Carlos Gamerro - The Islands

It was dark when I was helped off the boat by the ticket seller, who gave me a hand to leapfrog the crumbling cement stairs lapped by the Luján’s ashen waters. Still numb from the cold, I climbed the steps to the brightly lit ghost of the Tigre Club, glittering eerily in the spotlights against the shimmering darkness of the river and the blind silhouettes of the never-ending islands. The wind enveloped the double row of columns and, turning my back to it, I walked towards the number 60 bus terminal. The first one I boarded was being sluiced down and the wellington-booted driver shouted from the back ‘Not this one, son, the one in front there.’ The train was quicker, but I preferred the bus so that I wouldn’t have to change and could sleep all the way back, and I was still half asleep when I got off at Junín and Charcas over an hour later and made my way with difficulty through the canyon between the twin hulks of the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy, through which all the wind in the city seemed to be howling. I was starting to feel ill, kind of fluey, my whole body and head aching; I kept repeating ‘I wanna go home, I wanna go home’ with every step I took towards the open maw of the dismal Hospital de Clínicas. The only thing I asked was that this Tarino (a.k.a. Carlos Menem) chappie would keep things short and sweet, and wouldn’t have another tale of national or personal salvation to tell me. I’d had my fill of those for one day.

Once inside, I was startled by the echo of my own steps in the big, empty corridors, and wandered about for more than ten minutes before I found a haggard-looking nurse to give me directions. (Extractions. 6th Floor.) The lift wasn’t working, so I had to climb the grimy granite stairs and walk along another four or five corridors before I found the door I was looking for.

There was something about Dr Tarino I didn’t like, or rather there was nothing about him I didn’t dislike: he was loathsome in a way at once so general and specific that you didn’t know where to start. No wonder he’d got his lion badge in Surprise.

‘Clothes off, please,’ he said without looking up.

‘Listen here …’

‘You’ll already have been informed that this is no normal extraction. You have to take off all your clothes …’

‘I’m the man from Surprise,’ I announced, summoning all my strength, and to my relief (I don’t know where I’d have found the energy otherwise) his face widened in a toothpaste smile and he held out his hand. His affability was even more repellent than his indifference, but at least it saved me the extra effort, and his information was sound enough. I already had the details of two of his guests, one of them the lame woman who’d shouted at me down the phone. Tarino had no trouble remembering the name of the third, bringing my total up to twenty-three, although, as expected, the mystery man in the grey coat was one of the two remaining ones.

‘Three, yes. An especially good crop that week. It was a gabardine, not an overcoat. No idea. By the time I got back from the bathroom, it was all over,’ he lied. ‘Magnificent, magnificent,’ he remarked, holding the cheque up to the light, so proud that I imagined, rather than cashing it, he’d frame it and hang it up with his diplomas. ‘Surprise has never failed to live up to its name.’

‘Not everyone shares your sympathy,’ I pointed out.

‘Envy, naturally. Surprise is nothing more than a scale model of the jungle we live in, and believe you me, we doctors have to fight for survival in that jungle too.’

‘I know. I read the life of Dr Schweitzer as a boy.’

‘A country doctor. They have it easy in the country, believe you me. They whine and carp and appear on television claiming there aren’t enough drugs to go round, but that’s because they’re all shooting up out of sheer boredom. Me, I’m putting together the capital to open my own clinic and don’t feel that collaborating in the sale of quality products is beneath my professional dignity. I’m telling you this in full confidence, because I can see you’re clearly an insider . You at Surprise have organised something magnificent on the basis of an idea , a simple idea, and, in the world of business, having an idea like that is like striking oil in the desert. Oil,’ he repeated, and gave a little chuckle that didn’t augur at all well for my drained moral resources. ‘For thirty years I’ve been hearing that the oil reserves will only last another thirty, but lo and behold … The oil’s always there, just where you least expect it. All you have to do is look . I …’ (he paused dramatically, like a business speaker, for the equation oil=I to engrave itself indelibly on my brain) ‘have managed to extract it from the dried-up arteries of this comatose city. Yes, here ,’ he said, the vigour of his assertion creating an expectant incredulity that I hadn’t taken the trouble to feign.

‘And does it pay, this blood business?’

He wrinkled his nose and upper lip as if he’d been asked about his popcorn cart.

‘Please. Every morning a couple of my men scour the queues of the jobless, striking up conversations with the most desperate-looking ones, and then, feigning indifference, they mention this place to them … The laboratory, as you’ll have noticed, only requires the most basic facilities: two trained nurses could perform all the extractions without my participation, except that I have to keep an eye on things to make sure nobody puts their hand in the till, if you know what I mean … You realise, of course, that blood is a junk product next to what I’m talking about.’

He was playing hard to get, like a girl at a dance, and smiled in delight when I asked. Instead of answering, he went off on yet another detour.

‘I’m the end product of a long evolutionary chain. And when I say “end” I mean “end”: you simply can’t go any further or any deeper. You lot at Surprise strip men of their money. But money’s just the start. There’s more, far more to dig out in there. Where others see only useless rocks, the expert eye detects a seam of purest gold. Let me try a little test on you. Where would you keep looking?’

‘Well … after hard cash, I suppose … the poor sod’s car … his house.’

‘Furniture, the tools of his trade, wife, the clothes on his back. But anyway. Suppose you took it all away. Suppose you stripped him naked — stark naked. The archetype of the professional con. Is that it?’

‘Well … yes,’ I answered, grinning and bearing it. His worst insults would be more bearable than his palliness.

‘Wrong. That’s where we come in. Blood. Corneas. Kidneys. What else? We could pare the body back to the skeleton and utilise every last bit of it. Only the bones would be left. Is there anything else after the bones? What is the deepest of the deep?’

He nodded, indulgently, seeing that I’d guessed.

‘We harvest it from the iliac crest — oh, I beg your pardon — the hip; and we pay them what they couldn’t earn in a fortnight of honest work. Sometimes they aren’t as downtrodden as they look and feel encouraged to ask: we assure them the pain won’t last long. Ha! Did you know that bone marrow is worth several times its weight in gold?’

I felt a sudden wave of nausea, which I couldn’t put down to my marathon of coke and bad food; a lot of fatigue and a little self-pity. I can’t stand Menemists, I thought.

‘And that’s where the circle of a perfect business deal closes. Before handing over the money, I act the father figure, taking them to one side and speaking to them from the heart: “My friend … you deserve better than this. You’re about to be given this money, which will disappear on your numerous debts or shoes your children will wear out before the blood’s back in your veins. Don’t you think it’s time to change, turn the page and start a new life? Your problem is unemployment, isn’t it. I have a job for you: a job and a deal. No strings attached. If you want to invest your money wisely, turn up this Wednesday evening at this address …” Believe you me, not a week goes by without my reeling in two or three for the regular meetings, sometimes more. A great future awaits you.’ He slapped me on the back when we said goodbye. ‘Trust my clinical eye. Every profession … I believe Maradona isn’t just a person. He’s a concept, and every profession, no matter how humble or how lofty, has its Maradona. Perhaps you’ll earn the name of Maradona in yours, as I have, in mine, humbly …’