Buenos Aires resume el universo
Buenos Aires encapsulates the universe
Baldomero Fernandez Moreno
My feet were weary when I first met Diego Maldonado Hernandez at a shabby bar in the southern outskirts of Buenos Aires. It was a warm evening, the local
porteños
lounging at street corners. The faint sound of a
milango
drifted down the dusty lane of beaten, one-story homes.
I was far from my apartment on Belgrano Street, this was many years ago. I had been wandering the back streets of the city for several hours, my mind verging down morbid channels. It had been finally necessary for me to stop for a drink, and some food.
I took my beer, not cold enough in my hands, to a back room, dark and disreputable. There were three tables. Diego nodded to me from one. An older couple occupied the other, muttering with frowned mouths obliquely at each other.
I sipped from the bottle and ruminated. It would be late when I finally returned to my bed, and just as well that the day had exhausted itself. There would be another, tomorrow. And one after that.
Diego leaned over and casually asked me my thoughts on literature. I started, this was the last topic I expected to be broached here, in the back room of this dingy bar. Diego was perhaps forty, clean-shaven, with even, angular features and a sharp nose. His clothing was of better quality than the establishment warranted. I replied cautiously, curious to see where our words would take us.
He expressed respect for Joyce, Kafka, even Forster, although he voiced a violent distaste, to my surprise, for Márquez. "Fanciful beyond belief!" he spat. "Gets lost in his preposterous imagination and leads the reader astray!"
This was absurd, of course, and I felt compelled to rebut his assertion, more pedantically perhaps than necessary. *
Our voices rose and our hands gestured as we argued. But he was a quick-witted and well-informed opponent.
The discussion continued for some time, with growing respect for each other, about various of the literary arts. About whether
zeugma
could function as a legitimate rhetorical device in an inflected language. How the evidential modality tense of verbs altered the mind-set of speakers of Turkish or Hungarian, compared to those whose mother-tongues were English or Spanish. The validity of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We considered the intrinsic value of Macedonio's writings.
We talked long enough that we drove the other couple away. The old man gave us a withering glance as he rose from their table and they departed. Our conversation he surely felt was smug, aristocratic, showy, and disagreeably cerebral.
"
Intelectuales odiosos!
" he hissed as a parting shot.
But how had Diego guessed that I would be receptive to debate of such matters? I still ponder over this question.
"Are you fond of women?" he asked, now that we were alone, his dark eyes glinting from beneath the brim of his fedora.
I stared back. What was this query supposed to signify?
"Of course," I said, ignoring the abruptness of the change of topic, "but the price of attraction remains excessive."
"Ah, your bank account is a limitation."
I shook my head. My civil-service position then was comfortable enough. "No. The emotional price."
He nodded in sympathy, perhaps.
We were silent.
He told a long tale, about a large dwelling-place to the west of the city inhabited by extraordinary women, each of whom capable of transporting an ardent male to the ends of the earth. He was explicit about the nature and dexterity of their arts.
"You are a man of the mind," he continued. "Of sophistication. Is there no better salve to an overactive intellect than a woman's flashing eyes? Soft lips? A slippery, fragrant, excited womb?"
I stared back at him.
He described having his penis sucked the week before.
"For almost an hour, this lovely wench had me in her mouth. A body of soft curves, velvet tawny skin, long dark hair. The whole session lasted maybe twice that long. She was extraordinary, beyond belief, as delighted to give me pleasure as I was to receive it.
"Her wet lips sliding up and down my member produced impossibly divine sensations. Just as I felt the semen begin to rise, she would alter her approach, divert my attention, without lessening my arousal, until I was ready for an implosion. My testicles still quiver with the memory."
He continued and I felt my own desire stir with his extended description.
"You are aware of the etymology of the word 'vagina'?" he asked.
I nodded. He smiled.
"Every sword needs a scabbard." His face grew solemn.
We were silent.
"I am leaving Buenos Aires next Wednesday." He confided this in a soft, almost wistful voice. "For good. The ship will take me to Spain. I would like to make you an offer."
I listened carefully in the darkness.
"I have a key to this palace of pleasure, the house of doors. Very few others can say the same. It has never disappointed."
"How much are you asking?" I knew where this was going.
He named a large sum. It was not impossible but would deplete a good portion of my savings.
He saw me hesitate.
"I can give you a taste, once. If you decide against it, then there is no transaction between us and we each are free to go our own way. Yet I would like this key to go to a man worthy of the opportunity." He looked evenly at me. "I think you could be the one."
I could not know then why he wanted a stranger to be the recipient of his offer and not someone more familiar.
He wrote down a street number for the key on the back of his business card, which listed "Antiquarian Bookseller" as his occupation. His own address was in Palermo. "Stop by Tuesday night, after six," he said. "You can either return the key or pay me."
We parted with a handshake at the entrance to the bar. He pressed the key into my palm.
It was a long, archaic item, as if from some ancient hotel, of bronze or brass, large and well used. It felt oppressively heavy in my hand. In my pocket it intruded uncomfortably against my thigh, one would not be able to forget its presence.
"What if I decide not to return it after my trial?" I asked. "You would lose out on a fortune."
He looked at me evenly.
"You will arrive," he said.
The next afternoon I made my way to the address specified, almost to the edge of the city's borders, past small, neglected parks and fields and once prosperous homes. The route led me to the terminus of a long tree-lined street, with a gate at the end. A man in dark clothing from an earlier century stood there. I stopped in front of him.
"I have a key," I said, unsure of his role, what he might say, who he might be. He looked at me without interest and gestured to the lock on the gate.
"Try it," he said.
The key opened the gate, and he pushed it wide for me.
"Will I need the key to get out?" I asked.
"No. There are many exits, all easy, but this is the only way in." He waved me on.
The path took me through a short strand of tangled woods and then opened into a wide, grassy expanse surrounding a huge, stone-surfaced, circular edifice topped by a shallow dome. Six or seven stories high, windows evenly spaced around the outside. I remember trying to calculate how long it would take me to circumnavigate the perimeter. No human was visible.
I found a door, locked, but my key opened it. A short passage led to a long, wood-paneled, curvilinear hallway that ran to each side. Opposing red doors lined the hallway at regular intervals. I turned left, clockwise. My feet echoed as I walked. No one was present. Even during the late afternoon hours it was dark. I finally stopped at one entry and tried the door-knob, which did not turn. I knocked. There was no answer.
My key was sufficient, however. The door opened quietly into a narrow, well-ordered room, with one window at the end, overlooking the inner, circular court-yard.
A slender woman examined me from a table as I entered. I stopped abruptly, she reminded me of an early love interest of mine. I had barely been eighteen at the time.
Long, fine dark hair, intense eyes. A slow smile spread over her face.
Maria Verde once had been a troublesome threat to my sanity, inflaming every cell of my being. Her parents did not approve of me, an impoverished university student with no prospects, thwarting any future we might have had together.
I could not forget the two times we surreptitiously coupled however, how her arms held me close, how tightly her thighs gripped me, her scent, the softness of her hair. If her father had suspected the extent of our intimacies, I would have died with a knife in my back. She told me, and I believed her, that I was her first.
"Maria," I said. "It cannot be you." I knew it wasn't.
She stared back at me, those deep eyes enchanting. She shook her head.
"This is your first visit, no?" Her lips were full, ravishing. Her clothing was simple but elegant.
She served me tea. We talked. I found my thoughts returning to the years of my youth.
We retreated to her bed, a small, simple affair. My excitement removing her blouse, easing her skirt off, was more than nostalgic. Her feet smelled of the earth, the graze of her hands over my chest left me breathless.
We dallied for some time. Her breasts were long and supple, perhaps as Maria's would have become, twenty years after I knew her. The circles surrounding her nipples entranced me. I could not stop tracing their perimeter with my fingers, feeling their pimpled, dark texture.
