Cesar Aira - Shantytown

“Thank you very much.”

“What for?”

“For thinking of me.” He blushed.

“You’re blushing. Your whole face has gone the color of your bump. You’re so shy, such a little boy. That’s why all the women are in love with you.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Don’t go so red, please! You look like a chili.”

He giggled uncomfortably.

“I can’t help it.”

“It’s all part of the same thing. A little boy has no idea what’s going on around him. No one has any reason to thank him because he never wastes a second of his time thinking about other people.”

“Jessica, I’m sorry, but I think you’re contradicting yourself. Either you think about other people, or you pay attention to your surroundings. You can’t do both at the same time.”

“That’s so typical of you, to make that distinction. As if we weren’t surrounded by other people. You’re just proving me right.”

Maxi wasn’t sure how they had reached these bewildering

dialectical heights, so he simply replied with a smile. He could feel his forehead throbbing, with an almost audible beat. Jessica half closed her eyes and went on, contradicting her own contradictions:

“What you have to realize is you’re not the only one. It happens to us all. Not so much with people, because they find ways to grab our attention and occupy our thoughts, so we keep tabs on them. But with things and places. It’s like living in a labyrinth that’s always being modified. It’s amazing how much you can end up not knowing. Everything.”

“I get by OK.”

She continued with her train of thought:

“Have you noticed how some people are always doing home renovations and are never satisfied? God’s like that too. With humans it’s so common that the council has to hire planes to take aerial photos. That way they can see the renovations and adjust the rates accordingly.”

“Are you serious?” asked Maxi.

“And that’s nothing. If they want, they can reconstruct all your movements, everything you did in the course of a day, everything you said, what people said to you. . everything.”

“No, I think you’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not, Maxi, you’re so naïve! You’re such a daydreamer!”

“Who’d be interested in what I do?”

“You never know. Anything at all can turn out to be important.”

Maxi pondered this:

“Anyway, when you’re inside, they can’t see you.”

“What do you mean? No, you didn’t understand. I wasn’t talking about the planes. There’s a thousand ways to document all the stuff that happens. Everything gets recorded somehow.”

“Hmm. . yeah, maybe. With hidden microphones or cameras.”

“No. It was the same before they were invented. But now there are cameras as well, even here. .”

Maxi laughed:

“Don’t be paranoid. Who’s going to put a camera in a gym?”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. And even without a camera, I’m sure that. .”

Was Maxi imagining it or were tears beginning to well in the big golden eyes gazing up at him? He was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say. She went on:

“Now that the gym’s closing, somebody might want to know everything that’s happened here, minute by minute, since it opened. It might be important, for some reason. And there are so many traces! If you really think about it, everything you’ve done has left some kind of mark. Someone remembers it. Even when you’re alone, it’s like you’re being watched, because there’s always someone who can calculate or deduce what you’re doing. All they have to do is gather the data and sort it out. .”

“Hang on a minute,” said Maxi, who hadn’t been keeping up. “Why did you say the gym’s closing? Was that hypothetical?”

“What? Don’t you know? Come on. .! See how right I was before when I said you go round with your head in the clouds? Of course it’s closing. Chin Fu was just renting, and now the owner wants the premises back. He has heaps of places, all over Buenos Aires, and he’s leasing them out to an evangelical church so they can be used for services. He’s kicking out all the old tenants, refusing to renew their contracts. Either the church pays more or there’s something else in it for him. You really didn’t know?”

“No, truly. And when. .?”

“Now! The gym might be history already. Didn’t you notice that no one’s here today?”

“Yes, but isn’t that because it’s so early?”

“It’s not so early anymore. I was asleep for hours. Élida’s not coming. We said goodbye yesterday.”

Élida was the receptionist who worked there in the morning, a very nice lady.

“I had no idea.”

“It all began when Cynthia died. .” said Jessica, but she stopped when she noticed that Maxi wasn’t listening.

In an almost telepathic way, they had become simultaneously aware of the picture they composed together. They looked at the mirror-wall. Jessica couldn’t help noticing that she was almost naked — her skin a pale glow in the midst of the shadowy gray-green splendor — and that she was lying in the arms of a young giant wrapped in a plastic raincoat. But she made no attempt to cover herself or move away. Circumstances, which might have arranged them in any number of ways, had placed them in precisely that position. The slightest variation in the events leading up to that moment would have produced a different result. Yet this was how it had turned out. It was as if the hero of a fable, who had set out to rescue a princess, had, in the course of his marvelous adventures, been wounded on the sea shore, and a drop of his blood, carried by a wave, had voyaged to the far depths of the ocean and slipped in through the half-open jaws of an oyster to produce the rarest and most beautiful gem in the world: the pink pearl.

Now they were looking at each other. Maxi and Jessica. Her and him. Maxi was shy. Who isn’t, deep down? Who hasn’t succumbed to a hopeless feeling more powerful than all the strength one might possibly muster, wondering how many first steps will have to be taken, how many actions performed and words spoken, how many labyrinths will have to be negotiated in order, finally, to reach the moment at which reality begins to happen. But when that moment comes, none of us are shy; we couldn’t be, even if we tried. Things were happening to him now. He leaned down as the sky leans over the earth and kissed her. Lips touched lips that it had seemed they could never hope to touch, and that was all it took for their bodies and souls to communicate. If the gym no longer existed, everything was allowed. Trembling and enraptured, Jessica just had time to think, as if from far away: “He didn’t ask anything, he didn’t say anything. All he did was kiss me.” And before she put her arms around him and shut her eyes, she came to this conclusion: “He’s so clever.”

All day the storm remained imminent, building steadily; the sky grew darker hour by hour, the temperature rose, the air thickened. At dusk, Maxi woke from the deep sleep of his siesta into a crepuscular limbo traversed by people making furtive dashes for the safety of their homes.

When his mother, who was working in the dining room, saw him heading for the door, she said, “Don’t go far; it’s going to start pouring any minute.” She taught crafts in a high school, and was making complicated paper cut-outs. Maxi came to the table and picked one up, to be polite.

“That’s pretty. What is it?” He turned it over and answered his own question: “A mushroom. A duster.”

“A fan,” said his mother. In fact it was a cluster of fans with a single handle, which opened out in turn to make another cluster, upside down. “A fan that fans itself.”