Read Online The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán - Free Book Online

disappears inside the corrugated iron door of a rusty store. Inside it’s as if, as the tango says, twenty years are nothing: it’s full of antiquated implements and useless gadgets, all of them abandoned to the dust, dirt and rats. Alma climbs an iron spiral staircase. Waiting for her on the floor above is a wretched room and a white-haired man who looks older than his years. His nervous twitches abate when he sees her. They gaze at each other. Smile. He flings himself on her. Alma’s face is perfectly calm, she even smiles a little while the man is stripping her roughly to the waist, working himself up into a frenzy.
    ‘You can’t live without my prick, can you? Can’t live without little orphan Norman? There’s nothing like Norman’s little prick, is there? Circumcised like a baby’s dummy, or a big red strawberry. Is there?’
    Alma lets him push her over to the camp bed, stretches out on it and opens her legs when Norman frantically leaps on top of her, unzips his trousers and starts thrusting at her. Despite this sexual assault, Alma’s face loses none of its calm self-control, as if she were doing him a favour. Five thrusts, five groans, and it’s over. Alma seems to be counting silently. After the fifth groan, the man’s body collapses on top of hers. Alma strokes his head and tries to look him in the eyes.
    ‘You were much better today, Norman.’
    Norman sits up on the side of the bed. He smiles, pleased with himself. Alma, like a charcoal sketch, encourages him.
    ‘How many times did I manage?’
    ‘Five.’
    ‘I’m getting better. The last time it was three. D’you remember the good old days? No, you weren’t my partner then, but d’you remember what they used to call me?’
    ‘The insatiable ferret.’
    ‘I’ll be one again some day’
    Alma strokes his hair again.
    ‘You’re good because you don’t put me off. But if a woman starts shouting before I can get it up – “Give it to me, do it” – and to shake about like a foodmixer, I can’t do it, Alma. I used to fuck anyone. Half an hour at least. Half an hour without stopping.’
    ‘What about Raúl?’
    Norman shrinks from her, as if the question has brought him up short.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    Alma is no longer calm – she’s furious and indignant.
    ‘What d’you mean, you don’t know?’
    Norman points to a cage where a laboratory rat is moving nervously about.
    ‘That’s all that’s left of him.’
    ‘What are you talking about, you idiot?’
    ‘He brought the rat with him when he came, and when he disappeared again yesterday, he left it. I brought it here from the theatre.’
    Alma pushes Norman away and stands up. She grabs a blanket to cover her body. Her stockings are down round her ankles like a pair of socks, and her bra is round her midriff. She swaps the blanket for a sheet.
    ‘You’re an asshole, a bastard, an irresponsible lout!’
    ‘That’s the way I am. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
    ‘How long ago did he leave?’
    ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t watch over him all day long. I couldn’t stand any more monologues about rats, about Berta, or Eva María. He’s a grown man. A free man.’
    ‘You’re meant to be grown-up too. And we’re all meant to be free. Didn’t you stop to ask yourself where he got that rat? Can’t you guess? Can’t you see he’s in danger? When did he leave? Where did he go?’
    ‘About four days ago.’
    ‘Four days! Why didn’t you tell me?’
    ‘Who do you think you are? Still the one giving orders?’
    The man bursts into tears.
    ‘I don’t know. I was sick of him, of myself, of all of us. He said some very strange things. That he’d been back to his laboratory, that some men on motorcycles were following him, that they’d tried to run him over or push him into the river. That he was really close to finding out where Eva María is. I thought he was raving. I had to go out to audition an actor. I couldn’t miss it, it was the first dress rehearsal. I