Read The Buenos Aires Quintet for Free Online

sealed off. Later it was handed back to its owners – Doctor Tourón was only renting it. The owners are selling loads of apartments in the neighbourhood, especially to Europeans and North Americans. Lots of Spaniards bought bargains. Argentina was for sale, although now the prices have gone up again, and it’s become very expensive for foreigners.’
    ‘What did Señor Tourón do exactly when he came back?’
    ‘At first he stood there for a while on the pavement opposite, as if he was scared to come any closer. A good while. Then he crossed the street and opened the door. I went up to him to see what was going on, because although I sort of recognized his face, he’d changed a lot. He replied with my name: “Mattías.” I asked him: “You’re Doctor Tourón, aren’t you?” He nodded. Then he asked me: “What about the girl?” “I don’t know, doctor, I never knew anything about her.” So then he left the same way he had come.’
    ‘Is it true you never knew anything?’
    ‘A porter knows everything and nothing. I see people come and go. I nearly always know who they are, and when I don’t, I ask. For many years now. I polish the metal and dust the carpets. If you were to go up to one of those luxurious apartments today, they probably couldn’t even offer you a coffee, because their coffee-makers are electric, and there’s no electricity. Am I making myself clear?’
    ‘Yes, you are. Not that I understand a word of it.’
    ‘That’s what I wanted, to be clear and yet leave you guessing.’
    ‘Fine. So after years in exile, Doctor Tourón comes back, turns up here, asks you obvious questions, then disappears again. And in all this time has his sister-in-law Alma never been here?’
    The porter doesn’t seem to want to continue the conversation. His eyes have turned cold, and he is clinging on to his shammy leather cloth as if his life depended on it.
    ‘I can’t tell you any more, because I don’t know any more; and anyway, I’ve already said too much. Ninety per cent of Argentines wouldn’t have answered your questions at all. What went on in the Process had nothing to do with us porters. All we ever did was see who came and went.’
    It’s a slogan which is also the name of a company: ‘New Argentina’. Carvalho suddenly remembers the conversation he had with the fat man on the plane. Small world. The food and animal behaviour institute his cousin had worked in before the dictatorship is now called New Argentina. But even though that’s its name, it is housed in a neoclassical 1940s building with more than a whiff of Mussolini, and nationalist pride is evident on all sides. Production statistics, pride in Argentina’s cows, its horses, even its human beings. Carvalho is led down scrupulously scrubbed corridors by a girl dressed in a white coat that cannot hide her splendid ass or legs, and Carvalho gives in to her obvious charms.
    The laboratory door opens and one of the fattest men in the world appears. It takes Carvalho a few seconds to identify him with the photo file his brain sends him in a flash: of course, the passenger next to him on the plane. The man pretends not to have seen Carvalho, who also busies himself looking around what appears to be a typical laboratory, with its rats’ cages and scientific equipment that’s always seemed to him should be used for alchemy. Eventually Roberto Améndola comes up. He’s big in every way: physically, cynically, playfully. In his hands and mouth everything seems small. He looks at Carvalho as if he were a tiny mouse. ‘Raúl and I studied biology together. We got our professional qualifications together. We ran this laboratory together. Fortunately, I didn’t get married; unfortunately, he did. His wife Berta was like a cross between Marta Harnecker and Evita Perón. Do you know what females I’m referring to?’
    ‘As far as females go, I’m a real encyclopedia.’
    ‘He let Berta do whatever she wanted, he just accepted it. He was