Read Online Mapuche by Caryl Férey, Steven Randall - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caryl Férey, Steven Randall
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name and number, asking Prat to contact him right away. Outside the windows, the sky was still threatening. He warmed up some leftover paella, and called the numbers that appeared on MarÃa Campalloâs telephone bill, all of them administrative or professional contacts that were of no help. Same with the shoemakerâs shop, which was closed that day and the followingâthe shoemaker, whose name was Gonzalez, took Mondays off. All that didnât get him very far. Miss Bolivia finally called him back.
Pleasant, the young woman agreed to meet him in an hour at La Trastienda, a nearby bistro where she was appearing to promote her album. She was also a rock singer: Rubén found her profile on Facebook, and saved the information. Outside, a storm was brewing. The sparrows had left the windowsill, driven away by the wind. Rubén left the agency in a downpour.
The covered market in San Telmo did not attract an upscale crowd, with its dilapidated stores displaying antediluvian underwear, its bric-a-brac and shops with dusty ironwork. On the Plaza Dorrego, a few retirees were playing violins to supplement their pensions, which Menem had trimmed. They played on imperturbably, despite the gusts of wind that were whipping the displays of the itinerant vendors and second-hand sellers. Rubén crossed the square, where tourists who had taken refuge under plastic windbreakers were standing around, and found Miss Bolivia at the bar in La Trastienda.
A representative of an ethnic, explosive variety of rap, less than five feet tall and lost in a pair of shorts and big sneakers, Miss Bolivia was surrounded by her fans, half a dozen little lesbian dolls who followed her everywhere. They immediately hit it off. Rubén paid for a round of Coca-Cola. The rapper confirmed that she had called MarÃa the day before regarding the cover of her next album. The little Bolivian had not seen her since the photo shoot ten days earlier, it was the end of vacation, everyone was still a little here and there. In any case, MarÃa Victoria wasnât a close friend, they had just met through work: she didnât know if the photographer had a steady boyfriend, what she did with her nights, if she was interested in politics, astrophysics, or dog grooming.
âAll I can tell you is that MarÃa is hetero,â Miss Bolivia said.
The little dolls giggled behind her. He left the bar with the rapperâs CD.
On badly photocopied flyers, girls with breasts like artillery shells pretended to be hungry for sex: Rubén brushed off a dozen hawkers soliciting on the Plaza Dorrego and went home. As he came in the door, half-soaked, Jo Prat called back on his cell phone.
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*
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Jo Prat had created his rock group in the early 1980s, when the junta had had to make concessions to social pressure.
Los Desaparecidos
had saluted the victory of democracy at the Obras Sanitarias stadium, supported by a vengeful crowd:
Â
Milicos, hijos de puta! Qué es lo que han hecho con los desaparecidos? La guerra sucia, la corrupción son la peor mierda que ha tenido la nación! Que paso con las Malvinas? Esos chicos ya no estan, no podemos olvidarlos y por eso vamos a luchar!
10
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The rest had been less glorious: the group had worked the concert halls and festivals for four years without taking time off, endured stress, lack of privacy, and drug addiction, and finally sank into quarrels about matters of ego and alcoholism. Colombian marijuana and the spangles of the Menem years had ended up disgusting him: quarrels, depression, treatment, Jo Prat had crossed several deserts where heâd dried out over and over. The disappointments and the wounds inflicted by people who the day before were rubbing him the right way had made him taciturn, somber, and bitterââopen-pit coal,â as he said in his songs. Courageously or rashly, at the age of fifty Jo Prat was resuming a solo career with an album and a tour that had begun
Pleasant, the young woman agreed to meet him in an hour at La Trastienda, a nearby bistro where she was appearing to promote her album. She was also a rock singer: Rubén found her profile on Facebook, and saved the information. Outside, a storm was brewing. The sparrows had left the windowsill, driven away by the wind. Rubén left the agency in a downpour.
The covered market in San Telmo did not attract an upscale crowd, with its dilapidated stores displaying antediluvian underwear, its bric-a-brac and shops with dusty ironwork. On the Plaza Dorrego, a few retirees were playing violins to supplement their pensions, which Menem had trimmed. They played on imperturbably, despite the gusts of wind that were whipping the displays of the itinerant vendors and second-hand sellers. Rubén crossed the square, where tourists who had taken refuge under plastic windbreakers were standing around, and found Miss Bolivia at the bar in La Trastienda.
A representative of an ethnic, explosive variety of rap, less than five feet tall and lost in a pair of shorts and big sneakers, Miss Bolivia was surrounded by her fans, half a dozen little lesbian dolls who followed her everywhere. They immediately hit it off. Rubén paid for a round of Coca-Cola. The rapper confirmed that she had called MarÃa the day before regarding the cover of her next album. The little Bolivian had not seen her since the photo shoot ten days earlier, it was the end of vacation, everyone was still a little here and there. In any case, MarÃa Victoria wasnât a close friend, they had just met through work: she didnât know if the photographer had a steady boyfriend, what she did with her nights, if she was interested in politics, astrophysics, or dog grooming.
âAll I can tell you is that MarÃa is hetero,â Miss Bolivia said.
The little dolls giggled behind her. He left the bar with the rapperâs CD.
On badly photocopied flyers, girls with breasts like artillery shells pretended to be hungry for sex: Rubén brushed off a dozen hawkers soliciting on the Plaza Dorrego and went home. As he came in the door, half-soaked, Jo Prat called back on his cell phone.
Â
*
Â
Jo Prat had created his rock group in the early 1980s, when the junta had had to make concessions to social pressure.
Los Desaparecidos
had saluted the victory of democracy at the Obras Sanitarias stadium, supported by a vengeful crowd:
Â
Milicos, hijos de puta! Qué es lo que han hecho con los desaparecidos? La guerra sucia, la corrupción son la peor mierda que ha tenido la nación! Que paso con las Malvinas? Esos chicos ya no estan, no podemos olvidarlos y por eso vamos a luchar!
10
Â
The rest had been less glorious: the group had worked the concert halls and festivals for four years without taking time off, endured stress, lack of privacy, and drug addiction, and finally sank into quarrels about matters of ego and alcoholism. Colombian marijuana and the spangles of the Menem years had ended up disgusting him: quarrels, depression, treatment, Jo Prat had crossed several deserts where heâd dried out over and over. The disappointments and the wounds inflicted by people who the day before were rubbing him the right way had made him taciturn, somber, and bitterââopen-pit coal,â as he said in his songs. Courageously or rashly, at the age of fifty Jo Prat was resuming a solo career with an album and a tour that had begun
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