The new story of Marcelo Birmajer: Final

Moral and Civic Education professor, Edmundo Kandaro, arrived at the Covadonga hotel, in Montes del Mar, accompanied by his recent girlfriend, Caterina Neer Ven Hol, on Saturday 24th June 1978. It would be his last free weekend, paradoxically. : I would resume classes on Monday and, before the start of the winter break, he would retire.

I would never teach in school again. Your Saturdays and Sundays would be the same as the rest of the days. The professor did not support Videla’s military dictatorship. I didn’t want to keep trying to convey democratic and republican content in that atmosphere of terror and irrationality.

The days of the World Cup had been particularly difficult for him: even the students most interested in their classes had given in to the general noise. In his house, alone, horrified by popular joy, Kandaro celebrated Hungary’s goal against Argentina, screaming in Videla’s face on the TV screen.

He soon discovered that he had filed a complaint himself: what if a soldier lived in that building, or some accommodating neighbor, and they came to see what was happening to him? In that moment of panic, he decided to leave the capital, and also anticipate your retirement. In any case, it was time.

He had devoted his life to teaching, without success. He loved this country and its people, but they couldn’t understand each other. It happened in many love stories. In fact, with Caterina, love worked even if they didn’t finish understanding each other.

He met her about two weeks ago, shortly after her “flight”. She arrived as a reporter and they met on the bus. Catherine’s wallet with her ticket had been stolen and the teacher had bought her one. But that sudden love story, Kandaro considered it an undeserved gift. A miracle.

They spoke English, a little Spanish, and a word of Dutch escaped her. But what could she want from him? It was her last week as a teacher and this was probably her last love of hers. Y What if the strange forces of chance were heralding her final week?

The country became unlivable under those circumstances, and he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. In his youth he had known Europe and North America, even the USSR and its satellites: Hungary itself, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria.

He hated Communist dictatorships. He hated the bloodthirsty terrorists of the left and the military criminals of the dictatorship. He knew Argentina was for more, but he couldn’t do more.

In the room of the discreet Hotel Covadonga, with its black and white television, there was a safe, locked. What could I keep here, my heart? He had no other valuables. Caterina dropped onto the bed and he followed her. Kissing her was like visiting another place. Her skin was fresh and her laughter contagious. They were the first lines of the song orange blossom.

Kandaro decided to stay and hug her, both naked, until Caterina had had enough. She fell asleep under the embrace of her sated man.

He had paid for everything since they met: the ticket he had presumably lost, the dinners, the breakfasts, the lunches. The hotel. You paid with satisfaction. She couldn’t believe she just wanted to live it. She wouldn’t have traveled that far for that, and there were infinitely more profitable and attractive men out there. But there he is, like the bacán that acamalaba.

When she wakes up, Caterina resumes her enthusiasm for the Final the following day. This slightly irritated Kandaro. He tried to explain how offensive he found the devotion of his compatriots, his incalculable distance from the din; but Catherine, who was also against the dictatorship, I did not accompany him in his contempt for the World Cup.

He followed the games with gusto and happy that the Netherlands had reached the final. The chronicles of him were colorful. Once again, Kandaro wondered, why was that woman with him, on the brink of his personal abyss? What could he want with an old skin?

Caterina went out for a walk along the winter shore, and Kandaro stayed in the room drinking companion, with the stove, like a Bioy in war diary of pigs. In that novel the young people killed the old out of hatred; but a girl loved them. In her life, Catherine’s love, surely fleeting, would kill him.

To do something, as I watched her walk against the horizon, unaware of the cold and the spray of the sea, like a mermaid, opened the safe. There was five thousand dollars.

Someone, a previous passenger, had left five thousand dollars in the safe, with the key in the box. Unlikely. Kandaro, frightened, counted them twice. He controlled them, he felt them. It was five thousand dollars. there was no doubt. They were real. How can an Argentine have forgotten five thousand dollars in a locked safe?

Maybe he wasn’t an Argentine. After all, it was a tourist hotel. But even an Argentine, like Kandaro, Kandaro himself thought, could have forgotten them. What did it have to do with that money? What a nice topic that would be for Monday’s class. But for Monday, there were some 48 hours overlapping.

He had to make a decision before his last week of school. If he had notified the doorman, who guaranteed that the money would reach its rightful owner?

On the other hand, for the first time in her adult life, she maintained an intimate relationship with an idea of ​​metaphysical causality: was it Providence that had left Catherine on the shore that gave her five thousand dollars for her retirement? How easy it was to think that. How many conflicts has he saved.

Who needed morals and civics when human issues were resolved through unverifiable belief?, violence or fanaticism? So … what to do with that money? If the What to do? If Lenin had referred to that conflict, the twentieth century would have been less ruthless. But even this was no consolation for the old professor who was about to retire.

A flash of inspiration lit his soul. Did Catherine want her money? I would leave it within her reach. Somehow, she was going to make her catch him and run away unnoticed. May Providence, in the form of a woman, decide for him.

That night, in the large dining room of the hotel, in the middle of a cold dinner, they argued. Kandaro, still smiling at him, speculated that he did not see the final, as a civil protest. He told him he was crazy, in English, Spanish and Dutch. Already in the bedroom, she refused him. Kandaro pretended to sleep.

The money was available: in the ajar safety deposit box (it was a credible oversight, if she had been with Kandaro for more than a week).

Catherine left the room in the middle of the night and the professor, incredibly so, fell asleep. At dawn, the money was in its place. The woman is not. Whoever had decided the destinies of the Universe had spoken, written his own To do.

He went downstairs to give the money to the doorman.

While the Argentines turned on the televisions, Professor Kandaro, deeply asleep, with his heart beating in the safe, forever, was preparing his lesson for Monday.

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