The Foreigners - Maxine Swann [35]
There was silence. No one spoke. The prizewinning leftist looked at her bedazzled. He was the one to answer, who was supposed to know the answer, the war hero, yet he was speechless before her. She knew it. Never had she been so powerful. It was in her face, eyes, the tilt of her head, the way she held her shoulders, her whole delicate frame. Then the moment passed. He rose, puffed up again, laughed at her.
Still the door had been opened, the moment occurred. She turned to me. Triumph, her green eyes fiercely glowed green. Looking back at her, I too felt it, a mixture of exhilaration and the chills.
eleven
Okay, tell me more,” Gabriel said. We were in my apartment. He had had a long night and was lying back on the chaise lounge. I had been telling him about the Master Plan.
“Do you know this guy?” I asked, referring to the famous writer.
“Of course I know him. Everyone knows him. There’s no way not to know him.” He seemed amused, indulgent, if a bit wary. “So the plan is to hunt him down?”
“Yeah. Can you believe it? I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said.
“Me neither,” he said. “I’m wondering how it works. And what the end result’s supposed to be?”
“We catch him, I guess.” I laughed. “I don’t really know. You’re the one who said I should try everything.”
“You’re right, I did.” He thought for a second. His face, tired like this, had its mournful look. “This Leonarda sounds very compelling.”
I flushed. “She is.”
He hesitated, looking down, then up again. “I guess my only point would be to make sure you’re trying things for yourself, not other people.”
I was surprised at how little he seemed to understand. “But I am, don’t you see? All this is entirely new to me.”
He backed off. “Yeah, yeah, I understand. I’m not saying not to do anything. My only advice would be to keep your mind free.”
His wariness seemed weird, especially coming from the apostle of freedom. But, I decided, it was probably just his mood.
We’re preparing to send a second installment of funds at the end of the month. Please let us know how you’re progressing.” Shit. The grant people. It was September. I’d been here for six months. The agreement was that they’d send me the second installment of funds halfway through, once they’d received a brief progress report. If they didn’t send the money, I was in trouble. But I also hadn’t done any research for a while. I decided to check out the Riachuelo, the river, notoriously contaminated, that marks the line between Buenos Aires and the suburbs in the south.
I looked at a map and got on a bus that seemed like it would take me to the Barracas neighborhood, bordered on one side by the river. The bus wound on and on through the city on what seemed to be an incongruous path. Apart from a slight feeling of wooziness, I didn’t mind once I got a seat by the window. I had brought some reading with me about the river and the areas around it. I looked at it as we rode along.
This neighborhood, in the southern part of the city, had once been home to the wealthy, I read, until the yellow fever epidemic chased them north. The servants, largely black, stayed behind and were wiped out, another reason, along with the black troops sent off to fight the Paraguayan War, that the black population in Argentina, once sizable, had been so decimated.
As for the pollution of the Riachuelo, it seemed that it was hardly new news. As far back as the 1870s, the British engineer Bateman, hired to tackle the port problem, expressed horror at its filthiness and even cited it as an obstacle to the reconstruction of the port. The resultant “city of Bateman” plan traced a blueprint for the modern city of Buenos Aires with its storm drain and sewer systems and—this part was new to me—underground streams. In the 1940s, the construction of a web of subterranean rivers began. There was a striking photo in a brochure I had picked up from the Palace of Waters of men at the end of an underground tunnel leaning on their shovels. I looked up,