Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

That was when he saw them coming back, led by the white-haired man whose face looked like an Arcimboldo of raw steaks, and Marroné shut his eyes tight so they wouldn’t see him as they passed. They didn’t, but stopped right in front of him, puffing and panting and all talking at once, muttering, ‘Take that, you sonofabitch, motherfuckincunt, fucking lefty scumbag, Happy Christmas,’ and with every phrase came a whish of air — dull and muffled from the clubs, dizzying and sibilant from the chains — invariably climaxing in a thud and a moan, a cry, sometimes a crunch. ‘Come on, come on, finish him off!’ urged a hoarse voice full of hatred or maybe just weariness, and then came another: ‘Whoa, don’t be in such a hurry, I want to enjoy this.’

Unable to stop himself, Marroné began first to loosen his eyelids without actually unsticking them, then separated them very slightly until a filigree of pale light filtered through the crack, the way you loosen a closed shutter in the morning with the first tug. He kept his breathing shallow — very shallow and very slow; inside he shook with every blow, but outside — he hoped, he prayed — there was nothing to see. By the light now coming in through his eyelids he could distinguish shapes and colours through a faint mist. To see more clearly he had to open his eyes still further, but he remembered having heard or read that the eye of a predator is hard-wired for movement; but no predator — not even these — would spot the stop-motion of his eyelids. He could now make out the thugs’ faces: they were red and sweaty, and they huffed and wheezed from the effort; they spat as they swore but, lucky for Marroné, they were intent on their victim, who he couldn’t make out, because his forehead was still tilted upwards. Stage by stage, his eyes abandoned faces for shoulders, shoulders for chests, chests for bellies and bellies for knees, until his gaze reached their feet and the thing that lay between them.

It was face down, and the blood made the white overalls looked like a slaughterman’s; he wouldn’t have recognised him if it hadn’t been for the unmistakeable copper tone of his hair. The instant he did, his legs nearly gave way. He heard a gasp of horror escape his lips, but the thugs mustn’t have heard it above their hoarse wheezing. Or had he only gasped to himself? Paddy was still moving, his arms and legs bending and stretching as if trying to carry him away from the pain, but his body wouldn’t budge. His friend was being murdered before his eyes and he was powerless to do anything.

They went about it with a methodical slowness, like a long, physically demanding job for which you have to save your strength, and every so often one of them would stand up, arch his back with his hands on his kidneys and, after wiping his forehead with his forearm or a handkerchief, return to the task in hand. Arcimboldo didn’t take part, but merely supervised, hands on hips, and every now and then gave curt instructions or checked his heavy Rolex. A police officer came over to see how they were getting along.

‘Gonna be long?’

‘Nah. Five minutes tops.’

It felt like five hundred years to Marroné. He had to keep his eyes half-open now, for if he closed them the tears would roll down his cheeks, carving broad, skin-coloured furrows through the white plaster, and his disguise would be blown. But if he kept his eyes like this and concentrated every ounce of his being on fighting back the tears, he could just about swallow them. His greatest fear was that he might start sweating from the heat and the effort of keeping still, and it occurred to his mind — not to him — that every minute Paddy took to die increased his chances of being caught.

Arcimboldo checked his watch again and, true to his word, though the policeman had walked off by now, he called a stop to it and bent down to check Paddy, now face up from the kicking, for a pulse. Attempting to stand again, his downturned palms charlestoned in the air two or three times before he held them out to be pulled to his feet. They walked off in silence, pulling the knuckle-dusters off their swollen fingers, rubbing their red-raw knuckles and looking around for something to wipe them on.

Cracking with every step and flaking like old plaster, Marroné began to move: he went over to his friend and touched his face with one outstretched finger. The one remaining eye suddenly popped open, and Marroné leapt backwards, barely able to contain his scream. The eye cast desperately about itself in all directions: there was no way to get him out of here or ask for help, and he was next on their list. But there was something he owed his friend, and it was now or never.

‘Paddy…’ He crouched down and whispered in his ear. ‘That time with the coloured chalk… remember? It was me. I did it.’

Staring into his two, Paddy’s one good eye widened visibly, as if he were trying to absorb the enormity of what he’d just heard. Then it closed for ever.

* * *

Darting between the smoking ruins and freezing statue-like every now and then, Marroné made it to the right transept. The door was just a stone’s throw from the perimeter fence, which had been breached in places by the attackers. Moving cautiously through the scattered barricades, he ran into El Tuerto, who took one look at Marroné and crossed himself.

‘I’m still alive, you idiot,’ he whispered to him, when he understood.

‘Jesus Christ, Ernesto. I thought you was a ghost,’ said El Tuerto with one hand on his chest.

‘They’ve killed Paddy.’

‘Who?’

‘El Colorado,’ he corrected himself.

‘Yeah, I know. And Trejo. And Zenón. And at least two others.’

‘Hey… What about the lads from the… Montos?’

‘Ah. Dead meat the lot of ’em.’

Marroné’s heart skipped a beat.

‘The girls too?’

‘Them first.’

‘Both of them?’

‘I ’ope so, coz them as they take alive… You know. They took the lot of ’em. It’s just you and me left.’

‘Shouldn’t we turn ourselves in?’ asked Marroné.

‘Are you shitting me? They’ll fucking murder us. You first.’

Marroné swallowed. It was exactly what he feared he’d hear.

‘So what do we do?’

‘It’ll be dark in a bit. My house is on the other side of the stream. If we make it across without ’em seeing us, we can hole down there for a bit.’

By heaving the sacks around, they managed to make a tiny cubbyhole in the wall and, after dragging themselves inside, they blocked up the entrance with another sack and crouched there, not daring to say a word until the crack of light darkened from yellow to mauve to purple and black. Then they moved the sacks again and stuck out their snouts like a couple of armadillos in their burrow. A strong wind had picked up, whipping handfuls of plaster dust into the air, which blinded them and made them cough, but at the same time veiled their movements. The gardens had returned to the ghostly whiteness of the early days and, in the radiant light of the police spotlights, once again resembled a snow-covered landscape. Fortunately for Marroné and El Tuerto, the factory wall cast a long shadow that reached all the way to the wire fence and, groping their way along it for some distance, amidst the blinding dust clouds, they eventually came to a hole just large enough to crawl through. El Tuerto went first, getting stuck because of his girth, and Marroné had to find a firm foothold and push him through by the arse.

They forded the stream — more of an industrial sewer flowing with oil — from whose swampy depths, with every squelch they took, came protracted gurgles of foul-smelling gas. With difficulty they made their way up the steep slope of the opposite bank, composed entirely, Marroné discovered, of layer upon layer of garbage, which crumbled under their feet as they climbed. A little further on they could make out twinkling lights from what appeared to be not electric bulbs, but flickering candles, and clutching El Tuerto’s hand so that he wouldn’t get lost, Marroné set off towards them.