling her eyes like Betty Boop, very twenties, eight grand; that little chick in the Boca shirt and hot pants is doing good business, eight again – a real bargain; and last there’s the country wench, able and willing to keep the old boss happy, four thousand five hundred. What else? Oh. The Santa Evita line: there’s the Madonna of the Poor, complete with halo, twelve thou – hasn’t a stitch on under that cloak; the one with the hair-weaves in the mantilla and the black silk dress, with the Order of Isabella the Catholic Cross over her bosom, thirteen thou – had her audience with the Pope in that habit she did… And I think that’s it, apart from the specials.’

‘The specials?’

His companion’s voice dropped several decibels:

‘Cancer victim. Twenty thou. Thirty-three kilos.’

Marroné gave a low whistle.

‘Gosh!’ He was slightly tipsy from the cider and gradually getting into the spirit of the proceedings.

‘She really does have cancer. Pays for her treatment with whatever she pulls in here.’

‘They’re still pretty pricey though, aren’t they? They’re not exactly tailored to a worker’s pocket, shall we say.’

His guide looked at him for a few seconds with a sort of a halfway smile, unsure whether to take him seriously or not; in the end he decided not to.

‘You really do get into character, don’t you? I admire the realism,’ he said, holding Marroné’s filthy rags between thumb and forefinger, smelling them and wrinkling his nose in disgust. ‘Don’t get me wrong… it isn’t a criticism, you understand,’ he said, pointing floorwards with his eyes. ‘Still, those espadrilles… a bit old hat if you ask me. Adidas trainers are way more “shanty” these days. Which company are you from?’

‘The game’s up,’ thought Marroné with an inward sigh, he’d been found out. Perhaps it was his English-school accent that had given him away.

‘Tamerlán & Sons.’

‘Ohhh… You should have said so in the first place. Old customers… If your dear President had stuck with us, we wouldn’t be lamenting his sad plight. The guards here are top drawer. A lot of punters bring their own, of course, the neighbourhood being what it is. Look, over there, that’s a colleague of yours if I’m not mistaken.’

Marroné followed his pointing finger, and could barely contain his surprise when he saw, nuzzling the equestrian Eva’s riding boots and trying to lick their soles, the irreproachable Aldo Cáceres Grey on all fours, dressed as a beggar except for his exposed arse, the crack of which the rider was languidly caressing with her crop.

‘Ah… Marroné…’ he stammered in embarrassment when he saw him loom over him. ‘What are you doing here?’

Cáceres Grey’s expression was that of a life member of the Jockey Club, in his favourite easy chair in the library, on seeing the butcher from the corner shop, who has just been admitted for a look round. Marroné knew that expression all too well; too often had he been on the receiving end of it at school, and a fierce smile of triumph spread inwardly across his lips.

‘Same as you, I suppose. First time?’

‘Errm… No, well, actually…’ he began, but at that moment, still seated in her armchair, his Eva caught the back of his neck between sole and heel and thrust his face to the floor.

‘I told you not to talk to strangers, slave!’

‘Ooow… Now just hold on a second. He’s a colleague from the company.’

‘All the better. He can have a good look at what I do to you and tell everyone about it at work tomorrow.’

‘Well, you look busy. See you around…’ said Marroné, turning to go.

Cáceres Grey attempted to extricate himself from under her sole and got a thwack across the buttocks from her riding crop.

‘Ooow! You filthy black slum bitch!’

‘Down, boy! And don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.’

Marroné rejoined his guide, more and more composed by the second now he’d begun to understand.

‘We’re all businessmen, here.’

‘No, not everyone. That one over there, the one dressed as a farmhand, he’s a rancher. The docker in the gym vest with a handkerchief round his neck owns several shipping companies and the conscript being drilled by Admiral Eva is a colonel in the artillery.’

‘All anti-Peronists. Gorillas,’ mused Marroné. ‘Now I get it. And that one?’ he said, pointing at a football hooligan with a curly mop and hairy white belly protruding from beneath his San Lorenzo shirt.

‘Him? No, he actually works here. We lay on the real thing for the punters who like being buggered in drag. There’s an entire wardrobe at your disposal if you’re that way inclined.’

Marroné declined the invitation with a flick of the wrist:

‘Thanks. And the ones that look like trade unionists?’

Two fat men – one olive-skinned with a centre parting, the other with slicked-back curls and several days’ stubble, neither older than forty – were receiving a football and a bicycle from the hands of the Good Fairy.

‘Trade unionists. They come here quite a lot, as you’ll see – nostalgic steelworkers mostly. Loaded with cash they are, but they still hanker after the golden years of their humble childhoods, when they used to get presents from Eva,’ he said, with a puff of scorn, which Marroné seconded to conceal any hint of embarrassment, the memory of his own shanty-town epiphany still fresh in his mind. ‘But they’re in the minority. The ones that truly love her – worship her, I mean. Two classes of people come here as a rule: those who come to humiliate her and those who come to be humiliated by her. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, to fuck or be fucked.’

‘Literally?’

‘Those ones over there. The three tall ones? The Three Graces we call them.’

The Three Graces consisted of the lady in gold lamé, the governess with the angular jaw and sharp nose, and one he hadn’t noticed before, wearing an ermine-trimmed silk suit as white as daylight and a diamond tiara. All three had large feet and prominent Adam’s apples.

‘As well as being distinguished, our clients can be very specific at times. “I want my Eva to come with a dick. And one that works.” So we ask them to go easy on the hormones.’

Marroné was genuinely impressed, not only by what was on view, but by the lesson in business lore: they had found a niche in the market and had made it flourish with an almost infinite product range that exhausted all possible combinations. No, not all, he suddenly realised:

‘What about… the Montonero Evita?’

His guide let out a shush and fanned the air with his fingers to tell him to keep his voice down.

‘Shhh. Don’t even mention her. What are you trying to do? Make them shit themselves? Some things just aren’t funny. So, are you ready for the pièce de résistance?’

They went up some stairs and through a door. By now, Marroné had the impression that the world held no more surprises for him. But he was wrong. They were in a quadrangular room upholstered entirely in black velvet: portraits of Perón and Eva covered one of the walls, and hundreds of coloured votive ribbons, most with gold lettering, were pinned to the upholstery: ‘YOU LIVE ON ETERNAL IN THE SOUL OF YOUR PEOPLE – TRAMWORKERS UNION – NATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION.’ The centrepiece was a couch surrounded by fresh flowers and covered with a silk sheet. And there, on the sheet, lay Eva.

She looked like Sleeping Beauty, and her skin had the pallor of marble and the sheen of wax. A snippet of schoolboy Shakespeare flashed across his mind: ‘Nor scar that whiter skin of hers than snow / And smooth as monumental alabaster.’ Her hair was combed back towards the nape in two thick Greek braids, and an ivory coloured tunic covered the rest of her body, save her hands – which clasped a rosary over her belly – and her naked feet with their slender toes, which Marroné could barely prevent himself from kissing.

‘So? What do you say?’ The procurer’s voice rang stridently in his ears.

‘She’s… perfect,’ he said in a whisper, incapable of taking his eyes off her.

‘Thirty grand.’

‘She’s… the real one?’

‘Of course.’

‘I thought she’d been returned to Perón.’

‘Perón got screwed. He got one of the three original replicas. You know, modelled in wax directly from the body.’

‘And does anyone ask for her?’

‘She’s our top earner. The military really get off on her.’

Marroné contemplated her head and the line of her shoulders with keen professionalism. Give him a saw and he might just be able to separate them from the rest of her body; that would make one bust – ninety-one short – but it would be a start. He immediately decided he was losing his mind.

‘So… Which one’ll it be?’

Marroné’s brain groped for the contents of the calcareous bivalve that had once served him as a wallet. He couldn’t leave without consuming something, not after being treated to such a display.

‘Errr… How much did you say the country girl was?’

He recognised the look at once. It was the kind a Dior salesman would give a customer who, after being shown around the entire season’s collection, abjectly asks to be reminded of the price of the ankle socks.

‘This way.’

He had to shove the wooden door, which danced on its hinges. The room had peeling walls, a cheap print of the Virgin Mary, a sagging iron bed, a chair and a night table with a bedside lamp and red lampshade.

‘It’s an exact replica of the rooms in the brothel run by Eva’s mother, Doña Juana, in Junín. It was where Eva, aged twelve, auctioned off her virginity at a party for the local ranch-owners; not out of need, but out of a sheer taste for vice,’ he recited in the monotone of a tour guide reeling off the same old spiel day in, day out.

‘I thought that whole brothel thing was a load of bull.’

This time Aníbal’s expression was openly hostile.

‘What do you think this is?’ he said, embracing the surroundings with raised open arms. ‘The National History Museum? If so, it’s news to me. So. Do you want her or not? Alright. Wait here.’

‘Errrr…’ began Marroné.

‘You can have her for four. Enjoy.’

Marroné sat on the bed, which sagged even lower, the metal springs groaning as if injured. The room had no windows or openings of any kind, and smelt like a damp kennel. Beside the bedside lamp was an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts; had he had a lighter, Marroné would gladly have lit one. He opened the drawer: no lighter, no matches; just a candle end and a copy of The Reason for My Life in the perennial Peuser edition he remembered from his schooldays.

She entered without knocking. He’d barely noticed her in the lounge, and it was plain to see why: she was a tiny, transparent slip of a thing, slight and flat-chested, with legs like a lapwing’s; she was wearing a cheap, printed cotton dress, smoke-coloured stockings and Basque espadrilles laced up her calves. She can’t have been more than fourteen and, rather than bed her, Marroné felt like fixing her some cookies and milk.

‘Were you looking for me, sir?’

Marroné’s eyes welled with tears. What in God’s name was a child like this doing here? Perhaps, the thought suddenly occurred to him, this was why he was here today; perhaps his true mission was to save her and, by doing so, the busts would magically be his. He immediately decided he was raving again: he was willing to believe in anything if it looked like offering him a way out of this maze.

‘Come here, don’t be afraid, sit down here, beside me,’ he eventually managed to say. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Eva, sir.’

‘No, I’m asking you your real name.’

The girl looked at him for a moment with her dark, unfathomable eyes, then said:

‘Eva María.’

‘Where do you come from, Eva María?’ he said, following her drift.

‘Los Toldos, sir,’ she said, without hesitation; she’d learnt her lines well. ‘Shall I take my dress off?’

Before Marroné could do anything to stop her, she’d whipped it over her head and was standing naked, save for a pair of turquoise suspenders, which, together with her smoke-coloured stockings, suggested not so much bad taste but only poverty. The bastards think of everything, Marroné said to himself. Her breasts would have fitted snugly into English teacups, and her pubic hair was dark but sparse, leaving her narrow slit exposed when she stretched out on the bed: she looked as if malnourishment had stopped her from developing fully. It was the last snatch of social conscience his mind was capable of before his spring-loaded erection toppled what little of his moral scaffolding was left standing, and he decided he’d had enough: enough of trying to understand what was going on, enough of being nice to everyone, enough of doing the company’s bidding and Sr Tamerlán’s especially, enough of winning friends only for them to get killed in the blink of an eye, enough of the stinking clothes he was wearing… ‘I’m going to screw her, I’m going to screw her and you can all fuck off,’ he said to himself, slipping his t-shirt over his head and tugging his pants and underpants down so fast his member bounced up and down like a springboard. Gripping his glans in his palm, like someone stopping a shaken bottle of beer, and muttering through clenched teeth ‘you whore, you little whore, you black slum bitch’, he launched himself on top of her in an attempt to get a hole-in-one, but missed, and all his virility dribbled away through his fingers in two or three miserable spasms. Eva must have felt it, because she sat up with a start.

‘Sorry, sir!’ she exclaimed, as if it had been her fault. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll clean you up.’

She disappeared into the little bathroom, while Marroné sat on the bed, holding up his cupped palm to stop the dripping, and was soon back with a damp cloth.

‘No, no, don’t,’ mumbled Marroné, stricken with shame, but Eva wouldn’t have any of it.

‘Let’s see, hand first… This little piggy, then this one, till they’re nice and clean… Don’t worry about the bed, the maids’ll change it… Ooh, look, it got on me too, it’s all over my muffin.’

She looked a lot more comfortable in her new role, more self-assured: she had clearly been in domestic service. She reminded him of a maid his parents had had – somewhat older than Eva María it’s true, and darker-skinned and bustier – who’d turned him on as a teenager; he used to follow her around the house with his tongue hanging out and a couple of times tried to spy on her naked through the keyhole, but to no avail; he had hoped he would lose his virginity to her and told all his classmates he had, but in the end he had never actually dared, and his father had had to take him to a brothel. That was his first premature ejaculation, and the woman had made him wipe it up, standing over him making sarcastic remarks while he got down on his hands and knees: this early humiliation could well have been the stigma that turned into a trauma what would otherwise have been no more than a mishap. And perhaps now this sweet little girl had come to redeem the unnecessary cruelty of that callous whore, and somehow bring the cycle to a close; perhaps this was the dawn of a new era, though he didn’t actually care much because all he wanted to do was die on the spot and be done with it all.

Eva María had returned to the bathroom with her cloth, and Marroné heard the water running, then the squeak of the tap. This time she’d soaked it in warm water and put a little soap on too.

‘Lie back, please, sir,’ he heard her say.

Without opening his eyes he obeyed. She ran the cloth first over his forehead, ears, eyes and cheeks; when she got to his neck, she got up and rinsed it again. Wetting it whenever it cooled, she bathed his chest, arms, abdomen, thighs and shins; then she whispered in his ear for him to turn over and repeated the procedure on the other side. Marroné hadn’t bathed since his days in the factory, and Eva María washed him clean of all he had been through since: the crust of plaster, the urine, the blood, the oil-slick stream, his intimate contact with the garbage and mud of the shanties. She lingered long and tender over his feet, devoting a warm cloth to each, and she must have brought alcohol because he felt a sharp stinging at several points, from sores or cuts. When he turned over he saw her standing at the bedside, alcohol in one hand, cotton wool in the other. She was smiling shyly.

‘There’s still another half an hour to go. Would you like me to stay?’

She didn’t wait for Marroné’s nod. She lay down beside him, nestling into the hollow at his side, with her head on his shoulder and one leg wrapped over both of his. Marroné slid an arm under her neck to caress her hair and back, and, after two or three strokes, fell sound asleep.

She wasn’t there when he awoke with a start and a moan. Regaining his sense of the present, he put his shabby clothes back on and checked his wallet to see if she’d emptied it. He took out the four notes and slipped them into The Reason for My Life.

He stepped out into a corridor of identical symmetrical doors; he couldn’t remember coming this way on his way up, though he might have forgotten. The doors were so thin that he could hear everything going on behind them: the familiar moans, a recording of Eva’s hoarse voice tirelessly repeating ‘I offer you all my energies so that my body can be a bridge to the happiness of all. Walk over it…’ One stood ajar, and Marroné spied the lady with the whip riding a naked fat man dripping with gold and chains, and shouting, ‘What kind of an oligarch are you? You don’t even have the balls to exploit Bolivian workers!’ Then, spying Marroné, she cracked the whip on the wooden floor and beckoned to him to come in. ‘Look,’ she said to her steed, ‘here’s a slumdog come to stick his filthy cock in you. Now you’ll see what’s good for you.’

Reeling, Marroné backed away and stumbled down the stairs. In spite of the music still playing (wan tango Muzak), the artificial light and the welded-shut blinds, he felt, in his stinging eyes and jaded blood, the end of the party and the closeness of dawn. It was also being heralded by the dynamics of the sexual encounters, which had now spilled out from the reserve of the bedroom and across the half-deserted lounge. The governess was disciplining one of the trade unionists with her cane, forcing him to recite the Twenty Truths of the Peronist Creed and whacking him every time he got one wrong; The Prodigal Woman leapt from one side of the red brocade sofa to the other, hitching up her heavy velvet skirt to reveal an outsized, flesh-coloured strap-on dildo swinging from its harness, just out of reach of the costumed tramp drunkenly grabbing at it; and, last of all, the radiant Eva, whom Marroné had followed through the alleys of the shanties – his Divine Beatrice who had led him from the dark forest, his luminous Tinkerbell – was being served simultaneously by the colonel, the businessman and the rancher, striving to hump her back to what in their eyes she had never ceased to be: the whore of Babylon, a peroxide blonde harlot, a black slumdog. Her bun – which was mostly hairpiece – had come undone and was now being batted about on the floor by a tortoise-shell cat.

Dragged down by his cider hangover – a first far worse than he had ever imagined – and racked by an exhaustion that had escalated from the physical to the metaphysical, Marroné cast about in all directions to see if he could find something to cling on to in the midst of the wreck. Then he saw the statue of Eva, standing tall and proud and unscathed in the general corruption scattered at her feet, and she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Rapt by her loveliness, he knelt down in the fountain and kissed her small, frozen feet, resting his cheek against her fine ankles, not knowing whether it was the water flowing from her hands or his own tears running down his cheeks. Prostrate before her, he confessed his boundless contrition and remorse.

‘Radiant Eva, immaculate Eva, Eva most beauteous, I beseech thee… I don’t love my wife, I can’t stand my children, I try to influence people, I left my best friend for dead, I’ve been… fingered… I don’t know what to do. I’m lost, I can’t go on, I can’t go back… If you know, my lady, I beg you, show me the way…’

And, when he raised his eyes to her face, Eva seemed to answer him. Not in words, but with an eternally even, eternally quiet smile – a smile of stone. The tilt of her neck and face, the half-open eyelids, the slight curve of her nose, all seemed to be pointing to one spot, which was hidden by Marroné’s hands and face. He drew them back hurriedly: on one side of the pedestal, carved in Roman characters, there was a name, which must have been the sculptor’s: Rogelio García.

Marroné clasped her cold and lovely body and, standing on tiptoe, stretched up to her lips to leave his offering of a kiss.

‘Thank you, Evita… Thank you…’

On his way out he ran into Aníbal, who, yawning profusely, was locking up.

‘Would you like them to bring your car?’

‘No, I’ll walk, thanks.’ Marroné groped for a plausible lie. ‘I came… by train.’

‘You amaze me. What a passion for the authentic.’

Outside, a pale dawn had taken the heavens by storm. He didn’t need to ask for directions: he had only to join the blurred V of hazy figures converging on a single point with the defeated, trudging gait of those who rise in darkness every working day. Near the train station was a bar, whose tables and windows were thick with dust, turned to velvet by the early morning sun, and right next to the door, a public telephone, so orange it glowed. He ordered a milky coffee and croissants, and asked for the telephone directory; he found the man he was looking for with his third call.