Ricardo Piglia - Money to Burn

Kid Brignone ascended the staircase followed by the Crow Mereles and the Blond Gaucho. The Kid inserted the key into the lock and with a light push the door to the apartment opened.

The garçonnière installed in flat number nine, on Julio Herrera and Obes Streets, is a small complex of near-empty rooms, painted a pale green. The door to the flat (the bell doesn't work so, to get in touch with its occasional inhabitants, it's necessary to do so via the intercom system down at street level) opens on to a narrow corridor where (the youth who wrote the police reports for El Mundo pointed out) the doors to other flats are also located. It's on the first floor of the apartment block, which has no lift, being only three storeys high. It is important to bear this detail in mind.

Once inside the flat, the first sight afforded to the viewer is that of a kind of living-cum-dining-room of some four metres by three, on whose left-hand side there runs a kitchen, in which there's finally a window giving on to an inner well intended to provide air and light. The kitchen contains a marble-topped counter with a sink in the middle and cupboards underneath. The visitor who enters this flat will meet with empty walls and scant living-room furniture. The door that ought to separate the living room from the kitchen is also missing.

Next in line, opening on to the living-room, there are three doors leading to the two bedrooms and to the bathroom.

The first of these rooms, overlooking the central well, is the alcove used by the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro and in it can still be seen a bed, a shelf and a small wardrobe, a wicker table with a glass top, and a chair. There was nothing else in there at all apart from a small lamp on the shelf and, also on the shelf, a photo of the country girl. The bare walls give the flat that atmosphere of precariousness which such places have.

The next room looks on to a second inner well (for light and air) and is also an alcove which was used by the subtenants of the flat, along with the numerous occasional visitors who came, by one way or another, to have the key to the apartment or to have access to borrowing it. There's a double bed in the middle of the room, a toilet to the left and a wardrobe to the right, facing the foot of the bed. To the right, in the middle of the room, another window opens on to the inner well (affording light and air). The basic difference between this bedroom and the other is that the one belonging to the dark-skinned girl from north of the River Negro has polished parquet flooring and its walls are whitewashed, in this room the reverse is the case. The room has no regular incumbents: nobody is bothered to keep it in even a minimum state of cleanliness.

Finally there is the bathroom, containing nothing but the usual fittings, just a General Electric boiler and a blue plastic curtain running around the bath. Above the bath there is a window that opens on to the inner well, affording light and air.

'Across the other side there's nothing at all, only the patio.'

Mereles had clambered on to the edge of the bath and was leaning out, looking downwards from the window. Grey walls, lit windows and beneath them the corrugated iron roof of a shed. The Kid and Dorda headed into the living-room.

'There's a TV here, look…'

'Didn't I tell you it was reasonably well furnished…'

'Che, what a stink there is in the toilet…'

'So,' the Kid continued explaining, 'we went, because you'll remember, Crazy, that before, we wanted to go to Mexico, and I had a friend who went and bought a passport, because he had so many stamps on his, he was called Suárez and was helped by his surname (because every other person is called that) and it was in Mexico they finally bumped him off…'

'Listen to me, Rubberlips, who in their right mind would think of going to Mexico… The altitude bursts your eardrums, and once in La Paz my snout poured blood simply from opening my bedroom window.'

'But what I'm telling you is that you have to get to New York. There's a highway that runs from the Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, didn't you know that? Look at the map and it's like a thread, running and running, all through the open countryside, the Germans built it, they brought in the diggers, made the natives do the work and you could get from one end to the other by bicycle.'

'I'm going to crash here, chuck over the bolster, would you? Let's eat something.'

They had bought chickens on a spit and whisky and corned beef, enough reserves to last them a week, in case they couldn't move around.

'Hi Che, and is Malito coming over soon?' Mereles was stuffing chicken down him and drinking whisky out of a plastic tooth-mug. 'Should we wait for him? Does the country girl know him or not?'

'I've sent a message to let him know we're here.'

'I saw on the TV that you can rob a cinema if you come in through the rear door, through that little room where the projectionist sits… You enter, cut off the exit, fire over the heads of the audience to get them down on the floor, and make off with the loot of all those punters who came in to see a film and then you get out through the window of the projection room. It's perfect, all in darkness, the film keeps on running and covers any noise you make…'

'What do you mean, you saw it on television?'

'It was a programme about security lapses in public places… Imagine the dosh you could make from a full cinema…'

They had to await Malito's arrival with a new car and papers, to leave with him at dawn and head out north, bury themselves in the countryside, hide out in a maizefield in Durazno, or Canelones.

'So as far as you're concerned, it should all be left in the hands of fate… If he comes, he comes, and if he doesn't come, then what? It seems a poor deal to me.'

'It's a rough deal, but there isn't another on offer. We have to stick together and wait.'

'If we hold out for a week here for things to die down outside, that'd be better. I like this place.'

'But Malito's due to turn up here by tonight?…'

'Listen, if you want to strike out alone, just try it, you're taking a big chance.'

'Don't be an idiot, what do you want…'

'Anyway, where do you know this guy from, that flatface who wants to take you off to Mexico?'

'I got to know him in Bolivia, he had a Harley-Davidson 500 with a sidecar and travelled full tilt across the country, shooting at hares with his.45, over arid desert, with his helmet and goggles, the peasants leaned on their spades and exchanged glances, the madman making his bike leap like a spring trying to re-enter a trap, but the bike, you know what they're like, like aeroplanes, those bikes, always up in the air, and the guy was a madman, seriously mad, right, I can tell you that he kept his daughter locked upstairs at his farm because she looked like her mother, the girl did, and the flat- face made her dress up in the dead woman's clothes, and walk along in front of him, and I dunno what lots of other things he made her do, and when he went to Mexico he wrote letters to his daughter, she was a stunning looking bitch, you know, that girl, amazing little breasts, and even after they killed the guy, the girl continued receiving love letters from her father, I'd no idea who was writing them, the kid was a real headcase after being mixed up in all that…'

Mereles emerged from the kitchen with some packs of cards and a jar of chickpeas. He had stashed the weapons and the loot in the little room next door and they were now ready to spend a quiet night, waiting for Malito to come and seek them out.

'I found some packs of cards, leťs play three-handed poker.'

'Let's go… every chickpea is worth ten grand, I'll deal… Let's see what we get…'