The Buenos Aires Quintet

The Buenos Aires Quintet Read Free

Book: The Buenos Aires Quintet Read Free
Author: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán
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breed of Argentines.’
    He puts his hand into a black briefcase and pulls out a plastic bag, which he gives to Carvalho. ‘D’you know what this is?’
    Carvalho studies the contents of the bag. ‘I can hardly believe it, but they look to me like lupin seeds.’
    ‘That’s right. They’re Lupinus albus. The basis of future human nutrition.’
    ‘We’re all going to eat lupins? In Spain, we soak them and eat them with salt. They’re food to nibble at, for kids or at parties or when you go to the circus.’
    ‘No, it’s the cows that’ll eat the lupins, then we eat the cows. Up to now we’ve had all the grass we need to feed all the cows in the world, but recent scientific studies suggest that lupins are the perfect cow feed for the future. Everyone used to think that lupins, and especially the leaves, were harmful to cattle. D’you know why?’
    ‘No idea.’
    ‘Because bitter lupins contain a poisonous alkaloid, which is why they were used for fertilizers. But now we’ve produced lupins without the alkaloid. Cows eat them like cakes. Yum, yum! And Argentines are at the cutting edge of research into animal behaviour and nutrition. I’m on my way to see deputy minister Güelmes, who’s one of the Argentine politicians most interested in the idea. Have you heard of him?’
    ‘My knowledge of Argentine politics is strictly limited.’
    By now, the man’s bag is back in his briefcase. Carvalho pretends to doze off. The fat man goes on with what is now a monologue, driven by an irrepressible inner enthusiasm. As Carvalho is drifting into a real alcoholic sleep, his uncle’s face appears and asks him: ‘What d’you know about Buenos Aires?’
    ‘Maradona, disappeared, tangos.’
    ‘And scroungers, lots of scroungers. If a million Argentines weren’t such thieves, the rest would be millionaires. And scientists, brilliant ones. It used to be one of the most educated countries in the world. My son was brilliant. Is brilliant. Things didn’t go badly for me, nephew, it wasn’t politics that took me there, it was hunger. Before our Civil War. I made a fortune. I made my son a scientist, a brilliant one. But my daughter-in-law got mixed up in politics. I managed to get my boy out of it, but I was too late to help her and their daughter. The earth swallowed them up. Disappeared. They say Buenos Aires is built on the disappeared. Lots of the men who worked on 9 de Julio Avenue, the widest in the world, are buried under its asphalt. A lot more disappeared when they built the metro system, the “underground” as they call it. Disappeared. It’s a kind of destiny there. I managed to get your cousin Raúl out to Spain, hoping he’d forget. Then one fine day he escaped, went back. Don’t worry about not knowing Buenos Aires. You’ll be met at the airport by Alma, my son’s sister-in-law. She’s his wife’s sister: she went through the whole business as well; she was married to a Catalan, or rather a Catalan’s son, a psychiatrist. A shrink who lives in Villa Freud. You’ll find out what that means. She’ll help you, though she doesn’t much like Spaniards.’
    The fat man has trouble getting his seatbelt undone, standing up and moving out into the aisle of the plane. Carvalho helps him get his hand luggage down. Several stickers on a bag proclaim ‘The New Spirit of Argentina’. He wheezes off ahead of Carvalho, who loses sight of him in the process of picking up his baggage and going through immigration. He opens his passport at the back page with his photo, but the cop prefers to shut it and open it again for himself. He flicks through the pages, looks carefully at some stamps, then peers up at Carvalho. ‘Pepe?’
    ‘Yes, that’s me. Do you know me?’
    The cop points at the name written in the passport. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone called Pepe in a passport.’
    ‘That’s because I’m a private detective.’
    The policeman says ‘Ah!’ as if that settled the matter, and

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