Simón disappeared in Tucumán at the beginning of July. The days were mild and the nights frosty. He and Emilia had been sent to Tucumán by the Automobile Club on an easy mission, virtually a holiday. They were to map a ten-kilometre stretch of an invisible route — nothing more than a dotted line on the map — to the south of the province. ‘It’s changed a lot, that province,’ Dupuy told them. ‘Until recently, it was a brutal, feudal place. The subversives had the gall to declare it a free American territory. Can you imagine? Now, it’s a wealthy, peaceful province: there are no more terrorist attacks, no more kidnappings. The kerbs are painted blue and white; everywhere you go, there is order. In less than four months, the military government has worked miracles.’
At Tucumán airport, there was an Automobile Club rental jeep waiting for them. They spent the night at a hotel in the centre of town and at 5 a.m. they started driving south. The early hour, the brittle air, the emptiness of the streets: all these details which seemed so trivial were the first things Emilia would later remember. The shimmer of dew on the fields of sugar cane. The shadows of dogs moving under the street lamps. The tobacco leaves lying lazily in thick mats. Every few kilometres there was a military checkpoint and at every one they had to present their papers and explain why they were going where they were going. They were stopped in Famaillá, Santa Lucía, Monteros, Aguilares, Villa Alberdi. At the checkpoint at La Cocha, a sergeant emerged from the toilets, trousers halfway round his ankles, and barked at his men to check the jeep again. ‘Check under the seats,’ he told the guards. ‘These fucking subversives hide their weapons in a false bottom under the seats.’ ‘We’re cartographers, we’re with the Automobile Club,’ Simón explained. ‘We make maps.’ This made matters worse. They were hustled into a storeroom and subjected to a barrage of meaningless questions. ‘How do we know your papers aren’t forgeries? Why did you rent a jeep instead of a car like anyone else?’ In the corners of the storeroom were piles of corn cobs and rats. They were huge, grey, menacing. To allay the doubts of the guards, Simón sketched the route they were to map, from Los Altos to the banks of the Río El Abra. He explained that most maps omitted landmarks and that the course of Ruta 67 was not accurately mapped. He and his wife were here to rectify these mistakes. ‘There was a plane overflying the area yesterday,’ the sergeant said. ‘It came by twice, flying very low. I suspect they were taking photos. Right now I’m thinking maybe they had something to do with you. That’s how they plan terrorist attacks, spying missions, people who pretend they’re just passing through. Cardologists, natologists, everyone pretending to be something they’re not. Cartologists like you.’
‘Cartographers,’ Emilia said. ‘Why don’t you check our credentials?’
‘All right, I’ll let you go through,’ the sergeant conceded. ‘But just remember, we’ve got our eyes on you. You still need to get past the checkpoint at Huacra. If they turn you back, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes.’
The military checkpoint at Huacra seemed deserted. The stifling silence, the empty, almost surreal sentry boxes felt strangely jarring. The checkpoint marked the border between two provinces and was usually patrolled by at least twenty soldiers yet they could not see a living soul. The first red rays of dawn rose up on the left. A bitter cold leached through the canvas sides of the jeep. They drove on as far as the Río El Abra, or what they assumed was the river — a dry gorge with a crude concrete bridge they could just make out in the distance. Simón left the engine running and they waited for it to be light before beginning preliminary sketches for the map. ‘Have you checked the scale?’ Emilia asked. ‘See that embankment next to the bridge, we need to choose a symbol. Don’t fall asleep on me, Simón.’
Her husband lit a cigarette to keep himself awake but stubbed it out almost immediately. ‘There’s a terrible smell,’ he said. It was true. The stench was everywhere, spread across the landscape like a sheet. ‘Maybe it’s the vegetation,’ Emilia said. ‘Sometimes the trees are covered with fungus and bird droppings.’ ‘But it’s winter,’ her husband said. ‘The trees are bare, the whole place is a wasteland.’ ‘Then it must be putrefaction from the river,’ she said.
Rats, she remembered, abandoned their young under bridges when they went foraging for food. Who knew how many starving animals were under the bridge devouring each other? But the smell shifted and changed; sometimes it was like blood, at other times like breath flecked with spittle from a toothless mouth.
Smells are supposed to thrive in the heat, but the stench that morning seemed to draw its power from the chill air: it was a miasma which, instead of dissipating, seemed to become more dense, more tangible. Ice crystals formed on the windows of the jeep and Emilia’s joints began to ache. The air was slowly freezing and she wished that the smell, too, would freeze into flakes of mica. The wasteland was so monstrous, so absolute, that in the grey light of dawn things seemed to disappear, to vanish leaving only desolation: infinite placentas of abandonment, wounds that gaped beneath the jeep. ‘We’re going to get nowhere,’ said Emilia. ‘That’s because we’re already nowhere,’ said Simón.
When, finally, it was light enough to see, they could make out shadows moving towards the jeep, crawling along, scattering the loose gravel of the dirt road. Emilia had no time for horror movies or fantastical stories about supernatural creatures, but the creatures that morning reeked of sulphur and crackled like a cauldron of cicadas, a sound that came from the dawn of time, the sound of the wilderness spawning its poison.
‘Stay calm. There are people out there,’ Simón whispered, checking the doors to the jeep to make sure they were locked. As he did so, someone outside started jerking one of the door handles furiously.
The dawn came slowly. For a long time, it was merely a distant violet glow. Wind whipped sand against the jeep. A new, more piercing sound split the air. This moan, this whimper — whatever it was — grew louder; there were three, four voices coming from all directions, raucous and piercing. Suddenly they stopped, but only so the voices could come together in a shrill chorus like a needle that drilled into their eardrums.
‘There are people circling,’ Simón said again.
He took out the barbecue knife he always carried with him and climbed out of the jeep. The half-light of dawn was darker than the night had been and Emilia turned on the headlights. A woman dressed in rags and tatters was standing on the side of the road, rubbing her arms to keep warm. Next to her, two arthritic old women cradled a bundle wrapped in newspapers. Behind them, a woman with a mane of hair was trying to rouse a man sprawled on the ground with gutteral shrieks. A man stumbled along the dirt road towards the jeep wearing a threadbare raincoat that served little purpose since he was naked underneath. Behind him, another man pushing himself along on his hands and knees. Under the bridge were others, urinating, defecating. There were no fires, no shelter to keep them warm, nothing but the rage of that stench which was deeper than the night itself.