Carlos Gamerro - An Open Secret

“You’re right che . Well I’ll be … What a crafty old fox Beto turned out to be. No nothing happened. Nobody picked up on it.”

THE PLACE where the events took place is long gone. The island, the causeway, the concrete pavilions are part of the bottom of the lake, from whose surface all that sticks out is the power-plant building, a few upright pillars, which at a distance could be dead tree trunks or lamp posts, and of course the three-storey hulk of the hotel, one of whose lateral walls has given way, leaving the halls, passageways, corridors and rooms open to view, like a doll’s house. Emerging from the rocky base of its own rubble, its angular forms and the sunken cubes of the windows suggest more a prison or fortress built on a bluff than the hotel where I had dinner so many times with my grandparent — the tango orchestra or jazz band playing on the bandstand in the dining room, the marble staircases and the velvet curtains. It’s difficult now to believe any of it actually existed; not even my memories feel like my own — maybe they belong to my friend, Gloria, who told me them four years ago, the day we met quite by chance and discovered our common past in Malihuel.

“SOON AS WE GOT HIM in the car he went quiet and we’d barely laid a finger on him eh. He was sat there between Chacón and me mind, not on the floor or in the trunk, sat on the back seat the way it should be, and the Super in front not saying a word, the whole causeway dead quiet, and only when we was on the road into town did yer man decide to say anything: What am I being charged with? he comes out with and the Super Being a dickhead he says to him and didn’t say another word. We entered headquarters directly through the jailhouse gate and that’s when I thought you’re a goner lad ’cause that’s what’s done if they don’t want a new prisoner to be entered in the warders’ log. I’m not saying the Super had already made up his mind to waste him just that he was covering his back in case he had to. Told us to throw him in the pigsty and just as me and Chacón was about to give him some the Superintendent tells us to stop. Anyone lays a finger on him while I’m not here’s in for it he said and headed off to headquarters. Superintendent, wait, Ezcurra said to him. Aren’t I entitled to a phone call? I want to speak to my lawyer and without turning round Neri goes You’ve been watching too many movies lad and walked out. I was at headquarters all night ’cause the sergeant’d given me detention for some daft thing or other can’t even remember what it was now, you know what cops are like, and poking my head round the door I could see the Carnival parade heading down Veinticinco de Mayo and the music and the lights of the party and I got to thinking about the poor guy locked up there and all his friends out on the razz like nothing’d happened, if there’d been just one who’d of come to see him or ask about him not that they’d of been let in mind ’cause officially there were no records of Ezcurra — he wasn’t there — but anyroad nobody tried. Nothing surprises me nowadays, life’s shown me too that when you’re down on yer luck people treat you like a dog, just look at me I mean. While I was in the force everyone wanted to be my friend, bought me drinks, laughed at my jokes, and I’m not saying the birds were all over me but they did look twice, but it’s all water under the bridge now. Ended when Superintendent Neri left town, if I’d been a bit cleverer I’d of gone with him. Now he did appreciate me, liked me to brew a maté for him and have a chat, not just like a boss to his subordinate, it sometimes felt more like a father to his son. He didn’t have any children you know. If the Super’d stayed on a while longer at headquarters I could of been a very different person than what I am today. Someone everybody respected,” he says, scanning the audience to test their reaction. Only from me does he get a look of hypocritical understanding. He empties his xth glass, only Nene can keep track by now, and with his next one I replenish my whisky glass and Licho his vermouth. “Greco’s the one to blame”—Sayago harps on the same string—“Greco fucked my life up. I swear sometimes I feel like going and finding him and sticking a forty-five right here in his gob and telling him Come on then, say what you used to say about me to my face eh? I swear I wouldn’t give a toss what happens after that long as I see that shit Greco shit himself I’ll take what’s coming to me. Once—”

“Ezcurra,” I interrupt him.

“Yeah, sorry about that sir”—he smiles his servile smile—“it’s just when I get worked up the Good Lord himself can’t stop me. Well in the small hours when the Super gets back the first thing he asks me was whether anybody’d come to ask about Ezcurra, and me I go No news Superintendent sir thinking he’d be relieved, but instead I thought I could see something like disappointment on his face. Went straight to his office he did and locked himself away in there all morning. They say he was calling Rosario, the milicos , to come and take him away, I dunno. Don’t go thinking I knew everything going on just ’cause I was there, it wasn’t like that — I was just a corporal, I’m only telling you what I saw. The only thing I know is the milicos didn’t show up. Left us holding the baby they did. I was dropping so I found an empty cell right next door and slept like a suckling pig and round about noon it must’ve been I was woken up by the prisoner screaming for them to call his lawyer, call his mother. You understand? He wanted his mummy. I reckon it must of been the heat, the pigsty was a little two-by-two room in those days with no windows and a corrugated-iron roof which at the hottest time of day heated up like you wouldn’t believe and when it was your turn to dish out some pig—”

“Dish out what?” I interrupt.

“Beat the inmates to death,” Guido translates.

“Not always,” Sayago clarifies. “Sometimes we never even touched them, you’d just leave them there for a few hours and they’d squeal all by themselves they would, the ones who knew what the score was that is. But Ezcurrita didn’t, what would he know. So the Super had to come and spell it out for him didn’t he so he’d understand, shut up then all right. Still it couldn’t go on like that. All the common criminals listening in see, some who might be out shooting their mouths off on the street in a few days and to make matters worse the day after was visiting day. So the Super decided to move him. Problem was where to. He locked himself in his office with Greco who’d been there since the early morning too and when they came out you could see they had it all sorted and went to fetch him with a couple of low-ranking officers and took him away in Greco’s double this time not a patrol car, must’ve put him on the floor I reckon ’cause it was after siesta by then and the streets were beginning to fill up with people again, and it wouldn’t do to go parading him round the streets like a carnival queen. The town’d seen quite enough the night before.”

“Where did they take him?” I ask to confirm what I already know.

THE OFFICIAL NAME of the dirt street skirting the limits of the railway station is La Niña, but everyone calls it Eucalyptus Way. Guido and I will stroll between its tall, peeling trunks, submerged in the glittering green light and the murmur of the wind, impregnated with their scent as it blows through the treetops. A little further on the abandoned freight wagons stand on a stretch of disused siding. Wading into the weeds, getting my pants soaked to the knees with dew, I’ll scan the corrugated-iron sides of the nearest one, lead grey where it isn’t eaten away by rust. There are holes through which an adult body could easily fit and, poking my head through one of them, when my eyes get used to the half-light raked by sunbeams, I’ll make out the signs of recent occupation — old newspapers, sheets of cardboard, soot-blackened tin cans. I’ll get hold of one of the rusting metal edges and effortlessly pull off a piece, which will crumble like puff pastry between my fingers.