Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

It was held one cloudy morning, which again threatened stormy weather, inside the big empty factory, which, in the sepulchral silence where footsteps sounded like pounding hammers and cowed people to a whisper, looked now even more like a vast, abandoned cathedral. Its floor, machines, bags of plaster and the pieces that the announcement of the strike had left unfinished were all coated in a fine layer of dust. The air was strained and still, like an animal about to pounce, and, filtering in through clouds and skylights, the dead light made it hard to believe that just a week ago the whole factory had been clean and sparkling, and running like clockwork. He felt a little guilty for having caved in to the irresponsible delights of strike action: this was the result of the selfish satisfaction of his own desires; this was what happened when each part of the body worked for its own ends, with utter disregard for the health of the whole. What was happening at the Sansimón Plasterworks might well be a warning of what could happen across the whole country unless something were done to reverse the downward spiral into permanent chaos and conflict. Ah well, perhaps it wasn’t too late to put things right. Because this time Marroné was determined to have his say. This time it was all or nothing. If he couldn’t make his voice heard and make progress over the issue of the busts, he would take his mission at the Sansimón Plasterworks to be over and continue the search elsewhere. He still had no clearly defined plan of action: first he’d observe, see how things were shaping up, then seize the slightest chance to bring up his proposal.

At the vague line dividing the blue zone of the nave from the brown zone of the apse, more or less where the altar would be in a real cathedral, they had erected a makeshift platform out of a truncated pyramid (more Aztec-like than Egyptian) of stacked wooden pallets, which had the additional advantage of providing natural ladders for the speakers to climb up and down. Virtually the whole workforce was there, including those officially on leave; they’d even invited the Sansimóns, Senior and Junior, as onlookers. The list of speakers was carried by Trejo, one of Paddy’s lieutenants; Paddy himself — the whiteness of his hard-hat vying with the permanent smile that rose out of several days’ growth of copper beard — was running the show.

The start was as predictable as it was disappointing, with the usual declarations of support from delegates of neighbouring factories, class-struggle unions, opportunistic politicians, student organisations, political youth movements and guerrilla organisations, regurgitating the obligatory quotes by Marx and Lenin, Ho Chi Minh and Mao, Brecht, El Che, Fidel and, of course, Eva Perón… By this stage several of the workers from the factory had started coughing, yawning and gathering in groups with their backs to the podium to talk amongst themselves. It was understandable, their lives and jobs were on the line, and they had to stand there listening to some shrill little pedant giving them the low-down on some worker’s strike in Saint Petersburg. Marroné looked on with rising impatience at the received gestures and hackneyed phrases of the orators, who acted as if they hadn’t even heard of Dale Carnegie, not to mention Demosthenes or Cicero. Not one of the speakers made any effort to put themselves in the other’s place; they only listened to themselves: the art of persuasion had given way to loud-mouthed sloganeering. If only he could find the room to do some creativity exercise with them… But which one? He could forget brainstorming or brain-sailing: the dynamics of the assembly were already too turbulent, and the chances of entropic disorder grew exponentially with the number of people. A mind-mapping exercise would be ideal, but he lacked the basic materials: an overhead projector to write on, a blackboard… There was some coloured chalk, and the office easel was there to hand, but the felt-tips were dry, and anyway… No, it had to be something more dramatic that forced the participants to step outside their rigid, inflexible positions and put themselves in the other’s place. In other words it had to be a role-play exercise. With the speed of a pocket calculator his mind reviewed all the known options, whether honed at meetings and workshops or studied in books on the subject. None of what he had done or learnt seemed to be any use to him, and there, he realised suddenly, lay the answer: creativity begins at home. The onus was on him to be creative; he would have to invent something new, something no one had ever done before. But what? What? He racked his brains, running his eyes over the motley crowd. How to captivate them? How to get through to them, these rookies? That was when his eyes fixed on the coloured helmets.

At that precise moment Ernesto Marroné had an inkling of what Moses might have felt on seeing the burning bush, or Archimedes on leaping naked from his bath, or Newton when the apple landed on his head. Rapt by the revelation taking shape effortlessly within him, it was with some effort that he managed to nudge Trejo on his right:

‘Put my name down.’

His move didn’t escape Paddy’s notice.

‘What are you up to?’ he asked in surprise.

Without looking at him and with such assurance that his voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else, to the man he had become since feeling the magic wand, he replied:

‘You leave it to me, I’ll have this assembly on the right track for you in no time.’

He had to wait a while for those ahead of him on the list to speak and, although an impatience bordering on frenzy ate into his body with a furious tingling, he knew it was for the best, because it gave him time to work out the finer details of his original brilliant intuition and draw up a plan of action worthy of it. As at other key moments of his life his brain burnt white-hot, like a tungsten filament, and his whole environment was transfigured before his feverish eyes, as if what had changed were not just his gaze, but the very light itself. When it came to his turn, he mounted the steps of the platform with a steady purpose, and the tremulous note in his opening words was more an ‘Oxford stammer’ calculated to create sympathy in his audience than genuine nervousness.

‘Comrades…’ He paused to make sure he had everyone’s attention, then went on, ‘I have been here for a while listening to one comrade after another telling us we have to pull together and that the workers have the final say and the workers wear the trousers. And in the end all they do is talk and talk, and tell the workers what they have to do’ ( murmurs of approval ). ‘Is it because they’re afraid that, if they really and truly give the workers the final say, you’ll say something they don’t want to hear?’ ( More murmurs, sporadic applause, someone shouts ‘Nice one!’ ) ‘Comrades… We all know each other here, and we all know that at the end of the day it’s always the same at these assemblies. Always the same ones who talk and talk and talk till people get tired and leave, and only then do they vote, and decide behind the workers’ backs’ ( more sustained applause, shouts of ‘It’s true!’ and ‘ You tell ’em, comrade! ’).

Paddy watched him with a worried frown, and Marroné winked at him to reassure him.

‘All right, all right, at the end of the day I’m yacking on too much too’ ( laughter and applause ). He had everyone’s absolute attention: the time had come.

‘So let’s get down to brass tacks — I mean the real facts. At Tamerlán Construction, where I’m from, we’ve invented a miles more efficient and entertaining way of doing assemblies. We use coloured hats; yes, just like the ones you’re wearing,’ he said, when several of his listeners instinctively raised their hands to their heads. ‘Seven comrades, seven volunteers: come up here onto the platform, each wearing a different-coloured hat. Well? What are you waiting for?’