Free The Crime of Julian Wells by Thomas H. Cook Page A

response, Marisol’s gaze grew tense. “Here we say that Argentina es un país perdido,” she said softly.“A lost country.” She shrugged. “And we have another saying. A funny answer when we are asked how we are doing.” She glanced about to make sure she could not be heard, then whispered, “ Jodido pero contento. ”
    “What does that mean?” I asked.
    She was suddenly hesitant. “I do not wish to be vulgar.”
    “Oh, come on, Marisol,” Julian said. “We’re all adults here.”
    “Okay,” she said, then laughed. “It means ‘screwed but happy.’”
    We parted at around nine that evening, then met again the next morning, mostly for a tour of various museums, during which Marisol was very much the professional guide, talking of this artist or that one in the fashion of a museum brochure. There were also walks along the canals, a visit to Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires’s famed opera house. Our third day involved a ferry to Montevideo followed by a boat ride to the estuary where the Germans had scuttled the Graf Spee in December of 1939. Marisol was surprisingly knowledgeable and knew the exact coordinates beneath which the doomed vessel lay.
    “The English tourists like to come here,” she told Julian by way of explanation. “Sometimes the Germans, too. So I discovered where it is and we are now exactly at this place.” She smiled brightly. “Knowing such a thing makes me a better guide, no?”
    On the fourth day Marisol took us to the cemetery in Recoleta.
    “This is a very quiet place,” Marisol said as she led us beneath the dazzlingly white arched entrance.
    For a time we wandered silently among the mausoleums, moving slowly, but without a stop, until we reached Evita’s tomb.
    “Eva Perón was a poor girl,” Marisol said softly when we paused before it. “Just another poor girl from Los Toldos.”
    “Would you have voted for her?” Julian asked.
    Marisol shrugged. “Now there is no voting here,” she said. “It is only between two bad things that we must choose.” She peered at the small plaque attached to the tomb. “Sometimes, when I bring the people here, I tell them what Borges said about life,” she went on. “This adds to me as a guide.”
    “What did Borges say?” Julian asked.
    Marisol, honest to the quick, said, “The English, it is not my translation.”
    “Still, I’d like to hear it,” Julian insisted.
    Marisol summoned this translation that was not hers, then said, “Okay, Borges said: ‘Our time on earth is divvied out like stolen things: a booty of nights and days.’”
    Her eyes darkened slightly, and then, as if by an act of will, they brightened again, though this time something behind them remained in shadow. “Come,” she said. Then, very quickly, she turned and headed out among the tombs. “Come,” she repeated as she waved us forward. “A guide should be always smiling.”
    She had only contracted for a set number of hours each day, but she went off the clock at six that evening, so we remained in the restaurant for a long time. We had dinner, then strolled along Calle Florida for a time, where we stopped to watch a couple of street performers dance the tango.
    Marisol watched them for a little while, and during that interval I noticed her mood descending. “I do not like the tango,” she said as she turned and led us away from the dancers. “The man rushes forward. The woman pushes him away, then turns her back to him. The man rushes to her again and jerks her around with violence. It is disturbing to me, this dance. It is not romantic. It is—what is the English word?—prelude. Yes, it is the prelude to a beating.”
    We returned to the hotel at around eight in the evening. I was tired, but Julian was full of energy, so we went to the lounge for a nightcap, where he talked of nothing but Marisol. He had seldom traveled since his father’s death, and I could see that her foreignness appealed to him: the fact that she was bilingual, which