The Foreign Girls. Sergio Olguin
barely used it. The automatic reply set up on her account was the perfect alibi not to keep on top of emails. She didn’t really feel like surfing the internet, either. She’d rather read, or watch movies. She had brought some books with her (Laure Adler’s biography of Marguerite Duras, Murakami’s 1Q84 and Ernest Hemingway’s Complete Short Stories). She had begun 1Q84 with great enthusiasm, but had been losing interest and finally decided to abandon the novel after finding the language used in erotic scenes too medicalized. Perhaps the problem was with the translator, rather than the Japanese author.
Her cousin Severo’s library had stopped expanding sometime in the 1970s but was very good all the same. He had an almost complete collection of Emecé’s Great Novelists series. She was surprised to find Informe Bajo Llave by Marta Lynch, an author she had never thought of reading. She found the novel, with its story of a writer in love with a military man during the dictatorship, both dark and passionate. She had also selected a Ken Follett novel and Graham Greene’s Dr Fischer of Geneva for her vacation reading.30
The DVD collection contained many movies Verónica had never seen. Unlike most of her friends, she wasn’t a cinephile, but she liked going to the cinema and watching the odd movie on television. She wasn’t partial to any particular era or style of movie, so her cousin’s giant screen was able to tempt her with such offerings as All About Eve, that classic story of ambition and treachery. It was the first time she had seen a whole Bette Davis movie, and Verónica thought her the most wonderful actress ever to appear on screen. She also watched All That Jazz (the alphabetical organization of the DVDs guided her choices), GoodFellas, Ginger & Fred, In the Name of the Father and 2001: A Space Odyssey.
She never got up before eleven, and then the first thing Verónica did every morning was make herself coffee with the Nespresso machine. That said, she usually suffered a brief episode of insomnia at around 7 a.m. She woke up feeling anxious, as though some forgotten nightmare had left shards in her brain. Perhaps it was simply that she wasn’t used to the birds’ dawn chorus. She got up, had a piss, smoked a cigarette and read her Duras biography by the light of the bedside lamp (she didn’t want to open the curtains yet). Half an hour later she was fast asleep again, and those extra three hours of sleep were restorative.
Verónica would take her coffee and cigarette to the veranda, along with whatever book she was reading, and stay there until after noon. Then she connected her iPod to the music system speakers, made a sandwich or a salad, opened a beer and put on the television. No news bulletins or gossip programmes. Verónica preferred those reality shows where couples swapped their homes, a chef explored the gastronomic possibilities of insects from Burundi, a badly behaved dog was retrained, a woman with a crane hijacked a car or a policeman transformed himself into a rock star.31
It was always past three by the time she swapped her T-shirt and underwear for a bikini and headed off for the pool. Even though the house was distant from its neighbours and the pool shielded from view, she didn’t dare swim naked. Around the pool, there were some exceptionally comfortable loungers for lying on and drifting off to sleep. She couldn’t read in the sun – had never liked it. Every so often, then, she went to sit in one of the armchairs on the veranda and read more of her book. When it started getting dark she filled a thermos with hot water and made herself a maté. She defrosted some bread, took a jar of dulce de leche out of the fridge and carried the whole lot back to the recliners on the deck. Normally she wouldn’t have allowed herself bread with dulce de leche, but this was a vacation. No sugar in the maté – she liked it bitter.
Verónica could easily spend a couple of hours there. After eating the bread, and when there was no more water in the thermos, she gazed off into the distance. That was the best moment for her. She let her mind empty, stared at the horizon, the distant houses, the mountain greenery. She listened to the sound of birds and parrots as the air filled with a sweet perfume. A light breeze gave her goosebumps. There was nothing in her head. All thoughts, feelings, fears and anxiety completely disappeared. If she had been dead and a part of nature, a jumble of cells scattered through this landscape, she would have felt no different.
It was usually dark by the time Verónica went back into the house. She had a hot shower (she couldn’t stand to wash with cold water, even in summer), dried her hair, which had not been cut for nearly six months, and put on pants and the T-shirt she slept in. With the television or her iPod on in the background, she uncorked a bottle of wine first, then heated up a pizza, put some absolutely delicious frozen Tucumanian 32empanadas in the oven, or boiled some German sausages, which she ate with sauerkraut from a jar. When her supper was ready, she put it on a tray to eat in front of the television, with that night’s choice of movie.
She never drank more than half a bottle of wine. In the study where the spirits were kept, she had searched unsuccessfully for a bottle of Jim Beam. There wasn’t any – no Jim Beam Black and no Jim Beam White. But cousin Severo had a nice selection of British whiskies.
This is no time for dogmatism, Verónica told herself, picking up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. Between Scotch and nothing, I prefer Scotch.
She finished the movie drinking whisky and smoking, then, half asleep, made her way to her room. Sometimes she would read for a bit longer, other times she would collapse straight into the unmade bed. Right away she would fall asleep and keep sleeping until insomnia struck again at seven o’clock the following morning.
That was how Verónica spent the first five days. On the afternoon of the sixth she got bored and decided to leave the house. Coincidentally, her stash of cigarettes was running low.
IV
It was the first time Verónica had got properly dressed since arriving in Tucumán. Her jeans felt rough against her skin. She had very quickly got used to life in the great outdoors. She thought of putting on a shirt she had bought shortly before leaving which had struck her as perfect for the trip but, looking at herself now in the mirror, it seemed very formal. Instead she opted for a DKNY T-shirt in pastel colours and put a light blue jacket over it. The weather was getting cooler. 33
Instead of taking the road by which she had come from San Miguel de Tucumán, Verónica decided to keep driving up through the hills. She had noticed that the route was almost circular and that, if she kept following it, she would arrive at the provincial capital. The aim was to find a bar before she reached the centre of town. She drove along, enjoying the mountain road, absorbing as much as she could of the view without taking her eyes off the winding road, its ups and downs. As the road finally levelled out and became straighter, she passed a neighbourhood of weekend homes. In the distance she saw a sign advertising a bar called Lugh, which seemed to have the vibe of an Irish pub. The availability of a free parking space right in front of it was enough to persuade her to stop outside, although, on closer inspection, it looked less like a happening pub and more like a typical small-town bar.
There weren’t many people in Lugh and very few of the tables were occupied. There was a couple, a group of four men, and a family of two adults and two pre-teens who were sitting at one of the tables outside. She asked the waitress for a double Jim Beam Black and a still mineral water on the side. For a moment she sensed that the four men, who were sitting alone at a table at the other end of the bar, were watching her. The barman also watched her as he poured the bourbon. Verónica pretended not to notice, turning her attention instead to the map of Argentina’s north-east she had brought with her. It was time to relinquish the sepulchral peace of her cousin’s house and continue north. She would pass through Yacanto del Valle, meet that relative of her cousin-in-law; he’d be a charming guy, she’d fall in love with him and spend the rest of her life in the little town.
Admittedly the plan had some flaws: she wanted to reach Humahuaca and couldn’t let a man detain her en route. 34Perhaps she could take him along with her, though. Settle down together in some other little town. But even if this guy turned out to be a perfect combination of Clive Owen, Rocco Siffredi, nineties Arno Klasfeld and Leonard Cohen at any point in his life, it wouldn’t be enough to tempt her away from Villa Crespo, her beloved neighbourhood in Buenos Aires. So she might as well quickly abandon the fantasy of staying in Yacanto del Valle.