I called the waiter, paid my bill and left. It was past midnight and all you could see in the streets were beggars huddling on bits of cardboard, and foul-smelling piles of black rubbish bags. Now and then refuse lorries ground their metal jaws. I turned down a side street, and was irresistibly drawn to the sudden glow from a shop window. I moved closer and stopped. It was a large furniture store and inside, before my eyes, soundlessly, unbelievably, a fire was spreading. The rug at the entrance was already in flames, slowly writhing and undulating and seeming to rise from the floor. It was smoking and giving off sparks that quickly spread the fire to a coat stand and a coffee table by the door, the flames rising higher and higher. The coat stand suddenly collapsed in a shower of fire, touching the headboard of a double bed. Only then did I notice that the display was arranged as the ideal marital bedroom, complete with bedside tables and a baby’s cot. Suddenly the bedcover burst into savage flames. It all happened in the same dauntless silence, the roar of the fire sealed behind the window. I knew the glass might shatter at any moment, but couldn’t tear myself away from the hypnotic, dazzling spectacle. Everything writhed before me but still no alarm sounded, no one came, as if the fire was a message for me alone. The room, the cot, the little fake home-it was all disintegrating, transmuting. The furniture was now simply wood, an elemental material seeking only to submit, obey, feed the flames. The fire reared up, a single violent being, malevolent, gleaming, like a dragon twisting and changing form. Suddenly I heard the hysterical wail of a fire engine siren. I realised it was all about to end and tried to hold on to that final indecipherable, breathtaking image behind the glass. Attracted by the siren, the starving creatures of the night, staggering drunks and children who slept in subway entrances, now surrounded me. Above, windows were opening. Then came human voices, orders, a fierce jet of water, and the flames receded, leaving blackened walls. I walked away, not wanting to witness this other, much more depressing spectacle of the fire defeated.
It was very late when I got home. I still hadn’t packed for my trip but the flight to Salinas wasn’t till after midday so I decided to leave it for the morning. My sleep was heavy with confused images, layer upon layer in quick succession. Still asleep, on the edge of morning, I felt as if I was about to understand something: I simply had to read a succession of dashes and crosses. But I opened my eyes too soon, with that sense of both imminence and loss that accompanies images slipping away as you wake. It was nine o’clock. I started packing, and suddenly remembered the fire. I went down to have breakfast in a bar so as to read the paper, and searched for news of the fire. I didn’t expect to find anything as it was, all in all, a pretty minor matter and probably wouldn’t merit even a short article. But there it was on one of the inside pages, beneath the heading ‘As we went to press’. It was a very short item, headed ‘Fires’. First it mentioned another fire that had almost entirely destroyed another furniture store. It went on to say that there had been ‘two more very similar incidents’, in furniture stores in different parts of town. One of them was the fire I had seen, but the article simply gave the location with no other details. The item mentioned that an initial investigation was being carried out to establish whether the fires had been started deliberately. And that was alclass="underline" no conjectures, just a vague promise that the police were exploring several different avenues.
I folded the paper on the table and ordered another coffee. Three fires in three furniture stores in a single night. Beyond runs of heads or tails, this couldn’t be a coincidence. Something stirred in the depths of my memory, trying to rise to the surface. A face came back to me, vehement, mocking, firing out sentences and theories that only held up for a moment, like bubbles in the air, at a café table in the Calle Corrientes, behind the haughty smoke of his cigarette. I could see him again, with his beard and ponytail, surrounded by awed young faces, including my own.
Students, aspiring intellectuals and writers, we all fought to sit near him, listening as he hurled quotations at us and demolished or elevated books with a single sentence-a strange talking machine, malevolent and sarcastic, who also, every so often, had sudden enduring flashes of insight. It was him I thought of first, rather than an arsonist in the most obvious sense. I seemed to hear him again: had it been in our usual bar or at the party to celebrate the only issue of the magazine? Someone had spoken of ephemeral art and street happenings: the stream of paint and Greco’s chalk circle around passers-by. Someone else mentioned subversive sculpture: the brick flung at the critic’s head. Then he had suggested setting fire to furniture stores. Weren’t they replicas of the perfect little bourgeois home? The marital bed, the baby’s cot, the big round table for family meals, the bookcases to be filled with and display the old culture. The reassuring coffee table in the living room. It was all there, he said, eyes shining mischievously, defiantly. If we wanted to be truly incendiary, there were all the furniture stores of Buenos Aires, waiting for the first match. It would be irresistible. Contagious. A city up in flames, in a single night. Fire, the ultimate, supreme artistic statement, the form to consume all forms.
But could it be him, so many years later? I knew it couldn’t: I’d bumped into him again in the street one day and been surprised to find him in a suit and tie. With barely concealed satisfaction, he said he worked for the Ministry of Culture. I had exaggerated my disbelief: he worked now? For the government? He smiled a little uncomfortably but then tried to return to the ways of the past. That was just it, he defended himself, it wasn’t work. It was almost a pension, given to him by the long-suffering taxpayers, the wonderful Peronist people of Argentina. After all, he was only following Duchamp’s dictum that the artist should make use of anything-inheritances, grants, private patronage (“And why not the Ministry of Culture?” he said with a wry look)-so as not to have to live by the sweat of his brow.
No, it couldn’t be him. But then another thing I’d heard him say in that distant past now came back to me: you shouldn’t write about what has been, but about what might have been. For the first time in years I felt I had a subject. There had been something providential about the fire of the night before, and the small item in the paper, the modest mystery of the furniture stores, was speaking to me secretly. I left the bar and, a little euphoric, went into a stationery shop and bought a thick hardcover notebook to take with me on the trip. After all, I’d have the mornings free in Salinas so I’d be able to do some writing: maybe I could get a new novel going. I went up to the flat to collect my bag. As soon as I opened the door I saw the red light on the answering machine blinking menacingly, as if it were a remotely activated weapon that could still hurt me. I pressed the button and heard Luciana’s voice. She sounded bewildered, desperate, her speech halting, as if she were having trouble threading sentences together. She’d spoken to her sister the night before and told her everything, but she’d sensed that Valentina didn’t-wouldn’t-believe her. She asked me, begged me, if I hadn’t yet left, to ring her. I looked at the clock and picked up my bag. I decided that her call had arrived too late, and I’d already set off for the airport.