yesterday, when i came home, my computer was still on. there were almost 2,000 unopened e-mails. my answering machine had recorded a few messages. the rest looked as if i had never left.
about two weeks ago, the corporation that owns my building decided that, because the rental leases were dollar denominated, we should pay our rent in US dollars. since our deposits in dollars have long been confiscated by the government, we could hardly comply with the company's demands. we were summarily evicted en masse. end of story. what i'm describing is but one instance of everyday life in buenos aires today. decisions are made on the logic of the absurd, rules change by the minute and 14 upper-middle class families can be evicted at the drop of a hat. and i mention upper-middle class because that is what saved us from permanent eviction. since most of us are professionals, we could immediately resort to consumer advocacy groups, lawyers and friends in more privileged positions. when new government decisions [that will eventually be overruled by other government decisions] addressed the case of dollar-denominated rentals and ordered a 6-month truce between tenants and owners, we could return to our homes more or less unscathed by our ordeal. what would have happened if we had been less prepared to deal with homelessness and uncertainty? where and whom would we have turned to? i shudder at the thought. in the last few weeks, our financial, banking and payment systems have collapsed. no one knows how to charge or pay for a telephone bill. the telephone companies decided that the nearest thing to a compromise solution to the problem of providing a service that they cannot discontinue without a civil war erupting and that they cannot charge for in hard currency is to let people receive calls but not make them. the only messages i found on my machine when i came back were long distance and mobile phone calls. you can't receive the calls that no one can make. i spent the last two weeks with my elderly friend mabel, my guardian angel. we shared our meals. i cooked for her. others weren't so lucky. you see people in the streets these days, an army of stunned people, zombies wandering from place to place, taking refuge in atm vestibules, in churches, in parks. they're the newly homeless. they're wearing givenchy, they're wearing gucci. they have botticelli shoes on. their burberry raincoats are only beginning to show the first signs of wear, of street-sleeping, of exposure to the odors of soup kitchens. in all this surreal state of affairs, i have been more fortunate than the average person. i was kicked out of my house, but no one broke into my apartment while i was away. it wasn't even hard to clean it up. the owners were smart and didn't touch a thing. if they had, they would've been in deep legal trouble. what they expected to gain from all this is beyond me. maybe they thought that each of us had a million dollars tucked under the mattress. maybe they believed that the crowned heads of europe would flock to buenos aires and rent their apartments. maybe they hoped that they would yank the buildings off the ground and export the apartments to cities with a housing deficit. no clue, really. as to my e-mails, i never thought of turning my computer off as i left. so, although i couldn't gain access to my account from outside my house, i can now read the hundreds and hundreds of messages that have accumulated over the past days. so all my money is gone except for US$ 5,000 that i never had time to deposit last december. such a paltry figure. what can it get me? and yet, as the peso devaluates further, 5,000 can buy me food and shelter for maybe four months -- an eternity in a country where one week is the ''long term''. my astral chart is very particular. four planets square each other. astrologers call this phenomenon ''the great cross''. it is supposed to bring exceptional adversity to my life. however, three planets form a perfect equilateral triangle in my chart. this in turn is called ''the great trine''. it is the mark of the truly fortunate person, the cat with nine lives and then some. as i write this, it is pouring rain in buenos aires. i think of those that will never go back home now, the ones that were born with the great cross alone. wally
