The Guardians of the Treasure - Jorge Fernández Díaz - Zenda

rocked the country in the 1970s.

Zenda publishes this short story by the Argentine author, originally included in the book Tribute for the celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Argentine Academy of Letters.

***

"I admit it's a minor incident, but in one of those it turns out that the thief is the true author of the serial and we can finally solve the enigma," one of the academics tells Cálgaris, during dinner at the Jockey Club restaurant. It is an after-dinner of accomplices and dilettantes, washed down with Rutini Malbec. Imagine what it would mean to narrate such a literary revelation in some cultural supplement after so many years of doubts. The professor is a scholar who gave him several tips on old books; The colonel became a collector, he is extremely grateful, he is amused by all these eccentricities, and sometimes he indulges in small personal treats with the funds reserved by the Intelligence service. He calls me to put me in the car and to order me to activate a class D operation, which translated into Spanish means that we will deploy a low-budget, limited-time investigation. This decision cancels the chance to tap all Academy phones and follow up. All this does not mean, of course, that our hackers in the Cave do not go into action, check the networks and call the main used booksellers one by one to see if they remember the recent sale of a copy of El foletinista de la calle. Bonpland. Perhaps the intruder did not have it at home, and had to pay for an identical book to make that useless replacement.

—If this is so, a whole range of possibilities opens up —Cálgaris tells me, loading his pipe— . It means that the guy did not want to improve his collection, but specifically to keep that copy. But why would you want to do it, if it doesn't have any extra value?

“He could be a kleptomaniac,” I reply, bored. Either a fetishist or a madman.

"Or a rehearsal for a robbery," he nods thoughtfully. Then he sweeps the air, hinting to me to get off his ass.

I visit the crime scene and talk for a while with the librarian team: the subject in question asked for a wide variety of books and it's difficult to put together a puzzle of meaning, because he hardly uttered a word during the entire raid. There is no record of that afternoon, because the two security cameras are not working, they only serve to deter visitors. They are from the VHS era, and on top of a cabinet the player, the video cassette player and the antediluvian monitor gather dust. The employees are cultured and careful, and they love their priceless treasure: there are first editions of the entire Argentine canon from the 19th century, copies dedicated in handwriting by their famous authors, books from 1600 that would be worth a lot at Sotheby's or Christie's. They recall, for example, that in the 1990s a subject took advantage of a distraction and inexplicably took a volume of the Complete Works of Borges, and that later a well-known black market thief, fond of plates and maps and expensive editions, appeared on the library and was recognized by the boss, who sat next to him for hours to watch his slightest movement and in the end asked him never to come back: the lad, who was a true gentleman of culture, quietly withdrew with the empty hands.

A secretary offers me a guided tour of the entire Errázuriz palace, and I walk up and down Sánchez de Bustamante trying to detect public and private security cameras on corners and in different buildings. That becomes the main and heaviest task. It takes me two whole days to ask for permission and check the recorded files of the surroundings. I do everything with an apocryphal credential from the Federal Police, and with the connivance of the commissioner of 25: the building and business managers agree to my kind requests, and a City official facilitates traffic monitoring. Most of the material turns out to be a fiasco, but on the third day I spot the man in the gray suit, overcoat, and short-brimmed hat two hundred meters from the Academy taking a taxi. We sighted the patent number, and found the laborer who was driving it that afternoon. He doesn't have a good memory, even though he seems a bit intimidated, but after all he thinks he remembers the aforementioned because of the hat and because he left it at the Retiro station. One of the hackers, who follows the columnist's route, suggests a Beccar's bookstore, and then I decide to connect the dots: I take the train, get off at the station and walk seventy meters. The stranger saw his catalog on the internet, called to ask about The Bonpland Street Newsletter, asked for a detailed description of it and when he was offered to send him a photo via WhatsApp, he said that he used a tiny and outdated cell phone, but that he would come by himself the next morning. He showed up one rainy day, three weeks ago, and out of curiosity he didn't even check the shelves or the balance tables. He didn't comment either: he checked the issue date, paid cash, and got out fast. They remember the slight coffee stain on the first pages, but they can't tell me if the man had a parked car or someone was waiting for him on the sidewalk. I stop to have an espresso in a bowling alley with plastic chairs and ask the Cave for a quick review of the incoming calls from that number. And I take advantage of the pause to communicate with Cálgaris and pass on the news. The colonel clears his throat:

—Please God I haven't used a public phone. Then he advances in his reasoning: —What was in the stolen copy? A handwritten notation? The librarians of the Academy did not even remember having opened it, like so many other books that rest on those illustrious shelves waiting for a reader. I feel Calgaris shrug: 'This is all bullshit, Remil. If we don't catch it in twenty-four hours, we continue with something else. Never stretch the rope on a whim. Before hanging up, he asks me to talk to the Cave and to order the hackers to install a modern camera circuit, as a donation: the Casita will bear the costs of the installation and all the instruments. The colonel does not want the Argentine Academy of Letters, which has just turned ninety years old, to remain unprotected and at the mercy of any crow. I transmit the order and instantly receive the location of the fatal call: it is not a public telephone, but a bar in Núñez, on Avenida Cabildo.

I return by train, and I walk along Juana Azurduy to the indicated café: the boss treats me to a beer, because he thinks I'm a gray hair, and I don't deny it. He has many clients who sit back reading books all the time, but he specifically remembers one who wears a short-brimmed hat; He usually comes in the afternoons and has two cappuccinos by the window. Sometimes he asks for the phone number at the counter to make a call and then leaves a good tip. I stop by Saavedra's gym to make irons and gloves, I prepare two salmon sandwiches and a vodka with ice in Belgrano R's apartment, and I stay up until dawn reviewing the adventures of the journalist and the cutler, who first belongs to flesh and blood, and later transforms into an annoying and evil ghost. At noon I am back in the Cabildo bar, stationed at a distant table, waiting for the gentleman. That he doesn't show up that afternoon.

"We've already established traceability, colonel, don't relieve me now," I ask Cálgaris after telling him about the first failure.

Reluctantly, already a little annoyed, he gives me one more afternoon. Just one. Happily, the unknown this time does not fail. He appears at three o'clock, hat and all, although not in a gray suit, but in a thick sweater and a suede jacket. Carry an old gilt hardcover book. Indeed, it does not fall below seventy years. An uncommunicative and somewhat melancholic individual: he constantly distracts himself from reading and stares into space. He drinks two cappuccinos and a still water, goes to the bathroom, pays his debt and then walks down Cabildo, turns right and reaches Cuba street. Two hundred meters away, he enters a decrepit house on the odd sidewalk. Suddenly the address triggers something in my memory, and I check the chat in the Cave. How stupid —I recriminate myself—, the retiree from the DNI: his last name is Lazarte and he died on the 18th, but the last registered address is this same out-of-this-world house. We thought it was a classic identity theft and a forged document by a professional eyeliner. But it was not really more than an old and real document, to which they changed the photo, and perhaps not even that. We thought we were smart and we are reverend assholes.

I wait fifteen more minutes and ring the bell. The thief comes out to attend to it and I know from his eyes that when he sees my appearance he is struck by a bad omen. I place a strategic foot so he can't slam the door in my face and show him the Glock: he steps back, pale but without a trace of surprise, into the dark and silent interior, and I step in and close behind me. It's a long, unkempt living-dining room, with 1950s furniture and two stained rugs. It's colder inside than outside. In the background you can see the light of an internal patio and the doors of two bedrooms; also the kitchen, where we headed without opening our lips. He has the burners on and even an electric heater, and the hardcover book open on the rotten Formica table. He does not make any claim or stammer any protest: he imagines who I am and knows exactly why I visit him. With a sign he invites me to sit on a creaky chair; he rests one buttock on the low counter, makes his right leg dance a little and smiles sadly.

—You didn't write The Bonpland Street Serialist, I guess.

"No, not at all," she denies with an exhausted grimace: she has a tobacco voice with an indefinable accent. The most interesting thing I ever was – she stops, she asks me –: I quit smoking three years ago, do you have a cigarette?

I offer him one and light it up. Breathe in the smoke as if it were vital oxygen; her pulse trembles a little.

—The most interesting thing that I ever was, and ceased to be, was a revolutionary militant —he completes. Then she looks closely at the ember. My old man was killed by the butt, you know? It had a horrible ending.

I let it come. Chirping is heard in the patio and a very distant Pugliese melody that he would recognize anywhere on Earth. He gives me an appraising look and decides to cut to the chase:

—I was twice in exile in Italy. The first time I came back was in 1979. You can imagine why.

—Yeah, I can imagine.

—The dictatorship was in crisis and the people were ready to be led to victory.

—I see you were lucky.

“A lot, a lot,” he nods. It is a long story.

—Let's focus on The Bonpland Street Serialist.

He heats his hands on a stove, rubs them together. Then she drags another chair, turns it upside down, sits as if riding it, and rests her arms on the back of it. The Glock is still in sight: he knows perfectly well that I can put a bullet in his brain with the smallest gesture. Blows a new column of smoke through the nose.

“We had our rear guard,” he says wistfully. In general, surface people, in internal exile, operatives disguised as parsley. In this case, a professor of literature. He and others from the Orga were ordered to act as a financial front. There was also a well-connected jeweler from Villa Martelli.

—A jeweler?

“It was hoarded in gold, to preserve value,” he laughs. By then this country had no currency.

Pugliese's music does not end, it goes from song to song, but there is no longer a single chirping in the courtyard. As if all the sparrows had suddenly gone silent, or were dead.

—The services went on full alert, and someone sang that the professor was responsible for logistics.

—And they began to follow him.

—I knew the Academy, because of his work he frequented it —he says, and crushes the remains of the butt in a tea saucer—. I guess she visited the library and asked for a random book. He spent a long time reading, and marked it without the employees noticing. We assume that he made that note because when he was leaving, he called a colleague and explained that he left the key in El boletinista de la calle Bonpland. That's what he said: the key. But without saying where. Two days later he was killed in a confrontation.

–And the partner got away.

—Don't think so much: they sucked it up and left it to misery. Now for the first time the gentleman looks pained. And we don't know why they released it. Maybe because he was nobody. His family put him on a plane and sent him with twine to Spain. Upon returning from this entire tour, two boys from the Conduction visited him in Valencia. I was in an asylum, I looked like a zombie.

—Zombie and everything mentioned The Bonpland Street Serialist.

—Yes, but in the air, like hallucinating. None of his colleagues left ESMA alive. Not even the jeweler. It was a mousetrap.

—They thought the task forces had taken the loot.

—Like so many times. Do you have another cigarette?

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I give him the second one and turn it back on. Her eyes appear darker and less bright. The evening light is fading.

“I had already decided to open up,” he adds. We had been defeated, we had sent so many shits.

—And then?

He spends a few seconds thinking about the best way to explain himself. In the end, he decides to go the fast way:

—And then I deleted myself. I got a job in Milan and tried to forget about Argentina. And for a while I did, I assure you. I had a total denial, a kind of amnesia, and you don't know what it cost me to call my old man to see how he was doing. It cost me an egg. But life in Italy was not a bed of roses either.

He takes a deep look at me for the first time:

—I was never able to claim that time, nor did I know how to take advantage of my history. I just took it out of the way and hit it straight, like there were no bills to pay.

I have déjà vu; I know other amnesiacs. Again I let it come.

"The problem is that there was a very, very big hole left in its place," he says, contemplating the shadow that breaks on the floor and climbs up the fridge. I look at his worn-out shoes.

—Did you come back to accompany your father or because you had no more money left? I ask him.

He laughs heartily, takes another drag.

—For both.

“He inherited a nice piece of land and the house can be recycled,” I say, glancing around.

“Mortgaged,” he cuts me off, narrowing his eyes. What do you know about gamblers, Commissioner?

"That money is never enough," I reply. She began to think about gold.

"Desperation sharpens the senses," he nods, scratching an eyebrow. But look, it was all a fluke. I ran into the teacher's sister in the middle. I was at a human rights march, or some of that bullshit. I was at the house of his parents, who are still alive.

—They told him about the Academy.

—He often went to study in that silence, surrounded by books. He used to tell his family: "There's a lot of noise here, I'm going to the temple." That library was his temple.

—Basic cryptography?

“Basic but hard to locate,” he clarifies. The book is needed to search for the message, which in the end consisted of a series of well-hidden, almost invisible coordinates. I changed it because I needed to examine it carefully and without arousing suspicion. I assumed that no one would notice that it was not the same specimen; that's why I didn't worry too much about my old man's ID. That being said, he was quite similar to me. See.

I see that he carefully extracts the document from an inside pocket with two fingers. The old Lazarte was a more sunken and less elegant version, but with an undeniable resemblance: at a glance, one and the other are the same person. I give it back.

—Was the package still where you buried it? -I want to know-. Or did they build a building on it?

"Nothing like that," he says with a new smile, a little more animated or perhaps more sardonic. An underground chamber, in her own family alcove. In a small cemetery in a city in the province of Santa Fe. Near the northern limit.

—He convinced the sister.

—No, he doesn't show his palms. It was enough to give a manager a few mangoes. You can't imagine the excitement, he had tachycardia.

Silence surrounds us; the sun seemed to retire and the shadow begins to shrink. In the patio some sparrows resumed their routine.

"I'm not here for the gold, I'm here for the book," I told him.

Shake your head and take a deep breath. He no longer needs cigarettes, nor conversation. He gets up and I imitate him. We pass into a room with a desk and full shelves. The Bonpland street columnist is in full view, innocent of everything. He hands it to me without ceremony. I charge it like it's an explosive.

“An enigma within an enigma: I read a lot about that newsletter on the Internet,” he says, now with keen interest. Do you want to see the package?

—I couldn't resist.

He points me down a hallway, which leads into the courtyard. Pugliese continues to slip through the median. There is a huge and empty aviary; many malvones, walls with damp spots, cracked tiles. In the background, a glass and iron door leads to a junk and tool workshop. I prudently let Lazarte go in first and keep my Glock drawn. But it is not an ambush, but an irony. An irony of fate. I carefully approach the table he points to. The suitcase remains open, its leather damaged and discolored, but the bundles appear intact and the bills have not lost their legibility. Argentine pesos, without injuries and without mold. Taken out of circulation decades ago, and victims of countless devaluations.

—How much do you reckon I'll get at the Flea Market, sheriff?

He didn't convert them, I think aloud. The Gold Chimera.

—You said it.

We were silent for a while, contemplating the evaporated and lost treasure. Then I ask him for a wad and put it in the pocket of my jacket. It is a souvenir for Leandro Cálgaris. I also holster the Glock and accompany myself to the exit. On the sidewalk we shake hands without reproach. As I walk to the Cabildo I think about how many savings and trinkets Lazarte will have left before blowing his brains out.

That same Thursday, at exactly 4:30 p.m., we take part in the classic academic fellowship tea, and the colonel tells them in detail about the strange journey of The Bonpland Street Serialist. They spend another half hour exchanging new speculations about his literary authorship, and agree not to air the theft to the media for obvious reasons. Shortly before the opening of the session, we went to the library and Cálgaris gave its director and his assistants the copy that Lazarte took from the Errázuriz palace. The true guardians of the treasure receive it as if it were a unique piece and lovingly return it to its place. They're excited.

_________________________________

This story is part of a publication of the National Academy of Letters for its 90th anniversary, celebrated in 2021, with texts by its academics.

The text was originally published in the newspaper La Nación.