with bodies that are still alive. His work as a coroner was, in many ways, more relaxing. All he had to do was find out what the cadaver was trying to tell him before throwing it away. A dead body is nothing but a bunch of information to investigate, decode, order, systemize and record, but the subject himself is no longer anybody. It has no hopes, neither suffers nor desires anything, it has become an object, a thing already past its due date that is humbly initiating its process of decomposition, its return to the biosphere. It can be examined, studied, packed up and sent off to those who decide where it will go. His interaction with that dead flesh carries no commitment, responsibility or consequences, because its future is already beyond the realm of science. Because the dead force us to face our condition as beings subject to the laws of nature and our powerlessness over death, we are always so quick to hide them away in tombs, mausoleums and graves. They show us what we prefer not to see. The living, on the other hand, demand certainty; they want to be told that the inevitable moment to relinquish their suit of skin and bones has not yet arrived. They desire, feel, suffer; they place their fear, despair and pain, as well as their hopes, at their doctor’s feet; they make him the repository of secrets that will cure them or at least bring some relief. Hope is a fundamental component of the healing process, hence a doctor must act as if he knows, communicate confidence, give comfort and strength to fight against illness, even though the fact is that what he knows is a mere grain of sand in the vast desert of what he doesn’t.
This place is life, whereas Buenos Aires, for him and many others, is impregnated, contaminated with horror and death. His son is buried there — a wound that never heals or stops hurting. Lascano, his best friend, is there, lying in the street, gunned down like an animal by a military death squad. Through its cobbled streets and paved avenues echo the shouts of the tortured, the murdered, the young people thrown from aeroplanes into the sea and the cries of fathers, mothers, friends and lovers who will forever be missed. Return? To what? To whom? The murderers still walk around, enjoying their freedom and good health. When he thinks about his city, it seems like a place of perennial night, and its name, Buenos Aires, like a cruel joke.
18
As he makes his way down Callao toward Corrientes, Lascano thinks that the morning in 1536 when Pedro de Mendoza disembarked here must have been a morning like this one: its diaphanous sky, the temperature sweetly hovering around twenty-three degrees and a fresh and invigorating breeze explain why the spot was named Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires.
He crosses the avenue, preferring to walk along the plaza side of the street, where a group of men and women are practising Tai Chi. One of the young women, from the back, reminds him of Eva. He has a sensation of vertigo, a mingling of desires and fears. He also feels the urgent need to be held in someone’s arms. He sits down on a bench and observes her. She turns in slow motion, her hands seem to be floating in the air, and her body appears to have become part of the atmosphere. She bends over, as if curtsying to royalty, and stretches one arm out in front of her as she straightens out her bent leg and turns to face him. As she does so, her hair falls over her face. Another turn and again her back is to him. He knows she’s not Eva but still he remains there under the Araucaria trees in the plaza watching this dance that accompanies his memories: Eva is walking across his living room, a towel loosely wrapped around her, then turns and looks him in the eyes. It embarrassed him so much that he blushed, which made her smile with pride. She had an air of helplessness even though she was, is, a wild creature. She could cry for hours in the utmost despair, wallowing in her pain only to then brush it off as if it were a pest, imbue herself with magnificent power and relieve all her sorrows in a session of deep and intense lovemaking. That woman taught him the unbreakable connection between love and death, the one we try so hard to hide between the lines of ballads and madrigals.
Weary of his longing for that love, he turns his attention back to the plaza, where the girl has stopped dancing to his memories. His weariness leads him to the certainty that love has always been, for him, something that is lost as soon as it is found. He wonders if, after all, it isn’t like that foreverybody. Could it be that love dies as soon as we name it, trap it, try to possess it? Could it be that love either kills us or dies? Lascano feels a cry, a howl, a groan of pain lodged in his chest and squeezing his heart, trying but unable to pour out like lava flowing from an erupting volcano until it fills the skies with ash, darkening the Earth forever. The death of his parents when he was a child; Marisa, his wife, dying at the very moment they were most deeply in love; and Eva, her double, whom he loved briefly but with such intensity, and who was now lost somewhere in the world. He longs to find her but is also afraid. Who is she now, after all that has happened? Did she give birth to that child who wasn’t Lascano’s but might as well have been?
A gust of wind blows through the plaza and brings him back to the present. The Tai Chi practitioners gather their belongings and stand around chatting calmly. Perro stands up and crosses the plaza diagonally toward the service station. In front of Pizzurno Palace a crowd of men and women, dressed in white overalls, are protesting, demanding a raise, waving placards and making a lot of noise. He has allowed himself these moments of sorrow, a brief respite from the tasks in front of him. He has to find Miranda the Mole so he can make the money he needs to find Eva. He remembers her mentioning Brazil, Bahia to be more precise. But the map he looked at showed that, contrary to what he thought, Bahia is not a city but rather a province, and not a small one at that. His search will not be simple and he needs more facts to go on. He must find her parents. Eva talked to him about her childhood in Haedo… or might he have fabricated that memory out of his own desire and what Dandy told him about Miranda? He knows it won’t be easy to find Miranda or Eva’s parents, whether they are in Haedo or elsewhere. But they are the only leads he has.
At the foot of the stairs in front of the Palace of Justice a group of young women are dressed in caps and gowns and wearing mortarboards. They are handing out circulars for an information technology course for lawyers. Once in the foyer he consults his watch and sees that he is early. He turns down the corridor toward Lavalle and descends the narrow staircase to the basement, where the coroner’s office is located. A sixty-something-year-old man sits at the reception desk; he is lively and talkative and chews gum and bobs his head up and down like a woodpecker. Lascano stands right in front of him and puts on his best moronic — boludo — face.
Good morning. May I help you? I’m looking for Dr Fuseli.
As if he had said the magic word, the Woodpecker stops chewing, glues on him a questioning stare and lowers his voice.
Who wants him?
Lascano feels like the world has stopped turning. Is his friend here?
An old friend of his. What’s this old friend’s name? Lascano. I knew it was you. Don’t say another word. Meet me at six at La Giralda, right around the corner. I know where it is. See you there.
The man’s head starts bobbing again, as if Lascano weren’t there. Perro understands it’s time to leave; he does an about-face and climbs back up the staircase he just came down. He returns to the elevator and gets in the queue. When Prosecutor Pereyra called, he said he wanted to talk to him about the Biterman case. He was taken aback by that young voice that spoke to him with such familiarity, and to learn that someone had resurrected the case Perro had investigated and which had almost cost him his life. Biterman, a moneylender, had been killed by Perez Lastra, a poseur who’d fallen on hard times and owed Biterman a lot of money. The moneylender’s own brother was an accomplice. The body was dumped in an abandoned field next to the bodies of some young folks who’d been summarily executed by a death squad commanded by a friend of Lastra’s, Major Giribaldi. But when Lascano took the lid off, the military creep had his friend and Biterman’s brother killed, and while they were at it, Lastra’s wife and several other witnesses who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Most likely, Lascano thought, Pereyra wanted to prosecute Giribaldi for his involvement in those murders. Much of the evidence had disappeared and, best case, though improbable, he might get a short sentence for collusion and obstruction of justice. In the end, all they’d be able to pin on Giribaldi was the help he gave Lastra to dispose of the body; at the time it was impossible to hold that gang of brutal killers he commanded accountable for anything.
When Lascano walks into the prosecutor’s office, Pereyra is giving instructions to a young woman with long straight hair wearing what look to him like party clothes. The young man greets him with a friendly gesture, and Lascano can’t help but notice how much things have changed. These offices used to be inhabited by taciturn, musty old bureaucrats, dressed invariably in grey or brown. Now, the old farts are retiring, making way for these eager and multicoloured youths. He wonders if the change is a positive one. The prosecutor himself looks like a kid, or maybe Lascano’s just gotten old. As if he could hear him thinking, Pereyra looks up and straight at him. That’s when
