Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“Can I get you another slice Fefe?” asks Celia, who’s been doing the second round of the table with a serving dish and a portion poised between spoon and fork. She smiles at me with her whole face — mouth, eyes and wrinkles — every time she looks at me or talks to me. She’s extremely happy to see, me that much is plain. I hadn’t noticed she was so fond of me as a boy. Or maybe I’d forgotten.

“Thanks, I’m fine for now.” I never was much one for pionono . That sickly sweet taste … “I’ll save myself for the spaghetti,” I add flatteringly. “Nearly twenty years I’ve waited for this moment. Never tasted pasta like it all these years.”

“And you never will either now the multinationals have bought up all the big factories. Ours is only still scraping by ’cause it’s so small,” nods Don Ángel gesturing with his fork at a spot on his empty plate, which his wife covers with the slice I’ve just turned down. “Pour Fefe another glass of wine will you Guido seeing as you always have it handy. So we haven’t got much for you to go on as you can see. It’s a quiet town this is, everyone knows everyone else. People’s doors are always unlocked, we leave our cars in the street with the keys in.”

“A hen goes missing around here and the whole town’s up in arms,” intervenes Mati and as nobody laughs at his quip I decide it must be more proverb than wit.

“Exactly,” I say. “A crime in a place like this would be far more dramatic. Nobody could ignore it.”

“SO WHY DID YOU CHOOSE US? I mean there are so many towns in the province,” Don León wants to know now.

“I used to come here as a boy,” I reply. “Every summer. That’s how Guido and I know each other.”

“He’s Echezarreta’s grandson,” Guido chimes in. “Poli’s son.”

“Echezarreta, your grandfather? Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I remember your grandfather well, I remember your mother too. The whole town was terribly upset at the news of her passing. She’d left as a young woman in in … When was it Nene?”

“Nineteensixtytwo,” I beat Nene to it. That was an easy one to remember. It was the year I was born.

“So, Echezarreta’s grandson eh? Well well. I’ve always said your grandfather was the best mayor this town’s ever had. Wretched luck his illness. He still had so much to offer. And your dear grandmother?”

“She moved to Rosario remember?” Guido asks him.

“Course I remember, I was asking after her state of health.”

“She’s fine,” I answer. “I dropped in to say hello to her in Rosario on my way here. We hadn’t seen each other since Mamá’s funeral. She doesn’t get about much any more.”

“WASN’T THERE THAT case in the days I used to come here about some lad or other, what was his name, who had this problem with someone from town or some neighbouring town, I can’t really remember?” I take a pull of wine and blurt out without looking at anyone.

“Know of a case like that Mati?” asks Don Ángel archly.

“About a hundred,” his son replies with the same wry chuckle I used to find so winning. “If you can’t provide more details …” he says to me.

“They were both from the town’s older families; one, the older one, had estancias all over the area and they used to say he had the other one killed because he was—”

“Ezcurra,” Guido, laconic from chewing, finishes my sentence for me over the head of his brother, who snaps at him:

“It’s not certain he was killed.”

“No he just upped and buried himself in Villalba’s pigsty and pops out every now and then to light some candles for himself,” lunges Guido after swallowing.

“That’s for the miracle-loving spades that is. Maybe you go and ask him too,” his brother parries.

“Don’t start, che ,” their father reprimands them from the head of the table, but Guido’s already turned around to explain to his grandfather what the argument’s about and the remark sails past him. After serving her grandchildren and daughters-in-law at the other end of the table, Celia finishes her waiting duties and sits down beside her father, who’s no doubt repeating to her what Guido’s just told him. In spite of coming from almost the other end of the long table, I can’t help noticing the intense, almost concerned gaze she casts in my direction.

“So who was he this Ezcurra?” I ask anyway.

“EZCURRITA, YES. Course I remember. From one of Malihuel’s highest families, the Alvarados, he was, and the Ezcurras of Rosario. High up a greasy pole they were in those days,” says old Don León with a cackle the others smile at out of politeness or approval, “’specially after his father went bankrupt, a good thing old man Alvarado had the measure of his son-in-law and left all his earthly goods to his daughter and grandson. Those two were a real pair. His mother with her frocks from Buenos Aires and her trips to Europe, and Ezcurrita may’ve been tied to her apron strings but in another way he took after his father, always some big business deal in the pipeline that was about to earn him a hatful and show us once and for all who he was, always about to take up some big post with his friend the governor or his uncle the deputy or his cousin the councillor — he lowered his expectations over the years — always about to leave this town of losers for good. Bye bye losers, he’d say every time he left, and when he came back not a peep. You saw him didn’t you Licho that time he gave us the finger from the Chevallier bus.”

“No not me,” the new arrival whistles through the bristles of his moustache and the gaps in his teeth. “It was you as told me.”

“There you go. A finger. Who hasn’t left Malihuel is what I’d like to know. Eh? But a good dog always comes when called, ain’t that the truth. And he always came back Ezcurra did, honking the horn of a new car in broad daylight if things’d gone well or more often than not skulking in the back of the Chevallier bus in the small hours when they hadn’t. We’d have him back at this table the next day sitting in the chair you’re sitting in now, cool as you like, shrugging off wisecracks and bumming cigarettes, coming out with things like You know, the pull of home … the old lady — and with a wink — my dear friends. Beto here was one of the gang, he can tell you better than me,” concludes Don León as his cellphone starts ringing.

“Los Jaimitos they used to call us”—Beto Iturraspe, a talkative, theatrical lad whose fifty plus years only show when tiredness or distraction slacken his youthful rictus, struggles to speak over the stentorian tones of Don León addressing his daughter—“and we liked the name, so it stuck. There were four of us — an ideal number for a hand of truco, the table at the current establishment and a night on the razz in the one car, either Bermejo’s Torino or Batata Sacamata’s Chevy Coupé—should be here any minute — orange it was, used to look after it a treat, I don’t know if you ever got to see it? Bermejo, Batata, Ezcurrita and me,” he muses wistfully, looking resignedly at the other three sides of said table, currently usurped by Guido and Licho and myself. “In the summer our days used to start after siesta, a couple of beers under the pines at the island bar, and when the heat let up, a stroll down the public beach to check out the birds and lay some plans for the night … Then we’d drop in here and Bermejo, who’d spent all afternoon getting the nightclub ready, would join up with us—”

“… The infamous Sucundún, corruptor of the Malihuel night,” I chime in. “The girls had to leave their virginity at the door from what I heard.”

“They used to get it back on their way out rest assured, apart from the odd one that forgot to visit the cloakroom,” ventures Iturraspe with a wink.