The Port of Montevideo Ch. 03

Just off Avenida de 9 Julio, I entered a bookshop that was good at sourcing gay literature. The man who ran the shop was Marcelo, a long, narrow broom handle of a man. We had met when we were in university together. He had inherited the shop after his father's death, and dropped out to run the store. In the early days of Isabel Peron's presidency, and certainly in the years to come, it was probably much more useful to own a store with a paid off mortgage than a bachelor's in Modern Language.

Marcelo and I studied in the same department, but had really gotten to know one another in the library toilets. We were both young and horny, and some furtive glances at the urinal led to a few rushed blowjobs here and there. It was clear the spark wasn't there, but we remained good friends.

"Ignacio! Hey, I was just about to close up early. Want to take a look at what I just got in?"

We went into the back to look at the crate that had arrived. The crate was stamped 'FRAGILE: GLASS / FRAGILE : VERRE' in big block letters on the outside. When Marcelo cracked it open, carefully wrapped bottles of French wine made up the top layer. After he removed a few, there was a layer of packing, followed by what turned out to be paperbacks, tightly wrapped in a layer of foil and a layer of brown crate paper. Their shape and density were distorted enough to resemble some kind of eccentric packing material, something a winemaker precious about their product might invest in.

"A tourist who came into the shop last year called and asked if I needed anything. I can't believe they made it through!"

Most of the titles were in French and English, but there was a small selection of Spanish ones. I had read many of the classics -- the Wilde, Forster, etc. But there were some more tawdry covers I hadn't seen before. Marcelo opened one, and his face fell when he saw the seal of the Spanish Ministry of Culture on the publishing data page.

"Fuck, I think they're all official translations." And he threw the book in an arc across the room into a waste paper bin. Because the market for literary translation had for decades been dominated by Spain, we had been subject to their fascist censors long before the arrival of our own.

Somewhat defeated, Marcelo collapsed into a chair and I took the one across from him.

"How's old Sol doing?" he asked, lighting a cigarette and pulling an ashtray from a shelf.

"She's fine. She reconnected with a girl she used to know from the Law faculty. She's been over at the our place a lot -- I think it's getting serious."

"Oh? That's good for her. Is she going to take the bar this year?"

"I don't think so. SAID cleaned house at the Law school. Her name isn't on anything subversive, but I don't think now is the right time. She's trying to keep her nose clean. How have things been here?"

"Surprisingly good. My offer still stands if you're hurting for cash. I can always give you some hours if you need."

"I think I'm alright for now. Between the tutoring and the translating, we're staying afloat. Soledad found part-time work in a hotel in San Telmo."

"I actually had been meaning to talk to you about something. I might have a job for you that's not here."

"Doing what?"

"Well, a guy came in the other day -- real jittery. I was nervous about him at first, real military look to him. He works at the Uruguayan Embassy and we got to chatting. He wanted to see 'what else we had in stock' and he loosened up after I showed him some books. Into surprisingly high brow stuff -- not the generic smut the closeted cop types usually go for -- but I guess he's technically a diplomat. Though an Uruguayan feels hardly like a diplomat..."

"Marcelo, please, what does this have to do with me?"

"Right, well, he saw the French books and mentioned that they are going to be meeting with the French, and the French don't do things not in French, and they didn't want to pay for an interpreter. The Uruguayans offered to finance one hoping it would be leverage for what they're trying to get."

"So, they need an interpreter?"

"In short, yes. I mentioned you to him, but I didn't know where I'd put my address book. Then Facundo stopped in and I got distracted and forgot about it until just now."

"That actually sounds great. I don't have any special clearances or anything though."

"He said they just need an interpreter, and they don't want to use one that the Argentinian government would suggest. And no one in the government would suggest you for absolutely anything. Ever."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"I have his number. You can take it. He's more your type than mine, anyway, so I won't need it."

We made our goodbyes. I took with me an Italian book I hadn't heard of, Ernesto by Umberto Saba. It was super, mega banned pretty much everywhere, and that alone was higher praise than any blurb could offer. I also took two bottles of Côte du Rhône on Marcelo's insistence. It had all been free anyway.

In the colectivo on my way home, I mused about the image of the eccentric French vigneron who'd taken it upon himself to fight against the world menace of fascism by shipping free wine and smutty books to us poor, oppressed folks south of the equator. I guess that is what solidarity looks like.

Carolina and Soledad were on the couch when I got in, gazing lovingly at each other, and stroking each other's hair like a pastiche of lesbiandom. I gave them one of the bottles and put the other in the cabinet.

I dialed the number scratched on the paper.

"Hello?"

"Yes, I'd like to speak with Señor Castaña."

"This is he. What does this regard?" He certainly talked the way I imagined diplomats talked.

"I'm a friend of Marcelo, the bookseller. My name is Ignacio and he told me you needed an interpreter."

"Oh indeed! I was awaiting your call with great impatience. Are you disposed to meet me tomorrow? Three pm. My residence is in Palermo." He gave me the address and hung up.

I can't see through the mist, it's too thick. I could chew it, if I could. I could eat the air, is what my grandmother always used to say on humid days. The air is thick and edible. The air is no longer air, but a solid.

A forest. The shadow of a man cuts through the mist. I reach out to him, but he's already gone. Please wait, don't go. What is this place? My mind and throat form the words, but my mouth won't obey. It won't make the words it's been ordered to make.

"Do you think that Berenice ever loved Titus, truly?" A voice from my left said.

"Indeed I do. But Titus never loved Berenice in return!" A voice on my right shouted back, and both voices cackle horrifically.

"The boy, the boy, 'twas ever the boy!" says Right.

"Never was there such a boy!" responds Left, and again the peels of vicious cackles. They amplify until I am drowned inside them.

I jolt awake. I am safely in my room, no forest, no mist. I shower, washing the uneasiness of the dream away, and dress. Carolina had stayed over and made the three of us breakfast. I suppose I didn't mind having this unexpected roommate, and Soledad seemed happy for the first time in years.

I had a few students in the morning, and then went home for lunch. I preened a bit before heading over to meet Castaña.

He lived in a really nice part of town, lush trees and Hausmannien apartment buildings. His front door was an extravagant art nouveau floral configuration of wrought iron over glass. I rang his buzzer.

"Troisième" he said and the door clicked open.

I climbed the stairs and his door was left open, so I pushed my way in.

"Señor Castaña?" I called out.

"Par ici," he responded, still in French.

I went through and found him in the kitchen. He was in slacks but no shirt, his suspenders dangling beneath him.

"Please, call me Alejandro." He was deep in concentration, writing comments in the margin of a large stack of paper. "I appreciate your punctuality. There's not enough of it these days. I will be with you in just a moment." He finished the note he was writing and replaced the documents in the folder.

I was taken off guard by his formality in contrast to his state of undress. He glanced down as if unaware he was shirtless, "Please excuse me. My shirt is drying at the moment."

"Aucun problème," I thought I'd play along with whatever game he was playing.

He continued in French, "Thank you for coming to meet me. I am in desperate need of someone, and I'm rather particular about who I choose to work with. We would need you for a series of 8 meetings, with the possibility of taking you on as a staff interpreter long term. Marcelo says you have some other languages we might be interested in. It will be hard. I need you to do a mix of simultaneous and consecutive, Spanish to French."

"Yes, German, English, Portuguese and Italian," I responded. "But your French is already quite good. Why do you need me?"

"I don't, but they do. It's really quite simple. I am doing them a favor by providing language services at our meetings. But if I respond directly to what they say, without waiting for your translation, but never actually speak in their language, I make them reliant on you while showing I am reliant on no one. They have to wait to speak, and I do not. I gain an upper hand, and show them that I do so without being outwardly domineering. It's just a simple manipulation -- a matter of being in control of an environment and gently forcing the other to submit to your control."

"I suppose I see what you mean. I'm definitely interested. Do you want to see my references for past jobs I've done?"

"No, I do not. I like what I see."

I guess, based on the context of how we came to know one another, it would make sense if he were flirting, but he was an odd enough man that it was anyone's guess.

"When is the first meeting?"

"This coming Monday. A courier will drop off your badge this Friday. Bring that and your passport with you to enter the embassy. I'll pay you a deposit now." And he took out an envelope of pesos from his briefcase and set it on the table. It was more money than I had made in a while. "We'll call that your retainer fee. I'll pay following each meeting, but I was hoping that this might cover something else I require."

"What would that be?"

"I heard about Marcelo's special collection in a sauna, you know the type."

"I do."

"And I don't wish to return to such places any longer."

"I see."

"I had hoped that this extra fee might convince you to help me refrain from such activities."

"What do you mean?" I knew exactly what he meant, or I thought I did, but making him say it out loud when he clearly didn't want to excited me somehow. Maybe I was showing my upper hand, controlling the environment.

"We both know you know perfectly well what I mean. You would assist me when I need assistance."

"I suppose I do know what you mean."

"Does that seem like an attractive proposal? We can negotiate your fee, this is just my starting offer. You simply agree to provide me with the resources necessary so that I can go about my life properly, without needing to call upon improper means of finding an outlet, let's call it."

"What exactly am I meant to do?"

"I can see that you wish for me to be frank with you, which is something I respect. I value frankness. In service of frankness, why don't I instead demonstrate for you?"

With that he rose from his chair and came to stand beside me. His torso really did give a military vibe, still unexplained. He was burly with the body that all former military men, now in their 40s, have. Like a Greek statue gently covered in baker's fondant. The hardness still there, but coated in a light layer of flesh and hair.

His rough hand rested in my hair. "You have such soft hair. It's sublime."

Stroking my hair with one hand, his other unzipped his slacks. "Put your hand inside," he commanded.

As if on auto-pilot, I obeyed, reaching inside the open fly. I found his stiff member sheathed in cotton.

"Stroke it." I grasped the fat prick and moved my hand up and down over his underwear.

He unbuttoned his slacks and they slid to the floor. He stepped out of them.

"On your knees." And I slid off the chair onto the floor before him.

"Take them off." I reached up to the waistband and slid his underwear down. His trimmed bush came into view along with the base of an impressively thick dick. When they came off, it sprang forward, curving slightly to the right.

"Are you pleased? Do you understand what I am asking of you now?"

"Yes, I do."

"Will you work for me, then?"

"Yes," I said, not entirely sure why I said it. I did, and didn't. He wasn't someone I would otherwise usually find attractive, but the circumstances were exciting. When the disappearances began I had become almost monk-like in my chastity for fear of a setup, or misjudging a signal.

That night all he wanted was a simple blowjob that I was happy to provide. He looked down at my face as I caught my breath and his cum dripped down my chin -- he had asked to finish on my face. He wiped it with his thumb and brought it to his mouth.

"Did you enjoy that?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, simply.

"Good, then it's settled. I'll see you Monday. After the meeting we can arrange how to continue the other side of our deal."

"Sure, that sounds fine." He went to get me a washcloth to clean my face. I gathered my things, and the envelope of cash, and made my way home.

The meetings turned out to be with representatives of the French military. There were three other interpreters and we swapped out every half hour. We were told it was to keep us fresh and prevent fatigue, a real danger when one is interpreting for too long. But it was obvious, too, that our rotations made sure that we were each kept enough in the dark about what was being discussed that we only had fragments of the negotiation. To be perfectly honest, though, it was all incredibly dull and so I didn't mind that I only followed the randomized segments I was allowed into. I did the quick mental math to figure out what my hourly rate was and could barely suppress my smile at knowing how much of a killing I was making. I would put up with something much more mind numbing for a lot less.

Alejandro and I would usually head to his place after the meetings. His tastes varied within a small spectrum of sexual acts -- sometimes he just wanted to be jerked off, sometimes he wanted to fuck me. He was pretty to the point in bed. It definitely wasn't bad, and his cock was fantastic, but it was all pretty standard stuff.

I grew quite fond of him with time, once I saw that his eccentricities were simply awkwardness and not malicious. Sometimes after he'd finish, we'd hang out for a bit. Sometimes we played chess, sometimes we did the crossword together at the kitchen table. He was clearly pretty lonely, though he did his best to hide it, and there was something almost sweet about seeing that vulnerability.

One evening, after a particularly grueling meeting with the French, Alejandro had finished inside me and we were lounging in the living room. He was staring out the window at the rain, and I was sprawled on the floor with the paper. We were listening to a recording of Tosca.

"Who is that?" I asked in the middle of the climax of one of the soprano's solos.

"Callas. She's truly divine, isn't she?"

"Callas -- is that Greek?"

"She's American, actually. Must have Greek parents or something."

I groaned, showing my disgust. "I'd rather just think of her as Greek, then."

"Do you disapprove of Americans?"

"Do I disapprove? They're scum! Do you know all that they've done to us? More than just the coup, but ever since they came into being they've destroyed everything in their sight!" I said this as if these were my opinions and I wasn't just parroting the radical beliefs that Carolina would share at dinner when she got onto one of her anti-American rants. I felt fired up, though. The first time I felt like I could speak freely outside our home in years and I felt like using the moment to unleash my own sermon condemning the imperialism of the fucking Yankee trash.

"Is this what Carolina says?"

I was stunned silent for a moment. "How do you know about Carolina?"

"It's my job to know things. Like how I know exactly what the Americans have done."

I had no idea where he was going with this. "What have they done then?"

"You were the one saying they destroy everything. The coups. Not just here, obviously. Everywhere. The inflation, the unstable prices, the disappearances. America is the world's boogeyman. I also happen to know that Carolina knows this, but needs documentary evidence of this. Documentary evidence she currently lacks."

"What do you know about Carolina?"

"I know that Carolina has been trying to keep her work with Amnesty quiet, that she's in desperate need for something that would credibly show the link between the US and the regime here."

"How do you know about her, though?"

"Why does it matter how one knows something, as long as one knows that one knows it. Am I mistaken?"

"No. Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I admire what she's doing. I know that her suspicions are not incorrect. I have the crumbs that will lead her to what she's looking for."

"What do you mean?"

Alejandro stood and went to his briefcase. He unlatched it and removed a manila envelope with red tape sealing its edges. He handed me the envelope and I tore off the tape.

Inside were the minutes of a meeting with an attached appendix of figures and graphs. The minutes were in English and at first seemed pretty uninteresting -- a discussion of bread, vegetable and cooking oil prices. The meeting was dated from before the coup.

"What is this?" I asked.

"It's a meeting."

"Of who?"

"It's from the US State Dept Latin America desk."

"How do you have these?"

"I simply do. I think Carolina would like to have them as well."

"Why is that?"

"It's part of what she's looking for. I have more if she's interested."

As I read on, it appeared to be a timeline. A planning meeting about projected targets that needed to be met. But rather than projected timelines about farm aid distribution or the structuring of loan repayments, it was a timeline for a plan, clearly already in place, to destabilize the prices of Argentinian food stuffs and household essentials. It was shockingly banal in the administrative coldness with which the meeting proceeded. The intentions were clear -- they wanted to foment unrest, opening the door for the military coup.

I looked at Alejandro. "What am I meant to do with this?"

"It's what everyone already knows, but I have access to many such documents that prove that what people think they know is indeed the case."

"This is really serious."

"But is it surprising? The world split in two in 1945 and you could either throw your lot in with the Soviets or with the Americans. Our entire region opted for the latter and it has been spectacularly disastrous. It's not like the alternative was much better -- just look at Cuba. But we were forced to make a choice and this is the fruit born from that choice. Do with it what you will, but I know that Carolina would like to see it."

Later that evening, after I'd returned home, I showed Carolina the folder, explaining the situation to her. I told her that sitting on these documents had been wearing on Alejandro's conscience, and as the various dictatorships in the region turned out to be much bloodier and ruthless than anticipated, he felt the impetus to act. Getting these documents to Amnesty was the best way he saw to act.

"This is fucking insane," she sighed, laying the file back down onto the kitchen table once she'd reached the appendix. Soledad rubbed her back as Carolina took her temples into her hands.