As he spoke, I remembered things about Sito. An only child, he lived with his mother long ago, in the days of M. His father had died, or left, before being able to leave a tangible or lasting impression on him, just after his first birthday. Despite having no siblings and being practically an orphan, as a child he found, in his mother, a repository for his cruelty, a deep-seated bitterness that he would cast onto her in the form of arrogance, deception, and even disdain, as though he were trying to make himself disappear. This translated into a pronounced dominance. He lacked the resources of the spoiled child; instead, he made use of a power that anticipated that of an adult, only saturated with innocence, which made it all the more ruthless. Every time his mother would come out into the street to look for him — having to call out “Sito” again and again even though he had not only heard her the first time but had also, like every child, sensed her physical presence — you could hear an abject tone in her voice that belied her wisdom; her entire being was submitted to the ignorant rule of the boy, to his innocent and brutal authority.

A little while after I met him, as he passed into adolescence, mother and son reversed roles: then it was she who was ruthless, Sito who was submissive. It should have been the other way around, but it was not. The mother accused him of being just like his father, when in reality it was she, who drank more and more, that best recreated his memory. Sito had to keep a small sideboard in the living room, which I saw on more than one occasion — closed, of course — well stocked. To this end, he would go out in search of cheap liquor, usually liters of vodka; his mother told him which brand. He would return slowly, doubled over by the weight of his purchases. I remember, on those rare occasions when the three of us were at his house, the silent disposition of that sideboard, as intimidating as a person lying in wait, a figure that at once concealed and signaled the drama of the household. We could have been talking or doing anything at all when that imperious voice would ring out from a tiny room in the attic. As though propelled by a sudden force, Sito would instantly jump to his feet and run up the stairs; it was nothing like the waiting he inflicted on her just a few years earlier. At one point we even saw him dodge his mother’s fists and struggle to hold her back; something kept him from using his full strength, which was obviously greater than hers, even simply to restrain her: it was as though her superiority was carried in her voice; shrieks and movement came together in the body of the mother to break down the defenses of the son.

Years later, as tends to happen and as they tend to say, I lost track of Sito; every now and then our paths would cross near his house and we would exchange a few jokes, then go our separate ways. As was now reflected in our mutual and confused discomfort, we had not seen each other since M’s disappearance. “I couldn’t get work until the war in the Falklands — it was only after I got married that I found something.” “With my father-in-law,” he added. He helped out in a bar off the turnpike, the Acesso Oeste, which also offered room and board (the Acesso Oeste just past Haedo, he explained). A few years later his father-in-law died, and they had to close it down because he had so many brothers-in-law. The experience had done him some good: since then he had been working as a waiter at a café in the area, on Reconquista; soon they would make him a manager. People passed by us in a rush, indifferent to the decisive encounter Sito and I were having there, on the sidewalk. He invited me to join him for a cup of coffee. “But not where you work,” I said. Who said anything about that? he responded, naturally. (To this day I can find no explanation for my awkwardness.) I asked about his mother. She had died, as well, but he was still living in the same place — now with a wife and children. Those blocks around the train tracks never change, it’s remarkable, he said. As he approached his house, he would try to find something that had changed, sighing with disappointment when he could not. He felt as though he were still in his childhood or youth: any change — the passage of time in general, his children — having no outward sign, seemed to exist only in his head; it became unreal to him. He said the following: Time moves so quickly that before I know it I’m a man, what they call an adult; my father did not reach the age I am now, and I think I’ve lasted longer than I deserve to or should have. I look at my children, he continued, and they seem like people, not children. I tend to my customers without seeing any trace of humanity in those I serve: they are just posts attached to the tables. The same thing happens to taxi drivers, he rationalized, many of them have said so. I agreed and looked away. His words sounded harsh; I couldn’t tell whether this was due to my presence, if they were trying to convey something beyond what they were saying, or whether this was an effect of his general nervousness, of which I could be a victim just like any other person in any other place. Perhaps it was both. Yet it was not only time — the effects of which he had such trouble perceiving when they were right in front of him — that separated us, no matter how long it had been since we had seen one another, but also the absence of M, so clearly omnipresent — in that he was, and continues to be, the reason that we know each other — that lent an air of sadness, distrust, and even inappropriateness to the encounter.

Just as had happened with M’s mother years earlier, that day after the abduction when the weight of his disappearance would have kept us on that sidewalk forever had it not been for her wisdom in acknowledging, in different words, that M was gone; just as had happened years earlier, Sito and I were playing a part that was not only unpleasant, but also unclear. Any change of tone, any word half-said or said with undue emphasis, and we might freeze up and remain there, at the corner of Tucumán and Reconquista, for all time — the preserved relics of an encounter immortalized in its impossibility. In light of the disappearance, his absence, every comment, even those not about M, took on a valence of inadequacy, incorrectness, as though some weight were keeping it from achieving any real significance. And yet Sito, with his chattiness and gestures of fatigue, which were actually just a product of his laziness, conveyed something of the image I had of M from those years, no doubt with the spontaneous assistance of memory. In a way, it is those feelings that I am trying to represent now. (Sito greatly influenced my decision to write this account; though the idea existed before, it was one of those vague promises, caught halfway between commitment and resignation. Our meeting was decisive in this regard. Sito was the final impetus.)

Today one might see in Sito — in his robust figure, his agitation as he approached, climbing the hill like some tired animal — M’s consent to divulge some aspect of his story, even if that were only his existence. This may seem like magic, or superstition, but it is also hard to refute. Before his death, I had never suspected that a person’s substance or spirit could manifest itself from time to time; this was the outcome of M’s leaving (I say that he left in the way someone might say I never saw him again, he died, et cetera). But at no moment since have I come so close to feeling M’s presence, perceiving it as a sign unto itself. While Sito spoke, I went over the chance nature of the encounter and was even more convinced of the direct intervention of M. Any witness would have said that two old acquaintances ran into each other, but the reality, as usual, turned out to be something less serendipitous and more lasting. A permission had been granted to me, almost a gift, the benefit of which depended on the way it was used. I realized this as Sito’s words followed their course, though I was still listening to him. There were two paths: the straight one of his words and the winding one of M’s intervention, which, despite its twists and turns, kept up with the other. This is why I believe that, whether irrational, fantastic, or serendipitous, the encounter was a sign. M’s presence showed itself to be fleeting and without gradation; one could say that, though perhaps he had always been present; only now, fleeting, did he choose to show himself.