Far

2

As she did every morning, she slammed the garden gate shut, patted her thighs, and started to run.

First, she zigzagged her way through the area of terraced houses where she lived. Then into the part where the large villas were. Each one was a different colour, so nobody got their houses mixed up. Luxurious two-storey villas, with double garages, terraces, balconies, gabled roofs, and dormers; with extensive gardens, with ponds and flower beds; with loungers in dark wood and cast-iron tables and chairs, covered with custom-made cushions for sitting and drinking beers or lemonade in summer. All built nice and far apart.

She carried on through the streets of apartment blocks. The first phase boasted full occupancy. There were gaps in the following blocks, but only a few. The ratio increased into Phase 2, then went down again in Phase 3, with its most recent buildings barely occupied. Phase 4 was filled with unfinished buildings and surrounded by a metal fence. She would not be running in there. She only went into that part when she had to, on special occasions. Not today.

On normal days she would run through the area where, according to the development's plans, there should be a large park with wide paths, gazebos, pergolas, statues, benches, flower beds, fountains, and even a small lake. The paths had been marked out, a few trees planted, the lake dug out, but the rest still had to be imagined. She ran as far as the statue marking the spot where the other entrance to the park should have been, circled the roundabout at the entrance to the development, then back. At that time of the morning, she usually crossed paths with very few of the 236 inhabitants. "Settlers" was what the locals in town called them; at one time they would have been called "outsiders".

That morning she didn't bump into anyone. Anyone who commuted had already left for work. It was the holidays, so the children didn't need to be taken to the school in the local town, and the shops weren't yet open. What other reason could anyone possibly have to leave their homes? Homes built as part of an urban development programme approved in the year 2000, the documents to which were in the hands of a judge investigating real-estate corruption. The entire development was constructed on a pile of poorly concealed sleaze, a chain of bribery, corruption, intimidation, and complicit silences. No ancient manuscripts, no mythical foundations. If these lands had been the scene of some momentous event, back when battles of conquest and reconquest were being fought all over the area, no one had bothered to record it. It was a bleak place, devoid of stories, where it was impossible to satisfy any yearnings for greatness. Although what degree of greatness could anyone begin to aspire to, living in a place called the Residencial Fernando Pacheco?

Fernandos tend to be smug about the name they've been given. This one tacked on his ten-a-penny surname out of smugness about his project. A premature self-satisfaction that was set in stone when he baptised the development.

She had always found it strange when whole towns were named after one person, the way streets are. Don Benito, Pedro Muñoz, Comodoro Rivadavia, or Perito Moreno. At least that last one got the name of a famous explorer. And had a glacier to show for it.

Here, they had three billboards lined up less than a kilometre from the entrance to the development, still advertising apartments for sale. On the middle one, the developer Fernando Pacheco, in a suit and tie, looked out towards the main road. His eyes were bleached white by the sun, but before that he must have been like one of those images of Christ of the Sacred Heart, whose eyes seemed to follow family members around the dining room. Pacheco's outstretched arms pointed to the billboards on either side. The right-hand one depicted a bird's-eye view mock-up of the development. On the left-hand one, a multitude of smiling people, men golfing, kids splashing around in a swimming pool, a mature couple sipping on cocktails while two couples played padel tennis in the background, young families with children strolling through a forest. How could they be so blinkered, seeing only what was on the billboards and not the reality surrounding them? Not even the implausible forest scene snapped them out of their reverie of social ascent.

Most of the colours had faded in the sun. Blue held out, as always. Clever of Pacheco to choose a suit in that colour.

Residencial Fernando Pacheco. Sí, señor. There they were.

The small town was four kilometres away, the capital seventy. On your doorstep, the advertisements proclaimed. Near and far. Bullshit. It was just far. But that didn't matter, did it, if they had practically everything they needed right there?

Every amenity was promised to the development's residents. Daily amenities, such as supermarkets, bakeries, hairdressers, bars and restaurants, a nursery, and a school. And then other amenities that justified the use of the word "luxury" in the advertising: gyms, swimming pools, cinema, an event space, sports centre with tennis and padel courts, and the inevitable golf course, the wet dream of the nouveau riche.

The idea was that it would be a city in the countryside, with straight city streets, city lamp posts, city benches. She recalled the time, a couple of years ago, when a new resident moved into the terraced houses and decided she would put some chairs out on the pavement like the women did in rural villages, to sit and enjoy the fresh air. She set out three. One for herself and two for anyone else who might care to join her. All week, she waited for someone, anyone, to stop and have a bit of a chat with her. She experimented with every variant: she sat in the chair on the right, then the left, then the middle. From this trio of different positions, she greeted any passing neighbours with the anxious look of a busker who has run out of songs. She gave up on putting out the chairs when a neighbour asked her if she was having work done on her garden.

No, this was no village.

That was the one thing they were under no illusion about: the development made no attempt to simulate rural life. No wagon wheels on the roundabouts or farming tools adorning the parks. The parents there were never meant to stick their offspring in front of some rusty piece of equipment and tell them all about how their grandparents, or more likely their great-grandparents, had used it for ploughing, reaping, threshing, winnowing. Activities as obscure to the children as they were to the parents, who would have had to lie outright if asked "What's that thing called?" and call a hoe a plough or a scythe a sickle to prevent some old piece of junk from prematurely stripping them of their omniscient-parent status.

On the development, it had taken them a while to realise that the work had definitively ground to a halt, even though they'd been subjected to the cicadas for several weeks since the giant insect-like buzzing of the machines had ceased. They had to finally accept it the day a van pulled up in front of the unfinished mini mart and two workmen removed the little red car the children liked to sit on, making vroom-vroom noises or getting their parents to do it, since they all knew that dropping a coin into the slot had no effect.

Ashamed, or angry, someone tore down nearly all the posters bearing the images of singers who had performed at the party organised by Fernando Pacheco for the development's official opening. Promising young stars from TV castings, or old has-been music legends. Pure fiesta fodder.

Then, given the inhospitable environment, efforts became focused on the interior, on the decor of the apartments and villas.

And on the "dignification" of the settlement. Swept pavements, manicured gardens. Being dressed properly in the street.

"So, no more going out in your dressing gown to buy bread," said Sergio Morales, the chairman of the residents' association, at one of their meetings, in that jocular tone which often masks inconvenient or ridiculous orders.

"And no leggings." Raquel Gómez, orange villa (i.e. Phase 1) took the opportunity to throw this in casually, but it was clear she was addressing Beatriz Puértolas, Calle Sorolla number 7, apartment 3, second floor, who immediately stopped chewing her gum.

At the time, Beatriz Puértolas had been living on the development for less than a year. She had bought one of the apartments in Phase 2; apartments sold at bargain prices after the economic slowdown and crisis. They were even sold to young twixter couples, strategically distributed throughout the apartment blocks to prevent deterioration. Like in the age of industrialisation when destitute people were allowed to live for a few months in newly built dwellings so that, like human dehumidifiers, they would remove the moisture from the mortar using their own body heat, and the carbon dioxide through their breathing. Then they would be kicked out and in came the real tenants. The twixters ran water through the pipes, ventilated the spaces, scrubbed the floors, heated the walls, while the developers waited for better times to come.

"We can't have the place turning completely chavvy," Raquel Gómez added.

Beatriz Puértolas said nothing at the time, but the chewing gum started moving defiantly again.

She felt ashamed when she remembered that episode; she should have come to Beatriz's defence, as the two of them had a budding friendship, but she had said nothing. She pretended to be busy taking the minutes of the meeting. Her first minutes. She had just been unanimously...