Chasing Ghosts In Montevideo
From Uruguay
Sometimes a place draws you out of mystery as opposed to anything it might knowingly offer you. Rio offers color, Paris shimmer, NYC a rush, Dakar the sun. Montevideo hides behind a blankness, cultivating its charm through a position on the map few people have reported back from. In the global world such silence is special––more so than any detailed reportage.
Growing-up, I had a strange fascination with the place, seeing it listed on travel sites under headlines promising it as the bastion of affordable & tolerant liberal society in South America. At the time, I’d never been exposed to anything other than a tolerant & liberal society in which most things were affordable enough, and yet this sounded good. For years and years, this was all I had to go on. Somehow it stuck with me.
As I got older, I roped my best friend into my plot, telling him how this was the year (yes, this one!) that the boys finally moved to Montevideo. He’d entertain this for as long as was polite, which between two adolescents is really any length of time whatsoever, before doing his best to change the subject. I don’t get the sense he had any idea what I was going on about. I only know he never thought I was remotely serious.
II.
And so now crossing over from Buenos Aires aboard the ferry, the journey to Uruguay has taken on a dreamlike quality. Both coasts have disappeared from view beyond the windows, and the speed at which we’re travelling is such that we can’t leave the cabin. Held captive in this way, like eggs in a carton, we wait. As we do, I’ll share a quick note on Far South American cities:
It’s not uncommon for the residents of both Buenos Aires & Montevideo to get out of town during the most punishing summer months––finding spots on the beach (like Punto Del Este) or places farther north to shelter in-place until the heat passes. It goes without saying that this is a habit for those that can afford it; those who can’t, sweat. I’ll add that I’m additionally travelling on a Sunday, when most of the world puts up their closed signs.
This is all to say that as we come down the gang-plank in Montevideo, the city is a ghost town. There are more signs of humanity in the faded street art above the closed storefronts than any carrying on beneath it, and walking it takes me more than twenty minutes before I encounter my first soul. He’s a homeless man splayed out on the sidewalk in clothing so frayed it’s become guaze-like. He isn’t moving and with his beard and bronzed skin, looks like a housepainter who’s fallen and hasn’t been noticed. I pick around him, stealing glances, and as I do the thought suddenly occurs. What if he begins to scream? All around, the quiet buildings lead away down streets bathed in white light. One can only assume (and one does) that this quiet extends to encompass the whole of the city. If he were to start screaming, in this silence, how would I handle it?
I walk a little faster, inwards, or what I believe is inwards towards the heart of things. As I go, the passing side-streets lead my attention down corridors of stucco where lone facades stand, backed only by other facades that seem to have no more depth than Hollywood sets.
III
Eventually the city opens out onto the Plaza Independencia, a chess set of green bushes, deep shadow, and park benches. The businesses at the bases of the heroic buildings facing in towards the central statue of General José Artigas have seen better days. A man, speaking English approaches me. We’re the only two souls on the square––perhaps the most famous in the entire country. He has his hand-out and is smiling. No way, not today, I think. I haven’t stopped walking since leaving the ship, and I dont stop now. Dodging him, I’m already passing into the next street where I do, finally, have to stop. Or at the very least slow down. For craning my neck upwards, there it is. The Palacio Salvo.
It’s magnificent, and so I give it about 5 seconds. I’ve sighted the first signs of people up ahead, and I’m desparately eager right now for the company of a crowd. I take a backwards glance at the thing, and then another. This building in those talks with my friend a decade earlier somehow represented that thing (liberal democracy, youthful ideals, hope, etc.)––the idea that through a city one could find somehow distilled a direction in life. And though I’ve largely outgrown this particular brand of wishful thinking, it is one I continually have to beat back the brush on. I know myself that well at least.
In Centro, I’ve rejoined humanity. There’s a street fair going on and as I walk, I’ve stepped into a Calvino story. There are women selling goldfish in bowls stacked on nerve-wracking displays that climb 2 meters into the air. There is noise, strange flavors, and once again, color. The side-streets that once beckoned me towards an early doom, now only harbor wall art and the appearance of upkeep.
IV
I keep walking, and as I walk and get lost, I fall more and more in love with the streets I negotiate. Trees appear with broad sun-speckled leaves, stirring in the limp summer air. I find a colorful, concrete building and venture inside. It’s the National Museum of Art, tucked away on a side-street behind a hill. It’s about the size of a high school gymanesium and this approachable area leaves me with enough mental energy to look at every canvas. It’s a stronger showing than most American cities can boast.
I recognize the style of one painter I’ve seen before in Buenos Aires––Guillermo Kuitca––whose previous canvas (Tres Noches, 1986) I’d sat in front of at MALBA long enough to feel the gallery attendent’s concerned looks on my back.
He’s here now too. Exhibiting in two capitals and still alive to boot, (in his 60’s). Good for him. He’s shown alongside Uruguayan nationals like Viale, Bidart, and Cohen.
Outside I call my friend, the one I’ve mentioned. I’m in Montevideo! I tell him, saving this up behind a big breath. This garners almost no response whatsoever (as expected). With that out of the way, we have a good chat, and then he has something to do in New York and we hang-up. New York, I think. Over 5,300 miles away. It’s amazing our words can coordinate over all of that atmosphere. Thinking about NY from the shadow of this cement bunker with its collection of unknown Uruguyan painters, reveals a sense of distance I’ve not yet known in life. This is what astronauts must feel in orbit, I believe. And when you’re this removed from all familiarity it’s easy for the sense of unreality to take over, for that question of what am I doing here to blot out any reason you might have drummed-up for your travelling in the first place. Travel, I’ve found in this way, if anything gives you permission to go home again. And nothing creates a greater homing instinct than the voice of a friend heard from over 5,300 miles distance.
Following the course of the hill, I make my way towards lower ground and the ocean. A crescent of white sand, running off to merge with a sun-white ocean. There is always some triumph in arriving at a beach. I’d show it to you, but I’ve run out of film at this point. I only brought 6 film exposures to Montevideo. 6. This degree of preparation sets-up perhaps what I’m about to tell you:
I’ve eluded to the heat of the day and I’ll clarify this now by saying its been over 100 degrees. I’ve been walking without water, in a labrynth of white walls and humid air. It’s inherently not a hugely dangerous situation, and yet given I’m in a foreign place with very little phone battery and even less Spanish, is fast becoming one. My access to complex thought is fraying. I’m dehydrated, I think, before the realization comes apart over the white sand at my feet. Then the wordless, animal urge is arriving, the thing that protected us before language. Find water, find shade.
VI
I find in my sightline a restaurant on the far shoulder of the bay––hunkered down next to the water. It looks cool and I take myself there. A small painted staircase leads down to a covered patio and tiled veranda below, from which there’s a bar and view of the city across the water. As always happens when you’re out of your mind (I find this most frequently in hospitals) the staff are intimidatingly attractive. I’m a slobbering mess by comparison. I ask first in English, and then in a relatively-fluent Spanish I don’t quite recognize if they have a glass of water. Then, after a pause, maybe several glasses. Looking at me, the waitress is a mix of annoyance and genuine concern. I pick a far table in the shade at the back of the patio and slowly, one by one, down my beverages. Liquid spills over my chin, and I blot-out a small mountain of napkins. I begin to realize, slowly, that I can no longer hear my heartbeat in my ears. That the unspoken sense of dread that had been chasing me down is beginning to lift. The calmness of the patio before me reveals itself, and sitting there, slightly stupid, slightly stunned, I watch the minute stagecraft of local greetings & goodbyes play out as the afternoon pushes on.
“Would you like to order something else,” The waitress finally asks, having picked her way to my table in back. She’s skipped the polite attempt to engage my kindergarten Spanish. I order the steak special as I can see it written on the chalk sign-board in the entryway and then as she get’s away, ask after her, “The steak––is big, yes?”
“Yes.”
VII
The steak is big and the steak is good. They’ve scraped some green garnish over the surface and the dish comes with nothing else on the plate. I’ve accrued maybe my 6th water now, and a little less mad, have become the model standard for the foreigner eating alone in a restaurant.
At this point there’s not much else to report. I finish my meal, and decide, that’s enough for the day. The white city across the water has gone gray with the afternoon heat and ultimately doesn’t beckon me back. I’m comfortable where I am, I think. I call my dad, feeling somehow the need to connect with someone stable. While I’m swinging around the world, he’s calmly anchored off the coast of Southern California, a sort of counter-balance to my free-wheeling orbit. We talk for about two hours, I think about music (I’m reading a book on Paul Simon) and other things. Then we hang-up and I sit in the quiet some more. It’s probably 5 or 6 by now and the patio is starting to fill-up with locals calling for drinks––groups of guys, groups of girls, and larger groups where the two have merged. I watch them, knowing I have no capacity, or even desire to join their easy good-times. These are there lives, Montevideo is their city, and I like a ghost exist only in my ability to witness.
It’s too early to leave, and yet I figure I’ll still probably get home past midnight. I start looking at the ferry schedule, then hail a cab and have it take me to the terminal.
VII
In reverse, the journey which has taken me most of the day on foot flies by in under 10 minutes. Watching the coast out the window, I think, maybe there is something here, and that between my heat stroke and broken Spanish I couldn’t detect it until now. The blank spot on the map may require a bit of time to reveal the color buried beneath its surface. This something––a feeling only, maybe––is slipping in quietly with sunset as the beach through the window turns purple with the dying day. Yes, I’m only getting a sense of it now. But then already it’s over. Again, I’m infront of the gang-plank and this time boarding the boat, going up, and for good I somehow sense. I doubt I’ll be back to Montevideo. I’ve seen it, and for some places that’s enough––this tolerant & affordable society doesn’t call for me to know it better. Instead, it draws back behind its secrecy, having shown me only a small signs of a deeper pattern. A goldfish in a fishbowl, a network of white citadels beneath ghoulish heat, a beach leading off into open ocean and nowhere beyond. And so, in the course of a day, the revelation I’d hunted for my entire life is gone. Montevideo, once again, evades me.
D.C. 2/04/24
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