390
PARTISAN REVIEW
at the
Buenos Aires Herald
all evening and read magazines, but offered
liLLie information. He lefL me wondering. After that, there was a small
white Fiat waiting for me late at night at the station when I got out of
the train. The car followed me home, or pan of the way home, to
Acassuso,
an aLLractive dormitory on the northern riverside.
The car was there with me. Sometimes only once a week, some–
times every night of the week. As a precaution, I took taxis from the
station. The cabbies thought I was mad, until they got accustomed to
my madness, and to the low fare they collected.
If
there were no cabs a.t
the station and the white Fiat was there, I took the long way around, up
to Santa Fe Avenue, which was beLLer lit. There, tired prostitutes, aging
in the dark, were picked up by bad-tempered motorists and insatiable
truck drivers .
After a few days the women began to greet me; they smiled and
asked if I had been working hard, and I said, "Not so hard, and you?"
My question seemed quite reasonable and they told me whether
business was good or bad. The weather, strikes, the mid-month budget
restraints were all reasons why fewer motorists stopped for the brief
copulative service they offered.
One night the women disappeared for good.
In
the Odeon cafe, at
the corner opposite the train station, the men at the bar said a police
corporal at the San Isidro precinct had been squeezing the women for
money for some time. On a recent occasion he had become too rough in
his demands and had broken one woman's arm.
It
was the kind of story that I could not write-hint at possibly–
but hints were wasted because people would only ask, "Why bother?
Everybody knows that such things go on ." The bravado spent on a
daring, but sneaky hint was wasted, and I could not summon the
courage to tell the whole story.
The walk home became lonelier after that. I kept looking over my
shoulder as I walked. I greeted the nightwatchman at the San Isidro fire
station, hoping that his awareness of my passage would be some
protection.
It
could not be, of course, but it was a comfort to hear a
voice return my greeting at three a.m.
There were many articles in which I dared myself to make brief
references to political anomalies, and then fretted about reactions after
publication.
It
was a stupid , not a vicious circle-I compelled myself to
report and then waited in terror for the outcome. What is more, this
was an exhausting exercise which achieved very liLLIe. A naval captain,
secretary to the force's commander, wrote to me one day denying that
naval intelligence had a dossier which linked me with guerrillas.
"If
you have a clear conscience, you have nothing to fear," the officer's
