I reach the hallway and take a moment to look back, searching for the face of the man to ensure that he didn’t get off the train. I don’t see him, so I linger a moment longer, standing on the tips of my toes and leaning my head around to see through the gaps in the crowd, most of which is moving toward me, a sea of indifferent faces, some of them meeting my eyes then looking away. One gaze falls upon one face which is not indifferent-- it’s red, grimacing, and staring right back at me as the blue-jacketed body its attached to bowls its way toward me. I turn down the hallway and start to run, clutching my wooden case to my chest like a rugby ball as I weave between people and cut left at the T-intersection at the end of the first segment of hallway.
From behind me I can hear the man yell, “Hey! Stop that guy! Stop that guy! He stole my phone!” and now I’m catching even more attention than I was before, the people up in front of me turning around to see who the thief is, seeing me running, realizing that I’m the thief. Many of them doubtless recognize me from my H-Line circus act, and now they’re able to validate their preconceived suspicions about my character. The vagrant is also a thief—who would have guessed? I’m still running, not even bothering now to say permiso as I usually would, and though I’m gaining ground on the man in pursuit it’s becoming clear that the crowd is against me. A older woman in front of me sticks out her leg to trip me, but she does it so preemptively that I’m able to avoid it by running right into her and knocking her to the ground. People gasp, one girl shrieks, and at least two men reach out and try to grab me by the arms or the collar but I’ve got enough momentum going that they can’t get a grip. Now there’s at least six people yelling about me, at least three in pursuit, and my outlook is bleak because I’m coming up on the A-Line platform, Plaza Miserere, and there’s no train here yet and the closest staircase to the surface is thirty meters behind me. The only other staircase out is in the central platform of Plaza Miserere’s three platform set up, meaning I’d have to cross the tracks to reach it.
I’m out of the mouth of the hallway now. There’s nowhere to turn and the people behind me will catch me in a matter of moments, no matter how fast I run or how quickly I decide what to do. I’m like a prehistoric animal now, a wooly mammoth, being forced to the edge of a cliff by spear-wielding neanderthals. Do I die by the cliff or die by the spears? There’s a tantalizing light coming down through the staircase on the center platform, a little patch of blue sky, and without deliberating or even looking to see if there’s a train coming I leap off the platform and onto the tracks. Every face in the massive room seems to look at me all at once, and I realize that there is a train coming, not far away now, but still far enough away that I am not in great danger so long as I keep moving. I step over the third rail and reach the center platform, which is up to my shoulders and will require some exertion to climb over. The men in pursuit reach the platform behind me, realize that the train is coming, and decide not to follow me. Two men on the center platform hurry over to where I’m struggling to lift myself and they each grab me under an armpit and hoist me up. The men behind me yell, “Stop that man, he’s a thief!” But the train’s rolling in now and it drowns out their voices then obscures them completely.
I thank the men who helped me, but I can’t stay long because they will start to ask me questions about why I was being chased, and I’m sure someone has already told a police officer or at least a Subte staff member that I crossed the tracks. I would be arrested for that whether or not they’d know I stole a phone while I was at it. By a stroke of luck, another train, this one heading in the opposite direction, is pulling up to the platform in front of me, so rather than climb the stairs to the surface I jog across the platform, saying “Thank you, thank you,” to my saviors, then jogging in place until the moderately full train finally stops and the doors open to let me in.
I ride this train all the way to the end of the A-Line at Plaza de Mayo, where it connects to the D-Line and the E-Line. This is the biggest metro station in Buenos Aires, and surely one of the biggest in the world, consisting of three separate stations all connected by hallways, and existing in an area equivalent to roughly six city blocks—all the way from a coffee shop on cobblestone Calle Peru, beneath the ancient Cabildo and the Plaza de Mayo, beneath taxis and buses, beneath a dozen different office buildings, a dozen different vendors selling clothes, books, and trinkets, and stretching all the way to the other side of the Cathedral.
Right now I’m underneath the Plaza de Mayo and descending the stairs into the blue-tiled hallway that runs underneath the Cabildo. My first indication that something unusual is happening comes when I pull the stolen phone from my pocket, light up the screen, and find that the time, according to the device, is 22:30. It’s running eight hours fast. That’s not so unusual in and of itself, except that I’m realizing now that the hallways are nearly deserted, when for this time of day they ought to be churning like rivers. I round the corner heading toward the E-Line, and halfway down the next segment of hallway, seated cross-legged on the floor, is a bearded man with his hands clasped out in front of him and a purple blanket draped over his body and over the top of his head. I’m reminded of my earliest memory, in which my father and I are moving down a hallway like this one, perhaps this same hallway, and there is a man like this, seated in a similar way, covered in a blanket which in my recollection looks identical to this one. Of course, memory plays tricks on us. It is impossible that it is the same man, just as it is impossible that I aged five years and my father developed stomach cancer all over the course of a few stops on the Subte. Still, I cannot shake the feeling that there is some kinship, at least an uncanny similarity, between the man seated before me and the man who exists in my memory.
I approach him somewhat tentatively, because in spite of his praying hands he seems like a coiled snake, and if I disturb him too suddenly he might lash out. When I'm a few feet away I say, "Señor, where is everyone?" but he doesn't respond nor even react at all.
"Señor," I say again, a little louder and somewhat irritated that he's chosen to ignore me. I'm close enough to kick him now or hit him over the head with the brief case, and it depresses me that these are the first thoughts that come into my head as I stand over him. It seems I have that same twisted sense of superiority that I despise in the rich-folk, and if I ever had their wealth perhaps I'd be no better than they are.
"Señor," I say one more time, more gently this time, and I place a hand on the man's shoulder. He looks up at me with eyes just like mine, then he disappears, and I'm left staring at the dark tiled floor my outstretched hand feeling nothing but the cold, humid air.
TO BE CONTINUED TOMORROW
Cover Photo: Image Source