The Scent of Buenos Aires

by Hebe Uhart

  “Yes,” he said, like someone who wants to change the subject of conversation.

  “Thank you,” Doris snapped haughtily.

  Throughout all this, Miguel and Agustín sat expectantly. Miguel asked if he should bring anything in from the kitchen. Doris, in an impersonal and respectful tone, answered:

  “Napkins, if you would.”

  Agustín remained silent. He didn’t normally converse with strangers unless spoken to first. He felt as if an inspector had come over—a gracious inspector, but an inspector nonetheless. On the one hand, having an inspector in the house pleased and relieved him; on the other, just being in his own body was painful. He would have liked to be invisible, to watch it all unfold. The businessman, noticing there were no cushions on the wicker chair he’d been offered, asked permission to remove a little round cushion from another chair to place on his own. He put a round cushion on a square chair. If he had been paying attention, he would have noticed how that cushion had never been removed from the little armchair, it had been there for many years and was destined to stay there, sweetly, alongside the matching armchair, until its dying day.

  From the kitchen Miguel brought cheese, olives, and an aperitif, for starters. He said to the businessman, “Maestro…” and served him some olives.

  Miguel figured the man must be a master in his field, he was sure of it. He was fond of and respected the talents of different people, as long as they were specific and didn’t overlap: there are master poets, schoolmasters, master gardeners and—why not—master custodians.

  The businessman said:

  “Yesterday I saw a very interesting show at the SHA.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard,” said Doris

  Although she hadn’t gone, she was in the know.

  “More than the play itself, the staging was interesting.”

  “Which play is that?” asked Agustín in a polite voice, demonstrating unusually good manners.

  “The Fir Tree Forest,” said the businessman.

  “Based on a story by Gogol,” said Miguel.

  “Yes,” replied the businessman relaxing now and popping a piece of cheese in his mouth. He relaxed because he realized these were his kind of men, clearly. One never knows the company they’ll end up with in these situations.

  Agustín said: “I know that story, but it’s not one of his best.” And he started to name other stories by Gogol that were much better, all the while sipping on his wine.

  The businessman sized him up: skinny arms, missing tooth. From all the time he spent observing and listening to the people he hired, he had gotten used to paying attention to two things at once. At moments he paid attention to the conversation, perking up an ear if there was something that truly struck him, like when you’re picking out sounds from a backdrop of silence. At the same time as he listened he also thought: What scrawny little arms. Surely this man didn’t do his military service. He wouldn’t even be able to cultivate a crop of potatoes if it came down to it.

  Doris was tense; she was worried that Miguel and Agustín would start to argue about Gogol’s stories, which was clearly a respectable topic but nevertheless felt like old news to her. To keep them from talking about Gogol, she said:

  “I saw the staging of The Straw Hat at the SHA. I found it pathetic.”

  “Yet I do think there were some redeemable moments,” said the businessman.

  “For example?” replied Doris in a tone that seemed to say: All right, name one.

  “The second act had some successful moments,” he answered somewhat reluctantly, which didn’t seem characteristic of him.

  Doris said:

  “Well, in the second act there were a few good moments, that’s true. They’ve got to get something right…”

  Agustín was relaxed. Luckily Doris had gone back to her normal self. Wisely, Miguel remained silent, like someone intent on keeping himself company, although he did look a bit tired and somewhat misplaced. Doris began to object:

  “But when he gives those long, useless soliloquies, which are a complete waste of time; and when that…that half-idiot comes on stage, the one whose name makes no sense…”

  “Oh, sure,” said the businessman.

  Having downed some more wine, Agustín now joined in the conversation. He hadn’t seen the play, but felt as if he had; he could imagine what the soliloquies were like. So he said:

  “Yeah, it must have been a total waste of time. What a drag,” and poured himself another glass of wine.

  Just then Miguel burst into a fit of laughter: healthy, cheerful, and carefree laughter—only it wasn’t clear what he was laughing about.

  While Doris chattered away, the businessman found himself looking at her to his heart’s content: What a beautiful woman. Which of the two men was she with? Her eyes made her look Spanish with some Arab features; her hands were dry and her ears were small.

  “As for me,” Agustín was saying, “it’s been seven years since I’ve been to the theater. Let’s see, the last time I went—”

  “He’s a poet,” Doris said quickly, “a very good poet.”

  “Have you published anything?”

  “No,” he replied. He was about to say that “publishing is dishonorable” but then he remembered the rules he’d agreed to, so he kept his mouth shut.

  “What do you mean you haven’t published anything, Maestro?” said Miguel. “What about the magazine?”

  Doris got tense again. Anything to do with the magazine generated conflict; they’d spent entire evenings arguing about whether or not it was a “publication,” which depended on whether or not the “magazine” was really a magazine.

  Doris said: “Shall we eat?”

  “Whenever you like,” replied the businessman casually.

  The food looked appetizing to him. They walked back to the kitchen to get something they’d left behind. Only Agustín stayed, waiting for them to come back. He walked around the room a few times amusing himself by looking at some pictures on the wall. Suddenly everyone was startled by a noise and they all ran over to the table: the cat had jumped up on the table, tipped over the entire contents of the platter, and eaten the fish. There was nothing else to say. A hush fell over the group and then Doris, in a detached voice, asked Agustín:

  “How did the cat get in?”

  “I don’t know Doris, I didn’t see her come in.”

  She couldn’t say “stupid cat” in front of the businessman—she’d have to defend the cat with him there because, after all, it was her cat. They all pitched in to clean up the floor. Agustín was really helpful; he moved quickly and nobly; he took initiative, cleaning everywhere that needed it. He felt happy and calm because he kept thinking: This time it wasn’t all my fault; it was the cat’s fault.

  There wasn’t anything else to eat except cheese with jam, but that couldn’t be served right after a vermouth. Doris offered the businessman another glass of wine, who said:

  “No thank you. Actually, I shouldn’t have promised to stay for dinner because I haven’t got a lot of time,” he glanced at his watch. “I have to be downtown in an hour. Do you think I’ll have problems hailing a cab at this time of night?”

  “A cab at this time of night? That’ll be hard,” said Miguel.

  The businessman looked at him slightly alarmed. Then, getting up with a sense of determination, he said:

  “I’ll find one, no problem.”

  Miguel told him where to find a taxi and walked him to the door. Agustín circled the room a few times and Doris went to the kitchen without saying a word. When he came back, Miguel said:

  “He found a cab.”

  Then a silence fell; it was tense. Agustín momentarily forgot to be happy it hadn’t been his fault; the businessman had left. That savior with the silk thread jacket—harmonious, modest, and worldly—that savior of theirs was gone. Where t
o, who knows? All because the cat had eaten the fish. Who knew whether he’d come back? After a moment of silence, Doris grabbed a stick and chased the cat out to the terrace; she slammed the door violently, barred it, and went back inside. Then they started drinking wine.

  The Cake

  I WANTED to make a cake that was light and fluffy. I didn’t want to make cookies because they don’t have that third dimension. You eat cookies and it’s as if they’re missing something—that’s why you can’t stop eating them. With cookies it’s like they’re made out of reconstituted bread or breadcrumbs. Only dogs know how to eat cookies the right way: they snatch them in midair, bite into them with a loud crunch, and devour them in one gulp, bobbing their head a bit.

  I didn’t want to make flan either because it’s a proto-food and it looks like a jellyfish. I did not want to make a tipsy cake, that’s a sneaky cake. You pour wine into the batter. Then someone bites into it with confidence, expecting it to taste like cake but instead it tastes like something else, something strong and rancid.

  The fluffy cake I wanted to make was just like this instant cake mix from a beautiful little box I had eaten once. It was called “Paradise Cake.” On the box there was a picture of a woman wearing a long dress. (I can’t remember if it was a woman and a man or just a woman, but if it was just a woman she was no doubt waiting for a man.)

  The Paradise Cake was so fluffy—I’ve never eaten anything else quite like it. It’s not that it melted in your mouth. Instead you’d take a bite, chewing ever so slightly, and all the steps that followed—chewing, swallowing, and so forth—were perfect. Plus, it wasn’t like cookies. Cookies are for eating when you’re bored. When it came to Paradise Cake you’d envision eating it some afternoon, some afternoon filled with lovely thoughts. When I saw the recipe for a “fluffy cake” I said to myself, “This will be just like the Paradise Cake.” I asked my mama if she’d let me use the cook stove to make it.

  “Not in your dreams,” she said.

  We never lit the cook stove; it was a cumbersome black contraption with a blackened door. I had never seen inside it, nor did I know how it worked. We didn’t use it because apparently it was a pain in the neck. There it stood in the kitchen, everyday, like an uninvited guest. It was like the bread oven out back—I never saw anyone baking or roasting anything in there. That oven was considered to be another pain in the neck at my house, only outdoors. To me they were different; I barely registered the cook stove because it was more like a piece of furniture. But the bread oven I knew my way around because every time I went out to play I would climb up to peer inside, its dark pit filled with ancient gray ash, and then leap to the ground. The bread oven looked like a pigeon coop and if anyone had ever baked bread there, it was long forgotten now, and no one wanted to remember either. It was as if the oven brought back unpleasant memories. I couldn’t make my fluffy cake in the cook stove or in the regular oven. So I asked:

  “Can I make it in the shed?”

  “Yes,” said my mother. I could make it in the shed using the brazier.

  Not in the kitchen, because children make a mess in the kitchen. My mama was going to light a fire in the brazier, out in the shed. (Lighting fires is too dangerous for children.)

  I mixed up the batter in a little pan that wasn’t the right size for soup or anything else. I’d never seen that little green pan before; it must have come from some set my parents used before I was born.

  If braziers are as dangerous as they say, I don’t know why my mama decided to use a bellows. The more she pumped, the closer she came to being scorched; maybe death didn’t faze her.

  Glowing embers had to be placed over the top of the little green pan so the cake would turn golden on top. I wanted my friend who lived across the street to give me a hand. The day before I had told her that I’d been given permission to make a fluffy cake and she said she’d come over. I knew by the look on her face when she arrived that she’d come only because she had nothing better to do. She played the part of the reluctant onlooker, but she wasn’t afraid of death-by-exploding-brazier, and when the flames died down she pumped it gladly one last time using all her strength, as if to say this crap is cooked. I knew she wasn’t tending to the fire because she cared about the cake, rather to partake in the act itself, to do something, because she knew how to keep a fire going and the idea of letting it go out seemed wrong to her.

  By now the little pan with the fluffy cake was heating up, but I couldn’t wait any longer to see if it was done. More specifically, I wanted to watch the fluffy cake rise; like a Japanese gardener who wakes up in the middle of the night to watch how his plants grow.

  But I couldn’t lift the lid by myself either, because there were glowing embers piled on top. I asked my friend but she just shrugged.

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “We’ll use a long pole.”

  I grabbed a long broomstick and tried to loop it through the handle of the lid. Reluctantly, my friend helped me. Right when we were about to lift it off my mama came back in. My friend made like she had nothing to do with my bright idea or the broomstick—which was true, after all. Mama knew right away it had been my idea.

  “What’s gotten into you!” she said. “Checking the batter before it’s done? Why, you’ve just put it in!”

  Once she left, I was able to lift the lid with a thinner pole and I saw the cake for a split second. I got a vague idea of what it looked like, but it was still a pancake: no third dimension.

  “Maybe it will still rise,” my friend said and she suggested doing something else while we waited. But I wasn’t going anywhere until I saw how it turned out.

  After a while I took it out for good, because you can’t be removing the embers and putting them back on, over and over. The cake had turned dark brown, it had shrunk into itself in every direction. It was nothing more than a little brown pastry, like a stubby croissant.

  Mama said:

  “That makes sense. I figured as much.”

  So, in the mind of an adult, baking turds was something logical and inevitable.

  I didn’t eat the cake, nor did anyone else. You wouldn’t have been able to eat it either.

  The Stories Told by Cecilia’s Friends

  THE friends arrived, they removed their overcoats and hung them on a large coat stand. Then they sat down to chat with Cecilia, who had asked them over. Cecilia had invited them all together—that way they would talk among themselves and she could just sit back and listen: she was tired. Now they were all sitting around the table telling stories.

  The first guest told a story about monkeys. One monkey climbed on top of a box and, using a stick, it grabbed a banana and then peeled and ate it. Cecilia listened to him attentively and brought out small cups of coffee on little saucers. Everyone stirred his or her coffee until one guest said:

  “Let’s tell stories about thieves.”

  “No, not stories about thieves,” said one lady with a bun in her hair.

  So they all drank their coffee without a word, glad to be warm because outside it was freezing. Every time the door opened, someone would quickly shut it, and they would all content to be warm again. Then they started to tell stories in smaller groups, each chatting with the person beside them. Cecilia listened to the person next to her, whose story happened to be the one about thieves.

  They frittered away the evening chatting, until the door opened again and another friend came in. This friend didn’t take off his overcoat and he never stopped smiling. He sat down keeping his hands in his pockets. Cecilia went off to bring him a cup of coffee, without saying a word, and everyone told him what they’d been up to:

  “We were telling stories, but your stories are the best of all. We’ve never met anyone else with so many stories.”

  The friend smiled, as if to excuse himself, and he started to tell a story just as Cecilia brought in his coffee and sat down.

  “I’m goin
g to tell a story about something that happened a long time ago,” he said sticking his hands in his pockets again. “Once upon a time, there was woman washing her hair. She looked in the mirror to see if her neck was clean. When she looked in the mirror she noticed that she had a red round spot next to her ear and said to herself, It must be a spot of ink.

  “She tried to rub out that spot she’d never seen before, and ended up using all the soap. When she realized it wouldn’t come off she thought she might be sick, so she went to see the doctor. The doctor said:

  ‘It’s just a spot. It’s not an ink spot and you, madam, are not sick.’

  “The woman went home but she couldn’t stop thinking about the red spot on her face. Whenever she could, she covered it up. When she was with other people, she thought they might notice the spot and it embarrassed her.

  “Consequetly, she ended up alone for a long time. Everyone who knew her wondered why she had undergone such a change, but no one could explain it. The fact that she had changed meant they’d changed too—they were polite to her yet distrusting. She sensed their misgivings and suffered a great deal.

  “One afternoon she was looking at herself in the mirror absentmindedly, thinking about nothing in particular, when suddenly she realized something: the spot wasn’t there! She checked again and her heart skipped a beat. The spot was gone. She braced herself and sat down because her knees felt weak and she was about to cry. The spot was gone. The woman piled her hair on top of her head as high as she could and went to bask in the sun in her yard. She wanted to feel the sun on her neck. When she came back inside she felt good and went to bed. When she got up the next morning, the spot was back in the same place as before—a red round spot. She still has it to this very day.”

  The storyteller chuckled and removed his hands from his pockets to drink his coffee. One of the friends said, looking at Cecilia:

  “What a strange story.”

  “Sometimes spots are really birthmarks,” said the lady with the bun in her hair.