Read Online Holy City by Guillermo Orsi - Free Book Online Page A

and jacaranda trees, there are no noisy avenues near the house and the barbecue smells delicious.
    â€œJust look at that moon.” Bértola points up through the leaves of the chinaberry that is putting on its nightly display above the terrace, creating tiny shadow figures. The moon he is talking about is sitting on the highest branch. “It’s like living in the country,” he says enthusiastically. “But what brings you here? I know, an oil check. I can check the level alright, but changing it takes years. And remember, it’s Saturday.”
    â€œYou talk like a supreme-court judge,” protests Verónica. “You said you lived with a dog, so where is he?”
    From a corner of the roof terrace it is the enormous dog that replies rather than his master. He has been so focused on the barbecue he has hardly even wagged his tail since Verónica appeared.
    â€œLiving on your own is complicated,” says Bértola. “Most people in cities live alone. They say that’s fine, that it’s their choice. Crap.” He turns the meat over and carefully pricks the intestines, adding, “People say that to protect themselves. First came fire, then the wheel and then muuuuch later, in the twentieth century and above all in the well-off parts of Buenos Aires, the word.”
    â€œThe paid-for word, you mean.”
    â€œThat’s how I make my living, Verónica. But at least when I write areport or a clinical record I don’t end them with bombastic stuff like ‘in accordance with the law.’ The meat’s going to dry out if I leave it much longer. Do you like it juicy?”
    He stabs a piece of spare rib, lifts it and holds it under the light so that she can decide if it is juicy enough for her. Verónica suggests they start with the sausages and intestines; she is a lawyer and so follows written legal advice that does not leave much room for improvisation. Although strictly speaking there is no law to cover this eventuality, precedents suggest it is offal first.
    â€œAfter that, the meat and salads,” she concludes her speech.
    Bértola again laments the fact that he lives on his own. He does not know how to make a salad. He always ruins them by smothering them in oil and vinegar, he does not know how to wash a lettuce. Hygiene is a female thing, he says: it’s woman’s work. That’s why he’s sorry his wife left him: because of the salads.
    They sit down to eat, still a little uncomfortable but beginning to get used to each other. A roof terrace in Villa del Parque is not the kind of place where foreign tourists eat their barbecued meat. They get taken to cattle ranches or restaurants where steak is paid for in hard currency. There are cattle and gauchos (as plastic as their credit cards), sometimes even “traditional”
malambo
dances and “typical”
boleadores
whirled round the gauchos’ heads. A roof terrace in Villa del Parque can offer none of that. It is, though, a good place for a psychoanalyst and a lawyer who hardly know each other, who are work associates more than friends, to begin to glimpse each other’s concerns, to wait patiently for the secrets to be revealed.
    â€œHis name is Mauser,” says Bértola, when Verónica jumps as the dog’s tail tickles her shins under the table. “He’s happy. He’s always happy when there is a barbecue. He dreams of the bones before he starts to chew them.”
    Once she has explained what Pacogoya means in her life (little more than nothing: a good dinner once in a while, love making thatis not always so good), Verónica tells him what happened the previous night.
    â€œI live waiting for a skunk I happen to be in love with to reappear,” she says, “but the only people knocking on my door are ghouls like Pacogoya and Miss Bolivia.”
    â€œThen don’t open your door. The early hours are no time to go visiting. Nobody