Land of Smoke

by Sara Gallardo

  One day he saw the city of Buenos Aires, wrapped in fog. Chimneys as tall as young girls scattered their smoke messages zigzagging into the fog. A smell of putrefaction, and the city with lit-up buildings was waking, coated in shades of pink.

  Of course he cried.

  From the dock to Constitución he went on foot. He didn’t have a cent.

  As for the return by train, it goes without saying: he upset the passengers with his appearance and smell.

  There was no water in his street once again.

  There was his house; or rather, the plot where it once stood. Nettles. Very tidy-looking neighbours shut the door on his beard.

  The Protestant instead shared with him his potatoes and his tin of sardines. He only ate the potatoes. Issues of the magazine were lined up on the table.

  ‘I’m in charge of the humour section,’ the neighbour said.

  A torrent of tears flooded the face and beard he had in front of him. He had never seen a face so strange, with wrinkles like those.

  He found the pensioner a job in the dining rooms of the Salvation Army. There he had his daily bowl of soup. He still does.

  THE MAN ON THE ARAUCARIA

  A MAN SPENT TWENTY YEARS making himself a pair of wings. In 1924 he used them for the first time, at dawn. His main concern was the police. The wings worked, with a rather slow swaying. They wouldn’t raise him higher than twelve metres, the height of an araucaria tree in San Martín Square.

  The man left his wife and his children to spend more time on the tree. He was an employee at an insurance company. He went to live in a guesthouse. Every midnight he put sewing machine oil on his wings and went to the square. He carried them in a cello case.

  He had a quite comfortable nest on the tree. It even had cushions.

  At night, life in the square is extraordinarily complex, but he never bothered to look into it. He had enough with the foliage, the dark houses, and most of all the stars. Nights with a moon were the best.

  Our misfortune is not accepting limits. He decided to spend an entire day in the nest. It happened on a company holiday.

  The sun came out. There’s nothing like sunrise in the treetops. A flock of birds passed very high over the city far below. He watched them in tears, with a kind of vertigo.

  That’s what he had dreamt of for the twenty years he had spent making his wings. Not of an araucaria.

  He blessed them. His heart flew away after them.

  A servant opened the shutters of the house of a sleepless old woman. She saw the man in his nest. The old woman called the police and the firefighters.

  With loudspeakers, with ladders, they surrounded him.

  It took him a while to notice it. He put on the wings. He stood up.

  Cars braked. People assembled. Windows opened. He saw his children in their school smocks. His wife with the grocery bag. The servant and the old woman clinging to each other.

  The wings worked, slowly. He grazed the branches.

  But he lost height. He came down to the monument. He jumped. He sat astride the hindquarters of the horse. He took general San Martín by the waist. He smiled.

  A policeman fired a shot.

  One shoe remained hooked on the horse.

  But he could fly away. Slowly, he advanced, slightly higher than the heads of those in the square, and no one breathed, observing him.

  He arrived at the Torre de los Ingleses. The wind helped him towards the south.

  He lives amongst the chimneys of a factory. He’s old and eats chocolate.

  A SECRET

  THERE WAS A YOUNG LADY who had a spare head. She lived in Comodoro Rivadavia. Maybe because of the constant wind, or the monotony of limited society, she began to long for variety.

  The first step, as we said, was a replacement head. Since she had Armenian features, she chose blonde.

  Every fondness either grows or dies. In both cases it ceases to be a fondness. With her it grew into a need.

  She therefore added a few pairs of eyes and mouths, as well as two magnificent breasts to alternate with her own and a set of feet that couldn’t have been more graceful.

  There are secrets that force a change of scenery. She decided to move to another city. She packed her bags and went straight to Buenos Aires.

  For some it was a demotion: from teacher to store employee. According to her, it was a piece of luck.

  She joined Harrods, in the children’s shoes section. She was happy when she was transferred to perfumes, because patience was not her strong point. Also, she had a knack for perfumes. She sold well, and commissions increased her salary. Which would suit anybody, and her even more so.

  Her life was fascinating. She even got to the point of accepting invitations from the same man, an employee in household goods, making him believe she was two women. That is, her, the vivacious Armenian, and a blonde friend living in her house. They went out dancing, and the man, though happy with the liberties allowed by the blonde, ended up proposing to the brunette.

  The interest of her life was not limited to such dangers. It took as little as going shopping. Buying shoes for certain feet, bras for certain breast sizes, make-up for eyes and mouths.

  Her life consisted of putting things on and taking them off, matching, laughing.

  They say love is a trial by fire. The trial came. And it was love for real.

  He was a man of the sort they don’t make any more. She confessed everything. About the man from household goods. And most of all her secret. It wasn’t easy! But she did it. Crying as if her soul were being pulled out, she showed him her collection. She swore she would stay a brunette, Armenian, with small breasts and big feet.

  He… went pale, obviously. Leaning out the window he smoked a whole cigarette in silence. Waiting for a word, already regretting her confession, she planned to pack her bags and flee early in the morning to Mendoza. But turning around slowly, he embraced her. He would always love her. No matter what form she wanted to take. She just had to let him know beforehand. Mostly at the beginning.

  The happiness of love, when it gives more than is expected. Out of gratitude and joy, she danced a crazy dance, covered him with kisses, wept buckets. They loved each other with abandon. They went to the cinema.

  And they were happy. It has to be said that he grew addicted to her, to put it somehow. She had so much to offer.

  On her side, seeing her most secret of secrets accepted was a rivet nothing could loosen.

  They say a leopard never changes its spots, and it’s true. But this does not include fleeing. There are ways and forms. She kept her need for transmutation under control with small eccentricities that harmed no one and which she didn’t need to confess. Eating a gold and black plastic bag of the kind used to wrap purchases at her job, cleaning the floor of the kitchen with hair shampoo, going to a costume party without a costume.

  One day they decided to celebrate their happiness with a child.

  Conceived it was, and it grew larger and began moving around, as usually happens.

  Beside himself with enthusiasm and love, the father did everything today in fashion: paternity classes, couples counselling, endless bothers for both. Among these, he decided to accompany his wife during the delivery.

  The boy was born in splendour. But wrapped in the gold and black plastic bag. Harrods Household Goods, it said in beautiful letters. He was a good-looking boy, identical to his father, everyone said.

  The father left the delivery room. He left the city. He left the woman – and the child – forever. Love is like that, when it feels betrayed.

  That’s how a secret is. It wants us alone. Alone.

  THE CASE OF MRS RICCI

  THE CASE OF MRS RICCI was the most difficult the Pension Fund ever had to face in its branch for independent workers. Some think the problem was bigger for the lady herself. It’s true. But such coincidences do exist.

  To begin with, she was very punctual. Of a frightening punctuality, if one could say so. First in line, gree
n coat, grey kerchief on her head. Authoritarian. The employees exchanged glances when they saw her on the pavement. She seemed to notice it and looked back at them through the glass. Staring, as they say. As soon as they opened the door she went straight to the counter and held out her hand.

  ‘Don’t I know about hands,’ the main clerk used to say once the case was finished. ‘Pensioners’ hands.’

  It’s true she had worked hard, yes. Cooking and cleaning, according to her latest papers. Whereas in her youth, she had been uninhibited. A chorus girl, for instance. They often find placement as cooks when summer is over, according to that same clerk. The cicada and the ant. Mrs Ricci’s fingernails, always varnished bright red, were what made her guess that. Work made them chip in parts, revealing dirt here, patches of bare nail there. The choice not to retouch them revealed, to her mind, an untidy nature; it spoke of a happy youth, too happy a youth.

  She wanted to collect. Her eyes fixed on those of that clerk, she demanded. The clerk’s teeth started chattering the minute she saw her standing at the front of the line on the pavement. Sweat ran down the inside of her stockings, she said. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.

  Somehow she was told no. That she could not be paid.

  She shouted things never heard before at the Pension Fund. Men came out of their offices. The young ladies got upset. And she wouldn’t leave. Standing her ground, she watched the rest receive their pay. The head clerk had to request a leave of absence: a nervous breakdown.

  For this reason a colleague of hers, later her husband, seized the reins of the affair. He went around the houses of Mrs Ricci’s employers. Along with the shady figures, he got to know people he considered eminent. The female trade-union founder, now balding, who raised her voice to assert she had never paid Mrs Ricci’s pension contributions. And seemed proud of what she said. An aristocratic gentleman, tall and tanned, a judge according to the information, in bad company when he arrived, by the looks of it. A writer with a full head of long hair, half-naked in a musty room reeking of coffee, who said he had paid Mrs Ricci all the pension contributions he owed, as well as those owed by the trade-union founder, whom he didn’t know. He also seemed satisfied by what he said. He got proof of the injustices that creep daily into the Pension Fund. He felt sorry.

  He gave this information, the writer said, for the simple reason that it could not harm Mrs Ricci any longer. She had died run over by a bus while going out to buy vegetables for the judge.

  Deceased: 7-X-76. It was in the file. Yes, they knew it at the Fund.

  A former pupil of the Marist Brothers now involved in apostolic work at the Pension Fund went straight to his parish as soon as he came out of the terrible meeting with the writer.

  A pleasant smell of stew filled the office. The parish priest said he would go punctually the next payment day. He didn’t need to be told when it was. His own mother was retired. On that day he would be by his side.

  It was reassuring to see him looking so sturdy. Even the cluster of warts covering his left eye gave an impression of good sense.

  Everyone at the Independent Workers’ Pension Fund anxiously awaited payday.

  There she was. With the green coat. With the grey kerchief. At the head of the line.

  The door was opened, people began to file in, Mrs Ricci came up to the window.

  ‘Stop!’ The parish priest’s voice was like a cannon-shot.

  She looked at him in anger.

  He waved his arm at her, bathing her in holy water, which seemed to spill on the floor without touching her coat.

  ‘Lost soul, go on your way! This is not your world any longer!’ the priest cried out. Sweat streamed down him.

  It was lucky he was there because one of those in line dropped dead. For most of those going to the bank that day, this was a sensitive topic.

  Whereas she opened her mouth and exploded in a torrent of abuse. Several employees fainted.

  What came next has to do with the tenacity of love and the eagerness of apostolic work. Another look at the file gave an idea to the most entrepreneurial of the clerks. Ah, but how hard it was.

  The month passed. The line again. Again Mrs Ricci. Combative as always. She held out her hand. She asked for the money.

  ‘Rebecca,’ a small rabbi murmured. Seen from the front, his head looked like a sugar bowl with a beard and a hat.

  Mrs Ricci turned around.

  ‘Your parents are waiting for you,’ said the rabbi. ‘Are you going to abandon them again?’

  Mrs Ricci shuddered. She spun around, breathing heavily. Her green coat, her red nails started to disappear, like a vanishing spinning top.

  The small rabbi trembled, and a tear rolled down his cheek.

  That was the case of Mrs Ricci. May she rest in peace.

  IN THE DESERT

  SHE

  SHE ARRIVED and everything changed. She came on a wagon, eight horses, whips, a cloud of dust! The door opened and it was marvellous just seeing her foot, and the wonderful skirt she shook, and just waiting until she lifted the veil of her hat. Then. First the smile: the sun when it rises. The clear sensitive eyes, the cheeks. The gesture – kind, if you want, conducive to nothing, with which she saw off the tousled men who unloaded the luggage. And they would say goodbye as if they were letting fall a drop of a liquor from heaven that could never be recovered.

  But it could. Every year she came back. That patriarch of a brother and her nephews, suddenly gallant, greeted her.

  Do you know the story of one of her arrivals from Europe? The men at customs had to wait seven hours for her to wake up, have breakfast, get dressed, come down from the boat. Stomachs empty, shivering by the braziers, they exhausted their insults during the wait. After that, they didn’t forget her. They remembered her as an event, a radiance.

  Yes, everything changed. The men became gallant, the women shadows. The servants took pride in their tasks: cleaning the floor for her feet was something else. Her tall brother with the ringing spurs would not admit it, but it mattered little.

  The following day she would go out with him on horseback. Due to an acquiescent charity, she would not reveal her repulsion for barbarism, her horror of the countryside.

  She taught everyone how to dance. One year she brought a gramophone. The house lost its warlike atmosphere.

  At long last she could get even. Alone with her favourite niece, her god-daughter, she would open a small suitcase and take out the trinkets that love made her find. She came because of her. They spoke as equals. She would produce a hair tonic brought from Paris, bows, a silver hairbrush, and would change her hairstyle. She took out embroidered camisoles, a tortoiseshell comb, cod liver oil, a doll.

  She returned every summer for two weeks.

  For her god-daughter’s fifteenth birthday, she promised a string of pearls. She described it by letter, on pink paper.

  It was 1876.

  That year the Ministry of War pushed the frontier two thousand leagues forward. The newspaper said so.

  Naturally, there were reprisals. Seven, to be precise, in Buenos Aires alone. Invasions. Namuncurá, Catriel the fratricide, Reumay, Coliqueo, Pincén, Manuel Grande, Tripailao, Ramón Platero. And their armies.

  ‘They left no horses, cattle, houses or people in their path,’ said the chronicle.

  Or travellers.

  PHASES OF THE MOON

  FATHER MATÍAS rode three months, and it was his first time. He was a man of faith. That happened in Paraguay. But Paraguay is one thing, this, our pampa, another.

  For instance, sleeping on the ground is nothing strange for a missionary. But sleeping on the ground making sure your head points in the direction you’re going, since when you wake up there will be nothing to tell you what’s north, south, west or east, only the waving of grasses – that’s different.

  One needs faith to leave Paraguay without complaining, enter the pampa with a few medallions of the Virgin in a pocket, accompanied by a guide with no tongue and feet lik
e leathery claws clinging to a stirrup that is just a knotted strap.

  It also isn’t pleasant to change horses just like that. A horse is someone you get used to, someone who gets used to you. But to arrive at a human settlement and get permission to leave the tired horse, choose another and free it when you reach your destination because it can return home on its own, is an impediment to the heart’s affection. You can’t even get used to a horse.

  Those were nights of waxing moon. Until the full moon. Despite his fatigue, the priest never fell asleep without admiring the phantasmagoria that filled the world. Born in Germany, arrived by sea, he looked at this sea of grass where fireflies swayed, and preferred not to think what monsters its nights might shelter.

  They unsaddled. The guide tied the horses to some bushes, dug a hole with his knife, stuck a bone deep down. He replaced the halters with hobbles so the horses could graze at leisure and even roll about if they felt like it; he tied the hobbles to the bone, filled the hole with earth and stamped it down hard. Then he set about preparing the fire.

  The priest took out his breviary and Latin rose from the pages like incense.

  He was so worn out by the immensity travelled during the day that those preparations on the ground seemed to smile at him like a little house. The preparations of savages, one might say. An iron kettle started to murmur, a gourd filled with yerba, a lump of meat was pierced by a skewer.

  But raise your eyes, priest, and your two homes will vanish. The golden house of Latin and the affectionate house on the ground. To lift his gaze would be a slip into the infinite. When the sun disappears, it leaves us in solitude, which welcomes the arrival of the uncertain.

  Midnight. Asleep on the pit where the bone was stuck and which vibrated at the slightest fright of the horses, the guide felt something. The onset of terror prevented him from moving. The priest felt it too. Paralysed, he was unable to pray. The ropes of the horses stretched in a brutal creaking.