Читать книгу Accidentals - Susan M. Gaines - Страница 12

5

The chickens meant Mom was now fully committed to life at the estancia—but this was a commitment that was even harder for Abuela to comprehend than her daughter’s abandonment of California. Mom’s latest filial guilt project didn’t help. She could only leave the chickens alone for a few days, and she was determined to spend “quality time” with Abuela and get her out of the house more—a project I suspected was even more doomed to failure than the yellow paint. When I suggested we go to a play at a theater I’d seen advertised in El Pais, Abuela swatted the idea aside as if I’d suggested we watch a mud-wrestling championship. But I myself had an urge to get out and see something of the city, and it had nothing to do with Mom’s misguided schemes.

I’d awoken to the Benteveo’s call outside my window, and now it sounded like ven, te veo, or ven-te-y-veo, ven-te-y-veo, as if the bird could see into my heart and were calling me to come out and see its city—a city I’d visited often enough, but never really seen. To tell the truth, I don’t know that I’d ever really seen any city as such. I’d grown up in a California suburb, a bland, amorphous amoeba of tract houses, malls, and freeways. And though I’d lived in Oakland and spent time in San Francisco, I’d never experienced them as living entities, with personality and character and history, the way I began to experience Montevideo that week.

I wasn’t exactly thinking about the biologist I’d met wading around in Caruso’s rice paddy, certainly not expecting to run into her in a city of over a million humans. But as I meandered through the middle-class neighborhoods from Abuela’s house in Pocitos to Ciudad Vieja, taking in the hole-in-the-wall boliches—the pubs and cafés I’d never stepped foot in—the furniture builder and the hardware store, the row of shuttered houses, the concrete wall overgrown with political graffiti, the schoolyard kids in identical white smocks with big blue bows … I’d catch myself thinking about her. Wondering who she was, what she did in her free time. Where she lived. With whom. Of course it was absurd. I had no idea if our brief encounter had impressed Alejandra the way it had impressed me. But the mere possibility of her presence somewhere in Montevideo—breathing the same sea air, negotiating the same trash- and dogshit-strewn sidewalks, blasted by the same relentlessly catchy election jingles—the simple fact that Montevideo was Alejandra’s home, added a new dimension to a city that had been, for me, circumscribed by Mom’s childhood memories and Abuela’s hermetic house.

The bits of history I’d been reading jumped out from street names, buildings, plazas, and monuments: the colonial Cabildo and the Iglesia Matriz, the stone portico to the Spanish port—abandoned like a lone movie-set piece at the entrance to the Ciudad Vieja—and the giant bronze statues of Artigas reining in his restless horse in the Plaza Independencia and Lavalleja wielding his sword in the Plaza de los Treinta y Tres Orientales … Never mind that the city had seen better days, as Mom was always ready to point out. The art deco Palacio Salvo’s extravagant domed turrets and tower, designed as a luxury hotel with a lighthouse beaming across the river to Buenos Aires, still dominated the skyline of Centro and Ciudad Vieja—no matter that the light was never installed and the twenty-four floors now housed a maze of run-down apartments. The Teatro Solís had hosted some of the finest opera singers of the nineteenth century, not to mention the national theater and philharmonic orchestra, and its graceful columns and porticos still evoked a level of high culture beyond any I’d known in my suburban upbringing. Never mind that it was closed for renovation and the philharmonic was reduced to playing in the foyer of the Palacio Municipal. Never mind that, in 1999, all of Montevideo seemed to be in some transitory state of construction, reconstruction, decay, or abandonment—stone facades crumbling, paint faded or nonexistent, high-rises lined with scaffolding, sidewalks torn up for repair—as if the city had left the present unattended in its leap from past to future. Never mind that the handsome music hall named after Elsa’s favorite tango singer had shut down for unknown reasons, or that the Parque Rodó’s iconic lake was a stagnant morass of algae and trash, its antique amusement park’s charming juegos mecánicos long motionless and abandoned. It was still spring in Montevideo, and for this repatriated emigrant’s naive yanqui son, the city was brilliantly alive, if not quite the beautiful city extolled by the tourist brochure I’d picked up at the kiosk in front of city hall.

The old plane trees were decked out in new-green buds, the river-sea blinked out from between the high-rises, the plazas blossomed with spring flowers and thermos-toting old men, the garrapiñada vendors filled the air with the sweet smell of roasting sugar and peanuts, and the broken sidewalks teemed with citizens—mothers with shopping bags and toddlers in tow, laborers waiting at bus stops, besuited businessmen, glamorous office girls in high heels, old ladies walking their dogs, students in jeans and sweatshirts …

Surely, I wasn’t looking for her. But I did find myself climbing the steps of a turn-of-the-century structure whose stone lintel proclaimed “Universidad de la República,” loitering in the empty foyer—which was devoid of information signs, obviously intended for people who knew where they were going—and venturing into a dank inner courtyard that looked more like a family’s private garden than the quad of the national university—and then retreating, quietly, feeling like a trespasser. Later, I learned that I’d been in the law school, and the sciences were all housed in different buildings around the city. What was I thinking? That I would run into Alejandra Silva in a hallway, stumble into her office and request help studying for my microbiology exam? That I would spy the lone heron of the rice fields passing out leaflets on the corner, or undulating with the gregarious flock of whistling, drumming, party-flag-waving citizens I stumbled into on Saturday afternoon?

Curious—and not, certainly not, looking for Alejandra—I joined what appeared to be a campaign rally for the Frente Amplio, the party my uncle Rubén and cousin Patricia were coming from Venezuela and Buenos Aires to vote for. A couple thousand people were crammed into a narrow downtown street, and there was a stage at the end of the block where someone was giving a speech—I couldn’t see, and between the microphone’s distortions and the crowd’s interruptions, it was hard to follow, but I got bits of it. He was comparing Uruguay to New Zealand, “an ideal example of a small agricultural economy for the twenty-first century.”

“We too,” he proclaimed, “have the talent and knowledge to develop a home-style technology, tailored to our needs. We need to focus on the dairyman who maintains profitability using his pastureland, without big loans or a huge influx of foreign technology … If we allow the market and its fashions to dictate technological growth and make our decisions for us, we are headed for disaster.” There was a round of drumming, whistling, and flag-waving, and the speaker’s contemplative philosophical tone turned to impassioned rhetoric. “We need to divorce our economy from North America, not remake ourselves in its image!” I started inching along the edge of the crowd, jockeying for a view of the stage. “Do we leave the earnings from our resources to jangle in a few select pockets? Or does the whole society reap the harvest? We can’t integrate with Mercosur if we don’t first integrate with ourselves, incorporate our poor.”

The crowd erupted again, and I stepped up on the threshold of a shoe repair shop and finally got a clear view. The man commanding all this adulation was short and stout, his gray hair disheveled, the cuffs of his brown sweater turned up as if it were a hand-me-down that was a size too big. To me, he looked more like a plumber than a politician, no resemblance to the well-coiffed politicians I knew from American campaign commercials. “Progress,” he shouted, quieting the crowd, “does not mean abandoning the founding paradigm of our society! As José Gervasio Artigas said over a hundred and fifty years ago: ‘To each his just without exclusion, and the neediest should be the most privileged. Because together with social justice comes solidarity.’”

This time he let the crowd go, raising his arms as if to embrace them, while they chanted, “Pepe! Pepe! Pepe …” It was a nickname for José, but José what? I examined the flier that an earnest leafleter had pressed on me, answering my protests that I couldn’t vote with a cheerful “no importa,” as if he were peddling a creed rather than soliciting votes. But the flier didn’t profess a creed or, for that matter, say much of anything. It was like all the others I’d been stuffing into my pockets—too much the well-trained yanqui to let them flutter off on the wind like everyone else—just a book-sized slip of paper with the name of a party, a couple of small mug shots, and a long list of names. This one had “Encuentro Progresista-Frente Amplio” and the number “609” emblazoned in red across the top. I recognized Tabaré Vázquez, the candidate for president, in one of the mug shots, and the other was the guy I’d just seen, who, I deduced, must be José Mujica, the first name on the list under Vázquez. He’d sounded more thoughtful, and his rhetoric seemed more meaningful, than anything I’d heard at home. But then, who knew what might be meaningful here. It wasn’t just that I couldn’t vote—quite possibly, if I jumped through all the bureaucratic hurdles with Mom, I could get a credencial and register—but that I didn’t know enough to vote.

I could now distinguish the main parties, but that was about it. The Colorados were something like our Democrats, though Elsa’s Jorge Batlle seemed more liberal than Bill Clinton. The Blancos seemed most like our Republicans, attending to the interests of the rich property owners, though they dealt in cows instead of oil. But my analogies broke down when it came to this Frente Amplio, which seemed to be an up-and-coming third party that had grown out of a coalition of old left-wing parties. And the current president, Julio Sanguinetti, was a Colorado who everyone seemed to hate and consider a right-wing fascist. I didn’t really understand the ideologies or context for any of it—and Mom, I suspected, was in the same boat. Intent as she was on voting, she seemed less interested in politics and current affairs than she’d ever been at home.

“Do you even know who you’re going to vote for?” I asked her that evening. We were at Juan and Elsa’s, clearing up after a wild dinner with my cousin’s two-year-old, and Juan had switched on the TV to watch an interview with one of the candidates.

“Of course I know who I’m voting for,” Mom said firmly.

“Who?” I was surprised she sounded so adamant. I’d had the impression she was more concerned with reclaiming her citizenship than with the actual outcome of the election.

She gestured toward Juan and the TV at the other end of the room.

“She’s going to vote Frente,” Juan said flatly. “She’s enamored of Tabaré Vázquez.”

“And you?” I ventured, plopping myself down on the sofa next to him.

“Colorado.”

“But he’s obviously wavering,” Patricia said, lifting the baby out of her high chair and following me over to the TV. It was weird seeing my cousin as a mother. She was only three years older than me, and last time I was in Uruguay, she’d been finishing liceo and talking about going to university to study law. Instead, she’d gotten married and moved to Buenos Aires, dyed her hair blond, gained about ten pounds, and produced this little person.

“I’m not really wavering,” Juan said.

“Vamos, Papá, that’s why you’re watching the interview.” Patricia handed the baby into his lap. “Emilia, you tell him. Tabaré is the voice of the future.”

Emilia immediately stuck her hand in Juan’s face and squealed with laughter. She was a little clown, cute, but goofy looking, with big ears and a wisp of hair tied up in a bow on top of her head. Patricia had decked her out in the yellow jumpsuit and jean jacket we’d bought.

Juan moved Emilia’s hand aside. “I’m not wild about Jorge Batlle.”

“Oh come,” Elsa called, still gathering up the dishes we’d left on the table. “You know Jorgito is dependable.”

“If the Frente could get its agenda together,” Juan said as Patricia dashed out to answer the phone, “I might consider voting for them. But they’ve never been able to do that. And Tabaré isn’t doing it for them.”

Unlike the guy at the rally earlier, Tabaré Vázquez was suavely dressed, dapper, and blandly handsome—my stereotype of a politician. I was curious to hear what he had to say, but between all the bantering and Emilia’s shrieks of delight every time she shoved her hand in Juan’s face, it was impossible to follow anything. Juan didn’t seem bothered by this, but then he probably didn’t have to hear every word to know what they were saying.

Elsa came over, a pile of dirty plates in her hands. “Do you really think you’d have a job in a Frente ministry, Juan? And then what?”

“I’d go back to consulting,” Juan said as Emilia grabbed his nose. “And farming the estancia.” I’d never seen Juan acting silly before, but he was playing along with Emilia and he started honking like a goose when she pushed on his nose.

Mom had joined us in front of the TV, but she was clearly more interested in this bit of family gossip than in the interview. “Is that why you’re suddenly so eager to farm the estancia? Because you’re afraid the Frente will reshuffle the ministry and you’ll lose your job?”

“I’ve been wanting to plant rice up there for years,” Juan said. “Job or no job. But the Frente isn’t going to win.”