Enriqueta corrected me. Sometimes he copies onto the index cards what he remembers, although I think he gets the stories mixed up.
Grete and her friends insisted on going down to the cellar to see if the aleph radiated some aura or signal. Beyond the third step, however, access was blocked by Bonorino’s index cards.
One of the tourists, who looked exactly like Björk, was so frustrated that she stomped back to the bus, not wanting to see anything else.
The conversations in the lobby, Grete’s tale and the brief walk through the ruins of the house, where a few fragments of the old parquet floor still coexisted with the predominant cement
and two or three original handcrafted mouldings, which Enriqueta now used as ornaments, plus the interminable questions about the aleph, had all taken almost forty minutes instead of the ten
anticipated in the itinerary. The tour guide was waiting with her hands on her hips by the door to the boarding house while the bus driver hurried them up with rude blasts of the horn. El Tucumano
told me to keep Grete back and ask her if the group was interested in seeing the aleph.
How am I going to say that? I protested. There is no aleph. And anyhow, Bonorino’s there.
You do what I tell you. If they want to see it, I’ll arrange the show for them at ten. It’ll be fifteen pesos each, tell them.
I gave in and obeyed. Grete wanted to know if it would be worth it and I answered that I didn’t know. In any case, they were busy that night, she said. They were being taken to hear tangos
at the Casa Blanca and then to the Vuelta de Rocha, a kind of bay that formed in the Riachuelo, almost at its mouth, where they hoped a singer whose name they’d refused to divulge would be
performing.
It’ll be Martel, I guessed.
I said so, although I knew it wasn’t possible, because Martel didn’t respond to any other laws but those of the secret map he was drawing. Perhaps the Vuelta de Rocha was on that
map, I thought. Perhaps he only chose places where there was already a story, or where there soon would be. Until I’d heard him sing, I couldn’t prove it.
I only want to remember what I’ve never seen, Martel had said that very afternoon, according to what I was later told by Alcira Villar, the woman who’d fallen in
love with him when she heard him sing in El Rufián bookstore and who would stay with him till his death. For Martel, remembering was the same as invoking, Alcira told me, recovering what the
past put out of reach, which is what he did with the lyrics of the lost tangos.
Though not a real beauty, Alcira was incredibly attractive. More than once, when we met to talk in La Paz café, I noticed men turning to look at her, trying to fix in their memories the
strangeness of her face, which had nothing special about it except an unusual charm that made people stop. She was tall and tanned, with thick dark hair and black inquisitive eyes, like Sonia Braga
in
The Kiss of the Spider Woman.
From the moment I met her I envied her voice, grave and sure of itself, and her long, elegant fingers, which moved slowly, as if requesting permission. I
never dared ask how she could have fallen in love with Martel, who was almost an invalid and devoid of charm. It’s shocking how many women prefer intelligent conversation to solid
muscles.
As well as being seductive, Alcira was selfless. Although she worked eight to ten hours a day as a freelance researcher for publishers of technical books and news magazines, she spent the rest
of her time being a devoted nurse to Martel, who behaved – she herself would later tell me – erratically, childishly, sometimes begging her never to leave his side, then paying her no
attention for days at a time, treating her as if she were a misfortune.
Alcira had done some research for books and leaflets written about the Waterworks Palace, completed in 1894, on Córdoba Avenue. She had learned about the details of the baroque structure
thought up by
Grete and her friends insisted on going down to the cellar to see if the aleph radiated some aura or signal. Beyond the third step, however, access was blocked by Bonorino’s index cards.
One of the tourists, who looked exactly like Björk, was so frustrated that she stomped back to the bus, not wanting to see anything else.
The conversations in the lobby, Grete’s tale and the brief walk through the ruins of the house, where a few fragments of the old parquet floor still coexisted with the predominant cement
and two or three original handcrafted mouldings, which Enriqueta now used as ornaments, plus the interminable questions about the aleph, had all taken almost forty minutes instead of the ten
anticipated in the itinerary. The tour guide was waiting with her hands on her hips by the door to the boarding house while the bus driver hurried them up with rude blasts of the horn. El Tucumano
told me to keep Grete back and ask her if the group was interested in seeing the aleph.
How am I going to say that? I protested. There is no aleph. And anyhow, Bonorino’s there.
You do what I tell you. If they want to see it, I’ll arrange the show for them at ten. It’ll be fifteen pesos each, tell them.
I gave in and obeyed. Grete wanted to know if it would be worth it and I answered that I didn’t know. In any case, they were busy that night, she said. They were being taken to hear tangos
at the Casa Blanca and then to the Vuelta de Rocha, a kind of bay that formed in the Riachuelo, almost at its mouth, where they hoped a singer whose name they’d refused to divulge would be
performing.
It’ll be Martel, I guessed.
I said so, although I knew it wasn’t possible, because Martel didn’t respond to any other laws but those of the secret map he was drawing. Perhaps the Vuelta de Rocha was on that
map, I thought. Perhaps he only chose places where there was already a story, or where there soon would be. Until I’d heard him sing, I couldn’t prove it.
I only want to remember what I’ve never seen, Martel had said that very afternoon, according to what I was later told by Alcira Villar, the woman who’d fallen in
love with him when she heard him sing in El Rufián bookstore and who would stay with him till his death. For Martel, remembering was the same as invoking, Alcira told me, recovering what the
past put out of reach, which is what he did with the lyrics of the lost tangos.
Though not a real beauty, Alcira was incredibly attractive. More than once, when we met to talk in La Paz café, I noticed men turning to look at her, trying to fix in their memories the
strangeness of her face, which had nothing special about it except an unusual charm that made people stop. She was tall and tanned, with thick dark hair and black inquisitive eyes, like Sonia Braga
in
The Kiss of the Spider Woman.
From the moment I met her I envied her voice, grave and sure of itself, and her long, elegant fingers, which moved slowly, as if requesting permission. I
never dared ask how she could have fallen in love with Martel, who was almost an invalid and devoid of charm. It’s shocking how many women prefer intelligent conversation to solid
muscles.
As well as being seductive, Alcira was selfless. Although she worked eight to ten hours a day as a freelance researcher for publishers of technical books and news magazines, she spent the rest
of her time being a devoted nurse to Martel, who behaved – she herself would later tell me – erratically, childishly, sometimes begging her never to leave his side, then paying her no
attention for days at a time, treating her as if she were a misfortune.
Alcira had done some research for books and leaflets written about the Waterworks Palace, completed in 1894, on Córdoba Avenue. She had learned about the details of the baroque structure
thought up by
Similar Books
