Cesar Aira - Shantytown

As winter came on, night fell slightly earlier with every passing day, and the scavengers stopped a little sooner, and Maxi went a few steps further toward the shantytown before turning back. Since the garbage trucks kept doing their rounds at the same time, there was really no reason for this acceleration, unless the collectors were rushing through their work because of the cold, eager to get back to their shelters, or maybe people were bringing out their trash earlier, reacting automatically to the failing of the light. It was also possible that Maxi’s help was making a difference. His action was individual, spontaneous and technically primitive, but perhaps it was having an overall effect and lightening the burden for all the collectors. If so, it was inexplicable and could only be attributed to the mystery of charity. In any case, they were now reaching Directorio by eight (whereas in summer it had taken till nine), and as Maxi approached the place where Bonorino opened out, he was less sleepy and had more energy in reserve. It also helped that he wasn’t getting up so early, because the sun was rising later. These advantages were counterbalanced by an accentuation of his diurnal rhythm, and a heavier, thicker sleepiness; the body consumes more energy in cold weather, and he was an eminently physical being.

No matter what the load, Maxi hauled without effort, like a faithful workhorse never shrinking from the yoke, and each day he ventured one step further into sleep. . No one had made any effort to discover Maxi’s social function, but he had found it on his own, without looking, guided by chance and the need to occupy his time. The reason why he had been left to his own devices was simple: society works with classes far too broad and crude to capture the variable properties of an individual. No one was to blame, of course. How can you tell what a person is capable of doing? There is no science of vocations. Each person’s place is determined by chance, and inadaptation is the norm. If there were a procedure for deciding what people should do by taking every one of their qualities into account, it would determine their maximum utility, both to those around them and to society in general. For a young man like Maxi, disinclined to study and endowed with an impressive (and, in its way, decorative) physique, the obvious occupation would have been to work as a bouncer or a security guard at a nightclub. He could have walked into a job like that; they were hiring just about anyone — the demand was insatiable. But here we can begin to see how this kind of selection and placement is based on generalizations. Maxi’s particularities rendered him unsuitable: for a start, his “night blindness” ruled out working at night. And then he didn’t have the gift of violence. So the only remaining option, in the system of general categories, was to work as a gym instructor. But that possibility was ruled out too, by less obvious particularities. He couldn’t accept or even consider a job like that. To him, there was something monstrous about the idea of someone who worked out in a gym becoming an instructor: it was like a patient becoming a doctor. He had a deep and instinctive aversion to systems that fed into themselves (he wouldn’t have been able to say why). It was as if, in order to exist at all, his strength and, in a sense, his beauty, had to operate outside the structure that had produced them, engaging with the real world. His “work” with the families of collectors was an improvised, spontaneous solution, which he adopted without a second thought, as if it were a gift from heaven. He had no doubt that in time he would find his real work, his vocation. And perhaps this was not just a stopgap measure, to fill in the time, but a path.

Every new cart he pulled was different. But in spite of this variety, all of them were suited to the common purpose of transporting loads as quickly and easily as possible. Carts like that could not be bought, or found in the junk that people threw away. The collectors built them, probably from junk, but the bits and pieces that went into them came from all sorts of things, some of which were nothing like a cart. Maxi was hardly one to consider things from an aesthetic point of view, least of all these carts; but as it happened he was able to appreciate them more intimately than any observer because he was using them. More than that: he was yoked to them. He had noticed how they were all different, in height, capacity, length, width, depth, wheel size. . in every way, really. Some were made with planks, sticks, or pipes, others with wire mesh or canvas or even cardboard. The wheels were from a great variety of vehicles: bicycles, motorcycles, tricycles, baby carriages, even cars. Naturally, no two carts looked the same, and each had its own particular beauty, its value as folk art. This was not an entirely new phenomenon. The historians of Buenos Aires had traced the evolution of the city’s carts and their decoration: the ingenious inscriptions and decorative painting (the renowned fileteado ). But now it was different. This was the nineteen nineties and things had changed. These carts didn’t have inscriptions or painting or anything like that. They were purely functional, and since they were built from assembled odds and ends, their beauty was, in a sense, automatic or objective, and therefore very modern, too modern for any historian to bother with.

As Maxi’s hauling brought him each night a little closer, the light the shantytown gave off gradually came into focus. One night he finally reached the point where Calle Bonorino opened out. That was when he realized that it really was an avenue, like the signs said. . But only there, and that was where it ended: on one side there was a row of little houses and stores; on the other, some kind of warehouse with a yard. In fact, the avenue was so wide and so short, it was more like a big square parking lot. On the far side, a sealed road led off into the distance, gently curving away. To one side of this road lay the shantytown, shining like a gem lit up from within. The strangeness of this spectacle brought him to a halt. The father and the mother (who had been riding on the cart) climbed down and took hold of the handles, supposing that his assistance had, for that night, come to an end. He yielded submissively, took his leave with a shy smile, and set off homeward. Before re-entering the narrow part of Bonorino, he turned to look back: the cart’s receding silhouette stood out against the brightness. He was very sleepy and had a long walk ahead of him, and yet somehow he was reluctant to go home. It may have been a purely physiological reflex; perhaps his dysfunctional pupils were attracted to that excess of light.

It might seem odd that a shantytown should be so abundantly lit. But there was a perfectly reasonable explanation. The connection to the grid was illegal; everyone knew that the shanty-dwellers “pirated” electricity. Since they weren’t paying, they could use it as lavishly as they liked. It’s easy enough to run a line from a high tension cable, but someone has to do it, someone who knows how to make the connections and distribute the current. There were, as it turned out, plenty of electricians in the shantytown, as there were plenty of people skilled in all the other trades, to a basic level at least. You could almost have said that everyone there had all-round basic skills: poor people learn to make do; they have no choice. They didn’t fear electricity like middle-class people, and there was no good reason why they should. But there was something odd: whenever Maxi managed to get a brief glimpse into the shacks, through open doors or windows, those spaces were much more modestly illuminated. In contrast with the blaze outside, the interiors were dim.

Up until then he’d thought that the scavengers were ashamed to let him come right up to their dwellings; but now he began to think that they’d been acting out of kindness: noticing how sleepy he was, they had been letting him go. He resolved to be more alert and extended his siestas; in vain, because nightfall still had the same effect on him. Nevertheless, by hiding his tiredness, he was able to get closer, and finally, one momentous night, he finally crossed the shantytown’s perimeter, and ventured just a few steps into that enchanted kingdom of unstinting light.