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PARTISAN REVIEW
out warning, as an urgent request; they had no time to say good–
bye, or discuss a future they might or might not share. She declared
she was not ready to disrupt a collective project, the Antofagasta
plan, for sentimental matters they could resolve over the telephone.
Later Maiiungo wrote to her from abroad. She did not answer.
He wrote again, more insistently, when he found out she'd left the
Communist Party to join a group whose crazy revolutionary ac–
tivism was typical of the youth of her generation. He asked her to ex–
plain how, for what purpose, why, since her reasons might help him
get beyond his own rejection of patterns . She did not answer this let–
ter either, and for twelve years Maiiungo did not know who Judit
Torre was .
As they walked under the trees, J udit periodically pointed out
the silhouettes of boys emerging from the corners of the night, mute
shadows, ancient ghosts , a bearded elder, all bent over garbage bags
or pulling wagons or pedaling fantastic bicycles or improvised
tricycles that quickly vanished in the vegetation or were pierced like
pictures in a slide-show by the headlights of passing cars. The helter–
skelter movement of these scavengers increased, their vehicles be–
came more fantastic, their faces more deformed, their rags more rag–
ged, and their loads more and more like huge pies piled high with
booty as the curfew hour approached and the streets emptied .
The scavengers would soon stampede in order to avoid the
patrols that would chase them away . This was the "green ghetto" of
the privileged classes , she explained, as if Maiiungo didn't remem–
ber; a neighborhood that was emotionally charged with whispers,
but was, at the same time, besieged by slums a hundred times larger
and more hostile, a world that grew outward, threatening to ex–
tinguish all this self-absorbed greenery.
The tattered humanity rummaging in the garbage was merely
the silent advance guard that nightly entered this bastion to reclaim
the spoils, that, for the time being, was its part of the banquet.
Shadows torn from fear and guilt, bent figures dragging phantas–
magorical strollers, coughing, worn out, spitting blood, astride
bicycles with sidecars, old people tugging platforms mounted on
different-sized wheels discarded from other vehicles, children push–
ing carts , disappeared furtively around corners or blended with an
immobile tree trunk , or dissolved in an alley, while Judit and
Maiiungo, hand in hand, passed street after street kept awake by the
fragrant breeze.
