We took the bus as far as we could and got a taxi the rest of the way to the hostel. The journey in from the airport involved strange detours and one stop in a petrol station. We went round a roundabout twice. When we finally arrived inside what felt like the city we soon realised that we would never understand it – the street that leads to the centre was perhaps 25km long. We had help with directions from the rest of the people on the bus, all of them, each with an opinion; one guy took charge though and told us where to get off, where to walk to, and how much to pay in the cab. Our taxi driver was a decent old man called Antonio. His people were Italian, they moved out after the war. We talked and he seemed to follow us most of the time, with some exceptions:
Me - y cómo és el uso del voseo?
Him – eh? El boxeo?
Me – no no, el uso de vos!
Him – pero que uso?
Me – de vos!
Him – che, nadie me está usando para nada!
And we pulled into our hostel in Palermo. We offloaded and headed out to the streets, our first stop was in a little coffee shop where we met a Colombian guy from Bogotá who told us where to find the best empanadas in the city but we didn’t find them. Palermo is huge and beautiful, and only one third of one of the 100 barrios of Buenos Aires (there is also Palermo Hollywood and Palermo Chico). The first day we wandered around and found a gorgeous place to eat, a lovely starter of blended carrot and tomato in a shot glass and a huge steak. The following day we rented bikes and cycled for hours, and then days, to the parks, to recoleta cemetery, to Colegiales to see graffiti, to the house where Gardel was born, to Barrio Once where they say do not go, to calle Lanin where the kerbs are painted all colours, to the architecture faculty of la nacional. We sailed to Uruguay in a day and drove a moped around Colonia, we kayaked through the delta of the Rio Plata in Tigre. I became a member of the Biblioteca Nacional. We went into a shop that sold a variety of dolls and nothing else, all handmade and stitched, all weird, non-existent animals, perhaps from Borges´ Chinese Encyclopedia. (Palermo is full of these shops, most with a half-life of 6 months, selling one thing at a time – belt buckles, customised towels, almonds. Later on at a market we would find a shop that sold, exclusively, vintage imperial weighing scales.) I filmed ewa cycle across an 18 lane avenue that smears itself through the city. We saw a guy walking 13 dogs at the same time. We met a Chilean lady and her daughter who invited us to lunch in Santiago. We went to one of a million tango clubs and saw the same band playing a week later on the streets. I suffered, from severe headaches, weakness, diarrhoea and constipation, a strange rash on my inside leg. I made promises that I didn’t keep, and some that I did.
A week into our trip we visited a friend of ewa´s aunt who grew up in Poland. Lucy is married to Domingo. Their daughter is Carolina who is married to Joselo. They themselves have two children, Ciro and Beltran. Domingo looks like he is carved from hardwood; he has the presence of a totem pole. The scar on his forehead is more like a knot in a tree trunk. He traces his ancestry to the indigenous Indians of the river plate and he hates Diego Maradona as much as he hates the current government. He wanted to know if I was half gay when I arrived with flowers for his wife; I liked him immediately. He took me into the garden to show me the meat he was preparing for us all. He had made enough. Carolina and Joselo are both dentists – they were fascinated with my crossbite, they noticed it immediately. They have a dog called Ringo Starr. Domingo played me his tango records and told me about the dances in the fifties (tango was the easiest chance of getting your hands on a woman – so when they put on a jazz record we´d all hit the bar...jazz is shite!). Lucy recorded a message in Polish for Krzrysha, she sounded like a child speaking it, a bright young child. It was lovely, she seemed to find the right words out of nowhere.
We ate soon after we got there, not much messing around, and it was great, we talked a great deal, argued, laughed a lot, and we left with new friends. Domingo grabbed my arm fiercely as we left and told me that when you have a good feeling about someone, that feeling will always exist. I told him that I felt the same. I also wanted to tell him that what he said sounded totally gay, but it would have been lost. Plus I was wearing his shorts at the time. Caro and Jose offered to take us to the train station, but we stopped in the guys’ apartment before we got there, and we had another beer. They explained to us how insane it was during the collapse – the government allowed a maximum withdrawal of 150$ per week, the corralito as it was known. The middle classes were ruined; all savings were withheld and as the currency weakened their money was lost. They took to the streets, millions of people, and a state of siege was declared. The country saw 5 presidents in 2 weeks. But those in cash businesses – taxi drivers, corner shop owners, and especially street vendors - those were the most affected. Having no backup, they were destroyed. Many of them are cartoneros now, cardboard collectors that sell it by the kilo to recycling plants for a pittance. We talked about this. It was difficult to see it as something that happened in a civilised country less than 10 years ago. The two of them were broke when it hit, but they started from scratch and saved up a living. They live in an apartment near San Miguel in the outskirts of the city, and they have bought land to build a house. All things considered they are doing well.
They walked with us to the train station to see us off that night. Ciro likes trains apparently, and he stared at one as it arrived at another platform. But this train was different – it had open carriages, and people sat on the sides with their legs hanging over the edge. Those that got on at the station carried plastic bags full of cans, and cardboard tied up with twine. It was a free train, offered by the government to encourage those from the shanty towns in the outskirts to come in to the centre and collect the rubbish. Women travelled with their children, young men look bent but unbroken. Many have moved out to the slums, non-places that have multiplied since the collapse. They make the trip daily and, it seems, unbegrudgingly, though many have respiratory problems as a result of walking the streets every day, and encountering heroin needles is a common danger. The indignity that they suffered seems to be long gone, they just get on with things, but I couldn’t help wishing that a day would come in which instead of cleaning the plastic and cardboard from the streets they would make it to the casa rosada and rid it of the real trash. Ciro waved to the people in the train and a few people that saw him waved back; our train came shortly after and we said our goodbyes.
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