Chapter Two
At the Elizalde’s
Jimmy's place wasn't far away and Manuel, the Elizalde fac totum, opened the door to find a still flustered Peter standing at the doorway, his bag in his hand, his black eyes brilliant.
‘El niño is resting,’ said the old Spaniard who had been with the house Heaven knew since when, and called Jimmy el niño, an old fashioned and sophisticated expression, common enough in Spain but quite unusual in Buenos Aires in those days. He showed the way to the living room as if Peter hadn't been there a hundred times before and left with the promise of waking up ‘the boy’. Peter smiled to himself assuming that Jimmy would throw something at the poor Spaniard if he dared to do such a thing at that time of the morning.
The chimney fire was blazing away unnecessarily at that time of the year—but always a great comfort thought Peter, while he took off his jacket, got rid of his equipment and sat down to a cigarette and some thought. What would her name be? He shuffled a number of patronymics in his head but very soon, dissatisfied with the exercise, began to look around.
Rays of sun on that brilliant spring morning came in through the mullioned windows that looked on to the yard covered with wisteria, its sweet fragrance only a few weeks away. He went to the bar and served himself some scotch and soda. ‘What the hell,’ he thought. It was a bit early in the morning but all the same he needed something to allay his stirred heart. He knew that Jimmy's parents were in Europe and no one would miss a bit of the stuff if the bar ever came under close scrutiny, an unlikely thing in any case. Owing to its expense, few people drank Scotch in those days, but Jimmy had hooked him with his established formula, half whisky, half soda, no ice. His eye caught the old ‘Grundig’ record player in a corner and he sat on the carpet with an enormous pile of L.P.’s hesitating between a bit of tango, some pop music (mambo, twist, bossa nova and the like), some concert or other by Tchaikowsky or Bartok. They were old records, bought by Jimmy's parents years and years ago. He smiled at the garish covers, the typical girls with swirling skirts and brilliant smiles, the old red sport cars, and among them the solemn face of a Beethoven looking censoriously from the top of his 9th. Symphony. It was quite a standard assortment: the old Mexican and Peruvian records, quite a lot of Argentine folklore, a couple of music hall celebrities, ‘Oklahoma’, ‘My Fair Lady’ and others, next to a Dean Martin L.P., a young and serious red headed Edith Piaf keeping Mozart's marble bust company with “The Mamas and the Papas’s” featuring Mama Cass sitting in a bath tub in full clothes. Peter was one for trying to get things right from the start. As when he started singing in the morning, under the shower, or at any musical gathering for that matter: he always found himself intent on hitting the right note from the start.
‘That’s why I never even started something with that beautiful girl on the bus,’ he reflected. ‘It’s not so easy to hit the first note and get it right from the outset,’ he thought dejectedly, finding no consolation in his musings.
Jimmy saw him from the top of the staircase, a cadet sprawled on the carpet, without his short jacket, his braces in full view, his sword on a sofa, the records all around him and a glass of Scotch in his hand. Leaning on the oak banister, Jimmy, with his ruffled brick-red hair and his freckled face who looked like a figure of fun in his preposterous pyjamas—a yellow and pink affair suggesting oriental nights—, spoke with a raucous voice, surprising his friend. ‘Nothing romantic, my romantic friend, nothing romantic, please! I've a bit of a headache this morning and we can do without your horrible tangos and jazzy blues!’ One of Jimmy's affectations was that classical music was the only thing worth listening to. These weren't his true feelings, but in those days he liked to think so. Without looking up, Peter simply said to a small chair in the corner: ‘Please go and have a bath before speaking to me in that horrible hangoverish voice of yours. I bet you've been at it again... Have a bath, will you, and then maybe we can talk about what's romantic and what's not.’ Jimmy disappeared into the background mumbling dark words while Peter set the gramophone going with an especially strident tango.
He smiled to himself while sipping his drink, letting the morning sun soak the room with brilliant beams, the long weekend stretching luxuriously before him with all sorts of beckoning promises. And then the record went on to band two with a funny waltz he had never heard before. The simple music and the two first lines caught his imagination immediately. Linen flower... I wonder what those lyrics mean, he thought. And then, with a wider smile, he turned a button to louder tones, which would certainly reach Jimmy's bathroom.
I saw her blossom like a linen flower
from an Argentine field matured by the sun
Oh! If only had I understood her
My cottage today would be full of love...
Understanding women, Peter thought, that's a tall order. But he enjoyed the waltz and when it had finished, played it all over again knowing all along that Jimmy would be having a rough time listening to it for a second time. He gave the volume another upgrade with a malevolent grin. Giving hell to Jimmy on this wonderful Saturday morning was just perfect.
Eventually his friend came down while, with perfect timing, Manuel appeared out of the blue with a silver tray crowned by an enormous green kettle and Jimmy's maté. Peter frowned at the infusion of which he had had too much during the long week behind him, especially during the long nights when he had been on watch. But his friend sucked at his bombilla with evident relish.
‘Would you please turn down that infernal machine?’ Jimmy pleaded. Peter complied and sat down on one of the sofas in front of his friend who was sitting on a small stool near the fire-place where he held his maté sessions. He was a well built young man, a bit shorter than Peter; nevertheless his red hair and ingratiating smile won him the favour of most girls, much to Peter’s envy. Since coming down from the Military College he had let his hair grow wild and his new habit of using small rim-less spectacles had begun to give him a deliberate John Lennon-like appearance.
Peter hadn't been able to quite forget the girl he had met that morning and surprised himself by suddenly blurting out: ‘I saw a girl today...’ ending his phrase lamely.
Jimmy didn't show any particular interest, ‘So what?’ he asked despondently.
Peter fumbled with his words. ‘No, I mean, a real girl... I mean, you know what I mean... a girl out of this world.’
‘A smashing girl, what?’
‘No, not that. Smashing is exactly what she is not.’
He seemed quite definitive. Jimmy put the kettle closer to the fire and asked Peter her name. Peter blushed but said nothing. By now Jimmy was wide-awake and most interested.
‘I say! Do you mean you don't know? She must have a name... I mean, do you only know her by her nickname, Betty or something?’
Peter waved his hand impatiently and rushed into his story of how he had seen her at the railway terminal, and had felt overwhelmed by her je ne sais quoi.
‘For instance, when I first saw her walking at the railway station I thought to myself, “She isn’t walking, she’s sailing”, if you see what I mean, and then—’
In a most uncharacteristic fashion, Jimmy, for once, didn't laugh at his friend. He listened seriously and frowned in silence for a minute.
‘And then what?’ he prompted.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Peter blushed again, ‘Something terribly attractive about her, I don’t know how to put it, I mean, something like an aura of loneliness about her, I wonder if you know what—’
‘Loneliness? What the devil do you mean by—’
‘Yes, well, don’t make me say sillier things than usual, but—’
‘Well, come on mate, come out with all you have to say,’ Jimmy delicately prompted, ‘It’s too late now that you’ve given yourself away this much. Wouldn’t it be tristesse?’
They had recently discovered Chopin’s small piece and Jimmy couldn’t resist including any French wordhe had lately taken to reve
riein every chat, anywhere, somehow. But Peter shook his head.
‘No, not that... I don’t think,’ he paused searching for the right words, ‘Uh, let’s say a sort of estrangement from her surroundings, something like an unsolved enigma.’ Peter looked up at Jimmy frustrated with his efforts to put into words a definite yet not easily ascertained mystery. ‘I tell you, I can’t make myself clear, but there was certainly something like... something of a solitude about her... I’m sorry, I mean, it’s not exactly that... but however... Oh hell, I don’t know.’
There was a pause while Jimmy reflected, sucking at his bombilla and looking into the fire.
‘So all you’ve got is that address where she rang a bell?’ he asked.
‘Yup, I'm afraid that's all,’ Peter confessed, beginning to recant as it dawned on him that it all seemed a ridiculous non-story.
‘What's the address?’ asked Jimmy.
Peter told him, surprised at the question. ‘Do you think we could actually find out who lives there?’ he asked with renewed spirit.
‘We might’, said Jimmy, ‘but I don't quite know how we could follow the lead, except by asking its tenant about a young girl with long black hair’
Peter couldn’t refrain a laugh.
‘Who has a penchant for Oscar Wilde and indulges her whim in big spectacles?’
Jimmy frowned at the fire. ‘To be sure, it looks like a lost cause but, who knows? I'll take note of the address just in case someone happens to know who lives there.’ He rang a bell and presently Manuel brought him an agenda where he carefully wrote down the address following Peter's dictation.
‘Are you staying here this weekend?’ he asked after that, ‘Manuel is making soup for lunch with some cold meat.’
Peter nodded, a bit ashamed about not going home to see his mother. And it wasn’t the first time he was shunning her either. But he knew that if he stayed at Jimmy's he would enjoy his weekend one way or another... and anyway he thought it was high time he had a long talk with him about everything.
‘Why did you leave us?’ he suddenly bursted out, ‘I mean, why didn't you say anything about coming down, and then so suddenly, without crying wolf... leaving?’
The question had more or less involuntarily escaped his lips and he repented immediately. Jimmy didn't answer and turned to the fire and his maté, his silent back a testimony to his strong feelings and disturbed spirits.
‘Stop that, will you? I told you I had a headache... Where shall we have lunch?’
Peter went to his room, the guestroom he always slept in, and had a shower while he thought about a girl who read Oscar Wilde. What was the book called? He couldn't remember and made a mental note of looking up Wilde's complete works to single it out and have a go at it. Something Latin, he thought. Some time later Jimmy went out through the front door and walked slowly to the florist shop a block away. He went in with a wide grin, his agenda wide-open and ordered two dozen red roses to be sent to such and such an address. The plump employee behind the counter enquired about the sender's name but was promptly and laughingly informed that no card was to be attached.
When he got back Peter hadn't yet come down, but presently they sat down to a delicious home-made soup in the patio where a big teak table was set under the wisteria. It was a wonderful day and they had a bottle of Cabernet between them while Jimmy asked Peter all about the doings at the Military College, how was so and so, and what had happened with the horse one of the cadets had deliberately let into one of the most hated officer’s bedroom while he was doing a typical unscheduled night patrol.
‘The joke didn’t go down exactly well with him and he poured his anger on us all,’ Peter grimaced remembering that particularly hard week with a double ration of night exercises and what not.
After the dessert Jimmy brought out his guitar and played some old zambas that they sang at the top of their voices, quite a good duet, they thought. Eventually they turned to some old Spanish songs from the civil war with pungent lyrics designed to mock the communists, lyrics that they had learnt from a Fascist uncle of Jimmy's.
Manuel could hear them from the kitchen and looked on with a disapproving frown, being as he was from a family with strong Republican loyalties. But presently he was smiling to himself while he silently contemplated the couple of old friends singing and laughing away while they emptied the bottle of red wine. He had known them since they were very small children and he couldn't get over the fact that they were very nearly full grown men by now. He shook his head. No, he told himself, they will always be children for me, Peter hiding under a bed when his mother came to fetch him and little Jimmy crying because they wouldn't let his friend stay overnight. Manuel sighed at the old platitude as if he were considering it for the first time in his life, how fast life goes by, how speedily we were all getting on. And also the other Spanish truism, not so common nowadays: it's later than you think.