The octagonal building had another door, also of grayish steel, set into its western arm. A door meant to give workers access, I imagined, to these dental, echoing vans. This door opened and a fat, hairy-shouldered man in a white undershirt stepped through, his boot treads creaking against the asphalt of the lot. As the door closed behind him I saw, or imagined I saw, sky-blue cloth, banners or uniforms. The fat man didn’t see me at first. His cigarette lighter failed and he had to resort to matches. Clusters of brown, faint stains speckled his undershirt. Fresher red streaks painted his wide forearms. From the Ojea building, as from the metal sheds in its vicinity, metal whines and cries drifted, treble and sustained. The fat man paced without seeing me, slapped the flank of the lead van in fraternal affection, scratched his balls. In short, a fellow primate. I called out to him: Sir, sir. He ignored me. Or the noise from the Ojea building obscured my words. But eventually, after repeated calls, he stared at me, one hand on the truck side, his cigarette in the other, an image fit only to be smeared with the effluvium of artistic photography, in fact, especially because more geese had appeared and their crooked, tender shadows were touching the asphalt. I waited, I called out again, and the fat man approached without speaking. The blood drying on his skin carried a raw smell. He stared at me through the fence, stared without speaking when the name Mariategui made its appearance, stared and stared. I asked again: Sir, do you know Dr. Mariategui, Ana Mariategui? A colleague of yours? A supervisor? I was given this address by the Department of Social Praxis.
The fat man spat through the chain-link with astonishing precision. The sputum traveled over my shoulder but passed close enough to my face to cause me to leap back. Then he apologized, but a crooked and even ashamed grin twisted and crushed his apology. I did not mean to do that, spit so close, but I have to spit constantly, it’s an affliction, said the fat man. He spat again. Who knows if it was genuine spit and a genuine affliction or a theatrical proof of his previous statement? I asked him if he knew anything, anything at all about Dr. Mariategui, I said once more I’d been given this address by the Department of Social Praxis. You work there, he wanted to know. I told him no. You don’t look like it but I thought I’d ask, he went on. He spat a third time, between his own feet. I don’t know that name, he said, and I don’t know why the University sent you here. We’re a meat packaging company, as I’m sure you figured out. He grinned his broken-spined grin once more, and I saw that fading bruises, faint and greenish, mottled his face and bare arms. Please, I said, I must know, so if you’re fucking with me please stop. My own profanity surprised me.
I’m not fucking with you, sir. I honestly don’t know anyone by that name, or anything about the Department of Social Praxis, beyond what I said already. He was smiling, his tile-like teeth strong and dark yellow, his gums vivid. Then why did they give me this address, I asked, it can’t be a mistake — the street was just renamed. That’s true, said the spitter, his smile twisting and curling into horns, knives, a trident. Whatever you like. Yes, he said, that has confused people. As he spoke his pupils twitched, and I followed their arc. They had twitched toward a gate in the parking lot fence, closed with a loosely wrapped chain. I wish I could help you, sir, said the spitter, through his pollen-colored smile, I wish I could but I don’t know anything and only employees are authorized to be on the premises. Again his pupils jumped, again they indicated this gate in the fence, secured by its frivolous chain. A gate I could enter if I liked. And at the spitter’s invitation, so to speak, I was already heading toward this door, my molars already locked behind my own painful and obedient grin. The spitter’s smile had widened, as had the blank, titanically empty smile of the sky, the roofline, this deserted precinct. We had reached the gate, and I was waiting for the spitter to unwrap the chain when the door he had first exited opened again. A rat-faced boy in a sky-blue uniform with silver epaulettes leaned through and shouted: Olegario, get inside, what the fuck is the matter with you. The spitter looked at me. Real melancholy in his muddy eyes. He obeyed the uniformed boy. He glanced at me again before the door closed. One meager raindrop stroked my earlobe. Then another.
9.
THAT GUY IS A real motherfucker, Adriano muttered, or so I hear. He was holding another match (whose flame I could hardly see in the glaring sunlight) to the black mouth of his pipe.
He meant Sanchis Mira. I told him everything about my bizarre evening on the roof while we were waiting in line at the Cárcel de Devoto. He listened with grave care, nodding, squinting, tapping more brick-brown tobacco into the bowl. He added that while he wished he’d been a professor he was glad he didn’t have to deal with them. He pointed at the squadron of University police standing guard around the entrance gates (next to the two steel bowls reflecting sunlight). Adriano turned out to know even more about the phenomenon of betting on dogs than Violeta did. The clubs of Hecate, he said, that’s nothing new. We had those under Videla and we had them under Rosas, too, it’s just part of our history. Not always dogs, though — at least that’s what it said in the article. And he wasn’t surprised, he added, about my friend. It happens all the time, he said, it started right after the epidemic too. Even before the night dogs showed up.
The line was composed mostly of old women wearing black kerchiefs striped with lilac. The liveried guards let them in five or six at a time, not bothering them or berating them. They asked for identification and then proffered their upturned caps. The first time I watched an old woman drop coins (they chittered telegraphically) into the cap, I found the gesture so nonsensical that it failed to make any impression, sordid or comical, at all. Adriano already held a fistful of change ready, taken from his wallet which, like the fobs his brother sold, also bore a GENUINE PAMPAS HARE label. I gathered up all the centavos (with their bloody smell) I had in my pockets. The cap the guard at the line’s head offered me displayed a sweat stain on the inner crown, shaped like a pretentious, second-rate nation.
The layout of the carcel did not correspond in any way to the plans of it I had seen. The prison had long been a basic instructional text for aspirants to my field. We all knew it by heart. Even my colleagues whose memories fell short of mine at least knew the carcel. When the structural changes had been made, Adriano didn’t know exactly. Some time after the epidemic, he said. The oblong garrison you passed through to enter was still there but in the center of the courtyard the fences I remembered from my studies had been demolished, creating a wide, broken-skinned expanse of concrete across which the old women moved with complete freedom, their striped kerchiefs fluttering. From the cracks in the asphalt grew rugged dandelions. The old ladies gathered up handfuls of these as they passed, crammed them into their purses or carried them tenderly in curled hands.