Nestor

Wednesday was a peculiar day. It was the day the National Census was carried out, so we all had the day off, provided we stayed at home all day waiting for the 'censista' to turn up. In order to ensure that everyone was in the right mental shape for the exertions, all bars and restaurants were shut at midnight on Tuesday. However, one or two bars worked out a cunning way of getting around this problem by holding private parties - it was illegal for a bar to be open, but there's no problem if it's a private party in somebody's 'house'. So that's where I was until 5 or 6 am on Wednesday. It felt like a Friday night, although it was a Tuesday.

I had set the next day aside for cooking and cleaning, but naturally woke up in the afternoon. What actually woke me was a call from a colleague informing me that Nestor had died. It is hard to accurately describe the thoughts that rushed colliding into my head at that precise moment. It felt like the suspension of reality, mixed with the coincidence that everybody in the city was at home to grieve in silence. My censista turned up shortly afterward to take my details. A sample of the questions: "Do you own a fridge? A laptop? A cellphone? A landline? Can you read and write?", in that order. The Census was also declared to be 'obligatory' but 'anonymous'; how any process can actually be both is beyond me.

After responding these questions, I went to the park to meet my friend Trevor, his girlfriend and their dog. I have never seen a space so devoid of mourners. Not one in sight. Nobody was wearing black; a lot of people were wearing barely anything at all. Music, sun, alcohol, dancing... Reality was clearly still suspended. And then I returned home, switched on the tv: the Casa Rosada, silent, deserted, and the only people walking in the Plaza de Mayo are Brazilian and/or Japanese tourists who haven't read or understood the news or participated in the Census and are bemused by the lack of people in the central square in a busy capital city. This changed, of course, over time, as people returned to the streets. But nothing was open until 8 pm, so that was when the mourning began in earnest.

The President declared three days of mourning; what that means is apparently not a national holiday until Monday, as we believed at first, but flags at half-mast and a lot of wearing black. Latin American heads of state have been rolling in over the last 24 hours. The talk in the streets and in the office is about what she will do next, whether she is strong enough politically or emotionally to run again in the elections next year, or whether it's time to step down and let somebody else take control. The next few weeks will be crucial in terms of defining her decision. Vultures/sharks are circling, depending on where one is standing. Regardless of personal opinions about the man himself, it is clear that, in the last decade, he has changed Argentina forever, and it is possible that in dying he has done exactly the same thing again. We shall see.

Palermo last night was full of life. I met up with a friend in a bar to watch part of the World Series, a sport I do not understand. In the packed bar, there was not one Argentine in sight. I wonder how many of them in there knew what was going on in the outside world. For them at least, reality was and is still suspended.