The Scent of Buenos Aires

by Hebe Uhart

  Alicia, the chubby one, is somewhat annoyed and says:

  “No, they gave him an IQ test and he got a ridiculously low score.”

  Another teacher gives me a dubious look, unconvinced.

  “What do I know?” I say and walk off.

  Sometimes I find it difficult to appeal to logic and common sense; sometimes they escape me. And a principal should never give up on logic or common sense. That’s the worst sin for a principal. I have to demonstrate that I know lots of things, at all times, and especially that I use logic. Sometimes I’m eager to work and I’m quick to delegate when a problem arises. Sometimes I don’t want to, and if they tell me:

  “The cesspit’s backed up.”

  I don’t have an answer. I want to say, Why are you telling me! What do I care? I’m not going to be the one to unclog it.

  Or perhaps:

  “I think Lima has scabies. What should I do? Should I send him home?”

  I don’t know what to do. Besides, I don’t think that scabies are contagious. I don’t think a cesspit can get clogged unless you can actually see the shit, and then it’s already outside. I can’t imagine the scabies bug being passed from hand to hand.

  But since there’s a lot of pressure for me to send him home I say:

  “Yes, send him home.”

  And Lima, sadly, full of scabies, goes home.

  Sometimes I have to take charge of the classes and they can really catch me off guard. For example, the last time I went to first grade a boy told me:

  “I lost my pencil.”

  It seemed like a loss that was beyond repair.

  Or perhaps:

  “Somebody stole my eraser.”

  I never can figure out who steals these things.

  But I ask:

  “Alright, who stole his eraser?”

  “It was him,” says the victim, pointing at another child.

  “But he took my colored pencils,” the other one says.

  This narrative can go on for half an hour and I still come up with nothing. Or take, for example, when there’s a fight. I ask:

  “Who started it?”

  “He did,” says the one who got hit.

  “But he was making fun of me and yesterday he hit my brother.”

  Very rarely have I ever discovered a true culprit. Perhaps because I absurdly think that a culprit should have a guilty face, or a certain expression. It’s the same story when they walk on the benches, sometimes I let them and sometimes I think it’s wrong. Then I use my indifferent, somewhat commanding voice:

  “Don’t walk on the benches.”

  A teacher who takes her job seriously should know how to feign anger and astonishment. She should say:

  “What? Walking on the benches!”

  But somehow, the anger has to come off as genuine because children can always see right through their teachers and if the anger isn’t real, they’ll walk on the benches anyway.

  Or when a teacher tells me:

  “Yesterday I didn’t come because, well, the truth is, I slept in.”

  After all, isn’t sincerity important? How do you teach someone who’s very sleepy not to sleep in?

  * * *

  —

  THE MOTHER’S DAY GIFT

  For Mother’s Day the children make gifts. It’s my job to go see what they’ve made. In one grade they’ve taken the paper off tin cans (the same cans the children use to store their “werns”), and then they’ve wound yarn around the can. “Nice and even so you can’t see the tin,” the teacher tells me. “It’s like a little jar to keep something in.”

  “What do you keep in there?” I ask.

  “What do I know?” she tells me, “Whatever you want.”

  The best part is a bow in the middle of the can. The can looks like a fat, crazy old lady in a wool dress who’s put a girl’s bow around her waist.

  “Looks good,” I say.

  In another grade they’ve done a craft project with matchboxes. It consists of four empty matchboxes (matches are expensive) stuck together with glue. Each little box has a thumbtack in the middle, imitating a small drawer with a tiny handle. I try to think of it as a miniature chest of drawers. I tell myself, “how pretty!” But it’s a thumbtack.

  “Very good,” I say.

  Suddenly I’m overwhelmed by despair and sadness. The children were content making those little gifts, as were the teachers. One teacher said patiently:

  “Now, children, we place the thumbtack here…”

  They were all excited, making things. Their excitement didn’t rub off on me. It was a rainy day and everything was flooded. I had the feeling that life was sad, but I didn’t have the right to bring anyone else down with me.

  During recess the children got in trouble for getting wet. I had been forgetting about recess for some time, I hadn’t made my rounds on the playground. I had been neglecting everything for a while. All I noticed was how much the teachers yelled at the children, and it felt like they were yelling at me, but I couldn’t put a stop to it—that would have meant putting myself in the role of the yeller. Lately, lots of teachers had gotten into the habit of yelling at the children, embarrassing them for their clothes or their hair. When that happens I hole up in the office and don’t come out. It’s as if they are yelling at me, I don’t move and I can’t start working on anything until the yelling stops.

  The other day, Alicia, the chubby teacher who yells the most, just wouldn’t let up. I wanted to think about something else but I couldn’t. Suddenly I realized that the only thing I wanted was to eat a cookie. If I didn’t eat that cookie I was going to die.

  I started to eat—better said, to nibble on—the cookie. Outside, the yelling got louder and louder. I closed the door to the office but I could still hear everything. The noise of my own nibbling frightened me, so I chewed even more slowly, trying not to make any noise at all.

  I was completely alone in that place.

  New Times

  TIMES were changing. By 1960 the Church was becoming more modern and change even found its way to the town of Moreno. It all started when they got a new priest. The old priest, Father Sotelo, had been a Spaniard with a heavy accent who was always in a bad mood. Once, instead of giving a mattress to the poor—which had been donated by the congregation specifically for that purpose—Father Sotelo decided to put it in the guest room of the clergy house instead. The only guest who came to town once a year for two days was the bishop—and he rarely quartered at the church. Even though the congregation was somewhat miffed at Father Sotelo after the mattress incident, they were quick to acknowledge that some of his sermons touched the bottom of their hearts. And the most brutal references, such as Saint Lawrence the Martyr who was roasted alive over hot coals, gave them all goosebumps.

  But now, on account of Father Sotelo, there had been an estrangement between the young and old members of the congregation: the young announced they could no longer stand to look at him. Furthermore, when he saw them sitting with their legs crossed he would say:

  “Wastrels! Who sits like that? A wastrel, that’s who.”

  That’s exactly why they thought the whole mattress incident had been so appalling, it was like making fun of the poor—all he really wanted was to be under the bishop’s wing; he was subservient, etcetera.

  The old people had their arguments too: the guest room was a cold damp place with an iron bedframe and a straw mattress. And the bishop, judging by what they had seen of him, was a refined man with graceful manners, a lean face, and long thin fingers that looked like doves when he blessed the worshipers. He wore his miter and purple zucchetto elegantly. So, how was such a fine man—who never said one word too many and never made the slightest spare gesture—just how was someone like him going to lay down on that straw mattress?

  In any case, there was so much pressure
from the young members of the congregation that Father Sotelo felt rejected and misunderstood. He started to lose weight and asked to be transferred to another parish. Sent to replace him was a young priest, around thirty years old, who acted even younger. He always wore a leather jacket and almost always wore pants, a custom that was beginning to take hold in the Church in those days.

  The young folks were thrilled. They took their guitars to church with them, had barbeques, ate empanadas, went out on dates—and nobody got on their case. Quite the opposite: Father Roberto even joked around with them. Many of the Church’s customs were changing. The bells, for example, no longer chimed on Palm Sunday, Good Friday, or Christmas Eve. Those bells, which used to cheerfully fill the air for ten whole minutes, had been abolished. A strict ordinance had been imposed for all noise disturbances, and since some of the townspeople were bothered by the toll of the bells they’d submitted a complaint to the local government. Father Roberto had stopped ringing the bells. Now he just gave them a few sharp clangs on Easter and Christmas Day. As for the funeral toll, it was entirely done away with because many citizens felt it was a bit of a downer. Father Roberto thought it over and decided that, indeed, it could be somewhat depressing. Now, instead of those long spaced-out, melancholy gongs every time someone died, the rule had changed: one normal stroke of the bell.

  Other things began to change, too—things we’ll see farther along in the story—and as a result of these changes the old people started to distance themselves from the Church—not from the actual place of worship, because they still felt a connection to the building: they’d baptized their children there and attended church with their parents. But, for example, instead of following along at mass, they walked over to the side altars and prayed to the saints. Or they didn’t join the confraternity societies; in fact, the confraternity societies they’d been familiar with no longer existed. There were no more Daughters of Mary. The new priest said:

  “Potentially or virtually, all females are daughters of Mary.”

  They didn’t know what potentially or virtually meant; they only knew that they used to be Daughters of Mary because they were given a light blue ribbon with an image of Mary on it, and it was their job to arrange the altar. And don’t forget to be on your best behavior—you wouldn’t want to be unworthy of the image you wore.

  That’s why, when that new Father Roberto came to town, of the twelve ladies who had been members of Catholic Action (all of whom were over the age of fifty-five), only four remained. One of them was the president, Forti’s wife. She was a big-boned Italian and wore a dark beret over her coal-black hair à la Christopher Columbus. She was said to have been frivolous as a young woman; she’d flitted from party to party in Europe; she’d been one of the first women to wear a bathing suit while all the other girls still wore long swimming trunks. She still preserved vestiges of coquetry: she took great care of her hands and wore colorful garments that were a certain color of purple, a specific tone of red; she had become something of a female bishop, majestic as an adult. She also wore lipstick more often than not. It was said that she had gone from being vain and flighty to the sanctimonious woman she was now all on account of the war. She had suffered many hardships during the war: her siblings had died, she went hungry, and from one day to the next she had started to pray and pray and had never stopped since. She still prayed loudly at church—in Italian—and she didn’t care what anyone else, except God our Lord, thought. On the first day that Father Roberto attended a meeting she said:

  “Oggi ricordiamo a Santo Giaccomo de Compostela, che e preciso non confondere con Santo Giovane Bautista, discípulo di Nostro Signore e evangelista.”

  Father Roberto immediately responded with:

  “The veneration of saints currently occupies its proper place. The saints are not inaccessible beings who are beyond our reach or holier than us. In fact, they are like us—with their weaknesses and their misfortunes…That’s why we say the saints are no longer on the altars, that they’ve descended from the altars to be closer to us, to blend in with us, the inhabitants of this very town.”

  Mrs. Forti couldn’t hide the look of irritation on her face and she thought, If the altars are there, there must be a good reason for it.

  She was enraged by the priest’s intrusion, which prevented her from talking about Saint James the Greater, which reminded her of her own childhood in Europe, now so far away. When her mother was alive she would say, “Put some flowers on Saint James the Greater’s altar.”

  The silence was immediately broken by Manuelita Catella. She said, “Father, Father” (she always said “Father, Father”), “isn’t it true that the Protestants don’t have any saints, and instead of the host they eat bread, and they drink wine in a glass but not at communion?”

  “We must be tolerant with our Protestant brothers, Manuelita.”

  “I don’t like their saints, Father. They haven’t got any grace, have they? But if they’re our brothers, Father, we must accept them anyway, right?”

  Father smiled.

  In Manuelita’s mind, although Father was young enough to be her son, the fact that he was a priest made her feel as if he could have been her own father. She’d been raised at a nearby orphanage and her voice had the solemn, stealthy tone of people who’d spent their childhood at such a place. But since she was a happy, curious, childlike soul, her voice came out dissonant, shrill. Manuelita liked Father Roberto. When she asked the old priest a question (she always started by saying, “Father, Father, I have a question”), he would tell her: “Be quiet now.”

  Then they remembered they hadn’t said the prayer to the Holy Spirit, which they always recited at the beginning of every meeting. They stood up and said:

  “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love…”

  Father Roberto took this prayer very seriously, and he said it with complete concentration.

  Mrs. Forti, who was an exuberant spirit at heart, imagined the Holy Spirit as mighty tongues of fire approaching and burning everything in sight. The one who had a pretty reliable version of the Holy Spirit was María Pérez. She was a widow; her children had grown up and moved far away, and she tended to get depressed. Sometimes she got so depressed that she sat still for hours, unable to move. Then, without knowing from where she found the strength, she’d stir and say:

  “It’s the Holy Spirit.”

  It was something rare and mysterious for her—like the evil eye, but sunny-side up. María Pérez was unobtrusive; she hardly spoke and everyone adored her.

  The last member of the group was also the oldest: she was around seventy. She dressed completely in black, stockings and all, and at this particular meeting she hadn’t taken off the black tulle she wore at church. She had something of a hooknose and never spoke, although she did pray along with everyone else, but in a hushed voice. She no longer helped out with the parish activities, or when they handed out clothes to the poor, or anything else—and no one knew why. It was as if she had been born with the tulle on her head and the black stockings, and nobody would have ever expected anything else from her. If it hadn’t been that she was so old, they might have mistrusted her: her eyes were small and beady, her jaw stuck out, and her nose was big. But, admittedly, she was harmless. They didn’t know her last name, just that she went by Botznia. She was Croatian. The truth is everyone figured she had a few screws loose, but at her age they weren’t about to kick her out of the group for that reason. One afternoon Botznia started coughing loudly and Father Roberto told her:

  “As I’ve said before, if you’re not feeling well you shouldn’t come. Now that it’s gotten cold we all need to take care of ourselves.”

  But she came, unfailingly—and the colder it got, the earlier she showed up.

  * * *

  —

  Father Roberto continued his “Christianizing” crusade, as he called it. Th
e young folks were right there with him: they were soldiers, apostles, martyrs, while remaining kind, modern in appearance, but profoundly religious at heart. It was up to Father Roberto, intelligent and philosophical, to discern case-by-case who was just there to put on appearances and who was religious at heart. The gentlemen of the parish were middle-aged, balding, and had a sense of good judgment; and the women of Catholic Action had made some real progress. For example, Manuelita would come and say:

  “Father, Father, isn’t it true that we have to accept the Protestants? The lady next door ripped up a Bible right in front of them when they came around selling Bibles and I told her it was wrong to do that. Isn’t it? Because the Protestants are our brothers.”

  “Very good, Manuelita.”

  Although Mrs. Forti still prayed to the saints (she said novenas for herself), she no longer imposed saint veneration and devotion on everyone else, which they were all relieved about because she used to endlessly name saints that no one had ever heard of—some of whom were no doubt only well-known back in their own day, some thousand years ago, and were still awaiting canonization by the Holy Office, which nobody knew about (except for Mrs. Forti). Now she spoke only of general principles, such as charity and grace, and when she went off on a tangent, when she explained how Saint Cajetan Christ had appeared to her in the form of a tree, Father Roberto gently steered the subject back to more general and operational concepts.

  María Pérez had always been modest and straightforward, so she liked the new spirit of the Church, especially because it had been simplified. She said:

  “All those altars with embroidered linens! People used to wear out their eyes—they spent their entire lives embroidering altar cloths. And all those high altars made of gold—keeping the dust off them was an uphill battle! Now everything is so much quicker, the prayers are shorter.”

  Botznia was the real mystery: nobody knew whether she agreed with the new spirit of the Church or had preferred the old one, because she didn’t speak her mind. She continued to attend assiduously. Now, according to the new customs, each of them had to explain the gospel; when it was Botznia’s turn all she could say was: