There is the incident that took place a few months after M was abducted. I was about to cross one of the typical, cramped avenues of Greater Buenos Aires, which were roads in the days before the area was populated and only later, with the spread of urbanization, ended up as very narrow avenues. There was no curb; the simulacrum of a sidewalk angled slightly toward the pavement, creating a formless space in which a bit of earth ate away at a fine layer of asphalt. The cars kept coming; I was waiting to let them pass before I crossed, when a hand holding a cigarette emerged from a car window, trying to burn me. I did not jump back, but managed to lean away and watched the bandaged hand, still holding the cigarette, return to the car a few meters down the road. There was a military base a few blocks from there; it was clear, despite its lack of markings, that the car belonged to the so-called security forces. I was not afraid, nor was I angry; again, typically, I felt nothing. Nonetheless, I saw how the coincidence of my crossing as they passed created, momentarily, the setting of a game, of order, organized with ease and pleasure to which the rest of us submitted with a certain natural acquiescence, at the dramatic and even more organized core of which M had met his end. That hand was accustomed to burning, and it found diverse, even incidental, opportunities to exercise the habit. Afterward, I crossed, but I did not forget what had happened. Once more it had become clear that chance is a condition of tragedy.
The relationship between M and the other was based on a mutual — though not always shared — time, within which certain topics, interspersed with actions and events, were advanced through both conversation and silence. As I have written, the railroad was discussed throughout their friendship, but there were other recurrent topics that became more central over time, signs of harmony or danger, the marks of a shared identity. One Saturday morning, as they were going to the house of a classmate, M and the other saw a group of Orthodox Jews; all were male, men and boys, and they walked without any particular hurry. M said, pointing, that they were genuine, real Jews. “They’re authentic,” he murmured. “Who?” asked the other. “Them, the Orthodox Jews. Don’t you think they’re more authentic?” M replied. “Why would they be more authentic than us?” retorted the other. He made a gesture to signal his reproach; he felt slighted at his exclusion from a group to which he had been certain he belonged. “I don’t mean that they are more Jewish,” M continued; only that their condition has retained qualities that speak of a truth and not only of constraint, as in our case. Our nature is marked by loss, by absence; what is left of an abundance that is slowly becoming more remote and somehow exotic: the Yiddish language, the religious holidays, the dances, the food. They, on the other hand, signal a confirmation, affirm a continuity with every step; they operate in time, within the diffuse time in which sons are, in the future, mistaken for their fathers like a convergence of the self, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Their lives find meaning in repetition, turning it into constancy. “But,” the other said, “what does repetition have to do with authenticity? It’s true that repetition ends up becoming authentic, but that’s not just a matter of repetition. On the other hand, how can you turn authenticity into a collective category? Yes, an observant Jew has an image that is easier to assimilate to Judaism than one who is not religious. One aspect of this is appearance (we are talking about them now because we were able to recognize them); no one would recognize us, though in some cases, like yours, certain features do help,” the other asserted, avenging himself for M’s earlier exclusion. “Every trait, whether visible or spiritual, shows its condition; a condition that is not necessarily religious,” he continued. “The truth is, one could say someone is — for example — a gaucho, when he lives the life of a gaucho; when his experience aligns with the model, generally speaking. Still, it is possible to say that the further he gets from that model the less of a gaucho he is, and just as there may be a moment in which he is no longer a gaucho, there may be a moment in which one is no longer a Jew or an Indian or a homosexual. One simply isn’t, or one is in a complete and absolute way one moment, only to find that one isn’t, the next. There are also moments in which one is so little, when one is at the mercy of the slight pulse that keeps our hearts beating. Perhaps, then, Jews have a more flexible threshold of identity; more accommodating in one sense, but more implacable in another, since someone might no longer belong to a congregation, without knowing it, or the congregation might include someone among its ranks who sees himself as an outsider.” “I hadn’t thought of all that,” answered M, emphasizing the all, “but it doesn’t seem like you disagree.” At that moment the other got distracted: the bus lurched forward and the sidewalks, filled with pedestrians, slipped into the distance with the sole objective of avoiding scrutiny; he saw vague colors and reflections, neither whole nor essential; the side streets opened up to him only to close in on themselves like dark little wells. After a while M, noticing the silence, asked, “What were you be thinking about?” “When?” the other wanted to know. “Now,” said M, “what do you mean, when?” “What should I be thinking about? Nothing,” he answered. “The street.” So M told a story that the appearance of the authentic Jews had helped him remember. It was an adventure plagued by imprecision, like all fables; or rather, it was a collection of precise imprecisions. This fairy-tale quality extended further stilclass="underline" M did not know how he came to know the story, which seemed not to have an author. At some point he heard it for the first time, yet he already knew all its principal details — just as he already knew its outrageous conclusion.
THE FIRST STORY TOLD BY M
Two boys, classmates, decide one afternoon to play a trick on their parents: upon leaving school each would take the road to the other’s house, go in, and greet everyone as though it were their own. They finalized the details as they left the building and, anticipating the illusion they had dreamt up, both laughed happily as they traded names: Sergio called Miguel Sergio, Miguel called Sergio Miguel. Until they arrived, neither wanted to give up their role; the routine of the journey home, coupled with the novelty of the route and particularly the new identity, intensified both impressions and thoughts. It was a kind of emotional tourism; similar to, though the opposite of, the way children imagine their own death and actually feel afflicted. They got their first surprise when the mothers welcomed them naturally, as though they really were their sons and had been at school since the morning. The second setback was encountering the same attitude in the fathers when they got home from work later on. In the meantime, everything seemed at once strange and familiar because, even though they had been over innumerable times before — their parents were also friends — they realized that they knew nothing beyond the superficial. One generally associates the unknown with terror, especially during childhood: silence, darkness, or being around strangers produces a singular sense of anxiety that is immediately dissipated by turning on a light, hearing familiar sounds, seeing familiar faces. This was something similar, though not exactly the same, given that experiencing the extraordinary in the company of people close to them — and the fact that those very people would be the primary actors in the nightmare — allowed them to deliberately immerse themselves in confusion and represented a kind of ironic terror. Both boys spoke little while they ate, but the parents did not stop talking; they even seemed more talkative than normal — though, of course, they were comparing these parents with their real ones. The boys were asked the usual questions about their time at school, their assignments, and the material they might have learned, then they all talked about their days: work, acquaintances, the neighborhood, politics, whatever came to mind, until the conversation turned to the coming weekend and the many choices of things to do, as they said. In one case, they were leaning toward the rose gardens in Palermo, and in the other, toward La Boca and the Costanera Sur preserve. Miguel and Sergio realized the persuasive power their words had over the other, as well as the influence of their real parents over the other ones, since those had been their own excursions the week before. Now they were faced with the prospect of repeating them, after having spoken enthusiastically about the activities of the other.