The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [16]
Interesting. I’d had no idea.
Next I looked up “Río de la Plata,” the funnel-shaped water body on which Buenos Aires sits. “Hopefully named the Silver River by Spanish explorers in search of treasures, it has also been known as the ‘Sweet Sea,’ since visitors, confused by its size, mistook it for a freshwater sea.” For centuries, enormous civic efforts had been dedicated to staving off the Río de la Plata’s devouring of the city. Pushed miles back, the river, practically motionless to the eye yet ceaselessly encroaching, would then regain that terrain. Finally, accepting defeat, Buenos Aires gave up its dream of being a port city in the traditional sense and turned its back on the water.
I read on a bit farther and then decided to go out for a walk, directing my steps down to the coast so as to take a look at the river myself.
It took me about an hour to get there. A highway ran right along the coastline, on one side of which was the national airport. Small planes came and went. Taxis lined up. A sidewalk bordered the river itself. I waited on the far side of the highway for a moment to cross. Finally, it came. I dashed over. The river was contained by a high wall with a balustrade. I leaned over the balustrade and looked down. The water was velvet brown, gray in spots, rippling slightly, apparently so shallow that it only reached chest-high for miles. Far across was the Uruguayan coast.A few fishermen leaned against the balustrade holding their lines. Cars shot by on the highway behind them. There was no beach situation, no seaside terrace. Although elevated properties such as the penthouses of Libertador Avenue were coveted for their river views, tiny strips of glinting brown in the distance, it seemed that actually approaching the water was a different matter. The only loitering spot in the vicinity was a restaurant perched out on a distant pier, notorious, I later learned, as the place where men brought their mistresses but never their wives.
Walking along the balustrade, I passed a fisherman pulling up a wriggling catch, brown and silver. The cars roared by. A plane started lowering fast at a diagonal. There was a patch of green on the other side and I decided to cross over. The highway forked. I had to wait on a concrete island, cars whizzing by me on all sides. Relieved when I finally reached the grass, I walked on, crossing a bridge and another road, only gradually understanding that I had entered the vast park known as the Bosques de Palermo.
People in a paddleboat passed under a decorative bridge. Others sat together in the grass, they sat on top of each other, just sensing how it felt to be together, doing nothing, touching, body against body. Still others were gathering up their things, picnics, blankets, and heading home. I came upon an asphalt circle and began walking around it. Bikes whizzed past, then several joggers. On the outside edge of the circle, a figure dressed in purple satin had her back turned, head dipped forward. She was tying something at her neck. I looked over my shoulder as I passed, trying to get a glimpse of her face or at least something more, the front of her. But all I could see was the back view, legs in high heels, what looked like a short purple kimono tied with a sash. I walked on, passing a family, parents and two kids. The sycamore leaves rustled. A car cruised by. The traffic light was just changing.
Farther on, another figure—now I saw that it was a transvestite—in high white boots and white leather emerged from the woods and stood on the outer edge of the circle. Above her, the sycamores were shedding their leaves, yellow, brown, some of them still green. I looked around me. The first cars were already cruising slowly. Elsewhere men walked among the joggers with a furtive look.
I turned the bend and the scene changed. Here the lake was visible, the water