EVITA
When Julián Troncoso arrived at the social club on the feast day of San Roque, the town’s patron saint, Don Marciano Amaya was already there with his famous tatús, also called peludos, a kind of hairy armadillo typical of our area.
Generations of gaucho musicians have used the carapace of these little animals to make their charangos and the meat to fill their bellies as they wander through the pampas.
In the little town I come from, with the sweet name of María Susana, the creatures also served a playful purpose. They provided the most popular entertainment on feast days, captivating the entire community, as well as the residents of nearby towns.
All were lured by the excitement of placing bets and fascinated by the animals’ interesting behavior. The armadillo game was a kind of gaucho roulette that involved wooden, box-shaped cubicles arranged in a circle, with hatch doors facing inwards. On top of each box, or in this case, “den,” was a prize and a number. Players would bet for the award they coveted. This could be a box of chocolates, a plaster figurine of a child shepherdess, some kitchen pots, or even a can of peaches in syrup.
In the center of the circle, Don Marciano would place a tatú in a bag, which he shook and turned several times to befuddle the animal before letting it go. The poor disoriented creature would walk dizzy and in a zigzag to one of the lairs to hide. From time to time, it would stop, wobbling like a drunkard, and change course. Then it would double back again, appearing to head toward another den and prompting the spectators to let out shouts of excitement. After several meandering attempts, the tatú would choose a box to enter, and there it stayed, to the delight of the gambler who had bought the corresponding number and would take home not only the prize but a percentage of all bets.
According to Mrs. Troncoso (who years later recalled the confessions of her son and other details provided by the treasurer, the commissioner, the hairdresser, and anyone else who had crossed his tortuous path), that afternoon Julian drifted around looking for a game in which to compete. He tried his hand at the soapy pole, sliding down as soon as he was halfway up. He scorned the sack race because it was strictly for children and rejected the ring race on horseback because he did not have the gauchos’ guts or expertise. For a while, Julián wandered between the various competitions, especially those that attracted girls, hoping to receive even a hint of a smile, un- til he found the official tent set up for the organizers.
Seated in front of a small table, don Gascar, the treasurer, counted the money meant to pay the musicians, the butchers, the steak houses, and the various services hired for the day. It was a considerable sum for such a small town and a fortune for Julián. He discovered an opening behind the tent, and from there, he watched avidly as the bills were being handled. He did not know which part of his soul let decency flee that day. Without even questioning himself, he allowed the demonic pesos to tempt him. He kept watch, waiting for an opportunity. Finally, it came in the form of the beautiful Ofelia, who had been elected the town’s queen for the day.
When the treasurer saw Ophelia’s porcelain doll face peeking inside the tent door, he rose to greet her. Hard to say whether don Gascar lost his head when Ofelia kissed him on his cheek (he maintained later this was not the case), or whether he never imagined the money on the table was within the reach of the hand slipping into the tent through a tiny opening in the back. The fact is that while they were busy exchanging smiles and kisses, and Gascar asked for a mirror to get rid of a smear of lipstick before his wife appeared, Julián Troncoso had already appropriated the wad of bills and disappeared among the partygoers.
His heart was pounding. For one panicked moment, Julian wanted to go back. But a saying (surely heard from those of his cronies who were equally dishonest) rang in his head. “There are two types of thieves. Those who actually are, and those who only dream of being so.” Julián didn’t want to be just a dreamer, what the fuck! he would later confess. What’s more, he planned to give his mother half, or at least a third, or a fraction; because as he once heard a Roma man saying, “It’s shameful to steal and not bring anything home.” And with this bit of folk wisdom in mind, he suppressed the voice of conscience and slipped through the crowd.
Don Gaspar didn’t take long to notice the money had gone missing. His embarrassment at his incompetence overwhelmed and immobilized him for a time until someone told him he had seen the thief—a curly-haired young man—but did not get a look at his face.
Arms raised, the treasurer burst out of the tent, shouting: “Seize the thief, the one with the curly hair!” Julián felt trapped. Why the hell had he ignored his mother that afternoon when she told him to put on his wool cap! He’d had his reasons: in a nutshell, it was his sheer vanity over his abundant wavy hair. Now, pride was his downfall. He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to straighten it and praying that many other men had the same type of curls. He strode toward the club entrance, and when he saw don Marciano unloading the tatús—the other hairy creatures— along with the boxes and prizes, he climbed into the back of the truck. It was an excellent place to hide and sweat it out. The armadillo’s owner failed to hear the treasurer’s alarmed announcement over the noise of the rockets and firecrackers.
”Let me give you a hand, don Marciano,” Julián said.
The man accepted with pleasure since getting on and off the vehicle was hard on his knees. He asked Julián to start with the prizes while he placed the boxes on the paved area assigned to the game. Among the trophies was a bust of Evita Perón, and when he saw it, a light bulb went off in Julián’s head. It was a small bust with a beautiful head and hollow, as these statuettes often are. Julián’s, on the other hand, was brimming with ideas. In the back of the trailer, where no one would see him, he turned the bust over, in- serted the roll of money, and pushed it through the neck until it reached the very center of the First Lady’s worthy head. Adrenaline had made him enviably dexterous. He quickly plugged the hole at the neckline with a bit of mud, which was by no means lacking in don Marciano’s truck, until he had properly and discreetly sealed the opening.
No one would ever suspect the head of the illustrious Evita held more than empty air. Julián’s stroke of genius not only freed him from the incriminating evidence in the event anyone searched him, but he could also keep an eye on where he had stashed the loot. He planned to bet repeatedly on the den where the statuette was placed until one of the furry creatures went inside. A small investment for an enormous profit! He unloaded the rest of the prizes—a frying pan, a mason jar, a crucifix, a tea set, and other household items. He put the beloved bust in box number fifteen, which meant “the pretty girl” in Argentine bingo jargon, and went on with his volunteer work.
Meanwhile, the police were busy. They searched several curly-haired suspects, interrogated others, and detained a few straight-haired individuals from other neighboring towns who, as outsiders, looked suspicious. They didn’t bother with anyone who was bald or had a few droopy strands.
Don Marciano was about to start the game, and Julián was getting out his money to bet on number fifteen when a policeman spotted his curly head.
”Hey, you there, yes, you, come here, we have orders to search you.”
He took Julián to another tent temporarily serving as a police post and made him wait with the other curly-haired young men. Julián was a bundle of nerves because he knew that the tatús game would begin at any moment, and someone was sure to bet on his prize.
”Chief, don’t keep me waiting here! I have to meet up with don Marciano!” he complained.
”Ah, so the young man is in a hurry,” an officer scoffed. Half an hour went by before it was Julián’s turn. They looked him over, made him empty his pockets, and unceremoniously patted him down.
”Get your paws out of there, asshole; that wad you’re playing with is mine!” Julián exclaimed when a young officer put his hand inside his pants.
”Shut your mouth if you don’t want to go to jail!” the commissioner interjected. Of course, the search was fruitless. There was- n’t even a whiff of money, only the pungent stench of armadillo pee.
”If we find out you passed the money to someone else, we’ll lock you in the dungeon for a hundred years! If you confess, it’ll go better for you.” They slapped him, nothing serious, just routine. When the police were finally satisfied, they let Julián go.
The lights fanned over the dance floor, and the orchestra’s music drowned out the crowd’s jum- bled murmuring. Julián sprinted to the armadillo site. Don Marciano’s wife, doña María, told him that someone had already bet on number 15 and won the statuette. Julian Troncoso let loose a howl. “Who? Who won it?” He asked in a rage.
Don Marciano told him it had been Mrs. Dalmastro, and the lady was long gone.
ulián stumbled past the tatús in their cages and ran the five blocks to the Dalmastro house. There were no lights to be seen through the window, so he assumed that the woman was sleeping. He did not dare call out because that would draw suspicion, so he decided to come back the next day. Knowing where his beloved bust had ended up was a great consolation. And, to avoid further problems, he headed home, but not before passing through the plaza to greet the full-sized statue of the late Eva Perón. A ray of moonlight shone on the beatific face of his benefactress, who, from her pedestal, cast a marble gaze on the children’s swings nearby. Julián asked her to justify what he had done, if not forgive. Was she not on the side of the poor?
That night he prayed fervently in front of a portrait of the First Lady that graced his room’s wall. As his mother would later say, sometimes he confused Evita with the Virgin Mary, or with the girl next door with whom he was a bit in love.
The next day, the clear morning air made Julián reconsider his behavior. Scrutinizing his conscience lasted no longer than the bird in the courtyard’s ceibo tree warble. He went to Doña Dalmastro’s house to offer to buy the figurine, his excuse being that his mother, who was ill, was devoted to the late Evita, and he thought that per- haps Evita’s presence would help her recover.
The woman’s maid informed him that the Lady had left on the six o’clock bus for the city and would be staying there for a month.
He had not planned for this. Those were days of extreme anxiety for Julián. He worked as a painter’s assistant, and his wages, although not bad, were insufficient for his ambitions. In the evening, he would go to the plaza to greet the First Lady.
One Sunday afternoon, he found her de- throned—the magnificent statue had been removed, and her mortal remains scattered at the foot of the pedestal on top of which someone had set up a vase of wild daisies. Julián flew to the café where a bunch of men had gathered to play billiards. “Vandalism! Somebody destroyed Evita’s statue!” he shouted from the doorway.
”What vandalism do you think you’re talking about, you idiot? Do you live on the moon? Didn’t you hear the news on the radio? Don’t you know about El Hombre? They gave him the boot!”
He walked out of the cafe like a zombie. Politics mattered little or nothing to him, but this catastrophe had spilled over into his private life. It seemed an omen of the worst kind. He ran to the barber, who knew all about it and confirmed that the General had fled to Caracas. The military now ruled the country.
”And that’s why they destroyed the statue of Evita?”
”Not only that, my man. The military’s order is to confiscate all her books in the school library.” Two tears ran down Julián’s face. He still lovingly preserved his copy of Evita’s book, La Razón de mi vida (The Reason of my Life), which had been mandatory reading in elementary school. Not long ago, as a teenager, he had read phrases such as “Evita is the spiritual head of the nation” or “Evita loves us.” He remembered the day the First Lady died, in that terrible leap year of 1952, when he had been part of the procession carrying the flaming torch. With mourning ribbons on the sleeves of their unusually white uniforms, school children scattered flowers all along the way from their school to the cemetery. I was a little girl at the time, but I also vaguely remember how I followed the parade perched on my uncle’s shoulders on that day.
In September 1955, three years after that sad, mournful day, a coup d’état ended what some had considered a long dictatorship and others a golden age. The town’s people, like those elsewhere, were of divided loyalty. Some rejoiced at the political changeover, remembering the shameful occasions when Perón and Evita passed by the train station, throwing money in a gesture— so people whispered — of pure demagoguery. Others were saddened, among them the wisest women (Evita had given them the vote) and teachers (Perón had favored them). But on the day Julián was obliged to face political reality, people said nothing. The shock had silenced them.
What a bad omen for Julián! Yet another symptom of the disorder that had always plagued his short life.
Some days later, the owner of the statuette of the deposed Lady returned from the city, and Julián, heart pounding with pure joy, wasted no time in going to her house.
“Doña Dalmastro, nice to see you…er…I wanted to know if you would sell me the statue you won at the tatús game, now that it’s worth nothing…because my grandmother is quite attached…”
”Son, you’re too late. Today I gave the bust to the gardener to bury it because I didn’t dare throw it away myself. I don’t want to get in trouble with the law either because, you know…” she said, lowering her voice, “we’re not even allowed to mention her name or that of her beloved husband. I don’t know where the gardener buried her. Ask him!”
Julián found the man in the woman’s garden and inquired about the resting place of the na- tion’s former spiritual head, since he, too, didn’t want to say her name aloud.
”The Eva bust, you mean? I gave it to Bizca. He’s very sentimental, you know, and he said he would keep it in the closet.”
The trouble was that Bizca was a hopeless drunk, and sentimentality was beside the point when he needed a few pesos for a drink. So Julián was not surprised when he found him in the bar drinking gin, which the bar owner had diluted with water “to prevent him from getting drunk,” as he put it. “To cheat the customer,” others might have argued.
”Sorry, buddy, I don’t have it. I sold it to the húngaros,” said Bizca.
”You are a traitor to our country!” Julián yelled at him.
”Hold your tongue, asshole, if you don’t want to be locked up as a counterrevolutionary. And if you want to buy your precious bust from the húngaros, you better hurry up because they are already dismantling their camp.”
Julián arrived, almost out of breath, just as the Roma’s caravan—loaded with women, children, dogs, tents, and gear—could be seen lurching down the dusty road that cut through the yellow wheat fields like a scar.
He ran after the last truck, waving his arms and calling, “Wait, wait, guys, I have an offer for the Eva statuette …!”
He knew they didn’t care about patriotic senti- ments since they had no patria, no country. Through a cloud of dust, he saw someone lift the tarp that covered the trailer. A face appeared, and the man said something in an incomprehensible language, tinged with words in Spanish, and shouted the typical Argentine insult, “boludo!”
Julián responded by cursing Roma’s mother, and the vehicle continued its way, bellowing like a bull.
It was a hard blow. From that day on, Julián spent months wandering from one Roma’s camp to another on the outskirts of neighboring towns in search of his statuette. They all greeted him with “Boludo!” For some reason, these itinerant foreigners who roamed our homeland had taken a liking to this popular national idiom. Today we would call it “cultural appropriation.”
A year passed without anything remarkable happening for Julián or the town. The only change was that atop the pedestal Evita Perón once occupied, the authorities placed a sculpture of a mother with a baby latched onto her breast. The next day the priest requisitioned a handkerchief to cover up this indecency.
One fine day, Julián happened to be in a mechanical workshop in another town―and that’s when he saw her. His heart skipped a beat. Someone had painted a mustache on the beautiful porcelain face and was using the bust as a paperweight. He strolled over, asked permission to take a closer look, lifted her, reached inside, and checked that the dried-out mud plug was still there. When he shook her, the muffled sound of something inside told him that his treasure was unharmed. He offered all the money he had in his pocket, about twenty pesos. The mechanic, who was dealing with a bolted nut, shrugged and mo- tioned him to put the money on the counter and take the bust away.
He couldn’t wait. On a bench in a nearby park, the bust’s new owner gave himself over to a cleaning and rescue operation. With a bit of water and long tweezers (surreptitiously taken from the mechanic’s office and, as he justified to himself, paid for in part with the twenty pesos), Julian poked around until he loosened the plug. He then inserted the tweezers and pulled out the roll of money. It was intact! Clean, undefiled, not even a moth bite!
”God has finally remembered me!” he thought. He pulled off the rubber band, spread the bills on the bench—it was a sunny, windless day—and smoothed them out with the palm of his hand, counting, contemplating, and recounting them while making plans for how to spend or perhaps invest, all that money. The most exciting thing was that on each of the bills, the sweet face of the Spiritual Chief of the Argentines smiled … Eva … Evita … the First Lady.
First Lady? It only took a moment for him to grasp. The Argentine peso had been revamped and revalued. Three zeros had been dropped due to inflation and a new-minted currency stamped with the profile of a national military hero with a blameless past. The notes displaying Eva Duarte were no longer in circulation, and he recalled in dismay that the date for exchanging them at the bank had long expired.
Julián gathered the bills, lit a match, and threw it onto the useless pile of papers, making a tremendous fire on the bench, the only place where that money could be deposited. He watched as the smoke curled up between the leaves of the trees, consuming the old pesos that wriggled like worms.
And in the best Gongoresque style, everything turned to smoke, to shadow, to dust, to nothing.
Rita Sturam Wirkala
This story is part of the memoir “Leap years. Five Stories from Argentina”
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Rita Wirkala 