Collected Fictions

Unworthy

The picture of the city that we carry in our mind is always slightly out of date. The café has degenerated into a bar; the vestibule that allowed us a glimpse of patio and grapevine is now a blurred hallway with an elevator down at the far end. Thus, for years I thought that a certain bookstore, the Librería Buenos Aires, would be awaiting me at a certain point along Calle Talcahuano, but then one morning I discovered that an antiques shop had taken the bookstore's place, and I was told that don Santiago Fischbein, the owner of the bookstore, had died. Fischbein had tended toward the obese; his features are not as clear in my memory as our long conversations are. Firmly yet coolly he would condemn Zionism—it would make the Jew an ordinary man, he said, tied like all other men to a single tradition and a single country, and bereft of the complexities and discords that now enrich him. I recall that he once told me that a new edition of the works of Baruch Spinoza was being prepared, which would banish all that Euclidean apparatus that makes Spinoza's work so difficult to read yet at the same time imparts an illusory sense of rigor to the fantastic theory. Fischbein showed me (though he refused to sell me) a curious copy of Rosenroth's Kabbala Denudata, but my library does contain some books by Ginsburg and Waite that bear Fischbein's seal.

One afternoon when the two of us were alone, he confided to me an episode of his life, and today I can tell it. I will change the occasional detail—as is only to be expected.

I am going to tell you about something (Fischbein began) that I have never told anyone before. My wife Ana doesn't know about this, nor do my closest friends. It happened so many years ago that it no longer feels like my own experience. Maybe you can use it for a story—no doubt you'll endow it with a knife fight or two. I don't know whether I've ever mentioned that I'm from Entre Ríos. I won't tell you that we were Jewish gauchos—there were never any Jewish gauchos. We were merchants and small farmers. I was born in Urdinarrain, which I only barely remember; when my parents came to Buenos Aires, to open a shop, I was just a little boy. The Maldonado* was a few blocks from us, and then came the empty lots.

Carlyle wrote that men need heroes. Grosso's History suggested that San Martin might be a fit object of worship, but all I ever saw in San Martin was a soldier who'd waged war in Chile and who'd now become a bronze statue and given his name to a plaza. Chance dealt me a very different hero, to the misfortune of us both: Francisco Ferrari. This is probably the first time you've ever heard of him.

Our neighborhood was not a bad one, the way Los Corrales and F J Bajo were said to be, but every corner grocery-store-and-bar had its gang of toughs. Ferrari hung out in the one at Triunvirato and Thames. That was where the incident happened that led me to be one of his followers. I'd gone in to buy some yerba for the mate. A stranger with long hair and a mustache came in and ordered a gin.

"Say"—Ferrari's voice was as smooth as silk—"didn't I see you last night at the dance at Juliana's?

Where're you from?"

"San Cristobal," the other man replied.

"Well, I'll tell you for your own good," Ferrari said to him, "you ought to stay up there. There are people in this neighborhood that are liable to give you a hard time."

The man from San Cristóbal left, mustache and all. He may have been no less a man than Ferrari, but he knew he was up against the whole gang.

From that afternoon on, Francisco Ferrari was the hero that my fifteen-year-old heart yearned for. He had black hair and was rather tall, good-looking—handsome in the style of those days. He always wore black. It was a second episode that actually brought us together. I was walking along with my mother and my aunt when we came upon some street toughs, and one of them said loudly to the others:

"Let the old hens through. Meat's too gristly to eat."

I didn't know what to do. But Ferrari, who was just coming out of his house, stepped in. He stood face to face with one who'd spoken, and he said:

"If you boys feel like picking a fight with somebody, why don't you pick a fight with me?"

He walked down the line, slowly, one by one, but nobody said a word.

They knew him. He shrugged his shoulders, waved at us, and walked away. But before he left, he said to me:

"If you're not doing anything later on, stop by the joint." I stood there unnerved and shaken. Sarah, my aunt, issued her verdict: "A gentleman that demands respect for ladies."

To save me from the spot that put me in, my mother corrected her: "I would say, rather, a ruffian who won't allow competition." I don't know how to explain it to you. Today I've carved out a place for myself. I have this bookstore that I enjoy and whose books I read; I have friendships, like ours; I have my wife and children; I've joined the Socialist Party—I'm a good Argentine and a good Jew. I am respected and respectable. The man you see now is almost bald; at that time I was a poor Jewish kid with red hair in a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. People looked askance at me. I tried, as all young fellows do, to be like everyone else. I had started calling myself Santiago* to make the Jacob go away, but there was nothing I could do about the Fischbein. We all come to resemble the image others have of us; I sensed people's contempt for me, and I felt contempt for myself as well. At that time, and especially in that setting, it was important to be brave; I knew myself to be a coward. Women intimidated me; deep down, I was ashamed of my fainthearted chastity. I had no friends my own age.

I didn't go to the corner bar that night. I wish I'd never gone. But little by little I became convinced that the invitation was an order. One Saturday after dinner, I went in.

Ferrari was presiding over one of the tables. I knew the others' faces; there were probably seven, all told. Ferrari was the oldest one there, except for one old man of few words, and weary ones, whose name is the only one that from my memory has not faded: don Elíseo Amaro. A knife scar crossed his face, which was very broad and slack. I learned sometime later that he'd once been in prison for something....

Ferrari had me sit at his left; don Elíseo had to change seats. I was nervous. I was afraid Ferrari would make some allusion to the unfortunate incident of a few days before, you see. But nothing of the sort happened; they talked about women, cards, elections, an itinerant singer that was supposed to come but never did—the things going on in the neighborhood. At first it was hard for them to swallow the little red-haired Jewish kid; they finally did, though, because Ferrari wanted it that way. In spite of their names, which were mostly Italian, they all felt themselves (and were felt to be) native Argentines, even gauchos. Some were teamsters or cart drivers, and there may even have been a butcher; their work with animals gave them a bond with the country people. I suspect that they wished more than anything that they had been born Juan Moreira.*They wound up calling me Little Sheeny,* but there was no contempt in the nickname. I learned from those men how to smoke, and other things.

One night in one of the houses on Calle Junín,* someone asked me if I wasn't a friend of Francisco Ferrari's. I shook my head—I felt I would be almost bragging if I said yes.

The police came into the bar one night and frisked everyone. Several of us were taken to the police station—but they didn't mess with Ferrari. Two weeks later the scene was repeated; this second time, they arrested Ferrari too. He had a dagger in his belt. He may have fallen out of favor with the ward boss.

Today I see Ferrari as a poor kid misguided and betrayed; at the time, in my eyes, a god he was.

Friendship, you know, is as mysterious as love or any other state of this confusion we call life. In fact, I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification. However that may be, the fact was that Francisco Ferrari, the daring, strong Ferrari, felt a sense of friendship for me, contemptible me. I felt he was mistaken, that I was not worthy of that friendship. I tried to avoid him, but he wouldn't let me. My anxiety was made worse by my mother's disapproval; she could not resign herself to my associating with what she called "the riffraff," nor to the fact that I'd begun to ape them. The essential element in the story I am telling you, though, is my relationship with Ferrari, not the sordid events themselves, which I do not now regret. "So long as regret lasts, guilt lasts."

One night I came into the bar to find the old man, don Eliseo, who had taken his place again beside Ferrari, in whispered conversation with him. They were plotting something. From the other end of the table, I thought I heard the name Weidemann—Weidemann's weaving mill stood on the outskirts of the neighborhood. In a few minutes Ferrari and don Eliseo sent me off to have a look around the factory. I was given no explanation, but I was told to pay special attention to the doors. Night was falling when I crossed the Maldonado and the railroad tracks. I recall a few scattered houses, a stand of willow trees, and vacant lots. The factory was new, but it had a solitary, seedy look about it; in my memory now, its reddish color mingles with the sunset. There was a fence around it. Besides the main door, there were two doors in back, facing south, that opened directly into the workshops.

I confess it took me some time to grasp what I imagine you've already grasped. I made my report, which one of the other kids corroborated—his sister worked in the factory. If the gang had missed a Saturday night at the bar, everyone would have remembered, so Ferrari decided the robbery would take place the next Friday. I was to be the lookout. Meanwhile, it was best that no one see us together.

When we were alone together in the street outside, I asked Ferrari whether he really trusted me with this mission.

"Yes," he said. "I know you'll comport yourself like a man."

I slept well that night, and the nights that followed as well. On Wednesday I told my mother I was going downtown to see a new cowboy movie. I put on the best clothes I owned and set off for Calle Moreno.

The trip on the streetcar was a long one. At the police station they made me wait, but finally one of the clerks, a man named Eald or Alt, would see me. I told him I had come to discuss a confidential matter.

He told me I could speak freely. I told him what Ferrari was planning to do. I was astounded that the name was unknown to him; it was another thing when I mentioned don Elíseo.

"Ah!" he said, "he was one of the Uruguayan's gang."

Eald or Alt sent for another officer, one assigned to my precinct, and the two of them consulted. One of them asked me, not with sarcasm:

"Are you making this accusation because you think you're a good citizen? Is that it?"

I didn't feel he'd understand, so I answered.

"Yes, sir. I am a good Argentine."

They told me to carry out the orders the leader of my gang had given me, all except the part about whistling when I saw the police coming. As I was leaving, one of them warned me:

"Be careful. You know what happens to squealers."

Police officers love to show off their Lunfardo,*like fourth graders.

"I hope they kill me," I answered. "It's the best thing that could happen to me."

Beginning early Friday morning and all throughout that day, I was filled with a sense of relief that the day had come at last, and of remorse at feeling no remorse whatever. The hours seemed endless. I barely touched my food. At ten that night we began gathering, less than a block from the factory. There was one of us that didn't come; don Eliseo said there was always one washout. It occurred to me that the blame for what was to happen would fall on the absent man. It was about to rain. I was afraid that one of the others might stay behind with me, but I was left by myself at one of the back doors. Pretty soon the police came, an officer and several patrolmen. They came on foot, for stealth; they had left their horses in a field. Ferrari had forced the factory door, so the police were able to slip inside without a sound. Then I was stunned to hear four shots. There inside, in the darkness, I thought, they were killing each other. Then I saw the police come out with the men in handcuffs. Then two more policemen emerged, dragging the bodies of Francisco Ferrari and don Eliseo Amaro, who'd been shot at point-blank range. In their report the police said the robbers had failed to halt when they were ordered, and that Ferrari and don Eliseo had fired the first shots. I knew that was a lie, because I had never seen either of them with a revolver. The police had taken advantage of the occasion to settle an old score. Days later, I was told that Ferrari tried to get away, but one shot was all it took. The newspapers, of course, made him the hero that perhaps he never was, but that I had dreamed of.

I was arrested with the others, but a short while later they let me go.