Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo Read Free Book Online Page A

expensive to Elías. When he has to buy a new pair of shoes, he calculates the value of each shoe separately and always, through sheer persistence, obtains substantial discounts on every transaction he makes, though he won’t give an inch when people try to negotiate with him. He managed to multiply a hundred times the modest sum of money his mother gave him, thus providing her, his brother and himself with a decent subsistence, one in which they lacked for nothing but in which nothing was ever left over. Until the day of Sara’s death, the only time in his life that Elías ever cried, she was very proud of her eldest, recognizing in him
the integrity, vision and discipline of her late husband. Women were otherwise an empty chapter in Biterman’s life story. Having had no contact with any, he had never acquired the necessary skills for seduction or courtship. As a young man, he appeased his sexual cravings with occasional and hurried visits to cheap prostitutes. His erotic spark soon burned out, a fact that pleased him as it allowed him to spend all his time on what he considered truly important. The opportunity to cut another cost was always a source of great happiness for him.
    Elías hears his brother arrive. His face at the door brings him back to the present. Horacio is Elías’s exact opposite. When out and about, going from one place to the next, Horacio’s route is determined by any attractive woman who crosses his path. He’ll follow her for blocks on end chatting her up, until she agrees to go for a coffee or he gives in, tempted by another. With a particular kind of logic, he tries to pick up every woman he meets, a matter of stacking the odds in his favour: if I throw myself at twenty, thirty or forty women a day, by the law of averages, one or two will succumb to my advances. Thus his daily routine is dedicated to chasing skirt, and his life is full of women problems. From his mother he inherited his blaze of orange hair. He has an easy smile, dreamy eyes and a dignified demeanour, and he has cultivated a taste for the sort of fine, well-cut clothing that he wears with elegance. But Horacio is a dandy without a penny to his name. His income is like the slow drip of a tap, his expenditure a fireman’s hose. Although he doesn’t dare try to cheat Elías, he has no scruples when it comes to stealing. He swindles all his female conquests with stories of the need to buy furniture for when they’re married, or whatever ruse will make them give him a few pesos.
His preferred hunting ground is the grandstand at the Palermo racecourse, where he gets to rub shoulders with members of the Jockey Club while awaiting the miracle of the forty-to-one horse, which always seems to pull up in the final stretch. There he can admire the blond, beautiful and distant women of Buenos Aires high society, in whom he can only ever inspire a fleeting interest. It was at the racecourse that he met Amancio Pérez Lastra, a jet-set version of himself. With so much in common, they couldn’t help but become immediate friends. Horacio would desperately like to bridge the social divide which, deep down, he knows separates them. So, although it irritates him, he’s tolerant of Amancio’s habitual remark: you’re my only Jewish friend .
    In a further attempt to ingratiate himself, Horacio thought to introduce Amancio to Elías, so providing his friend with a lending source for the funds he needs with such increasing urgency. Horacio also speculates that his brother might pay a commission for his bringing in a new client. He feels he deserves a lot more out of life, and a lot more out of Elías than the meagre salary he receives in exchange for his position as the errand boy that Elías doesn’t need. This role was conceded on the insistence of their mother, the only person in the world ever capable of making her eldest spend a penny on something superfluous.
    …So? So nothing. What do you mean nothing? Exactly that, nothing, nil, zero.