I turned on my back and swam slowly up the pool with my eyes closed. After the exertions of the tennis match, the water was pure relief, and the presence of these naked bodies close to me in the water gave me real pleasure and a sense of expectancy. I had not seen Pablo naked. I waited in the water, ready to turn and look at him when he got out. I swam past him with my eyes closed thinking about his body emerging from the water, his hands on the rails.

I THINK MAYBE the heat explains some of the things which happened next. In December the days became hot and the nights too. It was hard to sleep. Everywhere I went people were sweating and fanning themselves and complaining about the heat. There were several strikes in factories and marches through the city against rising inflation and falling wages. One day I had to meet two Amoco executives at the airport and accompany them into the city. At the bottom of Corrientes a line of strikers stood in front of our limousine and blocked the way. It looked as though they had chosen us as the first to stop because of the size of the car. The two Americans watched silently as long lines of chanting marchers passed. It became hot in the car, which had no air-conditioning. I could feel the anger of the Americans as though they owned the factories on strike, as though their money were at stake here.

“This is not what we came here to see,” one of them said. The driver, luckily, spoke no English. Some of his language about the strikers would have been hard to translate. I almost suggested that we get out and walk and allow the driver to curse these people on his own and deliver the luggage later, but I said nothing. I sat there watching too. No one had ever asked me before to have views on strikes and strikers. I did not know how I felt.

The executives asked me about inflation but I did not tell them that the ticket seller in one of the cinemas near my apartment had asked me if I needed dollars changed; as far as I could make out he offered the best rate. I do not know how or why. He changed my money into local currency and thus I was not affected by inflation. I knew that Jorge’s father was pleased with the levels of disaffection which inflation caused in the city. The government could not last, he said. The longer things went on, the more there would be a need for change.