The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [12]
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay.” She took a breath and went on. “So it was like he was really talking about the waterworks of the whole nation.”
I nodded, encouragingly.
“Oh, and the other part was about immigration. He said that, along with the rivers and railroads, immigration would be a kind of oxygen, promoting internal circulation and commerce. They were really trying to get people to come here at the time to fill that empty land. But not just anyone, that’s the funny part. Sarmiento was very clear about the kind of immigration he wanted, Anglo-Saxon blondies like you because, he said, the instinct of navigation wasn’t bestowed on the Spanish or Italians, but is possessed to a high degree by the people of the north. They would bring the spirit necessary to ‘agitate these arteries.’ And then guess what happened? Only the southern darkies came! Like me. I’m Spanish Andalusian and, even worse, with Peruvian Indian mixed in.” She looked up. “Oh, here we are.”
We got off the bus in a neighborhood I’d never been to and walked down a wide, straight street. It had rained the night before, the concrete in the shady spots was still drying. We came to a large gray-green metal door and Leonarda rang the bell.
There was no response whatsoever.
I felt a little nervous. “So what are we doing again?” I asked.
“It’s a group of people who gather to discuss things. As I said, it’s supposed to be an alternative society. And everyone’s supposed to offer something, a service of some kind, like computer classes, or a haircut or blow jobs or whatever. And people are also supposed to propose things, projects in which everyone participates.”
“Blow jobs?”
“Yeah, yeah, one guy was doing that.”
We heard footsteps. After a moment, a young woman with thick brown hair cut close around her face opened the door. She had a patterned skirt and funky sneakers on. Leonarda introduced her as Milagros.
Speaking of circulation, inside there was a feeling of cool air circulating. It was a high open space, with old printing machines sitting here and there.
“They’re all upstairs,” Milagros said.
We followed her. In the room upstairs, people were lounging around on couches, two shoddy armchairs, a mattress on the floor, in the midst of a discussion. On a low table in the center were a few bottles of basic red wine, some plastic cups and a bottle of Coke. There was a trash can full of papers.
Leonarda and I sat down squished together on one end of a couch.
A man in his late fifties, poised on the edge of a chair, with gray hair cut short, a black turtleneck, looking at any moment as if he might leap up, seemed to be leading the discussion. Another man, younger, slightly plump, in his mid-thirties, with a swath of dark hair falling in his eyes, sat beside him, prompting him with questions. Now and then other voices chimed in.
“At one point I got interested in a group of Trotskyites,” the gray-haired man was saying. “They had this literature, this magazine, and when I asked to see it, they said, ‘Why?’ ‘Why?!’ I asked.” People in the group laughed. “ ‘Well, don’t you want people to know what you’re doing?’ The answer was ‘No,’ precisely no, they didn’t. They didn’t think there was any point in trying to disseminate what they knew. The question is what do you do when you’re living in an age of stupidity and in possession of a truth that no one wants to hear? From the Christians to the Trotskyites there has been this model of a secret society. The secret society gathers to encrypt the truths that other people aren’t ready to hear. What you have to do is think, not transmit. People in another era will be ready to hear.”
The young woman, Milagros, looked up with a shy, slightly mischievous smile. “Was that your intention in starting this group?”
The gray-haired man, Ernesto, laughed. “Well, if it turns out that way. No, no, not really. What I had in mind was a strategy of happiness,” he said. “We’re confronted today with an immense amount of uncertainty. The idea of this group was to construct networks,