Cesar Aira - Shantytown

But one day he came across a child or a pregnant woman (he couldn’t remember which), barely able to shift an enormous bag, and he took it from the child’s or woman’s hands, just like that, without a word, lifted it up as if it were a feather and carried it to the corner, where the cart was. That first time, perhaps, they said thank you, and went away thinking, “What a nice boy.” He had broken the ice. Before long he could help anyone, even the men: they didn’t take offence; they pointed out where they’d left their carts, and off he went. Nothing was heavy for him; he could have carried the collectors as well, under the other arm. They were tough, resilient people, but scrawny and malnourished, worn out by their trudging, and very light. The only precaution he learned to take was to look into the cart before loading it up, because there was often a baby on board. From the age of two, the children scampered around among the piles of garbage bags with their mothers, helping, in their way, with the search, learning the trade. If the family was in a hurry and the children were lagging behind, rather than listening to the impatient shouting of the parents, Maxi would pick up all the kids, as if gathering toys to tidy a room, and head for the cart. Actually, they were always in a hurry because they were racing against the garbage trucks, which were hard on their heels in certain streets. And ahead of them, in the next block, they could see big piles of promising bags (they had an intuitive sense of where it would be worth their while to stop), and this made them anxious: an urgent buzz would spread through the group; some would shoot off ahead, the father and one of the sons, for example, because the father was the best at undoing the knots and opening the bags and spotting the good stuff in the dark; meanwhile the mother would stay behind pulling the cart, because they couldn’t leave it too far away. . That’s where Maxi came in. He’d tell her to join her husband; he’d bring the vehicle. That was something he could do; all the rest was up to them. He’d grip the two handles, and whether the cart was empty or full (sometimes it was piled high), he’d pull it along almost effortlessly, as if he were playing a game, using his excess strength to stop it jolting, so as to spare the mended axle and the dicey wheels, and not to disturb the baby asleep inside.

All the local scavengers got to know him eventually, though he couldn’t tell them apart, not that it mattered to him. Some would wait for him, watching a corner, and when they saw him coming, they’d rush to get ready: he saved them time, that was the main thing. They didn’t say much, hardly a word, not even the children, who are usually so talkative. He’d come across a group of them almost as soon as he stepped into the street, but sometimes he’d go across to the other side of Rivadavia and the railway line, where they congregated earlier in the evening, and then he’d accompany their slow southward march, passing from one family to another. When they stopped to work a specially rich vein, and he left them behind, they never tried to stop him; it was as if they realized that others, a little further on, needed him more than they did.

If there was some sharing of the places with the richest pickings, it was a customary, tacit arrangement, or perhaps a matter of instinct. Maxi never saw them fight, or even get in each other’s way. When two groups met at a corner, he was the only link between them. His imposing presence must have been enough to establish order and guarantee peace: for these diminutive, downtrodden people, his giant’s body served as a bond of solidarity.

Marching southward, they were heading for home, that is, for the shantytown; as their loads grew heavier, the distance to be covered shrank. But they were also preceding the garbage trucks, which advanced in the same direction. This was such a practical arrangement, it might have been set up deliberately.

The richest plunder was to be found near Avenida Rivadavia, in the cross streets and the parallel streets, packed with tall apartment buildings, restaurants, greengrocers, and other stores. If the collectors couldn’t find what they were after in that stretch, they wouldn’t find it anywhere. When they got to Directorio, if things had gone well, they could relax and rummage in a more leisurely way through the less numerous piles of trash. There was always something unexpected: a little piece of furniture, a mattress, a gadget or an ornament, and curious objects whose purpose could not be guessed simply by looking at them. If there was room, they put these spoils into the cart; if not, they tied them on with ropes brought specially for that purpose. It looked as if they were moving house: the volume of what they ended up hauling must have been equivalent to that of all their worldly goods, yet it was the fruit of a single day’s work; when all the deals were done, it would be worth a few coins. By this stage, the women had generally identified anything edible and put it into the plastic bags that they were carrying. Beyond Directorio they entered the council estate: a dark, deserted tangle of crescent streets lined with little houses. The pickings were much slimmer there, but that didn’t matter. The collectors hurried on, anxious now to get back as soon as possible. They took short cuts down the little alleys to Bonorino, which led to the shantytown. But they were tired and burdened; the children stumbled along half asleep, and the carts wandered erratically. Marching home, they looked like refugees fleeing from a war zone.

By this time of night, Maxi had to struggle to keep his eyes open. Dinnertime was late at his place, luckily, but he got up early and needed lots of sleep. As he was helping his last family, if he was sure that they really were the last, he’d be waiting for the moment when he could say goodbye and go home, which he usually did when they came out onto Calle Bonorino. From there on they continued straight ahead, and he went back in the opposite direction (he lived on the corner of Bonorino and Bonifacio). The collectors, however, often made detours, which took them beyond the council estate, into ill-defined areas occupied by factories, warehouses, and vacant lots. And there it was sometimes the other way around: they said goodbye to him, because, on the spur of the moment, or in accordance with a pre-established plan (Maxi couldn’t tell: his rudimentary conversations with them never got that far), they would stop in some derelict building or open space that could serve as a refuge. This surprised him, and he could never work out why they did it. Obviously they were tired, but not so tired they couldn’t make it home. Perhaps it was so they wouldn’t have to share the food that they were carrying with relatives or neighbors. Perhaps they had nowhere to live, or just a portion of some flimsy little shack, and it was more comfortable for them to set up a provisional camp. One advantage of going out to work all together, as a family, was that wherever they happened to stop instantly became their home.

In any case, as long as the family kept moving, Maxi put off the moment of saying goodbye. As long as he wasn’t asleep on his feet, he could do a bit more to help them. He didn’t like having to leave them to their fate, they looked so exhausted; and it was no trouble, he enjoyed it. They trusted him, and his strength was plain for all to see. Imagine an elephant pulling a baby carriage: that’s how easy it was. Soon all the collectors got to know him. They accepted his help without fuss and gratefully let him take the handles of their carts, even those who looked unfamiliar to him, either because they were new to the trade, or came from another neighborhood, or hadn’t yet happened to cross his path (or because he was getting them mixed up, since he had no memory for faces, and there were so many of them, and they looked so alike, not to mention his poor night vision). And perhaps they didn’t need to have seen him to know who he was, because the news of his existence had spread among them like a legend: a humble, realist legend, so they weren’t amazed when it became a reality.

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