Books | Advancement of Vito Baez’s Memories: “As a Child I Knew the Smell of Death”



Chapter one

As a child, I knew the smell of death. No child is prepared for the smell of death. It has a very special scent. Withered Flowers for Confinement Every Saturday at noon for several years my father would take me to face my mother’s tombstone. I was in the El Salvador cemetery. We crossed a Doric colonnaded front through a wide covered passage, up to the staircase that descended into the central street. Hand in hand we walked several endless blocks. Then we turned to the right until we found a staircase that went into the depths of this maze of corpses.

My mother was never a dream. An imaginary idea or ghost. My father religiously bought dozens of red or white carnations at the flower stalls that used to be on Ovidio Lagos Street, in front of the cemetery. The first thing he taught me was the ritual of those meetings. After passing through the underground passages during a few minutes of walking in silence, we reach the grave of the dead woman. There were five hundred-meter rows on which the tombstones were arranged. one on top of the other.

We were lucky. I was in the second row starting from the bottom. I could look my mother’s portrait straight into my eyes. Others were forced to bend over or use available ladders to meet their dead. Then my father kisses my mother’s photo with his hand as a greeting. Then he told me to do the same. We removed the old flowers that caused their dying nectar.

Sometimes they weren’t the people we left last time. Someone else visited the grave. My father’s silence is still with me. Those looks. Then the flowers. These flowers will only live for a few hours after being placed in a tin container. They only knew shelter from the cold, dampness and shade. All those flowers knew they had reached their final hours when those icy channels cut through the sun crossed. Some record of suffering I always assumed they had. Everything carries with it the virtue of obsessions.

Then I throw the dead flowers into the basket. And the cleaning protocol has begun. First a picture of my mother. It was in a metal frame attached to white marble with gray veins. Then you clean the brass plate where the epitaph reads: “Your husband and son, who will always love you.” First, every millimeter of the tombstone was cleaned very meticulously with a piece of cloth that we brought in a small bag. The rag was thrown into the basket along with the paper in which the fresh flowers doomed to die were wrapped. Then pray.

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My father seemed absent from this rumination. Me too. That’s it. I felt like this was not the place. Maximum annoyance. We made our way back. We got into a taxi and went back to the house on Balcarce Street. My father locked himself in his room until lunch. I don’t remember what happened in those long minutes until we sat down at the table. Children and flowers are not ready to die.

Balcarce Street, 681. Bet Bays. It was located just a hundred meters from the emblematic Boulevard Oronio. Plot 6.91 x 13.92. The traditional chorizo ​​house. A category used to define houses with successive rooms, one behind the other, on the dividing wall, as in the first decades of the nineteenth century. According to the cadastral data of the municipality of Rosario, building permit No. 56 from 1926. Let’s take a tour of the neighborhood. I suggest a long sequence shot, with a steadicam In the hands of a friendly photographer or a remote control drone that can go up and down at will.

audio story

I lived my childhood and adulthood in the Macrocentro neighborhood of Rosario. There, in front of my house, was the Scarafia Conservatory. On the left side, in an old house, lives my neighbor, Maria Elena Falcone, with her husband and teenage son. Pregnancy of a sassy woman from the fields of Eastern Europe. The owner of the stall she served through the window of her house on Santa Fe Boulevard, a loving woman, a supposed aunt. Crossing Balcarce towards Boulevard Oroño, located at the corner of Balcarce and Santa Fe, the restaurant, bar, café, pizzeria Grand Prix. My Rosario Cafeteria. “When I was a child I looked at you from the outside like those things never reached, the cream on the glass the cold blue that only came later, I live just like mine.” Enrique Santos Discépolo knew how to name endearing places with precision and emotion. So cafeteria in Buenos Aires. So my jackpot.

Crossing Santa Fe to the south, via Balcarce, was the stop of Bus 200. On those vans he went to elementary school almost every day. In the morning, to the workshop to learn blacksmithing, model aircraft, and carpentry, and in the afternoon to the school shift. Not counting the chilly winter mornings, go to PE lessons when the deadly humidity slipped between a pair of long underwear and gym shorts, and train early to withstand the Rosario cold.

Crossing the sidewalk, in Santa Fe, in front of Maria Elena’s booth, was an ordinary 2. School for future women and teens 18 cents in bloom. With their gray pleated skirts, white knee-highs, black boots, and white shirts freshly ironed for spring. The obligatory gray tunic in winter, her blue jackets and her hair tied up. The joy of my youthful dreams.

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Next to it was the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Political Sciences of the National University of the Coast. They will see the characteristic style of French neoclassicism. There are bat caves nesting and kinotera palm trees that have reached into the sky.

Final destination: Plaza San Martin. Note that it occupies the entire block in Santa Fe, Moreno, Cordoba, and Dorego. square full.

On the right, when crossing Santa Fe, you will see, and still imposing, the Police Headquarters. A dark secret center of torture and enforced disappearance during the last military dictatorship. On Ele with Moreno Street, the square adjoined the Museum of Natural Sciences. Also a cradle for bats and baby scouts who walk the eaves. On the corner of Moreno and Córdoba, across the street, was the Second Army Corps. A few meters away from the same sidewalk of Cordoba Street was the CGT. In front of the Faculty of Law. Besides him, he almost reached Balcarce, the wrought-iron doors created at the exit from Normal 2 were like two giants: weapons, law, education, science, music, children’s entertainment, and politics were very close. Let’s double down with Balcarce.

There, in that two-story building, the Gallardo family lived. Fabian, one of his sons, would be one of my early teen buddies. The Boglioli family lived in that other building. On that third floor, he would spend many hours around a table playing poker, and listening to progressive rock. Next door, almost to the corner of Santa Fe Street, is another building in which extreme violence will take place.

From this sidewalk, which I do, you can only see the side wall of Normal 2. Let’s salute the hand-waving girls from the classroom. Round about the same sidewalk, on Santa Fe Street, lived that handsome slacker, lively-hearted and enlightening artist, named Fernando Piedrabuena, who was to accompany me for most of this journey.

Let’s cross Santa Fe’s house. Maria Elena again, and next to him, again my home. Opposite, next to the Grand Prix, are two very old houses similar to mine. They were buildings where the rooms were arranged around a large courtyard. There were old women running their properties as temporary pensions. Next to it is the already mentioned and beloved Scarafía Conservatory. On the corner of San Lorenzo Street another one-story building was erected, in which lived a family with whom we had no other treatment than a friendly greeting among the neighbours.

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His daughters were older than me. Two wonderful teens have always caught my attention. Long-haired, fluffy, gorgeous. Along the road from my house, to the right, separated by a dividing wall, lived Dr. Costa and his wife, whose name was Bononi. They had fourteen children. A very reserved family also accompanied my life in the neighborhood in my early years. Continuing on the same path, in a one-story building, the facade of which was made of gray stone with small inlays of brightly colored pebbles, lived the family of Dr. Caviglia. A man in his sixties, very handsome. He came every weekend to have fun with the pais. There in front of you, past the pan on the right, like a travel In front, you can see a garage, and next to it is the home of Dr. Cochero, a respected lawyer who lived with his wife and two children.

Across San Lorenzo Street was Pochi’s Store. Anything you want to get in the edibles was there. Deluxe store. A few feet away, blue-fronted Japanese dry cleaners, then some old houses that border El Peñón Bakery. There he would buy several blackcakes and monks balls to accompany his high school homework before noon, after physical education lessons. Nothing like a dozen of these delicacies accompanied by a cold Coca-Cola to get you through the morning.

Back on the corner of Balcarce and San Lorenzo, in front of Pochi, was El Pampa Tavern. A shady restaurant with a long tradition in the neighborhood. Along the same path going up San Lorenzo towards Moreno was my favorite shop. Run by two single sisters who are fifty years old. The mare climbed two steps and entered a general store in the old town. Large counter above two giant dark wood refrigerators, with cold cuts and dairy products. Machine for slicing sausages, cheese and scales.

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In the back, a pantry full of food products moved from one side of the bowling alley to the other. Through a curtain made of colored plastic threads, you can see the shabby living room, where these two sisters spent most of their days. One, with short hair and glasses, skinny and pizzeretta. the other, a robust woman, with dark brown hair cut at the neck, always in a strict green apron and with a drier character. To the right, two more fridges for drinks, and always the loving smiles of the two, who before they left, after noting all I had bought in the family book, gave me some sweets so that I might come home happy.

That’s how it happened.

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