The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [30]
I solde had invited me to accompany her to the German’s Thursday-night wine party on Arroyo Street.
When we arrived, the room was gradually filling. The floors were laid with small amber-colored pieces of wood, the bookshelves the same color. The German, Thomas, was in his early thirties. His neck jutted out. He had a slight stutter and a post in an overseas German bank. “Welcome,” he would say to whoever appeared, too formally, too eagerly really to be gracious. Despite the regularity of these events, he continued to be flabbergasted at the very idea that a woman, much less a strange woman, would step into his home.
As we walked around, Isolde told me who was who. Tatiana, the beautiful upper-class drunkard, whose father was a famous artist, had recently returned from abroad. She had a look of discontent on her face. A small band of women, who had been in the nerdy group at the best girls’ school in Buenos Aires, were now, as then, still ostracized at these parties, even if they had made names for themselves elsewhere in the world. One, Bettina, was a well-known clothes designer. Yet this made no difference. In these settings, she was still, as always, an outsider, pressed into a corner. So why did she still come?
Ignacio arrived. In him was encapsulated the whole point of this class, its good looks, easy charm, privilege taken for granted. His brothers and cousins were versions of himself, each with aspects, but in no one else had the elements been so fortunately combined. Ambitious women roved around him. He was the only one the French girl had agreed to date. Though he kept his apparent cool, he was actually terrified by these women, including the French girl and, as I would witness later, would eventually end up settling with a very different type of girl who asked nothing of him, never complained.
“What’s going on with your art world project?” I asked Isolde as we milled around.
“Oh, there’s interest,” she said. “Plenty of it, at least on the Argentine side.”
With Argentines, there’s the constant urge to get the word out, abroad, we are here, we exist. This corresponds to a real set of circumstances. Unlike in the States—where an internal career can largely suffice—it is one thing to have a career within Argentine borders and quite another to have one abroad. The foreigner is consequently stamped with this glowing and vertiginous possibility : though the foreigner might him- or herself have no contacts whatsoever, have grown up in the Midwest, in a little town, he is conceived as rubbing shoulders with luminaries, in the New York art world, the London jet set, immediately preconfigured as a messenger to the court, by virtue of his foreignness, as if like the first conquerors, he and he alone were bringing back news to the King and Queen. Some foreigners, you can see it in their faces, are simply baffled to be placed in such a position and miss entirely the role being handed them. Others, more astute, play their cards. Isolde knew how to play her cards. What was less clear was what she actually meant to do with them, once played.
Later, Leonarda appeared. We’d spoken earlier and I knew she might be coming by. “Heyyyyy, hiiiiiiiiiii!”
I’d told Isolde and Leonarda about each other, but they hadn’t met.
Isolde was talking to our German host. Her blue-and-white dress gave an impression of crispness, cleanliness, while her flat gold sandals matched her jewelry. Now I watched Leonarda watching her, always on the lookout for what a foreigner could yield.
“More colonial material?” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Leonarda said. As always, when she was interested in someone, I felt jealousy mixed with curiosity about what she would do. “You see,” Leonarda whispered to me, “the way she’s totally adopted the upper-class accent?”
I nodded, though the truth was I hadn’t understood where Isolde’s accent was coming from.
Leonarda leaned into Isolde’s conversation. “Your Spanish is delightful,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I insist on speaking Spanish,” Isolde answered. As usual,