All Men Are Liars Read online

  The old man picked up a Roman soldier from a threadbare chair and offered the seat to Bevilacqua, then sat down opposite him, on a large painted chest. Apparently the old man (whose name, by the way, was Spengler) then launched into a long and seductive paean to the art of puppetry, in which creatures made of wood and felt enacted before an audience a more solid reality than that of our own illusory world. Spengler said that he took his theater to schools and parks, factories and prisons, with the aim of telling what he called “truthful lies.” “I am a missionary from the world of storytelling,” he told Bevilacqua. And giving the boy a little slap on the thigh (Bevilacqua would have judged it innocent, but I’m not so sure), he began pulling on different strings, leaping over the furniture, and making mysterious noises.

  As you can imagine, Bevilacqua was fascinated by all those tiny arms and bodies, noses and eyes. At twelve or thirteen, we do not want anything to be strange, and yet strange things hold an irresistible attraction for us. They are appealing and terrifying at the same time. Bevilacqua was torn between going and staying. Just then, a girl—a woman, almost—came into the room and sat down at one of those cluttered tables to mend some of the puppets. Later Bevilacqua learned that her name was Loredana.

  Bevilacqua began to visit Don Spengler at all times of the day: as the years passed, he never lost that disagreeable habit of thinking that other people should tailor their day around his. He went to see him before school or in the evening, when Señora Bevilacqua was busy at La Bergamota. I imagine that the old man must have felt flattered: Bevilacqua was already blessed, it seems, with that seductive expression bestowed on him by hooded eyes, pronounced eyebrows, and black irises. Spengler was not, however, the one he came to see, much though he had grown fond of the mustachioed old man. He came looking for Loredana, who barely even spoke to him as she bent over her mending, in a low-cut top, crossing her legs in such a way as to reveal one thigh, as shiny as an apple. He would find Spengler sleeping in an armchair with a book, or making his marionettes dance frenetically on an improvised dais, or staring out of the window, lost in thought, or painting, with brisk brushstrokes, a face or some scenery. Don Spengler seemed to move from an almost catatonic state to one of febrile activity, with no intermediate stages, and Bevilacqua used to make bets with himself about how he would find the old man on a given morning or afternoon.

  Loredana was not always at home, but the mere fact of knowing that she had been there a few hours earlier or that she would be coming later—when he would already have gone—filled Bevilacqua at once with a sensation of anguish and dreaminess. When he did see her, he felt that Loredana handled the soldiers and princesses with the skill of a goddess. On the lips of Bevilacqua, that word was no mere hyperbole.

  Now, if it had been up to me to invent a life for Bevilacqua, I would have gone about it differently. Knowing how he was when he arrived in Spain—knowing, above all, about his tragic end and the terrible events that drove him to it—I would have furnished him with a more passionate childhood: skirmishes with the underworld, affairs with older women, some petty criminality which would later, toward the end of his adolescence, evolve into revolutionary action. Because, the way he himself told it, violence, frenzied love, politics (the kind which landed him in prison) played no more than chance roles in his life, were nothing but accidents of fate. Bevilacqua was cut out for observation, contemplation, like that traveler of Baudelaire’s who cares about nobody—neither family nor friends—but only for the clouds: les merveilleux nuages.

  It’s my belief, Terradillos, that this contemplative vocation fostered his talent as a storyteller, for detailing trivialities with a pornographer’s gusto. For example, Spengler only mattered as a preamble to Loredana, yet Bevilacqua claimed to remember the old man’s entire life story.

  It seems that Spengler had been born in Stuttgart, not far from the house of the philosopher Hegel (who had even exchanged greetings with his grandfather once or twice). His family was in the watchmaking business, and the regular ticking of clocks had inured them to the passage of time. Spengler’s father was a devout but cantankerous Jew who spent his days ranting and raving about the iniquity of his God. He had devoted himself to clocks out of respect for the great mechanisms of Time, but without actually conceding them his approval. It struck him as scandalous that God should have invented a single, continuous, eternal time while simultaneously apportioning to men short little spans in which—adding insult to injury—there was nothing for them but frustration and suffering. His wife, who was dumpy and dumb, smiled all day and night while he, reddening with rage, bent over his wheels and cogs. “A man must keep on working,” he muttered, “even when his employer is a madman.”

  At the age of twelve, Spengler was apprenticed to a puppet maker, and never saw his parents again. War hounded him to the edge of the Atlantic. There his master, too exhausted to attempt the journey to the New World, gave him a trunk full of puppets together with a little money from his savings, and saw him off on a boat loaded with Syrians who had little clue where they were going. That was how he arrived in Buenos Aires, one autumn afternoon, thousands of years ago. He wanted Bevilacqua to know about his background, so as to understand that all human lives are, in the end, the same. “Directionless, difficult, incomprehensible,” he told the boy, gently slapping his leg. “But the same.”

  I am, on principle, totally against giving psychological explanations, but—if you want my opinion—I do believe Bevilacqua felt that Spengler’s presence settled, in some way, the debt of his own parents’ death. He decided to devote his life to puppets. He would learn the necessary skills from the old man, and he would be with Loredana. Señora Bevilacqua (who was beginning to lose all notion of time and to forget people’s names and faces) was persuaded to approve his increasingly long sessions at Spengler’s place. Finally came the memorable day when the old man allowed him to work one of the puppets in public. Even years later, Bevilacqua could still sing to himself the music that was played when the curtain went up.

  Let’s talk about Loredana now. How often had he seen her? Half a dozen times at Spengler’s, perhaps a few more in the street and at the little theater. From those snippets, he had assembled an entire physical person. The English talk about “falling in love”; Bevilacqua would never have used such an expression. For Bevilacqua, to become enamored of someone was no accident, no happenstance: to love was to be converted, to acquire a new state of being. You did not fall in it, you let it fall over you, like rain, soaking you to the marrow. I don’t know if Loredana realized that; I suppose she did—women know about these things. Loredana never gave him any encouragement. She was impeccably polite, allowing him to walk her to the bus stop, or to give her a box of candied fruit or a tin of La Gioconda membrillo stolen from his grandmother’s shop—but she never confided in him or cracked a joke. Bevilacqua learned nothing of her life beyond Spengler’s workshop, on the other side of the curtain, except that Spengler had trained her himself and that her surname was Finnish.

  A little before Christmas 1956, Don Spengler was invited by a producer of variety shows to put on a performance in Santiago, in Chile. Loredana, of course, was going to go with him. Bevilacqua fell into despair. I don’t think he had told anyone about his feelings. He could never have confided such a thing to Señora Bevilacqua, and—as far as I know—he had only one real friend at school. All reality was reduced now to this one single fact and its consequences: Loredana was going. He would be left alone. He could not live without her. He decided to follow her.

  You can imagine my surprise when he told me about this adolescent escapade. Nobody—certainly not I—would have thought of Bevilacqua as an impulsive person, a man of action. We used to talk (or rather he talked while I, as usual, kept an eye on my watch) about sudden and rash acts, the kind that people associate with a Latin temperament. Bevilacqua praised them. Not for him the cool, premeditated decision, but rather the one that strikes suddenly, like lightning. I think I told you before that I t
hought of Bevilacqua as very much a northern Italian—very rational. Perhaps he hoped that by telling me about this adventure, he would show me that he was not like that at all.

  The greatest difficulty was crossing the border with Chile. He knew that his identity card would be enough, but he also knew that as a minor, he would need his grandmother’s authorization—and that she would never give it. The solution was to obtain a document from someone older. Reasoning that identity photographs are rarely recognizable, he persuaded Babar to get hold of his older brother’s card—with the excuse that he wanted to get into some particularly smutty cabaret—and lend it to him for a few days. To get money, he sold his Grundig tape recorder to a neighbor’s daughter. He bought a train ticket, packed a few scant belongings, and left a note for Señora Bevilacqua very early one morning, in which he explained that he wanted to go out into the world and make his fortune, on his own and without asking anyone’s help. He hinted that his adventure might take him to Patagonia—which, for Señora Bevilacqua, had a reputation as fearsome as the Amazon jungle.

  I don’t know if you agree with me, Terradillos, but there is something magical about train journeys. Boarding a train at the start of a new life (or what Bevilacqua imagined to be a new life) must have felt like an epic moment for the boy. He noticed every detail, as if it were already passing into history: the cherry-colored upholstery, the long-haired guard, a group of boys playing guitar. Everything was important, because each moment (so Bevilacqua told himself) was now part of his future.

  He journeyed across a monotonous landscape for one interminable day; to Bevilacqua it seemed the necessary preparation for a great victory. When the mountains appeared, they confirmed his expectations. Before night fell, the train arrived at a little border station, tucked between stone walls and dirty snow. While they waited for the engine to be brought down the other side, Bevilacqua and the other passengers got out to stretch their legs on the platform, which was crowded half with Argentinians, half with Chileans. The Oriental-looking officer cast an indifferent glance at Bevilacqua’s apocryphal document. Years later, Bevilacqua would comment, as if it had just dawned on him: “I have walked on the Andes.” The rest of the journey took place in darkness.

  When he arrived in Santiago, it was after midnight. He must have fallen asleep because, when he got down from the train, the other passengers had disappeared. The station was deserted, and an old man was sweeping the platforms. As he emerged onto the street, he saw the gates being locked.

  He had heard Don Spengler mention the name of the theater where they were going to perform, and asked a taxi driver if it was far away. He set off walking. It was dark, of course, but finally he picked out the lights of the Gran Hotel O’Higgins, on the other side of the road. He went in and asked the receptionist if this was where Don Spengler and his troupe were staying. The receptionist said that it was. Bevilacqua asked to be put through to Loredana’s room.

  Let me say that when Bevilacqua claimed not to be a writer, there was some truth in that. He lacked the inventive spark necessary for fiction, that disregard for what is and that excitement about what could be. He didn’t imagine: he saw and documented things, which is not the same. Proust goes looking for details a posteriori, because he wants the past to confirm what he is inventing in the present. Not so Bevilacqua: he was interested in the a priori, in facts as pure narration, with no gloss, no commentary.

  I don’t know what he was expecting. That his beloved would cry out with joy, run downstairs, and hurl herself into the arms of her intrepid Hannibal? That she would invite him into her bed, share the night with him as a reward for his bravery? I know that the last thing he expected was absolute silence. He heard the receiver being picked up, some sleepy breathing; he heard the echo of his own voice saying, “Loredana, it’s me, Alejandro”; he heard the receiver being put down. Still holding the handset, he asked the receptionist if there was a free room for the night. As the man got him a key, Bevilacqua heard himself observe that it was the first time he had ever stayed in a hotel.

  That unbearable night finally reached its end. Bevilacqua had not slept a wink, as far as he remembered, but when he saw that it was light outside, he got up and went downstairs. Don Spengler was in the restaurant room, having breakfast on his own. Loredana had woken him and told him about what had happened. She had also told him to send Bevilacqua back to Buenos Aires that same morning. Bevilacqua refused. He had left everything to be with her. He would follow her wherever she went. He would love her in silence, from the shadows. He couldn’t go back.

  Don Spengler tried to persuade him. He repeated his lecture on reality and our obligation to accept it. But for Bevilacqua, the fiction, the lie, was Loredana’s absence; the truth consisted in her accepting his presence, his act of love, his very self.

  At that moment, Loredana entered the room. It took him a minute to recognize her. This Chilean Loredana was different. The one from his memory, his yearning, was taller, darker, marked by absence and desire. In every waking hour, every sleeping minute, he had felt Loredana’s physical presence, from the brush of her hair against his arm to the scent of apples exuded by her skin under her clothes. This woman who came into the restaurant room was different: slightly round-shouldered, haggard, rather graceless in her movements. As though to confirm her presence, Bevilacqua tried to grasp her arm. Loredana avoided him, and was about to sit down when Bevilacqua once more put his hand out toward her. Loredana slapped him. Then Don Spengler got to his feet and ordered the girl to go to her room. Her suitor’s nose was bleeding. Don Spengler handed him a napkin to wipe it. Bevilacqua turned to catch a final glimpse of her, but Loredana had already gone.

  That very afternoon he returned to Buenos Aires, this time by plane, courtesy of Don Spengler. At the border, an official pored over his document, but let him through without saying anything. I don’t know what explanation he may have given his grandmother. Years later, Bevilacqua still wished he could ask Loredana why she had not spoken to him. It was something that he never came to understand.

  Bevilacqua told me that his grandmother did not ask him where he had been. He never knew for sure if she had read his note, or if she had simply decided to ignore something that would have been hard for her to understand. What was true was that, from that moment onward, Señora Bevilacqua scarcely paid him any attention. Perhaps, in some way, after all the years of bickering and punishments, she had realized that force and discipline were of little avail where her grandson was concerned, and decided to take a kind of laissez-faire approach—that is, to let him live his life. It began to seem more important to Señora Bevilacqua (less bewildering, you might say) not to leave two knives crossed on a table, for this presaged a fight, than to ask her grandson for a truthful account of his life out in the big world.

  In the only photograph that Alejandro possessed of his grandmother (which, of course, he showed to me), Señora Clara Bevilacqua was pictured in black-and-white—a thin, pale woman, her eyebrows plucked and drawn in, as though with a dark pencil, her hair arranged in tight curls, as rigid as a jockey’s helmet. Wearing a flowery dress, and posed against a chalk wall, she bore an expression of unflinching hardship. She was tall, upright, and severe, a woman who was clearly uncomfortable with physical contact and didn’t go in for hugs and kisses. Throughout his childhood, Bevilacqua felt that he must have failed some secret test. He never knew which, but this mystery and his sense of failure made him feel guilty nonetheless. So Bevilacqua’s adolescence passed between that ancient and haughty woman and the evanescent Loredana.

  I must confess to a certain impatience with Bevilacqua’s angst. All my life, my parents had believed that every single thing I did was the work of a genius, and that my faults were the mere peccadilloes of a saint. Señora Bevilacqua held the opposite view: any task upon which her grandson embarked must, from the outset, be destined for failure. Without knowing it, this woman—just like my parents—was in the grip of superstitions that predate the cultures of the Po Ri
ver or the Caucasus. For my parents, these simply constituted the rules of the game, whereas for Bevilacqua’s grandmother, they were traps set by an imperious and vengeful God, traps that her hapless grandson would not know how to avoid. Poor Bevilacqua—I think that his grandmother never really loved him.

  One thing was certain: when the boy returned from Chile, the world had changed, for his Loredana was no longer in it. Then he decided to alter his habits, his daily itinerary, as if to take revenge, through his own conduct, on the conduct of what he dared not call fate. His grandmother’s life was divided between her home, the church, and the shop. Bevilacqua wanted to escape from all three. He began to find excuses to linger after school, or to leave the house earlier than usual. Every day he took a different route to school, and he would lose himself in the tree-lined streets of the poorer neighborhoods, in ancient parks, or among building complexes whose purpose he could not guess at. In those days, Buenos Aires was a good city to get lost in. Hours went by like this, and then weeks, months. It is strange how one afternoon can prolong itself to infinity, and several years be reduced to five words.

  But I don’t know if you’re interested in this, Terradillos. I don’t know if what I’m saying is at all useful. You want to know why Alejandro Bevilacqua died. You want to know how a polite and reasonable man in his forties, at a time when fortune was beginning to smile on him, came to grief against the pavement of the Calle del Prado, in the early hours of a Sunday in January, beneath my balcony.

  I’m getting around to it, my friend. Be patient.