We’ve already said it. Juan Arias was born. There’s not much to add about his life. If he’d been rich, he would have played the role of a gentleman. But he was poor. And though he was very beautiful, he was considered an idiot.
In old age he was given the work judged most appropriate to him: locating cars in a Diagonal Norte parking garage. He did this with care, just like everything else.
There he died one night. Softly, in spite of the rain.
TACHIBANA
NO ONE BROUGHT more money to the house on Suipacha Street than little Flora, or Tachibana. It was 1892. Her science of the senses was astonishing.
Gentlemen – politics and alcohol – discussed her at the club. One proposed marriage. As if they were no more than a handkerchief, he offered her his lands, big enough to hold a hundred Japans in them. Another one, tall and blond, fought a duel for her, killing his father-in-law and then himself.
Little Flora, or Tachibana, occupied herself with the Chan’g, the great doctrine without doctrine. In the mornings she meditated: ‘Who were you before your parents were born?’ The thought suffused her until she felt the boundaries between herself and her room dissolve.
Well, as is known, on a certain date, at ten in the evening, she attended to the Vice President of the Republic. They toasted. The soft clink of glasses seemed to burst in her ear like the sound of a hundred volcanos. She saw herself reverberating like the leaves and the houses and the monsters and the planets and the murmurs in the fountain.
They say that she came down the staircase, her face shining. She laughed in front of the madam, stretching out both her arms.
It’s not that she didn’t go back to work. She did, but now she was invulnerable.
TRAINS
For Manuel Mujica Láinez
THE GREAT NIGHT OF THE TRAINS
AROUND THE TIME man first set foot on the moon, it rained hard in Buenos Aires. The trains put out to die dripped and water ran unceasingly down the windowpanes.
The government had decided to amputate the railway lines, just as doctors dry out unhealthy veins from the calf. It put the old trains on one side of the tracks to die.
Most of the wagons’ windows were broken, and puddles formed on the seats and on the floors. The thistles formed a forest, their little heads hitting the glass like a crowd cheering a king. The earth gave way and the trains felt they were sinking. If they didn’t feel water seeping into their core it was because they were made of the hardest wood in the world, from India.
The rebellion of the trains took place that month.
There were two causes: the lack of sun, and the purchase of yellow trains by the government.
The insufficiency of sunlight in those months, to talk like an academic, undermined the moral energies of the trains put out to die. During that time they were unable to wake from their dreams. In addition, there was none of the heat that usually radiated through the planks, the same way a smile radiates. There was no blue.
When there is blue, tatters can wave without feeling wretched; they can feel they are banners or anything else. Maybe the term ‘tatter’ will surprise someone who remembers the old train roofs’ blackness, a superb blackness. But the roofs were made of cloth, as was evident when, after a period of abandonment, they began to turn grey and tear.
It must be understood that trains dream, just like the whole world apart from hens.
The dreams of the trains put out to die were long as a result of their leisure, and wide-ranging as a result of their age. The first-class wagons with leather seats didn’t have the same dreams as the wagons in second with wooden seats. But their memories were of equal importance to them.
One had been a restaurant with tablecloths, dinner service and waiters. Another had been a sleeping car.
Those were their memories. Their dreams were more varied, more confusing and more difficult to explain.
These dreams worked as leavening for the rebellion.
Without sun, the trains didn’t wake up. Nor did they have the usual activity around them that makes life acceptable, not even plants. The buzz of bees can be important in certain circumstances.
What they did have were months of water, thunder, water, more water, more thunder, more water. The roads became tongues of mud no one would travel, not men, not trucks, not cattle, not anything. Everything was loneliness, leaking, dripping, silence. The trains put out to die felt something awful was going to happen.
Twice a week the diesels returned them to the world. There had never been conflicts with the diesels, or if there had been, there’s no need to call attention to conflicts that are natural in any new start. For years they had shared the service equally. The flaming hues of the diesel-powered trains had gradually toned down to the earthy dispositions more appropriate to real trains; that alone was enough to make them trustworthy. Also, even without an engine worthy of the name, they carried out their duty with spirit.
During the watery months, it was they who reminded the trains put out to die of their condition as denizens of this world. Twice a week they shook off the density of their dreams. They were the ones that revealed that the government had purchased the yellow trains.
This was the second cause of the rebellion. But one must not think the yellow trains had the slightest contact with or were even aware of the existence of the trains put out to die. They only serviced the lines travelling immediately north, the ones we use when we go to place a bet in San Isidro, sunbathe in Olivos or ride the ferry in Tigre. This note does not imply they are frivolous. Thousands of people live in the zones they pass through, and I believe even newspapers have taken it upon themselves to photograph the excessive work they must do, the bunches of people hanging off their sides or piling up on their roofs during their daily route.
None of which can even be imagined on the lines of the south, where the rebellion happened. There, it’s common for a train to stop because a cow is asleep on the rails. On those journeys, setting your bag down on the nettings sometimes sends up a cloud of thistle flowers, which land softly on the clothes of the nearest passenger.
No one knows how the rebellion was organised. It’s unclear whether or not the diesel engines played an active role. Since they continued to be used, one might believe they had no pressing motives. But alerted to a terrible fate by their friends put on the railway sidings, it is probable that they participated surreptitiously.
It seems the rail carts were more involved than one later knew. Maybe because of their contact with the rail-repair crews, men much given to bragging, the carts often made cutting remarks at the trains put out to die. As the carts lack windows, doors and, to put it plainly, everything else, it didn’t upset them to see the shades pulled off the trains, those that could once be lowered over the windows to sift the light. Dust would dance through the air of the wagons in ceremonial displays, stairways of light and shadow created by the blinds, so gorgeous that a journey of seven hours could pass in a single breath for an attentive traveller. It did not pain the carts either to see the panes broken on some of the doors, smoked glass that had featured sketches and railway initials, made at a time decoration was considered one of the obligatory pleasures of life. Rapid and impudent, with nothing to lose, they made an effort to encourage the spread of the mutiny, helping place certain locomotives, delivering news.
In those days a few wagons were set on fire near Constitución. The aim was to take advantage of their iron and steel. You’ve seen them: a criminal impression. It couldn’t have happened at the stations farther away, where the country folk are poor because the trains pass so rarely, and no one thinks of making off with a seat or mirror for their ranchos.
Little is certain, but it’s known that the trains’ meeting place was a station on the abandoned line to Magdalena.
It was a good place because of its isolation and because it was a symbol.
It is still there; anyone who likes can go and see it today. Thistles, wind, a shed at each lonely station. The wooden bracke
ts through which once cows, rearing their heads and pushing one another, boarded the trains, stand empty. Only the swallows, if they feel like it and it’s summer, or perhaps the bats, happy at sundown, go through them. If I could fly, I’d go take a look too. Not otherwise. At the ticket booth, a written sign sways in the wind. A door opens, closes, makes the heart beat faster, but there’s nothing to worry about; it’s just a door the wind bangs shut. There are devices in the offices, stuck at settings of their own choosing. Truth is they are not really interested in any setting at all. As for the tale about a puma that dwells at the stationmaster’s, it’s false. There haven’t been any pumas in the region for almost a century. I’m ready to believe, yes, the one about the dead ewe, stinking on the oaken staircase. Also, that an occasional calf can suddenly burst out of the waiting room. Now, if you wish to think it’s a wild cat rather than a puma, you will probably be right. You could possibly find a tramp too, although they are not as abundant there as in other parts, westward.
What I wouldn’t give to have seen that night, the great night of the trains.
La Indómita hurtled from the broken sheds of Ranelagh station, belching smoke. It was raining that night, and smoke pressed itself against the sides and wheels of the train. The lights looked yellow in the nocturnal steam.
There was La Olga, licence number 7.897, her radiance different from that of all the rest. Crowned by her ray of light, she appeared, a knower of snows, one who, sheathed in whiteness, had arrived at the platforms of Bariloche and Neuquén. She used to tell stories which were as true as they were hard to believe.
La Rosa arrived in the beam of a headlight. There was a moment of respectful observance. More than all the others, it is she I would like to have seen, tearing through the gates of Circunvalación station and advancing surrounded in sparks that the rain put out and put out again. Her licence plate, sadly erased, dragged long strands of vines. In 1918, when she was still new and terrible, she challenged the army and police. Driven by rioting anarchists, flags screaming in the wind, she swept down the line like a black bonfire.
La Morocha came and waited for orders. She knew a thing or two, after having pulled the wagon with couches used by the President of the Republic, and also the trains used during the sugar harvest, full of Indians from Bolivia who played the flute on human bones. Once she transported the second elephant that had ever come to the country, which never lost its dignified manner despite its distrust of rail travel. It was thanks to La Morocha’s serenity that there were so few deaths in the derailment of February ’46. Now she made her way in silence; her whistle was too well known.
And among them the main one moved, silent.
How much work it must have been, and how difficult, how much coming and going.
To call together those locomotives, some active but blind, others enthusiastic but stripped of a vital part. The rail carts came and went, the diesel engines ambled along. And the trains put out to die in the rain in the ferment of their dreams, wanted to wake from everything, straining with a groan which shook them to their very core.
And wake they did.
The rails were slippery that night, as well they might have been. Imagine the skidding, the difficulties braking, the challenges getting started. Also, everyone was fed up with the rain, which was an advantage. Hardly anyone poked a head out of their house, and after every thunderbolt a little old lady lying in bed said, ‘Lord, protect the walkers.’
As to whether there were crashes, yes there were, and this was anticipated. No one could control the signals. The express from Bahía Blanca was destroyed, and La Rosa along with it, a wheel turning blindly on the side where the Anarchist flag had waved in ’18.
On the Samborombón Bridge, where fishermen have planted poplars for shade, for some unknown reason one of the biggest trains, full of sleeping cars, derailed. Usually there is little water there; its riverbed seems intended for ten rivers just like it. Despite the rains it was only half empty. But there was enough water to rush into the splintered berths at the bottom of the gorge.
Ah, but let’s imagine the trains put out to die.
To feel once again the hitch, the sound of irons, the violent shake that joins one wagon, then another, then another. A groaning noise. Some planks split, something else is smashed in.
Some couldn’t get away. They crashed or slipped in the night, without the light of fireflies because of the rain.
But many could.
It is because of those I would have liked to be there. To see them back on the rails, breathing once more, the engine at the lead, the telegraph posts whisking past. Being trains again.
Yes, it is because of them I wish I’d been there.
The rebellion of the trains was great. Why it failed and who informed on it will never be clear. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the flame that rises and is dampened and rises once again.
Great was that night, very great indeed.
Why it wasn’t reported in the newspapers, I have already told you. Man had just walked on the moon, and the newspapers had no space for anything else.
LOVE
THE DAUGHTER of the stationmaster had a white attaché case, and when you opened the lid you could see it had a mirror. She would smile in front of it, dimples in her cheeks.
She’d polish the case with a rag dipped in milk. She’d wash the rag and hang it in the sun. She’d clean the mirror with silk paper. She wrote to her friends from school. She kept her letter paper in the case.
She had arrived from school by train, sitting between her parents. During the journey the blond railwayman had looked at her. She kept her face hidden behind the cover of the attaché case, where she saw her disturbed features reflected. ‘He’s not good enough for me,’ she thought. He was arrogant to boot.
He sported the sort of cap favoured by city dwellers. He liked women and women went crazy for him.
She began to get up at six to try and see him, and to spy on Rosa.
Let me tell you about Rosa. She brought milk to the train in a cart high as a house. She was tall and serious as a man, was expecting a child and was madly in love with the blond railwayman, who had left her.
Hidden behind the blinds, the daughter of the stationmaster saw the sun come out from behind the train. She heard the chat of the milkmen who received empty jars and loaded full ones, Rosa amongst them. Sometimes she saw the rail cart pass and saw the urban cap, heading towards the station.
She kept a diary: when the young man did the rounds, when he passed in the truck with the others, how she managed to look at him without him seeing her.
She stored the diary in the attaché case, which she locked with a key that seemed golden.
One day she wrote: Rosa brought a newborn and left it on the cargo balance while she was busy with the jars. Hairless and red. Disgraceful. It’s disgusting, and I hate it.
In the desert there are no secrets. The rounds of the young man at the station must have been noticed, because Rosa started to look at the window of the stationmaster’s daughter, and from behind the blinds the stationmaster’s daughter looked at her.
Then the big rain came. As one knows, there was no sadder time.
When it started, no one worried. But when they had to abandon their houses… The green expanse turned blue.
The stationmaster had to move his family to the city, but in front of the train his daughter refused. Like two little birds fluttering behind bars, her parents repeated: why? Because she would travel the next day. Used to obeying her wishes, they agreed.
She had a reason. The young man had stopped doing the rounds of the station, and if she remained alone she thought he would appear. All she could think of was him.
But there was no train the next day.
The radio said the rivers had burst their banks. The stationmaster’s daughter remained alone at the station.
She ate a little powdered milk from a can. There were hens in the henhouse, but she didn’t know how to kill them. She cried, s
he trembled. The telegraph tapped in the parlour. She had always refused to learn to decipher it, but now her hands struggled. Opening the suitcase, she sobbed before the mirror. How pretty her dimples were. She called the young man’s name. If only he’d come to save her. But all she could hear was rain and croaking.
Afterwards the dogs appeared. Dogs from the abandoned houses, in packs, starving. They howled and jumped against the henhouse, and the hens went mad, losing their feathers. The dogs made an opening and fought over them with their teeth.
The stationmaster’s daughter, hiding crouched on the floor, tore out her hair. A puddle of tears formed beside the window.
The dogs left through the gap, just as they’d entered, feathers and threads of egg yolk on their lower jaws.
Night fell, with more rain and croaking. Even the radio had gone silent.
She heard the sound of the cart on the rails, and an energetic voice that repeated her name. She jumped to the window, calling out the name of the blond young man.
Rosa was in the cart, her hooded milkmaid’s cloak dripping water. She shouted, asking her to bring the lamps from the telegraph room.
The stationmaster’s daughter grabbed her white oilcloth attaché case, and hurried towards her.
Shaking her by the curls until her teeth chattered, Rosa said: the lamps. She dressed her in another hooded cloak. The stationmaster’s daughter moaned and didn’t let go of the case. She ran to look for the lamps in the darkness, and, intent on holding on to her case, dropped two. They shattered.
You have to keep them dry this way, said Rosa. She raised her cloak.
Sheltered beneath it, the red child slept.
The thistles had grown like trees. They grew at every moment, they crossed the rails, hindered the cart. Rosa covered the infant and jumped to clear the railway, her whip and milkmaid’s lantern in hand.
The daughter of the stationmaster covered her eyes. She wept: she pulled my hair.
Land of Smoke Page 13
