Carlos Gamerro - The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Perón

‘All we have to do is contact our usual supplier and place an urgent order,’ answered Marroné. ‘No big deal. That’s why I’m head of procurement, isn’t it? But as you know…’

‘Please, Marroné, not that again. You know all promotions are frozen until Sr Tamerlán gets back. Help me rescue our president and I promise you that, when all this is over, I will speak to him myself in person about your promotion to marketing and sales.’

‘When all this is over,’ Marroné mentally retorted to the unmannerly Govianus, who, without waiting for him to go out, had plunged his nose back into his paperwork, ‘I may not need a middleman to speak to Sr Tamerlán and ask him for what he’ll no longer be able to refuse.’ As he waited for the lift to take him back to his office on the sixth floor, he looked up at the model of the Monument to the Descamisado, which stood in the lobby: sheer forehead, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, right hand on chest, left clenched in a sinewy fist. The monument had been commissioned during the golden years of the first Peronist government and, at a purported 137 metres, was intended to be the tallest in the world. But by the time Perón fell from power in 1955 the building work hadn’t even started, and the model was shunted discreetly to the basement where it gathered dust until Perón’s return to power two years ago, when they had decided to move it into the lobby. Instinctively Marroné adopted his plebeian counterpart’s posture of Herculean determination, as befitting someone who has heard destiny knocking on his door. This, he said to himself, was the opportunity he had so longed for to prove to Sr Tamerlán his personal devotion, to show him he wasn’t just another employee (‘Just another arsehole,’ the devious side of his mind said in a whisper that the saner side dismissed with a mental grimace) and to join the inner circle of Tartars, as Sr Tamerlán had taken to calling his personal guard of samurai executives. ‘The arrival of those busts, Marroné,’ he would say when it was all over, the two of them lounging in the plush white armchairs of his living room (a living room he could relax in, thanks to Mabel’s collection of magazine cuttings, as comfortably as in his own), each warming a glass of cognac in their cupped hands, ‘was providential. They’d already pronounced my sentence, the murder weapon of the chosen one was already pointing at my temple — they draw lots, Marroné, such is their bloodlust that they will fight each other for the privilege. But tell me something… The idea of concealing a transmitter in the sample bust, was it really the police’s or…? Of course. I knew it. What is a man like you doing vegetating in procurement? Marketing? Don’t be modest, man. Look, I need to recover, have some time to myself, travel the world in the company of my darling wife. And Govianus, we can agree, much as we acknowledge his efforts over these last few months, isn’t the man for the job… He lacks fibre, grit, drive … If it had been down to him, I wouldn’t have enough fingers left to warm this glass. Besides, Ernesto — mind if I call you Ernesto? — I needn’t tell you that the doors of this house are always open to you. So my daughter Clara won’t feel so alone while we’re away, will you, Clara, darling?’

By the time the lift reached the sixth floor it was the day of his wedding to Clara Tamerlán and the bubble of his imagination burst with the rarefaction of the reality around it: Sr Tamerlán had no daughter, and Marroné was already married. But despite his right hemisphere’s natural tendency to such tangential flights of fancy, it didn’t escape the notice of his more sober left side that this wasn’t the time for dreaming but for living up to the name of executive and executing.

‘Busts? Of Evita? No, what problem could there be?’ the jolly voice of the owner of the Sansimón Plasterworks, the company’s main supplier, answered him good-naturedly. ‘A few years ago it would have been a different story, but these days… They’re going like hot cakes. How many did you say? No, not that many in stock, but I’ll have them run off for you before you can say “Evita Perón”. Why don’t you drop round first thing tomorrow and I’ll show you the different models. Will you be wanting some of the Governor too?’

After hanging up, Marroné gazed out of the window of his deserted office at the crawling columns of vehicles as they drained from the city centre, and indulged in two more flights of fancy: the short version, in which he passed himself off as a member of the guerrilla to rescue Sr Tamerlán and fled with him through the slums at night, carrying him through a hail of zinging bullets; and the longer version, in which beneath Govianus’s unimpeachable mask he discovered a guerrilla leader who had infiltrated the company years ago and bled it to swell the coffers of subversion. Knowing he had been exposed, Govianus holed up in the bunker and asked Marroné — named sole negotiator by mutual agreement of the parties — for a plane to take him and several political prisoners to Cuba in exchange for Sr Tamerlán’s release; in the end, realising the game was up, he bit the cyanide pill carried by every subversive and died in Marroné’s arms, but not before revealing Sr Tamerlán’s whereabouts and whispering his final message. ‘Been in their power for years. Wasn’t all my doing. Took me to the Soviet Union, had me brainwashed. In death I can be the man I used to be: Ulrico Govianus, accountant, loyal servant to the company and its president and director general. Sr Tamerlán’s finger it’s… in the freezer, in the bunker, third shelf down, under the beefburgers,’ Govianus would reveal before breathing his last, his penchant for the prosaic breaking the spell of Marroné’s second daydream. But it wasn’t just Govianus’s impertinent coda that brought him back to reality: a distant voice that seemed to reach him from his innermost being was calling to him, as if hesitating before the gates of his consciousness, and as it became more audible, the initial chill that had gripped his body on seeing the severed finger gradually thawed to a warm and pleasant inner glow. The sensation was unmistakeable, but so many months had passed since he had felt it with such intensity that it was like bumping into an old friend you never expected to see again. At once incredulous and grateful, with the hypnotic certainty of a dream, he pulled out a half-read copy of The Corporate Samurai and the key to the executive bathroom from the second drawer of his desk, and stepped out of his office and into the corridor.

His deep-seated constipation had accompanied him like a faithful dog ever since he had started working at the company. No sooner was the post of head of procurement his than his intestines, as if unbeknownst to their owner, had turned against him and tangled themselves into a perverse Gordian knot that he could only cut with the aid of powerful laxatives. It was a problem of timing more than anything, but also of setting, and ultimately of that rare commodity in the life of the efficient executive: relaxation. It was getting harder and harder in the morning to find the necessary peace and quiet: his wife wouldn’t let him use their en suite bathroom because the smell would, she claimed, pervade her morning ablutions; and the children’s bathroom was prey to all-important needs — use by their son, a change of nappies, toothbrushes, medicines, nebulisers — rendering any prospect of relaxation utopian. Last, the downstairs guest toilette was besieged by the fervent Doña Ema, the enormous maid who, advised by Sra Marroné of her husband’s early-morning needs, had immediately decided, with her impregnable common sense, that it was merely a naughty habit and purposely chose that time to clean it or, if Marroné did manage to evade her vigilant eye and take cover within, she would decide to wax the floor outside and charge at the bolted door, first with the waxing cloth, and then — her coup de grâce — the wailing floor-polisher, until he gave up. But if going to the toilet at home had become a mission nigh on impossible, things weren’t much better at the office. Rarely was there time amid the daily rush to enjoy that much-needed oasis of peace and quiet, and anyway, Marroné was incapable of feeling at home in the toilet without a book in his hands — not only to make the most of his time, but because a pleasant and instructive read had the virtue of soothing him and steering his performance to a successful outcome; what’s more, he felt embarrassed at the thought that some employee or colleague — especially if it was a woman — should see him entering or leaving the bathroom with reading matter, and although he had perfected a posture of camouflage to that effect, which involved wedging the book under his armpit and cleaving his arm to his side in order to conceal it from prying eyes, the average size of books on management made any dissimulation unviable. Hence the office was far from ideal.