Sira, page 31
The great dining hall of the Ritz dripped with ostentation that farewell evening. Filled with lush plants and resplendent chandeliers, it made quite a display in that gray postwar capital where the streets were scarcely lit, and where the people stole bulbs from the streetlights and cables from the urban network in order to extract the copper wire to sell at Madrid’s flea market. Despite the solemn regard commanded by the presence of the head of state and his guest, the atmosphere was jubilant, with many people breathing a sigh of relief because, after tonight, responsibility for the visit would be passed on to other cities. Goodbye, good lady, they must have thought. And good riddance. Farewell to the preparations and arrangements, the demands, urgency, hysteria, and anxiety of making sure everything was perfect in order to dazzle the wife of the Argentine president, to glorify the image of the Generalísimo, and to try to send the world the message that the regime was in excellent health.
With Diego Tovar to my right and a boring high-ranking official of some ministry or other to my left, the banquet got underway. My neighbor at the table, upon learning that I was with the BBC, began a long soliloquy about hunting in England. I pretended to listen with interest, while in truth my eyes and ears were tuned in to the rest of the table. Foxá was certainly the most talkative. With a lively, jocular manner of speaking, he went on to describe a recent tour of South America. “Lima is a Seville with earthquakes,” he said as he made short work of the appetizers. “Lake Titicaca, a Mediterranean held in the air like a glass. From the air, at night, Rio de Janeiro is marvelous, incredible, superior to Constantinople.” Everyone around him applauded his comments, and between verdicts, he voraciously dispatched wine and food.
“Spain is a nonentity as far as Argentina is concerned,” he then proclaimed, his glass of wine raised like a flag. “The wealthy and educated of Río de la Plata either adore the Anglo-Saxon snobbery or look to France and everything French for inspiration. For Spain, in contrast, they feel only indifference, as if we didn’t exist. What we were to those lands for centuries is a distant memory, and to them we’re just a country of emigrants now, rough gallegos, as they call us. Stubborn, miserly halfwits, whether Andalusian, or Leonese, or Valencian, we’re all gallegos, fit only to be porters, waiters, storekeepers, or bricklayers with knotted handkerchiefs on their heads. Do you know how Perón’s ministers usually receive Ambassador Areilza? ‘Here comes the poor starving gallego,’ they say. ‘Let’s see what he has to say.’”
Foxá went on like this, captivating his audience without taking a single break. By the time the River Bidasoa salmon arrived, he’d won the attention of the entire table as skillfully as any prima donna might have done. Those closest to him gleefully passed on to those out of earshot the words and opinions belonging to the 3rd Count of Foxá and Marquis of Armendáriz, an old hand of the Falange, career diplomat, newspaper columnist, writer, and poet. Even guests at nearby tables pricked up their ears to listen to his witty remarks. With a few rare exceptions, like me, everyone in the dining hall had undoubtedly read his novel Madrid de Corte a Checa, which recounted the ups and downs of Franco’s nationalist supporters in Republican Madrid during the war, the suffering experienced by the side that all those present that evening had been on, of course.
“How could I not be right-wing?” he bellowed proudly. “I’m fat, I’m a count, and I smoke cigars!”
There were only two people who seemed uninterested in his incisive monologue. One was my neighbor, who was still prattling on about pheasant and partridge, boar and deer. The other was sitting diagonally across from me. I had seen her before too, though only from a distance, at other events and visits that had been part of the program. She was a tremendously attractive young woman who stood out because of her height and her style, classier than the other well-bred ladies who made up Doña Carmen Polo’s entourage. While Foxá extracted another wave of laughter with one of his irreverent comments, I observed her discreetly. Impassive, she kept her eyes on her plate, scraping it with her fish knife. Distracted, focused on herself, she wasn’t even eating. She was wearing a cherry-colored sleeveless dress. Her neck was long, her hair dark chestnut, her features were beautiful, and her eyelids, lowered with a trace of sadness.
Our plates were taken away, the chateaubriand with duchess potatoes arrived, and the gluttonous diplomat took the chance to move on to a new topic. While he demolished the meat and gulped down the red, Eva Perón herself became the theme of his performance. He knew what he was talking about—he’d been posted to the Spanish embassy in Buenos Aires for six months and knew the workings of the Peronist system firsthand. With ornate irony, he then proceeded to describe the first lady’s efforts for social justice.
She was in the habit of spending hours at the Ministry of Work and Welfare, where she was as likely to receive the poverty-stricken, the underprivileged, and old women as she was ambassadors and bishops. From this location, President Perón’s wife exercised her power, balancing hard bargaining, the saintliness of Our Lady of Lourdes, and a most magnificent generosity. By sheer force of will, she secured bicycles, pensions for widows, false teeth, mattresses, and bridal trousseaus, roof repairs, surgical operations, prosthetic legs, and thousands of cans of powdered milk.
While jumping from one anecdote to another, urged on by the comments and guffaws from the distinguished guests, Foxá still managed to polish off his meat and ask a waiter to fill his plate again as he finished another glass of wine. My neighbor to my left offered me his umpteenth observation about fox hunting with dogs, but I barely paid attention. The beautiful, inexpressive young woman, meanwhile, remained impervious, as if the chatter that everyone else was enjoying so much bored her to death.
“Isn’t that right, Mery? Tell us if what I’m saying isn’t true.”
The diplomat had raised his voice, and, to my surprise, all eyes turned to the young woman. In response, she shrugged her shoulders without even looking at him, as if she couldn’t have cared less about the question or the man. Her disinterest didn’t seem to bother Foxá. Undeterred by the lack of reaction, he carried on talking, regaining the attention of the diners.
Our section of the table, however, was left with an uncomfortable atmosphere. Diego Tovar tried to lighten it.
“Mery, are you all right?”
She remained silent while the sound of voices, the clink of dishes and cutlery, and the popping of the first bottles of Spanish champagne, as the printed menu called it, ricocheted around the opulent dining hall of the Ritz.
Diego persisted.
“Mery?”
Finally, she looked up, her eyes big and dark, full of melancholy detectable even through her long eyelashes. She smiled mechanically, then muttered, “Perfectly all right, darling, thank you.”
By then we had a swarm of waiters upon us taking away our plates and serving the dessert and the sparkling wine in coupes. Foxá’s runaway mouth had dropped the subject of Eva Perón in favor of the imminent farewell bullfight of the celebrated matador Manolete. As a result of all the food, drink, and fierce verbosity, his chubby face had turned red, and he wiped sweat from his grandiose jowls with a crumpled handkerchief. There was a blotch of sauce on the white piqué of his waistcoat.
Indifferent to all of this, Mery slowly got up, straightening her body.
“Don’t tell me she’s his wife . . . ,” I whispered to Diego, hiding my disbelief behind my napkin.
He nodded. To my surprise, she then addressed me, asking in excellent English if I would accompany her to the powder room.
45
“Your husband has a way with words,” I said, to break the ice.
We’d left the great dining hall together and walked through the lobby. We’d powdered our noses and necklines together in front of the mirror, touched up our lipstick at the same time. But until that moment, we hadn’t exchanged a word.
“My husband’s an imbecile.”
She spoke without drama, as if she’d simply mentioned the day of the week or an appointment with the optometrist. Then she sat on an upholstered bench, crossed her legs under the red gauze of her dress, and lit a cigarette. She didn’t appear to be in any hurry to go back to the table. As a couple, she and Foxá were so ill matched that their pairing still struck me as inconceivable. She was young, of exquisite manners, beautiful, and composed. He was flamboyant to the extreme, a voracious eater, undoubtedly intelligent, but ugly, loudmouthed, and brash.
The interest she hadn’t shown her husband she now directed at me.
“So. You live in London?” I didn’t know when she’d learned this detail; I hadn’t seen her pay any attention to me all evening. “I lived there for a few years, before I had the misfortune of moving to Spain.”
She took a long pull on her cigarette, leaving a ring of red on the tip.
“I can’t stand this country, or its people.”
I remained in front of the mirror, pretending to return a lock of hair to the coil at the back of my head.
“And Buenos Aires?” I asked after a few seconds. “Do you like it?”
“At least it’s the capital of a young, prosperous country. Do you know they even have a Harrods?” she said with a sardonic look. Then she was serious again. “At least I can swim there, play tennis, go around by myself without being branded as sinful. Or mad.”
Her tone remained dispassionate, faintly frivolous. Even so, I was aware I had a potentially useful source of information in front of me. If she could tell me without a care that her husband was an imbecile, she might talk to me openly about other things.
“And do you know Señora Perón well? Have you had the chance to meet her?”
She looked at me while she puffed on her cigarette, her eyes fixed on the blue taffeta that enveloped me.
“Are you really preparing a report on her? You don’t look like a journalist. I don’t think you could afford an evening dress like that on a reporter’s salary.”
I reached for her cigarette case without asking for permission and put one of her cigarettes in my mouth. If she wasn’t shy, then I wouldn’t be.
“A full-time reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation,” I assured her brazenly after blowing out the smoke. “The genuine article.”
She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again the other way. Ultimately, she didn’t care who I was.
“Everything that bigmouth Agustín said about Eva Perón is true. She likes to appear ostentatiously generous in public, make extravagant displays of her devotion to the unfortunate, and browbeat anyone with means into supporting her cause.” She spoke Spanish with a strange mixture of accents. “She’s in a class of her own, Evita,” she added. “To some she’s shameless, resentful, arbitrary, impertinent, and despotic, with no restraint, culture, or class. Whereas to others she’s a fairy godmother fighting tooth and nail for the dignity and welfare of workers, women, children, and all the poor wretches that no one else ever cared about.”
Yes. I was already aware of those contrasting perceptions. But I wanted someone to go a step beyond that, to give me a more balanced opinion, a midpoint between those who adored her as if she were the Virgin Mary and those who wanted her to go to hell.
“Do you know what I think is truly admirable?” she went on. She stood and took a final puff on her cigarette, narrowing her eyes so the smoke wouldn’t go in them. “That she’s a free woman.”
I nodded slowly. I thought I understood her.
“At fifteen, Eva Duarte decided for herself what her future would be and went in search of it. In her early twenties, she chose the man she wanted to be with and made him hers. Once she’d done so, she didn’t settle for living under the wing of the most powerful man in one of the most prosperous countries on earth. By his side but never subdued, she forged her own path and made something of herself through her own efforts.”
Beautiful Mery then pushed open the door to one of the cubicles, lifted the toilet lid, and threw in her cigarette end with good aim.
“Nothing intimidates her,” she added, coming out of the stall. “She bows to no one. Look at her now, sitting next to the tyrant Franco, dressed however she pleases and completely confident in herself. I’ve never known a woman so free, so autonomous in her opinions, decisions, and actions.” She came closer. “Can you say the same thing about your life, my dear?”
I didn’t answer. And the obvious was implied by my silence.
“Nor can I.”
We checked ourselves in the mirror one last time and picked up our handbags to return to where we should be: dependable, obedient.
“Say it on the BBC. Tell the world,” she concluded as our heels clicked on the marble floor of the lobby. Raised voices came from the dining hall. The waiters were now serving coffee and liqueurs. “Broadcast on your airwaves that Evita is unique and will go down in history. When there’s nobody left that remembers you, me, or my husband’s clowning, when Franco’s glory has evaporated and everyone who adulates him now fades into the background, Eva Perón’s memory will live on.”
46
We were almost alone as we drove along Paseo de la Castellana, the night air lashing our faces. Plaza de la Lealtad and Neptune with his trident were behind us, and we passed the goddess Cybele while Diego Tovar informed me of the next stages of the tour.
“The flights to Granada will take off at half past five tomorrow evening. Señora Perón will travel in a plane with her delegation, and our official escort and the press will follow. As soon as we land, the events will start.”
We’d passed only two or three cars going in the opposite direction. At Plaza de Colón two workers were watering the road with enormous hoses, and Diego had to swerve so that we didn’t get wet. We continued along the broad avenue lined by greenery, public buildings, and old mansions. I closed my eyes for a moment while my skin’s pores and the roots of my hair absorbed the cool of the night.
“I wanted to apologize, Livia. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to seat you at our table,” he admitted, completely changing the subject. “Foxá wasn’t at his best this evening.”
I thought about the unusual couple. They’d left the Ritz the same time we did. She’d walked ahead, upright, tall, and beautiful, sheathed in gauze. He’d followed a few paces behind her, drunk and sweaty, moving with heavy strides, his shirtfront dirty, his tie knot half undone.
Over the purr of the engine, Diego gave me a brief account of Mery Larrañaga de Foxá’s background. The daughter of a Peruvian executive at Shell and a Spanish lady of noble ancestry, she’d been transferred at a young age, at the family’s behest, from London to Seville. Before long, she was being pressured to marry a man twice her age whom everyone found exceedingly charming. Everyone, that is, except her. But he was an aristocrat, rich and famous. And a diplomat. That was perhaps the only thing she’d been faintly attracted to: the possibility of being taken far away from that dusty, impoverished Spain.
“When we attended the wedding in Seville, all her friends could see that the marriage was a farce. I’m no authority on marital matters, I have no experience, but there in the Church of the Hospicio de los Venerables, and at the reception afterward in the courtyard, it was obvious that the match made no sense.” He stopped for a moment, as if retrieving fragments of memories. “She didn’t so much as look at him the entire time. He ended up drunk as a lord.”
His expression fell somewhere between melancholic and sarcastic. I observed his profile for a few seconds while he continued to grip the wheel. The wind had ruffled his hair, and his brown fringe flapped over his forehead, giving him an almost youthful appearance despite his forty or so years. Diego Tovar de las Torres was an attractive man. Handsome, of good family, successful. A good catch, all in all. I wondered why he was still unmarried.
“But Agustín adores her,” he went on, as if to exonerate Foxá.
“She can’t stand him. She thinks he’s an imbecile.”
He gave a bitter smile.
“He’s an extravagant bon vivant and idler, he never shuts up, and he’s a disaster in matters that require discipline and methodical work. But he’s a man of brilliant wit who loves his wife. He loves her badly, but he loves her. Deeply.”
We overtook a junkman’s cart pulled by two mules. It was piled high, crowned by precariously balanced cardboard and bundles of paper. That was when he confided in me.
“She has decided to make up for her unhappiness by being unfaithful to him. She doesn’t even bother to hide it, does it in full view of everyone. We all know about it.”
I remembered her smoking on the bench with her legs crossed, the back of her head resting on the tiles. I wondered if she’d had one of those affairs with Tovar.
“And him. How does he react?”
Diego guffawed.
“With admirable stoicism. He says without any embarrassment that he would prefer to share a diamond than have a turd all to himself.”
We both laughed into the night air. There were few lights at that last section of the Castellana, near the racecourse, the vacant lots, and the leveled land.
“Afterward, to console himself, he attacks his rivals with scathing wit and dedicates poems to them.”
We turned right into a dark and deserted Calle del Pinar. He stopped the car outside the press club. On any other occasion, he would’ve quickly climbed out to open my door, but this time he didn’t move.
“They’re strange, relationships between men and women,” he said, turning off the ignition. It was a banal statement, but something in his tone made it seem sincere.
“Why have you never married, Diego?”
I immediately regretted my question. Our association had been easy, he had just confided in me about the marital affairs of a friend, but our relationship was purely professional, and that is where it had to remain. Yet the question had popped into my mind, perhaps because it was very late and because I was exhausted from all that pretending to be someone I wasn’t, or perhaps because the complexities of the human condition were growing ever more incomprehensible to me.
