Chasing Daybreak Part 4

I got away from the park as quickly as possible, as if a physical distance from the stabbing could diminish my memory of the blood spilled. I walked briskly south, drinking absinthe in empty streets, and got on the first bus I saw.

Going nowhere, just away.
I walked up the bus steps and told the portly bus driver a peso twenty five. Instead of hitting the button, he asked me where I was going, but I had no idea where the bus was going. I made something up, he shook his head and he hit the button for a peso twenty five.
I sat in a single seat. In a CNRT seat, an old man with a wispy comb-over coughed. At the next stop, a group of lanky, tipsy hipsters got on, talking loudly and gesticulating, and moved to the back. The youngest one wore a thick dishwater moustache and never spoke. Outside the bus, gold jewelry glittered through shop windows onto the cardboard waiting on the sidewalks. A street or two over it was all, Compro Oro! Compro Oro!
The absinthe came on like a comet. The bus was all of a sudden stuffy. I needed air but the black window latch would not budge. Two hands. All my weight. The window opened with a start, planting me flatly on my ass. The breeze washed over my face and we let out of the tiny streets into the behemoth open space of Plaza de la Republica.
The whole world opened wide like a river emptying out into an endless sea. The breeze twirled and picked up speed. We were at the obelisk on 9 de Julio, the urban clearing where paths cross and reaching your arms into the plentiful above can still be sacred at certain moments, the metropolitan meadow where you feel momentarily removed from the tiny people scurrying through the grid, agendas under arm. There, passing the obelisk, with a distant view, was the first outpost of civilization and the final guard against its excesses. I could breathe and I felt like a tourist again, but not a tourist of Buenos Aires, or Argentina or South America. I was a tourist of the living, pulsing moment, which is the best way you can feel. So I knew that the absinthe was really coming on.
That was when things turned sour. I thought about the history of the obelisk, the almost daily public executions during the dirty war, and the mortal fear left in their witnesses. I thought about the apprehension, persistent through today, in some portenos to speak frankly of political inclinations. The injustice of passing this sense of fear and victimhood onto children enraged me. The obelisk began to bleed and I could taste its blood, metallic and dry. Everything was bitter and untenable.
I could see the clean soldiers outside in a line, young and righteous, poised and useful, with rifle butts studded to their shoulders. A man with dark eyes stood with his hands behind his back against the obelisk. An adjacent officer barked an order which was drowned out by five eager volleys as the blood of the accused dotted, dripped, and then pooled around the gray stone obelisk. Boots marched and halted, arrangements were carried out tidily and swiftly. The soldiers’ indifference to this crime set me aflame. The absinthe was only going to grow weirder.
At the next bus stop, an old woman boarded with a bandana on her head. She looked ragged and pitiable. She wore her long tan coat and face in mourning. The portly bus driver closed the door and accelerated as if she had never boarded. She did not pay a fare, but came right up to me. She glided right up to me in plea, the mother of Plaza de Mayo. Then another one got on the bus, identical but faceless. And then another. They were on their knees, palms up, pleading for their sons. They moaned and cried out, kneeling on the striped plastic aisle mats. There were twenty now and no one else on the bus took notice. I was harrowed and speechless. They grew louder but I had no words or sons. Their tears drowned my ears. I heard the boys’ names through fervent sobs. My reality had shed even the slimmest filament of scrutiny. This was not a welcome development. It was necessary to depart. I jumped up and crouched, eyes closed, hidden behind the seat.
. . .

I woke up to the sound of someone opening the fare box. It was the portly bus driver and we were at the depot. I had either blacked out or slept the entire trip, hidden from the driver’s view behind the seat. He turned and saw me when I stood up.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I fell asleep,’ I said.
‘You must go.’ He opened the box and the monedas spilled out into his canvas bag.
‘Dale.’ There were a lot of monedas. After they all spilled out and he closed the fare box, a receipt spat out from the ticket printer. ‘What do you do with those monedas?’
‘We sell them.’
‘Sell them? They’re money. You scalp them.’
‘No.’ He looked at me sternly. ‘No, we scalp nothing. We receive them as payment and then sell them for one-hundred-eight percent.’
I looked at him just long enough to make a person uncomfortable.
‘Why are you here? This is not a bus stop. You are trouble. You must go.’
‘Who do you sell them to?’
‘Mostly supermercados, but to anyone that will pay.’
‘Can I buy some?’
‘Cuanto queres?’
‘I don’t know. A hundred pesos.’
‘For a hundred pesos, you receive ninety-two pesos in monedas.’
‘But that’s not a hundred eight percent.’
‘Yes, yes. It is one-hundred-eight. One hundred minus eight is ninety two.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I did not care enough to fight this battle. ‘Don’t the buses make enough money?’
‘It is a business.’ He was growing agitated, but I began to feel indignant, righteous, heroic even.
‘The buses are the business,’ I said.
‘The people pay for the buses with monedas. Monedas are a part of the business.’
‘No. No. The buses are the business. The buses.’ I was stabbing the air now in his direction. ‘The buses. The means of transportation.’
‘You are trouble. Queres monedas? You must go.’
‘I’m trouble!?’ I looked up at the bus ceiling and exhaled. ‘Do you have any idea how much frustration this causes your city?’
‘It is business. I am going to call the cops.’
‘Call the cops!’ I laughed.
‘Just leave. Go. Now.’
‘The single mom who stands around waiting for a chance to break a bill to take her child home because she doesn’t have monedas! The homeless people that go without food because people don’t want to donate coins! The sheer multitude of daily frustration! And I’m trouble?’
But once I said it, I stopped caring. I thought back to the obelisk and suddenly the bus lines’ injustices were just inconveniences. They paled in comparison to life and death. It could be worse. I just stopped caring, just like that.
‘Yo quiero cien pesos,’ I said, handing him a hundred.
‘Noventa dos,’ he said, looking more comfortable.
‘Right.’
We walked out of the bus and into a small office where he opened a safe and took out a canvas bag of ninety-two pesos in monedas, separated by denomination inside paper banker’s rolls. I thanked him and left. The bus depot was in Barracas and I found my way out to Avenida Montes Oca and started north.
Sitting on the steps in front of a bank at almost six in the morning, a homeless man was smoking a cigarette and staring fixedly out at the vacant avenue. Feeling generous from the moneda discovery, I pulled a five peso roll of ten centavo pieces out of the bag.
‘Here you go,’ I said, extending the roll out to him. He did not notice me at first. ‘It’s worth cinco con cuarenta if you find the right buyer.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the roll. ‘You want something? Un cigarillo?’
‘That’s okay, thanks anyway,’ but I kept staring at him. ‘You have another shirt?’
‘Yeah. In that bag.’ He pointed behind him.
‘Great, I’ll give you fifteen more pesos for the one you have on.’
‘Sold.’
I took off my suit jacket and put the filthy, fluffy pirate shirt on right there. I paid for it all in monedas, realizing that I love this city for its little ironies, staunchly maintained, like the precious scarcity of tiny denominations.
This adventure brings us up to six a.m. I am settling down at the coffee shop, glad I bought this over-priced pen to set down these stories for you. There was, however, one place left to go.