An Open Secret Read online

  CARLOS GAMERRO

  AN OPEN

  SECRET

  Translated by Ian Barnett in collaboration with the author

  PUSHKIN PRESS

  LONDON

  The English version of this novel is dedicated to the memory of Anthea Gibson (1941–2010), who made it happen.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Interlude One

  Chapter Two

  Interlude Two

  Chapter Three

  Interlude Three

  Chapter Four

  Interlude Four

  Chapter Five

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  AN OPEN SECRET

  To speak is to lie—

  To live is to collaborate.

  William S Burroughs

  Chapter One

  “A MURDER IN A SMALL TOWN.”

  “Why here of all places?” asks Mati.

  “It’s the only small town I know.”

  “Is that why you’ve come back?”

  “And to see you all.”

  “So what’s it going to be? A film?” enquires Mati again.

  “Or a book. Not sure yet,” I reply.

  Don Ángel’s third call to table spares me from giving any further details:

  “Dinner’s ready che! I know you’ve got some catching up to do but do it later.”

  “Fefe I look at you and I swear I can’t believe you’re really here,” blurts Guido, who’s so far said next to nothing. “How many years has it been?”

  I’m slow to answer because I’m hauling myself up from the sofa, whose springs my body has recognised with consummate ease, as I eye the souvenirs of trips to Europe and the Middle East that the current occupants of the house have never made, and rediscover the roughness of the old tiles under my feet—the furniture, the ornaments, the floors of the house that used to belong to my grandparents until their lifelong neighbours, the Tuttolomondos, bought it from them. “I’m back in Malihuel,” I say to myself in mild amazement. “Back in Malihuel.”

  “’Bout twenty isn’t it?” I eventually reply.

  “SO YOU WANT to write about Malihuel do you? Someone’s already written a hydrographic survey on the lagoon, donkeys’ years ago, ’bout roughly … When was it Nene?”

  On the corner of the main street and the one variously known as Post Office, Phone Centre, Courts or Yacht Club Street stands the most traditional bar in Malihuel, Los Tocayos, whose current landlord, Don Porfirio Dupuy, is a direct descendent of one of the two Hipólitos that opened the original establishment. Three blue doors on the main street and two on the other provide access to a vast vertical expanse of sea-green walls, barely alleviated by their lining of varnished wood cladding, the framed photos of Don Porfirio’s pampered pups, the trophies from the Colón dog track and a Chinese imitation antique clock. The premises are L-shaped, with a billiard table and two Foosball tables at the far end of the long arm, and the bar tables in the short one and the elbow, evidently arranged around the one presided over night in night out by Don León Benoit.

  “Nineteen seventy-three,” the waiter answers without hesitation.

  “Nene’s our walking encyclopaedia, there’s only Professor Gagliardi knows more than he does. And there isn’t much in it mind. Is it something like that you’re going to write?” Don León asks.

  “No,” I counter.

  “He’s a real writer,” Guido sitting next to me sets him straight. “He writes stories, novels … Literature,” he adds, in a nutshell.

  “Oh, we’ve got that here too. If it’s literature you’re interested in I imagine you’ll have read His Honour’s Dream, it’s set right here in Malihuel, tells the whole story of our foundation it does. No there’s a lot been written about this town believe you me, don’t write us off, the other towns hereabouts may be bigger but they don’t have our history. We’ve been here since colonial times you know. The lagoon’s right there on the very oldest maps. The Northern Frontier ran through here. Indian territory back then. We suffered several raids, and the civil wars to boot. There was a fort here razed to the ground by none other than General Lavalle himself, on his way north. We’ve got history to burn here. ‘A town of two centenaries,’ as the song goes. So it’s literature is it? I was told you were interested in geography or ecology, goodness knows why. Who was it told me Nene?”

  “Licho.”

  “See where idle chatter gets you? And there was I finding out about the chemical composition of the lagoon water, which as you know is highly medicinal. Is that any use?”

  “Careful, he’ll try and rope you into the beach-resort business next,” Guido chimes in, and Don León smiles.

  “The town’ll go back to living off the lagoon again one day, and then they’ll have to put up a statue of me right next to the Comandante’s. Now there’s a tale to be told, the one about the Comandante’s statue.”

  “Right, sure,” I nod. “I had something more recent in mind though from the last I dunno twenty years at the outside,” I say, and then, sensing or imagining a buzz of alarm, I explain: “It’ll be a work of fiction though, right, not a document? I mean the town in my story’ll have lots in common with this one, the setting, the lagoon, that kind of thing, but …”

  It wasn’t as easy to explain as I’d first thought.

  “I’m even going to change the name so there won’t be any mix-ups, you know, people coming up to me afterwards saying no it isn’t like that, it wasn’t like that at all … I’m going to change the name,” I repeat.

  “Uh-huh,” Don León remarks. “And what are you going to call it if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Malihuel,” I reply. “The town in my story’s called Malihuel.”

  “CRIMES HERE IN MALIHUEL as I can remember … Can you remember any Vicente?” Don Ángel asks his brother.

  “There was that one case ages ago now, you weren’t even born,” Vicente replies. “That business at the Arana Hotel. Remember?”

  “Do I. The number of times I must’ve heard it. You know how it goes don’t you Fefe?” Don Ángel asks me.

  “Mamá used to make me check under her bed every night to make sure Señora Arana’s killer wasn’t there. In Buenos Aires as well!” I answer.

  “Travelling fabric salesman he was, I met him once,” Vicente’s voice starts up but is overtaken by his brother’s.

  “Don’t know about under but definitely on top. Most people reckoned the salesman was just the lover and it was the husband who …” He stabs the air with his knife. “Anyway they ended up pinning the dead wife on the guy. Two birds with one stone Arana killed. Closed the hotel not long after that and scarpered. You can still see the walls out in the Colonia opposite the station. You taken him to see it yet Mati?”

  Don Ángel is sitting at the head of the table at the welcome dinner the Tuttolomondos have laid on for me. Naturally, I’ve been accorded one of the places of honour at his side; his elder brother Vicente, the other.

  “We could drop by tomorrow afternoon if it dries up a bit,” answers my inseparable childhood friend, Mati, sitting next to me. The days I spend in Malihuel I’ll be staying at his house, which had belonged to his parents until they bought my grandparents’ house.

  “The roads in the Colonia are impossible when it rains,” Don Ángel confirms. “Is it something like that you’re going to write Fefe?”

  “Something like that,” I lie. “A crime novel I thought. I thought it would be a good idea to set it here in Malihuel. You know … crime committed in Malihuel, population three thousand, everyone knows everyone else, no outsiders in town that night. So the murderer’s got to be one of them. Everyone suspects e
veryone else. Or maybe it’s a conspiracy the whole town’s in on.”

  “You’re unlikely to get anyone in this town in on anything,” quips Guido, philosophically buttering a roll and asking his brother with a nudge of the elbow and a flick of the eyebrows to pass the salt. Mati obliges with a growl.

  “’Specially when there are people who can’t even get on with their own family don’t you reckon?” Don Ángel spears a last mouthful of pionono with his fork after speaking. Guido chews his buttered roll and shrugs.

  “Can I get you another slice Fefe?” asks Celia, who’s been doing the second round of the table with a serving dish and a portion poised between spoon and fork. She smiles at me with her whole face—mouth, eyes and wrinkles—every time she looks at me or talks to me. She’s extremely happy to see, me that much is plain. I hadn’t noticed she was so fond of me as a boy. Or maybe I’d forgotten.

  “Thanks, I’m fine for now.” I never was much one for pionono. That sickly sweet taste … “I’ll save myself for the spaghetti,” I add flatteringly. “Nearly twenty years I’ve waited for this moment. Never tasted pasta like it all these years.”

  “And you never will either now the multinationals have bought up all the big factories. Ours is only still scraping by ’cause it’s so small,” nods Don Ángel gesturing with his fork at a spot on his empty plate, which his wife covers with the slice I’ve just turned down. “Pour Fefe another glass of wine will you Guido seeing as you always have it handy. So we haven’t got much for you to go on as you can see. It’s a quiet town this is, everyone knows everyone else. People’s doors are always unlocked, we leave our cars in the street with the keys in.”

  “A hen goes missing around here and the whole town’s up in arms,” intervenes Mati and as nobody laughs at his quip I decide it must be more proverb than wit.

  “Exactly,” I say. “A crime in a place like this would be far more dramatic. Nobody could ignore it.”

  “SO WHY DID YOU CHOOSE US? I mean there are so many towns in the province,” Don León wants to know now.

  “I used to come here as a boy,” I reply. “Every summer. That’s how Guido and I know each other.”

  “He’s Echezarreta’s grandson,” Guido chimes in. “Poli’s son.”

  “Echezarreta, your grandfather? Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I remember your grandfather well, I remember your mother too. The whole town was terribly upset at the news of her passing. She’d left as a young woman in in … When was it Nene?”

  “Nineteensixtytwo,” I beat Nene to it. That was an easy one to remember. It was the year I was born.

  “So, Echezarreta’s grandson eh? Well well. I’ve always said your grandfather was the best mayor this town’s ever had. Wretched luck his illness. He still had so much to offer. And your dear grandmother?”

  “She moved to Rosario remember?” Guido asks him.

  “Course I remember, I was asking after her state of health.”

  “She’s fine,” I answer. “I dropped in to say hello to her in Rosario on my way here. We hadn’t seen each other since Mamá’s funeral. She doesn’t get about much any more.”

  “WASN’T THERE THAT case in the days I used to come here about some lad or other, what was his name, who had this problem with someone from town or some neighbouring town, I can’t really remember?” I take a pull of wine and blurt out without looking at anyone.

  “Know of a case like that Mati?” asks Don Ángel archly.

  “About a hundred,” his son replies with the same wry chuckle I used to find so winning. “If you can’t provide more details …” he says to me.

  “They were both from the town’s older families; one, the older one, had estancias all over the area and they used to say he had the other one killed because he was—”

  “Ezcurra,” Guido, laconic from chewing, finishes my sentence for me over the head of his brother, who snaps at him:

  “It’s not certain he was killed.”

  “No he just upped and buried himself in Villalba’s pigsty and pops out every now and then to light some candles for himself,” lunges Guido after swallowing.

  “That’s for the miracle-loving spades that is. Maybe you go and ask him too,” his brother parries.

  “Don’t start, che,” their father reprimands them from the head of the table, but Guido’s already turned around to explain to his grandfather what the argument’s about and the remark sails past him. After serving her grandchildren and daughters-in-law at the other end of the table, Celia finishes her waiting duties and sits down beside her father, who’s no doubt repeating to her what Guido’s just told him. In spite of coming from almost the other end of the long table, I can’t help noticing the intense, almost concerned gaze she casts in my direction.

  “So who was he this Ezcurra?” I ask anyway.

  “EZCURRITA, YES. Course I remember. From one of Malihuel’s highest families, the Alvarados, he was, and the Ezcurras of Rosario. High up a greasy pole they were in those days,” says old Don León with a cackle the others smile at out of politeness or approval, “’specially after his father went bankrupt, a good thing old man Alvarado had the measure of his son-in-law and left all his earthly goods to his daughter and grandson. Those two were a real pair. His mother with her frocks from Buenos Aires and her trips to Europe, and Ezcurrita may’ve been tied to her apron strings but in another way he took after his father, always some big business deal in the pipeline that was about to earn him a hatful and show us once and for all who he was, always about to take up some big post with his friend the governor or his uncle the deputy or his cousin the councillor—he lowered his expectations over the years—always about to leave this town of losers for good. Bye bye losers, he’d say every time he left, and when he came back not a peep. You saw him didn’t you Licho that time he gave us the finger from the Chevallier bus.”

  “No not me,” the new arrival whistles through the bristles of his moustache and the gaps in his teeth. “It was you as told me.”

  “There you go. A finger. Who hasn’t left Malihuel is what I’d like to know. Eh? But a good dog always comes when called, ain’t that the truth. And he always came back Ezcurra did, honking the horn of a new car in broad daylight if things’d gone well or more often than not skulking in the back of the Chevallier bus in the small hours when they hadn’t. We’d have him back at this table the next day sitting in the chair you’re sitting in now, cool as you like, shrugging off wisecracks and bumming cigarettes, coming out with things like You know, the pull of home … the old lady—and with a wink—my dear friends. Beto here was one of the gang, he can tell you better than me,” concludes Don León as his cellphone starts ringing.

  “Los Jaimitos they used to call us”—Beto Iturraspe, a talkative, theatrical lad whose fifty plus years only show when tiredness or distraction slacken his youthful rictus, struggles to speak over the stentorian tones of Don León addressing his daughter—“and we liked the name, so it stuck. There were four of us—an ideal number for a hand of truco, the table at the current establishment and a night on the razz in the one car, either Bermejo’s Torino or Batata Sacamata’s Chevy Coupé—should be here any minute—orange it was, used to look after it a treat, I don’t know if you ever got to see it? Bermejo, Batata, Ezcurrita and me,” he muses wistfully, looking resignedly at the other three sides of said table, currently usurped by Guido and Licho and myself. “In the summer our days used to start after siesta, a couple of beers under the pines at the island bar, and when the heat let up, a stroll down the public beach to check out the birds and lay some plans for the night … Then we’d drop in here and Bermejo, who’d spent all afternoon getting the nightclub ready, would join up with us—”

  “… The infamous Sucundún, corruptor of the Malihuel night,” I chime in. “The girls had to leave their virginity at the door from what I heard.”

  “They used to get it back on their way out rest assured, apart from the odd one that forgot to visit the cloakroom,” ventures
Iturraspe with a wink.

  “What became of Bermejo? Is he still around?”

  “Uh-uh”—Guido shakes his head. “He opened a new place in Fuguet where there are enough brothels to deflect the sanctimonious wrath of the female congregation.”

  “After that we’d move on to the vermouth and play a few hands of truco, it depended, if there was no show on at the lagoon we’d keep going till dinner—the lagoon hotel, of course, where else. At weekends there was always a tango orchestra belting it out or a quartet that could do the odd rock number, or sometimes even a Charleston or jazz band from Rosario. By the small hours the four of us’d invariably be round at Bermejo’s sucking on our private bottles and the slags we’d picked up down by the lagoon and when there weren’t any going Bermejo’d always come up with a bit on the side to peck at. The first ray of daylight was the sign to leave whatever the night had washed up, in the weeds or the back seat, or if there was any money and the chick was worth it, the mirrored room at the Mochica Motel, and the Torino or the Chevy burning rubber at ninety or a ton ten with the windows down and the cool dawn air clearing our hangovers, waving back at the farmhands and foremen riding their horses to the only brothel in Fuguet or the two or three in Toro Mocho, where there was never any shortage of girls so well-behaved you never needed to argue the toss even over the money. Unless Ezcurrita was around that is. They’d fight to be with him then.”

  “You remember”—the recent arrival Jaimito Batata Sacamata is bellowing and roaring with laughter—“the time Nori or Dori or Flori—Titín’s cousin from Elordi, the one as married Kyke Brofman—was waiting for us in the front seat and Ezcurrita, who’d never seen her before, got in the back, tapped her on the shoulder and went Hi gorgeous, and the bag turned round and grinned at him?”

  “Don’t say a word. You forgot your make-up”—Iturraspe revives the deceased’s quip. “No there was nobody faster than him. And that time we all boned that Otamendi girl? We cut for it and the lucky bastard got to go first as usual and when he comes out he tells me to fetch the razor blades and there’s me going What are you talking about you pillock and when I go in the sonofabitch’d left her face down for me on purpose, brother her back was so hairy I had to flip her over to make sure she wasn’t a truck-driver!” sighs Iturraspe wiping the tears from his eyes with his index finger and there’s me smiling in agreement and Guido nodding and Nene Larrieu leaning on the counter with his tin tray handy and a face that says he’s heard it all before.