At first, and for a long time, M’s father did not understand what had happened when he turned his head to discover that his car was gone. He had just left a small grocery store in the suburbs (at the time he worked as a cookie wholesaler) and was going over the list of clients he still had to call on; he was startled to see nothing at the curb. He thought there had been a mistake, that he had left the car somewhere else, et cetera. He took stock, walked the few paces to the corner, and looked up and down the street. Each scan of the desolate block, however, brought him a little closer to the truth. Then he understood that he had been robbed. He went back into the store, to “let them know,” as he said, though in truth he didn’t know what to say. As he spoke, he felt that there was little, almost nothing, he could do. Then he saw that his world was falling apart and was so mortified that he began to cry. They comforted him at the store; later, as though they were revealing some great secret, they suggested that he report it to the police. In anticipation of his experience years later, they offered him no hope at the police station, so he went back to the office, where they comforted him even more and offered him something to eat. M’s father spoke angrily, but ate without any hurry. When he finished, he took a walk around the neighboring blocks, asking if anyone had seen his car. He was out there for hours, getting answers like, “I don’t know,” “Yes,” and “No.” At one point he gleaned that the people, surprised by the strength of his conviction, were actually answering at random — not with the first thing that came to their minds, but with the most statistically likely answer, the effect of probability; it was a pre-cerebral response. This realization did not lead him to abandon his inquiry, on the contrary, he told himself that if there were an order beyond experience that determined the answers he was getting, it was also likely that this was close to the truth; certainly, the order with which he was now coming into contact had been the one that dictated the moment his car was stolen. Though the light was beginning to dim, the afternoon seemed to him as though it were fading to white. He thought about that evening, about his return home and about going inside with the news, and told himself that he still had plenty of time, getting his hopes back up to continue the search. He had lingered a bit with the client, he conceded; since no one else was coming in, they had spoken for nearly two hours. When he got bored, he looked at his watch and feigned surprise at the time, but he already knew he had wasted half the morning. As he left he thought: I’ve been here two hours and not a soul has come into this poor guy’s shop. Then all of a sudden he became the poor guy, when he realized that he had left the car alone too long. That’s how it happened, M said to me the next day. He was late getting home; everyone was already at the table. “The car was stolen,” he managed to stammer as he crossed the floor toward his room.

M and I were in our third year of high school. The next morning, his father began to walk around the suburbs, swearing that he would not give up until he found it. He would abandon his dedication to the car a few years later, because of his son (in this sense I still remember the father, his figure, under a sign of mystery). M would go out with him some days, and on occasion I would accompany them. We were going out to wander around, according to the mother. Despite the lack of signs — or hope, for that matter — and the discouragement that brought down our spirits, especially those of the father, I still have a clear and, I would almost say, happy memory of those walks. In the first place, the likelihood that the search would succeed was so slight that, far from being a duty, it took on the quality of an adventure, of frivolity: there is nothing better than an unlikely objective to make a task that might appear important seem gratuitous. In the second place, I have never again had that feeling, except in memory, of setting in motion the proliferation of whitewashed houses and perfectly regular blocks that unfolded before us as we walked at a leisurely pace. Even poverty, which can often seem unexpected and overwhelming, as one might imagine, proved to be gradual in that territory. Entire blocks of indecision or timidity, and occasionally of cowardice or bashfulness, regulated any contrasts. As it was, the geography of Buenos Aires could not be thought of in terms of depth, but only of breadth — we had not actually entered into anything in particular, but were rather crossing a surface that lacked any real variation — these were poor areas in which the deterioration was so aligned with its medium that it seemed as though they might never end. Surface and poverty were two complementary echoes coming together to create a concrete reality, each multiplying the effect of the other. In the meantime, it seemed as though we — alert, attentive to the appearance of that blue car — were skirting the outer reaches of a territory, an ever-changing yet boundless country. I would not be exaggerating if I said that, despite the difficulty of the operation, we were able to take note of the balance of things, like that of our heads and our bodies as we moved, which was similar to the undulating line of the horizon discerned by a camel. As we advanced, I went over my doubts about the endeavor: it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, I had said to M, without any originality. Now, however, I had no regrets about joining the committee—“the investigative committee,” as the father would joke; despite the growing concern that overwhelmed him, he was always at the ready to amuse the two of us, who were still boys in his mind. I had no regrets; on the contrary, I wanted more streets to walk down, and was happy to have the chance to wander without boundaries, as though Greater Buenos Aires were truly the territory of vastness.

Sometimes M’s father would plan our routes to coincide with stores where he could solicit orders. M and I would wait outside, hiding from the sun under a tree, silently surprised that not a soul would come down the street. Other times we would go in, and the father would introduce us to the owner in a way that seemed excessive, not so much because his remarks were particularly fawning, but for the profusion of details he used to describe us. Later, the shopkeepers would ask how the search was going. The father would answer reproachfully with an oath I have not been able to recall exactly for some time now, perhaps because of the jarring effect that it produced, swearing that he would wear out all his shoes before he gave up. Almost imperiously, he insisted that we go in with him when he made use of the walks to sign on new clients; our presence was a force that was hard for the owners of these businesses to overcome. They were flattered by the fact that three people were engaged in the effort to sell them a few little things; they were grateful for the service and, caught somewhere between confusion and pretension, ended up buying more than was expected. The father often used the phrase “poor guy,” and on more than one occasion said, “Everyone in Greater Buenos Aires is down on his luck,” usually without noticing my presence as I walked beside him through the vastness like one more of those, according to him, poor guys from the suburbs. When he did notice, too infrequently for my taste, he would improvise some gesture of surprise and excuse himself, patting me on the back. First he would say my name, and then add, “Nothing personal” (the order never changed).

Though we might be inclined to talk about it as something common, it is always startling to see the effect displacement has on the organization of space. Scale and trajectory, the tools necessary to organize a route, depend on movement rather than geography; speed is the determining factor. When one walks, one moves within an environment on a tremendous scale; when one travels by train or car, the environment is reduced to a moderate scale; the airplane, on the other hand, belongs to the small scale. To cross half a continent in a few hours, or to walk on both shores of an ocean in the same day, not only contradicts anyone skeptical of movement, but also means the compression of a seemingly impossible distance. Forced by the theft to walk day after day with a double purpose, M’s father would discover a parallel essence in the suburbs, supplementary to the one he had observed from his car. The deferred realm of the large-scale, paradoxically, individualized the streets and multiplied the businesses. In this way, he experienced — or rather relived, since this is, as I recall, a characteristic of children — a communion with the minor and the microscopic: fleeting moments, brief interruptions, a limited radius; murmurs and exclamations, as well as small businesses, kiosks, garages, and vestibules.