Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

Baigorria’s mouth began to water in spite of himself.

‘I mean, as we’re all in this together, we should at least have as good a time as possible, are you with me?’ Baigorria nodded eagerly and Garaguso, knowing it was in the bag, pointed almost tactfully to one of the disconnected telephones.

‘So… you don’t mind if I make a couple of quick phone calls?’

Saturnino came over to see what was going on, and Baigorria whispered the glad tidings in his ear. Standing beside Marroné, Sansimón explained the meaning of the ruse.

‘At least now we know they’re real workers.’

‘How do we know?’ asked Marroné.

‘If they were undercover subversives, they’d never have gone for it. Revolutionary morality,’ he elucidated.

Marroné seized the chance to raise his most pressing concern.

‘So tell me… The little matter of the busts… What shall we do about them?’

Sansimón immediately went on the defensive.

‘As you can see, I have no say in the matter any more. You’ll have to discuss it with the boys,’ he said, indicating the two guards with his chin.

‘But in that case, the cheque I gave you…’

‘Ah, no, that’s another matter. They’ll be delivered, you can be certain of that. Now, if there’s a delay owing to circumstances beyond our control…’

‘But you know we need the busts to expedite Sr Tamerlán’s release. If you don’t deliver them soon, they’ll be no use to us at all.’

‘Listen… Who are the ones holding him? If I’m not mistaken, it’s the Montoneros, isn’t it?’

Marroné nodded. Sansimón was leading him somewhere but he couldn’t work out where. There was nothing for it but to go with the flow.

‘And who do you think’s behind all that’s going on here?’

‘The Montoneros?’

‘Correct.’

‘Not the union?’

‘I’ve got the union in my pocket, sonny. The occupation’s worse for them than it is for us. No, it’s the Montos. So, if the ones asking you to have a bath take the sponge and the soap, it isn’t my problem, or yours — it’s theirs. Am I right or am I right?’

Marroné did his best to conceal his annoyance.

‘The problem…’

‘The problem,’ Sansimón interrupted him gruffly, ‘is that this occupation started because I had the bad idea — the very bad idea — of making the workforce do piecework just to save your boss’s arse. Because I trust you’ve learnt something from your tour and don’t expect some crummy little busts to make any difference to the yearly balance. But instead of apologies and gratitude you come to me with demands — worse still, with sly accusations. Next time someone goes down on bended knee asking me for a favour over a matter of life or death, I’ll think with my head, not my heart.’

Marroné recalled one of the golden rules from How to Win Friends and Influence People : ‘The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it’ and he thought it inadvisable to contest such insidious reasoning. The occupation might be over in a matter of hours, as so often happened, and in that case it wasn’t in his interests to get on the wrong side of Sansimón, who had clearly taken offence and treated him with manifest coldness thereafter; an attitude immediately picked up on and aped by his obsequious executives.

Lunch arrived an hour later. It consisted of a box of real Scotch whisky, another of local champagne, and cold cuts of sliced York ham and pineapple, turkey and glacé cherries, and king prawns and palm-hearts with thousand island dressing. The girls arrived half an hour later: one short and fleshy, the other tall and gangling with a husky voice, and the party got into full swing. Sansimón opened up his radiogram and put on some dance hits and then, while Cerbero and Garaguso strutted their stuff with the girls, began pouring the whisky into cardboard cups. Marroné approached the table, which the caterers had laid with a white tablecloth, and picked up a slice of turkey upon which a phosphorescent cherry sat impaled. Following his example, Baigorria and Saturnino sidled shyly over and stretched out their hands, Baigorria for a palm-heart, whose heart popped out under his rough grip, Saturnino for a king prawn, which he devoured shell and all with an audible crunching and pained expression; but by their third whisky they were wolfing down slices of turkey and ham as if to the manner born, and even allowing Garaguso to put his arms round their shoulders and press home his advantage. When he thought they were ready, he decided it was time to play his trump card and, beckoning them with his finger to watch, he began to pull down the taller prostitute’s panties until, to the fanfare of her shrill, artificial laughter, out popped a limp member, as wrinkled as a prune.

She was a man! At first Marroné was as taken aback as the two commissars, but unlike him they soon recovered from the initial shock and, egged on by the drink, began to vie acrimoniously for the transvestite’s company, while the woman, altogether forgotten, smoked a cigarette and watched the events play out with a seen-it-all-before expression. To stop her feeling left out Sansimón took her by the hips and manoeuvred her naked titties onto the glass top of his desk, pulled down her panties with a tug and entered her, while Espínola, pretending to hide underneath, licked her nipples through the glass and Viale diligently crammed rolls of ham into her mouth, which she could only chew and swallow; meanwhile, Garaguso and Cerbero had commandeered the tranny and, as the former inserted a prodigious erection into her mouth, the other, with a good deal of snorting, took her from behind. Yet there was something contrived and — why not? — even theatrical about the whole scene; something that suggested a live number performed by the company’s executives for the benefit of their underlings, like in those progressive schools where the teachers dress up as children for the annual graduation party and play-act at behaving badly. Marroné had been to many a business convention and private party at which alcohol, sex workers and even drugs were freely available, but in this instance it was obvious that such histrionics were put on for the exclusive benefit of the two plebs, who were clearly having the worst time of it: the confirmation that all their fantasies about the dissipated and licentious lives led by their bosses at their expense were actually pretty accurate seemed to have robbed them of their capacity for reaction, or even righteous indignation, leaving instead two mere husks trembling with mute, affronted desire; so by the time the whore and the transvestite had gone from executive prick to executive prick and it was their turn, all that was left standing of their moral scaffolding was the requisite proletarian modesty to ask, after much tentative throat-clearing and shuffling of soles, if they could have their slice of the pie somewhere a bit more private, a mercy most graciously granted them by the conclave of executives.

No sooner had the two of them retired to Garaguso’s office with their sexual partners (their objection apparently only went as far as doing it in the presence of their bosses, not in front of each other) than Sansimón pounced on one of the phones on his desk and Cerbero on the other one, any trace of befuddlement or intoxication evaporated as if by magic, and while the big boss phoned the general secretary of the union, the other got on to a trusted police chief of his acquaintance:

‘Just a second, Babirusa, what do I stick in the envelope for you every month? Sugar-coated peanuts is it? Your people… a den of subversives, Turco, this strike thing’s a smokescr… You’ve disaffiliated them? Ah, well, that makes me feel a lot better. Made them go without pudding too, did you?… The delegates are all from the Montoneros and the ERP, and the shop stewards are armed to the teeth… do I know who they are? Wasn’t it you who said we’d sacked them all? Besides, the trouble started in the old workshop, Christ knows what those sonsofbitches have done with my poor old… I don’t think the police will be enough, what we could do with here…’