Cesar Aira - Shantytown

“Sir, are you going home?”

“Yes, it’s late already.”

“Sir, it’s not so late.”

“For me it is. Very late!”

Then there was a silence, and fearing that it would go on forever, Maxi said the first thing that came into his head, in a brusque tone that he began to regret even as the words came out of his mouth:

“What are you up to at this time of night?”

“Sir, I’m going to buy food for dinner.”

“Now? Why don’t you go to the supermarket and shop for the whole week? It works out cheaper.”

He’d put his foot in his mouth again! Poor people live day by day, obviously; they don’t stock up for a week or a month, and anyway there are no supermarkets in shantytowns. But she didn’t take offence, and said exactly what Maxi’s mother would have said:

“Sir, there’s always something you need at the last minute.”

“You’re not afraid to be out alone at night?”

“Sir, I’m with you now.”

“Yes, because you ran into me by chance. You could get mugged for a peso round here.” He realized that it was rude to talk like that about the people who lived in the shantytown, but it was better than letting her think that he had been imagining the possibility of rape. Attempting to cancel the bad impression, he made a more general comment: “It’s shameful that people who have almost nothing will rob each other of the little they have.”

“Sir, I don’t think it’s so bad.”

“What!? So you justify theft? You’d steal too, would you?”

“Sir, can you see me trying to mug someone? They’d laugh in my face.” And it was true: she was scrawny. “What I mean is, if someone can steal, let him steal. If that’s what he’s made for, what else is he supposed to do? Especially if an opportunity arises.”

“That’s the law of the jungle,” said Maxi, shaking his head despondently.

“Sir, all I know is that everyone looks out for their own interests, and they can only do it properly if they exploit all their relative advantages, legal or not, otherwise they’ll lose out.”

“But someone else will win!”

“Sir, that’s right, but the thing is, for the overall balance to be maintained, everyone has to exploit their possibilities to the maximum! Otherwise there’d be gaps. If I don’t do something that I could do, because of a scruple, I’m relying on other people acting in the same way, and how can I know that they will? How can I oblige them to have the same kind of scruples as me? This is the source of much bitterness.”

She spoke with quite a strong accent, which Maxi couldn’t identify, but it had the merit of making her words, and even the situation, plausible. He bent down toward her and said:

“That’s what I call ‘the law of the jungle’: everything for me, nothing for the others.”

“Sir, if everyone says the same thing, then everyone will have everything. We are all ‘me.’”

“You don’t really think that,” he said, in a brusque tone again, as if he were impatient or cross, although he wasn’t: it was just a way of talking, quite common among the shy. And as before, he broke the ensuing silence with a generalization: “There shouldn’t be any poor people.”

She shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly:

“What poor people? Sir, that’s an old-fashioned word. In the old days, there were poor people and rich people because there was a world made up of the poor and the rich. Now that world has disappeared, and the poor have been left without a world. That’s why the ladies I work for say: ‘There are no poor people anymore.’”

“But there are.”

“Sir, yes. You only have to look around.”

“And they must suffer as a result,” Maxi hazarded.

“Sir, I’m not sure. The old world of rewards and punishments is finished. Now it’s just a question of living. It doesn’t matter how.”

“I just thought of something — maybe you’ll think it’s crazy. Imagine that a poor man comes across a rich man; he pulls out a knife and steals all the cash the rich man is carrying, and his watch while he’s at it. OK. Then they go their separate ways. And what happens? What happens is the rich man goes on being rich, and the poor man goes on being poor. So what use was the robbery? None at all. It’s like it never happened. You probably think that’s stupid.”

“Sir, it’s a thought that must have occurred to many other people because there’s a story I’ve often heard, sir, which starts in the same way: a poor man comes across a rich man, and attacks him. . and from that moment on, the poor man is rich, and the rich man poor, forever.”

“I’ve never heard that.”

It struck him as a typical “poor person’s story.” Or a typical “rich person’s story.” Once a story gets to be typical, the differences dissolve. Since he belonged to neither group, it wasn’t surprising he’d never heard it.

At this point in the conversation, he became uncomfortably aware of an uncertainty that often bothers people with a poor memory for faces: did he know his interlocutor? They must have known each other from somewhere, otherwise she wouldn’t have engaged him so naturally in conversation. There was an additional difficulty because in this case he couldn’t really blame his poor memory for faces: with a girl like her, the face was neither here nor there. His memory would have treated her as a social and human whole. He didn’t have the energy to run through all the possibilities, so he gave up trying to place her. If he didn’t want to make a fool of himself, or worse, hurt the feelings of this innocent girl, he had to maintain the ambiguity, which limited what they could talk about. Maybe the limits had been in place from the start, and that was how they’d got onto poverty.

As if she had guessed what he was thinking, she said:

“Here in Flores, we all know each other, even if it’s only by sight.”

“Really? You know everyone?”

“Sir, if I tried to keep something hidden, people would find out. There’s always someone watching, no matter where you go. And you can’t go very far, of course, unless you take a bus.”

“. .?”

“I was thinking of what you said before, about getting mugged.”

“Oh, that.”

“Sir, someone would see the thieves and go tell the police.”

“As if they’d care!”

“Sir, you never know what they’ll care about.”

They had reached the road and come to a halt. Maxi looked at the large red garment suspended from the girl’s hand. Then he looked back down the little street. Lights arranged in the shape of a star were shining above it. He thought: “This is her street. I must remember the star.”

“I don’t think anyone pays much attention to me,” he said.

“Sir, but people do! You don’t realize. . That’s what I wanted to tell you. Someone saw you come here and went to threaten your sister.”

“My sister? Why?”

“Because he thinks that her friends come here to buy drugs.”

Maxi was puzzled and lost for words, there was such a jumble in his head. In the end he stammered:

“The stupid bitch! Sisters, I tell you, she’s nothing but trouble! But. .! Jesus Christ!” Finally it occurred to him to ask: “Who is it?”

“Sir, he says he’s the father of the girl who was killed here.”

“Cynthia. Yeah. She was at school with my sister. Uh huh. . I see.”

“But maybe he was lying. He seems more like a policeman to me.”

Maxi took a deep breath and said:

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t you worry.”

“Sir. .”

“You’re right, if he saw me, he must be a policeman. Other people wouldn’t notice.”

“Yes they would! I see you myself. .”

“Me? Where?”