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RENALDO
At the conclusion, everyone was standing and applauding, stomping their
feet and whistling. It seemed like a football pep rally, with Squeo carried from
the room on the shoulders of his supporters.
He preaches pure anarchy! Lonnie thought to himself. It seemed to him that
the overall theme of Squeo’s lecture was that ‘Argentina must be ruled by the
will of its common people, with free elections. This must be achieved by any
means possible, even civil disobedience and violence!’
That could not be accomplished without even more retaliatory violence
on the part of generals who currently controlled the military, and therefore, the
country. It was a vicious circle that just seemed to perpetuate itself, recurring
every few years with a different cast of characters.
Lonnie was relieved to find no military police at the university that
evening as they walked to his car. The audience had been asked before the
lecture began to disperse as quickly as possible, so that the location of the event
could remain secret and secure for future use. The crowd seemed to be heeding
those wishes.
Once they were alone in his car, Lonnie finally sought out a reaction from
his learned companion. He was shocked at her diatribe.
“That man knows nothing about what is best for this country! He is a fool
and a coward. He has never killed anyone in the name of his revolution! All he
does is talk and line his pockets. No one asked him how much he is paid by
the unions to stir up unrest, or how much he takes under the table from the
junta to keep things peaceful. He is playing both sides against the middle, and
his bank account is the middle! We have had dealings with him in the past,
and I tell you, the man is a snake!” She sat back forcefully against the seat and
caught her breath. “And what must you think, mon petit bourgeoisie, about a
man that would take away your heritage, your fortune, and your family’s good
name? You can’t have me believe that you want these people running Argentina
the way that they aspire to. They are dreamers, men who do not act except in
speeches. Where I come from, we let our actions do the talking.”
It was true, of course. All of Argentina was aware of the destruction and
havoc that the Perónista guerrilla group, the Montoneros, had wrought, not
only in their home base of Tucumán Province, but also right in the heart of
Buenos Aires itself. Murders, kidnappings, extortions, and outright firefights
with the army had produced a death toll running into the thousands. It all
seemed so distant to Lonnie, unless, of course, a bomb exploded in Buenos
Aires or a local politician or general was abducted and murdered. Then, at best,
it was just a quickly forgotten news headline. But that attitude had changed
from the moment he met Celeste. She had succeeded in filling his head with
doubt. Doubt about his lifestyle, his family, his country, and also about his
prowess with women.
31
JAMES McCREATH
He was certainly not used to the cool aloofness with which Celeste
deflected his advances. Other women, they were his for the taking. But not this
one. This one drove Lonnie to distraction!
He found himself laying awake at night thinking of political arguments
that would impress her in the next day’s tutorial. Even his mother had noticed
the change in him, proclaiming at the dinner table one night that “Lonfranco
has lost his appetite because he is in love.”
Following Squeo’s dramatic oration, the student had dropped his tutor
off at her apartment building with a formal handshake and a thank-you. But
something deep inside his being forced him to call out to her impetuously
before she disappeared inside.
“What do you want me to do?”
Celeste remained on the stoop of her building staring at him for several
seconds, then disappeared without saying a word. Lonnie slammed his fist into
the hood of his car.
“Damn, that woman is driving me out of my mind.”
No one could have been more surprised than he was when Celeste asked
for hours in a café near her apartment, and to Lonnie’s delight, she did not want
to talk politics. She wanted to know about his family and his background and
promised to keep the biting comments that she would often make in class out
of their conversation. The señorita seemed truly interested in him for a change,
and the soft night air along with several carafes of wine made for relaxed,
expressive dialogue. When it was time to go, she did not hesitate to ask him
back to her flat so that he could “borrow a copy of a book by her favorite left-
wing author,” as she so coyly put it.
It would be a seduction unlike any Lonnie had ever experienced. Celeste
set the mood and controlled the flow of events. With candles lit and soft guitar
music on the stereo, they smoked a marijuana joint that Lonnie had been
carrying, followed by a bowl of Nepalese hashish. Celeste revealed that the hash
had been a present from a student looking to better his grades.
Lonnie’s skin was on fire with pent-up lust. When Celeste brushed his
arm with her fingers while handing him the hash pipe, he thought that his
body would explode. She sensed his arousal and let her hand fall to his inner
thigh. Slowly she began to trace the outline of his quickly growing manhood
with her fingers.
She leaned forward and kissed his lips. Unbuttoning his shirt, she swiftly
ran her tongue down his chest until she was able place his nipple in her mouth
and bite it. When he did not shy away from the sweet pain, she continued to
playfully explore his hidden secrets.
32
RENALDO
She orchestrated their coupling from start to finish, bringing Lonnie
to heights of ecstasy he hadn’t known existed. He was shocked that they fit
together so well, considering their disproportionate size. She seemed to meld to
him like a second skin.
Her passion knew no boundaries, and in this tutorial of the flesh, she
exposed him to new horizons for the first time. When they were spent, she did
not demand that he leave. Instead, she asked if he was hungry, then prepared a
huge feast of ‘vermicelli mixto,’ a pasta dish with pesto and tomato sauce. Fresh
green salad and hot bread were joined by a new bottle of Chianti. Lonnie was
convinced that this was the closest he had ever been to finding contentment in
his life as they ate and talked and snuggled.
When the aggressive athlete took too much liberty with his roaming
hands, the object of his affection would hit him with the wooden spoon she used
to stir the tomato sauce. The telltale red splotches on Lonnie’s face and torso
finally convinced him that this woman was totally in control of the situation,
and that he had better wait for an invitation to continue his advances.
Over the next two days, they stayed entwined with each other, body and
soul. It was Celeste, however, that set their course and pace. They would eat,
talk, make love, and then repe
at the whole routine again at her discretion.
Lonnie did not mind, for he had totally succumbed to her knowledge and
power. He had never felt so helpless, yet so connected to any woman in his life.
Sometimes they spoke of politics, but mostly of themselves, their backgrounds,
their families, their dreams.
She was the descendent of French immigrants who settled in Tucumán
Province as sugar cane sharecroppers when the railway expanded into the
northwest region of the country in 1875. That same rail line opened the
province to trade markets in Buenos Aires and beyond, and Celeste’s ancestors
became well-to-do sugar merchants.
Tucumán had been one of the first settled regions in the country, with
the Spanish Conquistadors arriving from Peru in 1553. The cities in this region
served as livestock and agricultural centers to support Peru’s nearby silver
mines. The city of San Miguel de Tucumán rose to such prominence that the
first national assembly representing all regions of what was then considered to
be Argentina met there in July of 1816. These representatives declared their
independence from the corrupt regime of Ferdinand the Seventh of Spain and
established the united provinces of the Rio de la Plata.
This was easier contemplated on paper than it was to achieve in fact. A
central Cabildo or ‘municipal council’ was set up in Buenos Aires, but several
disgruntled provinces, including modern-day Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay,
quickly gained independence in a series of bloody battles. Spanish loyalists in the
Tucumán region fought from bases inside Peru, using terrorist tactics to keep
both the military and the local population wary of this new independence.
33
JAMES McCREATH
This in many ways, Celeste explained, was the birth of the continuing
antigovernment movements that seemed to flourish in Tucumán province. The
cost in human lives and suffering over the last one hundred and fifty years had
been immeasurable. From pitched military battles to murder, extortion, and
kidnapping, nothing had changed up to the present. There was always a new
cause to champion and fight for, and thus, to die for.
It wasn’t so much to attain independence or autonomy from Buenos Aires.
It was more to achieve a sharing of the national wealth along the populist
philosophy. But for those innocents caught in the deadly political crossfire, it
didn’t matter in the slightest what the current cause was.
Celeste’s family had made and lost several fortunes as a direct result of
this turbulent history. Scores of her relatives had been arrested and executed or
had simply disappeared. Everyone tried to lead as normal a life as possible on a
day-to-day basis, but there seemed to be a constant undercurrent of uneasiness
due to the likelihood of impending flare-ups.
Lonnie was captivated by the story, but every time he would delve for
current family information, Celeste would skillfully shift the conversation to
his roots.
He had learned that her parents were retired and living on their country
estate, some hours from San Migel de Tucumán. Her two brothers, one older,
one younger, were running what was left of the family export business.
The student also received some insignificant facts about his lover’s
undergraduate studies at the local university, but further information was not
forthcoming. Lonnie was too much under her spell to push the point, and
subsequently, found himself talking about his ancestors with more feeling and
emotion than he had ever done before.
With the gentle encouragement of his tutor, Lonfranco Ernesto De
Seta painted the tableau of his family’s history in Argentina with a graphic,
insightful brush.
34
Chapter three
My paternal grandfather and namesake, Lonfranco Guissepe De Seta,
arrived in Buenos Aires in 1898 as a fifteen year-old immigrant
from Livorno, Italy. He was alone and had only the name of an old
family friend to contact.”
With those words, Lonnie embarked on a journey through his family’s
history in Argentina, a history that would take several hours to relate.
He went on to explain how his great grandfather, Alberto De Seta, had
shipped his young son off to establish a base in Argentina, with the intention
that the rest of the family would follow later if the reports from ‘the land of
silver’ proved promising.
Alberto De Seta had been a traveling porcelain and dry goods merchant/
importer working the northwestern provinces of Italy, with Florence as his
main market. The constant travel had taken its toll on Alberto. In spite of the
help of his two sons, Lonfranco and Pietro, both of whom he conscripted into
the business as soon as they could count money, his health and vitality had
failed him.
Seeking a new frontier for his family in retirement, he had sent his eldest
son across the Atlantic to establish a foothold for the future. This was not an
uncommon practice in Italy at the time. Young Lonfranco would often sit down
by Livorno’s bustling port, watching the tramp steamers carrying deck loads
of his excited countrymen off to the adventure of a lifetime. It was with great
enthusiasm that the youth awaited the day that he could be one of those men
on the steamer deck, waving and blowing kisses to adoring, tearful relatives
below.
That day came in the fall of 1898. Alberto had told the boy that this was
the best time to go, for it would be spring in Argentina, and the prospects
for work would be much improved. He gave his son the name of a prominent
Italian builder in Buenos Aires as a contact. This wealthy gentleman had been
a longtime customer of the elder De Seta before immigrating to Argentina.
That information and a few gold coins were all that Lonfranco De Seta
had at his disposal to establish a foundation in the land his family aspired to
adopt. The boy would have no way of knowing as he stood on the deck of his
westbound steamer that none of his loved ones would ever join him in the
promised land.
JAMES McCREATH
The passage to Argentina was pure hell, with food and sanitary conditions
at an intolerable level. Several passengers died outright from disease or
malnutrition. Others simply disappeared, jumping overboard to end what
seemed like perpetual sea sickness and claustrophobia.
Lonfranco was young and strong, however, and able to endure the first
of many hardships he would encounter on his journey to success in the new
world. When he finally disembarked on Argentine soil, some four weeks
after his departure, he was shocked to find that Señor Pugliese, who was to
be his mentor, had died several months earlier and all his businesses sold or
terminated. Pugliese’s widow had been aware of the communication from
Lonfranco’s father, but was in no position to offer any assistance, except for the
location of a cheap immigrant hotel.
She did mention that there was a lot of construction going on in the well-
to-do ‘Palermo’ section of Barrio Norte, where ambassadors, generals, and the
elite of Buenos Aires s
ociety were settling and building palatial homes.
Lonfranco was able to find an inexpensive room that first night in his
new country. He was thankful that his homesick sobs of anguish could not
be heard over the snoring of the dozen or so men with whom he shared his
cramped space on the floor. The next morning, the boy ventured off on his own
at daybreak, anxious to seek out whatever employment was to be had in this
new land that he was forced to embrace.
The sights, the sounds, the smells . . . they all bombarded his senses.
More than anything though, it was the humidity that caught him unprepared.
His heavy woolen fall clothes were drenched with perspiration within minutes.
Nevertheless, his spirits were buoyed by youthful curiosity. There was a newness
to the city that was not to be found in any part of Italy that he had traveled.
The similarity of Spanish to his native tongue made communication with
the Porteños relatively easy. Within a few hours, he had traveled by lorry and by
foot deep into Barrio Norte, where he finally rested at the edge of an immense,
open, green space.
One quick inquiry revealed that what he was gazing at was the Jardin
Zoologico, or Buenos Aires zoo. The park stretched well beyond the zoological
buildings, however. Lonfranco was told by a helpful passerby that what he
saw before him was Parque Tres de Febrero. It encompassed over ten thousand
acres of land. Along with the zoo, it contained a state-of-the-art race track with
grandstands, polo fields, several lakes connected by navigable streams, playing
fields, botanical gardens, and picnic areas. He was informed that it was the
center of the universe here in Buenos Aires on the weekends, when thousands
of Porteños would flock to its soothing, open expanses.
Another local told the boy that construction gang foremen often sought
day laborers at the Plaza Italia, not far from where he now stood. Lonfranco was
36
RENALDO
heartened to find that the plaza’s dominant feature was a statue of Garabaldi,
the famous Italian patriot. To his delight and relief, most of the fifty or so men
that had congregated at the base of the statue were from his homeland. Each
was after the same thing. Work!
He didn’t have to wait long to learn how the system operated. As soon as
a prospective employer announced his arrival in the plaza, every man went to