Lascano realizes he’s seen this kid before, though he can’t remember where. Pereyra says goodbye to the girl and doesn’t deprive himself of watching — a worthwhile activity — as she leaves. When he realizes that Lascano has caught him in the act, he raises his eyebrows in a show of innocence, complicity and regret. Lascano likes this guy.
How ’re you doing, Superintendent? I’m no longer a superintendent. That depends, as far as I know they haven’t let you go, seems there was simply a problem with your file, it got lost and a lot of people on the force still think you’re dead. Whatever, I’m not active. That’s something we might be able to fix. I don’t know if that’s a good idea, the last one who tried is pushing up daisies. Turcheli? I see you are well informed. Sorry for asking, but have we met before? We’ve seen each other. Where? You’re young, and I’ve been out of the loop for a while. I worked in Marraco’s court…
In a flash the face he’s looking at gets superimposed on the face of that young pup who was working as a clerk for Judge Marraco when he was investigating the Biterman case.
That kid sure has done well. Not bad. Do you remember the Biterman case? Do I remember it? A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it. It almost cost me my life, among other things, and for what? Nothing ever came of it. Do you know what happened? No idea. When you brought that envelope with the evidence to Marraco, he had it sent on directly to Giribaldi. I’m not surprised, I always knew he was an brown-noser. I always thought that deep down he liked the military. He told me to take it to Giribaldi. So? So, I did, I gave it to Giribaldi, but not before I made and kept a copy. Did you ever find the murder weapon? Unfortunately not, it was auctioned off by the Banco de Prestamos. We never found the buyer, somebody from Cordoba or Tucuman. So what now? I want to arrest Giribaldi for the murder of a civilian. I don’t think you’ll get very far, Giribaldi didn’t kill Biterman, he was just Lastra’s accomplice, and even that will be difficult to prove. All the witnesses are dead. All except one: you. I don’t think you have a very strong case. I agree, but I have another motive. What’s that? Giribaldi played an important role in the death squads. He knows a lot about various issues I’m investigating. Like what? Basically, the disappeared and their children. And you think that if you press him on the Biterman case, you’ll get him to talk? What, you don’t think so? I think it won’t be easy, but it’s worth a try. That’s the idea. Can I count on you? For what? First of all, to testify in the Biterman case. No problem. And second? I’m going to arrest him for his involvement in the case. With your testimony, the judge will issue a warrant. What else? It would be important to have you there when I arrest him. I want Giribaldi to think the sky is falling, and when he sees you, that’s exactly what he’ll think. And me, what do I get out of this? Justice, Lascano, justice. Oh, that little word… anyway, count me in. When’s it going to happen? Soon, I’ll let you know.
At six o’clock on the dot, Lascano walks up to La Giralda. Just as he’s about to enter, he sees the man he came to meet leaning against the newspaper kiosk, smoking a cigarette. He goes up to him, making an enormous effort not to ask him for one.
Well, here I am, what have you got to tell me about Fuseli? I don’t know why I’m doing this. Fuseli was always kind to me, he always treated me right and he helped me whenever he could. Do you know where he is? To tell the truth, no, I don’t. Well, you asked me here, and now you’re being so mysterious, you must have something to tell me. Look, Lascano, Fuseli split. Oh. Some soldiers came for him, seems he was mixed up with some subversives because… As if that mattered. What? Nothing, nothing, go on. Well, the thing is, the same day they came for him he called me on the phone. Go on. He told me that if you ever showed up, I should give you the keys to his house… My wife cleaned the house for him… Once a week… I understand… Well, here are the keys. But please, don’t tell anybody I had them. Don’t worry. I am worried, I don’t want any trouble. It’s okay, thank you. Another thing. What? Fuseli left without paying my wife, because she kept going to clean after he left. Okay, in a few days I’ll stop by the courthouse and give you the money.
Fuseli’s place is on the corner of Aguero and Cordoba, a small one-room apartment on an enormous rooftop terrace. He opens the door and gets a blast of a damp and musty odour. It’s neat and clean and quiet. A film of dust has left a uniform greyish patina over every object and horizontal surface. He walks across the room and opens the French doors leading onto the terrace. He goes out. The sky is cold, smooth and bright. This is where he and his friend last talked. This is where Fuseli explained his theory about stars and ghosts. He said that many of the stars we see shining in the sky actually burnt out millions of years ago and that what we see now is the light still travelling through space. He said that people also emit radiation. And that, after they die, those waves can still reach the living, like the light from dead stars, and that’s what ghosts are. Lascano shakes his head and a pained smile appears on his face. Fuseli would always pontificate when he smoked pot. He’d go on and on with the wackiest ideas as if they were deep revelations, vastly important insights nobody could afford not to know, truths far and away above daily miseries and petty sorrows. He made you feel like a microbe, but a marvellous and unique microbe. The cantina that used to be on Aguero is gone; it was an awful place, but Fuseli, a gourmet of sorts, inexplicably liked it. Come on, let’s go to the cantina where you eat crap and it’s expensive and they treat you like shit. He looks back inside the apartment. His footsteps have left an imprint on the dust on the floor. They are perfect footprints in which you can read the brand and even count the lines on the bottoms of his shoes. Perro figures you should always examine your own footsteps that carried you to this particular present, this exact situation, whatever it may be, fortunate or dreadful, joyous or sorrowful. Then you should ask yourself: how do I feel? The word that takes shape in his head is: abandoned. A shiver runs up and down Lascano’s spine. He goes back inside the apartment. He looks around. The four bookshelves are full of books and photographs. Fuseli’s son is smiling out of a black frame, leaning his head a little to one side and holding a green ball with rough outlines of the continents. He, Lascano, appears in another photo, laughing, sitting and eating with Fuseli and a group of men from the force in a cantina in La Boca. He contemplates those youthful faces, still not brushed by the wings of death, by the corrosive breath of lasting sorrow. He picks up one corner of the quilt over the bed; in one quick movement, he shakes it and lets it fall on the floor, raising a cloud of dust that falls with it, but in slow motion. He lies down on the bed and stares at the ceiling. He’s sick and tired of feeling so alienated, so alone, of listening to his own laments. Sick of it and angry, and the anger fills him with renewed energy, and he decides that the time has come to look for Eva. This is his version of Fuseli’s theory about stars and ghosts: nobody disappears without leaving a trace, a footprint. Perhaps in this very apartment he’ll be able to find a clue to his friend’s whereabouts, but first, he decides, he’ll pursue every other possibility, because he feels a certain reticence about looking through his things, dissecting his intimacy, digging into his nooks and crannies, meddling in his hidden sorrows and joys, discovering his secret pleasures, uncovering those things he chose not to share with him.
19
Lascano looks out the train window on the way to Haedo and tries to remember the address he read so long ago in Eva’s police file. But no matter how hard he tries, he can’t summon up the name of the street he feels he has on the tip of his tongue. With only the name of a neighbourhood and the unreliable memories of their conversations, he has decided to go and look for her parents. He knows the family owns a shoe shop near the station. He got on the train with the hope of catching a whiff of either his lost love or the fugitive. He doesn’t even wonder which he’d choose if he could. He knows that in a battle between reason and passion, passion always triumphs.
He gets off the train and enters a bar, steps up to the counter and orders a cafe cortado from a young man who has an astonishing likeness to Popeye. He grinds the coffee, loads the basket, packs it in, adjusts the handle of the spout and presses the button, moving both hands at full speed to do an array of things simultaneously and with astonishing precision. The coffee tastes horrible.
Hey, kid, is there a good shoe store around here? I think there’s one past the station, down Moreno.
El Perro walks through the station at the very moment two trains are arriving. The one from the centre spews out a crowd that hurries off the platform to jostle for a good place in one of the interminable queues for the buses. Perpendicular to the station, on the same axis as the waiting room, an array of awnings along the main street shamelessly compete with each other to call attention to themselves. He walks slowly down the sidewalk, made narrower by the rear ends of cars parked at a forty-five degree angle. The shop windows are stuffed with imported garbage. Lascano looks at the shops on both sides of the street, still trying to remember the address he read in the file. There was something unusual that should have helped him remember, but what was it? Ahead of him, a barefoot kid lets out a piercing shout. The greengrocer turns to look while behind him the kid’s six-year-old accomplice pockets four mandarins and takes off running. Lascano watches him run by, and his lips curl into a sad