The smaller the city the greater the possibility of co-incidence.
Montevideo may not be the smallest of cities, but it’s small enough. Ana’s neighbour, on the landing across the way from her flat, is a man called Leo Masliah. A couple of years ago, in London, John Rattagan put on a playful CD of his favourite Uruguayan musician. Whose name was Leo Masliah. From behind whose front door I occasionally now hear a piano playing, and who hurries past me on the stairs.
The part of the city I’m staying in is not somewhere I used to know all that well. It’s a street called Jackson, on the edge of Pocitos, the barrio where Helena lived. Her first home was in Luis Franzini, where I spent a year sending hundreds of blue aerogrammes. That’s a fifteen minute walk away, and I inadvertently ended up there on my first morning, whilst looking for the feria at Villa Biaritz. (I bought a Uruguayan hat.) Her parents then moved to Cardona, (next to the Jewish school where I will later go to give a class on The Boat People), about twenty minutes away. That’s where I used to stay when I visited. Now I’m informed they’ve moved again, and are nearby. It was only last night, when Anibal pointed out their house, that I realised how near. They’re two blocks up from here, on the same street, a minute’s walk away. I recognised their cars and now the street is rendered by this co-incidence into a different street altogether.
Today I called my friend Jorge and he asked me where I’m staying. It turns out that he’s working on the same street. About a minute and a half away.
Living in London, reading books from another time or place, you feel as though more than one co-incidence in a day or a text is excessive. When the truth is that in most places, people are haunted by the insistence of co-incidence. Our big-city lives are the exception, not the rule.
Montevideo may not be the smallest of cities, but it’s small enough. Ana’s neighbour, on the landing across the way from her flat, is a man called Leo Masliah. A couple of years ago, in London, John Rattagan put on a playful CD of his favourite Uruguayan musician. Whose name was Leo Masliah. From behind whose front door I occasionally now hear a piano playing, and who hurries past me on the stairs.
The part of the city I’m staying in is not somewhere I used to know all that well. It’s a street called Jackson, on the edge of Pocitos, the barrio where Helena lived. Her first home was in Luis Franzini, where I spent a year sending hundreds of blue aerogrammes. That’s a fifteen minute walk away, and I inadvertently ended up there on my first morning, whilst looking for the feria at Villa Biaritz. (I bought a Uruguayan hat.) Her parents then moved to Cardona, (next to the Jewish school where I will later go to give a class on The Boat People), about twenty minutes away. That’s where I used to stay when I visited. Now I’m informed they’ve moved again, and are nearby. It was only last night, when Anibal pointed out their house, that I realised how near. They’re two blocks up from here, on the same street, a minute’s walk away. I recognised their cars and now the street is rendered by this co-incidence into a different street altogether.
Today I called my friend Jorge and he asked me where I’m staying. It turns out that he’s working on the same street. About a minute and a half away.
Living in London, reading books from another time or place, you feel as though more than one co-incidence in a day or a text is excessive. When the truth is that in most places, people are haunted by the insistence of co-incidence. Our big-city lives are the exception, not the rule.
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