Leaving Córdoba (2 of 5): Raul

Raul, who looks about sixty and always wears a black knitted ski cap, is without a doubt the smallest of the small businessmen in our neighborhood. Every day except Sunday, directly across the street from the door to our apartment building, Raul sets up his spindly metal table, lays out his wares, and sells to the cars and people passing by.

This corner is a good one for him. Duarte Quiros runs straight from the center of Córdoba, past our shopping mall, and eventually out to the air force bases on the city’s Western outskirts. The intersecting two-lane calle – Rio Negro – takes cars from the south of Córdoba towards one of the city’s main avenues (Colón), its hideous central police station, and to the grounds of one of its better football teams (Belgrano).

Although I’ve never seen him make a sale, Raul says he’s been on this corner for the last twelve years. His business doesn’t seem to have a niche: Today, for instance, the red metal table was arrayed with tubes of flame retardant for fabrics and scrubbers that could’ve been for cars or bathtubs. It was pretty sunny today – nobody expected a 26-degree day in May, let alone three such days in a row – so most of Raul’s merchandise was propped up in the shade against the wall. On either side of his chair, from the door of Rebekah’s pilates studio to the door of the art-framing store, Raul had lined the wall with the following: A number of steering wheel covers (available in red or blue), two rubberized motorcycle cable locks (both blue), four stand-up air pumps for bike tires, ten tubs of a generic-looking pain cream, one large-button calculator, at least five unique wrench sets (both crescent and socket), and one of those beaded car-seat cushions that New York cabbies used to have. There was other stuff too that I can’t remember, but between what was on the table and what was against the wall, Raul couldn’t have had more than 150 products for sale, and he probably wasn’t stocking more than ten of any particular item. One thing I did know: All of it would fit into a single black plastic garbage bag at the end of the day.

Raul used to be a carnicero, a butcher – a not-uncommon profession here in this land of beef. But when he was hit by a car twelve years ago, he had to have a metal bar inserted into his lower right leg, and this left Raul unable to stand for long stretches of time. His career bagging, cutting, weighing, and flinging different cuts of Argentina’s best-loved food was over. Raul left his refrigerated display case in the city center behind, began selling here, and has been on the corner ever since.