Cesar Aira - Shantytown

For someone as sensitive as he was to the passing hours of the day, the winter dusk was bound to have a meaning. But what was it? The meaning without a name, in other words: nothing. The meanings all fell away, or revealed how empty they had been from the start. Hardly anything happens, after all, in an individual life: most of the time is spent working to survive and then recovering from work. If someone added up all the time that individuals have spent achieving nothing, just to keep time ticking over, the sum total of centuries and millennia would be overwhelming. By comparison, history is a miniature. But history is a condensation of facts, an intellectual contrivance that artificially gathers together the little that happened in the vast, half-empty expanses of real time.

The time of day was merely a signal for what was about to begin: the reverse of Maxi’s life, the night. His body eclipsed his consciousness, and from that point on he knew nothing. He didn’t know what happened at night. Against the background of that old ignorance, a newer one emerged: how did the inhabitants of the shantytown manage to survive? He understood the collectors’ system more or less, or could have (if he’d made a more concerted effort), but there weren’t many of them — a dozen, or two dozen, three at the most — and there were tens of thousands of families living in the shantytown. What did they live on? Air? He couldn’t rule it out. Maybe you didn’t need so much to live. Extending the earlier reasoning, it might be supposed that the moments at which you actually need something from outside to maintain your place in society or humanity are sparsely scattered over large empty stretches of time in which it is possible to manage with nothing. Added together, those moments of need would come to two or three minutes per year, and there’s always a way to get through such a short span of time.

Anyway, what poor people? The few he saw (by the time he entered the shantytown, the doors were closing) looked and behaved like any other Argentines. The only thing that identified them as poor was living in those makeshift dwellings. It’s true that no one chooses to live in a shantytown, but had he chosen to live where he did? And was it really so obvious that no one would prefer that kind of poverty? Perhaps not when faced with an actual choice, but some might find it desirable in a speculative way. Those dollhouse-like constructions had their charm, precisely because of their fragility and their thrown-together look. To appreciate that charm one only had to be sufficiently frivolous. Maxi wasn’t, but for him, the houses had another advantage: they simplified things enormously. For someone wearied or overwhelmed by the complexities of middle-class life, they could seem to offer a solution. Since their owners had made them, they could just as easily tear them down or leave them behind. After a day, a week, or a year, when the house had served its purpose, the owners could continue on their way. Or rather, make their way. . Of course, for this system to work you had to know how to make a house, of a rudimentary kind, at least. And who knows that? Poor people, that’s who. It sets them apart, and maybe it’s what makes them poor.

There was a moment each night when Maxi found himself alone in the shantytown. He would relinquish the handles and let the cart’s owners take over; they would head off between walls of tin, vanishing after the briefest goodbye, or before. They never invited him into their homes, understandably. He felt as if he were waking up, as if something were about to start. But it was time to finish, to go home, have dinner and sleep. He could barely keep his eyes open or walk straight; his perception was closing down like a clam. Otherwise, it would have been a perfect opportunity to explore. When he went down one of those diagonal streets, he always stayed fairly close to the edge of the shantytown, in the part that was brightly lit. Above his head were strings of light bulbs forming circles, squares, triangles, rows: a different pattern in every street. He kept looking back over his shoulder. Behind him, he could see the white light of Avenida Bonorino; ahead, darkness. The inner depths of the shantytown disappeared into the shadows, and that, along with his sleepiness, discouraged him from venturing further. And then there was the fact that the streets didn’t lead to the center. Because of the angle at which they ran, they would miss it, however far they went. In fact, they led away from the center, not just certain streets but all of them. In the end, he would turn around and head for home.

The shantytown wasn’t deserted. There were people about, of course: he was surrounded on all sides by a veritable ocean of humanity. And the people weren’t invisible. They did tend to go inside at that time of night, mainly because of the cold, and close their doors, or the sheets of tin or cardboard that they used as doors, but there were still some people walking around, or looking out, or hurrying home, or setting off for somewhere. No one paid him any attention; they didn’t even seem to see him. He didn’t look at them much either; he didn’t want to come across as a sightseer, or a busybody; anyway, he was shy, and by that time of night he wasn’t up to noticing anything much.

Nevertheless, one night, at that moment of hesitation when he was left alone and turned his gaze, as usual, toward the interior of the shantytown, he noticed a barely visible figure further down the little street and stayed to watch as it emerged from the darkness, becoming clearer with every step. There was nothing special about that figure, no reason for it to intrigue him, and yet he stood there rooted to the spot, staring. Had he sensed that his gaze was being returned by someone who knew him, and was coming to say hello? Sometimes you can know that much before you know anything else. If so, he should, in turn, have recognized the figure, and he did have a hunch of a sort, growing stronger by the moment. The identification of a tiny moving silhouette, barely distinct from the shadows, seemed an impossible task. But subliminal recognition at a distance is not so unusual either. Because of his poor night vision, Maxi was accustomed to the tricks of perception but also to its exploits. There was an asymmetry because he was right underneath a crown of bulbs, bathed in light, and the unknown figure was still coming out of the darkness, as if dragging it along behind. Was it a man or a woman? Actually, it looked like a child. Or rather it seemed too small to be real, even taking the distance into account.

A feeling of exaltation suddenly took hold of Maxi. Suddenly it seemed to him that the depths of the shantytown were about to reveal a small part of their great mystery. Why he felt this, he didn’t know. Perhaps just because the figure was coming from that direction and must have known what was there and was coming to tell him. This last supposition was unfounded. But it was possible and that was enough. And it wasn’t the only possibility in play. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was someone he knew, so they could say hello, and chat as they left the shantytown together! Even if it was somebody he barely knew at all, practically a stranger, it wouldn’t matter. Although it was true that something like that would have to be a miracle.

Anyone with normal eyesight would already have been able to see the person’s face. Maxi had to wait until the figure came within ten yards to realize that it was a girl: a very thin, short girl, with practically no breasts or hips, completely dressed in black, wearing tight pants, with her hair tied back. There was a big, flat patch of red swinging beside her. It was a garment, a coat or a raincoat, in a transparent plastic bag, the way they wrap them at the dry-cleaner’s. When he looked up again, he could see her face. She was a girl with Indian features, a boyish look and a deeply serious expression that seemed to be permanent. And yet, when she came up to him, she smiled, and although the smile was very brief, it was very encouraging, mostly because it came as a surprise. Maxi plucked up the courage to greet her with a “Hi,” which she did not return. He didn’t know how to talk to girls, he could never come up with anything to say. But she did reply in the end, and he fell into step beside her. After all, they were going in the same direction.