Juan Peron's Hands

Juan Person’s Hands, from Down to a Sunless Sea, Winter 2008

September 29, 2007

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Matt

The New York Times reported that the hands of Juan Peron had been removed from his body. A minister was quoted as calling the act “savage.”

Seagulls. Are there seagulls in Argentina? Do they soar, catching the spiraling updrafts off the coast of the Argentine? And are there dwarfs, scurrying hither and thither, thumping creatures with squat wooden stools in their fat and pouty little hands?

I wanted his head — only a thought. A head is too much to fathom. His hands, the huge ones that toyed with us in the grand plazas as he and the blonde one stroked and soothed us, the very hands that touched this whore in places we all imagined, would be the very hands I’d take from him. Without hands a man is neutered.

Breaking into the crypt was of no concern. Peron was always accessible. It was the method. At first taking different strolkes on a calf’s leg with an ax, a saw, then a machete, the machete came out best, like a butcher’s cleaver in its cut, sharp and abrupt.

I did not fear blood, for I knew it was long gone. I did wonder what else might issue. All shock has its roots in little acts.

Before I took his hands I removed his saber and scabbard. I removed a gold button, an anchor engraved on it — Peron loved his navy — from his now musty and gray white tunic, a keepsake, a reminder of the braid and buttons we all admired from the balcony above with Peron, the blonde one, the military and those splayed hands of his, with palms as wide as dishes. Like umbrellas to shield us, his hands enveloped us, placed us in shadow, anointed us fools.

While in the crypt I wrapped his hands in aluminum foil, destroying itself noisily. I put each one in a trouser pocket. I sensed I was endowed in some strange way. I was also, curiously, driven to open his fly, see what force he had, compare, but I had done enough. If I went further, perhaps I could not control my descent.

Are there Jews in Argentina? And are they safe?

At dawn I put his hands in a cooler near my cot, an American “Playmate,” atop a six-pack and a Milky Way.

I could not sleep. Taking Peron’s hands to the kitchen table, I placed them on the plaid oilcloth, still wrapped in foil, like chops. A cock crowed somewhere. Stiff to the touch and hard, I unwrapped Peron’s hands. I looked carefully at his palms in particular, furrowed, ridged, spotted and moist. They were within comprehension now, here on the coffee-stained table.

Placing both hands before me, I uncurled the gnarled fingers, so that each hand was like the hand of Jesus, our savior, in church, frozen in stained glass. I grabbed each hand individually with my own, an intense and prolonged grasp, my eyes closed, my arm and living fingers intertwined with Peron’s steely, cold and papery digits, once magically unavailable. And I was in control — of myself, as well, at last. I was complete, in possession. I had regained me.

Hurriedly i covered these waxen things with new foil, returning them to the chest. Worthless now, expendable, not worth a phone call to the press, or a ransom, they were excreta. And I had turned them into that, and I was much relaxed and cheered, slaked and spent, like being with a woman with thick thighs. I lit up a cheroot.

Once you have held a dead hand everything is imaginable — and possible.

As the cock crowed again, I flooded with scorn — so late in arriving, so belated in awareness. I was appalled at my own self-desecration over the years. And now it was only a matter of my final liberation, the disposal of the hands.

What I had done was not something a woman could do.

     Off the coast of the Argentine, over pelagic waters float Chagall’s Jews, among the gulls and dwarfs, attaining heights beyond their wildest dreams.

After grasping these hands, an exchange, a transfer was made, I knew, that which was disembodied embodied. I’d throw these stubs into a back alley, Juan Peron’s hands scum-licked, imploring. In late morning a stray cat might rub her snout against his fingertips, as we did. Perhaps a sotted campesino might come upon them and hurry away, self-whispering ruin.

Two unclenched hands in a back street, no self, no name, no one, a reminder of us all. Two hands against a Magritte sky.

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