Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“You see anyone laughing?” says Guido gruffly. “Apart from you I mean.”

Sayago gives a servile smile, laughs off his remark, senses a warmth and goodwill in the atmosphere that are merely the product of liquor in his bloodstream, looks hopefully first at me, then at Nene Larrieu, who goes and gets a fresh bottle off the shelf.

“I HAD THE CAR NEARBY,” Clara Benoit had recalled, biting her cuticles, looking out of the window and down at the table in the freezing half-finished building of the new beach resort, “and when I saw what was happening I started to shout Over here Darío, this way, don’t let them take you, but there were so many people screaming and shoving that he couldn’t hear me, I don’t even think he noticed me except one moment when a swirl of people brought us a little closer and I shouted to him again to come with me, that if he let them take him they were going to kill him. This time he did hear but they must’ve been the very last words, because instead of following me he made a break for it and tried to climb onstage.” Clara’s voice was at breaking point and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair and offered her a cigarette in the hope of heading off her crying jag in time. It worked. “That was down in the stalls, almost everyone there was from town or at least members of the Yacht Club, he knew them all personally, a lot of them all his life. Why didn’t anyone else try to help him?” she asked me after two or three drags. I looked at her without answering.

“AND THEN I dunno what must of got into him to make him climb on the stage, from where we were fighting our way through the crowd we could see him trying to jump up onstage and then he makes it and stands there like he’s dazzled by the spotlights, missing a shoe he was and one sleeve off his jacket, but the people in the crowd, particularly the ones too far away to see properly, started shouting San-dro! San-dro! ’specially the birds, you know how they get over the Gypsy Man some of them were already waving their knickers round their heads shouting Get yer kit off Roberto! Fuck me! stuff they usually save for the end of the show and then I reckon it was Greco and Sergeant Chacón and the guy from Leopardi his name’ll come to me they get up onstage too and they go and pull Ezcurra to the floor and start laying into him. That did it. People thought we was beating up Sandro and wanted to arrest him or something and launched themselves to the rescue, and once the avalanche come there was no stopping it nearly brought the stage down they did, we was lucky to get out alive mind, you ain’t got no idea what it was like.”

“We were all there,” Iturraspe remarks, including me out of politeness. “There were several casualties. Good thing the sand was there to cushion the falls otherwise there’d have been a lot more.”

“My uncle broke a leg,” Guido says to me. “Remember?”

“Who? Talito?” Of the three brothers he was the one I had least to do with.

“No,” exclaims Guido, a little more perplexed. “Vicente, Vicentito’s dad, who was with us. Don’t you remember?”

Now it’s my turn to look surprised. But I still manage to get out:

“You know what, all this you’re telling me, you can’t expect me to remember every—”

“But Fefe, you were there. You were with us that night. You saw everything.”

He hasn’t finished his sentence, but I already know it’s true. That and not the dubious narrative gifts of the ex-corporal was the reason why the scene was so vividly painted in my imagination. It wasn’t imagination. It was memory. I’d been there, just like the rest of them. I too had witnessed what happened. Not just that night, the night they removed Ezcurra from the lagoon. I’d been there all summer. How could it have been otherwise — I used to come every summer as a boy and spend three long months of the summer holidays, at my grandparents’ house by the lagoon. How could I have forgotten? When I finally come out of my daze, I notice the silence that’s fallen around the table. Stunned, with everyone waiting for me to say something, I’m barely able to ask:

“What about Sandro’s show? I can’t even remember that. What happened to the show?”

“Sandro couldn’t make it,” says Licho softly, squashing a butt end against the ashtray.

IDOL FAILS TO SHOW,

BUT GOOD TIME HAD BY ALL

Once again a good time was had by all yesterday at the booming beach resort of Malihuel, with yet another of its famed musical offerings, whose fame has jumped the borders of the province time after time. Once again the responsibility of opening the soirée fell on the square shoulders of well-known Coronel González LT 29 Radio announcer, Sr Elbio Limongi, who introduced the show in brief but heartfelt words, thanking the plentiful throng for turning out. With a quite outstanding performance at the last edition of the Cosquín Festival, the outstanding musical ensemble Los Churrinches brought us all the colour and joy of the traditional music of our northern lands, playing classic compositions from their repertoire like El quirquincho and Diablito carnavalero , which the audience accompanied with enthusiastic clapping. Given the profusion of insects blanketing virtually the entire stage — a problem we have raised in our column on other occasions — it’s unfortunate they didn’t perform a stomping malambo as well. Next up was comic Ziggy Estrella, who delighted old and young alike with his famed imitations, the most applauded of which were those entitled Fasting with Mirtha Legrand, The Pink Panther Strikes Again and Raffaella’s Party . And so we came to the most keenly anticipated moment of the night, the return of the incomparable “Gypsy Man” to the stage that saw his debut as an artist. And, as our headline suggests, our idol may have failed to show up, but it didn’t dampen the general jubilation. Only a series of stampedes and jostling, which the efficient security operation of our forces of law and order successfully contained before it escalated, was the all-too-understandable outcome of the audience’s disappointment on finding out they would have to postpone — hopefully not for long — the long-awaited reunion with their elusive idol. It would, in any event, be extremely gratifying if the show’s authorities and impresarios were to inform the population through this or any other medium they deem fit about the fate of our absentee. Where was he when everyone was looking for him? Where is he now? What does the future hold? Will we ever see him again? These and other questions disturb the peace of our daily comings and goings. For we are all aware that, where information is lacking, rumour runs rampant. We hope that Malihuel Festivals’ next offering will afford us no such similar surprises.

“Who on earth wrote that?” I’ll ask a few days later.

“Iturraspe,” Don León will reply. “The newspaper editor had come all the way from Toro Mocho for the show and offered him the job as editor of the section there and then.

Iturraspe accepted, on a temporary basis, to cover for his friend he explained, and the editor, going along with him, said Right, sure, by all means. That was how he ended up with Ezcurra’s ‘Malihuel Page’, it was his till the newspaper folded donkey’s years ago now.”

“And there was no reaction to this article?”

“No, people were expecting it. I reckon they could’ve waited a little longer right, at least till the Ezcurra boy was … I mean the patrol cars hadn’t finished crossing the causeway yet at least as a matter of form don’t you reckon?”

“No, I mean because of what it says at the end. It isn’t talking about Sandro at the end.”

Don León will stare me in surprise, then grab the stained photocopy I hold out to him and, donning his spectacles, will read it laboriously, following the lines with his finger and mouthing the words as he goes. When he’s finished, he’ll hold it out, take off his glasses and say: