The Buenos Aires Quintet Read Online Free PDF Page B

PRI did in Mexico. All I have to do is give my name in reception and all the doors will be opened, even at the highest levels.’
    ‘I don’t have the time to see any politicians.’
    ‘Well, when you need me just whistle, and I’ll come running.’
    True to her word, Alma turns on her heel and leaves him standing there. She’s strangely annoyed with Carvalho or with herself or with the backdrop of the Casa Rosada and the Mothers. Carvalho catches her up.
    ‘I want to see Raúl and Berta’s place. Will you come with me?’
    ‘Who do you think I am? I’ve had more than enough tragedy for one day. No, thanks. Do you think I’ve nothing better to do than follow you around?’
    ‘What did I do wrong?’
    But by now Alma is far away, running to catch a bus, and it would be too violent to try to catch up with her. A taxi appears from Puerto Madero, and Carvalho tells him to go to La Recoleta. He tries to remember what he’s learnt about it in the book on Buenos Aires he read by Vázquez Rial before leaving Barcelona, with all the mixed feelings he gets when he reads these days. The well-off area of north Buenos Aires comprises more than one neighbourhood, the author says, and several have a very definite character of their own. This is the case of La Recoleta, which is bordered on one side by a cemetery celebrated in a poem by the young Borges. The rich people of Buenos Aires arrived here in the mid-nineteenth century, fleeing the plagues of the port area; later they continued their exodus towards even more select neighbourhoods, as has happened in every city in the world that can lay claim to be something more than a mere city. Carvalho finds himself in front of the huge gum trees mentioned in the book, with their enormous cement crutches holding up the centuries-old branches. And beyond them is the Recoleta cemetery Borges wrote about – Borges here as everywhere else in the imagined world of Buenos Aires. Carvalho goes in, looking for the family pantheon of Eva Duarte de Perón, which contains all that’s left of a body that was embalmed, tortured, broken, even raped by a crazy necrophiliac military officer who hated Perón but fell in love with the icy soul of his dead enemy. The severity of the marble is softened by bouquets of flowers, and two women are talking to Evita as if she could hear them in the depths where she’s been buried to avoid any further desecration. ‘Oh, poor Evita! So far from Chacarita, where Perón’s buried!’
    The sober pantheon obviously belongs to a rich family that fits in well among these long, broad avenues of a cemetery that itself is a reflection of the rich, well-appointed houses of the neighbourhood outside, where houses with gardens boast bronze doorknockers on doorways made of the finest woods – the external signs of having arrived for people who live protected by porters, like the one on duty in the apartment building where Berta and Raúl lived until the night they were raided. In his smart uniform, the porter is busy polishing the brasswork on the stairs and makes it clear he doesn’t have time to waste talking to someone so obviously Spanish. While Carvalho is waiting for some kind of response, an old woman tries to use the lift.
    ‘It’s out of order.’
    Resignedly, the old woman starts to climb the noble marble staircase. For some reason, this loosens the porter’s tongue. ‘The only thing that works around here are us porters.’
    ‘Did Señor Raúl ask for his key by any chance?’
    ‘Which Raúl would that be?’
    ‘As I tried to tell you, I’m the cousin of someone who used to live here, Raúl Tourón. I’d like to see him, and I thought he might have called in here.’
    ‘Ah, you mean Professor Tourón? He lived here a long time ago. But not for long.’
    ‘Has he been back recently?’
    ‘Yes, but I didn’t give him the key. He didn’t ask for it. If he had, I wouldn’t have been able to anyway. After the night of the raid, the apartment was