What would you say, then, if I told you, fifty years ago you could have hailed a cab along the Avenue, and it could have taken you in the opposite direction towards Plaza Italia? ‘Impossible!’ the little voice says?
But it’s true. Santa Fe used to have only two lanes of traffic, puttering slowly back and forth. Then, one day—through the Force of a memorandum from the Office of Urban Planning—two lanes suddenly became six!
And it changed its course, like the Yangtze River did a thousand years ago, drowning villages of peasants who’d assumed—like you—that the Emperor, the River and the Moon would go forward unchanging for all Eternity.
If it’s possible for the Yangtze to change its course—and for Santa Fe Avenue as well—what, then, about Time itself?
For your little, beetle brain, this may be difficult to grasp . . . but I’ve stumbled across a Force that flows beneath the streets of Buenos Aires, like an Eternal River making rough rocks smooth in its bed.
Okay, things are going to get a little complicated from here on out, so try to keep up with me . . .
Suppose you’re standing at the corner of Cerrito and Córdoba, tapping your feet impatiently, waiting for the light to change. Your frustration level is rising, because you’re facing endless lanes of traffic and, at your elbow, some dirty Indian boy is frying nuts in a hot, copper pan.
You’re all set to rush across 9 de Julio, but you can’t. Because that little, luminous fucker in the metal box across the street is solid orange instead of blinking green. The boy shouts in your ear, ‘Garrapiñadas for fifty cee-eents.’ And he stirs the filthy nuts some more.
You pad back and forth along the sidewalk, just like the panther Rilke observed at the Jardin de Plantes a hundred years ago. That bestial power confined to the tiniest of spaces.
You look beyond Cerrito with your cat-like vision, and you see all those little crosswalk boxes giving you 58, 47, 52 seconds to cross from one cement island to another. But you can’t get there, because the light on the corner hasn’t changed yet! The boy shouts even louder, this time directly in your ear, ‘Garrapiñadas for fifty cee-eents.’
You look at him like the panther looked at Rilke from its prison cell, and you imagine how wonderful it would be to grab him by the scruff of his neck and press his face into the boiling oil.
Anger bubbling up inside of you, you think, ‘Waiting for the light to change is such a fucking waste of time!’
But is it?
You learned way back in science class that no energy is ever wasted in the universe. It only goes somewhere else.
Think, for example, of the dying dialysis patient. His one, lonely kidney stops processing urine, and he’s all the way at the bottom of the transplant list. He’s dying—all of him is dying—when all that’s wrong with him is just a little ball of flesh no larger than his fist. ‘How can this be possible?’ he wheezes. ‘Why, I still feel the strength in my heart and my lungs! I can see with 20/20 vision the pink slats of the blinds, half-closed and crooked with the pull-string dangling in the hospital window.’
‘It’s just not fair, is it?’ he thinks. ‘Dear God, isn’t there any way to move around all my strength, my vitality from the rest of me, to that one, sick place?’
But no, there isn’t. Boo-hoo for him . . . he slips into a whimpering coma and fini.
But when the doctors rush in to cut him up for transplant parts, something marvellous happens!
For the past six months, he’s been bed-ridden, full of sores. But now that he’s dead, parts of him are visiting provinces he never knew in life. His liver is air-lifted to a yellow-faced girl in El Chaco. His pituitary glands are rushed to a dwarfish postman in Formosa. So, in some way, his prayer that his body’s energy be moved around, that it be redeployed, came true!
The same is true with Time.
It’s been made clear to me—by events I’ll explain later on—that all your time ‘wasted’, waiting for the lights to change, isn’t wasted at all. Whenever you don’t use your Time, it drips down into the city’s foundations, through the cracks in the pavement. And all that Time flows towards the same subterranean pool. And it’s stored there, like cells in an ancient battery. The Panther Energy lies waiting.
‘That’s all well and good, on a theoretical level’, you may say, ‘but how do I know this is really the case?’
Well, I’ll answer your question with a question.
Why does traffic stall in one part of Buenos Aires? Cars stretch on for blocks. You slowly creep forward in a cab, until you finally reach the place where everything was bottled up. But, miraculously, nothing’s there. No construction. No accident.
What’s the reason? Mass hallucination? An apparition of the Virgin? No . . . it was a tidal pool of Time.
Still not clear? Okay . . . at the risk of bursting your simian brain, let’s say you get off at Bulnes station after a long day at work. You shuffle through one of those two wooden-armed turnstiles there, and you just happen to glance down at the number counters. You see the counter on the farthest left is stuck at 22,193. And the counter at the right is stuck at 48. The next day, when you’re coming home again, you look at the number counters, and they still haven’t moved.
Tens of thousands of people pass through those turnstiles every day, rotating the dark, wooden arms. And yet, the counters remain the same: 22,193 and 48. What this means, in fact, is that they’re stuck at the exact moment when passenger number 22,193 and passenger number 48 exited the station. This may have been seven or seventy years ago.
For the sake of argument, let’s say it’s 1936, and passenger 22,193 is a part-time prostitute who’s just got engaged to her too-good-to-be-true boyfriend. He’s promised to take her ‘away from all that’. She gets off at Bulnes station to window-shop for her wedding day.
And . . . let’s say it’s 1963, and passenger 48 who is going through the other stile is a businessman coming home early to strangle his cheating wife.
Whoever these passengers were, whatever they had on their minds—a white dress or a coarse rope—those moments are imprinted upon the turnstiles the last time they ‘clicked’. They’re like those alarm-clocks found half-melted in Hiroshima, arms fused at precisely 8:15 a.m. when Little Boy exploded above a dormitory full of sleeping children.
Deep counting things, like turnstiles, not only tally numbers but also store emotions. Or haven’t you heard that clocks in rooms in which people have been murdered stop at the exact second of death? And dare to put one of those clocks next to your bed tonight . . . and what nightmares of Hell you’ll wake up screaming from!
Past feelings of lust, hatred and rage become embedded in the things around us. They influence our emotions, holding us still in their time. So, maybe the reason you’re in a good mood on Monday and make love to your wife with abandon is because you’ve just exited the turnstile on the left. And perhaps the reason you fly into a fit of jealous rage on Tuesday and throttle her half to death is because you’ve exited through the turnstile on the right?
These places can make desires stand still like tidal pools, protected from the waves of Time that break around them. Likewise, there are other places that pull you back.
Remember what I said about avoiding the Colon Theatre exit at Tribunales? The reason is, if you try to exit there, you’ll go against the currents of Time. As a result, you’ll inevitably arrive a few seconds late.
If you don’t believe me, go out the Colon Theatre exit the next time you’re at Tribunales, and try going up Libertad. At first, it seems like the best choice, because it’s a straight line to Córdoba, and you won’t have to go up Talcahuano and cross to Libertad. But you’re thinking like the Herd, ‘The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.’
Distance, yes . . . But not Time.
In the ocean, the fastest fish follow the curve of the jet stream. The same is true with the streets of Buenos Aires, for Time is like water. Go down Libertad, and you’re going against something stronger than yourse
lf. I swear to you, for no reason you can comprehend, you’ll arrive late to work.
There are riptides, too. For example, on the day before your wedding you may be heading for a drink with friends in Palermo Hollywood, and, by ‘turning a wrong corner’, you end up in a brothel in la Matanza. (How many grooms have tried, unsuccessfully, to explain this phenomenon of time travel when their brides pull down their drawers and find their thighs smudged with rouge?)
This gets me back to my example of the stalled cars. Somewhere, under that intersection, is a pool of time, a place to which all the ‘wasted’ moments have dripped. Once the overflow drains off—and heads towards the Deeper Pool—the cars start to circulate again.
Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, if you only knew where these dark grottoes were, you could somehow take advantage of them.
Would it surprise you to know, then, that there’ve always been a handful of men in Buenos Aires who’ve known the whereabouts of these locations? Of course . . . most of them did so without realising it.
Why do you think only a few speculators won so very much during the stock market boom? Why do you think just some ‘knew’ it was the right moment to buy up dollars before a coup d’état?
The Herd call this ‘intuition’ or ‘déja-vú’, as if the Captains of Industry had seen what stock was about to be traded and acted on it. Well, it really wasn’t ‘as if’. They really had seen the future. They’d travelled there, and then they’d quickly travelled back. So they knew what decision to make.
Few ever realised that the ‘lucky’ marble tile on which they always stood on the stock exchange floor was right above a naturally-occurring fissure from the Pool of Time. Again, most of these baboons didn’t understand how they’d obtained this power, but they realised the location had something to do with their success.
Why else would executives cheat, steal, kill . . . just to get the corner office ‘everybody wants’. Was it for the view? No. Was it because they wanted to screw their secretary while overlooking a grassy knoll in the park? Well . . . maybe. But most of all it was because the office perched atop a Geyser of Time that came bubbling up like clockwork!
But they should have been going down, not up! The Flow of Time is stronger the closer you get to the earth, near the roots of trees, where the dark things breathe.
You know how the clerk in the basement mailroom knows more about what’s going on in the company than his boss up above. Sitting in his half-lit tomb, licking stamps, walking between his cubby hole in the wall and the franking machine on the table, back and forth, back and forth like the panther, the clerk bides his time. And, like the panther, he will have his revenge.
So, now you know these currents of Time exist. But you don’t know where to find them, and you haven’t a clue about how to control them. That makes you smart for a chimp. But not a Saint, and nowhere close to being a god.
But, if you continue to follow me, down deep into my lair, I just may reveal my secrets to you . . .
Book XII
From looking at the flip-calendar with the little metal coil on my desk, I see what I’m about to tell you happened months ago. Although designations like weeks, months and years have little meaning to me now, for I have entered Eternity.
That fateful day, Mr Engineer Smaevich called me into his office.
I packed in, with the secretary, cartographer, linguist and other experts from our staff. As I settled myself into a corner, I noticed a young man I’d never seen before. He was wearing a blue suit and a gaudy, red bowtie. I didn’t think this strange, at first, because we have experts from the provincial offices visiting us all the time. But I knew this much: I did not like the look of him.
The Engineer began gravely, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have a terrible problem with our binders.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’m not talking about the two-ring versus three-ring controversy or the “A4” versus “letter-size” debate. No . . . I’m talking about the width of the binders, and, thus, the space they take up on the shelf. I’m sure you see where I’m going with this . . .’
A general sense of unease began to spread throughout the room . . . for, of course, we knew where he was going.
The average binder we use at the Institute, before it contains even one sheet of paper, measures 7.5 cm from that little tip of the binder rings on its face to the four grommets on the back cover. If you consider that the previous year the Institute produced enough memos to fill 437 binders—signifying approximately 3,277.5 cm in shelving space—I’m sure you’ll twig to the problem.
If you take the standard five-tier bookcase that contains 71 cm of space per shelf, those 437 binders signify 46.16 (+) shelves or 9.23 (+) full bookcases. Our archives in the basement of the building were already approaching the saturation point. And, with our projected growth, we would need a space as large as the National Library by the end of the next decade.
The Engineer continued, ‘After much debate and consultation with the National Commission for the Preservation of Specialised Libraries and Archives (NCPSLA) our Board has made a radical—but necessary—decision: binders will be done away with all together!’
The strained silence—bordering on unutterable anguish —was felt throughout the room.
‘But, come, come,’ he continued in a gentler tone, ‘we’ve always known it would come to this. But things are looking up. Instead of the binder, we have decided to perforate two holes in two rigid pieces of cardboard and connect them with two strings—each 7.5 cm long—with a knot on one end and a washer on the other.’
He held up a prototype for all to see. ‘Therefore, this new filing system has the potential to expand to the full 7.5 cm, without the immediate waste of space.’ Engineer Smaevich made a dramatic pause. ‘This, of course, will change the entire way we conceptualise filing . . .’
He continued with a theatrical wave, ‘I hold in my hand an allocation approval recently arrived from the Board of Directors . . . to hire someone to implement this new policy. The person I designate will be permanently installed in the basement archives. This fortunate soul’s job will be to remove the documents from the binders—beginning with those from the very foundation of the Institute—and place them in this new binding system. You see, the simplicity of the knot-and-washer system is such that . . .’
The Engineer went on, but I must admit, my eyes began to glaze over. As I focused on the washer and the dangling string in Mr Engineer Smaevich’s hand, his voice dropped to a low din in the background, as if someone had turned down the volume on a hidden microphone.
Perhaps it was the heat from all those bodies packed into the office, or a lack of air circulation in the room. For whatever reason, as I focused on the washer’s hypnotic swivelling in my President’s hand, I entered into what I can only describe as a kind of trance. The room became dark all around me. I swooned.
I awoke to the dull-green glimmer of a banker’s lamp, surrounded by row upon row of dusty files. I’d never seen this place, but I recognised it at once: I was somewhere deep within the archives, five floors below!
My head ached, and I leaned on a stack of papers to my right, so as not to lose balance. There, under my palm, I saw the preliminary, fact-finding report from the joint Argento-Chilean mission of 1903! To my left, was the stenographer’s notes from the Drafting Conference of 1904.
Then the first draft of the first speech from the first President of the Institute on our inaugural day in January 13th, 1906. In beautiful, rolling calligraphy, with graceful arches and long curves, it began, ‘Long has Argentina suffered, long has she toiled under what can only be described as a glacier of injustices . . .’ I put it down quickly, afraid I would soil it with my moist hands. Such Knowledge. Such Power. What was it the Engineer said . . . ‘the very foundation of the Institute’?
I looked at the cover page of file after file, greedy for more. At first, the only sound was the slight buzzing of the light-bulb from the banker’s lamp. But then I heard something else. More than hear it, I c
ould feel it move, pulsating in the darkness outside the reach of the lamp. A Power was breathing in the humid, foetid air.
Then an image flashed in front of my eyes, an outline bright-red like a welder’s torch against a black filing cabinet. It was the mighty tree, Yggdrasill, from Norse Mythology. Its three roots penetrated the earth. One went down to the Well of Fate. The other to Jotunheim (the land of the Ice Giants). The third, and most powerful, to Niflheim and the Spring of Hvergelmir.
It was strange to hear my own voice say aloud, ‘The Dragon Nidhogg gnaws at the root of Yggdrasill.’
The dragon Nidhogg. Yes, that was the Dark Thing breathing, its great tail writhing in and out of the filing cabinets. Its wide, slippery maw clenched and sucked on the roots. It was then I realised . . . the Panther and the Dragon and the Devil are One!
It was there I must go, down to the basement, to the Source of all things. I must be assigned to the archives. I must descend to where the Power is!
Just then, I thought I saw something move under an overturned plastic in-box. I reached out and uncovered it. The Horror! It was the red, bristly squirrel, Ratatosk, the creature that scurries up the tree of knowledge to spread Nidhogg’s insults!
It’s small vermin mouth opened, and it spoke to me. To my surprise, it was the voice of the Engineer Smaevich, ‘Of course, this post could easily be filled by an internal candidate, but I’ve always been a fan of healthy competition . . . That’s why I’ve invited Ezequiel Rosenbaum here as well.’
With those words, ‘Ezequiel Rosenbaum’, the room began to shake violently. The fluorescent lights flared brightly above me. The filing cabinets fell away, and the squirrel transformed itself into that smirking boy with the bright red bow tie.
Suddenly, I was wrenched back from my vision, and I stood in the Engineer’s office, half-blinded by the lights, and sweating profusely.
‘As I was saying,’ continued the Engineer, ‘Ezequiel is finishing an accelerated master’s program in Migrational Ice Studies and Mass Communication. His thesis is tentatively entitled “Comparative Ice Frontiers: Forces of Nature, Forces of Politics”, and I’ve heard the bibliography contains some very interesting Nepalese sources.’
The St Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires Page 13