by Sam Munson
In the filthy tunnels of memory, to my eternal guilt, I recalled that Ana was dead, gone from this life, gone at the hands of, gone at the mustache of. I recalled this only then despite earlier claims, only then, only now, now, now. Only as that black-mouthed clerk fondled the receiver. I rushed up to the waist-high partition between us and drove my fist into that starry nothing.
The clerk’s teeth tore open the sticky, serpentine wound across my knuckles left by a baton blow. His shoulders and head collided with the rear kiosk wall; he himself, or his soul, or his colon whined. I struggled over the wooden lip, I entered the choked hexagon within the kiosk, and I kicked the supine clerk in the face, I kicked him once, twice, three times, four, five. Each blow revived my bodily pain, each blow sent sweat stingingly into my open brows. The clerk piped whistling cries as sleep or shock dragged him down. He was old, but I do not apologize. He had the immortal Department as a conceptual parent, and a Department voice now spoke through the fallen receiver: Hello? Hello? Blood from the clerk’s mouth smudged my wingtip, and a gold incisor lay on the blank floor tile.
I looked through the three windows to my left and observed: no visible disturbance. The travelers gathered on the domestic departures platform, the squat family floated on the Bolivia platform, and the old man was still peeling his orange. To my east a fence, an empty, weed-broken concrete expanse (toward Ramos Mejiá, this expanded into a parking lot), another double set of empty platforms and tracks, Padre Carlos Mugica, and the spike-shaped southern tip of the shantytown, its roofs now dark. I let go of my sighing suitcase as the voice on the phone continued to chirrup. I checked the other platforms and the station exit again: no security officers swarmed out to arrest me, nothing at all except the aborted and dental platform lights. The distance to earth from this platform was negligible, about five feet, so — I leaped down. No one, I realized, could see me. No track workers, no signalmen paced this section, and I had a clear path to the fence. Cold and greased beneath my fingers, like the fence at the meat distribution company on Zenz. I was contemplating how best to climb over, when I saw a tear, half-concealed by a clump of melic, its furry stem tips nodding in the breeze. Gravel spattered as I worked my way through, and a sharp-ended cut fence link tore open my windbreaker, but not my skin.
The Department’s arrogance, its grand insult, resounded. I saw no one, no one at all in the parking lot, the cars (all white) contained no one and no attendant’s booth shone out at the front. Through the silence, the silence that always blankets the zone around train yards, the kiosk phone went on chirping. Even the mingling announcements from within Retiro reached my ears. I kept trotting along in the twilight, not too fast, toward the unwatched gate in the fence facing Ramos Mejiá. Above it curled a stunted, scentless jacaranda.
13.
The citizens of the shantytown — in effect, the truest porteños — kept late working hours. This I observed for myself.
From ornament boxes or tangled piles, they lifted watch buckles, metal studs for trimming handbags, rolls of sateen lining, golden rabbit-shaped labels reading GENUINE PAMPAS HARE. A whole family in one house, mother, father, and triplet sons, all three faces stained red by a repetitive birthmark, sat at a card table and worked; in another, an old man and an old woman — who might have been siblings or husband and wife — engaged in the same labor as their radio blared out a Chopin barcarolle (I knew because my friend and colleague whistled phrases from it if her fury prevented her from speaking). Many of the shantytown dwellers, regardless of their age, wore jeweler’s loupes, which lent an inexplicable and utterly sinister element to their appearances. Euclidean scissors flashed in the dense, yellowed light, needles leaped and thread followed, pulled along with a nineteenth-century strength.
And in every house, too, I saw the same piles of objects next to the worktable. Stiff, hairy polygons, in many cases with the skin over the skull and the tail attached. The shantytowners worked with such speed that I saw the hides fully transformed: the pelt of a former fox terrier (I thought) was sliced up in threes and made into watchbands, and with the skin that once covered a mastiff the old couple sewed a handbag. They caught me spying but didn’t seem to care, they both grinned and waved, and called out: Good evening, sir. Then they sewed a clasp onto the handbag’s gaping mouth, set it aside, and picked up another skin. Ink-black and softly shining.
As befits a sufferer in a dream, I had no specific idea where I was, only that I was heading northwest toward my goal: the American Consulate on Colombia just south of Avenida de Libertador. Streets here, however, had no names. The lanes and alleys lacked public lighting as well. Most illumination came from within the houses. The shantytown dwellers filled the narrow streets, moving from house to house, asking their neighbors how the work was going, reporting on their own “progress” — that’s the term they used repeatedly. A young man, tall and wedge-shaped, wearing an amethyst-purple tracksuit with the name KATALINSKI lettered across the shoulders, seemed to be organizing this procedure. He looked in almost every window, smiled, waved, and reminded the dwellers: There’s a truck coming every day this week, so don’t worry if you have too much for the A shipment. He even said hello to me. Smiling, silent children, boys and girls alike, weaved left and right, pushing wheelbarrows full of skins (heading southeast) or finished goods (heading northwest, like me). Katalinski paid close attention throughout all his greetings and unctuous encouragements to the wheelbarrow bearers, nodding, making hard, curt gestures with a finger, and the kids obeyed with a speed that unnerved me.
Above us was the Illia overpass; the shantytown dwellers had continued building without interruption beneath it; here exterior bulbs dangled more abundantly than before, to compensate for the shadow cast by the overpass and the concrete pylons supporting it; here the lanes widened and wheelbarrow drivers traded loads of finished goods for loads of skins. Around us children furiously unloaded and reloaded wheelbarrows, and they whistled or shouted greetings at the man in the amethyst tracksuit. Katalinski circled and roved through the crowd. I cut out from the overpass shadow, he darted across my path, gave me a sour glance, and vanished behind a cubical house. I walked up a gentle rise. Beyond the low roofs, beyond the railyard, the first greenswards of Recoleta appeared, the Parque Thays and the United Nations plaza, resembling black lakes. Along Mugica, alone and loud, a blue van coursed, and I crouched next to a house where an adolescent woman held a dachshund skin up to the grimy bulb hanging from her ceiling, ignoring me.
In each sharp shadow I saw a security officer, I saw Luxemburg. Hard-beaten dirt spread emptily and tawnily before the doorways. No bowls, no meat, nothing. Blue plastic-walled outdoor toilets (surrounded by clouds of night-born flies) stood in for interior plumbing; filthy rivulets ran down the center of many streets, even down the main streets — children and adults alike plashed through them, spattered in graying muck up to the ankle, up to the knee. The dwellers, too, kept close together, moving in streams or swarms.
Two wheelbarrows collided. The children pushing them, a boy and a girl in identical jeans and T-shirts advertising the Ojea Meat Company, started to swear at each other, swear and laugh. I collapsed against a stack of tractor tires in fear, my knees bent, the porous, stinking rubber struck my right cheek. The girl was heaping up the purses that had slipped from the boy’s wheelbarrow, and the boy was arranging the skins that had fallen from the girl’s (by size, largest to smallest, and with shocking speed). They both kept looking at me as Katalinski had done: with dark, soured glances. After they’d finished loading up the purses once more, they did not seize the wheelbarrows and drive them away but embraced each other, whispering and looking at me. Katalinski appeared and tousled their hair, and they forgot all about me, it seemed. My fear receded. I staggered past the stacked tires, staggered along in the street muck, as the light, heavy tread of Katalinski continued to resound behind me. My lungs burned from the few miles I had walked and from the effort I expended in my assault on the clerk
. The long lane stretched into the gray-green darkness, where the houses lost their distinct outlines, where the proleptic haze of the parks was soon to begin. Behind me open laughter and mockery rang out. The shantytown dwellers chuckling (I assumed) at my hesitation. A smeared shout rose and died, too quickly for me to determine its meaning. The word “azogue,” that was the single word I knew it had contained — in that shimmered a sinister threat. Like the faint train whistles punctuating the radio noise.
There he is, there he is. Two voices shouted, two juvenile voices. I turned to face my accusers and the brightness made me squint, but I saw them: the boy and girl from the earlier accident, now surrounded by a crew of adult men and women, all carrying white, knob-ended objects. That’s him, said a red-haired woman, bending down to speak to the girl. Yes, yes, that’s him. Without speaking another word, the knot of people moved toward me. I started to run. Look at that guy go, a voice shouted, maybe it’s not him. I broke left and right as often as I could, to confuse my pursuers, whose footsteps spattered in the dust and muck, along with their laughter and cries: I think he went this way, no, no, he’s over near the Alonsos, near the depot. The paths here were filled, as well, with wheelbarrow drivers, and they all broke into a unitary shout when I cut through their ranks: It’s him, it’s him, over here, hey, you guys, he’s here. These wheelbarrows all bore finished goods, and they all appeared to be moving to the shantytown’s northwest point, as I was. Blood leaked in two streams from my torn brow into my mouth.
The polyphonic noise of my pursuers accompanied me. They hadn’t yet caught up with me. I stumbled into a massive thoroughfare, dead straight, at the end of which I saw the houses subside and the named streets begin. Here, the rivulet deepened into a brook. I had to dash through it to keep away from my pursuers thronging to my left and right, who shouted out that I was there, I’d arrived, come on, I was there; or else they stopped in their tracks and pointed at me, their grins subtle but visible. As I neared the limit of the shantytown, my dread and my hope increased. I could no longer see or hear my pursuers. The wheelbarrow drivers did nothing to hinder my progress. Like all children, they enjoyed cruelty, and it was far more cruel to let me run than to stop me. Between the shantytown edge and the short bridge Mugica passed beneath spread a band of dry, dead ground. The moonlight on it picked out the metal rails of the train tracks crossing that empty zone. Now my hope bested my dread. I spat out blood and swiped my sleeve across my forehead.
At first I didn’t perceive the blow that felled me. Only as I stumbled into the tracks did I understand I had been struck down. My pursuers formed a wedge, now headed by Katalinski. Almost everyone was holding a club; the man who’d thrown his at me smiled smugly, his club lay, I saw, near my right foot. A bone, a dog’s femur bone. Since I could not stand, I examined it: the joint end had been drilled out and filled with lead. The warm wood of the ties pressed against my spine, and the cold steel of the rails pressed against my skull. Katalinski wore a broad, flat smile: the man who’d thrown the club at me widened his smirk. My other pursuers hooted and whistled, clapped and cheered as I tried to force myself to my feet. A long thrumming note from the rail caressed my scrotum and bowels. Go the fuck back to the University, shouted the club thrower. We have everything under control here. Katalinski’s smile hardened, vanished, and an attenuated, obliterating noise that I believed at first was a scream, my own torn voice, burst forth. Not a scream but a train’s warning whistle. My legs like all dead limbs possessed great dead strength, and so I tossed myself onto the earth beyond the track and dragged myself away. I even managed to bring the bone. The train’s headlamp was extinguished, a human figure leaned from an aperture in the engine cab, and the cars thundered past, a conjoined and oblong darkness. The passing train shielded me from my pursuers, true, but even its ordnance-like sound could not blot out their laughter.
I had just gathered my breath when hot light, a palpable force, struck my neck and ears. It came from behind me, it revealed the last cars of the thundering train (painted deep green, their doors open to the night streaming past) and my pursuers standing on the other side of the tracks, grinning, panting, their brows damp and their eyes indifferently clear. I turned my back on them to find the source of the light, but I could not, it blinded me. I stumbled to the concrete. Katalinski screamed: Come and get him, we found you a stray. His colleagues echoed the cry. My eyesight had returned, though orange nebulosities bloomed and died across my visual field. In the shadows along Salguero, I saw a night-blue van, with the sky-blue words MAN’S BEST FRIEND SOCIETY painted on its side panels.
Security officers were climbing out. One I recognized: Luxemburg. Her cap could not fully conceal her rich hair. Who’s in charge here, she shouted across the tracks to my pursuers. I am, cried Katalinski, and like I said you can see we found a stray for you. And please tell Olegario to make sure the fucking truck is on time in the morning. Luxemburg nodded, assured him she would. Is there anything else, ma’am, said Katalinski. You can go, she said. Yes, ma’am, Katalinski said. The redheaded woman next to him cried: Hey beautiful, what are you doing on that side, you should be over here with me. Mr. Pasternak, said Luxemburg. I didn’t answer. Mr. Pasternak, she repeated. The van driver (did I recognize him?) rushed up, overtook her. Answer her, he said. I raised the bone club. Mr. Pasternak, said Luxemburg. She drew her gun. Get on your knees, she said, put your hands on your head. I knelt and I placed my hands on my hot scalp.
14.
I used to drink but I had to give it up, Luxemburg said. Her colleague chuckled. Fuck you, he replied, you never gave it up. I gave it up in theory, said Luxemburg, which is all that’s required. The rearview mirror showed me their rigid grins. I did recognize her companion: Victor, the boy from the lecture hall. The student who had assaulted me and the female shouter. He was also wearing a sky-blue uniform now, and was armed with a gun, a baton, and a whistle. His nameplate read KLEMPERER (it appeared, reversed, in the mirror, and I was able to decipher it). Luxemburg lifted one hand to show she meant no harm. Don’t worry, Professor, you have nothing to fear, she said, not from him and not from me. Luxemburg you can’t trust, said Klemperer. She has Gypsy blood. That’s not what we call them anymore, said Luxemburg.
A cage was fitted to the rear of the van’s cargo area. Brown stains streaked the floor beneath it. Luxemburg asked if I was cold. I told her no. She twisted and leaned into the rear cabin and raised a thermos to my lips, lifting it so I could drink. It did not contain coffee, as I expected, but juice, papaya juice. To my own surprise, I drained the thermos without stopping. She held it up the whole time, Luxemburg watching me drink. You need to keep your energy up, she said. Klemperer slapped the radio. Luxemburg warned him not to break it or it would come out of his pay. Between them, on the front floor of the cab, a shovel lay rattling as we drove. We don’t earn much, she said to me, smiling slightly, we do this work for other reasons. Speak for yourself, said Klemperer.
They didn’t touch me, they didn’t beat me, they simply handcuffed me and lifted me from the ashen earth near the train tracks into the backseat of the van, locked the door, and started driving. I was too tired to respond with anything but compliance. Without a word, we passed into the null greenery that surrounds and insulates the southern capital. Klemperer, at last, found two radio stations that were broadcasting clearly and switched between them, news and jazz, back and forth, until Luxemburg told him to stop, to pick a fucking station and stay there. Klemperer ignored her and asked me, instead, if I wanted a cigarette. This I accepted. See, Professor, no hard feelings, said Klemperer. He twisted back — eyes on the road, asshole, said Luxemberg — and shook one from his pack. The golden word MACEDONIA encircled the filter. I took it in my lips. Luxemburg lit it. Smoke streamed toward the open windows.
The night dogs had gone, yes, but very few humans appeared on the streets. Almost none in the scrawny suburb we passed through. The buildings low and red, the pedestrians all old, neatly dressed in a cle
rical, timid way, their hair white or nonexistent, the outlines of their bodies blurred with age. At every door, with no exceptions, meat and water bowls and shrines above them. The shovel rattled on.
This is all going to be over soon, Professor, said Klemperer, I promise, so just try to relax. I’d offer you weed but we can’t smoke it on the job. Sudden laughs choked me, stopped me from answering. I closed my mouth, clamped my teeth together, I rocked on the jump seat. Now, Professor, there’s no need for that, Klemperer went on. Luxemburg said: Can’t you see he’s upset, asshole? Klemperer, his eyes canine and moist in the mirror, apologized. I didn’t mean anything by it, Professor. Ruts opened in the road beneath us. Luxemburg’s black boots reflected the empty, tree-edged sky flowing outside, in the so-called world. Dampness leaked through my shirt. He’s all sweaty, said my benefactor. No kidding, said Klemperer. And it’s going to be a hot one today, right, Professor? Luxemburg was lifting another thermos. I leaned forward; she took the butt from my lips, and replaced it with the thermos. This one held cold, sweet tea, and I drank it with the same speed I had consumed the papaya juice. A news announcer started to speak, a woman with a sculptured voice, but Klemperer switched back to the jazz station before she could finish a word.
An abrupt chain-link fence rose from the auburn dirt, and Klemperer slowed. When we stopped, Luxemburg got out and opened the door for me, watched me step down. I stumbled as I made contact with the earth, and she grabbed my upper arm to keep me from falling. Klemperer, without preamble, climbed out and unzipped his fly. The air smelled like rue and cortaderia, as well as asphalt and exhaust. DSP signs (sky-blue letters on white) bolted to the fence rattled in the wind. In the fence, a gate, on the gate a padlock, beyond the gate, with no visible preamble, a beaten dirt track began in the tangle of rue. I could see nothing beyond the waving plants except taller grasses deeper into the field. Klemperer’s urine splashed luxuriously.