The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguín

Author:Sergio Olguín
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
Published: 2019-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

11  The Hidden City

I

Verónica had gone to the “smoking room”, a small space with a window into the building’s interior courtyard that also served as a repository for all the things no longer required in the newsroom of Nuestro Tiempo: CPUs that didn’t work, old monitors, old copies of rival publications, broken chairs and posters left over from a publicity campaign for the magazine. The window was open, despite the cold, so the only advantage of being in there rather than out on the street was proximity to the rest of the newsroom. Verónica was smoking while trying to piece together the different elements of her investigation, but her mind kept drifting to the trip to Villa Lugano which she had made with Lucio the day before.

Before calling him and asking him to go with her, she had organized the information that she had so far: the map modified by Federico and the details of Vicente Garamona. Four boys were from neighbourhoods in the south of the city and two from a shanty town known as Ciudad Oculta, the “hidden city”. She had decided to start with the easiest, the boys from Lugano and Soldati, but there was a problem: Verónica couldn’t remember ever having been to that part of Buenos Aires. She knew that it existed, that there was an abandoned fairground there, and she had once been to see a Davis Cup game at the Parque Rosa stadium. But she certainly hadn’t paid much attention to the places she passed through on the way. In fact, she tended to mix up all those neighbourhoods in the south: Mataderos with Lugano, Soldati with Pompeya, Ciudad Oculta with the shanty town known as Villa 1-14-21. That disorientation alone had momentarily overwhelmed her. After all, she had discovered many new places in the course of her investigations. The ability to progress quickly from ignorance to detailed understanding was a vital journalistic skill. That weekend she spent hours studying the map, swearing that she would learn those streets with funny names by heart.

On Sunday she reached the conclusion that it wasn’t enough to familiarize herself with the area’s layout: she needed to go there with someone. She thought of asking Patricia to send a photographer with her, with the excuse of getting a few shots from the neighbourhoods, but it struck her that this could be counterproductive for the investigation. Doubtless Federico would be wiling to go with her. But Fede – who had studied at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina – was even less streetwise than she was. He was more likely to be a hindrance than a help.

But why was she agonizing over this so much if what she really wanted was for Lucio to go with her? Did she really feel so insecure and scared, or was it simply that she wanted to share part of the investigation with him? Sunday evening wasn’t the right time to make this kind of decision. She would try to contain herself, wait until Monday morning and only then send him a text.

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