The St Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires

by Eric Stener Carlson

  I, myself, always keep in my attaché a copy of 9 de Julio Avenue: Laws, Ordinances, Decrees, Studies, Data in Reference to its Construction, a comprehensive booklet published by the Municipality of the City of Buenos Aires in 1938. (Be sure you get the version with typographic compagination by Leonardo Starico.) It’s the Gospel According to the Saint John of City Planners! Why, I hardly need to visualise Schiele’s paintings for inspiration in the shower when I have this little booklet.

  It recounts the history of that ancient dream of cutting a wide Avenue straight through the great megapolis. There were countless attempts, but it was not until National Law number #2698, promulgated in 1889—that most beautiful of laws—that the dream began to take shape. (Unfortunately, the law was never enforced and, in consequence, it has fallen out of almost every reference book after the time period.)

  But then we had National Law #8855 in 1912, the First Article of which declares that there shall be made ‘The aperture of an Avenue from North to South of thirty-three meters (33) in width, in the centre of the blocks included between the streets Carlos Pellegrini, Bernardo de Irigoyen, Cerrito and Lima, from Paseo de Julio until Brasil Street. The centre of this Avenue will be the centric line of the open space in all of the extension of the lands to be appropriated.’

  Ah, Law #8855: there are days when I run my fingers back and forth over an old copy of its twenty-four articles in such exquisite agony, pretending I’m a tiny pedestrian, moving from one line to another of its perfectly-crafted text. Unfortunately, Law #8855, too, was put aside. But, thank THE TERRIBLE POWERS THAT BE, it was not thrown away!

  For twenty-five years, it lay dormant, gathering dust in some ministerial basement until—with stunning vision—Mayor Dr Mariano de Vedia y Mitre took it up again in 1937. Under the good Doctor’s care, now in the age of the automobile, a widening of a mere thirty-three meters would not be good enough. No, no! Dr de Vedia y Mitre’s vision was greater still: there would be an Avenue, a Great Avenue, THE GREATEST AVENUE THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN—and it would be one hundred and forty meters wide!

  To accomplish this, much destruction was required. Great grinding machines and wrecking balls chewed through mansions and stores. Dark-skinned labourers from the north were enlisted to pick through the ruins of four centuries of foundations. When you see photographs of the era, such as the demolition of ‘La Finca Lavalle’ at 1045, or the ‘Going out of Business’ signs perched on stores marked for destruction, you get a feeling for the magnificence of the work. It was less like urban renewal and more like the Angel of Death sweeping down on the first-born Egyptian children.

  Perhaps that’s why, when you take a cab down 9 de Julio, you feel you’re driving through the ghostly imprints of lower-class living rooms, cramped bedrooms, and suffocating kitchens, all of them packed with a Babylon of immigrants into that one-hundred-and-forty metre girth of the city, ground up to rubble and set into the foundation of THE NEW AVENUE.

  That’s what 9 de Julio is—a river of ghosts that breaks frothy white over the jagged foundation of Armenian tailors’ and Ukrainian cobblers’ shops, all to make way for the Accumulated Grand Vision of Laws number 2698 and 8855. Perhaps that’s why you have to be so very careful when you cross. Perhaps that’s why the traffic is so homicidal, so possessed.

  The ghosts are jealous of the living, of all of us who make THE GREAT TREK TO WORK every day across the Avenue, who rush to write our memos, process our financial statements, and date-stamp our progress reports under the light of 40-watt bulbs. We are living the life they so desperately want, and the spirits want to rob us of it.

  With these dangers in mind, breathe deeply. Wait, wait for the light to change. Now, go!

  ***

  A total of 45 seconds elapses between the time the white, blinking man appears in the crosswalk box in front of you, until the time the solid-orange man appears in the box on the extreme opposite of 9 de Julio.

  Now, it’s hypothetically possible, that, with the wind at your back, you could make it across the Avenue in those forty-five seconds. Of course, you could cross it in even less time at an all-out run, arms flapping and pig-tails waving like a little school girl.

  But I’m talking about crossing it in a way that befits a gentleman, a persistent (yet refined) stride just shy of Olympic walking. I, myself, have crossed that way in the time allotted on more than one occasion.

  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  It’s not just a matter of crossing from one end to the other, as if this were a single lane of traffic on some country road. Between where you’re standing and the far bank, there are twenty-one painted lanes, four cement islands and five crosswalk boxes (each with its own, independent timing mechanism).

  The first, slim street is Cerrito, and its two lanes flow to your right. The little, illuminated man in the crosswalk grants you 58 seconds (much more time than you could ever need to cross the entire Avenue) to reach the first cement island with its wide fountain.

  But keep going. The next street is what we can call 9 de Julio proper, with three lanes, again flowing to your right. This time, the crosswalk box gives you 47 seconds to reach the next island.

  Then, you cross the largest—and most dangerous—swath of 9 de Julio: eight lanes of traffic shooting madly, this time to your left. The crosswalk box bolted on the next island lures you out with its promise of 52 seconds.

  What often happens at this point is that you become stranded right there—amidst the crashing traffic—a victim of that solid, orange man glaring out at you from his little tin box.

  Just remember, if the lights change, try not to panic. Just jump to the curb, keep still like a baby fawn, and focus on the obelisk far to your right.

  The sight of the obelisk, towering 67 metres over the intersection of 9 de Julio, Roque Saenz Pena and Corrientes Avenue, will steady your nerves, reassure you of your goal. It is as much a piece of 9 de Julio, as the stone islands, fountains and plazoletas wedged between the lanes. In fact, it represents the very Greatness of the Avenue.

  Of course, you know the land on which the architect Alberto Prebish chose to build the obelisk in 1936 is the key. It’s the same reason the San Nicolás church had been built there before it. And San Nicolás was built there, because Don Pedro de Mendoza had plunged his sword into that very spot in 1536, founding the city of Buenos Aires!

  And why did Mendoza plunge his sword there? Because he knew a Power emanated from that place. He could feel it vibrating through the steel clenched in his hand. You see, the obelisk stands at the very juncture of Time and Space. It is a marker along THE GREAT RIVER.

  Most people are unaware of this, but they sense it at some primitive level. That is why hoards of drunken football hooligans and political activists flock to the obelisk. In their simple minds, they see it as a symbolic place to celebrate the achievement of kicking a small, leather ball between two posts or overthrowing the government. But they are like the oracles at Delphi: not knowing what they say, they say the truth just the same.

  I’ll explain this later, because you’ll find it too difficult to fathom now.

  For now, just remember, if you get trapped crossing the Avenue, think of Mendoza’s Power underneath you, licking at your heels like the flames of hell. Let it fill your body, invigorate you.

  When the light changes, screw up your courage, and move fast across those next three lanes of 9 de Julio (for which you have forty-two seconds). Shuffle across Carlos Pellegrini street, whose last crosswalk box on the far bank mocks you with an abundance of thirty-nine seconds to cross its mere two lanes of traffic.

  As you reach the Café Madeleine on the corner, you may be feeling rather giddy from the effort. But don’t lose momentum now. Turn right and wend your way through the maze of wooden chairs hobbled here and there. Careful of the customers whose heads of newsprint are like Minotaurs with cappuccinos steaming from their noses.

  Past the cheap bookstand. A little more, and there, you arrive at 719 Pellegrini. Tu
rn left and face the building there . . . You are at the doors of the Institute.

  Book X

  The Institute is housed in a grey, squat building. Its stone façade is encrusted with angels whose features have been blurred by the elements and clogged with soot. But, like the muted walls of a Mohammedan’s palace in Cádiz, its dull face enfolds a plushness and a richness of ideas—akin to bubbling fountains and luscious fig trees—that drives our work at the Institute.

  Push open the heavy oak and cut-glass door and head towards the dimly-lit bird cage of an elevator. In the half-darkness of the chilling cold, you see the reddish glow of a lit gas ring set into the wall. I reach for the tightly-rubber-banded newspaper that’s always on the small metal table there. Then I press the small button to summon the cage.

  Now, it’s true that crossing 9 de Julio was the most difficult challenge of the morning. You should be satisfied you’re on time . . . let alone alive. Since you’re probably at the elevator by 8:56 a.m., you’re virtually assured of reaching the Institute by 9:00 a.m. But now’s not the time to gloat.

  Remember, in this quest for getting to work on time, you’re not alone. In the darkened hallway, shadowy figures crowd around you in the cold, each one aimed at reaching a lower floor by 9:00. Do not engage the eyes of these wraiths. Do not exchange pleasantries. Shuffle towards the elevator without a word.

  You pack into the elevator, coffin-like. Someone far in front of you closes the outer grate, ‘Sh-hh click’ and then the inner grate, ‘Sh-hh click’. Then, with a slight trembling, and a ‘Whirr’, the cage begins to rise slowly, under the dim flickering of the light-bulb above and the painful twilight of the gas ring below.

  We stop at the first floor, PARCA, ‘People against the Return of Communism in Argentina’, and a few shadows shuffle out. Then the next floor, PARFA, ‘People against the Resurgence of Fascism in Argentina’, and more shuffle out. Then the third floor at CSAM, ‘Centre for the Study of Anal Masochism’.

  Finally, I’m the only one left to get out at the fourth and final floor. With a quick bound I exit the cage, and I rap on the glass door of the Institute. The receptionist, who’s arrived just a few minutes before me, buzzes me in. At this precise moment, when the tip of her red talon presses the electronic door-release switch, all my work, all my training and sacrifice pay off. ‘9:00’ clicks the clock above her desk, as I walk through the door.

  9:00 a.m., the most glorious moment of the day!

  As soon as I enter the waiting-room, I snap around smartly and face the door. I stand stiff and still like an English barrister at the dock. The newspaper under my left armpit, I wait until 9:25 when the Institute’s President, the Engineer Héctor Maximiliano Cerfoglio-Smaevich, walks through the door. (The Engineer Smaevich has a Degree in Hydraulic Engineering from the University of Buenos Aires.)

  At that moment, I deftly offer the paper to him with my right hand, with a subtle Prussian bow, the way my father and my grandfather did. We exchange limited pleasantries about the weather, and then he enters his dispatch and closes the door.

  Engineer Smaevich seldom requires more of me until I prepare his morning cocoa at 10:30. So I leave the brightly-lit reception area for the cool dark of the offices behind. As I go in, darker and darker still, I feel along the walls. I’m met by the familiar smell of cigarette smoke trapped in cubby holes. Years of perspiration and smoke are infused into the panelling, making a rich patina.

  As I turn down the hallway, under the flickering, fluorescent lights, I see Her sitting, toad-like, a lit cigarette perched on her lips. Yellowed filters, lilac-ringed and scorched up to the tips, lie crushed in the cut-glass ashtray on her desk. Dark circles sag about her eyes. Wrinkled, dishevelled, hunched-over, she smells like someone’s evil grandmother.

  That Thing’s worked here since before I began, even before my father. (I suspect, even before my grandfather.) She’s here when I arrive to work. She stays here until after I leave. She is always here, waiting.

  As I squeeze between her and two filing cabinets to get to my desk, I often think how I’d like to kick her in the chest with all my might and hear her life’s breath wheeze out of her. I suspect the only thing the coroner would find in her chest cavity would be a fistful of sawdust, like dark-green mate dried in an ancient gourd.

  I hate her, but she also inspires a grudging professional respect. After all, I’ve never seen her answer the phone, the antique cord coiled like a black viper on her desk. (Actually, I’ve never even heard it ring.) I’ve never seen her away from her desk. I’ve no idea what her name is or what she does. Somehow, she’s found a way to remove herself from all the cares of the world.

  I settle into the dark niche of my desk and switch on my desk lamp. I spend my day poring over yellowed maps of Buenos Aires, perfecting my route to work. I also consult texts on philosophy, hagiography and mathematics to divine ways to shave a few seconds off here and there. For the Ancients knew a thing or two about Time Travel!

  I’ve found the Kabbalah to be particularly helpful. It’s shown me clues to the dark things we left behind when we walked out of the cave and towards the sunlight of ‘civilisation’. For example, the Kabbalah’s taught me that, since the number seven represents the days it took for God to make the earth—and rest—the number eight signifies the sin of striving beyond His power. (Therefore, I’ve chosen eight as my lucky number, because I am becoming the most Powerful Being of them all!)

  The Kabbalah holds the keys to the universe. For this reason, I’ve chosen to apply its wisdom to the study of Ernesto Sabato’s novel, The Tunnel.

  ‘Why,’ you ask, ‘is he bothering with a novel?’

  Well, my naïve little poppet, if you’re bent on unlocking the secrets of Buenos Aires, it only stands to reason you must study the most important novel ever written about the city. There, at the mathematical centre of the literary Buenos Aires, you will find the most Cherished Secret of the actual Buenos Aires.

  Think of Hinckley’s study of the Platonic Dialogues. Remember how he proved that Plato had placed Socrates’ death at the mathematical centre of his œuvre.

  Where would The Tunnel’s centre be? Well, the novel, as you know, is 151 pages long. (Of course, I’m talking about the 1967 first paperback edition, by Editorial Sudamericana.) The mathematical centre, therefore, must be on page 76.

  However, it’s important when making these calculations to remember the novel actually begins on page 9. Therefore, 151 minus 8 is 143 (the real number of pages). 143 divides neatly into 71 and 71, with one page left over. So the mathematical centre of the novel is really the 72nd page (or what is numbered as page 80).

  There are 209 words on page 80, which are arranged in 6 paragraphs and broken down into 17 full sentences. The math was easy: I concluded the 105th word must be the mathematical centre of the novel . . . the word ‘one’.

  The number one? ‘One’ what? There must be more clues!

  So I tried a different angle. There are six paragraphs on page 80, so the first word of the fourth paragraph would, technically, be the middle of the paragraphs. That word is ‘God’. So, it was ‘One . . . God’.

  I was horrified. It couldn’t be ‘There is one God and Allah is his name.’ Sabato wouldn’t dare mock my budding godliness in that manner!

  I decided to reread The Tunnel, to see if I could glean some insight.

  Then I noticed, on page 70, that Castel (our protagonist-murderer) tells María Iribarne that he is ‘tirty-eight years old’. ‘Tirty’, not ‘Thirty.’ I’ve read the novel at least three hundred times, but this was the first time I’d caught that typo.

  At first, I was inclined to think it was a mistake . . . But then, I remembered from my study of the Kabbalah that nothing is ever a mistake! It is all meant to be.

  I suddenly realised that someone—and it could be no one else but Sabato himself—was hinting to me that page 38 was the ‘logical’, if not the ‘mathematical’, centre of the novel.

  I quickly flipped to page
thirty-eight, and there it was! So obvious, so stunning in its simplicity. Get your own copy down off the shelf, and look for yourself. Among all the swirling, nonsensical concepts, how could it be anything else but the word ‘subterranean’.

  It is here Castel recounts how he sees María exit ‘the mouth of the subterranean [train]’.

  Sabato was telling me—as clear as day—to look underneath the streets of Buenos Aires . . . not above them! Avenues and parks and plazas were only the start. I had to scrape my fingernail against the immediate sense of things, to see Buenos Aires as it actually was.

  Think of the antique streets of Buenos Aires, with their cobblestones and tram lines. Generations of fools have plastered asphalt over them, but these things still exist, latent in our collective memory. Like reviving old grudges, just blow carefully on the cinders of injured egos, and soon they’ll burst into hateful flames.

  Tell me, how many times have you been returning home to Barrio Norte, and you’ve said to the cabbie ‘Take the low road’. I bet, in a million years, you couldn’t explain why you’ve just referred to the streets around Libertador Avenue that way. I bet you still couldn’t explain yourself, even if I put a gun to your head and slowly cocked the hammer back.

  You should know by now about the many houses that used to sit on the gully, separating the upper parts of Buenos Aires from the lower parts down by the water.

  ‘Gully? What the devil’s this man talking about?’ you reply.

  So, you haven’t read Schávelzon’s fine book on urban archaeology? (Well, you’d better beg, borrow or steal a copy of it today!) And I thought you were more enlightened than that. You boob!

  As Schávelzon informs us, this gully has long since ceased to exist. The city planners thought it best to fill it in with garbage and trucked-in dirt, to rid the city of the constant overflow. However, even though the fissure’s gone, the memory of the ‘low road’ (where present-day Libertador, Alcorta and Costanera avenues flow) and the ‘high road’ (made up of Cabildo and Las Heras) exists in what can only be described as a collective consciousness.