An hour later the heat has hardly abated but, as if in answer to some secret call, the streets begin to stretch and yawn. The doors of the post office, the factory and the bar open, a megaphoned Fiat 600 begins to drive around the square, stridently announcing the night’s shows down at the lagoon, towards which a last batch of bathers head off to soak up what’s left of the sun; the TV drama over, the church bell begins to ring, calling the señoras to five-o’clock Mass and, refilled over and over at the tank in the square, the sprinkler starts roaming the dirt streets, damping down the dust with its open flower of water dodged by boys on bikes and dogs (the first sprinkling evaporating so fast that one inhabitant sitting on a wicker chair on the sidewalk outside her house watches the earth suck up all the moisture and dry before her eyes as if in fast-forward) and the whole town is flooded with the scent of wet earth, which mingles with the honeysuckle, spikenard and jasmine as the shadows lengthen. On the dot of seven the cinema opens its doors for the one-and-only showing on sunny days (a matinee and a late show are added when it rains), welcoming the trickle of cinema-goers who have been killing time in the ice-cream parlour next door, only one of whom — a young man in bermudas and multicoloured polo shirt, carrying a two-flavour tub — walks against the tide and disappears around the corner of the Banco Provincia. The last intercity coach of the day — the 7.2 °Chevallier to Rosario — goes past, and in the Council yard an employee uncouples the sprinkler tank from the tractor and couples up the tipper, Friday being trash day. A reddening sun closes in on the horizon and the singing of the cicadas has now given way to crickets and frogs; first one row of mercury lights, then another perpendicular to it, comes on in the two main streets, the axes of a grid immediately, if more faintly, completed by the light bulbs strung along the other streets and a few moving cars with their sidelights on. Outside their radius, on the closed highway, almost at the edge of the lagoon, a few young couples under cover of the shadows venture towards the Mochica, as does the occasional solitary kerb-crawler down by the tyre workshop to check out the highway whores. Out on the island the power plant shudders and jolts into life, and as it hums the filaments of hundreds of light bulbs glow, going in seconds from red to yellow to white until they disappear in the very light they generate. A bronze-torsoed bather in scarlet trunks steps into one of the cubicles dripping wet, emerges from it in bermudas and brightly coloured polo shirt, sits down at one of the low pine tables and orders a beer. A few families have already struck camp, fathers loading deckchairs into trunks, mothers washing dishes in brown water in concrete sinks, grandmothers towel in hand waiting for the kids to launch the last of their water bombs or take a last dip in the lagoon, while along the causeway the caravan forms of those who want to shower again and change for the nine-o’clock show. By then there’ll be clouds of moths and scarabs and other beetles around the spotlights that will turn the open-air stage into a living, crawling carpet beneath the feet of the artists who that night are Los Churrinches (a folk group from Salta), an unknown imitator from Buenos Aires — who, crippled or consumptive (opinions vary), will take the stage on crutches and perform on a chair — and last, before an audience, whose impatience borders on frenzy, no less than Sandro will take to the stage in a triumphant return to the town that gave him a standing ovation when he was a rising star and today has dressed up to fête him in the cradle of his fame and glory. Special buses arrive from Santa Fe and neighbouring provinces, and hoards of young girls with placards and posters ready to be unfurled at their idol’s imminent arrival anxiously scan the clouds gathering in the livid sky and pray for the rain to hold off until the concert’s over. It’s likely — only likely — that at this stage of the proceedings a young man in an impeccable cream suit with neatly slicked hair, appears in the hotel doorway, scans the gathered multitude with puzzled eyes and disappears again in the direction of the bar.
From this point on it’s impossible to say with any certainty what happens. The night may well be unique and so fall outside the scope of a description that, like this one, endeavours to keep to the merely habitual. The artists take the stage a little late, when the audience’s rhythmic clapping makes their presence unavoidable, Sandro keeps them waiting even longer and rumours about accidents on Route Eight or health problems gust around the sensitive surface of the crowd; Sandro does or does not arrive and the approaching storm does or does not drown out the girls squealing at the delirium of his show, and at eleven at night the waxing moon may no longer be seen behind the black thunderheads driven by the sudden wind across the sky. The Carnival dances go ahead regardless, the poshest in the function rooms of the hotel with the Boedo Dixie Orchestra, who can switch from a milonga to a foxtrot in the blink of an eye, and the dance for the youngest under the Yacht Club shed vibrating to the rhythms of the Los Machimbres quartet from Córdoba. The night owls end the day — technically now a new one — at Bermejo’s nightclub or queuing at the drive-in entrance to the Mochica or scattering to the neighbouring towns, and more than one ends up sleeping it off in a lay-by, where they eventually open their dazed and gluey eyes to the first light of day.
This is as far as we can go then with the description of a typical summer’s day in Malihuel twenty years ago, peppered with the appearances of the figure of Darío Ezcurra, which the keen observer will have been able to spot amidst the anonymous swarming of his fellow townsmen. It is as well not to overlook those instants because, though they may seem habitual, they are nevertheless precious. Tomorrow the observer who wants to trace Darío Ezcurra’s trail from noon to dawn, in the complex weave of Malihuel’s inhabitants’, will search in vain.
Chapter Three
“I WAS IN THE FORCE che but it ain’t the same thing as being a cop though. It’s common knowledge my old man was the one as got me into the force, I couldn’t kick up a fuss about it could I. You’re from Buenos Aires, maybe you don’t know what it’s like here. A son follows in his father’s footsteps, part out of obedience, part out of need. If he don’t like it he’s got to leave. If the father’s got a business the son inherits it, if he’s got a farm the land, if he’s got a council job he tries to get his son a job there. Correct me if I’m wrong Don Guido.”
“You aren’t,” he replies laconically.
“That was my case. They give up a lot for me and sent me to the Virasoro Academy, a policeman’s salary’s barely enough to get by on as I’m sure you know and there were eight of us, my five sisters and me the only boy, I couldn’t very well refuse. A policeman all his life my old man was and proud of it. You wore the badge with honour in them days, not like nowadays when people see a cop and think ‘criminal’, and they ain’t far wrong, let’s face it the only difference between a thief and a cop these days is the uniform. I expected something different when I signed up, thought they’d all be like my old man. Never forget his face I won’t the first day he saw me dressed in blue, chest bursting with the pride of … But anyway, that’s not what you called me here for is it. To tell you about my life. Ask me whatever you like, I might be able to give you something useful.”