Read an Excerpt

I

It was four o’clock sharp when Demetrio Rota weakly lit the darkness with his neon suit. Almost without thinking, he hawked and spat into a drain. He was pleased to hit his target. A damp gust blew in from the Río de la Plata port, crept up Independencia, and dwindled on its way to Avenida 9 de Julio, where the wintry breath of Buenos Aires swelled and thrived: dense, continuous, corrosive. The cold was the least of it.

Alongside the truck, which gave off a warm stench of engine and residue, of orange peels and old yerba mate and fuel, Demetrio Rota and his shift partner trembled with arctic indifference. Toss me those bags, toss em here, El Negro yelled. Demetrio wasn’t listening. He stared down into the drain, motionless, his shoulders tensed into a shrug as if he’d forgotten to drop them. Come on man let’s go, what are you doing over there. Demetrio heard him this time, but he stayed perfectly still, the bags prone at his feet like an army of grubby pets. Hey it’s five-thirty Demetrio, we gotta hurry or we’re fucked. Then he sighed and crouched to sling the first bag to El Negro. The sewer insinuated a faraway flux down below.

II

Real damp, right?

            Every so often El Negro would clear his nose with a sound that Demetrio found especially irritating. The sunless dawn stained the sky with the discolorations of June. Demetrio was sure the seasonal change affected El Negro, making him dumber and more talkative. As for him, it depended: some days he kept quiet, and others he liked talking about soccer and weekends and the women who walked past as the day started lifting its head. Demetrio unquestionably preferred the ones with a little meat on them; he wasn’t into the current fad of sharp, pointy girls. El Negro, meanwhile, didn’t think the chick in the plaid skirt was half bad. Hey check her out, that kind of girl’ll show you everything even when they’re freezing to death. Nah, too skinny, Demetrio objected.

            At the end of Calle Bolívar was a cheap, shabby bar with tables shoved every which way and chairs scattered haphazardly around them. One was usually occupied by a slight, cheerful retiree who liked to go there for breakfast, and they knew him as the Pony. The waiter addressed him with a reverential “sir,” though the Pony never drank anything but the house wine. Hey man, c’mon and take our order, we’re in a hurry, El Negro declared as if the place were full. Demetrio sat pensive. It was a slow morning; they were almost fifteen minutes behind schedule and could only gulp down some cold café con leche before pressing on. The Pony sent them off with a shake of a days-old newspaper.

            Thanks to a nimble Negro, they managed to finish their route on time. Demetrio sat in the driver’s seat and felt the morning’s order restored to him: it helped to take off his gloves, because his fingers started feeling like fingers again and recognized the same old skin on things. He glanced in the rearview mirror at El Negro, who was collecting the last few bags with the pride of a juggler. He watched him fondly, with a slight smile, and noticed himself feeling better, almost well, as he revved up the truck. Now they’d head back to the dump to unload. Then El Negro would race off to his other job and wouldn’t make it home until the afternoon, when he’d have lunch with his wife and measure his children’s growth from the corner of his eye. Demetrio, for his part, was renting a narrow apartment near Chacarita, and after lunch he’d usually nap until the evening. He’d get up around eight, eat whatever he had lying around, and stare out the window for a while, study some cars, imagine them driving along all by themselves, without anyone in them, or else he’d choose a random rooftop to picture himself leaping off and flying away, stretched out on his back, face turned up to the cool and starless sky, until he’d get bored and sit down and get to work.

III

An open stretch of earth riddled with vast red flowers, none exactly like the rest. With dense-pressed grass and stalwart midday light, the field takes on the quality of a soft flag. Beside it, at a distance from the cabin, the lake unfolds. Its steady gleam goes dull as it advances toward the ridge. There isn’t much to see of all the mountains yet: just a rough outline of the peaks, tall index fingers pointing into space, identifying the unnavigable routes. The cabin was the classic alpine model with two small, slightly uneven windows. Meanwhile, two cats playacted scratches and affection, jumbling their colors. Age-old, the trees’ bark seems to bear sole witness to the passing years amid so much eternal water and so many flowers dying young.