Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

María Eva clapped her hand over her mouth and opened her eyes wide in horror.

‘Only joking. I know how it ends,’ he lied to reassure her.

María Eva suddenly seemed to recall where she was and looked anxiously around her.

‘I should be getting back to my post, shouldn’t I? If Miguel were to see me…’

‘I’ll take the rap,’ said Marroné, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest to assert his rank.

‘Thanks.’ That smile again. ‘It’s just that… Miguel isn’t just my superior… he’s my partner, you see?’

Marroné did see, and intercepted the downward rictus of his mouth just in time.

‘Right,’ he said, trying not to let his disappointment show. ‘Maybe we’ll find more time to talk tomorrow. I just wanted to ask you one thing: are you the Eva in the photonovel?’

This time she reacted differently: she blushed in shame, like her biblical namesake, but covered her face rather than her sex.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve read it,’ she said through her fingers.

‘Yes. You’re the one who plays Eva, aren’t you?’

María Eva took her hand from her face and gave a tight-lipped nod.

‘Why are you embarrassed about it? You look great.’

María Eva stared at him for a second, as if trying to guess the reply expected of her.

‘Yes, I know. I really admire Eva, and I loved playing her; I took it really seriously. Course, I had to go on a diet for the part about her illness… The Reason for My Life can be a bit daft in places, like this little fairy tale, but then we all know it was ghosted for her when she was ill… We tried to bring out the real Eva. The original script was really good, I don’t know if you’ve read it… It was by a comrade, Marcos, you know. They rewrote bits of it later, to make it more militant, beef up the slogans.’ It suddenly seemed to dawn on her that, as a leader, Marroné may well have been the one who’d ordered the changes in the first place, because she abruptly interrupted herself. ‘It isn’t a criticism, eh. I know what we need isn’t armchair literature, but books for the trenches. Still, I dunno, I find the whole idea of these militant photonovels a bit hard to swallow. They’re bourgeois prejudices of mine, aren’t they. As a girl I was taught they were just pulp for the pig-ignorant, because they were read by proles. But why shouldn’t a well-made photonovel ultimately be as valuable as a film, or a comic? I’m not talking about El Tony or Intervalo ; I’m talking Oesterheld, right?’

Marroné nodded, though he hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. He was overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all: a beautiful young woman dressed in worker’s clothes, packing an FAL and discussing Proust was nothing his previous life had prepared him for.

‘So, you aren’t going to ask a worker to read this,’ she said, holding up the copy of Fanon, although she may also have been referring to the Proust within. ‘But there’s one thing I don’t get… I mean, I’m told not to read Proust because he’s bourgeois, because he’s European, because the people won’t understand him… Yet everyone in Cuba reads Lezama Lima, or Carpentier, and neither of them have a trace of the worker about them… And that’s ultimately why we’re leading the Revolution, isn’t it? The Russians didn’t burn the Hermitage. They opened it up to the people. I don’t know… I suppose you have to renounce Proust at this stage… and reclaim him after the Revolution, when we can read him properly — all of us, not just a select clique. I felt the same when I used to act.’

‘You’re an actress?’

‘Couldn’t you tell, from the photonovel?’ she said with a coy laugh.

‘Film or television?’

‘No, just the theatre.’

‘So what made you give it up?’

‘Well, you guys don’t leave us much spare time, actually. Don’t take it the wrong way, I’m only kidding. Let’s see… how can I put it? One day… I saw the face of the audience. I was playing Nora, and I slammed the door and rattled the wings night after night just so that all those good married ladies could go home happy. Antigone too: I buried my brother to keep the spectators from being alarmed by all those corpses they were reading about in the papers. Then I read Brecht and realised I was falling into the trap of cathartic theatre. I realised I was acting to soothe the guilty consciences of the bourgeoisie. I took my act to the shanties, but the feeling just wouldn’t go away… What I was doing wasn’t getting through because my acting was still bourgeois. That was when I realised that, much as I loved it, I had to give up the stage… But then, everything we renounce now the triumph of the Revolution will give us back a thousandfold, won’t it? So that’s how I went from acting to action. Just like Evita. Goodness! Now I really do have to get back to my post. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you… er…’

‘Ernesto,’ repeated Marroné, who, if truth be told, had barely said a word, this time not because he was applying the sixth rule of How to Win Friends and Influence People , but out of dumbstruck devotion.

He bade her goodbye with a vaguely military salute, but gave it a nonchalant air as if to say ‘We’re bigger than all this’, and began to climb the spiral staircase to avoid the service lift, which was too noisy. He spent a while leafing through the photonovel, looking for photos of María Eva, tenderly caressing the polka dots on her bathing costume and the breasts beneath her uniform, then switched off the light and lay there turning over their conversation in his mind; only when bars of dawn began to filter in through the shutters did he manage to catch a couple of hours’ sleep.

First thing in the morning he found himself in the canteen, sharing the breakfast of rolls and maté cocido with his comrades, when Zenón, his transistor radio glued to his ear, raised his voice over the general hubbub to announce:

‘Babirusa! They’ve taken him out!’

Instantly, like a goal celebration at the Sunday match, a deafening victory roar shook the canteen windows and helmets flew into the air, landing on heads and feet, smashing plates and cups. The workers hugged and kissed, or pinched each others’ cheeks, and some even climbed onto the benches, jumping up and down as if they were on the terraces, and singing:

‘Babirusa, you brass whore,

Say Hello to old Vandor!’

Zenón, who still had his ear glued like a plunger to the radio, interrupted the revelling to relay the devil in the detail.

‘Mown down outside his house. Got one of his bodyguards too. Hasn’t checked out yet, but they’re saying he won’t make it.’

But Zenón’s running commentary didn’t seem to make any difference to the mood of the diners, who gave another raucous cheer and carried on regardless with the old chants. At least, thought Marroné, the workers didn’t pull their punches when it came to expressing themselves. He thought it unlikely that, if anything similar happened to Sr Tamerlán, the office staff would dare to be so open about their feelings, even if many in private wished him the worst that fate could throw at him. How very petit bourgeois!

Amidst occasional laughter, jokes like ‘Heard the new song about Babirusa? Which song? The one that goes “And though the holes were rather small… ”’ and the odd little sing-song, the workers slowly dispersed to their respective posts. As soon as the Evas were finished, they’d be off to their homes to get ready for Christmas Eve; and after Christmas — a working-class Christmas at last — they’d be back to full production: no more exploitation, no more capital gain, no more alienated labour; the Eva Perón Plasterworks was liberated territory and in it the socialist utopia was very much a fait accompli, Marroné told the workers as he bid them goodbye with a pat on the back or — the more trusted ones — a slap on the buttocks. They were still leaving and he was about to join them, when he came face to face with a ghost. It was Paddy. All expression had drained from his face and his eyes were dead.