FOUR
For those who give themselves over to a territorial friendship, time — even space — is an excuse, secondary to a single, essential element: the indirect path, often sinuous and always arbitrary, along which the traces and labors of distance accumulate as silt does beneath water. It is paradoxical that territory, a spatial concept, should see its own condition dispelled as it grows unfathomable and manifests itself in the form of a delay or of an often irrecoverable past, a lapsed apogee or a liberated present able to change form and occupy another place at any moment, under any circumstance. Sometimes on our walks, the day — despite its clumsy and forced evolution — would not progress. The light, the weather, or the set of sensorial tools one uses to locate oneself within the jumble might change, but there was a residue that literally stopped the passage of time; one felt one might remain there forever. At those moments it was as though we were in a painting over which a faint vapor hovered, or was perceived: some sort of shadow or mist at the horizon, a mix of light and color — or cold and heat — through which an imprecise form, probably that of trees or houses, could just barely be discerned.
For months we walked around different parts of the suburbs almost every day. Both before and after that time — a period in which we were searching for something, something that would become a symbol of salvation, as I will explain in a moment — both before and after that time we walked around intermittently, almost always casually and often without any particular reason but, as I have said, with the same feeling of recklessness and the same excitement, the same combination of abundance and delirium. At that time, when we would go on the walks I am about to describe, it was still four years before M would disappear. If I say now that the future to come would have seemed unreal, unthinkable in that moment, I am truly not exaggerating. No one thinks about the future; we are ignorant of what is to come and abandon ourselves to the void of its mystery. It is also true that, while no one can see the future, we attempt in vain to anticipate it. Those with foresight think about what is to come, those without it think about the moment. At the end of the day, everyone belongs to one of these two groups; yet the idea that M would disappear within a few years would have sounded far-fetched to anyone. As a concept, we expect nothing of the future, which is a good thing, but we expect everything of the moment and of what is to come. (This everything has a literal value here: I mean that “everything” includes the word change, as well.)
Something about the city brings us to accept transformations; this thing becomes familiar, and in that moment we acknowledge, or rather, embrace it. Change, novelty — despite being beyond our grasp because, in the city, things happen without our knowledge — are the proofs offered to us by the present in an unremitting stream. The proliferation of events, the propagation of signs, those forms in which the city expresses itself are the language used by the present to renew itself and, in this way, construct its simulacrum of the future. How else would the future manifest itself, if not in the image of the contemporary? And what is the contemporary, par excellence, if not life in the city? City, future, proliferation, truth: the four ends of an equilateral cross, at the top of which figures the word “city.” The other three are interchangeable.
Just as the geography of the city conditions us to accept change or novelty despite the fact that change and novelty are rarely within our grasp, assigning to the present the fantastic ability to contain infinite occurrences, people feel compelled to make their predictions: the city as an innumerable series of events that take place within a defined space, and what is to come as a hypothetical realm in which occurrences proliferate at the heart of a hidden moment, impossible but nonetheless concrete, similar to those that occur all the time on the streets of distant neighborhoods. Even this seemingly forced metaphor between the future and the city allows for the idea of proximity and its effects: nearness and immediacy — essential relations for those anxious about what is to come. On the other hand, the city offers validation to those who do not make predictions: change, the bustle that grows more or less feverish depending on the hour and the circumstance, which can be represented — and contemplated — from a single point. This observation often takes place from a café table or — in the neighborhood — from chairs set up on the sidewalk, open windows, et cetera. The city is not only simultaneous — we know that at any moment, in any place, there are always a number of different things happening — but also spontaneous: events unfold without reason or accord, which makes them appear autonomous and random. Those who live in the moment find, in this exercise, the natural model for their lack of foresight. The same thing happens with noise: noises do not fade into the distance, die out, or grow, they simply stop or are drowned out by another, stronger one. Yet the city — which, if one must define it, could be said to be the place in which the greatest number of obstacles comes together — finds its promise of privacy eradicated by sound. M’s meticulous observations about the clamor of the trains and the cheers coming from the soccer stadium on Sundays are definitive proof of this. From bombs to the clap of thunder, via the drip of a faucet or the crackling sound of cars inching forward on the wet pavement — these noises moderate the inevitability of its construction. Geography is an art of vision; it is in its profound independence from geography, which is condemned to absorb it, that the difficulty of sound resides. Sound is equivalent to the future: that which one cannot see. This is why the first thing we forget about a person is their voice. M and I used to listen for sounds and reflect on this dubious philosophy, usually on our walks without a set destination — or with a destination that was so unknown that it ceased to be such — while we thought of ourselves as planets. It seems to me today that Buenos Aires had, at the time, a certain essential quality; it was a crystalline city. Now, though, its inhabitants are made of liquid.
At first, and for a long time, M’s father did not understand what had happened when he turned his head to discover that his car was gone. He had just left a small grocery store in the suburbs (at the time he worked as a cookie wholesaler) and was going over the list of clients he still had to call on; he was startled to see nothing at the curb. He thought there had been a mistake, that he had left the car somewhere else, et cetera. He took stock, walked the few paces to the corner, and looked up and down the street. Each scan of the desolate block, however, brought him a little closer to the truth. Then he understood that he had been robbed. He went back into the store, to “let them know,” as he said, though in truth he didn’t know what to say. As he spoke, he felt that there was little, almost nothing, he could do. Then he saw that his world was falling apart and was so mortified that he began to cry. They comforted him at the store; later, as though they were revealing some great secret, they suggested that he report it to the police. In anticipation of his experience years later, they offered him no hope at the police station, so he went back to the office, where they comforted him even more and offered him something to eat. M’s father spoke angrily, but ate without any hurry. When he finished, he took a walk around the neighboring blocks, asking if anyone had seen his car. He was out there for hours, getting answers like, “I don’t know,” “Yes,” and “No.” At one point he gleaned that the people, surprised by the strength of his conviction, were actually answering at random — not with the first thing that came to their minds, but with the most statistically likely answer, the effect of probability; it was a pre-cerebral response. This realization did not lead him to abandon his inquiry, on the contrary, he told himself that if there were an order beyond experience that determined the answers he was getting, it was also likely that this was close to the truth; certainly, the order with which he was now coming into contact had been the one that dictated the moment his car was stolen. Though the light was beginning to dim, the afternoon seemed to him as though it were fading to white. He thought about that evening, about his return home and about going inside with the news, and told himself that he still had plenty of time, getting his hopes back up to continue the search. He had lingered a bit with the client, he conceded; since no one else was coming in, they had spoken for nearly two hours. When he got bored, he looked at his watch and feigned surprise at the time, but he already knew he had wasted half the morning. As he left he thought: I’ve been here two hours and not a soul has come into this poor guy’s shop. Then all of a sudden he became the poor guy, when he realized that he had left the car alone too long. That’s how it happened, M said to me the next day. He was late getting home; everyone was already at the table. “The car was stolen,” he managed to stammer as he crossed the floor toward his room.