E-Book, Englisch, 410 Seiten
Piñeiro Betty Boo
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-912242-77-1
Verlag: Bitter Lemon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 410 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-912242-77-1
Verlag: Bitter Lemon Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Author: Piñeiro, after working as a professional accountant, became a journalist, playwright and television scriptwriter and in 1992 won the prestigious Pléyade journalism award. She has more recently turned to fiction; All Yours (finalist for the 2003 Planeta Prize) was her debut novel. Other titles include Elena Sabe, Un ladrón entre nosotros (winner of the Norma-Fundalectura Youth Literature Prize) and Thursday Night Widows. Translator: Miranda France wrote Bad Times in Buenos Aires which in essay form won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize in The Spectator magazine. A book by the same title was published in 1998 and met with great critical acclaim. The New York Times described it as 'a remarkable achievement' and the Sunday Times as 'an outstanding book'. She has also written the novel That Summer at Hill Farm.
Weitere Infos & Material
Mondays are the days it takes longest to get into the Maravillosa Country Club. The line of domestic staff, gardeners, builders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, gasmen and other assorted labourers seems to go on forever. Gladys Varela knows this all too well, and that’s why she’s swearing to herself as she stands facing the barrier, from which a sign reading Personnel and Suppliers hangs, behind another fifteen or twenty people who are waiting, like her, to go in. She curses herself for not having charged up the electronic card that would grant her automatic entry. The problem is that the card expires every two months, and the times at which you can make an appointment to reactivate it clash with the hours she works for Señor Chazarreta. And Señor Chazarreta isn’t a very nice man. At least he doesn’t seem so to Gladys, who finds his face intimidating. She can’t decide whether the way he looks at her is surly, dry or tight-lipped. But whichever it is, he’s the reason she hasn’t yet dared to ask if she can leave early or have a break to go to the gatehouse and renew her entry card. Because of that way he looks at her. Or doesn’t look at her, because in actual fact Señor Chazarreta rarely looks right at her, rarely looks her in the eye. He just generally looks, looks around, looks into the garden or looks at a bare wall. Always with a long, unsmiling face, as though he were cross about something. Mind you, it’s not surprising, given everything that’s happened. At least her entry card is signed, that’s one thing; it means she has to queue, as she is in fact doing, but that nobody will have to call Señor Chazarreta to authorize her entry into the private neighbourhood. Señor Chazarreta hates being woken, and often sleeps until late. Sometimes he stays up into the early hours. And he drinks. A lot. Gladys suspects this, anyway, because she often finds a glass and a bottle of whisky in whichever part of the house Señor Chazarreta crashed out the previous night. Sometimes it’s the bedroom. Other times it’s the living room, or the veranda, or that cinema they have on the top floor. Not they, he, because Señor Chazarreta has lived alone since his wife died. But Gladys never asks about that, about his wife’s death; she neither knows nor wants to know. What she saw on the news is enough. And never mind what some people say. She’s been working at the house for two years and the Señora died two-and- a-half or three years ago. Three. She thinks. That’s what they told her, anyway; she can’t remember the exact date. Her duty is to Señor Chazarreta. And he pays her well, promptly, and doesn’t make a scene if she breaks a glass or gets a bit of bleach on an item of clothing or slightly burns a cake. Only once did he get cross, very cross, when something was missing – a photo – but afterwards he realized that she wasn’t to blame, and had to admit as much to her. He didn’t apologize, but he acknowledged that it hadn’t been her fault. And Gladys Varela forgave him then, even though he hadn’t asked to be forgiven. And she tries not to think about it now. Because she believes that forgiveness means nothing if you continue to dwell on your grievance. Chazarreta may have a face like a wet weekend, but what boss doesn’t? There’s too much misfortune in the world to go around smiling.
The queue moves forward. One woman’s angry because her employer has barred her from entering the compound. Why? she’s shouting. Who the hell does she think she is? All this for some shitty piece of cheese? But Gladys can’t hear how the guard on duty responds, from his side of the window, to the woman’s furious questions. As she storms past, Gladys realizes that she knows this woman, from the internal bus or from walking alongside her the first few blocks inside the club; she’s not sure, but she recognizes her. There are still three men ahead of her in the line, who seem to be friends or somehow to know each other, perhaps from working together. It takes longer than usual to process one of the trio because he isn’t registered, so they ask for his identity card and take a photograph and they tape a serial number to his bicycle to make sure he leaves with the bike he brought in. Then they telephone the property’s owner to get authorization for him to enter. Before letting him go they note down the bicycle’s make, colour and wheel size, and Gladys wonders why it was also necessary to issue a serial number. Is it in case the man finds another bicycle, exactly the same but newer and in better condition, and tries to take that one out? That would be some luck. You’d have a better chance of finding a lottery ticket with a palindromic number on it or of getting a full house at bingo. But the men don’t question the need for this number, much less complain about it. It’s the way things are, the rules of the game. They accept it. And in a way that’s right, Gladys thinks, because it means when you leave you can prove that you haven’t taken anything, that you’re decent. Better for them to make their notes now than go around making idle accusations later. That’s what Gladys is thinking – that they shouldn’t make idle accusations – when the woman who was shouting in the queue a few minutes ago comes up to her. If you hear of any work, will you let me know? she says. And Gladys answers yes, that she’ll let her know. The woman holds out her mobile and says: Take my number. Gladys takes her own phone out of her jacket pocket and taps in the numbers that the other woman reels off. The woman asks her to ring the number then hang up, so that she’ll also have her number. And she asks her name. Gladys, she says. Anabella, says the other woman, put it in: Anabella. And Gladys saves that name and that number. The woman isn’t shouting any more; her anger has given way to something else. A mix of rancour and resignation. After swapping numbers with some other women in the line, she leaves quietly.
When her turn comes, Gladys hands over the document. The guard enters her details into a computer and straight away her face appears on the screen. The image surprises her: she looks younger in that photo, slimmer and with blonder hair; now she remembers that she’d bleached it the day before they registered her. But that wasn’t so long ago. The guard looks at the screen and then at her, twice, before waving her through. A few yards further on another guard waits while she opens her bag. He doesn’t need to ask: Gladys, like everyone in the queue, knows the form. As she struggles with the zipper it sticks and she has to tug harder at it before the teeth come free. The guard moves her belongings around in the bag to see what’s there. She asks him to make a note on the entry form of the phone in her jacket pocket, her charger and a pair of sandals she’s carrying in her bag. And she shows him these things. The guard writes them down. The other stuff doesn’t matter: paper handkerchiefs, some sweets half stuck together; her wallet containing her identity card, a five-peso note and coins for the bus fare home; her house keys; two sanitary pads. Those don’t need to be logged, but the phone, charger and sandals do. She doesn’t want any trouble on the way out, she tells him. The guard hands her the completed form and she puts it into her wallet along with her ID, forces the zip closed again, and sets off.
The three men who were in the queue with her are walking just ahead, jostling each other and clowning around, laughing. The one with the bicycle pushes it, so that he can walk with the others and chat. Gladys speeds up; this Monday queue has made her later than usual. She passes them and one says: Hello, how are you? They don’t know each other, but Gladys returns the greeting. He’s not bad-looking, she thinks, and if he’s in here it must be because he’s got a job. She’s not thinking of him for herself; she’s already married – just thinking. See you later, says the man, who’s behind her now. See you, she replies, quickening her step again to put more distance between them.
When she gets to the golf course she turns right, then right again a few yards later. Chazarreta’s house is the fifth one down, on the left after the willow tree. She knows the way by heart. And she knows which door Chazarreta will have left open so that she can enter the house without ringing the bell: the one that leads into the kitchen from the veranda. Before doing that she picks up the papers – La Nación and Ámbito Financiero – in the entrance hall. Chazarreta must still be asleep, otherwise he’d have taken the papers himself to read over breakfast. Gladys looks at the front page of La Nación, skips the main headline, which alludes to the president’s most recent sworn declaration of assets, and goes to a large colour photo under which she reads: Two buses crash on Calle Boedo; three dead and four seriously injured. She crosses herself without really knowing why; on account of the dead, she supposes. Or for the seriously injured, that they may not also die. Then she lays the two newspapers down on the kitchen table. She goes into the utility room, hangs her things in the closet and puts on her uniform. She’s going to have to ask Señor Chazarreta to buy her another one; now that she’s put on weight the buttons are straining over her bust and the armholes cut...
