A Room For Two

Quarto Numero Quatro, Dos Occupantes

Written By James Fanning

       It was a Tuesday, the sun had barely glanced the earth and already I had allowed myself back into the grasp of a bottle, slept a motel with more cockroaches than patrons and bruised my second favorite drinking arm. I had arrived in town a few days previously and even before I had stepped off the plane I had the epiphany that I was once again stumbling into a situation that clearly over shadowed me. Physically, I barely had the stamina to raise the glass to my lips, much less hunt a man, who was likely out of country or dead, in a city of thousands. Mentally, I derided myself for ever taking this job in the first place. I was no great hunter of men, I was simply a man who once only felt comfortable with a rifle in hand and now could only feel sane with a drink in at least one of them.

       I had been at the bar for three hours, or three years depending on the way you looked at things. The clientele at the watering hole I found myself residing in was a Hodge podge of old men leering at the, as they said “linda chica” behind the counter and old women too engrossed in their gossip or their bibles to notice that their husbands’ collective gazes had long since shifted from discussions of piety to more carnal matters. A faded calendar was hung haphazardly on the wall, with nothing but thumb tack and string keeping it from falling into the abyss that was the floor below. Printed on the top section was a portrait of the local governor, Guevaros, The man was handsome, and like his oil slick hair, likely toxic to wildlife. The slogan underneath this glowing display read” 1956, un año de prosperidad para toda Argentina.” 1956, I laughed as the realization swept over me that I could barely remember what I had done for the past 10 years, much less the past 10 hours.   There were also a few young boys at several tables towards the door passionately drinking and passionately arguing about something, it could’ve been over the girl a few tables away or maybe the latest bout of political theater. Whatever the impetus, I was soon swept up in the maelstrom. I never bothered to learn much Spanish, but I gathered that “gringo” was used a ubiquitous term used by the locals to refer to anyone of my fair complexion and my grating use of the Anglo Saxon tongue and that “ Que haces esta cabron” wasn’t their way of giving me an invitation to join these merry men in their bout of drinking. 

            The first man, a hulking lad that insisted on being called “Toro”, knocked me to the ground and delivered a series of punches that could give the bolts of Zeus a run for their money. The next, similarly gave a thorough kick to my stomach. The third, clearly the proverbial brains of their drunken and mismanaged operation not only took my wallet, but also discovered the rusted pistol that had fallen out of my waistband.  He examined it, pulled the handle back, the distinctive “click” adding to the musicality of the affair and lowered it to where when he fired, my head would several addition holes once his finger found the trigger.  I shut my eyes and accepted that after all I had seen and done, this was practically mercy. But fate had other’s plans that day, as I heard another “click” registering in my ears not a moment before my then certain demise.  It was the girl behind the counter, the object of everyone’s eyes, brandishing a rifle that would have looked dated in the arms of a conquistador. However, her true firepower lied in the litany of words she fired at my would-be murderers. They laughed and abandoned their enterprise, maybe out of fear or maybe they thought a Yankee that found his salvation in a bar maiden with a musket wasn’t worth the dignity of dying in a saloon reserved for peasants and retirees.  My assailants made sure however, to ensure that whatever dignity a washed up drunk like me still hung unto was forever cleansed, as the leader of this trio pistol whipped with my own rusted gun, me before throwing it back to me, those “putos” kept my wallet, though they left me a single peso, I guess out of pity. Dime store hoods are the same from Berlin to Boise my father used to say, suppose the same is true for Buenos Aires. The last I saw of them that day was when they walked off into the street laughing.

           I suppose to any causal observer my predicament would be found funny and I would’ve attempted further self depreciation, but my head felt ripped open and my liver was dangerously underworked. However I remembered I had a task to do, I didn’t come here to die of alcohol poisoning, as I could’ve done that in Albany.  I stood up and began to realize that what felt like an era to me was only a minute or so to the many regulars of this oh so prestigious establishment. I needed  information if I ever hoped to find the man I was so desperately trying to find, I figured the best option was to ask my quite literal “guarding angel”.  I approached her and found to my surprising good fortune that she was well versed in English, probably spoke it better than I could. “Well I couldn’t just let some thugs execute some poor man in my bar, now could I?” She said with a pleasant smile across her face. It was a face fully ensconced with a myriad of bruises, dirt and stress marks that, while ubiquitous, could not conceal the fact that there was a beautiful young woman beneath all that grime. She had long black hair that only seemed to contrast with her brown eyes that while a pale color still had a fire in them that even Neptune couldn’t extinguish with any sea.  “ My name is Adelita in case you’re curious, Samaritano.” I looked at her incredulously, not knowing whether or not I should feel emboldened or offended.  “Samaritano, you know, El Bueno Samaritano, the story from the bible?” “You’re like poor foreigner on the side of the road and I am your gracious and honorable savior!” She burst out laughing. “ Lo siento, Samaritano, my abeula had a fondness for stories from the good book, some of them stuck, God bless her heart.” “Now, what is your actual name?” “John, John Smith” I replied, the words leaving my mouth with the passion of a man condemned. A fake name, as any one who overheard us could tell, but an answer to her question nonetheless.  “I prefer Samaritano. John, that sounds like a name from pinche gringo film they show to chicos at the cinema!” Admittedly, the joke, if it could even be called one, wasn’t funny in the slightest, but since she was the first friendly face I found in this town besides the reflection in the bottom of my glass, I mustered a laugh that could best be described as passable, plus, my mother always told me to laugh at girl’s jokes, especially the ones that catch your eye.   “Now was there something that you needed”? “Well, Could you tell me where this apartment block is?” I asked.   The only lead I had was the note that my mysterious benefactor had left me in that similarly seedy bar in New York. She glanced at the crumbled note in my hand, it read, “Juan González, Hotel Miranda, Quarto Numero Quatro, Dos Occupantes, return when issue is resolved and all debts will be forgiven.”  “ Oh, Samaritano, that’s just down the street.”  I stood there, bewildered and amazed that all I would have to do was walk to down the street and my debts would fade into the wind. I thanked my kindly savior and continued on my way.

          My odyssey down the road was largely uneventful. Several cars passed by; an old pick up, it’s bed loaded with tobacco and sugar cane. A black Lincoln town car, obviously imported from my bountiful homeland for some well connected official or a close friend of the Perons’. I believe It belonged to the same man I had seen the portrait of at the bar, the illustrious Governor Guevaros, the man looked wealthy, healthy save for the large growth that was his swollen gut and most importantly, he never looked out his windows. A politician that is rich, fat and ignoring the suffering around him, something’s are the same the world over. Lastly, I saw a convoy of jeeps, the soldiers manning them laughing and occasionally stopping to shake a peasant down for a “revolutionary tax”, such was the upstanding conduct of the local constabulary. These men were boy scouts compared to what I saw in the Ardennes, but still, the sight wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. The American in me wanted to interfere, be the hero, but the realist in me reminded my more noble and naïve half that I had couldn’t persuade a drunk from his drink, much less a gang of deputized thugs with more Kalashnikovs than consciences to stop collecting their “bonuses”.  So I kept walking.

      I reached the lobby of the hotel, it was a small but homely place staffed solely by women that could fit the description of every elderly woman on the continent. Small and soft spoken, with eyes that had seen a life’s worth of pains and joys, hair that had been pulled by many kinds and grandkids, colored with a shade of gray that was earned through trial and tribulation.  A cross hung around her neck, a sign of her enduring faith, she went to mass every obligated day, signed a cross before every precipice and made sure that all her progeny showed deference to their sovereign lord. If her Christ returned, many might reside on the side of goat, but Christ would call her name to be on the side of the lamb, she was a Christian in the truest sense of the word. I approached the counter and slipped her my now barely legible note, adding a quick “Donde Esta” to compliment my gesture. She nodded, smiled and pointed to a door to the fifth door on the right side of the hotel’s only hallway. I thanked her, she smiled again, for a brief moment there was joy, we were different sexes, worshipped different Gods, spoke different tongues and would only meet once for a mere moment and yet for that instance in time, I enjoyed her company and she enjoyed mine.

        I found the door unlocked and enter unceremoniously.  There was a single bed, a meager fridge and two dressers with four draws each. There was a curtain in the back of the room that most likely concealed this kingdom’s meager throne; there was even a copy of the bible resting on the dresser adjacent to the door. I examined it, found that it was not in Spanish as I had expected, but that it was in German, I gave this revelation momentary consideration but moved on, I had a task, I needed to find the whereabouts of this Juan character. I checked the first dresser, nothing but moth eaten clothes. The second had several diaries once again in German, they belonged to a “ Steiner”, in a demonstration of extreme ignorance, I thought nothing of it. The fridge contained bread, assorted meats and milk that could be best described as an approximation of the scent of the River Styx. I was about to leave the premises when I noticed an edge of a dress shirt jutting out from underneath a bed. I discovered a gray dress uniform, dust covered, obviously shoved under to die a victim of moths, something to be forgotten. I found a box containing a Luger pistol and an Iron Cross, with the words  “für Ehrendienst” across the middle plank. I had seen these all before; these belonged to an officer of the Wehrmacht, but what were they doing in a motel in downtown Buenos Aires? Before my mind could rattle off any further questions, I heard steps approaching the room, not wanting to go to jail in a land where the term police brutality was a synonym for due process, I hid in the only place I could, the shower. In there, I stumbled upon something that gave me pause, behind the curtain I found a second bed, much smaller and on a wall was hung a series of photos and drawings. Drawings that reminded me of what my kid sister would scribble on the wall when mom wasn’t looking.

        The photos told a story all by themselves, the first, dated 1899, was clearly the oldest and the most faded, it showed a groom with dark hair, eyes filled with a zeal for life and love of what I presumed was his wife. The next photo, dated 1907, showed the same couple with a young boy, playing in the field with his parents looking on in the background from a picnic blanket.  The following photos showed that young boy prosper into a young man, acquire adolescence, graduate university and find a ravishing fraulien as his lovely wedded wife.  The photo of their wedding was dated 1933. The aforementioned boy, like his father only had a single child, a baby girl, with her grandfather’s dark hair and most passionate eyes, that photo was dated 1940.  The other photos showed father and son gleaming in their freshly pressed uniforms and the three generations of Steiner women baking delicious treats. The last photos on the wall brought this story to a conclusion as these two photos, both dated 1945 showed the graves three graves with only the grandfather, hair gray and uniformed tattered and the young girl looking on. By then I heard the door handle turn, I responded to this by readying my gun, I had six shots left.

               I saw a man with short gray hair, the same man from the photo only now eyes that at one time passion had dwelled now only harbored sadness, for what, one could only guess. Behind him, in the dimly lit doorway, stood a girl, no older than fourteen, the very same girl that had made the drawings and had starred in the photographs. She didn’t scream, yell or even speak; she only tilted her head quizzically at me, like I was a projection on a screen. The man spoke, his Austrian tongue not inhibiting his English in the slightest. “You must be looking for Gonzalez, are you not? Well, here I am, I do suppose my fate is a thing not even a continent can change.” “You do know this errand of yours is without reason, correct?” “The man that I was is dead.” “The war took my wife, the Russians took her father and her mother was tried as a looter.” He motioned to the girl, his eyes welling with tears, obviously recalling a memory that contained my pain than any affliction. “I am all she has left, she is deaf you see, she… she can’t live on her own yet and no orphanage wouldn’t be equipped to handle her, if they would even have her.” “If it were only me, for the things I’ve done for Deutschland, I would have been at Nuremberg with the rest, I couldn’t leave her alone, Hans wouldn’t have wanted that.” “Sadness and age will claim my life eventually, I just want to see have the life that my Hans would want her to have.” “Please, I beg you, for her sake, pretend this is a vacant room.”

         I raised my pistol to his temple, so I guess I'd become what they wanted me to be, a killer. A bad guy with a gun who puts holes in other bad guys so good men can sleep with sated vengeances and clean consciences. Say what you want about Americans but we understand capitalism. You purchase a service and you get what you pay for, and these people had paid for some angry gringo without the sensibilities to know right from wrong. Here I was about to execute this man like some dime store angel of death and I realized they were correct, I wouldn't know right from wrong if one of them was helping the poor and the other was starving them. I paused and tucked my pistol back into my jacket, I wasn’t a good man, but this, this was beyond my pay grade, the girl reminded to much of my own, if she had ever made it to that age. I left that hotel and dropped my last peso for “Senor Gonzales’ ” “niece”

She deserved as much.