The Peacock Emporium(47)

“Don’t tell your mother how much we had to drink last night. My head is sore enough as it is.” His father’s voice still carried the satisfaction of the catch. Beside them, a colectivo, visibly belching diesel fumes, slowed down enough for its departing passengers to hit the pavement running, while those waiting launched themselves on board.

“I think she is going through the change,” his father said meditatively. “Women often become irrational then.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“She’s got so paranoid about security she will hardly leave the house. She won’t own up to this, of course. Not even if you ask her. She will make excuses, say the ladies are coming around for her charity works, or it’s too hot to go out today, but she’s no longer leaving the house.” He paused, still cheerful. “And she’s driving me mad.” The size of the fish had made him garrulous. “Because she’s not going out, she’s dwelling on things, you know? Not just the economic or security situation, which I grant you is bad. You know you’re more likely to be mugged in the Zona Norte now than in the slums? The bastards know where the money is, they’re not stupid.” Jorge exhaled, his eyes still fixed on the road ahead. “She’s become obsessed about where I am. Why am I ten minutes late back from the office? Didn’t I know that she thought I’d had an accident?”

He glanced in the mirror, unconsciously checking that the coolbox containing the fish had not tipped over. “I think she thinks I’m having an affair. Whenever she asks me why I’m late, she immediately asks about Agostina. Agostina! Like she’s going to give a second glance to an old man like me!” He said it with the confidence of someone who didn’t truly believe his own comments.

Alejandro’s heart was heavy. “Pa, I’m going abroad.”

“Everything is magnified, you know? Because she has too much time to sit and think.”

“To England. I’m going to England. To work in a hospital.”

Jorge had definitely heard him now. There was a lengthy silence, not sufficiently interrupted by the traffic reports on the radio. Alejandro sat in the leather seat, his breath held against the coming storm. Eventually, when he could bear it no longer, he spoke quietly: “It’s not something I planned . . .” He had suspected it would be like this, but still felt unprepared for the weight of guilt that had settled upon him, and for the explanations, apologies, that were already begging to be spoken. He stared at his hands, blistered and crisscrossed in an angry red from the nylon lines.

His father waited until the traffic report was finished. “Well . . . I think it’s a good thing.”

“What?”

“There is nothing for you here, Ale. Nothing. It is better you go and enjoy life somewhere else.” His head sank into his shoulders, and he exhaled in a long, weary sigh.

“You don’t mind?”

“It’s not a question—you’re a young man. It is right that you travel. It is right that you have some opportunities, meet some people. God knows, there’s nothing in Argentina.” He glanced sideways, and the look was not lost on his son. “You need to live a little.”

The words that sprang to Alejandro’s mind seemed inadequate so he closed his mouth on them.

“When are you going to talk to your mother?”

“Today. I got the papers through last week. I want to go as soon as possible.”

“It’s just . . . it’s just the economic situation, right? There’s nothing . . . nothing else that makes you want to leave?”

Alejandro knew that another conversation was hovering between them. “Pa, the state hospitals are on their knees. There are rumors that they don’t have enough money to pay us by the end of the year.”

His father seemed relieved. “I won’t go to the office. You need to talk to your mother. I’ll drive you.”

“She’s going to be bad, huh?”

“We’ll deal with it,” his father said simply.

They traversed the three sides of the square and sat in traffic before the government buildings. His father placed a hand paternally on his leg. “So, who is going to help me hunt peacock bass, eh?” The unforced animation of before was gone. His father’s professional mask was back in place, benign, reassuring.

“Come to England, Pa. We’ll hunt salmon.”

“A child’s fish.” It was said without resentment.



* * *



—

The Mothers of the Disappeared were ending their weekly march. As the car began to head back, Alejandro watched them as they folded their laminated posters carefully into handbags, adjusted embroidered headscarves, exchanged greetings, and held each other with the loose affection of longstanding allies before they headed for the gates and their lonely journeys home. The Marenas house, like many in the Zona Norte, looked neither like the flat-fronted, Spanish-influenced shuttered manses of central BA, nor a modern glass-and-concrete structure. It was a curious, ornate building set back from the street and, in architectural style, most closely resembled a Swiss cuckoo clock.

Around it, carefully sculpted hedges disguised the electric gate, the newly installed bars on the windows, and hid the security booth and guard at the end of the road. Inside, the wooden floors had long given way to shining expanses of cool marble, upon which sat expensive French rococo-style furniture, polished and gilded to within an inch of its life. It was not a comfortable-looking house, but while the front rooms spoke of a cool social superiority, inviting guests to admire rather than relax, the kitchen, where the family spent most of their private time, still housed a battered old table and several shabbily comfortable chairs. Their disappearance, Milagros, the maid, had sworn, would mean the immediate end of her twenty-seven-year tenure with the family. If they thought that after a hard day’s cleaning she was going to squeeze her backside into one of those modern plasticky things, they had another think coming. As it was widely agreed that Milagros was often the only thing standing between Alejandro’s mother and the sanatorium, the chairs stayed, to the unspoken satisfaction of all parties. And the kitchen remained the most used room in the seven-bedroom house.