Too long ago to remember the exact year, but surely in the past century, I was young and traveling.
Buenos Aires was exciting and bursting with so many corners and discoveries, tastes and lengths that the few days available foretold the impossibility of experiencing it all but not of trying. While making the effort to hug the city whole I’ve found myself in a bar one night, the first night I’ve mixed tequila and beer, just to top it off with a slice of anchovies pizza, offered to me by new friends, while we talked in a drunkenmishmash of languages as one does when staying in hostels.
The next morning came at noon when I woke up to the realization that my full day would be in bed, waiting for my liver to recover. While trying to fight the boredom in a world without internet I’ve resorted to things that could be observed without the absurd effort of getting up, let alone walking.
My wallet.
A museum ticket.
Some pesos.
A 10 Brazilian reals bill.
The bill was new crispy clear, covered in hundreds of thin dark red lines labyrinth like. Arms stretched kept the note in sight while my eyes crossed its design for hours, trying to escape my boredom until there was nothing but red lines, that’s when I saw it, clear as my conviction to never eat anchovies again, an easter egg, hidden words written with opposing lines.
The discovery granted my body the power to walk again and it hurried to find a pencil, back to my bed I started to draw frontiers among the lines, the difference was easy to follow – all lines went along a certain angle, wherever they changed direction I marked a point and then connected those points, a letter appeared, then another, and a word.
I was happy yet underwhelmed since the word LSA marked on paper could make up a possible acronym but nothing else, the word repeated itself five times LSA, LSA, LSA , LSA , LSA along the bill, I was content with myself, it was a “nice” thing to have found out albeit meaningless.
My brain was starting to make plans for the delayed breakfast when suddenly I saw that the pattern kept going into a busier part of the drawing, despite hidden I could make out the bottom and top of two more letters, an F and an A, now this, this was something
FALSA
or for the ones that don’t know Portuguese: fake; I sat there for some time thinking about who pulled it off, who managed to print fake in all 10 real bills in Brazil, and then came breakfast, the night and a roll call of things to be unveiled and new mistakes to be made.