Third of January. Dawn breaks, sticky and oppressive; it couldn’t be more humid. I go to the bank to pick up my first pay cheque. They gave me a card but the cash machine swallowed it. Iris, who’s on a day off, will stay with Simón in the hotel. Before I leave, she gives me instructions: how to get there, where to get off, not to queue twice, and above all to avoid being served by the cashier with the moustache who always manages to find a problem. The ID, the signature, the system, there’s something new every time. Best to arrive half an hour early and queue in the street. It’s worse later, so she said.
I take the subway at Pacífico. Progressively, as I descend underground, first at the ticket window, then crossing the turnstiles, on the escalator leading to the platform, the viscous heat at ground level doubles, triples, until it reaches its peak inside the carriage. Without being quite full, there are a lot of people and as we approach the city centre we are increasingly crushed together. Someone comments: It must be about fifty degrees in here.
There are three people around me with whom I can’t help maintaining physical contact. In front of me, behind me, arms, back, even the head of a boy with endless dreadlocks who will spend the entire journey rearranging his hair and scratching everyone else’s faces with it. There are men in suits, ladies with bags, a down-and-out, a group of percussionists who don’t really know where to put their drums. There’s a girl who’s unbelievably dressed, the seams of her trousers on the verge of bursting, a fat man sleeping, his cheek plastered against the window, and a very pregnant woman who provokes a ripple of sympathy as soon as she gets on. Strong garlic breath wafts through this atmosphere, impossible to identify which mouth it comes from. I breathe as best I can; I hope it’s over soon.
Between Callao and Tribunales, more or less halfway, the train stops dead. Not violently, but still forcing us into a swaying motion that continues until we find our balance as a mass. Two minutes pass and the thing that causes irritation, ill humour, in some cases anxiety, is not knowing what’s happening, or how long we’ll be left stranded. Some accept it with resignation and, as well as sighing, they adopt bored expressions, checking the time on their mobiles with no hint of rebellion. Others, because that’s the way they are, a matter of temperament, start talking loudly, sound off about the subway workers, speculate, swear at no one in particular.
One man, the most agitated, he must be about forty with lots of curly grey hair, overplays his annoyance and, clearly without thinking about it, bangs his fist against the emergency box and pulls the red lever which peals out a shrill alarm, extremely high-pitched, as if to scare off rats. The man is met with synchronised disapproval. His intended heroism, the fact that he assumed his anger on behalf of the rest, makes him the target of all eyes. The hell is almost eternal. Fifteen minutes of enclosure, siren and sweat. Just about at the limit of what we can tolerate, just before someone carries out the threat of fainting, those standing next to the windows notify us of a movement of torches at the edge of the tunnel, they calm us down. Here, here, repeats one man and taps at the glass with his finger, fearing they’ll pass us by, the way it happens in dreams.
When one of the doors is finally opened, the inevitable occurs, an avalanche of which no one seems to be the cause. Some raise their arms in a gesture of innocence. Two men with helmets and grey overalls try to contain the passengers’ anxiety, they ask for order, they don’t say women and children first, as they do during shipwrecks in films: Calm down, everyone will get off. They erect some steps and the carriage slowly drains of people. One at a time, they say, but people still push and shove. Because I’m in a corner opposite the exit, I’m one of the last to leave. As I get out, I look both ways. Our rescue scene is multiplied along the rest of the train, forming the typical image of an exodus of refugees.
The underground peregrination is a mini adventure. The guy who pulled the lever returns to his role from the shadows, he won’t let up carping. Around me, others weave hypotheses about what happened. A blonde woman who is leading two girls, also blonde, by the hand, daughters or granddaughters, the darkness won’t allow me to see, is talking on the phone, relating the events, and she mentions a power failure, I don’t know where she got that from. A third person ventures the theory of a suicide. He says it loudly, with a touch of vindictiveness. I think: a suicide halfway between two stations doesn’t make much sense. One of the percussionists starts humming. His friends encourage him with applause, the boy lets himself go and raises his voice:
I am the miner
The miner am I
I am the miner
And I sing as I pass by
At Tribunales we are informed over the loudspeaker that it wasn’t a suicide or a strike, the blonde woman was right: there was a failure on the medium-tension lines. The man who protested on everyone’s behalf, the guy with grey curls, now I can see him in his entirety, stomach too bulky for the length of his shirt, doesn’t believe the explanations at all and continues with his lecture, now directing it at the loudspeaker as if it were a subway employee.
On the surface at last, the air could be described as fresh, even though it isn’t really. An illusion that doesn’t last long. I buy mint gum at a kiosk. I hardly ever do, but I don’t think twice, I need it like water. As I chew, I feel as though the gum helps me dissolve all those smells that seeped into me during the journey, including the taste of garlic, which I can sense in my own mouth as if it had invaded me by osmosis.
Five blocks separate me from the bank where I have to collect my pay. I walk along the pavement under an extremely large sun in the opposite direction from the few cars that are cruising down the avenue. Before entering, I glimpse a swarm of bodies through the window. I go through the automatic door, which takes a second too long to open, as if it’s too lazy to keep detecting people, and a dry, icy blast of air gives me a nasty shiver. There are queues criss-crossing in all directions. I have to ask three times before I’m told where I should stand. A security guard points out the longest line, which is snaking from the entrance to the cashiers. I join it.
It’s the first working day of the year, which explains the hordes of people. I think about turning round and coming back tomorrow, but I reject the idea quickly; I’m already here. To entertain myself, I observe my surroundings methodically, from one side to the other. A green mural depicts a profile of South America on its side, sick or resting: the prominent forehead, the sunken eyes, the pinched mouth, the long, delicate chin. In front of me is a row of cubicles separated by partitions not even a metre and a half high, each containing a desk, a computer and an anglepoise lamp. In each one, a customer and a bank employee are facing each other. Apart from two cheerful women, probably friends, the faces on both sides tend towards discomfort. A bit further along, it opens out into empty space, with a round flower bed and a palm tree illuminated by a yellow spotlight. Artificial, real, I can’t tell. I’m tempted to go and touch it to find out, but I’d have to abandon the queue and ask them to keep my place, a lot of fuss.
For the three quarters of an hour I’m going to spend in line behind a boy with headphones who doesn’t stop nodding his head, my gaze wanders between the supine Latin America, the sleepy faces of the sales executives, Nelson, Víctor, Shirley, and the highest leaves of the palm tree that bend where they meet the ceiling. With about ten people between me and the finishing line, I start studying the cashiers. In the centre is the moustachioed bursar I’m to avoid. If I get him, I can let the person behind me pass in front, pretending not to notice, searching for something in my bag, pretending that I’m caught up in the cordons, having a coughing fit. To his right, there’s a redhead with a small mouth and her hair in a bun; on the other side, a boy who if it weren’t for the suit and tie you’d say was a teenager who’s skipped school. I think about Canetti and his story of feigned madness, his ill-fated plan, his treacherous psychologist, his deserting wife, also about his limp, the trees he was employed to catalogue, the sweeping job he managed to get at the zoo. I try to imagine myself in the place of one of these people, but it doesn’t fit.
Finally it’s my turn. I sigh in relief: I’ve got the young lad. He’s not at all friendly, you can tell he’s been trained that way by his boss. I hand him the cheque, my ID. Do you have another form of identification? he asks. I smile at first, convinced he’s joking, but from the stiff look in his eyes it would appear he’s being serious. You can’t read it at all, the photo’s blurred, he says, picking up the document between his thumb and index finger. I look him in the eye, arch my brows, I apologise with a purse of my lips. While he does what he has to do on the computer in order to give me my money, he complains repeatedly in a low voice, muttering, as if he doesn’t dare say what he wants to. He counts the money and opens his mouth but without raising his eyes, he’s talking to the banknotes: I’ll pay you this time, take it as an exception, next time you can forget it. That’s what he says: Forget it.
The return trip is fast. No incidents, protests or bothersome noises. As if I had travelled into one city and returned by another.
On Friday morning, we go to look for Herbert in his flat because I have to be at the zoo to receive some new animals at one o’clock. In the corridor, before I knock on the door, our footsteps are marked by fast harp music. Herbert sticks his head out. He’s flushed, his fringe stuck to his forehead, a black and yellow striped football shirt with a ring of sweat in the centre of his chest. I ask him whether he can come down a bit early. Yes, yes, but I have to change. He runs off and leaves the door ajar. The sunlight exaggerates the contrast between the half-finished flat and the resplendent domestic appliances. Mercedes appears in shorts and vest, his arms covered in tattoos and scars. It takes him half a minute to notice us. He ignores us, or doesn’t see us. Until he suddenly says: Argh, what a fright. I justify myself: We’re waiting for Herbert. Come in, he says with a smile of rotten teeth, and stretches out his arm offering me a maté. It’s Paraguayan tereré, he says. Delicious, delicious.
Mercedes is a mysterious type, there are all kinds of versions of his past in circulation. Tosca calls him murderer, dirty and treacherous. According to her, he used to work in the port in Asunción, until he had to leave in a hurry. He was a docker, she reckons. She says he came here from Paraguay after killing two guys. The husband and brother of one of his lovers. Stabbed them to death. She says he has something like seven children back there but he doesn’t even know most of their names. When he arrived in Buenos Aires, about fifteen years ago, he was poor, he showed up one day looking for work and she did him one favour after another. She offered him a roof over his head and introduced him to his wife. What else? Mercedes became something like a bodyguard to el Buti, the boy who was beaten to death, then he lost his way. He began dealing drugs, he went mad. Now he runs everything from here and occasionally goes out in a fake taxi, taking his son as a front. He makes him lie down on the back seat so that his legs don’t go to sleep. Because of the football. It was much worse before, he had a troop of little sods coming and going at all hours with their packages. Their packages, Tosca repeats, shaking her head. They’ve all been arrested, I can’t say anything. Just imagine. They want to see me dead.
Mercedes sits at the table and puts on some reading glasses that are too delicate for the size of his face. He opens a jotter and starts noting numbers in columns. From a box on the floor, out of my line of vision, he removes blister packs of medicines bunched up with elastic bands. He looks for something and goes back to making notes. I stand in the centre of the room drinking cold maté. Suddenly he says: And how’s the little tearaway behaving himself? Fine, fine, I say quickly although I’m not entirely sure whether he’s referring to Herbert or Simón. And Sonia, I ask for the sake of it, to fill the void. Hospital, he replies without lifting his eyes.
Searching among the thousand things on the table, Mercedes lifts a teatowel and uncovers a revolver with a black grip and silver barrel. I’m struck not so much by the weapon itself as by its size. Really chunky. Mercedes carries on searching as if nothing had happened until he realises and raises his eyes, covering the revolver with his huge hand. Don’t be scared, he says. It’s in case someone really angry turns up. I show them the shine on this and they’re suddenly tame. I smile, because of the shine part, but also because I feel that in some way he’s here to protect us. On our side. Herbert appears and Mercedes changes the music to see us off, like a boy who wants to show all his toys at once. Instead of the harps, he now plays a mix of cumbia and reggae that accompanies us to the stairs, gradually diminishing until we reach home.
Iii’m not going to cryyyy
No no no no
Iii’m not going to cryyyy
For the love of that woman