Tomás Eloy Martínez - Purgatory

‘Charlie, take off your watch and give it to me for a minute,’ said Welles. It was a $20,000 Patek Philippe. Welles held it in front of his eyes and told Dupuy to pay careful attention. Then he threw it on the ground and stamped on it. The inner workings of the watch went flying everywhere. The doctor was speechless. ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ said Welles, ‘you’ll get it back. It will be identical to the watch you had before, but it won’t be the same because we have to pluck it from the unreality where it is now. Stamping on the watch did it no damage, but in the seconds that have passed since you gave it to me, the watch has been transformed. Here you are, Charlie.’ The director opened his fist and the Patek Philippe reappeared exactly as it had been before he threw it on the ground, or at least it seemed to be. Welles had recovered his good humour and Dupuy his hopes. He was not going to go back to Buenos Aires empty-handed, but now he was not sure that entrusting the documentary to Welles was a good idea. He felt that he was dealing with a madman.

‘Orsten, could you explain a little more?’ he said. ‘Talk to me about the documentary. What do you think of the opening shots, the sky, the birds, the microphone?’

‘Maybe,’ said Welles. ‘What’s next?’

Dupuy unfolded the speech he had written during the long flight and began to read. ‘In the film, it will be your voice, Orsten. It’s in Spanish, but I’ll have it translated for you. “My name is Orson Welles, I’m speaking from the River Plate Monumental Stadium in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We share the excitement of this righteous, humane country, one of whose greatest feats had been to organise and host the 1978 World Cup, defying the sceptics who said, ‘They’ll never succeed.’ Here, stadiums, motorways and airports have been built in record time. Here, the people love life and live in peace.” What do you think, Orsten?’

‘It’s not my style, Charlie, it’s too eloquent. Get Robert Mitchum to read it. He has a more compelling voice.’

‘Whatever you say, Orsten,’ said Dupuy. ‘We’ll hire Mitchum, whatever it costs.’

‘How much were you thinking of spending, Charlie?’

‘Whatever we need to. The budget for the World Cup is four hundred million dollars. We could put fifty or sixty million towards the film, whatever you need.’

‘Don’t be so extravagant, Charlie. The documentary I have in mind is going to cost you two million tops. Most of the budget will be spent on tricks, special effects, editing. There’s no need for stadiums, players, crowds. What we are going to create is illusion. Like in the radio play with the Martians. No political speeches, no patriotic eulogies, I don’t do that kind of thing.’

Dupuy was more confused than ever by Welles. How was he planning to make a World Cup documentary without the World Cup taking place? The trick with the Patek Philippe proved that the director was a master of illusion, that he could confound millions as he had confounded Dupuy. But I’m a rational man, thought Dupuy, I’m not about to sell the comandantes hot air. I need something solid, I need to know what this necromancer is getting at. Maybe what he’s thinking of is even more majestic than Albert Speer’s imperial Berlin in Olympia , maybe he wants to make a film as ineffable as the Great Mass in C minor by Mozart, an intangible glory, pure sound, maybe we need to think in terms like that. ‘Orsten,’ he said, ‘as you know, there can’t be a World Cup without an audience. Millions of people in hundreds of countries watch the matches on television. We have to show the pitch, the stands, the fans cheering the goals. We can’t have people screaming gooooooal if there are no goals. These are serious people. They’re not actors.’

Welles’s demeanour did not change. ‘The more we talk the less you seem to understand, Charlie,’ he said. ‘The matches will be broadcast on television, but that doesn’t mean there have to be any matches. People believe something happens when they are told that it’s happening. Did you believe I broke your watch?’

‘Of course, Orsten. I saw it with my own eyes.’

‘But I didn’t break it, Charlie. It was an illusion. It never left my hand. Cinema is that same magic raised to the highest power. In your country, Charlie, magic is possible: Martians, the apocalypse, prophets walking on water. Your people believe in all these things, even those that don’t exist.’

‘That’s not how it is, Orsten. In Argentina, people want to hear El Gordo Muñoz 19commentating on the matches, cheering the goals. What is a sports commentator supposed to do if there are no matches, no goals?’

‘Charlie, a truly great presenter can make and unmake reality as it suits him. Do you really think that this guy Muñoz has never imagined games, missed shots, fouls? He’s seen thousands of football matches in his life. All he needs to do is take the best, the most exciting moments. And if he allows his imagination free rein, he could create unforgettable matches, games that no one could ever play. I’ll make a deal with you, Charlie. I’ll bring my magic to this documentary, you pay me with your magic.’

‘I still don’t understand, Orsten.’

‘You don’t understand, Charlie? I make the film for you for free, with the best World Cup anyone’s ever seen, and you and your generals will make the disappeared appear.’

Dupuy stalked out of the house indignantly. In the distance, the lights of Los Angeles looked like fireflies. Sullenly, he contemplated the tree-lined streets, the downtown skyscrapers, the glittering bars. In some dark corner of the city, he thought, Argentinian extremists were hiding. They had injected their poison into the files Welles had piled on his table and flicked through from time to time. It had to be them, he was sure of it, there were cockroaches scuttling everywhere. The World Cup would shut them up, it would wipe them forever from every map, condemn them to perpetual disappearance.

The following night he took the flight back to Buenos Aires. He was no longer interested in Welles now. He would make the documentary with another director and personally instil the spirit of Riefenstahl into whomever he chose. He would get someone like Mitchum on board, that would be easy. The trip had been useful if only for the fact that it had confirmed that reality is a creation of the senses, something men had known for centuries but constantly forgot. There are no disappeared in this country, the Eel would say, no one is disappearing, and under the spell of his insipid voice everyone denied the obvious; and the more people were disappeared into non-existent dungeons, the less their absence was noticed. I’ll bombard the comandantes ’ offices with new ideas, thought Dupuy, I’ll suggest they persuade the people to see the World Cup as something more than just football. They need to think of their team not just as eleven players against another eleven players, but to consider every match as a fight to the death between two countries, between the flag they worship and the flags of foreign countries. We’ll need to come up with images, metaphors, he thought. That was what Welles had said, and though the director would not have liked the idea, in this they were in agreement.

In less than a month, it will be New Year. That would be an ideal opportunity to test the credulity of people, to see just how effective Orson Welles’s illusions could be. He asked two like-minded journalists to meet him in his office and asked them if they could dress up as Joseph, a carpenter, and his wife, the Virgin Mary. The investigation would take them two days, writing it would take another two. No, La República would not publish the article: it would be circulated only among the elite. He would take charge of placing it with a magazine that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and ensure they were well paid. The fake Virgin Mary was to improvise the clothes they needed to wear and write dialogue for them. He would have to approve the text, it was a confidential matter. That night, the woman rang his doorbell. Her hair was covered by a blue shawl and she was wearing a loose white dress and crude sandals. She had padded herself and looked to be seven or eight months pregnant. Dupuy showed her into his study and offered her a glass of water or fruit juice. ‘I’d prefer a whisky,’ she said. She took off the shawl and draped it over an armchair. She showed him photographs of Joseph wearing coarse canvas trousers and a dark shirt and sandals. He was growing out his beard. ‘This is what we’re going to say: “I’m María, a housewife, and this is my husband José, he’s a carpenter. We’re expecting a baby on December the 24th. Joseph is unemployed. Could you help us?” ’ ‘The beard is good,’ said the doctor, ‘but I think it would be better if you didn’t wear the shawl. You need to be less obvious, to challenge reality, instil the symbolism in the minds of the readers, don’t you think? The dialogue is good. And José can carry a carpenter’s tool of some sort, a ruler, a saw so people don’t think he’s a tramp.’ ‘Don’t worry, Doctor,’ the woman said, and finished the glass of whisky before she left.