“
¡Che!
” yelled the man in front of her.
She stared blearily at the vomit on his coat, his disgusted face. Hands and penis melted away and left a gap in the throng behind her. She raced into it, away from the man she’d soiled, from the scene of the crime, far away far away from the scene of her crime. She ran. She pushed through the revelry toward emptier streets, until a stitch in her side forced her to slow to a walk. Where was she going? The day’s flush now tasted like pure bile. She stumbled into an unfamiliar alley, a damp and narrow shaft lined with brick walls. She belonged in the heel of a shoe. She belonged nowhere, she should pour down the gutter, drain through the ground and be gone. Who would miss her? She was ridiculous, almost twenty, almost un-weddable, a waitress and third-rate poet whose own father thought she was a whore and whose countrymen, on freedom’s day, could shove into her dress. Vomit soured her mouth. She had to rinse. She was close to the fountain at Parque Rodó. She turned the corner and walked to the park, to the plaza nestled at the center, and strode
to the fountain. She did not care (did
not
care) about the strangers staring from their benches as she scooped water onto her dress.
“Eva?”
She turned around. Andrés Descalzo stood in front of her, looking at her wet chest and then away.
“I … spilled Champagne.”
“I see.
¿Estás bien?
”
“
Claro. Claro
. I’m fine.”
“Are you happy about the surrender?”
“What?”
“You know. Of Germany.”
“Oh, right, Germany.” Eva stared down at her feet. The tiles beneath them burst with dragons, painted fish, a pomegranate yawning wide with seeds. “Great. Of course. Couldn’t be better.”
“Things are going to change now.”
“
Sí
.”
“You sure you’re all right.”
“
Sí, sí
.”
“You seem different.”
“I’m tired.”
“Of what?”
“Of—everything—of my family, of stupid poets, of Montevideo, and every single man in this damn country!”
Andrés laughed. The sun caught on his teeth as he laughed. “Me too.”
They sat down together at the rim of the fountain. Blue tiles cool against her skirt.
“How’s Beatriz?”
“She broke up with me.”
“Oh.”
“She’s with Pepe now.”
“I’m sorry.”
Andrés shrugged. “It wasn’t working anyway.” He looked at her frankly and her face went hot. “She’s not like you, Eva. Not someone I can really talk to.”
Eva broke the gaze. He was so close. The air she was breathing had been inside his body.
“I need to tell you something.”
She held her breath.
“I’m leaving.”
“What?”
Andrés nodded. Eva crushed a handful of her skirt.
“I’ve got to get out of Uruguay.” He stared out at impassive trees. “My father wants to retire. If I stay, I’ll have to take over the
carnicería
. Who ever heard of a poet who smelled like cow blood? The war’s over. It’s a sign. It’s time to do it.”
“Where to?”
“Buenos Aires.”
In Eva’s mind, Buenos Aires was a dancer, with flashy moves and a scandalous scent beneath her clothes, who danced as Montevideo—her smaller, drabber sister—never would.
“Buenos Aires,” she repeated.
“Things are going well there, with the social revolution.” His hands locked together, then unlaced. “There are other reasons.”
“Like what?”
Andrés studied her face. To her right, beyond the trees, Eva heard a baby crying. Andrés shrugged. “Well, for writers, it’s the next best thing to Paris,
¿no?
Paris before the bombs.”
Eva said nothing. Obviously it was the next best thing to Paris. “How will you get there?”
“I have just enough money for the ferry, and the first week or so after that. I’ll find work. I’m willing to do anything at first.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“No.” Eva grasped his wrist. It was smooth under her fingers; perhaps she would leave marks. “You can’t do that.”
His arm relaxed in her clasp, a supple prey.
“I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too. You’re my closest friend.” He stared at the ground; at the tiles; at the fantastic pictures painted on those tiles. “I love you,
chiquilina
. But don’t worry, I’ll write. I’ll send you my address.”
That night, Eva breaded
milanesas
in silence by her mother’s side. She set the table, fork by fork, each motion a minuscule act of release. At
dinner, she ate slowly, floating far away from her brothers’ uproar over the German surrender, their wives’ interjections, her father’s constant reaching for the wine. Later, in bed, she lay thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking, picturing Buenos Aires and picturing Montevideo without Andrés, hearing his words,
chiquilina
, I love you. She did not sleep. Before dawn could bleach the darkness from her room, she reached under the mattress and drew out her stack of pesos. She slid it into a tapestry bag, along with clothes, jewelry, notepads, books. She dressed. She wrote a note to her mother. It was 4:55 a.m.
She crept to the kitchen and placed the note by the sink, where Mamá would be the first to see it. She could almost taste her mother’s presence in this kitchen, with its cluttered green cheer, its jars of dark dry plants whose uses Eva had never learned. It would be many years before she stood in this kitchen again, and more years still before the night when she would stand here, in the dark, scraping burned tomato sauce into the trash with desperate gestures, unable to feel the pot in her hands, unable to smell the black ruins, unable to think anything but
No, Salomé, no, no
. Now, in this moment, preparing to escape across the river, she thought only of Mamá. Perhaps, if she breathed deeply enough, she could fill her lungs up with her mother’s essence and take it with her. She tried it but her lungs were tight and she felt nothing, so she slipped out of the kitchen into the night.
It was dark outside, and the prison walls formed broad shadows on the street. She could barely make out the castle pattern in the bricks along the top, the shape that had enchanted her as a child. She crossed the cobblestones, passed the prison, and approached the steps of the church. They felt cool and smooth against her legs as she sat down, her back to the chapel, facing Carnicería Descalzo. She settled in to wait.
The street was perfectly still. Only her breath seemed to move. Light leaked over the houses on the east end of the street. Any time now. She could see the door of the butcher shop more clearly with each minute, a dark green rectangle in the wall. She would not miss his exit—unless he’d already left. Anxiety tugged at her nerves; at least it would keep her awake. She hoped her mother had not gotten up to pee. Weak light crawled higher into the sky. The houses of Punta Carretas pressed together,
side by side, little boxes in a row. Any moment now, her parents would wake up and find her gone. She pictured them bustling toward her in their nightclothes. She shifted to a lower step.
The Descalzo door opened and a tall silhouette stepped out. She rushed to meet it.
“Psst. Andrés.”
His spine tensed. “Eva, what are you—”
“I’m coming with you. You have to take me.” She hoped she sounded firm and irrefutable.
“I can’t.”
“Why not? I want to break away, just like you.”
He shook his head, but he was listening.
“I’ve got money of my own. I’ll help you. I want Buenos Aires, I want to be a poet, and I want to be with you. Don’t you love me? Didn’t you say that?”
The pause between them thickened. She tried another approach. “Look, in any case, I’m after the same thing you are.”
He bit his lip. “Which is?”
“Piracy.”
He let out a short laugh; it was almost a bark. Then he was serious. He met her eyes. “God.” He looked away, toward the prison. “Have you packed your things?”
“What I really need.”
“You sure about this?”
“Completely.”
He stared at her as if she were a missive he’d just come to understand. “The ferry leaves soon. We’d better head right to the dock.”
Just before they rounded the corner, Eva took one last look at her childhood street: the church door’s arc, the long prison wall, the road of inlaid stones, the oaks rising out of the sidewalk, the sand-colored house where her family slept. It was more than she could curl her tired mind around. She turned and walked away, toward the river.
T
his city. Buenos Aires. It gleamed like a land of lucent giants. It roared and stretched and shot up from the ground in planes of stone. Eva stood at the lip of Avenida Nueve de Julio and stared. The widest street, her new landlady had boasted, in the world. She lifted her sagging chin as she said it. And there was no reason to believe that the world held anything, anywhere, vaster than this road, loud with automobiles and the bustle of a thousand people’s shoes. A proud late-autumn sky vaulted above it. The obelisk towered in the middle of the street, piercing the heart of the city, a long white finger pointing toward heaven, tall, sleek, effulgent with authority and promise. The people seemed that way to her too: smooth and sleek like stone. Slender women with exquisite purses, men in sharp Parisian suits. They poured everywhere and did not relent. Eva turned onto Avenida Corrientes. At the corner newsstand, a leathery man mumbled highlights of his wares—Perón defends new labor plan! Cigarettes! Magazines! Gum!
—
between puffs of his cigar. Earlier in the day he might have hollered, but it was 3 a.m. and some territory, only some, had to be ceded to the night. She passed him without slowing, passed the couple kissing against a lamppost; the men just burst from a bar, slick-haired, smelling of liquor and cologne; the dance-hall doors throbbing with tangos; the crowded café where a woman sat alone at a small table, scrawling mournfully on delicate pink paper. The city was too much, crushing against her. Eva stopped and leaned against the window of a closed boutique. She stood
still until she sensed the hum, low and constant, beneath the surface of the city. She felt it in her bones—it lit her up, unnerved her, showed the way, filled each sequin and bulb and alley, from dense downtown to her crumbling San Telmo tenement, where paint can be bright as it peels, where
tangueros
danced at bars with cracking walls, where fire escapes were balconies on which to sway to stolen music, taking reprieve from small damp rooms. Even in her own bedroom, Eva was in the hum, and she felt it when she sat completely still. Never mind the roaches that teemed across the floor, the stains on the bedsheets, the way she held her breath to avoid the stink in the bathroom down the hall. Never mind the paper-thin walls through which she heard the prostitute next door conducting business, night and day, man after man with his own pace and push and vocal gait; the families of five, six, nine in single rooms; the knife fights in the alley around the corner. She was home there, still, in the glow of the city, and anyway she’d moved her bed to the other wall, the one adjacent to Andrés’ room.
Eva tapped the glass of the boutique window with her fingertips three times and kept on walking. She had done it. It hadn’t been so bad. Her eleventh interview; she should be glad. He would pay well, that Don Rufino, with his linen tablecloths and shiny silver knives. His questions had been easy to answer, with the small exception of the way he looked at her breasts with his one good eye while his glass eye wandered toward the wall. “Learn the ropes from the other girls,” he said. “You’ll do fine.”
And she would. She certainly would. In the meantime, here she was at Librería Libertad, where Andrés waited in the poetry aisle. When she walked in, her fingers filled with sparks. Surely every book ever written in Latin America (and France and Spain) could be found on these towering shelves. The city forsook sleep to rove them. She walked past the displays of new literature, through the long philosophy aisle, all the way to the back, where Andrés was perched on a stool, bent over a book. She watched his lips purse and slacken, purse and slacken as he read.
“Andrés.”
He looked up.
“I got the job.”
“Ah. Terrific.”
“How was the cabaret tonight?”
“Fine. Work. One of these days I might actually afford one of these.”
“What have you found?”
“Well. For example.” Andrés gestured for her to approach. “This
boliviano
here: masterful verses on love.”
“Really?” They were so close now, she bent over the book, her hair brushed his shoulder. Lightning could travel on less contact than this.
“Here.” He traced a line with his finger. The page was coarse and cream-colored, his finger long and slim. “This line. ‘To drink you in a thousand tiny gulps.’ What do you think?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Yes—I like it.”
“Me too.” He shook his head. “And his war poems—wait, where was—” He fumbled with the pages.
“If you don’t find it, don’t worry.”
“You’re right. There’s so much here to read.”
She settled on the floor at his feet, and dove in.
Dear Mamá
,
I am writing, as promised. I’m in Buenos Aires—my address is below. I am very well here. I work in a fancy restaurant. I live in a building that is painted a pretty green. It’s a beautiful city. I’ve written some new poems, which are also enclosed. I hope you like them. Please don’t show them to anyone else (except Coco, of course, so she can read them to you). I love you. Please don’t be angry. Please don’t worry. I will write again soon
.
Love, Eva
.
Three weeks later, she received a package. Inside, she found a bundle wrapped in coarse cloth, and a letter:
Dear Eva
,
Thank you for writing. I am glad to hear that you are well. But you have no right to tell me not to worry. Say that again and I’ll be angry. Until you’re a mother, you can’t understand
.
Pajarita again. Make a tea with what I sent you. Twice daily. You can also put it in your
mate.
I will send more next month
.
Please write again
.
Mami