Shantytown

by Cesar Aira

  With that, he left her. He didn’t think she’d be able to provide him with any useful information, though given the curious routes by which information circulates, who could tell? And anyhow, he was really after something else. He was happy with the way the conversation had gone. Next time, he’d be able to take it a bit further, and maybe he could even seduce her, while he was at it. Clearly, he was ignoring the old adage: “He who sleeps with children wakes up in a wet bed.”

  Vanessa was dazed and not exactly sure where she was, as if she’d been magically transported to a foreign city and didn’t even know its name. Her little world was tottering. She started walking automatically, while her brain went into overdrive. But it was useless; she couldn’t think about anything. Or rather, there was just one thing she could think about; and she thought about it so intensely that it left no room for anything else: she had to find help. She was the kind of person who needs help all the time, for everything. And now more than ever before. Except that now her need, it seemed, had exceeded the bounds of the possible: she needed more help than heaven and earth could provide. And yet — so strange are the workings of the mind — the ideal person occurred to her immediately, someone who, five minutes earlier, could not have been further from her thoughts.

  This providential person was a maid who worked in the building directly opposite her apartment. Although they had never spoken, Vanessa knew that the girl lived in the shantytown and walked up from there every morning. She’d also seen her with one of those dangerous Bolivian drug dealers. The maid looked Bolivian too, and Vanessa might have been getting her mixed up because to her all Bolivians looked the same. Only someone in a state of high agitation would have resorted to such an unlikely source of help, but the girl was there, just across the street, and that was enough for Vanessa. She turned around and went straight back home; it was the ideal time to make contact. She’d be alone, and from the front window she’d be able to see if the maid was cleaning as usual. Maybe she’d be alone too, and they would be able to talk.

  Vanessa went upstairs and rushed to the window. Across the street, the doors that opened onto the balconies were closed, but the curtains were open; she could see into the bedrooms: no one there. She went to the telephone and only then did she realize that she didn’t know the number. That didn’t matter. There was a way she could find out: her best friend lived in the same building. She called the friend, who wasn’t home, but her mother answered and gave Vanessa the surname of the people who owned the third-floor apartment. She searched frenetically in the phone book. Among all the entries for that name, there was one with the address 200 Bonorino. She called the number. A woman’s voice answered.

  “I want to speak with the maid who’s working there,” she said.

  “Who’s speaking?”

  The accent was funny. It must have been her.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Ma’am, yes.”

  Vanessa heaved a sigh of relief, as if all her problems were over.

  “Listen, I’m the girl who lives in the apartment on the third floor of the building opposite, I always see you in the window. You must have seen me.”

  A silence.

  “Hello!”

  “Ma’am, yes. Who?”

  “Opposite, directly opposite! I’m at the window now. Can you use the phone in one of the bedrooms. It’s very important. If you go to one of the bedrooms you’ll see me. I can see into the bedrooms from here.”

  “Ma’am, yes.”

  Another silence.

  “Hello!”

  Nothing. Had she understood? Vanessa fixed her gaze on the balconies. After an eternity, she saw the girl appear, as black as a cockroach, as small as a ten-year old, and pick up the phone from a bedside table.

  “Ma’am, yes.”

  “Hello! Here I am. Look straight ahead.” She opened the window with one hand and waved her arm desperately. “Can you see me? No, look this way! Outside!”

  Vanessa saw her turn slowly, like a sleepwalker (or was it an effect of the distance?) and look all around.

  “Can you see me? I live here, right opposite. Hello! Hello!” These hellos were accompanied by extravagant arm gestures.

  “Ma’am, yes.”

  “Don’t call me Ma’am, you’re not talking to my mom, it’s me. Can you see me now? Do you see where I am?”

  “Ma’am . . . yes.”

  “Listen, what’s your name?”

  “Ma’am, Adela.”

  “Adela, my name’s Vanessa. I’ve been seeing you around for a while, and I know you live down near 1800 Bonorino.” She thought it would be tactless to say “in the shantytown.” “One time I saw you coming up from there with the fat man who used to hang out with the kids from Commercial College Nine.”

  “Who? What man?”

  “A short, fat guy. A man, or a boy, I don’t know.” As well as being unable to tell those people apart, she couldn’t tell what age they were. “He had a bright red jacket. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. That’s not what I wanted to tell you. I’m desperate. This guy just stopped me in the street: the father of the girl that got shot at 1800 Bonorino. He’s crazy! He wants to kill them all! I don’t know what to do. He’s after me, he knows where I live, he’s harassing me. If my parents find out, they’ll kill me . . .”

  She was out of control, sobbing and talking so quickly it was incomprehensible. Adelita seemed to be puzzled, with good

  reason.

  “But what do you want?”

  “For you to fucking sort it out! I’m being harassed by a madman . . . and I’ve got nothing to do with it! I’ve never even been there. I saw that fat guy once in my whole life. I don’t know who he is. You must know, that’s why I called you.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know . . .”

  “I want this to finish now! Now! I don’t want anything more to do with it.” She was losing control again, crying so much she couldn’t even speak. In the end they hung up.

  Adelita stood there pensively. The lady of the house came into the bedroom.

  “Who called you?”

  “Ma’am, the girl who lives across the street: she’s crazy! She was staring at me through the window as she talked! There she is, can you see?” The lady turned and saw the girl, standing by the phone in the apartment opposite, weeping convulsively. Luckily, Vanessa didn’t look up and see how her secret had begun to spread as soon as it had left her mouth.

  “But what’s wrong?” asked the lady. “Why did she call you?”

  “Ma’am, she says that she’s being harassed by the father of that girl who was killed in my neighborhood.”

  The lady looked horrified.

  “When is this nightmare going to end? And does she know . . .”

  “Ma’am, no,” said Adelita, making an effort to compose her features because now she was beginning to feel upset. “She thinks I know the people who sell drugs. She said she saw me coming up the street with . . .”

  “With who?”

  “I think she meant the Pastor. She mentioned that shiny red jacket he has.”

  “Mmm . . . and when did you come up with the Pastor?”

  “One day, it only happened once; I ran into him on the way up. He was going to the police station, Ma’am; it’s the only time I’ve ever talked with him. He asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, if I believed in Jesus, and then he went on and on.”

  “Typical,” remarked the lady, disdainfully. “It’s a wonder he didn’t ask where you work, and whether your employers believe in Jesus Christ, and what kind of car they have . . .”

  Adelita couldn’t stop herself smiling:

  “Ma’am, I think he did.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him!” said the lady, laughing. “What a nosy little shit!” She stopped to think for a moment. “Life is so strange. You talk with a guy in the street just once; somebody sees you and assumes that you’re friends.”

  “What a coincidence, Ma’am Élida . . .”

  It rea
lly was surprising. Not so much the business with the Pastor, a self-styled evangelical minister, who preached in the shantytown and extracted money from the gullible, but only as a cover for his real, paid job, as a police informant. The “coincidence” to which Adelita had referred, picking up on the word “nightmare,” used earlier by her employer, was that her boyfriend had been implicated in the death of that poor girl, and the following day, the sixteenth of March, he had disappeared. Nobody had seen him since. It wasn’t clear what had happened, what kind of accident had led to the firing of the fatal shot. Adelita was sure that her boyfriend was innocent, maybe just a witness, or not even that. But the fact was that he had vanished, without telling anyone where he was going: not his friends, not his parents (with whom he lived), not even her. He was a timid, gentle boy, incapable of hurting a fly, almost excessively childlike and shy. He’d probably been so disturbed by the death that he’d run away in a blind panic, with no idea where he was going. No shock should have lasted that long, but with him it was hard to tell; perhaps he was more fragile than Adelita had thought. She had cried and cried, and looked in all the places where she imagined he might be hiding; she kept visiting his parents at regular intervals to see if they had any news. But there was no sign of him. People from his village in Peru had told her that he hadn’t gone back there. The world was so big. i. . .

  They had been good together: they were outwardly similar, “made for each other,” but she had the energy and strength of character that he lacked. She was just what a boy like him would need, when he became a man: someone who’d always be there for him, supportive but inconspicuous. Over the weeks and months that followed his disappearance, Adelita had resigned herself to never seeing him again. She’d even found a new boyfriend and they’d gone dancing a couple of times before she decided that she didn’t really like him. Naturally she had told her employers everything. Mornings she looked after Madame Élida’s apartment, and afternoons she worked for one of Élida’s sisters-in-law, cleaning her home and business. Both women had offered support and advice, especially Élida, who was like a mother to her. Emerging now from a private daydream and returning to the topic of Vanessa, Élida said:

  “I know her mother. We sometimes chat in the street and she’s told me about the trouble they’ve been having with that little brat. Next time I see her, I’ll tell her about the phone call, just so she knows.”

  “Ma’am . . .” said Adelita in a murmur and went back to her work, but now she was weeping silently. An old wound had reopened. It was possible, even probable, that her boyfriend, Alfredo, had used the opportunity provided by the crime and his vague association with it to get away from her. He wouldn’t have had the courage to take that step under normal circumstances, but fate had provided him with an easy way out. He really was shy and awkward; he didn’t know how to talk to girls. Somehow he’d plucked up the courage to start a conversation with her, but maybe that was just because she was ugly and insignificant. . . . He was good looking, though, and in the end he must have realized that he could do better; but because of his shyness and inexperience, he couldn’t find a way to break it off. Maybe that was what had happened. Deep down Adelita suspected as much, and it hurt.

  That’s how she was: unassuming, serious, responsible, conscientious. She kept no secrets from anyone, and yet her life was surrounded by mystery. Nobody can tell what lives in the heart of a girl like her. Poor and small as she was, she had her own personal genie, not the standard guardian angel that other people believe in, but a supernatural masculine being of extraordinary proportions, who accompanied her everywhere, protecting her twenty-four hours a day, always wide awake even when she was sleeping. Nothing like those effeminate angels: a giant at least twenty yards tall, with a powerful chest ten yards wide. When he stretched out his arms he was the size of an enormous tree. How could any man approach her, once he had noticed that presence? Which showed how blind that ridiculous “Pastor” was. A wonder the giant hadn’t smacked him dead on the spot. Not that men were forbidden, as long as they didn’t have ulterior motives. She wasn’t planning to be left on the shelf. On the contrary. The plan was to find love.

  While all this was happening on the third floor, up on the fifth, a girl called Jessica came home, and was told by her mother that Vanessa, her friend from across the street, had called to find out the surname of the people who lived downstairs. This plunged Jessica into a turmoil of speculation. She knew what a scheming piece of work Vanessa was (they’d fallen out, and it was extremely surprising that she’d called). Something fishy was going on, and Jessica resolved to find out what.

  Cabezas would have been surprised to learn that the effects of his Machiavellian initiative were spreading like the proverbial wildfire. He was blinkered: he couldn’t see beyond the structure and its realization. This limitation had worked for him so far, and he had come to believe that it always would. His mistake was thinking that a battle is fought at a single point in space. That is not the case. A battle always covers a large area, and none of the participants can take it in at a glance, not even retrospectively. Nobody can grasp the whole, mainly because in reality there is no whole to be grasped.

  Something similar applies to time. The inspector’s error in that regard was a little more justifiable, since, as a policeman, he was supposed to be “an agent of justice” and in that capacity he had to believe that his work was underpinned by a transcendent rationale.

  How mistaken he was! If God intervened in earthly justice, crimes would be punished straight away. And that could only happen if it had been happening all along, in which case human beings would have adjusted their behavior accordingly. People would refrain from robbing and killing just as they get out of the way of a speeding bus: they would do it automatically because the species would have incorporated the knowledge that the consequences were automatic and fatal. In other words, it wouldn’t be strictly speaking a matter of deliberation and choice. But in the world as we know it, God waits. When moral rather than physical laws are operating, time has to pass between the act and its consequences. And in that lapse of time other things happen.

  In the case at hand, someone was presumably responsible for the death of the young woman, and time had passed without the culprit receiving any punishment. That lapse of time was not empty: time never is, nor can it be. And the strangest thing is that what happens in the meantime is odd and unexpected too — that is, the intervening events occur in a fortuitous order; sometimes the effects even come before the causes. . . . But since time is defined by an orderly causal chain of events, if cause and effect change places, it’s as if time were abolished. (Here it should be mentioned that the “Pastor,” whom Maxi’s sister had mistaken for a drug boss, had chosen the imminent End of the World as the theme for his preaching that year.)

  IV

  From the fifth floor, Jessica had seen Vanessa crying by the phone and this made her so curious that she went back to the kitchen to question her mother. What had Vanessa said when she called? Why did she want the name of the people on the third floor?

  “How should I know?” said her mother, who was making stuffed zucchinis. “I already told you I didn’t ask. I gave her the name and she hung up.”

  “And how do you know their name?”

  Just the sort of question a teenager would ask: she was so absorbed in her own little world she couldn’t imagine how anyone would know the neighbors’ names.

  “But darling, why wouldn’t I? We’ve been here fifteen years. I always have a chat with the lady when I see her downstairs or in the elevator . . .”

  “And you asked her name?”

  “Of course not, but it’s on the list of co-proprietors, the bills, her mail, lots of places. You just end up knowing these things in a condo; it’s not like you have to investigate.”

  “Which one is she?”

  “Huh?”

  “That lady, the one from the third floor.”

  “You must have seen her thousands of times; she’
s the one with wavy, dyed-red hair, who walks slowly and always wears really high heels.” Jessica tried to place her, but couldn’t. Her mother sighed: it was hopeless. “She’s called Élida, her husband’s a fat, pasty-faced guy with glasses. They have a white Duna, and their carport is right next to ours.”

  “Cars are all the same to me.”

  “You should pay more attention.”

  “And why did Vanessa want their name?”

  “Where’s your head?! How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know!” Jessica’s mother regretted this outburst immediately. But the girl was trying her patience with those childlike questions. “Call her and ask.”

  “But we’re not talking.”

  “Well, she called you.”

  “No. She called you.”

  “No. She called you. She said: Is Jessica in? I said: No, she’s gone out. She’ll be back in a minute. Ah, she said, Can you do me a favor then? The people who live on the third floor in your building, what’s their name? Gandulla, I said. And then she hung up straight away. I’ve got no idea why she wanted to know!”

  “Maybe to look up the name in the directory and call them.”

  “What directory? The telephone directory? Yes, maybe. But no. Because I didn’t give her the first name, just the surname, and there must be lots of Gandullas in the directory.”

  They thought about this for a while. Jessica shook her head despondently, but then a possibility occurred to her mother:

  “She could have used the address.”

  “How do you mean used the address?” asked Jessica. “Are there addresses in the directory?”

  “Yes. Haven’t you ever noticed? You’re so vague, it’s incredible.”

  “But if she was using the address to find the number, why did she need the name?”

  Her mother took a deep mental breath and explained:

  “In the directory the names are arranged in alphabetical order. She found the name Gandulla, then she looked for the Gandulla who lives at this address. Do you get it now?”