Ricardo Piglia - Money to Burn

I spent all my money in a Mexican whorehouse

Across the street from a Catholic church.

And if I can find a book of matches

I'm goin' to burn this hotel down…

He and the girl sang along together, in descant, in a rough sort of English, copying the phonetics of the music with alternately merry and angry yelps.

When the record finished, the Kid sat down on the rumpled bed beside her and took her hand (which was very cold) and pressed it to himself with a sensation of strangeness and loss. Then he closed his eyes.

'Kid,' she said, speaking in a muddled manner but with great emotion, as though she were uttering profound truths. 'I know the scene only too well. You need to pretend that nothing matters to you at all and carry on in there with all those to whom nothing really does matter at all, or you'll drown in it all.'

He looked at her, waiting for what was to come, and she propped herself on one elbow and then, after a long pause, kissed him on the mouth. The girl had a confused and passionate way of speaking which he liked, as if she wanted to give the impression of being more serious and intellectual than she was, using words he couldn't follow at all.

'You're searching for something unknown and so you end up falling into despair,' she said and then hummed the next tune ('Brave Captain') by Head and Body which rang out forcefully, like a harder and fiercer version of the life they were leading.

You got to tell me, brave captain, she sang.

Why are the wicked so strong…

'Take off your blouse.'

With a sudden start she realized the Kid was beginning to undress her, she stood up and began to feel offended.

'All you lot are always saying how macho you are and you take time out and do it with girls to prove it, but when you do it with each other, you always say it's only for money. Why don't you give it up, if you really want to leave off and flee into your own inner world so much? Give it a miss for now Go find a job.'

'I work the whole time and I don't want to be talking about this kind of crap,' he answered, on the defensive.

'But you always go back to it. Do you do it with machos? Do you like it that way round?'

She was sincere and ruthless. He nodded slowly and seriously.

'Yes…'

'Since when?'

'I dunno. What does it matter?'

She hugged him and he, almost without thinking, went on talking, as if he were alone. The girl then began to grind the hash into a delicate little pipe with a round bowl, where the drug burned and crackled.

It was a disease, this going out at night like a vagabond, seeking out humiliation and pleasure.

'I'm bored,' said the Kid. 'Aren't you bored? I like men, from time to time, 'cause when I've spent a long while without going out, I get bored. I'm married and my wife is a teacher, we live in a house in Liniers, and I've two sons.' Lying helped him to speak and he could see the girl's face illuminated by the glow of the drug and then he felt the warmth of the pipe in his hand and the smoke going down into his lungs and he felt passably happy. 'But family life doesn't interest me. My wife is a saint, and my children are real little pigs. I only get along with my brother, I've a twin brother. Non-identical. Did I tell you about him? They call him the Gaucho, because he lived in the countryside for a long time, out in Dolores… He has a nervous disorder, he's extremely quiet and hears voices talking to him. I look after him, and care more about him than about my wife and sons. Is there anything wrong in that? Life' — it was hard work for him to connect his thoughts — 'life is like a freight train, haven't you watched one of them go by at night? It goes so slowly, you can't see the end, it seems it'll never finish going by, but finally you're left behind, watching the tiny red light on the back of the last carriage as it disappears into the distance.'

'Dead right,' she replied. 'Freight trains, crossing the countryside, in the night. Do you want more?' she asked him. 'I've got some. It's good, isn't it? Brazilian. When I was a child back in my village, I used to watch trains and there was always some old tramp taking a ride on the top. I'm from across the River Negro, the trains came up from the south and carried on all the way to Rio Grande do Sul.'

They remained peaceful, lying on their backs, in silence, for a long time. They heard a train go by every so often, and the Kid realized that the sound reminded him of the freight trains running through Belgrano when he was a boy. The girl began to undress him. The Kid turned round and began kissing her and stroking her breasts. She sat down on the bed and within an instant had stripped off her clothes. Her skin was white, it shone like a lamp in the twilight of the room.

'Wait,' she said, when he was on the point of entering her. She leapt, stark naked, from the bed. She went to the bathroom and returned with a condom. 'It's impossible to know where you guys have stuck your pricks,' she said brutally, as though she were a third party, as though up until then it had all been a game that was now over, and it was time to start behaving like a proper prostitute. He held her down by the wrists, flattened, and with her arms outstretched across the bed, murmuring to her as he kissed her neck.

'And you?' he asked, without letting her budge. 'Every last one of the guys down the Mercado clubs has had you… several times over.' He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth.

'I know, I know,' she sighed regretfully.

Then they embraced with a kind of desperation and she said to him: 'I still haven't told you who I am. They call me Giselle but my name is Margarita.' She felt for his penis and inserted it between her raised legs. 'Go slowly,' she said, guiding him, 'give it me.'

They paused in between times to resume smoking and listening to Head and Body and in the end she turned around naked and supported herself on the windowsill, her buttocks lifted, her back towards him. The Kid slowly entered her until he could feel the girl's flanks against his stomach.

'Push hard inside me,' she said and twisted her face to kiss him.

He pressed against the nape of her neck, her hair short and rough, and she turned her face again with her eyes wide open and moaned loudly and afterwards spoke to him gently, in soft tones, as if she were apologizing, sighing again as she did so.

'Your prick will get covered in shit, your whole cock coated with shit.'

The Kid felt himself come and fell back.

He withdrew from her and wiped himself on the sheet. Then he turned over on to his back and lit a cigarette. The girl stroked his chest and he felt himself fall asleep for the first time, after months and months of relentless insomnia.

From that afternoon onwards, and during the whole of the following week, he'd drop in frequently at the Mercado café and they'd stay in the empty flat together. They always played the same Head and Body record, always both sides, which they now knew by heart, and they'd smoke some hash and talk together until they fell asleep. He began leaving her money, which she accepted as completely natural.

A while ago, but not all that long ago (according to what the newspapers would later report), the country girl had come from the interior, her head filled with illusions about the capital city. She was from the other side of the River Negro, but the river waters cascading over the dam weren't the only mirror she needed to reflect her growing up. She came to Montevideo with the hope and candour typical of youthful feminine beauty. Once in the city, she became increasingly caught up in the shining threads of night life and of a club called the Bonanza, shortly before moving on to another called the Sayonara, to end up in another one in the centre, known as the Moulin Rouge, where she found a man friend who set her on course working as a high-class escort. This friend was one of the night-club owners.