6. Quity: ‘The morning after’
The morning after we watched the video, Dani and I rushed to the slum. He wanted to take a Kirlian photo of Cleo and I wanted to write the story of the year. I liked to drive north of the city, to see the river even if only in glimpses, to smell the water, to slow to the rhythm of the landscape as we got close to the Delta. But that day we didn’t make it all the way to the river. We exited the motorway as soon as we saw the shantytown. It was built on the lowest ground: everything sloped gently downwards the closer you got to it, except the quality of life, which didn’t slope but rather dropped off sharply in the last few inches before the wall – a wall whose advertising potential the municipality hadn’t overlooked. The wall served as a mirror for the wealthy neighbours, their last line of protection: instead of seeing the slum, they saw only themselves in the ads plastered to the wall, people on top of the world with their expensive mobile phones, cars, perfumes and holidays.
Shame all those images of prosperity had to be interrupted by the grimy gates of poverty. The archway over the entrance was charming, with colourful letters that read ‘Welcome to El Poso’ and some painted cement doves, intended, I suppose, to be holding the sign up with their beaks, but looking more like they’d flown into a window. Little balls with wings plastered to the corners of the sign. On each side of the entryway was a security booth that bore various layers of decoration. The first layer was the requisite dark blue of all the booths; the second included the rooster of the Buenos Aires Police Department’s shield; the third, redheaded mermaids, a yellow submarine, the baby Jesus walking on a blue puddle, green fish and water lilies, all with eyes and smiling out from the dark blue background. The other layers of decoration consisted of graffiti, little cocks for everyone, including the baby Jesus. If it hadn’t been for the cocks and the smell of shit, you’d have had the impression you were entering a Catholic preschool in a poor neighbourhood. The security guard looked like just another decoration, a surprised octopus poking his head out of the booth’s window. Intelligence and press, the badges Daniel and I carried, gave us right of passage.
‘Go ahead, sir. Have a nice day, sir.’ The octopus respected hierarchy even though he was dying of curiosity.
‘Are you coming to see the Sister, sir?’
‘What’s your name, Officer?’
‘John-John Galíndez, Inspector.’
‘Are you the artist, Galíndez?’ Dani asked, mischievously nodding toward the elaborately painted booth.
‘Negative, sir. That would be Jessica, the Sister’s niece. Would you care for a drink of mate, young lady?’
‘Yes, thanks, John-John. Busy day?’
‘No, not really… Ever since the Virgin’s been around, the slum’s been pretty quiet. Very quiet. The only problems we have now are with the Condors, the private security paid for by the rich neighbours. Even the cokeheads get up early to listen to the Sister, she’s a comfort to us all. It’s pretty incredible. You’d never know it, Inspector, but, and my apologies to the young lady here, the Sister used to be a bit of a bitch. She worked in a whorehouse here in San Isidro, near the cathedral. She was expensive. For the posh set, you know.’ Galíndez lowered his voice and looked from side to side before continuing, ‘They say she was the bishop’s lover.’
‘Isn’t she a bit old for the bishop’s tastes, Officer?’
‘Well… I don’t know, I’m not a reporter, you’d know better than me. But that’s what they say around here, and you never know, there’s an exception to every rule, isn’t there?’ the officer answered. ‘Besides, Cleopatra was young before she was old.’
‘And before she was Cleopatra…’, Daniel ventured and the cop chuckled, warming up and almost certainly thinking: ‘This is my kind of guy.’ Then he started talking nonstop. He’d worked this precinct for eight years, and although he hadn’t been at the station on the day of the miracle, he’d witnessed other ones. ‘The Sister forgave us all,’ he repeated over and over, shocked that a victim could forgive such terrible things as the ones he’d done. He was right that any self-respecting person would consider these violations unforgivable, but Cleopatra says I’m bitter and that if everyone thought like me we’d all end up killing each other. The officer continued with his story: ‘It’s unbelievable, but I saw the miracle too. Cleopatra used to have one leg shorter than the other from when her father had beaten her to a pulp. Just imagine, he was a police officer, Sergeant Ramón Lobos, though later he was sacked for keeping more than his share of a payoff. When his son turned out like that – different, let’s say – he wanted to kill him. There’s still a lot of prejudice in the force.’
I think it was a November morning, like I said, but I remember it being cold. We stepped inside John-John’s booth and he carried on serving mate and explaining the prejudices of the force: ‘In the academy they give us classes on human rights. In the test everyone writes that it’s bad to discriminate against the poor, the fags, the Jews, the Bolivians, and then, as soon as they can