Review: The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Peron - Carlos Gammero

translated by Ian Barnett

The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Peron is a mythical quest with a difference. In the place of the Knight Errant is Ernesto Marrone, the head of procurement at a major construction company. His charge is to liberate the company’s kidnapped President, Sr Tamerlan, who is being held hostage by far-left guerrillas. To comply with their demands, Marrone must source busts of the late Eva Peron, and place them in each of the company’s 92 offices. This sets in motion a chain of events which takes Marrone deep into the heart of one of Argentina’s most potent myths: that of ‘Evita’.

The task initially seems simple enough, but a series of farcical events conspire against him. First, the factory he visits is occupied by the workers, and the bosses are taken hostages. In the confusion, he is able to pass himself off as a prole, to the extent that he is mistaken for an insurgent leader. When the police and army raid the factory, Marrone is forced into hiding, and flees into the slums. It is here that he finally experiences revelation, stumbling into a brothel staffed by Evita impersonators.

Marrone is fortified in his quest by a series of inspirational books which seek to reinterpret Shakespeare and Cervantes for modern business executives, and Gamerro has a lot of fun satirising the single-minded reductionist style of this literature ('Timon of Athens [was] an appeal not to overspend on advertising and representation... Romeo and Juliet was about the sometimes tragic consequences of communication failures in companies'). 

Marrone’s experiences during the factory occupation make up the bulk of the novel, and provide much of the interest. Initially, he adopts workers’ clothes in the hope that he will be able to appeal to his new comrades’ revolutionary sensibilities and persuade them to produce the 92 busts of Eva as promised. As he becomes immersed in the workers’ culture, though, a deeper objective becomes apparent. He has a latent need for acceptance, and to feel that his life has a purpose. These previously unrealised needs drive his actions from this point onwards, and add an element of ambiguity to his actions: is he serving his immediate goal, or this unspoken psychological urge?

His psychology is deepened by his relationship with his employer, who has a novel way of recruiting subordinates: "with his left hand Sr Tamerlan was pulling a proctologist's rubber finger-stall over his right index finger... Marrone felt the first, tentative contact between his buttocks, then an increase in pressure as the rubber surface began to work its way inside... perhaps the most humiliating moment for Ernesto Marrone [was] when his sphincter contracted on Sr Tamerlan's finger as if the were trying to keep it there just a little bit longer. It was the final proof, if any were needed, that Sr Tamerlan was right: Marrone could no longer call his arse his own'. 

Gradually, we learn more about Marrone’s past. He was adopted as an infant, and has no knowledge of his birth parents, but is aware that he is racially different from the majority of the Argentinian elite. It becomes clear that Marrone is looking for a spiritual element to his life, as well as a protective parental influence – eventually, he finds both in the figure of Eva Peron.

As previously noted, there is some uncertainty over Marrone’s apparent conversion to the workers’ cause – as with Patti Hearst, his revolutionary fervour appears to be genuine yet short-lived. Life in the occupied factory ‘was like a role play, and he was enjoying it enormously. It was a rule that always proved infallible: you never know your potential until you start exploring it'. We are told that he ‘threw himself with enthusiasm into the varied tasks,’ propagandising, unloading in the warehouse, security duty and overseeing the canteen. During a rally, he has enormous success adapting corporate ice-breaker games for a revolutionary crowd.

Gamerro is good on the chaos and farce that often comes along with political instability ('the usual state of catastrophe,' as he puts it). At one point, our Quixotic hero is forced to hide in a vat of liquid plaster; at another, he is nearly trapped by mounted police officers who burst into the factory: 'How on earth could a fucking cavalry charge be bearing down on HIM, a St Andrew's graduate and head of procurement at Tamerlan & Sons, as if they were back in the Middle Ages?'

This sense of absurdity reaches its peak when Marrone finds himself in the slum brothel, where masochists dress up in suits to be humiliated by the late First Lady, and business leaders wear peasant costume to fuck likenesses of her. As the maitre d’ explains to him, 'two classes of people come here as a rule; those who come to humiliate her and those who come to be humiliated by her. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, to fuck or be fucked'.

At the heart of this grotesquely parodic scene is an important observation: Eva Peron was 'a self-made woman who had created a product - herself - that millions in Argentina and around the world had bought and consumed'. The icon has become a commodity – the power of her ‘serene and peerless’ image renders her words and actions obsolete. Like Che Guevara, she is a symbol onto which individuals can project their own fantasies. This emptiness is also her lasting power. The thin line between the images projected by icons and by corporations is illustrated by Gamerro’s observation that Eva Peron’s charitable Foundation was 'one of the most innovative and truly revolutionary customer service departments in history'.

For Marrone, Eva Peron becomes a spiritual saviour. In the orgiastic surroundings of the brothel, Tamerlan & Sons’ head of procurement finds himself matched up with a 12 year old, playing the part of the young peasant Evita. There is no sex (Marrone suffers from premature ejaculation), but the child bathes him, washing off the dirt, oil and plaster residue from his time in the slums. Like Jesus, she washes away his sins with this action; the implication is that Marrone can reconnect with his humble origins, and find humanity and redemption through this understanding.

The Adventure of the Busts of Eva Peron is a surreal, fast-paced novel written with great insight and an eye for memorable set pieces. It shares the manic pace and satirical edge of novels like Eat My Heart Out and The Quiddity of Will Self – the willingness to shock readers out of their complacency, and confront them with bold and outrageous images. There is even a nod to Joe Orton: Sr Tamerlan’s finger is amputated by his kidnappers and sent to his offices, where it is passed around like Churchill’s cigar in What The Butler Saw. This is a bold and imaginative novel which deserves to be celebrated, a reminder that fiction can still take risks and provide the odd shock.