Eternal Love
by Ernesto Mallo
Barrio 11
Translated by John Washington
One merely has to walk around Barrio 11, the Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires, on any day after the businesses have shuttered their windows and the sidewalks are left flooded with discarded cloth, cardboard rolls, paper, and trash thrown out by the merchants and peddlers, to find themselves with the men, women, and children who sift through this waste, fishing for materials they can sell by the pound to recycling sites. These people survive by digging through garbage. Primarily benefiting from this misery are the police officers who collect their hush money, not in exchange for protection, but just for a momentary looking-the-other-way, an unreliable permission to go on. The rich Jewish families have started their slow and continuous exodus from the neighborhood, and though they’re keeping their businesses in Barrio 11, they’re starting to prefer living in Barrio Norte or Belgrano, residential areas that offer greater social prestige. The once luxurious buildings of the golden age are now filled with old people whose fortunes have been poured into high-rise apartments around the Libertador Gardens, vacations to Punta del Este, private, supposedly British schools, and imported cars.
Pablo Maese couldn’t care less. He’s happily walking down Sarmiento Street, having just received the good news at the Ministry of Culture that he’ll be commissioned to build a statue of Eva Perón, to be erected in the Rubén Darío Plaza. When the work is unveiled, they will call it Evita. The minister told him this in person. On top of the commission, they’ll also give him a work studio, and he’ll be able to hire three assistants and a model to help him with his magnum opus. His next few months are secure. He has won the tug-of-war with Gianetti, his rival sculptor, and now the first step is to put to paper the monument he’s already been sketching in his head. It’ll be a composition in which Eva, cast in bronze, will reflect maternal sweetness, lightly positioning, as if she were fearful of hurting it, an ethereal right hand on the head of a boy in a group of children tangling themselves in the layers of her dress. To her left, a solid mass of laborers, inspired by those that Carpani drew, a cluster of muscle and resistance. But he’ll keep this point of inspiration subtle, because he’s unsure to which end of the Peronist spectrum the ministry is now leaning. Either way, this will be a young, vibrant, sensual Eva, yes, but also a humble Eva—sweet but fierce—an angel who can wield a flaming sword. He’ll give her an objective, precise gaze, like Michaelangelo gave to David. The metal of her dress will reflect the movement of the wind, like in Sorolla’s beachside paintings. He sees it, in his mind he sees it, amongst springtime flowering jacarandas, framed by the National Library in the background, erect, dignified, brilliant, young: the true heroin of the shoeless.
Buenos Aires Noir Page 10