07.2 Mazzikin

“Where are you taking me?” asked the meek woman.

“To the Silverside,” Madeleine Blanche replied.

“STOP THE CAR!” freaked Marina.

“Why?”

“I don’t want to go there!”

“Why?”

“Stop the car! I am not going back! I am not going there! Stop the car! Stop the car!”

“Why not?” asked Madeleine.

“I don’t want to go back!”

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Drop me here!” snapped Marina.

“I can’t do that!”

“You can stop the car. I can get out.”

“You have been kidnapped. If I let you go, I am getting involved in this too.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Oh my gosh!” She stopped the car.

Marina got out on Echeverría, a rough narrow lane, and began to walk in the opposite direction. They were so close to the Silverside. Madeleine Blanche rubbed her forehead with both palms and watched in the rear-view mirror. A lady in white blouse, slightly droopy on left shoulder, walking away in the moonlight. She took the first turn left.

Madeleine started the car and rolled on gradually. Mind blown, she could not think of going to the police or calling them. She did not need an exposure, not now. She took the first turn right and continued at slow speed thinking what to do with her. She could let her go. Kidnapped, snatched and abandoned.

Abandoned! No, she deserted herself.

Madeleine came to a dead end, turned right to Alfonsina Storni and crawled at snail’s pace.

Suddenly, she began to cackle, biting a finger and burst laughing into the night.

“Stop the car! Stop the car!” Madeleine laughed out loud.

She turned right and drove to Lugones bend. Marina sat on the grass further deep in the field. In the profuse moonlight, everything came clear. She parked the car by the curb and stepped out picking her pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Then she entered the grass.

“Why do you want to leave your family? You have everything one could dream of,” she dropped on her bums beside Marina, “Imagine all that gold and luxury.”

“Gold!”

“Yes, that gold…” those fingers making sparks, “you surely do not want to miss them! Don’t you!”

“I want a different life,” Marina began, “I don’t belong here. It is not my life. Why can’t I choose my own life?”

“How are you going to start a new life without anything?” asked Madeleine lighting a cigarette.

“I’m a farm girl, okay!” she uttered.

Madeleine dropped back on the grass, “Moonlight! It is a beautiful moon!” She sent a stream of fume towards the sky.

“It’s very romantic!”

“Hey! Have you been to Paris?”

“Ten times. I lost the count.”

“Do you speak French?”

“Yes, I do,” replied Marina, “I attended a French school in my village in Morocco.”

“I’m French. How about Spanish?”

“Very little, I can manage. Do you speak Spanish?”

“My Spanish is as good as my Italian,” smacked Madeleine.

“You speak Italian!”

She giggled, “I mean, I can speak none,” her fingers combined in speech, “neither.”

The rest of the conversation took place in French. “You may think I am crazy!”

“No, no, I was thinking to take you to the city. You’d love it in the city.”

“What was your name?”

“Riva, Riva Mazzikin.”

“I thought you said Eva!”

“Ree…Riva.”

 

Diego Lopez rose in the middle of the night and glanced out of the window. He saw two women climb a small white hatchback and take a U-turn on Lugones bend dropping faint headlights on the rustic road. In the moonlight it apparently looked white but it was actually a cream-colour Fiat Spazio. Again, that thin figure in a sleek black suit and black hair looked like a police officer but for him she appeared rather like a fantasma de la lujuria.

Madeleine climbed Isidoro Iriarte and drove over a kilometre to the Silverside Club.

Marina noticed the gate and began to scream, “That’s the club! That’s Silverside! You are taking me there! NO! NO! NO!”

“Hold on! Hold on! I am not taking you there! We are passing!” By then she was on the turn to Avenida Cervantes that took place by a few metres to the wrought iron gate.

“Phew! That was close!”

“Are you nervous?” asked Madeleine.

Marina saw the sparkling ripples of the sea almost beneath the wheels, inundating the land. She cried, “That is water!”

“We’re on the coast,” said Madeleine.

“I thought the shore lies miles away!”

“Do you want to take a look?”

“Yes,” sought Marina.

The Fiat stopped on the circular curve inside El Balneario de Quilmes, within reach of the pergola standing by the shoreline. Also, in the vicinity of Malibet.

Madeleine and Marina climbed the promenade and sat down on the steps descending to water. A full bright moon hovered between the leaves behind their back. Marina recalled trying to take a dip on this beach which was actually further down the road pass the club that she could not remember the location. She removed her tennis shoes and dipped her toes in the cool water. The tide had risen by several metres, making ripples and noises in a brush of wind, almost flowing over the prom. On the day she tried to swim, this tide was far out of eyeshot.

The Silverside Club lay long and lonely, low in water to the right, emptiness in front of her and the lights on La Punta de Quilmes to the left where English troops landed to climb and invade the land.

“Beautiful!” she drew in a breath of air and decided not to return to the other side of life.

“It’s two o’clock,” reminded Madeleine, “We have a long day, lots of things to do. Let’s go home!”