Timote: A Novel

Federal Capital, Final Days of May 1970,between 7:30 am and 3:30 pm

 One thing is certain from the start: el General usually leaves his house around 11:00 am. But not always. Which proves there are no absolute certainties. Except to kidnap him, but that certainty belongs to them. The rest, reality, offers no guarantees of any kind. Everything is a risk, unstable ground. Sometimes the general emerges; sometimes he does not. The result is that it would be chancy to trap him on the street. It is not advisable to leave things to chance. You’ve got to work with sure things, things that have the regularity of the stars. Today he left his house. Tomorrow, who knows? They see him from the window across the way, from a reading room, perhaps a library that’s part of Champagnat College. The general strolls calmly, in no hurry. He’s wrapped up in a lot of dealing and has a lot of plans. He’s in the center of national politics, a center that is opaque because it is secret, conspiratorial. He wants Onganía out. He’s a bumbling corporativist, a latter-day Franco, someone who fails to understand. But the general, he understands. It is imperative to negotiate seriously with the Peronistas. The scheme to exclude and marginalize them from the political game has got to stop. It no longer works. He attempted it at first, in 1955, when he expelled Lonardi because he respected the Peronistas too much and wanted to integrate them from the outset. Neither conquerors Federal Capital, Final Days of May 1970, between 7:30 am and 3:30 pm josé pablo feinmann 24 | | nor the conquered. He was a fool, a weak man, a Catholic nationalist with the soul of an ingenuous altarboy. These nationalists know only how to make a bunch of noise and provoke uprisings. In 1955 all that would work was a heavy hand. Or that’s how he saw it. There must be some way to counter the Peronistas in this shitty country, he told himself with rancor, anger, and a thirst for revenge. If the June bombardment didn’t do it, nor the September coup, you had to find another way. Keep hitting them hard where it hurts. Hide Eva Perón’s body on them, so they’d never see her again. If you don’t, there’ll be nothing but disaster. Wherever we put her, they’ll go in droves to worship her. Just like the Deceased Correa Woman cult. No, the deceased Evita here in the country, never. Get rid of her. Put her anywhere in the world. Not here. No one could fault the general for the effort he was making to de-Peronize the country. All in vain. The country was obstinate in being Peronista . He, who had taken de-Peronismo to the extreme of death, who had General Valle shot in a penitentiary, who refused to receive his widow, who had her told he was sleeping—he, who ordered or accepted without batting an eye the clandestine assassinations, now wants to negotiate and talk with his enemies. It’s all that remains and the only thing that will work without a doubt. Clearly and with utmost caution, I’ll tell this first to the union people and the democratic politicians, the conciliatory ones: there will soon be elections and you can be candidates. And if you win you’ll have what you won. And if it’s the Government, then it’ll be the Government. And if you want to bring Perón back, we’ll talk. Everything is possible. But done calmly. Everyone pulling in the same direction, toward Argentine democracy and institutionalization. t i m o t e| | 25 It doesn’t even seem paradoxical to the general that he’s the one leading all this. History, as he is accustomed to confessing to himself, changes us all. It must have done something to Perón. Exactly what it did to him was to change him. He can’t be the same. If he, a hard-headed Basque, was able to banish old hatreds from his heart, why can’t the man who lives in Puerta de Hierro do the same? After all, the years do not go by in vain and Perón has certainly lived enough years. He looks old, tired. It’s as though only hatred or the desire for revenge kept him standing, lucid. If we...