From the intersection with Rivadavia, where Calle Bonorino began, all the signs said “Avenida Esteban Bonorino,” but no one knew why, because it was a narrow street like any other. Just another bureaucratic error, it was generally assumed, made by some careless civil servant who had ordered the painting of the signs without ever having set foot in the neighborhood. But the name was actually correct, although in such a secret way that no one realized. Eighteen blocks from Rivadavia, further than anyone would choose to walk, beyond numerous high-rise apartment buildings and warehouses and sheds and vacant lots, just when Calle Bonorino seemed to be petering out, it widened to become the avenue that the signs had been promising from the start. But this wasn’t the beginning; it was the end. The avenue continued for barely three hundred feet, leading only to a long sealed road that ran off along the edge of the shantytown. Maxi had never gone that far, but he’d gone far enough to see: in contrast with the dark stretch of road leading up to it, the shantytown was strangely illuminated, almost radiant, crowned with a halo that shone in the fog. It was almost like seeing a vision, in the distance, and this fantastic impression was intensified by his “night blindness” and the sleepiness besetting him already. Seen like that, at night and far away, the shantytown might have seemed a magical place, but he was not entirely naïve; he knew that its inhabitants lived in squalor and desperation. Perhaps it was shame that prompted the scavengers to say goodbye to him before they reached their destination. Perhaps they wanted this handsome, well-dressed young man, whose curious pastime it was to assist them, to believe that they lived in a distant and mysterious place, rather than going into the depressing details. But although they can’t have failed to notice Maxi’s purity — which shone in his beautiful childlike face, his clear eyes, his perfect teeth, his cropped hair, and his clothes, which were always freshly washed and ironed — they were hardly in a position to exercise that kind of tact.
Another thing that they must have noticed was the sleepiness that overwhelmed him toward the end: it was massive and irresistible. They might have been worried that he would actually fall asleep: what would they do with him then? It was an infantile characteristic: he was a child in the overdeveloped body of an athlete, whose energy was spent in weight training instead of play, and in voluntarily hauling loads of trash. Then there was his very marked diurnal rhythm, determined by a chemical imbalance in his hypothalamus, which affected his pupils (thence his “night blindness”). And as if that were not enough (but all these factors were interrelated), he always got up very early. Earlier than he should have, in fact, because of something that happened by chance. Well before eight, when the gym opened, he was up and dressed and had eaten his breakfast. In summer, when it was light at five, and he didn’t feel like just waiting around, he had got into the habit of packing his bag, leaving an hour early, and filling in the time with a walk. On those walks he had noticed a boy who clearly had no home or family and was sleeping under the freeway. The place was strange: one of those gaps that the freeway had created when it cut a brutal swathe through the city, a triangular area bounded on two sides by streets, which the council had turned into a little gravel park. They had put in cement benches and flower beds, but it wasn’t the right place for a park, and it fell into neglect straight away. It was completely overgrown with tall grass and weeds, except for a narrow path which people in the neighborhood must have used to go from one street to the other, cutting the corner. The freeway loomed over it like an enormous curved cornice. One day Maxi happened to pass by first thing in the morning and saw the boy sitting against the wall, putting on his sneakers. As he walked past, the boy watched him warily, and Maxi realized that he had spent the night there, sheltered by the freeway and the place’s dereliction. Among the weeds, Maxi glimpsed some newspapers, which the boy must have been using as a bed, and a bag, which must have contained his possessions. A few days later he went past again, at the same time, and again the boy was about to leave. That abandoned space was his bedroom, apparently: nobody passed that way at night, and he left at the break of day. Only Maxi had seen him there. The first few times, the boy seemed to resent the intrusion, but after that he let Maxi go by without even looking up. Maxi got the feeling that the boy didn’t mind him walking past each day, now that his secret had been discovered: it could become a part of his routine, and even provide a kind of company — although they didn’t speak to each other — a makeshift substitute for the family and friends he didn’t have. Perhaps when the boy saw him go past, he thought, “There he is again, my anonymous friend,” or something like that. You never know what people will fasten onto, when they’re all alone and they have nothing else. And that boy had as little as it was possible to have. Maxi called him “the hobo.” What he did during the day, how he fed himself and how he spent his time were mysteries; he must have stayed fairly close by so that he could come back and sleep in the same place every night. A few steps away, toward the edge of the little triangle, was a place where the weeds were higher and thicker, and it gave off a nasty smell; that must have been where the hobo did his business. It was hard to tell his age, but he didn’t have a beard, so he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. He was thin and small, with jet black hair, pale skin, sunken eyes, and the face of a frightened animal. He wore a kind of blue suit, which was dirty and crumpled.
Maxi wasn’t absolutely sure that the hobo actually slept there; he’d always seen him up and dressed, except for that first time when he was putting on his sneakers. But that didn’t prove anything: people often take their shoes off to remove stones and things; then they have to put them back on again. Also, memory had transformed that first time into something strange and uncertain, as it often does when a situation is repeated over and again. There were other clues of course, like the newspapers laid on the ground, the bad smell, and most importantly, the fact that the hobo was there without fail every morning. But that in itself was perplexing. The timing of Maxi’s morning walks was irregular, and yet the boy was always at the same point in his routine: awake already but not yet gone. It might just have been a coincidence, but still it was strange. Maxi started setting out earlier, to see if he could catch him sleeping. But he never did. The only explanation was that the hobo got up at cockcrow, with the very first light of day. But why was he always standing on his newspapers, as if he had just woken up? Was he waiting for Maxi? Was he using him as a sign that it was time to leave? Maxi might have tested this hypothesis by going past later in the morning, to see if the hobo really would wait, but he preferred to pursue the opposite strategy of passing earlier each day, in the hope of finding him sound asleep. And that was why he got up so early, bolted his breakfast and left; and then in the evening he had to pay the price: as soon as it got dark he could barely stay awake.