The commercial activities of cotillon, on Lavalle, accompanied with mystery and grace the path, during my childhood, to school, in the Once district.
The stained glass windows offering plastic masks of famous or classic charactersthe recent Nightmare-type rubber masks, the papel picado, the serpentine, mother-in-law fears, foam aerosols and noisemakers, among other carnival marvels, have attracted my attention as atmosphere, rather than concrete entertainment for my enjoyment . .
I’ve never been the carnival type. Pachanga, water throwing, doesn’t come naturally to me. But he didn’t rule out, in groups, outside the privateer, in the club, filling up, piling up in a bucket and fighting with water pumps. Businesses were closed on the way out and about to close when I returned; but I was only interested in his presence.
In my early youth, however, the owner of Super Momo, already elderly, told me a story with great bewilderment.
At every carnival, Genaro told me, a customer would rent him a Wonder Woman costume. Genaro’s cotillion was one of the few in Lavalle, at least at the time, that rented out costumes; the rest just sold.
Wonder Woman Costume – Wonder Woman for connoisseurs. among the most requested in the second half of the 70s, it opened a new era in the women’s field. But for five years El Cliente -Genaro never knew his name or surname-, frequented Super Momo, and rented his swimsuit on Fridays, to pay him back early in the morning on Mondays, always impeccable.
The adjective “flawless” refers in part to the fact that in one of those first five years, out of curiosity, Genaro sniffed the costume to find out who was wearing it. But the garment gave no clues. No perfumes or any other details.
In the seventh grade, the subject of the patron and of the costume recurred in the conversations between Genaro and his wife Amalia, who kept at home; despite her Amalia would have preferred to work, she is an excellent cook, beautiful in her forties, according to the old narrator. A harmonious, childless marriage of mutual convenience and little more than the husband’s admiration for the wife: with the logical conflicts of any non-dynamic human duet.
Who was the customer who had rented the costume for? they both wondered. Did you wear it? For a daughter? A wife? A lover?
In those disquisitions, one night – neither of them proposed -, Amalia appeared in the room with the costume, without Genaro expecting it, but not surprised either. In any case, an unforgettable conjugal event.
Genaro has decided to buy another copy of the Wonder Woman costume, to continue to rent it. But the distributor told him they were out of stock, so he had to send it to Japan’s Matsukudo dry cleaners, and reuse it once again, for the tenth consecutive year.
In the eleventh year, already a matter of domestic status, Genaro decided to follow the client. Like a spy, like a character, good or bad, of Wonder Womanhe crossed Lavalle, up to Callao, sank down to Recoleta and saw the customer enter a house, near La Biela, in one of those streets that still didn’t know if they belonged to a hero or a wealthy relative.
The customer left the door ajar, closed by a block of wood, and asked Genaro if he was following him. Genaro was unable to answer, when the subject took him by the shoulder, affably, and the cotillon seller discovered that he was entering the house of the stranger, from whom he had rented the Wonder Woman costume for eleven years, not knowing for whom, or for who. so that.
The client locked up Genaro. It was a gigantic main hall, elegantly prosperous and comfortable; surrounded by newly furnished rooms, luxury kitchen, services of a premium house of the time.
There was nothing to be said about who was wearing the Wonder Woman costume or why. The client had started as a young man in his sixties and was completing this strange parable of a vital septuagenarian. Genaro will be locked up at 12; around 5 pm the maid opened the door for him.
Genaro hurried to his house – his mood did not allow him to take a taxi or a bus – at the head of the cadet, who perhaps had closed and gone. They didn’t even have a company phone (eternally claimed by Entel).
He arrived sweaty, half suffocated, to find himself in a dystopian scene, of a sinister carnival, of Nightmare: Amalia and the customer worked together at the counter.
The cadet had called Amalia from a public telephone, alarmed by Genaro’s absence. The customer had appeared almost simultaneously with Amalia, claiming that Genaro had asked him to participate in Super Momo for a couple of hours.
There was no telephone in the client’s house, Genaro declared, he couldn’t remember whether he was shouting or whispering; nor did he have the courage, he did not express it, to try to break down the door, with some artifact or instrument, or to shout from the hall.
Things between the three of them have never been clarified, nor the mystery of the disguise. Genaro parted with Amalia, there was no divorce. Although she claimed to have been deceived, Genaro considered it impermissible disloyalty. Taking care of business, in the company of a stranger? Strictly speaking, now that I’m finishing transcribing the testimony, I realize everything. But I’ll let the reader know enough: a disguise is useless the day after the truth
Source: Clarin
