Miss Rodriguez

     The office is a routine. I presume that this has been said and written by numerous bureaulogists, but I could neither say by whom nor by how many; but as there is still a possibility that it remains an unpublished sentence I’ll say and write it here to remove any lingering doubt. It is a routine, of course, but it has its ups and its downs. In our office we knew each other so well that there was nothing new to learn.  We knew by heart all the vicissitudes of each other’s daily life, each other’s family relations, furniture, favourite foods, problems with each other’s parents or children, shirt sizes, favourite writers… well, we knew everything. This familiarity gave the office a fraternal atmosphere (even though we sometimes fought like real brothers), but after a while it became something tedious. When we asked anything, we already knew what the answer would be. There were no surprises, shocks or misunderstandings between us. It was what may be called “a collective unity”, and although we would refer to ourselves in the plural, we were aware that we thought and acted as one. As far as I can recall, there was only one occasion where our unanimous lethargy was violently disrupted.

     There were seven of us in the office, as well as the boss, who had his own, to which we had unrestricted access. We were a family, plain and simple. Asunción looked after the files; Remigio was the human calculator (back in those days there was still no technology); Marcelo was our inter-department liaison officer; Antonio was in charge of animations and projections; María Eugenia (whom everyone called Miss Rodriguez), was in charge of reports; and I was the personal secretary.

     We were all a little bland, not terribly talkative, and we would spend our spare time solving crosswords (Marcelo was the expert in this department, because he could do them in French), that we learnt to hide prudently between the pages of one file or other. I must confess that this withdrawn and timid attitude changed notably upon the arrival of Miss Rodriguez, since María Eugenia was happy, chatty, witty, entertaining, and also (actually rather significantly) very pretty.

     Apart from the boss’s office and the large space where our seven tables were aligned, there was another small room that had a sink with running water. In there we had a heater, a cafetiere, a thermos and a few bowls. The best part of every work day was our coffee break. However, since we could not leave the office entirely empty, we would go to the room in groups of two or three. Normally, I went with Remigio and Asunción; Marcelo with Antonia and Esmeralda and the boss (perks of the job) would go with Miss Rodriguez.

     We were all more or less normal (or common, why not? There’s nothing wrong with being common); all, with one exception: Remigio, who was a bit peculiar. Sometimes he would sit there staring at the calculator, as if he wanted to extract some confession from it. Everyone else’s stories and anecdotes were all very similar, almost stupidly similar. On the other hand, Remigio would tell certain events as if they were true, impressive without exception, but that then would later emerge as false. He was a fantasist, not exactly delirious, just a liar basically. He was also stubborn, and he would get angry and throw a tantrum, when someone showed him that one of his stories that he had told as true was actually totally false.  After that he wouldn’t talk to us for four or five days. But none of us resented him for it; we actually enjoyed it.

     The event that (unfortunately) broke the routine took place during a calm, normal afternoon in August. I was in the boss’s office working on a few late matters that he wanted to clear up before the end of the month. Suddenly the door opened (we always knocked before we coming in but this time the rule was not adhered to) and Remigio appeared, shaking, dishevelled and looking like a different person.

     “I want to talk to you,” he said to the boss. “And it’s urgent.” I made to leave to give them some time alone but Remigio firmly said to me, “You stay here. I want you to be a witness.”

     The boss, somewhat disconcerted, only managed to stand. “What’s the matter with you? Why have you got that crazy look in your eye?”

     “What’s the matter with me? You, of all people, can’t you imagine what the matter is with me?”

     “Calm down, man.”

     “I will not calm down. Not at all. Today you went to the small room today to have a coffee with miss Rodriguez, am I right?”
     “Just as we do every afternoon.”
     “But today you forgot to lock the door and I came in without knocking. I didn’t know the two of you were in there, but I went in. Neither you nor her saw me, you were too busy, but I did see the two of you and you were kissing. On the lips. It’s disgusting.”
     “What the hell are you talking about?”
     “The two of you shacking up, you foul people.”
     “I will not let you speak to me like this. Come on and behave with a little respect, you’re being crazy.”
     “Did you show any respect when you were necking her?”
     Remigio made a swift movement and pulled out a gun from his trouser pocket. I jumped up trying to stop the madness but once again he shouted at me, “Don’t you move! I want you to be a witness!” With a dirty hanker-chief he wiped the sweat from his brow. “Do you want to know something? I’ve already killed Miss Rodriguez. She’s out there dead, in the small room, the pig. Go and kiss her now, boss, since you like so much. Go and find the body, it’s still warm.”
     “Don’t lie!” I shouted. The truth is that I had no idea what to do.
     “I’m not lying. She’s quite dead. And now,” pointing the gun at the boss, “I’m going to kill you, degenerate. So you can be mourned together, like Romeo and Juliet.
     The boss’s movement was surprising and sudden, like that of a guy who was used to these sort of situations. It was clear that, while the other was talking, he had opened the right-hand drawer and soon enough he too had a gun.
     That moment was decisive. The two pulled the trigger simultaneously, but the boss was quicker and, more importantly, more accurate. Remigio collapsed, I had the impression that he was died. And he had. Remigio’s shot had not hit his target, but it had broken the glass of a window.
     With the gun still in his hand, the boss breathed heavily and then sat down. He was pale. He looked ten years older.
     The shots had been heard throughout the whole building. The door opened abruptly and this time ten or twelve faces appeared, whose eyes were wide and whose lips were trembling. And there was the most unexpected thing; behind everyone in the door the face of Miss Rodriguez also appeared, asking between sobs, “What happened? Tell me what happened! Please! Tell me what happened!”
     It took us around six years to get back into our routine. But we managed to. There were few changes but they were important ones. The small coffee room was closed off and Miss Rodriguez asked to be transferred to the National General Archive and her request was granted.
     Recently, such absences have not been filled, so now in the office there are only five of us, and the boss, who, of course,  still has his office, to which we have unrestricted access.  The truth is that we are a family, plain and simple.

Reunion (Reencuentro)

     For Medardo Soria it was a lovely surprise when four of his old friends wanted to meet up with him. Hit hat been a long time since they had fallen out of contact, and he regretted it because they shared many common memories,some good and some worse, but they marked all the same the beginnings of their respective adolescences. He arrived at the Prometeo cafe with his usual punctuality, but they had got there before him. There they were, on a reserved table, and were gesturing to him from it.

     First of all came the hugs and the physical recognition. "Gabriel, you've got fat." "Bah, after you pass fifty a belly is a sign of wisdom and experience." "You on the other hand, Felipe, are more skinny than a cyclist in the Tour de France!" "Did you not know that skinnyness shows good health?" "Mariano, are your grey hairs real or is it a wig?" "More real than the pope's." "Juan Pedro, how have you managed to preserve your pianist's hands?" "I had to pawn my beloved Pleyel." And all of them, almost in unison, asked, "How have you kept yourself so youthful, Medardo Soria?" "Look, I won't bore you with my tales of small, medium and massive maladies, because otherwise a stone sadness would sit here with us and ruin this lovely reunion. What would be better would be for you all to tell me what's happened with all of you since we took our separate paths into the wide world."

     "Well, I," began Mariano, "set myself up in a house in the country. It wasn't mine; it was my uncle's. But he died soon after I moved in and left me the land and the sheep. I must confess that the only nice thing about those large estates is the sunsets, when the sun distractedly vanishes and leaves us in the dark with only our pains. The rest is very tedious. I have never been as bored as when I was counting sheep. They must be, second to beggars, the least entertaining animals in the world. In the end I got a dog, Verdugo, who accompanied me for a time with loyalty and almost love. But he too got bored of the sheep and the sunsets. One evening he barked twice in a hoarse voice, and stretched out his paws. When I went out to look at him, the poor Verdigo had acquired the face of a sheep."

     "I went North,” interrupted Felipe. “To Rivera?” “No, to Miami. My incentive was that over there loads of people speak Spanish. Cubans, of course. They are also called worms. They never let me into their group. They all suck up to the Americans and kiss their asses, they rip them off when they can, but they always look down on other Latin Americans, almost look at them with fear that they’ll oust them from their North American shelter. In a way I justified their apprehensions, since the only woman who managed to curb my sexual needs for a while, and who did it willingly and even more ardently than I, was a native of Nashville, who also resented the Cuban invasion. After a few months of having fun, I came to the conclusion that the best thing would be to go back to paying. We parted with no ill-feelings, and swapped details, but the truth is that neither of us has looked for the other.”

     Gabriel asked to speak and everyone else let him, but he had to sit for a few minutes in silence first. “The thing is that I don’t know where to start. I don’t know if you remember that I was an orphan. In spite of that, I did pretty well. I studied architecture and nearly finished it. I was three classes away. I took the tests twice and failed both times. Without dwelling on it for too long I abandoned that ship and started life as a terrestrial wreckage instead. I bought a taxi, and then another, and then another. Taxis have been the sole reason of my bloody life. I should add that I’ve been married three times, once for each taxi. Each one differed from the other. The first was blonde; the second, dark; the third was very black. Although it may seem a lie, the darkest one was the best, but by bad luck it died during orgasm. That is to say that I was widowed by famished excesses. It occurred to me to write an autobiography, but after seventy-three pages I realized that that monstrosity wasn't going to interest anyone. Not even me. It was then that I sold my last taxi and rented an apartment that was tiny, but it had a window from which I could speak to the moon. When there was no cloud, of course, and I came to the conclusion that the moon was my forth and final love.”

     Finally it was Juan Pedro the pianist’s turn.  “I lived with music, for music and through music. More than once I was a soloist in some piano and orchestra concert. Well, we’ll say piano and small orchestra. But when Rock and other unrefined genres started to invade the radio, the venues, the televisions and the discos, I had no choice but to sign on the dole. For a while I survived thanks to the sale of my piano, which, as it was a Pleyel, allowed me to get by for one year, five months and nine days. And then? Well, I managed to get my hands on a fairly decent cart and devoted myself to picking up rubbish in the more wealthy districts. It’s another sort of music, but there we go.”

     From this height, Medardo Soria seemed to see that the four old and dear friends were looking at him in exactly the same way. The eight eyes were soon enough black, harsh and distant.

     Mariano spoke on behalf of the four of them, “Medardo, the time has come for you to see things for what they really are. We four have been dead for a long time. The ‘Beyond’ is repetitive, soporific and boring. For that reason we decided to come to see you to tell you our stories. Please, don’t look so dim-witted. We are not ghosts; we are dead.”

     Medardo could not handle his surprise. He felt himself lose consciousness and begin to fall. And he fell. The next thing he saw was the four defunct friends receiving him with open arms. 

The Discovery (El Hallazgo)

    Genaro and Fermín knew each other from school and, now in their forties, they had the habit of meeting up on Saturday afternoons in the modest café Horizonte which was situated opposite the park.
    They spoke about childhood memories, old films that had been televised again, books that they read and swapped, and sometimes topics that they considered existential, like suicide.
“I don’t think I’d ever kill myself,” said Genaro after “What’s the point? The end comes eventually without one having to provoke it, don’t you think?”
    “I, on the contrary,” said Fermín, “would not dare to discount it so definitively.”
    “But, for what motive? Anguish? Economic hardship? Illness? A disillusion with regards to love?
     “No, nothing like that. If I were to make this decision, on a misty, quiet afternoon with no ringing of church bells, it would be quite simply out of curiosity. To know what comes next. It’s possible that it’s fascinating.”
    “If there’s anything at all.”
    “Listen, just in case something happens I’m letting you know; if at one point I end it all, and if I do and I find something,  absolutely anything, the sign would be that even if it were not autumn, dry leaves would begin to fall.”
    “Where’s that come from?”
    “I dreamt it.”
    “It’s just as well. I thought you had a screw loose.”
    That conversation took place on the last Saturday of November. The first Saturday of the next February, Genaro and Fermín met as always in the café Horizonte.
    They sat in silence for a long silence. It appeared that they had exhausted all their available topics.
    Fermín finished his coffee and gave Genaro a look of affection, saying, “Chau.”
     Genaro saw hem walk towards the pine forest. Then he disappeared.
     Half an hour later, the shot rang loud and without any echoes. After the initial shock and before he had had time to recover from the surprise, Genaro noticed that, in the height of summer, a group of dry leaves began to fall onto his table.

Ends (Conclusiones)

     There was a summer that Death got bored of his realm of darkness and decided to set up shop in the dazzling morning. The sun filtered down through the skyscrapers and stopped just three paving stones away from his helpless shadow.
     Death focused his grey eyes on the highest floor of an imposing building. There, next to a fragile-looking railing, a man was waving his arms, completely naked. From the busy square below no one was looked up. Everyone was watching their own step and waiting for the green traffic lights. Death understood that the naked man was about to launch himself into the void, but the former did not have the energy to receive him and simply blinked instead. When he looked up again, the man was no longer on the precarious railings, but after a while he reappeared smartly dressed and with a smile that no one below was eagle-eyed enough to distinguish. Except for Death.
     A young couple, perhaps too absorbed in their love, stepped out into the road without seeing the red light. An enormous lorry came and ploughed into them; or rather, came, because once again Death blinked and the lorry driver braked sharply before showering the guilty party with insults. The couple did not even realise the danger that they had avoided, and continued, holding each other, on their way.
     Death decided to move. The impressive boulevard, with its line of skyscrapers and knots of cars, appeared to him to be a pretentious sketch of a future cemetery. For him it was certain: all of this disparate hyperbole would end one day, centimetre by centimetre, kilometre by kilometre, cross by cross, into a black future of no return, in its final hour.
     He soon realised that the bright day bored him even more than night had done. For this reason he returned hastily to his gloomy habitat where only the moon could defy him. And he started the same routine as he had always done.
     From below, souls floated and flowed upwards, consumed breaths of life, tracks of spirits, from the three or four wars that raged in the world. Death gathered them with his usual expertise and  dispersed them in his area of ether, sometimes as effluvia and other time as miasmas. It was truly draining work.
    Thank God there is no God, muttered Death. If there were a God and he came to dispute my fate, I would have not choice but to die.

Five Dreams (Cinco sueños)

     All in all, I dreamt about him five times. Edmundo Belmonte: a skinny guy in his forties with a rather sinister expression, he was disliked in every environment and was obligatory topic of conversation between desks of civil servants and journalists alike.
     In the first of these dreams, Belmonte was arguing fiercely and at length with me. I don't really remember what about, but I do remember that he kept repeating the same words to me, as if it were a mantra: "You're an insolent man, an inventor of crimes that are far from the truth", and sometimes he would add: "You accuse me and are perfectly aware that this is all a lie." I showed him the very compromising documents and he grabbed them off me and destroyed them. It was in the middle of this disaster that I awoke.
     In the second dream he addressed me less formally and smiled a wry smile. His sarcastic comments were concerned predominantly with my premature grey hairs. Generally, the joke would culminate in a final loud guffaw which, of course, woke me up.
     In the third dream I was sat down, reading Svevo, on a bench in the Plaza Cagancha, and he drew near; he sat next to me and began to tell me the intricate motives that he had had, back in '95, to fatally wound a football commentator. Logically, I asked him  how it was that he now walked the street so carefree, king of the road, and he smiled again with irony: "Do you want me to tell you the secret?" But it was precisely at that moment that I woke up.
     In the fourth dream he was telling me with an abundance of details that the greatest love of his troubled life had been a splendid prostitute from El Pireo whom, after five years of marvellous erotic togetherness, he had had to strangle because she was cheating on him with an insignificant Albanian man. Once again I asked my usual question (how was it that he walked free). "Drug dealing, old man, drug dealing." My surprise was so great that, still stunned, I woke up.
     In the end, in my fifth and final dream, the peculiar Belmonte appeared in my projectionist's studio, with an attitude so absurdly aggressive that I couldn't help my teeth from chattering.
     "Why did you sell me out you cretin?" was his vociferous opening line. "You think you're so decent and honourable, right? I always warned you not to mess with us. And you, idiot, you wanted to play. So don't be surprised by what's coming to you."
     Suddenly he opened his briefcase and pulled out an expensive revolver. I sat up completely terrified, but before I could bumble or ask anything, Belmonte fired two shots at me. One hit me in the head and the other in the chest. Curiously enough, I still haven't woken up from this last dream.

Twins (Mellizos)

     Leandro and Vicente Acuña were twins, and so similar that not even their parents could tell one from the other. It wasn't infrequent that one of the two would be naughty only for the other to take the rap. In their student years it was definitely an advantage. They would meticulously share their study-load; if there were eight topics, each one of them would study four and hand in two copies of the same exam, one under 'Leandro' and the other under 'Vicente'. For that pair of chancers organic synonymity normally constituted fun diversion, and when they were on their own they went back over the day's pranks, guffawing with laughter.
     Leandro was a centimetre taller than Vicente, though no one was tall enough to notice. Furthermore, they both wore caps, one green and the other blue, but they would swap them unscrupulously.
     The problem occurred when they met the Brunet sisters: Claudia and Mariana, both of whom were identical twins and disturbingly similar. Predictably, the Acuña brothers fell in love with the Brunet sisters and vice-versa. Undoubtedly they fell in love with each other, but who with whom?
     Claudia thought she was in love with Leandro, but it was Vicente who received her first passionate kiss. This error also spawned an internal conflict between the Acuña brothers, and it was not entirely forgotten in the laughter that followed.
     On another occasion, Vicente went to the cinema with Mariana. When the film drew to a close and the lights came on she looked that the bare arm of that evening's twin arm and said, with a little surprise and a little sarcasm: "You didn't have that mole yesterday."
     The conclusion of that intertwined chain of events was rather unexpected. One evening where Claudia was in a taxi next to her father, the driver fainted all of a sudden and the car crashed into a wall. The driver and her father were badly injured, but they lived. Claudia, on the other hand, died in the accident.
     At the funeral, which was very busy, Leandro and Vicente embraced a teary and anguished Mariana. Shortly after, she pulled away from the double hug, and turned unsteadily towards the room where the body of poor Claudia lay. The twins stayed on their feet, with a respectful silence, like simply two more people in a host of mourners.
     After a few minutes, Mariana reappeared. With a napkin, standing in for the absent tissue, she wiped the latest burst of tears from her cheeks. The twins looked at her inquisitively, as if asking: "Well, who's it going to be?"
     Then she included the two of them with a declaration that was an irrevocable sentence: "I hope you both understand that now I am half of my own self. Thanks for coming, now get out. I don't want to see either of you ever again."
     They left, of course, taciturn and with their heads down. Hours later, back at their house, Leandro spoke: "Little brother, I think our double-act has finished. From now on, we need to be different. I'll die my hair blonde and you keep the beard. What do you reckon?"
     Vicente agreed, with a very serious gesture, and could only muster the effort to say: "Ok. But I suggest that tomorrow we go to the photographer's to get the last picture of us as twins."

Who Killed the Widow? (Quién mató a la viuda?)

     The press had given the crime a huge, nearly scandalous, amount of coverage. The fact that Umpiérrez's wife (Argentinian, originally from Córdoba) was an upper class widow and also a part of what is called the financial homeland in Río de la Plata, the story made an impression on the various social strata (Argentinians, Uruguayans) in Punta del Este.
     The body had not been found in her lavish mansion, surrounded by a luxurious lawn, but rather chained to the stern of one of the yachts that fill and adorn the port's jetties in summer.
     A fortnight had passed since what the journalists had called, like always, "a gruesome discovery." The police had followed a multitude of leads without the slightest result. In the police stations and at the newspapers in Maldonado, Punta del Este and Montevideo, calls came in every day providing information anonymously that was invariably false. In situations such as these, jokers come out of the woodwork and multiply like rabbits.
     Eventually, Gonzalo Aguilar arrived from Buenos Aires. He was a famous private detective, to whom the distressed Umpiérrez family had handed over the responsibility of the case and its eventual resolution.
     After two draining weeks of gathering information, paperwork, interviews, searches, analyses, investigations and speculation, the journalists pressured Gonzalo Aguilar to give a press conference. The meeting took place in a large conference in the most lavish hotel in the resort.
     The reporters' relentless bombarrdment of questions did not bother the detective, who always accompanied his ambiguous answers with a sarcastic smile.
     After two hours of exasperating discussion, a journalist from Buenos Aires - who was slightly more aggressive than the others - let slip a comment that approximated a judgement:
     "I must confess that I find it disappointing that an investigator of your stature should have come to no conclusion on who committed the crime."
     "Who told you that?"
     "Perhaps you know who the killer is then?"
     "Of course I know. At these professional heights, not knowing who it was would be a disaster that my professional reputation could not allow."
     "So? Who is it then?"
     "So, and take note, boy. I am the killer."
     The detective opened his briefcase and took out an expensive revolver. Almost instinctively, the mass of journalists shrank back in a spasm of fear.
"Don't be afraid. I bought this beautiful gun in Zurich ten years ago. It was with this gun that I killed the poor lady, after a brief but disturbing spin on board her yacht, Neptune. Allow me, logically in the name of professional discretion, to spare you the motives of my attack. I do not wish to tarnish her memory or mine. And now: my pride cannot allow another colleague, especially if he is from the same country as me, to discover the identity of the architect of this mysterious death. Ah, and besides, as I have always liked the guilty person to suffer his punishment, I have decided to see that justice is done myself. In other words, you have a great front-page story. Please, do not be frightened when the gun goes off. And I'd also like to request an almost posthumous favour: may one of you make sure that this beautiful revolver accompanies my ashes."