The Scent of Buenos Aires

by Hebe Uhart

He said this half laughing, half in awe, as if Goran had stuck his foot into an anthole. The son didn’t share his father’s amusement; he seemed wary. Don Montiel said:

  “She came to town with a circus and ended up staying. She married that poor soul later on.”

  Don Montiel’s son kept quiet, as if he didn’t feel comfortable sharing these details with a foreigner. Talking about other people’s private lives disturbed him, gave him a bad feeling, yet he stayed. And since it was just the three of them there, and Don Montiel and his son were but two, as if there was a void, as if the world only takes shape when there’s a group, a group as varied as the sounds of the cows lowing, the frogs croaking, and the southern lapwing calling. They were choral people.

  * * *

  —

  That same day he put the small bags into his pack, said goodbye to Susana, and called at the door of Don Montiel, who said:

  “Are you leaving, friend?”

  “That’s right.”

  He looked Goran straight in the eye as he said “friend,” not like when he said “certainly” and then looked all around.

  “You really found your tongue in this town,” said Don Montiel. And then, in the tone they used amongst themselves—which wasn’t the same one they used with visitors, it was more assertive—he said:

  “You’re gonna have to come on back.”

  “Ah, yes, yes,” said Goran, but then he thought, It’s just a figure of speech, like Don Montiel says. But not a minute later he was surprised when he found himself thinking, How will I ever return to a place I’ve never left?

  Quitting Smoking

  IT’S no secret there are support groups to quit smoking, drinking, and gambling. But there are no groups to quit gossiping, stealing, or bribing, which could also be considered addictions since they’re associated with bad habits and misconduct. It would seem these groups arise when the misconduct is self-destructive, although in North America they’ve instilled the belief that smoking is bad for others, so if they see a mother smoking while holding her baby they want to slap the death penalty on her in the name of healthy living.

  Whether the purpose is to quit smoking, drinking, or gambling, the group methodology is similar. Let’s imagine a group of gossipers who want to redeem themselves. The coordinator would say:

  “So, tell us: when was your last relapse?”

  And then the gossiper would start to tell a story, which would be highly instructive for everyone. Then each person would tell their own story (as it always goes in these groups), with the purpose of overall improvement.

  I went to a group to quit smoking. The coordinator’s name was Leonardo and he was a mix between a recovering smoker, a preacher, and an activist. He also reminded me of an older brother—not a father figure, because Leonardo always found a way to understand the most incomprehensible things and didn’t make any judgments like God the Father does. He had the body of a tenacious bear and the head of a lion. He wore a shirt from which all color had faded, as if its purpose were merely to cover his skin, not actually resemble clothes. He was an inspiration to those on the right path and to those who were struggling. He didn’t discriminate, although in my opinion some sort of self-inflicting ritual, like coating oneself with cigarette ash for two weeks, would have been an effective tool to remind us what we had given up. Truthfully, all these group techniques are profoundly Christian: there’s the fall of man, the redemption, and finally, the conversion. Evil is temptation—even if our savior Leonardo (who also happens to be a shrink) refuses to acknowledge it. At Group, we spoke of “the fatal moment” (which we’d conjure up by drinking a glass of water) or having a “good group connection,” and Leonardo would do what he called “awareness raising,” so that people would become conscious of why they smoke. He also drew connections between the how, the when, and the where of smoking cigarettes.

  At Group, there was a dentist in the purification stage (he’d come from two days of abstinence). To keep himself from smoking he had showered six times a day and hand-washed all the clothes in his house—he’d become a launderer-dentist. There was another man who’d retired and bought a lovely country home outside the city. He showed us a picture of the house—splendid in contrast to his destitute appearance—while saying:

  “All the hard work I put in on this house is useless. It’s not worth a thing if I can’t sit down in the afternoon with a smoke and a glass of water: nothing else matters.”

  His words filled me with sheer terror. How could that beautiful house—which took him twenty years to build—be of no use to him? In my mind, he was the spitting image of vice. Compared to him, I felt much better adjusted. Recalling a Hindu saying about Westerners, I felt even more renewed by my path: they say Westerners don’t know what happiness is until someone comes along and hands them a cigarette and a glass of water.

  Leonardo asked:

  “Which is the most important cigarette of the day for you?”

  One by one they replied:

  “For me, it’s the one after lunch,” and then someone else said:

  “For me, it’s the one at six o’clock in the evening.” I wondered just how they’d come to realize this. It felt like they’d been privy to some wisdom I’d missed out on, and that was discouraging, because it felt like I’d gotten off track. I started thinking about Spinoza, who said: Man thinks smoking makes him free—but free he is not, because he knows not why he smokes. I had to sit back and learn humility from everyone else. Humility, another Christian virtue at play: confessing deprivation exactly as one experiences it; asking the group for help in times of temptation; not becoming bigheaded over little triumphs or losing heart with failures. But that type of humility makes me nervous. I’ve seen it in recovering alcoholics—they don’t drink anymore but they’ve become misplaced, grizzled, as if they were toting around something embarrassing.

  The most striking case was a young man who’d gone through an extended withdrawal, undertaking huge sacrifices: he’d buried his cigarettes in the backyard, steered clear from bars and public places, and even taken up craft projects to keep his hands busy. This is exactly what the eremitic monks of the fifth century did. They didn’t work to make money, but rather to keep their hands busy because evil feeds on idle bodies, leading them to use their hands for wicked deeds. I’ve always been disturbed by the work of those monks, especially the ones who spent more transporting palm leaves to keep their hands busy than they earned from the work itself. But they were happy that way.

  As I was saying about the young man who’d gone through withdrawal, he asked Leonardo:

  “So, now what?”

  Leonardo said:

  “What do you mean, ‘now what’?”

  “I mean, what’s next?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  But I did. He was hinting at the reward theory: he felt all his effort should result in something extraordinary in return. Leonardo said to him, smiling:

  “Now you continue down your path.”

  The kid’s face dropped, as if he’d been genuinely deceived. And I understood him, because even God rested on the seventh day to delight in his own work. (Which is the perfect moment for lighting up a smoke.)

  To conclude, the funniest thing I’ve read about cigarettes, which really hits the nail on the head, was by the Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro, a close friend of Bryce Echenique:

  “I don’t know if I smoke so I can write, or if I write so I can smoke.”

  Impressions of a School Principal

  I’M the principal of a school in an outlying part of town. The produce man passes through the neighborhood announcing his produce with a bullhorn. Since it’s practically the countryside, his voice can be heard from afar announcing something that sounds exciting: A party? A dance? It gets closer and you hear, “Potatoes, 4000 pesos; squash, 5000 pesos,” proclaimed in an enthusiastic tone of voice. Once, we put on
a festival at school and he was the announcer. Some lady gave us the idea because, like she said, the produce man had all the PA equipment. The Japanese flower-growers live way back near the fields. They always drive by in their cars but I’ve never seen any of them come by the school.

  On the far side of the school there’s a little field to go romp around in; it has a lagoon where we study something modern called “the ecosystem.” The ecosystem is how living creatures relate to one another, how some eat others, why spiders are useful even though they seem useless, stuff like that.

  The teachers say, “We’re going to the lagoon to study the little animals that live there.”

  I know they’re really going to romp around in the little nearby field, but they’re so happy on their way out. Besides, they know the creatures in the lagoon like the backs of their hands: frogs, worms, and—when the rain comes—tiny fish. When the children come back, rosy-cheeked from having run around, I ask them:

  “Did you study the ecosystem?”

  “Yes,” they say enthusiastically. “We brought back an earthwern.”

  “An earthworm,” says the teacher. “Where did you learn to call it a ‘wern’!”

  I’ve noticed when the teacher corrects the children, none of them want to repeat the word; they keep quiet. And if the teacher says:

  “Repeat after me: earthworm.”

  They say “earthworm” in a somber, sad voice. Like the children, I prefer “earthwern” to “earthworm.” It’s more humble, shadier, more intimate. Earthworm is a little dry.

  The children in first, second, and third grade say, “Should I draw the stripe, madam?”

  The teacher corrects them, “Shall I trace the line, teacher?”

  The truth is that either way you can understand what they’re trying to say. The expression “draw the stripe” does seem suitable for that age group. Eventually they learn to say “line” on their own, when they know what “line” means in a greater context: like learning how to stay in line, learning how to adapt to school. Before a certain age, a line is the same as a stripe for kids. Now where they came up with “madam,” I couldn’t say…

  They read the book Platero and then write sentences about it.

  One kid wrote: “Platero sniffered the flowers.”

  They’re always throwing rocks at the dogs because any one of them could have rabies and nobody wants them getting too close and, besides, it’s like a game. There aren’t any sports fields.

  I’ve also seen them use sentences with the words “build” and “destroy.”

  One child wrote: “My aunt built an apartment. My godfather destroyed an apartment.”

  Naturally, the teacher gave him a good grade. There’s one teacher who cares for them deeply, she looks like Snow White. She studies architecture and when she’s absent I ask the children:

  “Did the teacher tell you she wasn’t coming today?”

  They say, “Today she’s not here because she has to take an exam.”

  And they pronounce “exam” correctly. For them, the word “exam” is associated with Snow White, whom they love very much. They don’t plan on taking many school exams in life, but Snow White has surely told them how much she studies, about all the exams at college, and I’m sure many of them hope she does well on the exam.

  * * *

  —

  Mrs. Betty lives across the street from the school and has one glass eye. Her dog is called Mole and he used to come into the principal’s office and sniff the wastebasket to see if there were any bits of food. It didn’t bother me: if he didn’t find anything he would just lay down and keep quiet and I didn’t even notice him. Mrs. Betty liked me a lot, she was so gracious that even with my terribly obsessive gaze I had entirely forgotten she had one glass eye. But once Mole ate twenty salami sandwiches; he ate the ones with salami and left the cheese sandwiches intact. Perhaps if he had eaten the ones with cheese the teacher would have forgiven him, but she threw him out violently, pushing him out the door.

  When that happened I appealed to logic, to my common sense and my adult feelings. I said, “That’s awful!” Part of me thought it was funny.

  The teacher said to me angrily, “He can’t just come in here everyday like he owns the place and take something!”

  A little voice inside me was saying, “I don’t really care.” But the voice of reason prevailed and I told her:

  “You’re right, he can’t. We aren’t going to let him in anymore.”

  Ever since, Mrs. Betty doesn’t send him over anymore. It’s like when children go to play at someone else’s house and do something disrespectful, and then their parents don’t send them back over again.

  Betty is still friendly, but more restrained. There’s been a change. Before, when she talked to me, she was always beaming and the healthy eye smiled, too. Now, sometimes there’s a flash of anger in the healthy eye when she talks to me. She says, “Sure, sure,” in a reluctant tone of voice. Now, whenever I see her, I notice her glass eye. I don’t know how to fix things. I can’t tell her, “Send Mole over, we miss him so…” That would be lying and besides, lots of teachers don’t want the dog at school.

  * * *

  —

  THE STUDENT NAMED MONSOON

  “A pencil fer my brother?”

  “No, I don’t have any pencils today.”

  But he doesn’t leave. It’s Monsoon.

  “Go back to class.”

  “But she sent me here.”

  The teacher sent him to the office because she couldn’t stand him anymore. He’s in the afternoon group that starts at one o’clock, but sometimes by ten o’clock in the morning he’s already spying through the window at the morning kids. When the morning teacher sees him, she sends him on an easy errand. After that, he goes to his classroom but it’s still the morning group and says to the teacher:

  “Should I stay?”

  “Alright,” she says, “but be quiet.”

  He stays a while in the morning group until the teacher gets tired and throws him out. At one o’clock, when his classmates are in school, he spies at them through the window. The teacher pretends not to see him.

  The children say:

  “Teacher, Monsoon is at the window and he didn’t come to class!”

  The teacher opens the window and asks him:

  “Why didn’t you come today?”

  “Because I don’t got shoes.”

  “And the ones you’re wearing, what about those?”

  “They’re my brother’s. You don’t got no shoes?”

  “No I don’t and you have to come inside.”

  The teacher says it feebly, because she has to. He’s always coming and going.

  “Okay,” Monsoon says, “I’m going home and I’ll be right back.”

  Half an hour later he’s in the principal’s office because the teacher can’t handle him a minute longer. He doesn’t seem to mind. I can’t scold him because he isn’t angry or scared, nor is he resentful.

  I write something down and pretend he’s not there. He insists:

  “Do you have a pencil fer my brother?”

  “I already told you I don’t. What did you do with the pencil I gave you yesterday?”

  “That was fer my brother.”

  I can’t scold him. He just needs a few kind words.

  “Alright, write the vowels.”

  “Which one, the ‘a’?”

  He makes the ‘a’ contently, triumphantly.

  “Now the ‘e’.”

  He mixes it up with the “i.” The he asks:

  “The curly one?”

  “Yes, the curly one.”

  He makes a curl.

  “Now the ‘o’.”

  He doesn’t remember and he asks me:

  “You have sheet fer writin’?”
/>   “Yes.” I get him some sheets of paper.

  “Tell me,” I say to him, “what were you selling the other day, when I saw you outside?”

  “I sell combs. I got one right here. Will you buy one? Fer my brother. Fer the little one.”

  “But he doesn’t have any hair.”

  “Yes he does, he does. He got lots of hair.”

  “No, thank you. You should sell something else, no one’s going to buy those.”

  “Can I go to my house? I’ll be right back.”

  “Alright,” I tell him.

  I figured he wouldn’t come back. Ten minutes later he was back selling chewing gum. He sold it all and made 5,000 pesos.

  “Will you hold on to the money fer me?”

  “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later:

  “Can I have the money to buy an ice cream?”

  “Okay.”

  He ate the ice cream, walked a few laps around the playground, and since the teacher didn’t want him in class anymore, he went back home on his own. Later he came back to the front door to watch the kids getting out of school. I called his mother, who’s a bright and intelligent lady, and I asked whether she had thought about sending him to another school so he could learn at a slower pace. I could feel her rolling her eyes, as if to say This lady’s got no clue, and she explained:

  “No, ma’am. The thing is, it’s in his genes. My brother’s a company manager now. He’s got a house, a car, and he’s pretty well-off. When he was a kid he fell behind in school—and my brother the pianist, too. He was a really slow learner at school.”

  I don’t know why I believed her. She had such conviction in her words, she seemed to understand the situation so clearly. Besides, I thought, what if she’s right? Once she had explained it all, I felt better.

  * * *

  —

  The teachers are gathered on the playground and I tell them what Monsoon’s mother told me about the boy. I tell them in a neutral voice, neither approvingly or disapprovingly, to see what they say.