The Foreigners

by Maxine Swann

  “Christ, dude! What’s wrong with this apartment?” he said.

  “At least I managed to turn the water off,” I said. “You should have seen it before.”

  He followed me into the living room and looked around. “Shit, girl, this is not a good scene.”

  “I feel like we should get as much water out as we can,” I said. “So things don’t rot.”

  “Okay, let’s do it. Hugo’s on his way.”

  I handed Gabriel the broom and told him to sweep the water off the balcony with that. I went and got the mop and all the towels I had. He swept and I mopped. Then we both got down on the floor and soaked up all the water we could in the towels, wringing them out over the balcony at intervals and coming back for more. By the end, we were both sweating and tired. We lay there, he on the chaise lounge, me on a chair, exhausted.

  Olga called again, sounding frazzled. I said the plumber was arriving. “Oh, good,” she said. She was still out in Olivos. Her client was “very demanding.” She whispered this into the phone.

  Gabriel sent Hugo another text. He was on another job, would be there as soon as possible.

  “So how’s everything?” Gabriel asked.

  I told him about the latest scene with Leonarda and Miguel.

  “I remember once when I didn’t know what to do, I went away to this place in Uruguay,” he said. “It’s, like, this little squatters’ settlement on the beach. You can’t get there by car. You have to walk over the dunes. Or you can pay for a jeep to take you. There’s no electricity or running water. I went there because someone had told me about it. I was alone, I wasn’t sure what to do next, and when I was there I had this sort of panic attack. Yeah, way out there, in the middle of fucking nowhere. That was an important point in my life.”

  “And then what? What happened?”

  “I came back and started studying to be a doctor. Yeah, really.”

  Once he’d left, I felt agitated. I got up and wandered around the apartment. I looked in the mirror. The more I stared, the weirder my face appeared. For the hundredth time, I looked through the owner’s things, the books, knickknacks, tape cassettes. I pulled out a book, a novel, whose spine said La Creciente. I looked up creciente in my English-Spanish dictionary. It meant “tide.” I sat down and read the opening:The city was constructed on the edge of a river, but it wasn’t a companionable river on whose shores inhabitants could walk, that linked up between welcoming piers, under bridges with memorable names, one of those rivers that it was enough to mention to situate immediately the city which is its near-synonym: the Seine, the Tiber, the Thames, the Guadalquivir, the Moscow. It was a river independent from the city like a watery slice attached to it, a river that men didn’t need to cross to go from one end of the city to another, that did not impose itself on their vision and about which they hardly ever thought, since weeks and even months could pass without seeing it. They only went to it in the summer, but for this it was necessary to go a good distance from the city.

  It was a South American city and maybe for this reason the river was different from those of European cities. Everything about South America is different from Europe, something that saddens and humiliates the inhabitants of this continent, even leading them to deny this reality. Its landscapes, its people, its elements, its political events, its rivers are different. It was difficult to reach this particular river.

  A foreigner, attracted one day by the copper color of its waters, scenes on a postcard, wanted to find it and throw in a coin, an indispensable ritual when you arrive at any city where there’s a river. He was a determined and meticulous man, since Nordic blood ran in his veins and no one can deny that Nordic people know how to plan their days and accomplish their plans. He went down to the big avenues that run along the river and then turned on a transversal street. It was closed. He repeated his attempts tirelessly over the course of the day. At one point he encountered a wall that was hundreds of meters long. When he arrived at the end of it, he thought he saw the river, but it was only a barrier; he went to the other end of the street entrance and saw a sign that said “Closed to traffic.” His patience and perseverance did not flag, he had been a boy scout from the age of seven and a mountain climber since he was eleven; he had waited an entire year in the Siegfried Line and two and a half in a concentration camp, so he could definitely dedicate a day to looking for the river. But night fell and he still hadn’t found the way.

  The following morning, he repeated his search, he ran into other walls, other barriers, other streets closed to traffic, long rows of warehouses, coast guards who prevented his passing, rusted rails with out-of-use wagons put there like barricades and always, at the end, as if making fun of him, the tall masts that proclaimed the existence of the river. I don’t know how this apparently fruitless persecution ended, and it isn’t especially related to this story in any case apart from the definite fact that people had forgotten that they had a river and they neither feared nor enjoyed it. Maybe the foreigner managed to make it out from the top of a modern building or possibly he had to travel several kilometers away in order finally to catch a glimpse of the river on whose shores the city had been constructed.

  I called Gabriel. “Hey, what’s the name of that place in Uruguay? I think you’re right, I need to go away and think.”

  Part III

  twenty

  It took pretty much a whole day to get there. I took a midnight ferry across the Río de la Plata, the brown water transformed by night and the movement of the boat into a black sheet scattered continuously with white diamonds. We arrived at three in the morning in the port of Colonia. Then a six-hour bus drive across Uruguay into the dawn. It was a small country—I’d looked it up—roughly the size of my home state, Washington.

  I was sitting in the very front of the bus and watched the sun come up through the slanted windshield. The landscape was soft and green, with reddish roads, stands of eucalyptus, comforting clumps of sheep. Just looking out at it made me feel quieter. I had my iPod on and drifted in and out of sleep. Finally, we pulled in at an outpost where there were several jeeps parked around a wooden ticket booth. After I waited for an hour or so, a jeep took me and a few other passengers across the dunes to the fishing village that was my destination.

  I was glad to get away, to have my mind filled with new impressions. I made a point of not thinking about the things I’d come away to think about, at least not at first. I wanted to flood my mind with this other world, so that by the time I did think of them, it would be a different mind thinking.

  As Gabriel had said, there was no running water or electricity here. I had a little wooden cabin set back from the beach, a bucket, a well. During the day, I wandered down to the beach. The sand was packed hard. The waves were long. At certain points, they looked especially turbulent, as if currents were meeting, and could suck you right down. There were people here and there, not many. I walked along. A woman was selling crushed whale bones in little vials, which she claimed were aphrodisiacs. In the distance were high dunes, scaling, plunging. Every now and then, a dark tiny figure appeared on top of one of them, looked out, paused and then started to descend, stick-like legs sinking deep into the sand. There were dolphins in the water. Farther along were seal carcasses washed up on the shore, sometimes just the bones, sometimes the whole body, giving off a putrid smell.

  Back in my cabin, I lay down on the floor. Sometimes when I lay there, I felt a sensation in my chest, a sort of pressing feeling. It was oddly soothing, as if there were a hand resting there. Occasionally, I could summon the feeling, usually not. But if the feeling was there and I kept my awareness on the spot, the sensation grew. Sometimes it hurt. Sometimes it felt nice.

  The days melted into one another. I began waking up much earlier than I ever would. In the early mornings, the sky was a deep crazy pink. I thought about things I wouldn’t have thought about otherwise, the way the water curves down the drain in one direction in the northern hemisphere and in another in the south. Co
nsequently, rivers also carve different paths, the high bank on one side in the north, on the other in the south.

  I noticed the way the long grasses, swirling in the wind, left their own form of hieroglyphics, grass writing, circles in the sand. I stared down at the imprints left by tidal streams, those wavy patterns, like the form of the branches of trees, the shape of neurons, blood vessels, the shape of everything. From a certain spot on the dunes, you could see the sun and moon at the same time. I remembered things I had learned years ago. Sand actually consists of sea shells crushed tiny. Tides are the moon pulling water toward itself. To this day, no one understands why.

  It’s true that sometimes when staring at a tidal imprint in the sand, Leonarda in her various incarnations would come into my mind. At times I felt revulsion, especially when thinking of that last scene. Why get involved with such people who treated each other cruelly, wished each other harm? Then I’d see her in a different light, how fragile she was, the confessions she’d made to me. Another day, I had a vision of birds on branches hung with blossoms, moving in the wind. The birds took off, landed again, took off, this light, bright happiness I had felt with her. I thought of how it was in the beginning, just the two of us playing out in the world, before she’d introduced the Master Plan. What I wanted was to return to that early state, if we possibly could.

  A general retreats from battle, hunkers down in the hills. I had come away to nurse my wounds, recuperate and think through my next move. I would use all the tricks I had at my disposal. She could change shapes all she wanted. I didn’t care. Underneath was something else, I felt sure of it, this warm furry creature, sitting there quietly, waiting for me.

  I stayed away a month. But even on returning to Buenos Aires, I didn’t call Leonarda right away. I wanted to be careful, to do this right. The city had emptied out in my absence, as I’d been told it always did at this time of year. Isolde was in Uruguay, a different part than where I had been, Punta del Este, where the summer parties were. I called the hairdresser’s to make an appointment with Vera, but she was also at the beach, the Argentine coast. And Leonarda? For a moment, I imagined that she’d gone away with him, that the two of them were in Tigre, swanning along the muddy waterways, checking out island properties together. I panicked for a moment, was about to call her, then lay down on the floor for as long as I needed to, to calm myself down.

  The city was too hot for comfort. The streets were glaring.

  I saw Gabriel. He’d had to stay in town for his messenger work. He seemed languid from the heat. But he approved of my taking time to think things through. I could tell that he approved.

  The botanist had gotten in touch. He was very excited about a story happening on Argentine soil, a flower, the Iris pseudacorus that was taking over the Argentine wetlands. This was typical of him. He’d get very excited about a particular plant case and follow it closely.

  “Have you heard about it?” he asked.

  I hadn’t, but I promised to keep my ears open.

  I turned again to my water research. I had less than three months to go before I sent in my final report. I spent a number of afternoons in the National Public Library doing research. I took a tour of the water purification plant, witnessing how the dirty water from the Río de la Plata got transformed into the clear liquid that found its way into buildings and houses.

  Finally, after three weeks of this, I called.

  twenty-one

  Heyyyyy, hiiiiiiiiiiiii!” Leonarda said. “You have no idea how much you want to see me.”

  I picked her up after her Chinese lesson.

  She was wearing a tiny miniskirt, sneakers and her glasses. “Oh, wait, we have to put on makeup.” We stopped under a streetlight. It was dusk again. A dog was lying in the open door of a garage. “You need green, I always told you,” she said. “Close your eyes.” She put deep shimmering green shadow on my eyelids.

  We came to a plaza, its pathways on diagonals, the trees enormous, benches minuscule. All that green in the darkness, hulked there, breathing.

  I was trying to keep my equanimity. One part of my brain, a stronghold, wouldn’t budge. But another part was buckling, even now, I could feel it. Okay, go ahead, colonize.

  The point was I needed to stay in charge. Seduce, enchant, those things too, but above all take control of how the evening would unfold.

  She looked over at me with a funny smile. “You’re grateful to us, aren’t you?” she said. “Our antics free you up.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I didn’t mind what I assumed to be her jealousy, her fear of losing full dominion over me.

  “You’re that kind of foreigner. You go somewhere exotic and start moving your butt”—she circled her little butt around; some guys hooted from their cars—“and suddenly you think you’ve had an epiphany, like you’ve understood everything about yourself and the world.”

  I laughed. Oh, yeah, the butt fixation. I’d forgotten about that.

  “Or at least your butt’s understood. The knowledge is collected in your butt, which, by the way”—she glanced back—“is getting bigger and bigger.”

  We walked on. The enchantment accumulated. Despite my wariness, stronger than me. I imagined zoo animals in wartime, having crept out of their bomb-shattered cages, wandering loose on the streets.

  Suddenly, we were bumped into from behind. Leonarda skittered to one side. I fell forward, catching myself with one hand.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “What the fuck?”

  It was one of the cartoneros, the people who collect recyclable garbage. He was pushing a canvas cart suspended on wheels in which to amass his loot. It was piled taller than he was, blocking his view.

  Leonarda walked around the side of the cart. “Dude, you knocked us over! What’s the deal?”

  “Sorry, I’m really sorry.” The guy, surprised to be addressed at all by someone like her, and especially so informally, was about her age. He did look sorry.

  “Well, whatever. Get it together,” Leonarda said, turning away. “C’mon, dufus,” she called to me.

  I crossed the street to where she was.

  “I know,” she said, grabbing my hand in her little, hot one. “Let’s go to the nerd bar. It’s right near here.”

  By “nerds,” she meant hackers, computer program designers, video game inventors, maybe the kind of people she most admired, because they were at the forefront of everything.

  “You know Mercury fell apart,” she told me on the way. “I knew it would. It was totally passé. This is the new center of operations. Welcome to nerd world!”

  The bar was dark, everything looked red, with black-and-white cow spots here and there. Leonarda hoisted herself onto a barstool and sat there, shoulders hunched.

  When the bartender came, she ordered a beer. I got one too.

  There was a very tall guy with a very short woman at the end of the bar.

  “Shit,” Leonarda said, “sexual vertigo.”

  Suddenly, her face lit up. “Ohhh, the skydiver!”

  A young man with dark hair was sitting about five stools down from us. He seemed to have been waiting for her to recognize him. He got up, beer in hand, and came over.

  Leonarda turned to me. “This is Mateo. He’s a skydiver and a nerd. It’s the best combination.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said. “I’d like to try the skydiving part.”

  “If you’re serious, I can arrange it,” the guy said. “The one thing I would say is that you should do it more than once. You have to do it a few times to really enjoy it.”

  “Like how many times?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “After the fiftieth jump you begin to enjoy it.”

  “Fiftieth jump? Jesus.”

  “I would never do that,” Leonarda said, scowling.

  “Why?” Mateo asked.

  “Because I make a point of living my life so I don’t take risks.”

  “You do?” I asked, surprised.

  “But you cross the street?” Mateo said.

/>   “I cross the street in a way that it’s one hundred percent sure that it’s not a risk.”

  Mateo and I laughed.

  “How did you two meet?” he asked.

  “I stalked her,” Leonarda said.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I began stalking her online. I found out where she lived and waited outside on the pavement. I followed her everywhere.” Her eyes had an eerie look, making her story sound totally believable.

  A further group of nerds entered.

  “I know that guy,” Leonarda said, pointing to one of them, her lips close against my ear. “From the university. He’s a famous hacker. Like, I mean, he hacked through the U.S. Department of State’s security system.”

  The guy seemed to recognize her too, but was shy. Mateo went over to talk to the group.

  “So anyway, where were we?” she said, turning back to me.“Oh, yeah, you as a product of Humboldt’s theory.”

  We were like a comedy sketch. I lifted my eyebrows, meaning “Who’s Humboldt?” She rolled her eyes, meaning “Moron.”

  “Humboldt, you know, the Austrian explorer naturalist,” she said. “Bolívar, like the friggin’ liberator of the continent, called Humboldt the true discoverer of America. He traveled around here for, like, five years, doing all kinds of tests, describing everything, from ocean currents to volcanoes to magnetic fields to plant life. It’s not exactly that he came up with original ideas” (at this, I smiled—I knew how much she prized the “original idea”) “but he had, like, an astonishing capacity to synthesize knowledge. One of his essays called ‘The Geography of Plants’ is about how the geographic environment influences plant life, in which he pretty much laid down the foundations for ecology.”

  I nodded. I felt extremely happy to be sitting here in the nerd bar, listening to Leonarda talk about Humboldt, the nerds in the background, the couple with sexual vertigo at the far end of the bar.

  “So I was saying that obviously this geographical location is having its effects on you. Really, I think it’s great how you’re interacting with your environment.”