The St Perpetuus Club of Buenos Aires by Eric Stener Carlson

Author:Eric Stener Carlson [Eric Stener Carlson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Mystery, Weird Fiction, Dark Fiction, Dark Fantasy, Occult & Supernatural
ISBN: 9781905784165
Amazon: B01E69TBFU
Goodreads: 7894905
Publisher: Not Avail
Published: 2009-10-24T23:00:00+00:00

Book XI

(Third entry, Lives of the Saints)

Like the cycles of the moon and the tides, Buenos Aires gives the impression of endless continuity.

It makes you think the wide boulevards have always curved around islands of impossibly-ornate French mansions, and these have always been topped with impossibly-ornate cupolas. The Belle Époque is the only period we have ever known—the only period we could ever know—to which we are still connected, albeit by a long, tattered thread of Time.

But things can change, even in Buenos Aires.

Take, for example, Santa Fe Avenue. Walk along it any hour of the day or night, and you’ll see six lanes of homicidal traffic all flowing in one direction towards 9 de Julio. The little voice inside your head says, ‘Traffic on Santa Fe has always gone towards 9 de Julio, and it always will.’

What would you say, then, if I told you, fifty years ago you could have hailed a cab along the Avenue, and it could have taken you in the opposite direction towards Plaza Italia? ‘Impossible!’ the little voice says?

But it’s true. Santa Fe used to have only two lanes of traffic, puttering slowly back and forth. Then, one day—through the Force of a memorandum from the Office of Urban Planning—two lanes suddenly became six!

And it changed its course, like the Yangtze River did a thousand years ago, drowning villages of peasants who’d assumed—like you—that the Emperor, the River and the Moon would go forward unchanging for all Eternity.

If it’s possible for the Yangtze to change its course—and for Santa Fe Avenue as well—what, then, about Time itself?

For your little, beetle brain, this may be difficult to grasp . . . but I’ve stumbled across a Force that flows beneath the streets of Buenos Aires, like an Eternal River making rough rocks smooth in its bed.

Okay, things are going to get a little complicated from here on out, so try to keep up with me . . .

Suppose you’re standing at the corner of Cerrito and Córdoba, tapping your feet impatiently, waiting for the light to change. Your frustration level is rising, because you’re facing endless lanes of traffic and, at your elbow, some dirty Indian boy is frying nuts in a hot, copper pan.

You’re all set to rush across 9 de Julio, but you can’t. Because that little, luminous fucker in the metal box across the street is solid orange instead of blinking green. The boy shouts in your ear, ‘Garrapiñadas for fifty cee-eents.’ And he stirs the filthy nuts some more.

You pad back and forth along the sidewalk, just like the panther Rilke observed at the Jardin de Plantes a hundred years ago. That bestial power confined to the tiniest of spaces.

You look beyond Cerrito with your cat-like vision, and you see all those little crosswalk boxes giving you 58, 47, 52 seconds to cross from one cement island to another. But you can’t get there, because the light on the corner hasn’t changed yet! The boy shouts even louder, this time directly in your ear, ‘Garrapiñadas for fifty cee-eents.

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