way your sins with water, so much water. Your limitations, I say, are the same as the Devil’s: temptation is your only power. The only real power, says Tomatis: the rest is pure demagoguery. He too, will be at my sendoff, that’s why he’s called, he says, tonight, at ten to twelve, at the bus station, and between the end of his sentence and the sound of the operator cutting the line, there is a silence, a vacillation, something imprecise, as if his voice, already faint, were trying fruitlessly, indecisively, to say something and not at all to rectify, to distance himself, to console himself, but simply, almost mechanically, to continue talking a bit, to fill, with a pause, the duration, which is not more than a moment, in which his voice, fragmentary, sticks, just like my mother now, just now, delaying the end of dinner, offers me dessert, an orange, a coffee, to stick something clear, precise, formal, to the unmediated duration that, if you like, is no longer than a moment but as wide, even so, as time itself. Now the two of us are standing before the steel blue light of the television, seeing the bulletin. It is rising, and will continue to rise, says the bulletin. We see soldiers evacuate, to the north, an entire village: cots, blankets, heaters, animals, children pass by, precariously, in trailers, in trucks, are outlined, in single file, on the embankments, surrounded by water, against a background of naked trees and ranches in ruins, half submerged in water. Taken from the air, we see, on the coast, a strip that clearer and almost imperceptibly more serene than the two great plains that hem it in, the breaches in the embankment, and, beside the first, almost flattened against the pavement and the rubble, a black car and two human figures. After the image fades I recognized myself, retrospectively, standing next to Héctor as he contemplates, leaning over, the water flowing from the breaches. Now they show the breaches again, empty, always from above, and the image advances, devouring the road, the water, leaving it behind, until the tips of the towers of the suspension bridge come into view, its platform, seen from above, seeming level with the water; at the mouth of the bridge, heading out slowly toward the boulevard, a black car — us — and the first houses. I get up, intercepting, for a moment, the steel blue image. Slowly I cross the anteroom, the bedroom, and I see, from the window, the steel blue image, showing, flattened, from above, beside the breaches, two human figures, Héctor and me. Then I lay down and smoke, in silence, with the ashtray on my chest as I look at, without seeing, the ceiling. Strictly speaking, I think for fifteen minutes, while I smoke, about nothing. I am, so to speak, the center, the white wall, where images undulate like flags. Now I am passing again before the flickering steel blue screen, intercepting, for a moment, with my body, my mother’s vision as she fidgets, slightly annoyed, in her seat. Standing now, fixed, I am once again looking at the white municipal building immersed, so to speak, in the blue sky. An exceptionally small man, visible only from the waist up, walks in the sun, on the terrace, half of him erased by a white wall. He leans on it a moment and looks down. It is easier, like that, at a distance, to be standing, looking down, no vertigo, no memories, with the cold wind that should be blasting up there — more so since the light has begun to fade — in bursts, on his cheeks. He is relaxed, compact against the sky. Nothing at all seems to rise, from his toes to his head, nor does there rise, toward his muscles, his skin, the unstable, continuous murmur of his entrails working, complex, in the dark. He advances, perfect, opaque, indestructible, half of a dark figure emerging from the white wall, in the terrace, and now that I turn toward my desk he disappears, becoming a new memory that I carry with me and that begins to descend, like food, toward the combustion engine of memory that chews it, mixes it, polishes it, stores it in a great mobile enclosure in which all things, though they may change size and place, remain. From the third drawer in the desk, which is open, I am taking out reams of paper, tearing them up without looking at them and dropping them into the trash. I do that for half an hour. I look out, once in a while, at the flowerpots in the narrow patio, blocked off by the yellow walls. And now once again my body is intercepting the flickering steel blue image, in the room through which afternoon advances getting colder and darker. Her arms crossed over her chest, her salt and pepper hair, too smooth and well combed and parted to seem natural, immobile and half standing in the direction of the flickering image, my mother asks, distractedly, without listening for my laconic affirmative response, if I have everything ready. Now I am adjusting the collar of my overcoat as I go slowly down the stairs. When I open the door, the homogeneous murmur of the city becomes more varied and stronger than what had been coming to me as I descended, adjusting, unhurriedly and ineffectually, the collar of my coat. Innumerable, the city embraces me. It is more than the straight, gray sidewalks I walk along, more than the shop windows, diverse and packed with things, that flank me, than the people who come walking in the opposite direction on the same sidewalk, on the opposite sidewalk, who pass beside me, brushing me lightly, who cross the street, who stand before the shop windows and the cigarette kiosks, who watch me pass from inside the bars, who pass by driving cars, more than yellow, white, gray houses, one or two stories tall, and the bus and the cars that pile up on the main streets and wait for the signal of the traffic guard, their motors running, more than the sounds, the neighborhoods, the smells, more even than the memories interwoven in a common space that, even so, is not the same one where our bodies pass, more than the empty spaces, the water that rises, slowly, surrounding it, more than the opaque material that is always before our eyes and nevertheless refracts our memory, through which I advance, moving my arms and legs as if I were swimming, with my eyes open, in an ocean of stone. In a city without memory, those who remember, in your streets, direct like destinies, erroneous, fateful, they are mistaken, I formulate, attempting, fruitlessly, to memorize it as I arrive, walking slowly, at the bus station. In your straight streets — amended — continuous like rays, erroneous, fateful, they are mistaken. I pass through garages stained with oil, passing among the great yellow and red buses. Loudspeakers blare, confused, urgent. There are mountains of suitcases around the cigarette kiosks and newsstands. I argue for some minutes, leaning in front of the hole in the ticket window and manage, at last, urged discretely by the impatient line, to change my ticket. And now I am again, the cigarette smoke mixing into the weakest, most transparent of coffees, standing in front of the counter of the bar in the galleria, with my back to the full patio on which the cold clarity of the end of the afternoon falls monotonously, and already I am going up to the cashier in green overalls, the pads of whose tidy fingers brush the palm of my hand at the moment he returns my 100 pesos change. Those who remember, I settle on, at last, listless, weak, knowing that I will forget it, in your streets, direct like destinies, erroneous, fateful, they are mistaken. And now I am again climbing the stairs of my house, getting free of my coat, intercepting again with my body, for a moment, the steel blue image that flickers in the room, even darker, perceiving again, as I pass, my mother’s white head that nods a moment, to one side, losing no time to recover the image that I have blocked. Now the suitcase and the blue bag, on the bed. I see, through the window, on the sidewalk out front, repeated six times, in two rows of three, one on top of the other, the face of a man who speaks and then of a rapid cut, also repeated six times, to another face, its head covered by a military cap. I stand for a moment to listen as I am passing from the bedroom to the library: it is a colonel informing the populace: it is rising, and will continue to rise. They are evacuating Boca del Tigre, Barranquitas. There will be more explosions. And then, mutely, the images start up: military trucks advancing, darkly, down an avenue, turning on cross streets, in a monotonous convoy that divides, coming to a corner, into two files going in opposite directions; a great expanse of water from which emerge, half covered, feeble ranches; military tents set up on an enormous fallow field, among which a few women gathered in a circle, dressed in black, speak with two soldiers; once again, in detail, moving with a regular rhythm, chewing away at the border of an embankment, which has been reinforced with sandbags, firm, placid, the water. And again, from the air, the clearest strip of road between two interminable expanses and beside the breaches in the embankment, a little closer than the black abandoned car in the middle of the road, with its doors open, two figures, irreconcilable, flattened, and immediately, also from above, the tips of the towers of the suspension bridge and its platform, from whose edge, at the entrance to the city, Héctor’s black car slowly goes out and, with some maneuvering, heads onto the boulevard. Other images accompany me spontaneously when I come, perhaps for the last time, to the desk and sit, looking out at the patio surrounded by the yellow walls and at the flowerpots whose ferns have already begun to be erased, spreading out into the twilight: the arid, white house, in the January sun, and the river, from which Cat comes spouting water, passing, narrowly, golden, toward the south; Washington talking, when the smoke from his cigarette rises in the sun, about the fundamentals of Tendai — first proposition: the world is unreal; second proposition: the world is a transitory phenomenon; third proposition, and pay attention, this is the fundamental one: the world is neither unreal nor a transitory phenomenon — close to Cat and Tomatis, against a background, fresh and flowered, of birds of paradise and laurels; and last, mobile, harmonious: Cat, freshly bathed, descending the stairs in shirtsleeves, a drop of water falling from the hair stuck to his sunburned forehead, the smell, crude and savage, of the river still impregnating his body, stronger than the soap and the summer, coming afterward, so identical to me that he waves two or three times, from one sidewalk to the other, at some men who have confused him for me, on one corner in the city where he stands, smoking. It is not, I formulate, I realize, either love, or nostalgia, or any elemental cause that calls forth these brilliant images, but rather the mystery of time, of space, its inert, dense, solid operations, purer and clearer, more real than our own weak adhesion, I formulate, like the shadow, speckled with light, of a tree over the river. More embattled, stronger, the streets, the houses, yellow and gray, walls, on the foundation of the planet, in the mornings, in the afternoons, should not leave, so to speak, a greater trace than the time they are made of, toward the outside, for no one, constant, blind, refractory, occasionally wetted by the pendulum of the rain, regularly charred by the swing to summer, now that I stand up in the darkness and go, silently, to the kitchen to watch the steam rise, in front of my mother at the other side of the table, from my bowl of soup. We hardly talk, separated by a white and green checkered tablecloth, the bread cut in two, the tureen that shines in the light of the lamp and steams, the half-full bottle of wine and two full cups, the thick white crockery plates, the meat, the pepper, the oil, the oranges, the salt. Only when I tell her that I have changed my ticket, that I will go at ten instead of at midnight, does she shake, without effusion, her salt-and-pepper head, too well-kept to seem natural, hiccup two or three times, and burst into tears. Her cry is only a couple seconds long, flushing her face and passing immediately. And now I am putting on my overcoat, adjusting the collar, picking up the bag and the suitcase, having said goodbye, slowly going down the stairs and arriving on the street just in time to see three military trucks, in a line, coming from the darkness, pass under the light at the corner, identically, slowly, and go on to be enveloped into the darkness of the next block. I think about nothing, I formulate nothing. And it is not them, on the other hand, the streets, the corners, the signs, all of which remain behind me as I walk toward the station, receding, but me, more precisely, who is erased, gradually, from these corners, these streets. The green bus waits, half empty, illuminated inside, on the platform. At the newsstand I buy La Región: It is rising and will continue to rise. Among the others there is a blurry photograph, taken from the air, of the breaches in the embankment: the great white expanses, the slightly darker strip upon which a black car is visible, its doors open, as if abandoned, and beside the breaches — an uneven fringe of arid blackness — two flattened figures, dressed in black. Just when I put my foot on the step, my right foot on the step, my left hand holding the blue bag into which I have put the paper, from far away, I hear the explosion. The glass and the metal shake, briefly, on the bus. Walking down the aisle, I pass, so to speak, through a murmur of discrete commentary, looking for my seat. There is still a vague echo of the explosion in my head. There is no memory, it is still too fresh to be more than a residue, already extremely thin, of perception. And now, the illuminated bus starts up, slowly, leaves, so to speak, because it’s me who is above, leaving behind the station, the streets of the city, like a node of lights, red, green, blue, yellow, violet, the corners, the coupled houses, monotonous, one or two stories tall, the parks crisscrossed by the darkness, the humble avenues, the neighborhoods scattered among the trees, the city that closes itself off like a sphincter, like a circle, bidding me farewell, leaving me outside, further outside of her than of my mother’s womb, and she herself further outside, with all of her men, and her memories, and the passion of all of her men that mixes together, even so, in a zone that coexists, higher up, on level with the stones. We stop, before reaching the checkpoint, behind a file of military trucks. On the other side of the avenue is the soccer stadium, and closer up, in the enormous open space that separates the stadium from the avenue, the tents erected in disorder, darker than the frozen night that envelopes them and lower than the point of the bonfires that burn, scattered, in the clearings and that form an arid, mobile circle of yellow light in the darkness. The light inside the bus goes out: someone, something contemplates, or, more accurately, looks at, or, more accurately, sees, through the cold glass, the garbage heap, the wide winter, the mute tents, the bonfires, and some anonymous shadows that move around the fire, piles of objects without names, stored in disorder, bodies, denser, like the tents, than the night, but taller, sometimes, than the flames, cross the black open air that must be impregnated with the smell of water, and in which must flutter, at times, with the sound of flames, the broken canvas of the tents and the murmur of the trucks, and the crystal of the frost and the cries of the beasts accumulated on the narrow fringes of the still-firm earth. We start up. The second explosion goes off. I enter Boca del Tigre.