The wonder was only perceptible at night, when the frenzy gave way to an uncanny calm, but there was no one to admire it. Very occasionally, the shelf-stackers starting work at dawn would be surprised to find the cart astray down at the back, next to the deep-freeze cabinets, or between the dark shelves of wine. They naturally assumed that it had been left there by mistake the previous night. In such a large and labyrinthine establishment, oversights like that were only to be expected. If the cart was moving when they found it, and if they noticed the movement, which was as inconspicuous as the sweep of a watch’s minute hand, they presumed that it must have been the result of a slope in the floor or a draft of air.
In fact, the cart had spent the whole night going around and around, up and down the aisles, slow and quiet as a star, without ever hesitating or coming to a stop. It did the rounds of its domain, mysterious, inexplicable, its miraculous essence concealed by the banal appearance of a shopping cart like any other. The employees and the customers were too busy to detect this secret phenomenon, which made no difference, after all, to anyone or anything. I was the only one to notice it, I think. Actually, I’m sure: attention is scarce among human beings, and a great deal of it was required in this case. I didn’t tell anyone, because it was too much like the sort of fantasies I’m always coming up with, which have earned me a reputation for craziness. Over many years of shopping there, I learned to recognize my special cart by a little mark on the red bar; except that I didn’t have to see the mark, because even from a distance something told me that it was the one. A wave of joy and confidence swept through me each time I identified it. I thought of it as a kind of friend, a friendly object, perhaps because in this case the inertness of a thing had been leavened with that minimal tremor of life that is the starting point for all fantasies. Perhaps, in a corner of my subconscious, I was grateful to it for being different from all the other carts in the civilized world, and for having revealed that difference to me and no one else.
I liked to imagine it in the solitude and silence of midnight, rolling very slowly through the dimness, like a little boat full of holes setting off in search of adventure, knowledge, and (why not?) love. But what could it find in that array of dairy products, vegetables, noodles, soft drinks, and canned peas, which was all it knew of the world? Nevertheless, it didn’t lose hope, but resumed its navigations, or never interrupted them, like someone who knows that his efforts are futile but keeps trying all the same. Someone who keeps trying because he has pinned his hopes on the transformation of everyday banality into dream and portent. I think I identified with it, and that identification, I think, was how I discovered it in the first place. Paradoxically, for a writer who feels so distant and different from his colleagues, I felt close to that shopping cart. Even our respective techniques were similar: progressing by imperceptible increments, which add up to make a long journey; not looking too far ahead; urban themes.
Given all this, you can imagine my surprise when I heard it speak or, to be more precise, when I heard what it said. Its declaration was the last thing I was expecting to hear. Its words went through me like a spear of ice and forced me to reconsider the whole situation, beginning with the sympathy I felt for the cart, then the sympathy I felt for myself, and more generally my sympathy for miracles. I wasn’t surprised by the fact of it speaking; I had been expecting that. Perhaps I felt that our relationship had matured to the point where linguistic signs were appropriate. I knew that the moment had come for it to say something to me (for example that it admired me and loved me and was on my side). I bent down next to it, pretending to tie my shoelaces, so that I could put my ear to the wire mesh on its side, and then I was able to hear its voice, a whisper from the underside of the world, and yet the words were perfectly clear and distinct:
“I am Evil.”
MARCH 17, 2004
Poverty
I'M POORER THAN THE POOR, and I’ve been poor for longer. An eternity of deprivation stretches out in my resentful fantasy, which is not confined to measuring the duration of the ill. It also gauges the magnitude of the catastrophe. There’s so much I could have, if only I had the means! So many things, experiences, and comforts! Listing them, putting them in order, and calculating their potential contributions to my pleasure leaves me feeling exhausted and entitled to their possession, if only as a reward for that obsessive labor. But my real experience is taking me further and further away from the well-being that money could provide, while sharpening my appreciation of its advantages. I don’t have to fantasize about this; I just have to look around me. I live among people who keep getting richer year by year. I haven’t kept up with the poor friends I used to have, and to be frank I don’t want to. We have nothing in common: no tastes, habits, or interests. Soccer bores me stiff. The people I can have a conversation with are sophisticates with money to spare, but of course the idea of sharing it with me never occurs to them. Why would they do that? In their frivolous innocence, they consider me a great writer, a figure from literary history living in the present. But in fact I’m destitute. I watch them orbiting in spheres that are more and more inaccessible to me, and my resentment grows. I become bitter and depressed; I accentuate my eccentricity — it’s an understandable defense mechanism, and a way of hiding the truth. I’m ashamed of my leaky shoes, my unvarying and inadequate wardrobe, the scruffiness and poor personal hygiene that are symptoms of a repressed desperation. I hole up in my apartment, and I can’t invite anyone over: the furniture’s too rickety, there are too many damp patches on the walls, and our supplies of cheap noodles are too strictly rationed. From the window I see my neighbors in Barrio Rivadavia (a shantytown) and remark that they’re not as poor as I am, because they always have something to spare, while I don’t have enough of anything. I observe their feasts and drinking bouts, their Sundays in the sun; even when they go out towing their rickshaws to rummage through the trash, they’re richer than I am because they find things. Meanwhile, I exhaust myself performing the most abject tasks, engaging in the most humiliating middle-class begging, barely earning enough to feed my children, who have to make heroic efforts to endure the inevitable comparisons with the lives of their friends, and justifiably regard me as a failure. How long is it since I bought a book or a record, or went to the cinema? My computer is obsolete; by some miracle it still works, but I can’t even dream of upgrading. All around me people are buying, spending, adapting, changing, progressing. Crisis or no crisis, my country is subject to periodic rashes of consumerism that end up affecting everyone. Everyone except me. How can I buy anything, even a pencil, when my pockets are empty? I don’t even have a credit card. I’ve had to become a tax evader because I just don’t have the means to pay. And when all my friends and acquaintances get tired of amassing new things and rewarding experiences, and go away for vacations on tropical beaches or cultural visits to beautiful cities, I’m left behind in my sty, chewing over my resentment. Only a miracle could produce a windfall and light up my squalid existence, but it’s already miraculous that I’ve managed to get what I need to survive, and you can’t really ask for two miracles.