Cesar Aira - Shantytown

“Ma’am, yes. He’s a saint.”

“He’s a saint,” echoed the fiancé Alfredo, rustily, as if he had gone for years without speaking.

“Maxi, the things he does!” said Vanessa, shaking her head.

“He’s really sweet,” said Jessica. “But he’s too naïve.”

Adelita seemed to be on the point of stepping in to defend him, but she kept quiet. There was a silence. The four of them looked out of the windows: the storm had resumed in all its fury, as if it were starting over again, with a lavish festival of thunder and lightning, and the rain pounding like millions of drums. They had to rest their feet on the crossbars of the chairs because the tiled floor was under four inches of water. The waiters were sitting on the bar. There was nothing to do but wait. Vanessa heaved a long sigh and said:

“Well, now that it’s all over. .”

“Ma’am!” said Adelita, interrupting her. “If I may. . I don’t think it’s quite over yet.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think your brother is in danger.”

The look of shock on Vanessa’s face expressed a bewilderment larger than the girl herself. It was as if she didn’t even know who her brother was.

“Maxi?” It looked like she was going to say, “You know him?” again. But instead she said: “What’s he got to do with it?”

“Maxi!” cried Jessica simultaneously. “Of course! We forgot about him! Where could he have got to?”

“What’s it matter?” said Vanessa and added, addressing Adelita: “Don’t worry about him. He might seem really vague but he knows how to look after himself. And even if he does get a bit wet, it won’t do him any harm.”

Adelita shook her head stubbornly.

“Ma’am, I wasn’t talking about the rain. They found him a place to sleep in the shantytown because he couldn’t stay awake.”

Vanessa burst out laughing.

“He’s such a baby. He falls asleep on his feet as soon as it gets dark.” But thinking about it, she frowned. “Did they put him to bed?” And in an aside to Jessica: “I hope the sheets are clean. He’s so fussy. .”

“So what’s the problem?” Jessica asked Adelita.

“Ma’am, I’m worried that the man who killed the Pastor might have gone to kill Maxi.” The two girls gaped in amazement. “Because he was following him today, wasn’t he?”

“We were following him. We wanted to see what he was doing. But Cabezas. .” They looked at each other. “Come to think of it, it’s suspicious the way he turned up right then. Could he have been following us?” They both spoke at once. “But why would he want to kill Maxi? And how would he find him, if he’s asleep in a house in the shantytown?”

“Ma’am, it was the Pastor who hid Maxi and maybe he told that man something before he died. You didn’t hear anything?”

“Yes,” shouted Vanessa in a panic. “He gave him an address. Something with ‘seventeen,’ could that be right?”

“Ma’am, that’s where he is,” said Adelita in a dramatic tone of voice.

“Maxi’s doomed, Vanessa! That madman’s going to kill him! And it’s our fault!”

“But he said he was going to Paraguay! And he won’t go to the shantytown; that’s where the Judge is looking for him. .”

“Ma’am, I think he was lying. Didn’t you see that he headed off in the direction of the shantytown. .”

“That’s true. .”

Alfredo jumped up, plunging his feet into the water.

“We have to go and warn Maxi! Come on, Adela!”

“No, wait a minute. We wouldn’t get there in time.”

“And we’d drown on the way,” said Jessica.

In spite of everything, Alfredo was ready to rush off, but Adelita grasped his arm.

“I’ve got an idea.” She pointed to the cell phone that Cabezas had left on the other table. The two girls looked at it too.

“We forgot to call the judge!” exclaimed Vanessa. “We can call her now and tell her to protect Maxi. .”

“Ma’am, she won’t be able to do anything, but I can call the people who are hiding him. .”

They handed her the phone at once. She examined it for a moment, then punched in a number and lifted it to her ear.

Alfredo turned to the two middle-class girls and said confidentially:

“Adela’s very intelligent. She always works things out. Since she came here from Peru, she’s succeeded in everything. The only thing she couldn’t do was find me. Luckily Mr. Maxi came along.”

“Did you run away? How come? Were you scared of getting married?”

“Something like that. But it’s all behind me now: water under the bridge.”

“Well said.”

Meanwhile, Adelita had been speaking in a shrill voice, very different from her usual whispering. She hung up and said:

“It’s all sorted. They’ll take care of it. I asked them not to wake him up. He’s so tired, the poor thing. .”

Jessica and Vanessa smiled, imagining the scrawny little guys from the shantytown carrying Maxi’s gigantic sleeping body. There’d have to be twenty of them at least.

“But will they be able do it in time? It’s been a while since that criminal left, you know.”

“Ma’am, they have all the time in the world.” She seemed very calm about it all, and to put them at ease she said, “Didn’t you notice how, earlier on, extra time was needed too, for Maxi to get to the shantytown when it started raining, and reunite me and Alfredo, and let the guys put him to bed, and then for the Pastor to get back to the esplanade?”

“That’s true. We got there by car in a few seconds.”

They relaxed. Now there really was nothing more to do. They looked idly at the television, which was showing a series of dim shots of the shantytown’s outer alleys. Alfredo sighed:

“It’s such a long time since I saw the old shantytown. .” Adelita took his hand and squeezed it. The others were imagining that as soon as the rain stopped, the young couple would go there and consummate their delayed marriage. But was it ever going to stop raining?

“I just thought of something,” said Jessica. “Shouldn’t we call home?”

“You’re right! My mom’ll be having kittens. Is there a public phone here?”

She was already turning around to ask the waiters when she remembered that there was a cell on the table. Both girls laughed at her distraction; Vanessa picked it up and called. Her mother answered. Vanessa said that she and Jessica had been caught by the rain and taken shelter in a pizzeria where they were waiting for it to stop. They were fine; there was no reason to be worried. Yes, they’d got a bit wet, but it was no big deal. She didn’t lie much, in the end, and given the circumstances a little white lying was justified. Her mother said something, and she pretended to remember Maxi (and actually remembered him), and said that her brother, whom she’d run into by chance just as it was starting to rain, had gone to a friend’s house and would probably spend the night there. She hung up with a sigh and passed the phone to Jessica, who called her mother and told her more or less the same story.

“Mothers. .” they said to the other two, with a resigned smile. “You know what they’re like.”

“You’re lucky to have them.”

“But you have each other,” said Jessica, “and you don’t have to talk on the phone because you’re together.”

“Everyone has a mother, whether they like it or not,” said Vanessa. “It’s a mother’s world. That’s the only conclusion we can come to, in the end.”

She looked at Jessica. Jessica looked at her, with a melancholy air. They were still living in a mother’s world. Speaking of “conclusions,” it was obvious that for Adelita and Alfredo, the adventure had come to an end, and it had ended well. They loved each other; they would get married and have children: they were home safe. But Vanessa and Jessica were still up in the air, faced with the never-ending choice between following the advice of their mothers and doing exactly the opposite. The only conclusion that this or any other adventure could have was to let it be a lesson. . or not. That was the sole and dubious privilege of the middle class: not to learn from experience, to go on making mistakes, covered unconditionally by maternal insurance.