The Scent of Buenos Aires

by Hebe Uhart

  “Gina.”

  What an exotic name, I thought, because Gina was the name of an actress who was all the rage at the time and this girl was nothing like her: Gina the actress was cheerful, happy, and outgoing. I wondered whether my girl just wanted to be called Gina. Maybe it wasn’t her real name; perhaps it was Maria, for example. Even though I knew I ran the risk of appearing rude, someone who gets easily distracted when they’re being told something important, like a name, I asked her again:

  “What’s your name?”

  “Gina,” she answered plainly.

  She didn’t have any sort of ID to prove whether or not she really was Gina, but I was sure it wasn’t her real name. After that I always called her Gina to her face, but I was suspicious. At the same time I found myself laughing about it. She didn’t seem to notice anything strange, and when I called her name she always walked in wearing a straight face.

  I had a friend, as I mentioned, who came to visit me once in a while. He always came unexpectedly, around eleven o’clock in the morning. This time he arrived somewhat earlier because he had taken his watch to get fixed. There was something different about him: he looked taller and his clothes were a shade lighter. I told him there was a new girl working for me named Gina—at least so she claimed—and we spent a long time talking about her before she appeared. When she did walk in, all of a sudden, I decided to pay close attention to how she behaved around my guest because we hadn’t had anyone over since she’d started. I was surprised to find how cordial she was, and my friend just gave me a look as if to say: What’s wrong with you? Saying all those cruel things about her. She was still nice to me—but it was more of a generic kindness. In fact, it even seemed like her orphanage voice had changed. My friend and I spoke enthusiastically about politics and she listened. At one point she even sat down in a little chair and listened in silence. My friend was talking about someone who had taken an unnecessary risk for a cause and suddenly I heard her say:

  “You made your bed, so you must lie upon it.”

  She kept saying all these cryptic things throughout the entire conversation. Her comments weren’t entirely relevant, but you couldn’t say they were complete nonsense either—perhaps a bit foolish, but only a little bit. My friend agreed with her and Gina’s face started to blush, which really suited her. That’s when I discovered she was pretty. Her hair was lovely and she had a pretty face too, even if it was a little bland. At eleven o’clock she said she was tired and wanted to turn in, and asked my permission to do so. I consented, but noticed her light was on until much later and I heard footsteps, too. My friend remarked that that girl had real common sense—that she must be from a village. And then he noted how beneficial it was to discuss politics with a villager. He also said he’d quite enjoyed our conversation that night—a conversation in which “the people” had taken part too. I agreed and we continued to talk about Gina for a long time, until three o’clock in the morning. That’s when it dawned on him that he should have remembered to pick up his watch, but it was too late. I promised to get it for him and he promptly left in good spirits.

  We had been having a pretty good time of it, without much work, when I told her:

  “Today we’re going to wax the floors.”

  She went right out and bought some wax—a type I don’t like because it has a reddish tinge to it—but I didn’t say anything. She got down on her hands and knees with an old rag and started scrubbing the floor with such vigor that the whole house shook. She worked doggedly, without stopping, and when I approached her to see how it was going she stood up, as if waiting for something, but she didn’t speak. Then when I went into the other room she asked in a low voice:

  “Who was that gentleman?”

  I didn’t answer right away; then eventually I said:

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  I guess she was satisfied with that answer because she continued waxing the floor with the same gusto, and again the sound of the rag rattled everything.

  My friend showed up at eleven o’clock in the morning: he hadn’t trusted me to pick up his watch so he’d come to get it himself. When he saw her kneeling on the floor waxing, he said:

  “That’s so old-fashioned! We’ll get you up to speed in no time.”

  He set right out to a nearby store that sold household appliances and asked the owner (they were friends) if he could borrow a buffing machine. Then he came back with the machine and showed her how to use it, but the girl didn’t understand so he went ahead and waxed the whole house himself. Happy, wiping the sweat from his brow, he said:

  “Let’s take advantage of the extra time now. What could we do? I know! Let’s play cards.”

  He took out a deck of cards and nimbly dealt them into little piles on the table. Then he asked the girl:

  “Do you know how to play cards?”

  “No, I don’t,” she replied blushing.

  I knew how to play cards, but not very well—it was something I mostly did just for fun. Inevitably I would get bored and stop caring which card I played, but every now and then I would play, particularly solitaire. My friend started explaining the game to her and she listened to him as if it were a matter of life or death, but it didn’t make any difference because either way she didn’t understand, she just blushed and then smiled. We started to play anyway, my friend directing the game because he knew the rules and besides, he really enjoyed playing cards. He said since she was just learning the two of them would play as a team, against me. Needless to say, they beat me at every game—he played for her and told her which cards to play. We played escoba, making groups of cards that add up to fifteen. He showed her how to make fifteen points and she seemed pleased, as if she’d gained a new perspective on life. After they’d beat me over and over again my friend said he’d lost interest in the game because it was unfair—we would play a different way: just me against her. It was almost as if Gina had a delayed reaction because then she said triumphantly:

  “We beat her.”

  I was surprised because her claim came a touch too late. Then my friend said:

  “We sure did. Now we can beat her again.”

  He stood behind her telling her every card to play, and when she didn’t catch on he kept saying: “You’ve got to practice, you’ve got to practice.” And she would smile and play her cards attentively. By then I’d gotten to the point where I end up throwing any old card down and I began to yawn. I smiled and said:

  “I’m tired. It must be bedtime.”

  It had gotten quite late and my friend promised to come back soon, which sounded nice to me—albeit unusual. When he left Gina closed the gate, making sure the inside doors were locked and, before going to bed, when she asked which type of meat to buy the following day, she added:

  “Another day you can win.”

  “I hope so,” I said smiling, “but now it’s time for bed.”

  * * *

  —

  It rained for the whole month of February: you couldn’t even step outside unless you were wearing boots. There was too much mud and we spent practically all our time indoors. One afternoon I got up from my nap and found Gina sitting at the table with all the cards spread out before her.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I want to play solitaire,” she said, “but I don’t know how…”

  Strictly speaking, she hadn’t asked me to teach her, but I did. She picked it up right off the bat, perhaps because of her previous experience playing escoba. After that, whenever I was napping she would play solitaire. Once, when I got up and it was raining like usual, I found my friend there showing her how to play. He was amazed by how much progress she’d made. He opened a bottle of wine he’d brought along and we all had a glass. We made a toast to something—I can’t recall exactly what it was we toasted—but the atmosphere was fairly lively. Still, my lower back was hurting a bit. I g
ot a sharp pain and I didn’t want to say anything right then so I went out and sat on the bench on the patio. I ended up staying there for a long time. When I came back in, there they were, still talking and laughing. I said:

  “I’m a little tired. I’m going to turn in.”

  Then I added kindly:

  “Please clean everything up when you’re done.”

  And my friend answered for them both:

  “Rest assured. Good night and sweet dreams.”

  By the time I’d given them instructions on how to clean up and we’d said goodnight, a while longer had passed. I went to my room but I couldn’t fall asleep because my back hurt too much.

  From that night on, Gina started asking my permission to go out every evening after six o’clock. I presume that had I denied her she would have gone anyway. She left with her jacket in hand—but not stiffly like she had the first day, she was more relaxed now. She tucked it under her arm carelessly, or slung it over her shoulder. Once I even saw her drape it over her shoulders, like young athletes do. These days she powdered her face, and she’d bought rubber gloves. They were enormous gloves meant for some lady with monstrous hands, but she was convinced the gloves were practical. One afternoon when Gina was finishing her regular game of solitaire, she said to me in a voice feigning indifference, but tinged with the severity of the orphanage:

  “I’m going to get married.”

  “Sounds good,” I said to her, “sounds very good.”

  She turned red and smiled like she always does when I say that to her. She hesitated and then she said:

  “We’re going to rent a house. Be sure before you marry, of a house wherein to tarry.”

  “Sounds good,” I repeated.

  Then she didn’t say anything else.

  And so it went: Gina got married to my friend—of all people—and went to live in a house they rented together in a neighboring town. Meanwhile, as I look back in retrospect over all that’s happened I’ve forgotten the point. I have to find another girl, because all this work is too much for little old me.

  Hello Kids

  AT the zoo in Buenos Aires there’s a baboon cage. The sign says: Sacred Baboon of India. I’ve been to visit three times and I’d go a fourth. Whenever I go, I first stop in front of the brown spider monkey, who’s the best acrobat I’ve ever seen. He splits his time between resting up after his balancing acts (slumbering with limber passivity), and spending long spells watching the endless source of enchantment parading before his eyes: a seesaw next to a sandbox where children of all shapes and sizes play; up and down, laughing and swinging. He seems fascinated by the spectacle, but every now and then remembers that he’s got his own show to put on. Then he scampers back and forth at full speed along the narrow ropes without a hint of vertigo, as if it were a cinch. I figure a human athlete would have to train for something like ten years to do even a quarter of his tricks.

  Next to the baboon cage, separated by a fence, is the southern pig-tailed macaque. Like the spider monkey, he’s alone, but the macaque has less fun because he doesn’t climb, he doesn’t have anyone to groom him, and he doesn’t get to groom anyone else. He spends his life spying on the baboons. There’s around twenty of them and they don’t pay the slightest attention to him—except once when all hell broke loose. It was fantastic. The whole troop of baboons, who are really rowdy, swung into motion. They rapped on the pig-tailed monkey’s fence three times, as a warning, as if to say: Careful, you’re not going to get off so easy. One of the chiefs kept passing by and smacking the fence on purpose. But when the troop is peaceful, Mr. Pig-tailed can watch the baboons all he wants. Once I saw them grooming each other in circles of three, one behind the other, meticulously parting each other’s hair into sections like a hairdresser getting ready for a dye job. As one chief offered up the other side of his body to be groomed, the expression on his face was a mix of arrogance and vanity. Another monkey was absorbed in studying his long, dark hand.

  They must have inspired Modigliani to make his stylized figures; the eyes of these monkeys are two lines; their breasts, two pink tips; and the penis, a long, red sheath. They cough and sneeze. One of the monkeys made a little noise and a girl said:

  “Mommy, he’s got the hiccups.”

  They chew forcefully and conscientiously when they eat, as if following advice from a magazine for humans on how to aid digestion. There’s one main chief and other minor ones; you can pick them out by their hair: it’s long, white, and slightly wavy. Leadership seemed to be granted based on hair. If their hair falls out, the other monkeys no longer obey. One girl said about their hair:

  “Mommy, he got a blow-dry.”

  Perhaps the notion of strength—which for us is different from beauty—is an all-encompassing concept for them, some sort of fascination. The foremost chief stands out because he’s the most indifferent of them all. He climbs up on a high rock to keep tabs on all the persecutions he witnesses daily. Not surprisingly, the biggest skirmishes occur in the back, behind the scenes, where he can’t see. He’s more tireless than Zeus, who likewise climbed atop a mountain to observe the end of the Trojan War and wearily said to himself: Go ahead and do whatever you like—I’ve had enough. But this chief never tires, and when the fight gets dirty he doesn’t hesitate to run over and let ’em have it. When it comes to mealtime, however, he’s no different from the rest—he shakes the fence nobly and pounds on the food chute, too. Like they say in Mexico: Mendigo y con garrote—beggars can’t be choosers. After the chief has made his plea, another very different beggar comes along. Perhaps he was once the chief but his hair fell out, taking his confidence along with it. He tries to jiggle the fence but to no avail, as if to say: Anything for me? No crown of hair, no attitude, no conviction. He doesn’t score so much as a scrap.

  And then there’s the mother monkey with her little baby, who is around three months old. Sometimes she gives him a piggyback ride, or she holds him in her hand like a tiny package. She shepherds him around, but when he’s dying to play with a monkey who’s bigger than him she carts him off, like a suspicious human mother around an older kid. Once, the baby monkey climbed up the fence but then didn’t know how to get down. And his mother didn’t help—it was an aunt or an uncle or simply a neighbor who rescued him.

  There are a lot of people watching and some of them are impressed by the baboons’ behinds—they’re so prominent. A girl around the age of nine says:

  “He’s got a brain in there.”

  And the parents, the grown-ups, don’t seem to understand that a baboon’s behind is an integral part of the species. They’ve all got it, it’s their hallmark. Some of the people say:

  “He’s got hemorrhoids.”

  They must subscribe to some sort of creationist theory. God would never have conceived of such a deformity; there’d have to be some element of perversion in God’s mind for him to design a creature with such a large rear end. But like Spinoza said: “Any one thing considered in isolation and not in relation to anything else encompasses a perfection as far-reaching as its very essence.”

  The mother monkey has a suitor. It’s one of the minor chiefs and he stands before her expectantly; I saw him at all three of my visits. Sometimes, she quickly hides her playful little baby behind her, but I can’t figure out why she periodically lets him stay only to shield him from the suitor later on. She doesn’t dislike the fellow, she just sits there, facing him. Now and then he goes to fulfill his duties as a vigilant minor chief, but he remembers to come back to his girl, perhaps awaiting a moment of weakness.

  The last time I went, a boy around the age of three said to them:

  “Hello, kids.”

  The Old Man

  It’s not that I’m selfish, I told myself. That’s not why I don’t want to give up my seat. Giving up one’s seat involves a considerable change in position: here I am sitting down, then suddenly I’d have to get up, repo
sition my newspaper, or reposition myself to read the newspaper. Meanwhile everyone’s staring at me. I’m just going to stay put.

  The person waiting for a seat was an old man with a bowler hat, the type nobody uses anymore. He was wearing one tennis shoe and one dress shoe, which didn’t seem to bother him. When I noticed he was wearing two different shoes I figured his feet must really hurt, so I gave him my seat. I was tempted to move down the aisle to get away from him, in case he became too friendly, but that didn’t happen. He sat down with a little sigh. Anyway, it wasn’t just in case the old man became all chummy: I wanted to watch him. I couldn’t quite tell why he was wearing two different shoes. I figured that someone dressed like that would feel insecure, but that didn’t seem to be the case. He looked out the window of the train, watching the houses pass by. At one point he looked at a construction site with great interest, squinting as if he were short-sighted. When the lights of the train flickered on in the tunnel, everyone got up to get off. But the old man just kept sitting there, and I just stood there next to him. When I saw that he wasn’t getting up, I gave him a little nudge on the shoulder and said:

  “We’re here.”