English|Che

The Catcher
of Che

A bearded man near the window shared a kitkat bar with me and caught sight of russian letters in my book:

— The Quran?
— The book about Che Guevara.
— Are you a socialist?
I shook my head.
— And I am a socialist, — an argentinian smiled and clenched a fist in a gesture of resistance.

My beard will be heavy as his at the end of journey.

I crossed the town on foot, avoiding dangerous blocks like Constitución station or La Boca. I wanted to buy a mate gourd at the sunday fair in San Telmo.

I traded a small cup made of a dried pumpkin and a special straw for fifty pesos from a native woman. In such a crowd I barely got through behind the merchants' backs and hid from the noise in empty streets of San Telmo.

I turned to the backyards, where people carried crates from vans. Houses opened like folding screens, uncovering streets with graffiti, cafes and beauties, who never be with me. I remember a dog lying on the sidewalk.

III

Cold crossbars of the market echoed a roof of the Constitución station and churches I never enter. Smells of bakeries, butcher shops' chills and old signs.

Each wall was stained with paint — Che Guevara, girls with AKs, red stars, raised fists and writings: Leave us alone! Don't turn San Telmo into Palermo! Pig cops! Never forgive, never forget!

All of them interweaved with ghosts dancing the tango on walls, among cars, among streetlights. Empty windows, boarded windows of a bar, a man at the flowered balcony’s doors. An antique shop, a cigarette kiosk, a french bistro.

The man disappears and the whole picture tears apart. What was left was the stone house, covered with cracks, and the stub burning out on the road.

A waitress behind a counter tells me a password:

— Ma-ri-a. Want a coffee?
I shook my head.
— No hay problema. It's on me.

I turn away from the street and sit. Fingers hold the warm plastic tight, ‘cause porteñas’ faces outside the window are cold. Ma-ri-a.

— Where are you?
— I... I drink coffee.
— It's one in the morning.
— I don't know. It's bright here.
— Bright? Where are you?
— In Buenos Aires.

I take small sips as if I were kissing a rim of a cup, waiting for her to come back. Maybe she took the subway. Forty-four minutes I either stare at the second hand or into blankness. Voices and cyclists' bells reach me out from the boulevard.

Lucia is a veterinarian on the night shift. She has a shaven temple, she lives on the outskirts, smokes a lot and laughs at the outfits of argentinian chicks walking along the Recoleta's streets. She says, this Argentina is not real. She makes a gesture as if outlining all the space around with her hands. No vivimos asi. We don't live like this.

But I liked the tall buildings and yellowed tree crowns of Recoleta. I stayed nearby, in quiet Palermo, where I climbed a tree once and tried to feed some wild geese with cookies.

Along the way, Lucia told me about the seventies in Argentina. Here are some details: the dead drifting up to the shores of Uruguay, children missing forever, mothers spinning in wild round dance on Plaza de Mayo, a police officer shooting a student in the face with a revolver.

While coming home she kisses a portrait of Che Guevara. The tattooed hands of argentinian girls, as the walls of the city, are covered with chants about the brutal police.

VII

We took the subway, the same as the Barcelona one, except musicians, walking in at each station. At the estación Uruguay a guitarist ruffled the hair of some kid, hit the strings and Lucia recognized the chords of zamba.

"I don't know why you came back. I have already begun to forget you". The girls in the metro car sang along: "I cried when you left. I don't know why you came back".

This song keeps spinning and spinning in my head.

VIII

Two señores were smiling and flirting with a dark-skinned girl, their old-fashioned jackets hung on the handrails.

For a while the old men and the mulata were rocked and waggled with the car until the train stopped. I've read the station's name on the wall. The flow of passengers pushed us forward like cardboard figures.

We slipped through the turnstile and climbed stairs to the surface. White lights blinded me for a moment, then I saw outlines of houses with balconies, people on them looking out, some on the roofs.

Flags fluttered in the background of gnarled branches with purple flowers. Raised fists: Don't run! Calm down! They shouted: Hijo de puta! We are in the middle of the hum, sirens and voices, in the heart of marcha floating down the street.

I remember the heat and crunching bottles under my feet. The blue sky cuts through bullet holes in black, red, orange, white flags above my head. The beating of drums and the frightening singing of thousands of throats. Lucia held my sweaty palm.

Beauties with thick thighs climbed on knocked-down trash cans. A cloud waved in the front of the Congress in the depth of the street, weighty and muddy from smoking plastic, firecrackers left white trails, and when gas shells exploded with a rolling rumble, the crowd recedes heavily, bending around tobacco kiosks.

We hide from the police in a restaurant with tables moved to the doors. Shots whistle two steps away, blue blinkers light up the fume above burning cars.

We were walking along the main street when a peruvian woman stepped up. Lucia translated her words, chuckling:

— Los pájaros. Birds have shat on you.

Buena señal. A good sign. It took me a while to notice the woman had sharp lizard's eyes. I looked through our clothes and saw the stains of some dirt. I pulled a bottle of water and a few napkins from my backpack humbly, despite the strong scent of mustard in the air. The trick is simple: they spray mustard on your clothes, and when the assistant distracts your attention, thieves empty your pockets. But I realized nothing. Didn't even notice the crowd flowing around.

I was following gestures of the peruvian witch: put down your backpack, wet the napkin, come to me. She took my hand and guided it trough shiny Lucia's hair. And there I awoke: her hair was completely clean. I turned my head and saw the backpack’s disappeared from the ground.

My body threw itself in the right direction, as if it knew, where my backpack had been sneaked. Another peruvian bared the road, pointing to the street behind me: señor, he ran over there! But my body pushed him away. The body knew where the thief was in the crowd and clenched its fists. Peruvian saw me, dropped my backpack and vanished.

Maybe we should have stayed and walked endlessly through the streets of Buenos Aires, but the real, crowded forty-five bus took us to the suburbs.

The bus bent around the villa, poor neighborhoods — houses without roofs stirred up with tenements, an old church, boys in a vast metal net of football court, billboards, tires, laundry on lines.

XII

Every night a cat named Feli crawls into my sleeping bag, until one day I buy the cheapest bus ticket from Buenos Aires to Santiago.

Clouds darken the sky, but when the rain comes, you won’t be here. The city breaks off on the painted walls and roofs of San Telmo. You will never see that boy hitting a ball. An accidental touch of a skirt, also the last one.

I dozed off on a bus, and when I opened my eyes, there’s a night sky. Stars look like scars from cat’s claws.