The Foreigners (7 page)

“Oh, yes, wonderful people.” She gazed off distractedly.

But Isolde's show of reserve was only momentary. A few more questions and the whole of her story came tumbling out. Although I wasn't yet aware of it that afternoon, I was soon to find myself in the role of her primary confidante.

 

 

I solde, thirty-five, was from a small Austrian village. The men in her family were veterinarians with modest but dependable veterinarian incomes. She had a sister. I imagined from what she told me that the girls were lovely, strong, on the side of being big-boned. They were sporty and always known to be among the prettiest in their classes at the village school.

It was the elder sister who from a golden girl turned one day into a dark figure. Her parents had had great plans for her—she was to be the first woman in the family to go to college—but then things didn't work out as they'd hoped. The sister botched her college entrance interviews. Her male admirers were soon turned away by her aggressive habits. It was said that she had a mental disease. She stayed at home, locked in her room, only coming out at mealtimes to tyrannize the family. She had a child with a man, who then ran off. She brought the child to live with her in the house, another golden girl, but whose life was shadowed from the start by her troubled mother with whom she shared a room.

Isolde was apparently a simpler character, lovely but not so lovely as her sister, without such a feeling of entitlement, the good-natured one, innocent, hopeful, someone to whom life happened, one thing led to the next, with minimal forethought on her part. She was in a sense the face of the family. Though utterly inexperienced, she would step out and represent them in the world. This was, at least, how her parents seemed to feel, now that their dream daughter had failed them. Obediently, Isolde took on this role, going to college in Salzburg, studying commerce, getting a job in a bank. None of these things did she do particularly well, even by her own estimation, but she did them. In college, she fell in with a different sort of crowd, people with more money. She already had this glamour girl look, which, more instinctively than through calculation, she began to cultivate, copying other girls' clothes and hairstyles, mannerisms and accents. She spent a lot of time on the clothes question, looking at magazines, browsing through stores. A natural gift plus a great deal of dedicated time soon meant that she surpassed the other girls, more born to that world, with a tasteful, glamorous style that all of them envied. Then too, working in a bank and having her own money kept her steadfast in this path.

The one surprising thing she'd done was to suddenly one day quit her job at the bank.

Her parents were dismayed but, for the first time in her life, Isolde didn't care. She had saved some money and set out to travel. Her first stop, as she'd told me, had been Uruguay, a destination for a certain category of Europeans at that time of year, the southern summer, and then Argentina a month or so later where, seduced by the reception she received, she stayed on. “It's different, isn't it?” she said. “The way you're treated here is different.” She laughed. “Like royalty or something.” In Austria, she'd been nothing particular, an Austrian among Austrians, blonde among blondes. She'd even dyed her hair darker in school in the hopes of distinguishing herself. But here she felt revered. Why? Simply for being European, already she was placed in a higher echelon.

Her first encounters in Argentina were lucky ones, or so she thought at the time. The initial connection was made through her landlady to a guy, now in his fifties, whom the woman's daughter used to date. The guy had a right-wing TV talk show, one of the most popular in the country. Isolde didn't entirely grasp the heavily right-wing connotations of his commentary, nor would she have particularly cared, but the guy was famous. He invited her to barbecues at his country house. She was let in on the secret of that crowd. The famous right-wing talk-show host, always seen publicly in the company of a famous actress, and not least known for his misogynist jokes, was actually gay. He had a young beautiful lover the age of his own son. The two boys lived in his house, shared meals with him, each had a room with a DVD player and powerful speakers. Isolde felt one of the elect to be privy to this secret. She tried to relish in her rapid, unpredictable insider status. But the truth was that, when she was among these people, in this walled-in property outside the city, eating the famous Argentine barbecue, nothing touched her soul. She soon realized that it was a false piste. Where she wanted to be was with the cocktail crowd.

She backtracked, refused some of the country invitations. Though she'd started a flirt with the talk-show host's son, she dropped this too. There was a whole cocktail circuit. Isolde spent many lonely nights, knowing there was a cocktail party somewhere and not having anyone to go with or not being sure that she could get in. Sometimes she got dressed up and went anyway. She could almost always get in with her face and clothes alone. All the same, she would feel terribly exposed as she stepped out of the cab and up to the door. When no cocktail event was materializing, she went to modern dance performances or concerts. Everything, as she'd mentioned, was so cheap.

She soon met a French girl her age who was secretive and would sometimes tell her where an event was and sometimes not. The French girl had her own agenda, to be the most sought-after foreigner in Buenos Aires. Though the French card among Argentines could never really fail—the model for the upper-class Argentine woman is French, for the Argentine man, British—Isolde, with her goldenness, was competition.

In the cocktail set, circulating is key. On the other hand, given this very fact, the eloquence of absence cannot be overlooked. Isolde was not so good with the eloquence of absence. She had no patience with being alone. She was savvy enough to know it should be tried. She would try it and couldn't bear it, would dress hastily and go out. The French girl, Isolde's nemesis, was much more savvy. She could abstain. Evening upon evening would go by and she wouldn't appear. The thirst for her would grow, more and more eyes trained on the door. Isolde would see the longing eyes. She noticed these things. She'd vow to herself next time to abstain, but the next time would come around and she would be there.

Moreover, Isolde was healthily lusty. Within the upper-class circuit was a skein of brothers and cousins. While at the college she'd gone to, sleeping with one or another person was considered quite normal, she had no idea how small this world was. One night, after plenty of champagne, she slept with a guy after a party. Immediately, the word got out. It was actually the other brother she'd been interested in, Lucio, but now he backed away. Or rather, he still let her approach him, but now had a little smirk on his face whenever her name was discussed. She soon understood that she had tarnished herself. She'd lived in Austria and London, had traveled throughout Europe. Yet it didn't matter. She was in this small circle now. It was like an insect trap, sticky. You put your foot somewhere and the move was irremediable. It was stuck there for all to see. Still, no matter what, the Austrian card was strong.

Isolde imagined herself working as cultural attaché, in the embassies, hosting parties. Or in charge of a charity group for children. The funds would be raised at cocktail parties. Most appealing was this idea of being ambassador to the European art world, all the more so as her conception of it remained so vague. Only later would I learn what her actual situation was that, running low on money and without a job, Isolde had taken to asking discreetly at cocktail parties if anyone knew of any work she could do, to the delight of a certain bevy of snickering Argentines.

 

 

Walking home afterward, I thought about Isolde, cutting her path here, as I was cutting mine. I remembered what I'd learned at the botanist's about invasive plants. Once in a foreign environment, some species simply shrivel and die. There's too much moisture or too little. The seed can't get a grip in the ground. Others, however, due to the lack of the delicate balance of natural controls, suddenly grow rampant or metamorphose, a calyx, for example, hypertrophying. The foreign air, the soil, touches something in them. A part of their character, maybe dormant before, is suddenly pricked to life.

The e-mail I'd been waiting for from Leonarda arrived. “Hey, I'm on lab duty today. Searching for the virtual equivalent of the Ebola virus. You wanna come by and pick me up @ five?” She left an address. I didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about, but I was definitely going.

It was in a neighborhood I'd never been to, Boedo. The streets looked disheveled. The eucalyptus were in a state of constant dishevelment, tumbling down, falling over themselves. Imported trees, they weren't even from here originally. The smell, depending on atmospheric conditions in your head, could be bracing, soothing, intoxicating. I tore off a bunch of leaves, crushed and smelled them as I walked.

Following the street numbers, I soon located a white door. There were three buzzers. How to know? I pressed the second one down, then the third right after that. But before anyone had time to respond, the door opened and a lithe young man slipped out, letting me enter behind him.

The yard inside was muddy with sprouts of grass. Wooden boards had been laid out to step on. On the far side was a low structure like a garage but longer, with a wall of windowpanes. I followed the wooden boards to the structure's door, which was ajar. A short hallway led to the main room. The room gave an impression of glass. Besides the windows, glass shards were piled up against the wall. Something big had broken. Everywhere people crouched over computers, some old, some new, a few with their backs open. A printer had been taken apart. There were cords everywhere.

At first I didn't see Leonarda. Then I did. She too was crouched low over a computer, with her baseball hat and glasses on, fully concentrated.

Only when I got very near did she look up. “Hey, you came!” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, as if there might have been some question. I looked around. “What's going on?”

“It's that group, Mercury. They do experiments. Everyone's given a task. Or you can propose things. I proposed taking the Ebola virus and making it virtual. It's been something I've wanted to try for a while. Here, this is Facundo. He's developing a new form of digital animation.”

Facundo, thin with a shaved head and standing as he worked, gave me a nod.

“Why don't you take a look around? I'll finish up and we can go.”

I walked around. I passed the fine-featured woman with the orange hair who had been at the other meeting. She had a large set of earphones on and was listening with concentration, her eyes half closed. A small, round girl with a short fringe of bangs was peering at a monitor. Beside her were several iguanas in a glass cage with electrodes on their heads.

“What's that girl doing with the iguanas?” I asked Leonarda as we were walking back across the muddy yard.

“She's monitoring their sleep. Seems they only sleep with half their brains.”

“Why's that?”

“Sleep's dangerous, dude. They're protecting themselves.”

“Hey, isn't the Ebola virus lethal?”

“Duh,” she answered.

On the street again, Leonarda stopped and put down her bag. “Okay,” she said. She took off her hat and T-shirt—underneath she was wearing a black-and-green negligee—and got out her makeup case. “Here we are, back in Planet Gorgeous.”

 

 

I'm bringing you to a place where you can meet a ton of guys, okay?” Leonarda said. “Isn't that what you want? To meet guys?”

I laughed. “Maybe,” I said. I hadn't thought about it.

“C'mon.” She put her arm through mine and pulled me along.

The bar was in the center of town, Libertad Street. We went up a set of stairs and turned to the left and, indeed, the place was packed with men. The aesthetic was modern, glossy black tables, glass vases here and there containing single flowers on long stems. A silver bar stretched the length of the room. Courageous single women sat alone at the bar. The men milled around. They were in their thirties, forties, some looked older, a few preppy guys looked even younger. They were, on the whole, all dressed well and well-groomed.

Due to the no-smoking law recently passed in the city, the bar had constructed a little outdoor patio, a glass box, where you could still smoke. The box was dense with smoke. Here and there, you caught the shape of a head or limb pressed against the glass.

“Let's sit at the bar,” Leonarda said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I looked around. “But won't people bother us?”

“Well, ye-ah. That's the whole point. Guys will talk to us.”

I looked around again, thoroughly daunted by the prospect. It had been ten years since I'd been in this situation.

“C'mon,” she said, already sitting down.

We ordered cocktails, Leonarda, a strawberry daiquiri, a mojito for me.

“So how are you finding us aborigines?” she asked. She made the sign of a monkey, pretending to scratch an armpit with one hand. I'd noticed before that her armpits were shaved except for one dark tuft in the center.

I smiled. “Surprisingly advanced.”

“We're so grateful to you for bringing us your wisdom. Listen, can you do me one favor? Don't get all romantic about the crash, okay? Foreigners come here and they make a big deal. Then there are, like, these super-romantic newspaper articles in the foreign press about countries that otherwise never get discussed, like describing the apocalypse or whatever. When the point is this shit happens to us all the time. We're used to it. Every eight years, there's a crash. In eight years, there'll be another crash. Big fucking deal.”