Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

A voice stopped him before he could lay a finger on them. ‘They’re already spoken for, those are. We’ve been fair swamped with orders for her these last three years.’

It belonged to an old man in glasses, with a bushy, white moustache, wearing a cream-coloured cap rather than the regulation red helmet, whom Sansimón introduced as ‘My old man, the founder of the company’.

‘This young man is Tamerlán’s head of procurement, Dad. He needs… how many was it? Ninety-two?’

Marroné nodded.

‘Ninety-two busts of Eva, Dad.’

Sansimón Senior gave a low whistle.

‘Sounds like you mean business. When do you need them by?’ he asked Marroné.

‘Today, Dad,’ Sansimón answered. ‘Matter of life or death.’

‘Today? Are you serious? Tell me, do you see any automated machines here? Assembly lines? Mass-produced goods devoid of soul or beauty? Do you see men working like robots? No. And you know why? Because that’s your way of doing things, out there in your big factory. In here men still work with their hands and take legitimate pride in the fruit of their labour.’

‘Don’t give me that old socialist crap again, Dad. I’m not a baby any more. Put them on sixteen-hour shifts with eight-hour breaks right away. Nobody’s leaving till all ninety-four Evas are cast, dried and packed to go.’

‘Ninety-two,’ Marroné corrected him politely.

‘What?’ snapped Sansimón, who seemed to have forgotten all about him in the heat of the father — son tiff.

‘It’s ninety-two in total,’ he reminded him. He was very pleased with the way things were going. Sansimón certainly knew how to inspire customer loyalty.

‘Yeah, right. Whatever.’ Then to his father, ‘Are we agreed?’

‘What? Overtime?’

‘Half time and they can lump it. They still owe me from the last strike.’

‘Perhaps you might consider,’ ventured Sansimón Senior, appealing with exquisite delicacy to Marroné’s understanding, ‘taking a batch of busts of the General instead? This one, for example,’ he said, pointing at the eternal smile of the tieless Perón, ‘we have a considerable surplus of. We had a few returns because the clients said he’d come out looking like Vandor. You know Vandor,’ he added, noticing Marroné’s blank expression, ‘the union leader who reckoned he could replace Perón in the workers’ hearts.’

‘Dad,’ Sansimón tapped his foot impatiently.

‘Yes, yes, I’m just a talkative old man with old-fashioned ideas. Well, in any case, you can see for yourself, he doesn’t look a bit like him.’

Marroné pursed his lips in a non-committal smile.

‘My… clients asked for Evas, specifically Evas. And your son isn’t exaggerating when he says it’s a matter of life or death.’

Sansimón Senior stood and stared at him for a few seconds, then, without another word, turned away to correct the work of a young sculptor, whose delicate hands and studiously hesitant speech gave him away as an artist or Fine Arts student. The son took the opportunity to bring the tour to an end.

‘Come on, let’s go to the office and shake on it,’ he said, leading him away by the arm.

* * *

‘I leave the little workshop to my old man, for sentimental reasons, you know,’ Sansimón explained once they were back in his office. ‘To be perfectly frank with you, it makes a loss, but what can you do? We’re all ruled by our hearts, and it keeps him busy and leaves me to run the rest of the show. Sure you don’t want them gilded? A few pesos extra and I can have her looking like royalty.’

‘Look,’ said Marroné, opening his palms on the table as if showing his hand, ‘the minute it’s all over, we’ll be chucking the lot out of the eighth-floor window, I can assure you. They mean nothing to us, you understand. Peronist Party novelties. So if I have them gilded, the boss might not look too kindly on it. When they let him go, I mean.’

‘I don’t mean to put a jinx on him or anything, but that “when” of yours is a big “if”. Look what they did to his partner.’

‘We’re making huge sacrifices to get the ransom money together. A cent saved is a cent nearer our target,’ Marroné repeated a phrase from one of Govianus the accountant’s listless harangues. ‘All of us, from the managers to the lowliest operator, have been donating 15 per cent of our salaries to the ransom fund for the last six months.’

‘Lucky bastard, that Tamerlán. If I was in his shoes, this lot of bloody leeches would as soon have me cut into little pieces as part with one red cent. Back again last week, they were. More demands. About falling wages this time. Tell me something I don’t know. Here we are up to our necks in it like half the country, but instead of downsizing so the boat won’t sink, their lordships punch more holes in it. Good job we got shot of the ringleaders before things spiralled out of control, otherwise… I’ve got a personnel manager worth his weight in gold, a godsend he is.’

‘So they won’t make a stink over the busts?’

‘Who?’ Sansimón had understood perfectly, but he was feeling cocky now and wanted to talk himself up.

‘You know. The union.’

‘Who with? Me ? The boss ? We play golf every weekend, me and the general secretary. Still holds his club like a mop, but what can you do? Pulled himself up by his bootstraps he did. They had a ballot recently and if the union wasn’t nicked from him by them — what do you call ’em now, oh yeah — hardliners , it was with a little help from his friends — this friend. Had to sack qualified staff I did, ’cause the stupid bastards had joined the opposition. But you know how it is: you want to fuck in the grass, you have to fumigate for red ants. Commie infiltrators, that’s the problem these days. Which is why…’ Sansimón broke off mid-sentence to flash the butt of a gun that could have been a Colt or a Smith & Wesson, Marroné couldn’t tell, ‘… I never leave the house without it. By the way, there was something I meant to ask you, just between you and me.’ Sansimón leant forwards in treacherous confidence. ‘Is it true they snatched Tamerlán in a poofters’ sauna? That some Monto had to put his arse on the line for the Revolution?’

Marroné didn’t really know what to say: not only did he have proof that the rumour was true, he even knew that the Montonero who’d acted as bait had received special training from a Chinese pederast to clamp his buttocks shut doggy-style and keep Sr Tamerlán there until his accomplices could take him away. The bodyguards had already been taken out by two sexy young guerrillas dressed as whores, who lured them into adjacent rooms where their comrades were waiting. Marroné tried to look suitably sorrowful, but in his heart of hearts he couldn’t deny that his compunction coexisted with a certain gleeful vengefulness, a feeling shared by many in the company, though they would never admit it. Things had backfired on Tamerlán for once. Outwardly at least there was tacit agreement not to reveal more than strictly necessary, and indeed the official media reports were of the usual kidnapping in a car and bodyguards killed in the line of duty… Just then, Marroné found an opportunity to change the subject.

‘The chair-lifts… They’ve stopped,’ he said to Sansimón.

Sansimón turned to the inside window and saw that the chair-lifts had indeed stopped moving, save for a gentle swaying, and that the occupants, seated or standing, were yelling through their megaphones instructions that couldn’t be made out through the thick glass panes.

‘What the…’ Sansimón began to say, rising from his chair, when the door of his office imploded and six or seven workers in different-coloured helmets, wearing leather jackets over their work clothes, barged in en masse.