Cesar Aira - Shantytown

Thanks to some miracle of communication, the event had already been “deciphered” by the time the ad hoc retinue reached the dead man’s feet, and big red phosphorescent letters appeared on the television screens, over the images from the live coverage: JUDGE PLAZA’S SON MURDERED or MURDER VICTIM JUDGE’S SON, or something like that. This was a real news story, sensational and surprising, especially since until that moment no one had even suspected that the judge had a son, or that she had been married. It had been assumed, in fact, that she had no family or friends, or any kind of private life: she slept on a sofa in her office at the courthouse, never took a day off or a vacation; it was inconceivable that she might be subject to commonplace emotions or enmeshed in conventional relationships. And now, suddenly. . an amazing turn of the screw had confirmed her superhuman capacity to generate news, this time with a revelation that went “straight to the heart”: she was a mother, a mother facing the ultimate loss, the loss of her only child.

The news girls thrust their microphones at her mouth, shouting barely audible questions over the roar of the storm. The rain, falling more heavily than ever, bounced off the big black foam covers of the mikes, and splashed in the judge’s face, which was white as chalk. The cameramen kept turning from the judge to the corpse and back, and the glaring spotlights attached to their cameras made shadows dance on the water.

Any creature equipped with a rudimentary cerebral cortex would have been able to deduce the inner workings of the crime. But the news girls didn’t operate like that. It’s not that they were stupid (not that stupid anyway), but in their work, for the truth to count as true it had to emerge laboriously from a background of error. There was a logic to it as well: they had to get everything wrong to keep people talking and thereby justify their role. That was why they asked:

“Did your son, the Pastor, have a real religious vocation, or was he using it as a cover for dealing drugs?”

“How could he have sunk so low? Where did you go wrong, Judge Plaza?”

“Were you aware of your son’s illegal activities?”

“Who do you suspect, Judge Plaza?”

The questions were calculated to provoke a declaration. Such was the violence of the rain that as soon as the judge opened her mouth, it filled with water. But she spat it out vigorously and shouted:

“He wasn’t a drug dealer! He wasn’t a Pastor! He wasn’t anything like that! He was my son! He was helping me with the investigation, in spite of the risks. He was brave and audacious and he was prepared to lay down his life to protect the community. He was the first to fall because he was in the front line.”

“Did he have time to tell you what he had found out, Judge Plaza?”

“Everything! Everything! Now I’m the target. But it won’t be so easy to kill me! From here on out, we’re calling the shots, and he is the one who will have to die.”

“Who, Judge Plaza? Do you know who was responsible?”

The judge hesitated almost imperceptibly, but quickly recovered her composure, and her voice became more guttural:

“It was a man well known to the police, a corrupt officer: Deputy Inspector Cabezas, from Station 38. It all goes through him, and we’ve had him under surveillance for some time. Up until now, I’ve treated him with respect because he’s a father too. When his daughter died, I knew that the loss would eat away at him and sooner or later he’d slip up. Now he has made a fatal mistake, and we’ll get him before the night is out, before it stops raining. He’s cornered.”

“Is he dangerous? Is he extremely dangerous? Will he kill again?”

“The man’s a wild animal, he’s desperate, and he’s kidnapped two innocent teenagers!”

Then the judge broke down and bowed her head, seized by an uncontrollable fit of weeping. The cameramen stepped back to get her body into the frame, and the shadows rearranged themselves. The news girls withdrew their microphones because everything had been said, and they knew that the headlines would be coming up on the screens: CORRUPT POLICEMAN FATHER OF MURDERED GIRL. COUNTDOWN TO REVENGE. ALL WILL DIE.

The pause provided an opportunity for the obligatory shift to the other breaking story: the rain. The record for precipitation was about to be broken, and all the mobile news teams that the TV channels had sent out around the city were equipped with portable gauges made of transparent plastic, marked off in inches. The hourly rainfall had exceeded sixteen inches already, and was climbing to unprecedented levels. All the stations had diagrams in the corner of the screen showing the water level in the gauges rising in real time. In a city as large as Buenos Aires, rainfall is often heavier in certain areas than in others, and at that moment, by a curious coincidence, the heaviest falls were occurring on the esplanade at the end of Calle Bonorino. The news girls made the most of this, especially since the record for the volume of water that had fallen on the capital would be broken in a few minutes’ time. Nature happened to be making history at precisely the point in space and time where this particular story was unfolding.

And there was blood in the water. The blood of a son. A single drop. As in the most potent homeopathic remedies, one drop was enough to alter the chemical and philosophical composition of that nocturnal Styx. The water took on a shadowy pink overtone, visible only to the mind’s eye in the prevailing blackness.

Certain incidental shots elicited other reflections, albeit in an unconscious or subliminal way, particularly the ones that showed the judge standing in the rain without an umbrella or any kind of protection. Except in the movies, no one stands out in a downpour like that, as if they hadn’t noticed; it’s a basic human reflex to seek shelter. Therefore she wasn’t human. The story was taking a new turn.

The TV channels were in a frenzy. They had found photos of Cabezas in their digital archives and they were alternating them with the live images. For some reason his face was horribly distorted by the electronic medium, becoming more grotesque with every passing second. It must have been because they hadn’t yet been able to find real photos and were making do with artist’s impressions. Meanwhile the archives kept providing images: an identity photo of Cynthia Cabezas; shots from her funeral, with the girls from Misericordia, and her parents in tears. And then, all of a sudden: old photos of Cabezas and Judge Plaza at some night spot, looking young, holding glasses of champagne; the Pastor preaching to a congregation; the judge with her son in her arms, when he was just a few months old; Cynthia as a little girl on the beach with her parents. . And the night, the rain, the city seen from helicopters — all the channels had sent one out — an ocean of confusion, from which the ghostly face of Cabezas reemerged, grimacing, it seemed. . A birthday party ten years ago, with Cynthia and the child who would grow up to be the Pastor at the head of the table, wearing paper hats. . It was the theme of life’s brevity again, but in the world of images this time. And it was taken to an extreme by the fantasy that was hovering over the viewers at that moment: an intergalactic traveler arrives in a strange world without any kind of protection (what protection could he have?). The environmental conditions are totally hostile to life: he’s doomed, obviously; he’s going to die in a few tenths of a second; you could say he’s as good as dead. . And yet, for the time being, he’s alive, arriving in the world, in the world’s horrific reality. And “the time being” is all there is.

Meanwhile, Cabezas hadn’t gone very far with his two passengers. In the end, the edge of the world was too remote; it couldn’t be reached within this life, and after the first moment of panic, he hadn’t really intended to go that far. He went around behind the cemetery and the Piñeyro Hospital and headed east on Avenida del Trabajo. The land sloped steeply down toward what is appropriately called “Lower” Flores, and as the water rose to the tops of the wheels, Cabezas realized that if he couldn’t drive at top speed, he didn’t really feel like driving at all, so he might as well stop. He thought that perhaps he should make a decision before getting too far away. Or maybe it wasn’t as rational as that: something was holding him back, keeping him within the circle where things were happening. There was still a lot to be sorted out, and the further away he was, the harder it would be. So he pulled up at the corner of Carabobo and pointed to the little pizzeria: