In order to pretend that he was so happy that his stomach hurt, he would grasp it with both hands.
Sitting above the desk drawers, Monti would look at us with an ironic smile. He would pinch his wide forehead in one hand, he would rub his eyes as if trying to get rid of things that worried him, and then he would say:
‘There’s no need to get downcast, dammit. You want to be an inventor and you don’t know how to sell a kilo of paper.’ Then he would continue, ‘You just have to keep at it. All businesses are like that. They won’t deal with you until they know you. They tell you that they’ve already got everything they need. It doesn’t matter, you just keep coming back until the owner gets used to you and ends up buying something. And always be gentile, because that’s how things have to be.’ And then he would change the subject and add: ‘Come and have coffee with me this afternoon. We’ll have a chat.’
One night I went into a pharmacy in Rojas Street. The pharmacist, a bilious man covered in pockmarks, looked at my wares, then he spoke, and seemed to me an angeclass="underline"
‘Send me five kilos of silk paper, a selection, twenty kilos of extra-smooth paper and make me twenty thousand envelopes that say “Boric Acid”, “Calcinated Magnesium”, “Cream of Tartar”, “Logwood Soap”: five thousand of each. The paper needs to be here first thing on Monday morning.’
Overcome by joy I took note of the order, bowed to the seraphic pharmacist and got lost in the streets. This was my first sale. I had earned fifteen pesos commission.
I went into the Caballito Market, that market that always reminded me of the markets in the novels of Carolina Invernizio. An obese sausage-seller with a cow’s face, whom I had bothered on past occasions but always without success, shouted out to me as he brandished his knife over a block of pig fat.
‘Che, send me two hundred kilos of special cut, first thing tomorrow, no fail, at thirty-one.’
I had earned four pesos, even though I had taken the price down by one centavo a kilo.
Infinite joy, an unreal Dionysiac joy, lifted my spirit up to the heavens… and then, comparing my drunkenness with that of the heroes in the novels of D’Annunzio, those heroes whom my boss criticised for setting themselves up too high, I thought:
‘Monti is an idiot.’
Suddenly I felt someone touch my arm; I turned round quickly and found myself face to face with Lucio, that same distinguished Lucio who had been a member of The Club of the Midnight Gentlemen.
We greeted each other warmly. I hadn’t seen him since that hazardous night, and now here he was in front of me, smiling and looking all over the place as was his habit. I saw that he was well-dressed, with better shoes and better accoutred: there were false gold rings on his fingers and a pale stone in his tiepin.
He had grown, he was a robust layabout disguised as a dandy. The complement to this figure of a scrubbed-up braggart was a felt hat, which he wore pulled ridiculously low over his forehead, down to his eyebrows. He affected an amber cigarette holder, and, acting like a man who knows how to treat his friends, he invited me after our first greetings were over, to come and have a bock with him in a nearby beerhall.
When we had sat, and after Lucio had drunk his beer in a single gulp, my friend said in his hoarse voice:
‘So what do you do?’
‘What about you?… I see you’ve become a dandy, a real character.’
His mouth twisted in a smile.
‘I… I’ve made some changes.’
‘So things are going well for you… you’ve moved on a lot… But I haven’t had your luck, I’m a paperboy… I sell paper.’
‘Oh, you sell paper for any firm in particular?’
‘Yes, a guy called Monti, who lives in Flores.’
‘Do you earn a lot?’
‘Not a lot, no, but enough to live on.’
‘So you’ve changed your way of doing things?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m also working.’
‘So you do work!’
‘Yes, I work, can you guess what I do?’
‘No, I don’t know.’
‘I’m a cop, an investigator.’
‘You… an investigator? You!’
‘Yes, what’s so weird about that?’
‘No, nothing. So, you’re an investigator?’
‘Why does it seem so strange?’
‘No… no reason… you always had your little ways… ever since you were a kid…’
‘Ranún… but think about it, che, Silvio, you always have to make yourself over again; that’s life, the struggle for life that Darwin talks about…’
‘Oh, you’re smart now! Does it pay the bills?’
‘I know what I’m talking about, che, it’s the sort of thing anarchists say; anyway, so you’ve changed, you’re working, things are going okay for you.’
‘Can’t complain, like the man says. I sell paper.’
‘So you have changed?’
‘That’s what it looks like.’
‘Good. Waiter! Bring me another half… sorry, two more halves, I meant to say, sorry, che.’
‘And what’s this work like, as an investigator?’
‘Don’t ask me, che, Silvio; professional secrets, you get me? But anyway, now we’re talking about the old days, do you remember Enrique?’
‘Enrique Irzubeta?’
‘Yes.’
‘I only know about him that after we broke up, you remember…?’
‘How couldn’t I remember!’
‘After we broke up I know that Grenuillet managed to get the family evicted and they went to live in Villa del Parque, but I haven’t seen Enrique since.’
‘Right. Enrique went to work in a car factory in Azul. Do you know where he is now?’
‘In Azul, right?’
‘No, he’s not in Azul; he’s in prison.’
‘In prison?’
‘Sure as I’m sitting here, he’s in prison…’
‘What did he do?’
‘Nothing, che, the struggle for life… the struggle for life, it’s a term I picked up from a Spanish baker who liked to make explosives. Do you make explosives? Don’t get all het up; you used to be keen on dynamite…’
Annoyed by his wheedling questions I looked him straight in the eye.
‘Are you going to take me down to the station?’
‘No, man, why? Can’t you take a joke?’
‘It’s like you’re trying to get something out of me.’
‘Wow… you’re a weirdo, you are. Didn’t you change, you said?’
‘Right, anyway, you were telling me about Enrique.’
‘I’ll tell you all about it: between you and me, it was really glorious, an impressive stunt. Anyway, I can’t remember if it was in the Chevrolet dealership or the Buick one that Enrique was working, where he’d been taken into the owner’s confidence… He was always the king of getting under people’s wings. He was working in the office, I don’t know how, but he stole a cheque and filled it in for 5,953 pesos. That’s how things are! The morning he was going to cash it the owner of the dealership gave him 2,100 pesos to pay into the same bank. So this crazy guy puts the money in his pocket, goes to the garage, takes a car, goes calmly up to the bank and hands over the cheque. Now comes the really crazy bit: the bank cashed the cheque.’
‘They cashed it!’
‘That’s right, it’s amazing how good a forger he was. Well, he’d always had a knack for it. Do you remember when he did the Nicaraguan flag?’
‘Yes, he was good even when he was a kid… But carry on.’
‘Anyway, they paid him… But now think how nervous he was: he goes off in the car, two blocks away from the market he goes straight over a crossroads and ploughs right into a sulky-cart… and he was lucky, the shaft of the cart just broke his arm, a little further to the left and he’d have been spiked through the breast. He fainted. They took him to a hospital, and the owner of the dealership heard about the accident and came running. The man asked for Enrique’s clothes, because there’d have to be either the money or a deposit slip in his pockets… imagine how surprised the guy was… Instead of the deposit slip he finds 8,053 pesos. As soon as Enrique showed signs of life, the guy asked him where these thousands of pesos came from, and Enrique didn’t know what to say; then off they go to the bank and everything comes out there.’