Apparently in Montevideo there is another Constitution Square with palm trees and a fountain in the middle, bathed in the blinding glare of the sun and ringed by colonial mansions. If something like this does exist it is only a supplement to the regular square that everyone knows, an additional hidden aspect of it that escapes everyday attention and does not belong in everyday consciousness. Apparently Milan also has a Central Station in the form of an immense sarcophagus from whose walls stone gargoyles stare down with bulging eyes and bared fangs. This means that for some reason the glass-walled Central Station in the middle of the city needs a more distinct shadow than that cast by its transparent sides. Apparently a Prague of gilded palaces hovers somewhere over the Praga neighborhood of shabby apartment buildings and courtyards deep as wells, cut off from the rest of the city by a river that tastes of rust and engine oil and from the sky of stars by a mantle of clouds and smoke. The buildings, streets and districts are suffocating from opportunities unrealized, transformations uncompleted, promises withdrawn and desires in abeyance for which the city searches in vain for an outlet. In the densely built-up space the city landscapes crowd together; the crush of them oversteps all bounds. It is precisely because of the pressure of missed possibilities that the city begins to generate mirages: the gold of Prague, the mystery of Milan, the colonial architecture of Montevideo.
The Central Station here — the only one that really exists — is one of the principal stops on the routes of the trams as they calmly transport their numbers from one terminus to the other. Hurrying to catch a tram one passes the platforms indifferently since the station is merely an underground passage and a transfer point for the municipal transit system. There are those who are reminded by the sight of the glass walls of when they once bought tickets for a train in the great light-filled hall. But they are well aware that at that time they were dreaming. This magnificent aquarium has no need for platforms or trains; it can exist equally well without them. Nor does it need tram stops or underground walkways. In essence it needs nothing. It is the city’s salvation.
In the clamorous throng people bend over piles of luggage, lurking like exotic fish on the ooze of the ocean floor; they exchange words that are inaudible amid the hubbub, mutely moving their lips. Others resting their heads against their suitcases gaze at little country stores, at skinny oxen in harness, at a ramshackle truck rattling along a sandy road, yet they do not forget about the bags heaped around them which every so often they must raise their eyelids to count. Their dreams are as unsteady and unsure as the steps of a tightrope walker. At the sound of the loudspeaker they fall, arms flapping, but they do not wake. Staring at green hills and the dry grasses of the steppe, they listen without emotion and without comprehension to announcements about the arrival at various platforms of trains on which they will not leave. Their alien dreams are intertwined with the dreams of this place like warp and weft. Without the partial and hesitant presence of these dreamers the whole would not be complete. In the place of Kazakhstan, Transylvania and at many other points of the city, gaping holes would open up.
This is also the best place in the world for insomniacs, a true sanatorium. For at the station night never falls; evening turns at once into morning, no one knows when. Only here is it possible to look for hope even at the latest hour, to find it and squander it as one sees fit and then hide safely till night outside has passed. There are many insomniacs here. It is time to reveal that it was for them the stations were built. If the insomniacs did not keep vigil night after night the city would fall to pieces for it would be dependent in every way on the dreams of those sleeping. But as is common knowledge night at the station is not really night and dreams are not real dreams and it is only because of this that those hiding in station waiting rooms finally fall asleep, stretched out on the hard benches, at the time when the first trams are already pulling out of the depot.
On the city map the stations look like little rectangles in camouflage colors; there is no sign of the trains that leave — somewhere underneath — for east, west, north and south. Here are the boundless tracks, gleaming iron rails marking the direction through hazy space. The farther it is from the central figure of the map the more vulnerable the order of the world is to disturbance. New branches of railroad routes appear leading toward places that lie neither to the east nor to the west, nor to the north nor to the south. Toward places that are utterly and permanently closed. They cannot be reached by any railroad line despite the fact that they have ticket halls, waiting rooms, platforms and everything that is needed at a station — even arriving and departing trains. One cannot go there by car or even on foot even if one wanted to do so with all one’s heart. These are places cut off from the world as if by natural disaster, deprived even of telephone service though there is no lack of telephones there and every post office can receive telegrams. Submerged, there stands in the green waters of memory the city of a month ago, the city of a year ago, the city of forty years ago, each with the last editions of newspapers in its kiosks: meteorological depressions and atmospheric fronts, military parades, influenza epidemics, theater programs and crime reports. This entire space is filled with newsprint. Over every day is suspended a unique configuration of capital letters; unrepeatable shapes are formed by the swarm of lowercase letters, blown away by the winds. Are they not thrown to the winds here every day in their thousands, in their hundreds of thousands?
The city of yesterday and the city of today can seem like a pair of identical-looking pictures from a puzzle in which on closer inspection one may find a flag missing from a rooftop, an additional flowerpot on a windowsill or one more sparrow upon a ledge. There people went to bed in the evening; here they will get up in the morning. Every night, to the rhythm of tomorrow’s newspapers revolving on the drums of the rotary presses, the cities of yesterday are rolled up and then vanish. In the morning no trace of them remains. When the new day is over the city will be thoroughly and utterly used up; nothing will be left of it besides the nouns, verbs, adjectives, affirmative and negative sentences drifting everywhere. Yesterday’s chair, hat and teapot are already beyond the reach of today’s hand, immaterial and unusable. And those who went to bed yesterday evening exist today in the same immaterial way as yesterday’s teapots.
The life of today’s inhabitants is possible only in one single place in the world: the ephemeral city of today, which differs from the city of yesterday and that of tomorrow in the nature of its substance. Only there can one touch that which lies within reach. Though it may come about that a person will no longer touch the next issue of the newspaper. The newspaper is there but the person is not. This absence indicates that the resemblance between the two pictures in the puzzle means nothing beyond a chance convergence. If however the pictures have already faded then the multitude of visible differences will be so great that recognition will remain in the realm of uncertainty. Here is the square in which the crowd undulates in dance on a summer evening lit by the sun’s afterglow or where shivering soldiers trample the snow in the gloom of winter, warming their hands at a brazier. Here is the wind blowing yellow leaves across the empty viewing platform — then how did a Renaissance palace appear in the same place? The possibilities are boundless; it is not hard to imagine cities without a single detail in common. By waiting a sufficiently long time it is even possible to encounter an image of the city with the Eiffel Tower standing amid extensive lawns and flowerbeds with a view of the Arc de Triomphe. It would seem unlikely that the name of such a city would include so many Ws and As at once. Yet does the Eiffel Tower not suggest a letter A itself? And there will always be intermediate cities in which the Arc de Triomphe rises quite unremarkably in the middle of Constitution Square. Every change is simply a matter of time.