Short Fiction

Department of Criminal Psychology: Testimony of PEREZ, Ms Fernanda, dob 23/02/1978, inmate 1722533499

I am quite sure that the house is empty. To make absolutely certain would mean making enquiries – something I am loathe to do – before the dust has settled over the whole affair. And besides, it would seem… unsavoury, as you say in English. Such a fitting word to describe that particular, exquisite bitterness, a strange taste in this country. The idea of summoning foreign images to dance in front of you, soiling the borrowed clothes of your language, only increases the potency of the taste. So I am grateful that you allowed me to write instead of speak; I worry constantly that my breath will infect this new air, indelibly. My fear may seem nonsensical considering how far I have travelled, but please understand that the geography of straight lines pencilled across vast oceans in no way distances my mind from vivid memories of that place and what went on there. The house in my mind is suspended in vibrant primary colours, objects floating against walls that move without warning from day to day. So when I say that the house is empty, I mean empty of living people. I am certain that all of the original furniture is exactly as it was left; games half played, a fridge with putrid contents and legions of mosquitoes. You may have realised that the house was not always like this, and will no longer be content with just descriptive fragments. Detective stories do not interest me either.

Bel Grano was considered to be a respectable neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, and people used to tell us that we were lucky to live there. The houses still kept their shutters, the small squares their weeping trees. It was unusual that such elegant urban planning had managed to survive in such a city – it was an old world in the new world, a slice of colonial aesthetics now so incongruous with the ungainly and haphazard growth of the modern metropolis. I remember gazing out of the train windows across the mud flats of the Rio de la Plata, the dun silt deposits piled out to sea looking like some strange moonscape. Even the sun seemed closer to us there, lighting up every single scratch on the window panes, blinding everyone with crystal half-circles and burning alternate cheeks. An uncomfortable place, not good for little girls in school uniforms of wool. Our house was a cool sanctuary in comparison, on the corner of Calle de San Fermin and Conde Ferreira, opposite the square. I could understand perfectly why my father decided to set up a bar there. At the time, it would have seemed foolish not to. But as you English have a saying for everything, looking back I guess it was too good to be true.

We lived roughly on the corner. I struggle with the right preposition here because we did not exactly live ‘above’ the bar, but rather in it, around it and all over the square any time of the year. But the street was just the beginning; inside was where the real fun began. The place used to be a garage, so the ceilings were high and it extended backwards to occupy three large rooms. There were bookshelves lined with travel guides and maps, and art from my uncle’s studio on the walls. Further back there was the games room where you could play pool and miniature football, and behind this, my father in the kitchen. You could eat or drink, recline on the easy chairs or lean on the bar, shoot pool or play cards. The concept may not surprise you here, where I notice that the traditions of socialising have been blurred to incorporate leather sofas in bars and food menus in coffee shops. I have often peered through their large windows but still cannot bear to go in, to sit at a table, to speak to a waitress who may even be Hispanic. Flip over into another hemisphere and things become inverted; evenings open, afternoons closed, Western news late and distant. So you can understand that Alejandro’s on Plaza San Fermin seemed very different from anything else to be found in Buenos Aires. Of its time, but far removed.  

Alejandro was my older brother by two years, and of course he would have taken over the business in good time, although perhaps not quite running it in the same manner. My father was granjefe, the big boss, and kept a tight ship from his kitchen in the bowels of the building where we were not permitted. My job was simple; I was in charge of the bar staff and also took food orders from tables, while Alejandro acted as the friendly-faced bouncer, a job that was made much easier by the fact that he was so tall, and lately, somewhat overweight. You may be wondering about my mother. I never knew what happened to her, but I can guess. You see how much of my story is guesswork? Stories patched from the tattered remains of street talk and muffled telephone calls. Rather like what you do.

There were those who felt we should discourage the old men from playing draughts on the street as this may not attract the New Money, made elsewhere, into our residential area. But the men were necessary, and they kept an eye upon who was walking in, and for how long. There were five of them led by Carlos, our neighbour. He had lost his wife, like father, and the two of them used to pass the time late at night under the weeping willows of the square. If you did not know better you would have thought that they were two street vagrants, all sausage-legs stretched out, leaning against each other, bellies straining shirt buttons, eyes red and rolling. Brothers in arms. By day Carlos was a different man, cajoling his fellow players, or muttering under his breath behind a copy of El Pais. Only a few people knew of his red-eyed reminiscences. During the summer of 1988, when the heat made everyone walk as if underwater by day and then stalk the house, cat-people by night, I opened my window very late and saw them. Two rounded figures through the livid beam of a street lamp with its dancing troupe of flies. Too fast, one pair of eyes flicked up and stared back under thick brows. Contact. The brows did not raise. The eyes asked and gave nothing, wide and vulnerable like a child’s. Absolute reflection, uncanny, as you English would have it. After that night I can only describe my father’s attitude towards me as heavy-handed. I could not work out why he would despise me. Carlos remained the same, watching.

The informality of the place was what most appealed to young people. There were hoards of them there in the evenings; including our school friends and the neighbourhood kids. Students from the university used to bring their musical instruments and improvise, and we began to make a name for ourselves as a music venue, something my father permitted but only dimly understood the necessity for. Such indifference only increased the attraction to the customers, who never personally met the stern temper from the kitchen. Sure, if a person was rowdy then they would be removed. However I realise now that it was the absence of rules and regulations that proved most lucrative for the business. This was because increasingly, a place for socialising must not be related to work of any kind in Argentina. I noticed this especially after I graduated from high school; there was more chewing of bottom lips in the street, and people started to turn up at the bar for whole days in large, redundant groups. Something was changing, but the substance of it was difficult to trace, masked as it was by the cooking smells and the din of eating and drinking. A new taste without a tangible source. I never had enough time to study this inflection of mood, often crawling into bed at three or four in the morning during the school holidays. My exams suffered but the most nagging concern at the time was simply the aching of my flat out feet. 

In 1996 the pace of change seemed to shift a gear; you could hear the clicking. First, the factories and fisheries were closed down by La Boca, which meant that many young men paced the promenade and swung their arms over the harbour wall like sad flags. The immediate impact of this was that Carlos deemed it unsafe for me to eat ice cream there with my best friend Sylvina. What surprised me most was that he even forbade Alejandro. But Alejandro was preoccupied. Lately he had been talking, in his way, about going to Universidad Nacional to take a degree in Business Management. This course of education was precarious because it was common knowledge that teachers had to work for free and many had been imprisoned for demonstrating against the government. The new admissions process involved bribing a place in a class packed into a crumbling lecture theatre. A new kind of choice in which each alternative seemed curiously askew. Help the business with a degree gained by corrupt means; Ale. Stay at home and let the change come to us; my father. The last time they discussed this, Ale emerged with a swollen eye and did not speak for three days, adopting a pose in the corner of the games room watching other people win. In another time it would have seemed satirical to see him; Sylvina and I could have giggled across the bar. However, I now dreaded the way his eyelids batted lethargically and tried to avoid his direct gaze. Absolute reflection, but one that revealed the unsought secrets of a time yet to come.

It was a few weeks later when my father got up at three in the morning. Yes, just after I had gone to bed. He woke me on his way downstairs. What was most unusual was the way that he stood in the doorway and shone a torch into the room. Eyes snapped open astonished at the penetrating beam, an owl’s wince. He spoke in low gravel tones. So, he had been smoking already, something he only usually did in the evenings. All he said was that he was going to visit his brother Jorge in Resistencia and to tell Ale that he was in charge. Resistencia was an ugly industrial town in the north, and it took three days by car to get there. It used to take two by train but the tracks had been rusted for some time, lying like the vertebrae of some vast dinosaur whose long neck had fallen from a great height over the land. The dust of progress, not found in any other continent. Jorge was in the iron industry and there had been strikes and civil unrest in Corrientes, across the river from Resistencia, for some months. There was obviously trouble, but of course the police were out of the question. No nene – no kidding. Not like here, where I am told to write out my own story in my own words, for better or worse!

I blinked once, yes I understand you. Eyes closed, pause, eyes open.

He closed the door swiftly and tightly, a sign. Wait for dawn before moving. I became aware that an engine was running outside but there were still deep footsteps somewhere in the house. So someone else was driving. I think I know why he told only me; he wanted me to understand first so that I would put a spin on the facts that he could not do himself.

When dawn finally broke I knew I could not delay telling Ale any longer. I opened the curtains and he gave a sudden snort, gulping air and blinking down at me, down his nose and fat chins, a frog man. He was twenty-one but lately seemed more staid. Limbo, stagnation. Que lastima, the girls nodded, edges of their mouth down-turned. What a shame. I looked down the bed with my back to the light.

Papi is not here. He went to Resistencia because there is some trouble with Jorge. He hopes to be back in a few days and has left the car but does not want it moved. We will carry on as normal until then. No member of staff will know he is not in the kitchen except you, me and Carlos. If we cook all the food by the time they get here, it will just be a question of keeping it warm. So get the hell out of bed and tell everyone that Papi does not want to be disturbed.

 Ale said nothing, his lips puffed and congealed with still-warm sleep. He could have spoken but surprised me by blinking once, yes I understand you. Eyes closed, pause, eyes open. Blue eyes open wide, sticky lashes, asking and giving nothing. Not brown like father and me. Blue from someone else, a colour completely lost to me.

We succeeded in the cooking but were careful to wash the sweat away before opening time. I was not worried about the men talking because Carlos and Ale had taken their usual positions, Ale changing his shirt so that there was no chance of the morning betraying us. I was more concerned about the searching looks that the bar women and waitresses may give me, askance. They loved to pick up the scent of intrigue, and once detected I would have to talk to prevent a story escalating. This is not backstabbing, you understand, but the way that news gets around amongst people on the ground, stories fabricated to make common sense as you English say. This I remember as the hardest job of all –trying to pretend that I had woken up in the morning with a clear head. There was not enough time to keep my promise by torchlight and manage a trail of questions. Perhaps nothing has changed; I am still being questioned now and can barely keep up with the answers.

It is easy to begin something and far more difficult to maintain it. Nowhere in the world, and it is safe to say that I have been to a few places by now, is this more true than in Argentina. People sat and I took their orders, switching rooms and telling alternate staff. Beef that was cooked twelve hours before was covered, for one night only, in thick mole, the eccentric but loveable whim of our chef and patron! Duplicity seemed to be so freely interchanged for truth, a fluid bargain. And the glasses and the pool ball and the peso coins clinked on through the night. I allowed my body to be worn down on the assumption that Ale, Carlos and I were hardy brothers in arms, toiling as kin in the heat. This turned out to be my first mistake.

Tiny slips and slides to wrongdoing. I could forgive it in Carlos, an old man, no blood relation. Not so easily in my brother, still. Alejandro got drunk on the most important night of his life. It was at about ten that I saw Gonzalez at the bar bellowing for more bottles of beer. Gonzalez help up his hand – four. Stomach on the floor. I had seen Gonzo come in with two other friends of Alejandro’s, but that sign informed me that somewhere over the throng was a young man, a little overweight, waiting for his friend and rubbing his hands, thirsty and ready for drink, eager for it to come.

I was trying to get a good look at Alejandro, aware of the risk of looking conspicuously concerned. Instead I caught the eye of Carlos. We did not smile, but the seriousness of his look inwardly startled me. Like the night when I caught father’s eye as a night-watcher, I did not consider that I myself was being watched. I suppose I possessed a certain confidence in the belief that it was considered improper to create targets out of young ladies because they were exempt from experiencing real danger. This was my second mistake. It was at this moment that two men came under the swinging light behind Carlos, while a third man of about the same age and wearing, like them, a grey suit, stood up slowly as if to stretch his arms and call it a night.

The man who stood up was Sylvina’s father, Federico. Rather than stretch and yawn, he looked straight at me with eyes wide, hooked. 

Alejandro is over there.

 This was not quite the voice that I had expected, no warm treacly tones of the man who used to flip Sylvina upside-down on the climbing frame. Not a voice for little girls. It placed deliberate emphasis on the growls and harsh consonants of Spanish that most people chose to keep soft. There was a new language here, an underground language but not of familiar red earth. No clear account for it; let it be a mistake. 

We would like to see you and your brother in a more private place.

By now all three men were together and shared that same expression, three nighthawks. The man to Federico’s left showed me both sets of his teeth. I finally pulled my eyes to the table opposite the men; Ale could finally be seen, beer snorting out of his nose to bloom jagged flowers on his orange shirt. I had no choice. It would have to be the kitchen.

They followed me, close breathing. I sincerely hoped to hide the fact that the kitchen was still quite foreign to me, with its carcasses and strange instruments hanging from the ceiling. Doubt had to be wiped away; ask nothing, give nothing. I turned round flat-eyed as the door flapped shut bearing the suited men, Federico dragging Ale by the ear. His squeaky whimpering made me inwardly shudder. So it was me alone facing whatever was coming, a lone decoder of a dialect that had only previously reached us on tattered newspapers blowing across the square. These were dispossessed dregs of news so unlike our local street talk and friendly gossip.  

The greyest of three men stepped forward, strip lights forming a white orb on his downy head. This was the second time that I had stared into an orb of light that day, and each time it seemed to be saying ‘Here’s looking at you kid’. No hint of how to reply, no parent’s instruction. I could see the all the way round his irises; a smoker’s puce yellow. The voice was a stale husk;

We are from the government, and my colleagues and I are here to conduct an inspection. This young man informs us that your father is away on personal business; we hope that neither of you will disturb us in ours. We will take care that the place is cleared of customers in preparation. You are now to walk out and wait with your backs to the bar until the inspection is completed. Any movement may cause unnecessary delay to our inspection.

The three pairs of eyes did not move from their target. Six dull moons suspended in toxic jelly. The spokesman stepped back, one, two, attention. The action caused me to speculate. Maybe they had been in the army together over in the Falklands, or in the revolutionary groups in Paraguay and Bolivia. There was certainly some northern inflection somewhere in those instructions. I wondered if the speaker had a wife up there, if he came home in the dead of night to squeeze and roll a rounded hip over in bed to make more room for himself. A whisper in the ear, a sigh on the way to sleep, the duvet pulled tight over the ears to block out recent missions, desperate tasks. He could even have been from Resistencia, living across the square from Jorge as Federico lived across from us. The thought flashed through my consciousness like someone taking a picture of my laid-out internal organs. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

My feet moved me forward and as I passed the line of men a steel tube was pressed into the small of my back. You cannot be serious. I was suddenly incredulous that I had wasted time wondering whether these men had wives, ready and willing as they were to commit any crime imaginable upon a skinny fawn, Bambi-legged and ludicrous! Nudge, walk.

Sure enough, outside the bar had been emptied of people and a man with his back to us was pulling down the old garage door to cover the street entrance. My father’s job. When my shoulder was pushed round so that my back faced the bar, it occurred to me how this new Argentina could spare no time for family traditions. New in a tarnished way, and rootless.

The man formally known as Carlos did not turn around. He actually walked backwards from the door, fumbling with his fat sausage fingers for a chair. He passed the night with his back to us, arms folded. It was with some satisfaction that I noticed sweat seeping round his shirt collar like a wet noose. The third man, the one who spoke through the gun, turned slowly back to the light of the kitchen, trailing the gun along the tables and scoring the wood.

We stood there for as long as it took to smash everything. They began with the kitchen, plates broken in armfuls. At one point I could identify the sound of meat being cleavered and hacked into tatters, the thick dull crunch causing Alejandro to lean forward and vomit at his feet. Carlos did not flinch while the sweet acid odour of spewed beer filled the room up. But that was the least of my worries. The men had worked their way through every room, leaving the front bar till last. The whole job did not take long, and they kept their heads down on the task in hand. A wrecking industry; twisted builders and decorators in a demolition derby.

They did not speak, verbally. Much action without words, a modern play.  They finally took their places in a row before us. Except now their uniforms were dusted and ruffled and three chests panted. Such hard work had tired them. We waited for a long time. Quick look up quick look down. Heavy wheezing got a little slower.  Finally, the main speaker lit a cigarette. At the smell of it, I looked almost to his eyes. I could feel him staring. Let whatever they are thinking up be if, not how! Repeat, repeat, heart ticking half-seconds. He eventually walked round the fetid pool of vomit in front of us till he was breathing inside my ear. I could smell a dark world. 

The government requires payment for its inspection. Tell me where the keys are kept.

After I pointed the final part of the night was very rapid, almost logical.  The till and cash desk was opened and emptied of the week’s earnings. I guessed that they had found the safe hidden under the oven earlier because the men added these winnings to a burgeoning pile of peso bills in the lining of their suit jackets. Next, the speaker walked slowly over to the bar and swiftly yanked Alejandro’s hair back from behind, at the same time and with perfect aim stubbing out his cigarette in my brother’s left eye. Alejandro remained rooted, bent backwards and covering the ashen, boiling eye with one hand while using his good eye to stare at the speaker down his several chins, a frog man again. Strangled yelping, a boy and a girl shaking.

Then the men left by the back door. I could hear some inner engine – so they were taking father’s car. They were taking our parent’s car. They were taking the old man’s car. They were taking someone’s car. They were taking no one’s car. They took a car. Because they had the right keys.

Carlos did not leave with them, yet had not turned round the entire time that we were in the room. After the car petered away, he swiftly rose from his chair and approached us. Alejandro was making some kind of low noise but I did not care to look or listen. There seemed to be no one in the room except Carlos and myself, and I was staring now so intently at him that my vision formed a kind of tunnel. I looked for the first time right into his ruddy face, at the baby tears rolling out of bloodshot eyes that could not bear to meet mine and acknowledge me his equal. He was shuffling, a difficult movement to accomplish in a man so very broad. The smell of urine reached me more urgently than he did. Pant-wetting baby. A private disgrace. He seemed to be rummaging in his pocket, but the action was so ridiculous accompanied by such violent trembling that it almost looked like he was going to ask his penis for reassurance. All so preposterous. He finally recovered a crumpled blue peso bill. It snapped me to attention; a bribe not to tell! I was so astonished at the sheer absurdity of the act that I remained frozen. But Carlos did not. I let the note in his outstretched hand actually touch my stomach. I thought of eating it in front of him, to show what we had all become.

But it was not money. A glance excited a curiosity felt long ago in a mythical time when little girls stayed up late and spied on old men in the park. An absurd tale now, a Rapunzel to a pair of old squires. I snatched it and the outstretched hand recoiled slowly like some grotesque pigs trotter. A ticket for HRW in England with precisely four hours to get to the airport.

Wait down here while I get my bags.

I often wonder about all the avenues down which my life could have been driven. My experience has taught me in the plainest English that my life is nothing but my own. I sincerely hope that you can understand why I had no choice but to leave. It would have been more dangerous for me to stay; a country undergoing rapid social change is no place to be without friends.  You could argue that I have no friends now, but by the same token I am not at risk of further attack, except from other prisoners. I freely admit that the documents I presented at the Savoy Hotel were forgeries bought on the black market. I am completely at a loss to guess who could have brought them to your attention; I am shut out of the social networks I once took for granted, and am exhausted with detective stories. There is no translation into plainest English that can most accurately describe the systematic victimisation that goes on in corrupt societies. These pages can only be read silently and then quickly folded out of sight.

Criminal Psychologists Committee Report

Inmate 1722533499, PEREZ, Ms Fernanda

Further to Investigations Committee Meeting 12/09/06, Ms Perez has to date been cooperative and submissive to police enquiry, however her written eloquence is not consistent with her extreme shyness to speak to both male and female prison staff. Despite Ms Perez’s written command of English she speaks with a very faltering accent, claiming that she learned most of her written language from reading novels from the library of the Savoy Hotel, of which she was a member. Whatever the reliability of this, it is the belief of the council that Ms Perez poses negligible risk to the public of committing further fraudulent acts and has frequently expressed distress at her current situation. On attempted contact with Jorge Perez, we were informed that his brother took a train north from Resistencia on 14/06/06 at 0600 hours, heading for Salta from where he disappeared possibly into Paraguay. However, Jorge and Alejandro Perez are still residing in Resistencia. Both men claim that Fernanda Perez is no relation and a local doctor has testified that Alejandro Perez was born partially sighted with no recent scarring to his left eye. Buenos Aires Police have no documentation of the attack above described, and the 2002 census of the city documents many Perez families involved in local service industries. It is the belief of Bel Grano police that Ms Perez is not now in as much danger as she first perceived and her psychological distress at leaving the host country is disproportionate to the relatively low threat of outright political revolution. In view of recent understandings with the IMF provisionally securing Argentina’s financial stability, the Committee voted 5/4 in favour of dropping the charges upon Ms Perez on condition of her immediate deportation to Argentina and denial of future entry into the European Union.

Jessica Roth