We’ve got water, plenty. We drink. The landscape makes us thirsty. The idea that there’s no water here, that there isn’t, that there might not be. It’s really hard for me to picture how I’ll be supposed to feel when I get back to Buenos Aires, when I’m there again. Back in the desert, by the side of the truck, I felt, in reality, so far from everything. Because we were, because we are. From here, the city’s major streets like Callao and Corrientes seem somewhat unreal, in fact impossible, a hallucination. I don’t want to go home, even if I don’t know what my home is, or maybe precisely because of this. Communicating in words, trying, attempting to communicate in words, by means of them. My stomach is a little upset, probably from all the mate. And the car. Being on the road this long makes me carsick, even if it’s in a truck. Even if I’m enjoying it. Even still, it makes me carsick. Meaning there isn’t even any question of reading. I can’t read in a car. I wouldn’t want to. I’d rather look out the window; there’s nothing in the world that could make me want to miss what’s happening out there. I hate not being able to read in motion. To read you have to be still, which is what I don’t like about it. Or is reading in a vehicle reading in motion? I, for example, would love to be able to ride a bicycle and read or walk and read, but you can’t. That’s the whole thing: you read or you look, you can’t do both. It’s different if someone’s reading to you. Traveling by car and having someone read to you . . . Although not that either, it’s too much information, sooner or later I’d get distracted, I couldn’t pay attention to what was being read to me, try to imagine it, and, at the same time, settle on the landscape or whatever it was that was out there, on the other side of the glass.
Today, after we ate, I fell asleep for quite a while, against the window. That, on the other hand, is something I can do without the slightest difficulty: fall asleep wherever. Like cats, like Ali. Some might say I’m a narcoleptic. Or that I’m depressed. It seemed a shame to me that that picnic had to end, but at a certain point the wind really picked up, and you couldn’t be outside anymore, and besides, we had to keep going to make it to Trelew before nightfall, and so Juli could make his delivery. I feel a little scammed, I don’t know why in my head the trip was going to be so much longer, probably because I made the same trip as a kid, and by bus, a pretty beat-up bus at that. I say we should keep going and spend the night in Madryn. Juli doesn’t want to do that, he says that in Trelew there are more options, and they’re cheaper, and that he doesn’t have much interest in driving anymore, that he wants to have a real meal and a shower as soon as possible. That we can go to Madryn tomorrow, that he’ll take me. We drive around the city for a little while until Juli comes across the exact address. I didn’t remember that Trelew was like this. From the highway you access the city via a hill with dirt roads and little tiny houses, roads with puddles and stray dogs. Then, at some point, a few blocks in, the asphalt starts, and the city, the stores, little by little. Little businesses, very specific, very precise, staffed by their owners, or just about. We go around the square, there are quite a few people, quite a few people everywhere, in cars, on foot, on bikes, a lot of people. The plaza is pretty, Independencia I think I make out on a sign as we drive by, and then he turns right, we go two blocks further, and he stops in front of a shed/office. Juli gets out, I decide to wait for him in the car or next to the car. I put on your jacket and get out. It’s really, really cold. The sun is very low, and there’s nothing left now of its warmth. Nothing. I jump up and down a couple of times to warm myself up, to loosen up. I walk a little, exhale, release a white vapor. I clap, can’t feel my hands, and a little dog comes up and snaps at me, from behind some bars, shrill, and it scares me. I walk down to the end of the block. The little houses are low, fairly similar to one another, except for the odd huge ranch-style here and there, super new and super ugly, those stand out. Or the ranch-style duplexes, there are also a few of those, brick facades, reflective glass, and tall bars painted black. Against what are they entrenching themselves, from what are they excluding themselves? It doesn’t look like a particularly Patagonian set, with those bars, and those bricks, and those square houses that can do nothing to evade the wind. Why, in Patagonia, don’t they build oval houses, or even round ones, invincible ones? No, ranch-style or tiny squares, in the Spanish style, circa eighteen ten, with railings and all, sheer nonsense; ranch-style houses with brick facades that—where do they even fire them? And why? With all the rock around. It is at the very least odd. I start back for the truck, the dog starts barking at me again, Julián isn’t coming yet. I walk the other way, I can’t stand still, and the cabin of the truck smells gross, like food, like breathing, like us. On the opposite corner, on a rectangle of grass, there’s a small altar, a monolith of—once more—brick facade and concrete, painted white. It has two little glass doors and inside, a virgin. The typical image of the virgin, with a blue coat over a white dress, a tiara, hands together, smiling. The neighborhood altar is very tidy: a wreath of artificial flowers in colors faded by the sun, some candles, extinguished, and nothing more, no little medals or cards or coins or clothes, nothing. A tidy, cleared-off virgin. I spin around: a two-story house sits on the corner and on its wall graffiti saying Guido genius, Condo Rock, too, and a few more things, but in that skater-style writing I can’t read. I wonder if the owner of the house with these scrawlings is at the same time the altar’s caretaker. I find it funny, the coexistence of the little virgin, so tidy, with the graffiti. I keep looking at her awhile. It makes me feel something, generates something: it’s so strange the place she ended up in. And nobody ever broke the glass that encases her, even though it’d be so easy. There she is, so smug, so erect, so healthy, placid; I look at this Mary, and I like her now, I like the way she looks back, her tranquility, her blue hood, and her beauty on this little corner, so far from everything, so near. I put my hands together in an arch, look into her eyes and lower my head, one, two, three times, like a Japanese salutation while I think something, ask her for or transmit something, I’m not sure what. I go back towards the truck.
Does spring start tomorrow? I don’t think so, not quite yet.