Contemporary Latin American Literature
EDITOR
Charles Newman
MANAGING EDITOR
William A. Henkin
AR T DIRECTOR
Lawrence Levy
ASSOCIATES
Valerie Nelson Suzanne Kurman
Mary Kinzie Dan Conrad
Donald Chalfant
Chris Robinson
CIRCULATION
Terry Kearney Janet Bailey Barbara Urbanczyk Jeanne Sagstetter
TriQuarterly is a national journal of arts, letters and opinion,' published in the fall, winter and spring at
Evanston, Illinois. Sub scription rates: $5.00 yearly within the United States; $5.25 Canada and Mexico; $5.75 Foreign. Single copies will be sold for $1.95. Contributions, correspondence and SUbscriptions should be ad dressed to TriQuarterly. University Hall 101, North western University, Evanston, Illinois. Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome, but will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed stamped envelope. All manuscript accepted for publication Northwestern University,
becomes the property of the editors, unless other wise indicated. Copyright © 1969 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. The views ex pressed in this magazine are to be attributed to the writers, not the editors or sponsors. NATIONAL B.
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Editors' note to
announce
The editors of TriQuarterIy are pleased
Jose Donoso as guest co-editor of this issue. Sr. Donoso,
winner of numerous literary awards, is from Santiago, Chile. Two of his
books, Coronation and This Sunday, have been published in the United States. He currently resides in Spain with his wife and daughter. The editors wish to express their appreciation to the Center for Inter American Relations, New York, for its great cooperation in preparing
this issue; also to the National Translation Center, Austin, Texas, for
securing a number of the translations used herein; to the translators and editors who have given freely of their time and knowledge; and to Zegri
Gallery, Galeria Bonino, and the Museum of Modem Art in New York for supplying the artwork used in the issue. The photographs on pages 148, 203, 208, 245, 331, 333, 354-355, 450-451 and 487 are of the TSE Theater Group. TSE was started in 1966 by a group of young, independent artists (sculptors, poets, musicians
and dancers) at the Centro Audio-Visual of the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The group has performed in different
parts of Latin America, and premiered in New York in December, 1968, at the Hunter College Playhouse under the auspices of the Center for Inter
American Relations. The group is directed by Alfredo Rodriguez Arias;
members include Jorge Centofanti, Juan Stoppani, Marucha Bo, Zobeida
Jaua, Facundo Bo, and Roberto Plate.
TriQuarterly 15, the issue following this, will include a special sec tion of Latin American literature. This section will include some of the work the editors regret could not appear in this issue. Among the authors whose work will be
represented are: Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortazar,
Cabrera Infante, Jose Lezema Lima, and Ricardo Paseyro.
Commentary OCTAVIO PAZ
A literature of foundations
translated by Lysander Kemp 7 RODRIGUEZ MONEGAL
The new Latin American novelists 13
FABIO LUCAS
Cultural aspects of Brazilian literature translated by Alexandrino Severino 33
CLAYTON ESHLEMAN
Translating Cesar Vallejo an evolution 55 Fiction
ERNESTO SABATO
Report on the blind: part III from Sobre heroes y tumbas translated by Stuart M. Gross 95
GUSTAVO SAINZ
Selfportrait with friends translated by John Cameron Murchison 117
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Chapter one from The green house translated by Gregory Rabassa 152
JUAN JOSE ARREOLA
The switchman translated by Ben Belitt 185
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
Tuesday siesta translated by J. S. Bernstein 209
JORGE LUIS BORGES
The intruder translated by Ronald Christ and Paschal Cantatore 224
BASILIA PAPASTAMATIU
The shared thoughts, free prose, of Basilia
Papastamatiu translated by Ronald Christ 255 DALTON TREVISAN
Two stories translated by Gregory Rabassa Good evening, sir 292
The elephant's graveyard 295 JOSE DONOSO
Paseo translated by Lorraine O'Grady Freeman 307
NELIDA PINON
Brief flower translated by Gregory Rabassa 341
JUAN JOSE HERNANDEZ
The favorite translated by John Cameron Murchison 356
VINCENTE LENERO
The perfect adventure translated by Margaret S. Peden 367
MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS
from Strong wind translated by Gregory Rabassa 393
JORGE EDWARDS
Family orders translated by John Cameron Murchison 413
CARLOS MARTINEZ MORENO
The siren translated by John Cameron Murchison 452
LEOPOLD TORRE-NILSSON
He who howls translated by Agnes Money 489
Poetry CESAR VALLEJO
Six poems translated by Clayton Eshleman "It was Sunday
" ...
84
"The point of the man
" ...
85 "
"But before all this lady runs out
"Today I like life much less "The windows
" ...
...
"
86
87
...
88
"The one who will come
" ...
91
Three poems translated by Stephen Berg "Between pain and pleasure
" ...
92
The soul that suffered being its body 92 "At best I'm somebody else JAVIER HERAUD
94
Six poems translated by Paul Blackburn
The poem 106 Some things 112 OCTAVIO PAZ
" ...
At home 111
Only 112
The river 113
Epilogue 115
Altar of the sun translated by Stephen Berg 167
CARLOS GERMAN BELLI
20 poems from 0 hada cibernetica!
translated by Clayton Eshleman 216 PABLO NERUDA
It was the grape's autumn
translated by Robert Bly and lames Wright 297
They receive instructions against Chile translated by Robert Bly and lames Wright 298 Hunger in the south translated by Malcolm I. Parr 298 Murderer's sleep
translated by Malcolm I. Parr 298
Ode to broken things translated by Malcolm I. Parr 300
from Lautreamont regained translated by Ben Belitt 302
Opium in the East translated by Ben Belitt 304 Religion in the East translated by Ben Belitt 306 ENRIQUE LIHN
Mud translated by William Witherup
and Serge Echeverria 349 The dark room translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria 350
Jonah translated by Miller Williams 352
Coliseum translated by Miller Williams 353 You are perfectly monstrous in your silence
translated by William
Wltherup
and Serge Echeverria 354 Market place translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria 355 JORGE LUIS BORGES
To a coin
translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni 362
Raphael Cansinos-Assens translated by John Hollander 363
Emanuel Swedenborg translated by Richard Howard and Cesar Rennert 363
Someone translated by W. S. Merwin 364 A soldier under Lee (1862)
translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni 365 The sea translated by John Updike 365 To a Saxon poet translated by Alastair Reid 366
Edgar Allan Poe translated by Richard Howard and Cesar Rennert 366 NICANOR PARRA
Three poems translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria A man 407
CARLOS CASTRO SAAVEDRA
To the chicken guts 406
Unpublished artifacts 408
Two poems translated by Ameen Alwan
The insides of horses 409 RAFAEL PINEDA
Cluster of children 411
Four poems translated by Ben Belitt
Chicha talking it up 435
1926436
The commission 438 For Maricastana, with a spray of immortelle 440 ENRIQUE MOLINA
Three poems translated by John Upton Old ferret 443
Renegade 443
"What trade can suit me?" 444 MARCOANTONIOMONTESDEOCA
Three poems translated by John Upton With fixed bayonet 445
Assumption of the triple image 446 JOSE EMILIO PACHECO
Nameless 448
Two poems translated by Agnes Money
from The fire waned 480 An investigation of the bat 486 MARGARET RANDALL
An anthology of Cuban poetry 135
ELISEO DmGO
translated by Elinor Randall
Song of lost paradise 137 JOSE LEZEMA LIMA
Calm 137
translated by Elinor Randall Boredom of the second day 138 Now has no weight 139
The cords 140
ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR
The other 140
translated by Tim Reynolds
From the Vedado, a Cuban writes to a decidedly
FAYID JAMIS
European friend 141 translated by Tim Reynolds
I hear my name 141
Auschwitz was not the garden of my childhood 142 HERBERTO PADILLA
translated by Elinor Randall
Giron Beach 143 PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ
Anne Frank 144
translated by Margaret Randall
from Barracks and nets 145 MIGUEL BARNET
translated by Margaret Randall Errata 151
The absent friend 150 MAUREEN AHERN MAURER
An anthology of Peruvian poetry 193
ANTONIO CISNEROS
Question of time translated by David Tipton 197 Loneliness II translated by Maureen Ahern Maurer 198
Tupac Amaru relegated translated by David Tipton 199 After the battle of Ayacucho: a mother's
testimony translated by David Tipton 200 WASHINGTON DELGADO
translated by Maureen Ahern Maurer and
Life explains and death spies out 201
David Tipton
Plurality of worlds 202 JULIO ORTEGA
translated by David Tipton
Report for Isolda 204 CESAR CALVO
translated by David Tipton
JUAN GONZALO ROSE
translated by David Tipton
From the liturgy 207 PATRICK MORGAN
The poet's room 206
The beak of the dove 208
An anthology of Argentine poetry translated by Patrick Morgan 229
HORACIO SALAS
Those who are alone 233
CARLOS J. MONETA
Picture girl 235
Friends 234
The emperor of rain 236
The struggle of poets 236 ARMANDO TEJADA GOMEZ
Eternity 237
The wind and the weathercock 238
The fish dies by the mouth 239 MIGUEL GRINBERG
Americania 240
LEOPOLDO MARECHAL
To Elbialove unsung 242
MAXIMO SIMPSON
Michel246
EDGAR BAYLEY
Of men and years 249
JUAN GELMAN
-theory re daniella rocca 251
MIGUEL ANGEL BUSTOS
from Fragments 252
RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER
Nine Paraguayan poets
Melancholy hotel 247
translated by John Upton 278
ESTEBAN CABANAS
"The wind vacated" 280
RAMIRO DOMINGUEZ
"Flour from lifeless roots" 281
RENE DAVALOS
All on meeting you 282
JOSE.LUIS APPLEYARD
Colophon 283
FRANCISCO PEREZ MARICEVICH
Still
RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER
Sea bed 286
Fragment 281
There is a place 284 Poem 8 286
(fragment) 285
JOSE MARIA GOMEZ-SANJURJO
Awakening 287 "If the breeze today" 289 288 "I cannot find
ADOLFO FERREIRO
Early morning memory 289
ROQUE VALLEJOS
"9" 291
MARGARET RANDALL
An anthology of Mexican poetry 325
OCTAVIO PAZ
translated by Tim Reynolds
"
...
"7" 291
Nocturno 329
The written word 328 The return 330 ISABEL FRAIRE
Masquerade 290
Lightning, in repose 332
translated by Tim Reynolds The dunes 332
JOAQUIN SANCHEZ MACGREGOR
translated by Elinor Randall Fallout shelter 334
HOMERO ARIDJIS
Polar ice 334
translated by Elinor Randall "I love your confusion
" ...
335
"Night dies on a crushed apple SERGIO MONDRAGON
" ...
335
translated by Elinor Randall
Urns, flies and locusts 336 In July and in Hebrew 337 JUAN BANUELOS
translated by Elinor Randall
Chapters from EI habitante amoroso 338 ALFONSO CALDERON
An anthology of Chilean poetry
translated by Margaret S. Peden Thus it is-if you think it is 375
translated by John Upton EFRAIN BARQUERO
Legacy of honey 378
ALBERTO RUBIO
Winter 380
GONZALO ROJAS
To silence 381
GONZALO MILLAN
And I keep singing you like a bad popular song 383
The house 379
XXI 380
Grandmother 381 Coal 382
Clinical bulletin 383 OSCAR HAHN
Vision of Hiroshima 384
The living man 385
JORGE TEILLIER
The lost dominions 386
Leave-taking 388
MIGUEL ARTECHE
The cafe 389
HERNAN VALDES
While 391
Rain 390
I am as poor as a mouse
o King Achilles 392
...
392
A literature of foundations OCTAVIO PAZ
GONZALES-TORNERO. PORTRAIT GALLERY. 1965. ETCHING. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN
AFH. NEW YORK.
Is there such a thing as Spanish American literature? Since the end of the last century it has been said that our letters are a branch from the Spanish trunk. Nothing is more true, if we are speaking only
language. Mexicans, Argentines, Cubans, Chileans-all of us Spanish Americans write in Spanish. Essentially our language is no different from that which is written in Andalusia, Castile, Aragon, or Estremadura. It is well known that there is greater linguistic unity in the Americas than in Spain. It could not be otherwise: we never experienced the Middle Ages. We were born at the dawn of modern times and the Castilian that reached our shores was a language which had already arrived at universality and maturity. If there is anything lacking in American Spanish, it is the particularisms of the Middle Ages. True, we have created others, but there is no danger that the particularisms of Argentine or Central American speech will give birth to distinct languages. Although American Spanish is not eter nal-no language is-it will last as long as the other modern lan guages: we live the same history as the Russians, French, or English. But the language that Spanish Americans speak is one thing and the literature they write is another. The branch has grown so much that it is now as big as the trunk. Actually, it is another tree. A different tree, with greener leaves and a more bitter sap. The birds nesting in its boughs are unknown in Spain. Spanish American literature or literatures? If we open a book on the history of Ecuador or Argentina, we find a chapter dedicated to the nation's literature. But nationalism is not only a moral aberra tion; it is also an aesthetic fallacy. Nothing distinguishes the litera ture of Argentina from that of Uruguay, the literature of Mexico
of
from that of Guatemala. Literature is broader than frontiers. It is true that the problems of Chile are not those of Colombia and that a Bolivian Indian has little in common with a
Negro of the Antilles. But the multiplicity of situations, races, and landscapes does not deny the unity of our language and culture. Unity is not uniformity. Our literary groups, styles, and tendencies do not coincide with our political, ethnic, or geographic divisions. There are no national schools or styles; on the contrary, there are families, lineages, spir itual or aesthetic traditions, universals. Chilean poetry or the ArgenTriQuarterly 7
tine novel are geographic labels; but realism, creationism, creolism, and the other aesthetic and intellectual tendencies
are
not. Our
artistic movements are born in this or that country, of course; if they
genuinely fecund, they quickly leap the frontiers and put down roots in other lands. In addition, the present political geography of Latin America is deceptive. Its multiplicity of nations is the result of circumstances and calamities that are remote from the reality of our peoples. Latin America is a continent artificially dismembered by a conjunction of native oligarchies, military bosses, and foreign im perialism. If these forces disappear (and they are going to disap pear), the boundaries will be different. The very existence of a Spanish American literature is one of the proofs of the historical unity of our nations. A literature is always born into a historical reality, and often despite that reality. Nevertheless, Spanish American literature is no exception to this rule. Its unique character resides in the fact that the reality against which it contends is a utopia. Our literature is the response of the real reality of Americans to the utopian reality of America. Before having our own historical existence, we began by being a European idea. We cannot be understood if it is forgotten that we are a chapter in the history of European utopias. It is not necessary to go back to More or Campanella to prove the utopian nature of America. It is enough to recall that Europe is the fruit in some ways involuntary-of European history, whereas we are its premeditated creation. For many centuries Europeans did not know they were Europeans, and only when Europe was a historical reality did they suddenly realize it, realize that they pertained to something vaster than their native cities. And even today it is not certain that Europeans feel themselves to be Europeans: they know it, but that is very different from feeling it. In Europe, reality preceded the name America, on the other hand, began by being an idea. A victory for nominalism: the name engendered the reality. The American con tinent had not yet been wholly discovered when it had already been baptized. The name they gave us condemned us to being a new world. A land choosing its future: before being, America already are
knew what it would be. As soon as he reached our shores the Euro8
he ceased to have a past pean immigrant lost his historical reality: and was changed into a projectile aimed at the future. For more than
three centuries the word "American" designated a man who was what he had done but by what he would do. A person defined not
by
who has no past, only a future, is a person with little reality. Amer icans: men of little reality, men of little weight. Our name condemns
being the historical project of a foreign consciousness: the Europeans. From its very beginnings Anglo-Saxon America was a utopia on the go. The Spanish and Portuguese Americas were constructions outside of time. In both cases: the abrogation of the present. Eternity and the future, heaven and progress, all deny today and its reality, us
to
the humble evidence of each day's sun. And here our resemblance to the Anglo-Saxons ends. We are children of the Counter-Reforma
tion and the Universal Kingdom; they are children of Luther and the Industrial Revolution. Therefore they breathe easily in the rarefied
atmosphere of the future. And for the same reason they are not in close touch with reality. The so-called realism of the Anglo-Ameri can is pragmatism-an operation that consists in lightening the com pact materiality of things in order to change them into process.
Reality ceases to be a substance and is transferred into a series of acts. Nothing is permanent because action is the favored form that reality assumes. Each act is instantaneous; in order to prolong itself it has to change, to become another act. The Spanish and Portuguese Americas were founded by a civilization that conceived of reality as substance; human, political, or artistic actions had no other object than to crystallize in works. These works, as embodiments of a stable
the will for permanence, are designed to resist change. When I hear
it said that Whitman is the great poet of American reality I shrug my shoulders. His reality is the desire to touch something real. Whit man's poetry is hungry for reality. And hungry for communion: it goes from no man's land to every man's land. Saxon America suffers
from a hunger for being. Its pragmatism is an always unrealizable
utopia and that is why it ends up as nightmare. It does not seek the reality of the senses, what the eyes see and the hands touch, but rather the multiplication of the image in the mirror of action; it 9
changes reality but does not touch or enjoy it. The nomadism of the Anglo-Americans-a shot aimed at the future, an arrow that never reaches the target-is not spatial but temporal: the land it walks is a future land. At the end of the nineteenth century, Spanish American literature ceased to be a reflection of Spanish literature. The "modernist" poets
broke completely with models from Spain. But they did not turn their eyes toward their own lands; instead, they looked toward Paris. They were in search of the present. The first Spanish American poets to be aware of their own selves and their historical singularity were a
generation of exiles. Those who could not get away invented Baby lons and Alexandrias according to their recourses and their fantasies.
It was a literature of evasion and, at the same time, an attempt to fuse with modern life, to recover the present. They wanted to be up to date, to be in the universal mainstream. Our portion of the new
world was an old, locked house, half convent, half barracks. The first thing to be done: to knock down the walls, wake up the sleepers, clear the specters from their minds. (Those phantasms were, and are, very real: a stubborn past that would not go away unless it was
rooted up by force.) If the exorcisms of the Modernist poets did not
dissipate the specters, at least they let in the light. We could see the world: we were at the beginning of the twentieth century. We had to make haste. Among the exiles there were some who turned their eyes toward Spanish American reality: Was there something, out side that Spanish past, at once grandiose and immobilized? Some poets, more through imagination than memory, glimpsed an im mense natural world and the ruins of brilliant and cruel civilizations
lost among jungles and volcanoes. The literature of evasion soon became a literature of exploration and return. The true adventure was in America.
Almost always the road to Palenque of Buenos Aires went by way of Paris. The experience of those poets and writers reveals that in order to return to our home we must first dare to abandon it.
Only the prodigal son returns. To reproach Spanish American litera ture for its rootlessness is to ignore the fact that only this rootlessness permitted us to recover our portion of reality. Distance had to pre cede discovery. Distance, and also the mirages it created-it is not 10
harmful to feed on illusions if we transform them into realities. One of our mirages was the natural world of America; another, the Indian
past. Now, nature is not merely a point of view: the eyes that con
template it and the will that alters it. Landscapes are poetry or his tory, vision or work. Our lands and cities took on a real existence as poets and novelists named them. The same thing did not occur with our Indian past. On the one hand, our Indians are
soon as our
not past but present-in a present that breaks in on us. On the other
hand, they are not nature, they are human realities. Indigenous lit erature in its two
aspects-the ornamental and the didactic, the archeological and the apostolic-has failed doubly, as artistic crea tion and as social preachment. Much the same can be said of Negro literature. There are Indian and Negro writers in Spanish America who are among our best, but they do not write of but from their
condition. One of the most impressive works of our contemporary letters is an anthropological document: the
autobiographical narra
tive of Juan Perez Jolote, an Indian of Chiapas. The rootlessness of
Spanish American literature is not acci dental; it is the consequence of our history, of our having been founded as a European idea. But having assumed it fully, we went beyond it. When Ruben Dario wrote Songs of Life and Hope he was not an American writer who had discovered the modern
he was a modern spirit who had discovered
spirit:
Spanish American real
ity. This is what distinguishes us from the Spaniards. Machado believed that a Spanish work could be universal only by first being profoundly Spanish; Juan Ramon Jimenez called himself "the uni versal Andalusian." Spanish American literature unfolds in the opposite way: we think that Argentine literature is universal; on the other hand, we believe that some works of universal literature
Argentine. What is more, we have discovered, thanks to our rootlessness, a buried tradition: the ancient indigenous literatures. are
The influence of Nahuatl poetry on various Mexican
poets has been
very profound, but perhaps those poets would not have
recognized they
themselves in those texts, at once restrained and delirious, if
had not undergone the experience of surrealism or, in the case of Ruben Bonifaz Nuno, of Latin poetry. Is it not
significant that the
translator of Vergil is also one of those who has best understood the 11
"modern"
qualities of indigenous poetry? And in the same way,
Neruda had to write Attempt of the Infinite Man, a surrealist exer at his Residence on Earth. What is that earth? before
cise,
arriving
It is American and at the same time it is Calcutta, Colombo, Ran the novels of Bioy goon. One could add many other examples: Casares and Cortazar, the poems of Lezama Lima and Cintio Vitier But that is not necessary: a book by the Argentine poet Enrique Molina is entitled Errant Customs, or The Roundness of the Earth. ...
A return is not a discovery. What have Spanish American writ
discovered? Almost all of Borges' work-and I am thinking not only of his prose but also of many of his poems-postulates the non existence of America. Borges' Buenos Aires is as unreal as his ers
Babylons and Ninevehs. Those cities are metaphors, nightmares, syllogisms. What is that metaphor saying, what is that dream dream ing? Another dream, named Borges. And that dream? Another. In the beginning, someone dreams; if he wakes up, the dreamed reality disappears. Under pain of death we are condemned to dream a Buenos Aires where a Borges is dreaming. This poet's works postu late not only the non-existence of America but also the inevitability of its invention. Or to say it in another way: Spanish American literature is an enterprise of the imagination. We are resolved to invent our own reality: the light at four o'clock in the morning on a greenish wall in the outskirts of Bogota; the vertiginous fall of dark ness on a house in Santo Domingo (in a house in the center of town a revolutionary awaits the arrival of the police); the hour of high tide on the coast at Valparaiso (a girl undresses and discovers soli tude and love) ; the cruel noonday in a village in Mexico's state of Jalisco (a farmhand has dug up a pre-Conquest sculpture; tomorrow he will go to the city; an unknown person is awaiting him there, and a journey ). To invent reality or to rescue it? Both. Reality recognizes itself in the imaginings of poets-and poets recognize their imaginings in reality. Our dreams are waiting for us around the corner. Spanish American literature, which is rootless and cosmo politan, is both a return and a search for tradition. In searching for it, it invents it. But invention and discovery are not terms that best ...
describe its purest creations. A desire for incarnation, a literature of foundations. 12
translated by Lysander Kemp
The new Latin American novelists RODRIGUEZ MONEGAL
That the contemporary Latin American novel has achieved a great
importance today is a fact. It is celebrated by writers and editors; used as a publicity slogan on several continents; advertised in magazines with the widest circulations. This importance is due to a varied and abundant production on the whole continent. The con centration and quality of fiction in certain countries, such as Argen tina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico, is perhaps greater than in some of the other republics. But beyond the fuss of publicity (which has been a bother to the more serious writers) there exists a very solid
reality: today, Latin America can offer the work of at least three or four generations of novelists which continue an incessant renewal of the form. Can this be said of many other literatures?
The audacity of many of these novelists, the rabidly experi mental quality of some of their work, the evident freshness of the
youngest, should not, however, make the reader forget that this "movement" is firmly rooted in the immediate past; far from being the mere result of
chance, a creation lacking known parenthood, the new TriQuarterIy 13
narrative form is rather the result of factors which have been widely studied by sociologists, economists and cultural historians. For this reason, in order to avoid the mistakes of those who seem to be interested in eulogizing only what is new, one must start by a
survey of our roots, by showing how this new "movement" dovetails with a tradition which has been very much alive in Latin American literature during this century; one must go back, first, to what was
happening in Latin America circa 1940. This is not a date chosen at random. By then, the Spanish Civil war had ended with the victory of General Franco, and the Second World War had started with the
victory of Hitler. On one hand, the Spanish Civil War dispersed toward Latin America, and especially toward Mexico and Argen tina, some of the most brilliant intellectuals of Spain. On the other hand, the Second W orId War interrupted the flow of books and magazines which had been constantly feeding Latin America's nos talgia for a more sophisticated civilization. Both these facts coincide in their role of stimulating in our land the need to do something, namely to start publishing houses and magazines, institutions of high learning, libraries and museums. But, more than anything, they contributed to make a professional of the Latin American writer.
1940 marks the beginning of a development which, in a decade or
two, achieved the transformation of Latin American culture.
Gradually, a reading public began to exist. At the beginning it was only an elite. But with the years this elite sired its own successors everywhere. This is why one can refer to a second and even to a third generation of readers. The first generation was more interested in the work of foreigners than in the work of its countrymen, pro longing ancient prejudices not only in favor of the Spanish writers but, more often, in favor of French literature. But the second gen eration already began to favor the national. The third generation, that of today, is so exhilarated by what is happening in Latin Amer ican fiction that one could almost say that it has neither time or
patience for what is not its own. But let s not go too fast. If it is true that the Spanish emigres
plus
the
closing of the European fountainheads modified our cultural situation very deeply, that modification would not have 14
demographic explosion which increased the the population of capital cities through the influx of people from provinces, increasing thereby the numbers of those who now had access to secondary education. This second generation of readers, and even the third, are partly products of this demographic explo sion and, on its most demanding level, represent it. At the same time a growth of national conscience-which had come about without the
its most notable manifestations after the Mexican revolution-stim ulated the work of essayists who concerned themselves more and
problem: the "being" of each country, and the "being" of Latin America. This quest gradually emerges from the purgatory of international good intentions to be transformed into living matter, into effervescent polemics. The second generation of readers found a footing in those essayists of national quest. They used them with the purpose of looking for an identity that the great colonial powers had denied them, or which they had accepted only if it took the shapes imposed by the metropolis. For the third genera tion of readers the quest for an identity is no longer a problem but a necessity and an intellectual must. All of this-the Spanish diaspora after the Civil War, the lack of communication with Europe and to a lesser degree with the United States now intent on its own war effort, the demographic explosion and the consequent delirious growth of the larger cities, the creation of publishing houses and two or three generations of readers-was grist to the mill of the Latin American novel. Because the novel, like more with a double
the theatre, needs the concentration of great cities, the great minori ties of readers which ensure the circulation of books. The climax of
the novel in Europe coincides with the rise of the bourgeoisie. In our
America, though a few novelists appear in colonial times and there are some great novelists in the nineteenth
century, it is impossible to
maintain that there reallyis a novel (that is to say, acomplete form, with authors of many levels and a sustained quantity of production) until this century. But the novel exists in Latin America-that is to say in the professional sense of the word-beginning around 1940, that date which has been selected as a symbolical starting-point, and thus must not be taken too literally.
The novelists who started writing around 1940 were already in 15
possession of an immediate Latin American tradition of the "rural novel", but also a few examples of the "city novel" (to exhume two old and obsolete classifications) They also had something which was more important: the translation, and sometimes the recreation, by writers of the importance of Borges, of some of the most brilliant twentieth-century novels of Europe and the United States. If it is necessary to avoid, on one hand, the fallacy of believing that there are absolutely no Latin American antecedents for the new novelists, one must also avoid, on the other hand, the fallacy of forgetting that the new novelists learned from Joyce, from Kafka, from Faulkner and from Sartre, to mention only a few of the most influential masters. Everything that the foreign writers of the first four decades of this century had produced was used by those who began to write and pub lish around 1940. There was that magnificent quarry within reach of anybody's hand. With no premeditation, from one extreme to the .
other of Latin America, these and many other writers were read and
reread, translated and annotated, imitated and even plagiarized. From here a durable and original literary impulse would soon start.
The writers of the new novel, however, would read not only Faulkner and Kafka. Almost impossibly at first, with great difficulty,
hardly at all at times, these writers tried to procure for themselves the novels of the other countries of the continent, and little by little they would start to know each other. This process, very slow at first, has been accelerated gradually to a point where, today, we can speak of an international language of the Latin American novel. Deep knowledge and respect (this is no reference to the inevitable cliques) have grown between the best-known fiction writers of this continent.
Thus, through the contact of books and creators, a process which had begun around 1940 is completed: a process which is nourished
equally by the stimulus from foreign cultures (sometimes positive, sometimes negative), and a deeper growth of roots further and further into the reality, the conscience and the mission of Latin America. The result is the new Latin American novel with its lan guage of fire which today runs from one extreme to the other of our
Latin American world. 16
ONE LANGUAGE AND FOUR GENERATIONS
As the idea of the language of the new novel seems to me of first
importance I wish to dwell for a while on this subject. When I talk of a language I do not mean exclusively the use of certain forms of language. In literature, language is not a synonym for the general system of the tongue, but rather a synonym for the tongue a certain form or a certain author uses. The language of the Latin American novel is made of a very profound vision of its surrounding reality, a
vision which owes a great deal to the poets and essayists. It is impos sible to ignore the scorching influence of the essayist Ezequiel Mar tinez Estrada in a whole generation of parricides which first appears in Argentina in the decade of 1950. Is it possible not to perceive the style and even the words of Octavio Paz in so many of the crucial passages in Carlos Fuentes? Is it possible not to recognize the influ ence of Neruda and Borges in the novels of the writers who began to read with Neruda's Residences or to decipher reality with Borges' Ficciones? It is in this ability to use what it has learned from essayists and poets in the creation of a narrative language that the Latin
American novel of today shows its maturity. For if the precepts of rhetoric teach us that the "forms" should remain uncontaminated, the act of creation does not partake of these scruples and takes
what it will from where it wants to. It is perhaps due to this common
fund, which is the work of the great Latin American writers, that the new novel is not only the most complete poetic object for the
exploration of reality, but also the richest instrument to transmit that other parallel reality: the reality of language. In the fabric of the
new
Latin American novel what first
draws the attention is the coexistence, within the same literary space, of at least four generations of writers: four generations which
could
easily isolate into compartments, but which in the real process of literary creation share the same world, dispute over succulent fragments of the same reality, explore unheard-of avenues of language, or share and exchange experiences, techniques, secrets of the craft and mysteries. It is easy to create of these four groups writers' "generaone
17
tions"; this is a method that in the Spanish language has had such
distinguished exponents as Ortega y Gasset and Julian Marias. But I would like to stress here rather the pragmatic quality of those four groups in active service, rather than the mere rhetoric of the clas sification. The concept of "generation" always opens up the danger, if it isn't subtly managed, of implying a very well-ordered process,
rigidity which separates literature into stagnant periods easily reduced to sketchy diagrams. The several generations which so often even a
are confronted in the pages of a textbook from the different extremes
of a vacuum, in reality share the same space and the same time,
influence each other more than is at first apparent, and seem to contradict the orderly flow of time.
Besides, to belong to the same generation is no guarantee that a
vision and a language are shared. It is impossible not to realize
that the Peruvian novelist Ciro Alegria and the Uruguayan novelist Juan Carlos Onetti were both born in the same year, 1909. While
the first is the last of the great rural novelists of Latin America
(though he was soon to be superseded by a writer of the generation immediately following his, Jose Maria Arguedas), the second is a forerunner of the experimental novelists who concentrate their vision, above all, on the alienation of the city dweller. This now seems
obvious, and even a child could see it. But in 1941 both
Alegria and Onetti competed for the same international prize, and everyone knows who won it. This is why I'd rather refer to groups than to generations. And if I do refer to generations, it is not to tight pigeonholes; all of the most original new novelists of Latin America escape, rather than
belong to, their own generation. THE BREAKING DOWN OF A TRADmON
Toward 1940, the novel in Latin America writers who doubtless form
a
was
represented by
brilliant constellation:
Horacio
Quiroga, Benito Lynch and Ricardo Guiraldes in the Rio de la Plata had their equivalents in Mariano Azuela and Martin Luis Guzman in Mexico, in Jose Eustasio Rivera in Colombia, in Romulo
Gallegos in Venezuela, in Graciliano Ramos in Brazil. They belong 18
to the very valid tradition of the rural novel, of the man of the earth,
deep exploration of his relations with the overpowering nature around him through a chronicle of his rebellions and submissions, a
which they elaborated the important myths of a continent which still conceive in its romantic hugeness. Even the most restrained
they
of them (I'm thinking of Graciliano Ramos, of the Mexicans, of Quiroga himself) could not escape the heroic archetype which would of their novels, and above all La Voragine, Dona Barbara, Don Segundo Sombra, more "romances" than novels; that make
some
is to say they are books whose realism is so distorted by a mythical
conception that they escape their own hopes of being realistic docu ments.
It is exactly against these masters that the generations which
started to publish their most important work around 1940 rebel. A first group could be represented, among others, by such writers as
Miguel Angel Asturias, Jorge Luis Borges, Alejo Carpentier and Leopoldo Marechal. It is they and the likes of them (I can't mention them all here since this is not a catalogue) who are the first great renewers
of the narrative form in Latin America in this century.
I must make it clear that I include Borges knowing that he has
written no novels (except one, a police thriller written in collabora tion with Adolfo Bioy Casares, and under a pseudonym, in an edi tion of 300 copies), but it seems to me to be impossible to consider any serious analysis of the form in Latin America without a study of his revolutionary short stories. The books by these writers carry within them a critique of the
greatest importance. Surveying the former mythical literature which bore that impassioned testimony of reality which is to be found in the best work of Gallegos, Rivera et aI., Borges, Marechal, Carpen
tier, Asturias and Yanez try to point out the obsolete rhetoric in the reality of their novels. They not only criticize it and even deny its
validity, but more importantly they search for other ways out. It is no coincidence that their work is so strongly influenced by the avant garde writers who in Europe were able to dethrone the heritage of naturalism. In Geneva, in his youth, Borges becomes immersed in German expressionism and in the works of Joyce and Kafka, and 19
a little
later, in Spain, he is touched by "ultraismo" and by the works
of that great forgotten writer, Ramon Gomez de la Serna. Carpen
tier, Asturias and Marechal, on different levels, all avidly read the brilliant work of the French superrealists.
Latin American fiction emerges from the hands of these founders
deeply transformed not only in appearance, but also in essence. Be cause, more than anything, they are the renewers of a vision of America and of a concept of what the American language is. This is not generally acknowledged of the work of Borges (which still suffers from the accusation of "cosmopolitanism" without acknowledging that someone born in a land of immigrants and edu cated in the several languages used currently in Buenos Aires can afford to be "cosmopolitan"; but let that be) ; this which, as I say, is often denied to the work of Borges, although it is so important to define the cosmic vision of the spirit of Buenos Aires ("porten ismo"), becomes clear and evident if one wants to judge the work of Asturias, who is completely soaked in the language and imagery of the Mayan people and is also ardently anti-imperialist; it is also clear in the case of Augustin Yanez who shows Mexico its secular masks hiding its many true faces; it is indisputable in the case of Leopoldo Marechal, who willingly and consciously created an "Argentinian" novel; and it becomes more than obvious in the case of Alejo Carpentier, in whose work the entire Caribbean world, and not only Cuba, is transformed by the poetic vision of a past, a present, and even a time without time. Whether it was their intention or not, the first books of these writers effected such a complete and deep break with the traditional
language and vision of Gallegos and Rivera, that from then onwards it became impossible to write like them in Latin America. It is true that when these new books were published only a few realized their importance. But the few of that decade of the forties are the great reading minority of today. It is important to state the dates of publi cation of some of these books: Historia Universal de la Infamia
(Universal History of Infamy) by Borges was published in 1935; El Senor Presidente by Asturias in 1945; A I Filo del Agua, Augustin Yanez' most important work, in 1947; Leopoldo Marechal pub20
lished his ambitious A dan Buenosayres in 1948; and Alejo Carpen tier's El Reino de Este Mundo (The Kingdom of This World) in
1949. The work that these writers published later, from Ficciones by
Borges and El Banquete de Severo Arcangel (The Banquet of Severo Arcangel) by Marechal, through Hombres de Maiz (Men of Maize), Tierras Flacas (Thin Lands) and El Siglo de las Luces (The Cen tury of Lights) may be more mature or more important, but these books, which started to circulate during these transitional years, effect a definite break with the traditional linguistics and vision. NARRATIVE FORM AS A PROBLEM
The fecund renovation brought about by this first constellation took place almost simultaneously with that of the following genera
tion, which we could call the generation of J oao Guimaraes Rosa and Miguel Otero Silva, of Juan Carlos Onetti and Emesto Sabato, of Julio Cortazar and Jose Lezama Lima, of Jose Miguel Arguedas and Juan Rulfo, to mention only a few and again avoid the cata
logue. I'll also have to repeat that, if there are things that they share, the work of each one is deeply personal and unmistakably his own to the highest degree. But what I'm now interested in is showing what they have in common. In the first place, it is the trace left in them by the previous generation. To speak of only one novel, what would Rayuela (Hopscotch) be-that supremely Argentinian novel hidden under its French patina-without Borges, Roberto Arlt, Marechal and Onetti? I want to make it clear that Cortazar is the first in recognizing his filiation to these writers, and sometimes even does it in the novel itself when he writes the notes of his narrative alter ego, the ubiquitous Morelli, or in a few discrete homages which
constitute episodes originated in Marechal or Onetti. Another thing that these writers of the second generation have in common is the visible influence of foreign writers such as Faulk ner, Proust, Joyce and even Sartre. There are some odd anecdotes
in connection with this question of influences. Guimaraes Rosa, for
instance, has always denied that Faulkner interested him. He even told me once that the very few things he had read by him displeased 21
him, that Faulkner's sexual attitude seemed morbid to him, that he was a sadist, etc. Yet in his great and only novel, Faulkner's pres
writing an intense interior monologue, in his passionate mythical, rural universe, is always there. It is easy to explain it, however. It is not necessary to have read Faulkner directly to feel his influence, breathe his atmosphere and inherit his manias. It may be possible that the feeling of Faulkner got through to Gui maraes Rosa, almost invisibly, by way of writers like Sartre, who certainly did learn from the great novelist of the South. But it is not these influences, almost invariably admitted by the writers, that best define this group. It is rather a conception of the ence in a certain way of
novel which, no matter what the differences, offers at least one fea ture shared in common. If their immediate forerunners did little to
innovate the external structure of the novel and would be satisfied
(perhaps only Adan Buenosayres, with its obvious excesses, tried to create a more complex spatial structure) the work of this second group has the unique characteris tic of attacking the form of the novel, this being its greatest literary preoccupation. Guimaraes Rosa found in the interminable lyrical and epic monologues of the traditional oral narrators of the interior of Brazil the shape for his fabulous Grande Sertao: Veredas. Onetti, on the other hand, created in a series of novels which could be gathered under the general title of "The Saga of Santa Maria", a Rio de la to follow the traditional form
Plata universe which is dreamlike and real at the same time, of a very personal texture even though his debt to Faulkner is clear. In some of the novels of that
"Saga", and above all in El Astillero (The
Shipbuilding Yard) and Juntacadaveres, Onetti took the construc tion of his narrative to the most subtle extremes of sophistication,
introducing into the reality of the Rio de la Plata a literary facsimile which produces a frightening irony. A kinship of essence (not of accident) can be seen between Onetti's world and that of the Vene zuelan Miguel Otero Silva in Casas Muertas (Dead Houses) or of the
Argentinian Ernesto Sabato in Sobre Heroes y Tumbas (On Heroes and Tombs). As to Juan Rulfo, his Pedro Paramo is the paradigm of the new Latin American novel: a novel which uses the 22
great Mexican tradition of the rural novel but transforms it, destroys it and recreates it through a very deep assimilation of the techniques of Faulkner. Also dreamlike, as with Onetti's work, always in a dangerous oscillation between strict realism and the turbulence of
nightmare, this novel, for the time being the only novel Rulfo has written, marks a capital date. Less of an innovator on the surface is the Peruvian Jose Miguel Arguedas, but his vision of the Indian, from the standpoint of the Quechua tongue itself in which his novels are written, brushes away all of the good intentions of the Peruvian intellectuals who because they write in Spanish end up writing what reads like folklore.
revolutionary, because they attack not only the structures of narration but those of language itself, are the two most important novels of this group, Rayuela (Hopscotch) by Julio Corta zar, and Paradiso by Jose Lezama Lima. In more than one sense, these writers achieve in their masterpieces the culmination of a proc ess begun by Borges and Asturias, and at the same time they open up a completely new perspective: a perspective which enables us to place lucidly and with precision the work of the newest writers. In Para diso the Cuban Lezama Lima achieves, by what seems mere magic, that which Leopoldo Marechal had set about to do as if to solve a problem: to create a summa, a book whose form is dictated by the nature of the poetic vision which inspires it; to complete a work of Even
more
fiction which has the appearance of a novel of manners, of realism which is at the same time a treatise on the paradise of childhood and of the hell of sexual perversions; to build the chronicle of the educa
tion of a young man from Havana thirty years ago who becomes,
through the metaphorical play of language, the mirror of both the visible and the invisible world. Lezama Lima's feat is without
parallel.
Superficially Rayuela seems easier, since Cortazar is blessed not only with the rich tradition of the literature of the Rio de la Plata, but also with a knowledge of that monstrous ferment which is French literature, and especially superrealism. But if Cortazar begins with all these advantages, while Lezama Lima in his island thirty years ago was lost in a vast library of disparate and moth-eaten 23
books; if Cortazar seems to have written Rayuela from the center of the intellectual world while Lezama Lima began writing Paradiso in one of the most peripheral of Latin American peripheries, the truth is that Cortazar starts at that apotheosis of culture in order to
deny it and tries to be a "subtraction", not a "summa"; an anti-novel, not a novel; and though he attacks the novel as a form, he preserves something which is essentially a novel. The narrative form is ques tioned, to begin with, at the start of the book itself, by his telling the reader how to read it. He continues to propose a classification of
readers: the female-reader, and the accomplice-reader; and ends up
by enveloping the reader in an infinite circular reading: Chapter 58 goes on to Chapter 131 which reverts to 58 and reverts again to Chapter 131 and thus until kingdom come. Here, the form of the book-a labyrinth without a center, a trap which is always shutting the reader within it, a serpent biting its tail-is no more than another method to emphasize the deep, secret exploration of a bridge be tween two experiences (Paris and Buenos Aires), a bridge between two existences (Oliveira, Traveler), a bridge between two muses (La Maga, Talita). A book which unfolds itself to question itself the better, it is a novel about the complexities of the Argentinian being, and, with an almost vertiginous profundity, about that double who menaces us
in other dimensions of our lives. The form of the book
becomes what used to be called its content.
THE GREAT MACIDNE OF FICTION
What this group transmits to the generation immediately following it is, more than anything,
a
consciousness of the structure of the
novel itself, and an acute sensibility for language as the very material
of narrative. The development of both generations is simultaneous and almost parallel. The relative tardiness of the publication of the
masterpieces of Julio Cortazar, Guimaraes Rosa and Lezama Lima makes the publication of these novels even later than the publication of some of the most important novels of the following generation. In this case the influence is clearly due to a coexistence, more to a cross-breeding than to an inheritance. It will suffice to say that this third generation is that of writers like Carlos Martinez Moreno, 24
Lispector, Jose Donoso, David Vinas, Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salvador Garmendia, Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Mario Vargas Llosa. Their mark is that double atten Clarice
tion to the external structure of the novel and to the creative and
revolutionary role of language. Not all of them are visibly experimental novelists, though some of them are that to the very extreme of experimentation. Donoso, for instance, has followed the even
course
of traditional narrative, but has concentrated his inventive
exploration of a subterranean reality: that which lies be neath the many layers of stucco of the Chilean novel of manners. The same could be said of Carlos Martinez Moreno of Uruguay, of Salvador Garmendia of Venezuela and David Vinas of Argentina: their exploration of reality drives them to a kind of expressionism,
ness in the
even to brutal
caricatures.
But the greater part of the novelists of this generation are effi
cient creators of great narrative machines. While Clarice Lispector in A Maca no oscuro and A paixao segundo G.B. is stimulated by the nouveau roman to describe the
arid, nightmarish, and close
world of her characters, Carlos Fuentes uses all of the experimenta tion of the contemporary novel to create hard, complex books, in which he denounces a reality which is excruciatingly painful to him, and expressionistic allegories of his own country, a Mexico made up of mythical-poetic masks which at different levels conceal some thing which is very different from the surface of the Mexico of
today. On his side, Mario Vargas Llosa uses the new techniques (discontinuity of time, interior monologues, plurality of points of view and narrators) to compose masterly visions, both very con temporary and very traditional, of his native Peru. He has learned,
simultaneously and harmoniously, from Faulkner and the novel of chivalry, from Flaubert, Arguedas and Musil. Vargas Llosa is a narrator with a great epic strain to whom the characters and the anecdote are still of the utmost importance. His renovation really amounts to a new form of realism: a realism which does away with
the "good and the bad" of the novel of protest. He is aware that
time has more than one dimension, but never lifts his feet from his solid, tormented earth. 25
It is not these great younger novelists, already acknowledged
by the critics of this decade, who have really used the ferment of the work of the two foregoing generations. It is rather Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who re vealed themselves somewhat later, but who have already produced work of the utmost importance. In both Cien Anos de Soledad (A as masters
Hundred Years of Loneliness) and in Tres Tristes Tigres (Three
inevitably recognize the linguistic filiation with the world of Borges and Carpentier, with the fantastic visions of Rulfo and Cortazar, with the international style of Fuentes and of Vargas Llosa. But it is only a superficial resemblance, and it is not what makes these such important novels.
Sad Tigers)
one
will
At the core of both these novels stands the lucid conviction of the "fictional" quality of all narration. They are, first and foremost,
formidable verbal constructions, and they proclaim this in a subtle,
implicit fashion, as in Cien A nos de Soledad. In this novel the tradi tional realism of the rural novel becomes contaminated by fable and myth, served up in the most brilliant way imaginable, shot through with humor and imagination. Tres Tristes Tigres proclaims a similar thing, though militantly and pedagogically. This novel, after Rayuela, and even perhaps with a more constant novelistic invention, sets up right in its core the negation of its "truth"; it creates and destroys, ends up by demolishing the carefully built edi fice of its own fiction. If Garcia Marquez seems to be adapting the techniques of Faulk ner
and those of the Orlando of Virginia Woolf (translated into
country of Macondo where Colonel Aureliano Buendia lives and dies, it is well to warn
Spanish by Borges)
to the creation of that
the reader that it would be wrong to be led astray by the surface of it. The
already illustrious Colombian narrator is doing more than merely telling us a fable of infinite charm and unquenchable humor that envelops the reader in its fantasy. Using the most persuasive and insidious practices he is erasing the distinction between reality and fantasy in the body of the novel itself, to present-in one sentence and on the same metaphorical level-the "narrative truth" of what his fictional characters live and dream of. Rooted in myth and in 26
history, using episodes of the Arabian Nights and of the most archaic parts of the Bible, Cien Anos de Soledad only achieves complete coherence in the deep reality of its language. Most of its readers don't notice this, carried away by a style of unparalleled fantasy, wit and precision. What Cabrera Infante is doing is even more scandalously strik
ing because all his novel has meaning only if one examines it as lan guage structure. Different from Cien Anos de Soledad, which is told by an omniscient and ubiquitous narrator, Tres Tristes Tigres is told
by the characters themselves or, it would better be said, by its "talk ers" since the whole novel is a "collage" of voices. Evidently a dis ciple of Joyce, his debt is also to Lewis Carroll, another manipulator of language, and to Mark Twain, who discovered before so many others the tone of the speaking voice for the dialogue of his charac ters. The language structure of Tres Tristes Tigres, from the title itself, which is an untranslatable Spanish tongue twister, is made up of all the possible meanings of a word, and sometimes of a phoneme, of the rhythms of a sentence, of the most complicated puns. Disciple of his masters, yes, but more than anything a disciple of his own ear, Cabrera Infante has incorporated into the body of his novel things that are not of literary origin, but from the cinema and from jazz, integrating the rhythms of Cuban speech into those of the most creative music of our times or of an art whose visual persuasion has colonized us all. When I maintain that in Garcia Marquez and in Cabrera In
fante the conception of the novel as a language structure predomi
nates, I do not forget that both in Cien A nos de Soledad and in Tres Tristes Tigres the "content" is of lasting importance. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the demented process of Colombian violence
is marvelously pictured, in its surface and in its vertiginous depths,
by the magic hand of Garcia Marquez. It is impossible not to recog nize, in the Havana of the end of the Batista era, in which these sad
tigers prance, a society in agony, a candle on the point of being blown out or perhaps already blown out, as Cabrera Infante evokes it in his book. These things are obvious. But what makes Tres Tristes Tigres and Cien Anos de Soledad the unique creations that they are 27
is not their documentary value, which the reader would be able to
find in other books of minor literary value. What makes them so
unique is their devotion to the novel as complete fiction. THE VEIDCLE IS THE VOYAGE
With Garcia Marquez and Cabrera Infante-and also with the Carlos Fuentes of Cambio de Piel (A Change of Skin), his latest and ex
tremely complex novel-one can say that one has entered the newest and fourth generation of writers. It is not easy to speak of them in detail since they have mostly only published one novel. But I want to use the meaning of "newness", of "novelty", that the etymology of the world "novel" possesses, to propose a few new names of importance. In Mexico, in Cuba, and in Argentina, especially, there is
now a
whole new generation of novelists who commit the act
of writing a novel with the greatest possible freedom, without re
specting any visible or known law save that of experimentation. Their names are: Gustavo Sainz, Fernando del Paso, Salvador Eli
zondo, Jose Augustin, Jose Emilio Pacheco in Mexico; in Cuba-in and outside the island, but anyway in a Cuba which is united by its literature-they are Severo Sarduy, Jesus Diaz, Reinaldo Arenas and Eugenio Desnoes; and in Argentina are Nestor Sanchez, Daniel
Moyano, Juan Jose Hernandez, Manuel Puig, Rudolfo Walsh and Abelardo Castillo. It is impossible to speak of all of them, and even this enumeration looks suspiciously like a catalogue. I'd rather run the risk of making a mistake and choose four among this constel lation. Those who are most in view, or who at least have produced one novel which
distinguishes them and sets them clearly apart, are Manuel Puig, Nestor Sanchez, Gustavo Sainz and Severo Sarduy. These four are united by the knowledge that the most intimate nature of fiction writing is not in its theme (as the romantic creators of the rural novel believed), nor in the external structure, nor even in its
myths. For them the thing is the language. Or to adapt Marshall MacLuhan's popularized formula, "the medium is the message." The novel uses the word not to say something in particular about the world which is outside literature, but to transform the linguistic 28
reality of the narration itself. This transformation is what the novel "says", and not what is generally discussed when talking about a novel: plot, characters, anecdote, message, denouement. It is as if the novel is the reality, and not a creation parallel to reality itself. I want to say at once that this does not mean that they do not allude to extra-literary realities. They do, and that is why this form is so popular. But its true message is not really on that level, which can be substituted for the speech of a president or a dictator, or for the ministrations of the local parish priest. The message is the lan guage. This is why in a book like La Traicion de Rita Hayworth by Manuel Puig the important thing is not the life of a boy who lives in a provincial town in Argentina and who goes to the movies with his mother every afternoon; neither is it the structure in the form of a Joycean interior monologue; or the dialogues without an
explicit subject a la Ivy Compton-Burnett and her follower Natalie Sarraute. What is really important in Puig's fascinating book is that continuum of spoken language which is at the same time the vehicle of narrative and narrative itself. The alienation of the characters
through the movies they see, which the title indicates and which is clear in each detail of their conduct-they only talk of the movies they saw, and project themselves into scenes taken from old films; their values and the way they talk are all derived from movies, are the prisoners of that platonic cave created in the world of today by the movies-that central alienation is told by Puig with a sweeping humor and irony, and an extremely fine sense of parody. It is also projected into the personal experience of the reader by the alienation of the language which the characters use, a language which is almost the facsimile of radio and television soap operas and trash magazines. The alienated language makes the alienation of the characters ex plicit: alienated language is alienation itself. The medium is the message. Nosotros Dos and Siberia Blues
duplicate, although in
a
manner more a la Cortazar and rather frenchified, Cabrera Infante's
intention of creating a structure which is, more than anything, a structure of sound. Nestor Sanchez is also influenced by popular
music (the tango in his case) and by the avant-garde cinema. But 29
his narrative texture, his medium, is yet more complex and confus
ing than Cabrera Infante's-in whom a terrible British lucidity finally governs all delirium and in whom the concealment of an important part of reality, which is the passion of two of the characters of Tres Tristes Tigres for Laura Diaz, is more than anything a sign of modesty. But in Sanchez, tension and ambition end up in excess. When he triumphs he is able to create a narrative substance in which all presents and all pasts, all and everyone of the characters are
mixed, with the purpose of stressing the fact that the unique central
reality in that world of fiction, the only one which is accepted and assumed with all its risks, is the reality of language: a glass which at times is beautifully clear, then turns invisible and at times lets no vision through. In the novels of Nestor Sanchez the author of Rayuela is always present (he feels so great a devotion for Cortazar that it almost mimetizes them), but one is also aware of the presence of the rhythmic and visual world, uniform and serial at the same
time, of Alain Resnais-Alain Robbe-Grillet in L' annee derniere a Marienbad.
Gustavo Sainz arrives at the same point, at the same material
through something which is as trivial in the world of today as the windmills were in the world of Cervantes: the recording tape. His novel Gazapo is supposed to have been registered and dictated into a dictaphone. It is not now a problem of composing a novel on the typewriter, using as secret clues what so-and-so said (though attributed to someone else not to give the clue away), or transport ing, like Proust, so-and-so's head onto someone else's shoulders. No, none of this happens. Sainz pretends to use the tape recorder so that everything is kept within the realm of the spoken word. His char acters seem to be taping what is going on (it is a well known fact that the world is a tedious happening). But this basic taping is in turn used to start fresh tapings, or to contradict them, or used in a narration which one of the characters, perhaps the author's alter ego, is writing. The "taping" of the novel's reality within the book, just as the book itself, partakes of an identical condition of word and sound. After all, everything is the word. Just as in the second Quixote the characters discussed the characters of the first Quixote 30
and even the apocryphal adventures that Avellaneda invented for
them, the characters in Sainz go over and over their own recorded novel. They are prisoners in the cobweb of their own voices. If all the levels which are more or less apocryphal of the narrative of this
novel are valid it is because the only reality that the characters really
live is the reality of the book. That is to say, the reality of the word.
Everything else is questionable and is questioned by Sainz. I have deliberately left for the end the novelist who has gone the longest way into this kind of exploration. He is Severo Sarduy, who has had two novels published: Gestos (Gestures), somewhat related to the nouveau roman, especially to Natalie Sarraute's Tropisms but with an eye and an ear which are very much his own; and his second novel, De Donde Son los Cantantes (Where the Singers Are From), which seems to me to be one of the decisive works in this collective enterprise of creating a language for the Latin American novel. What this novel does is to present three episodes from a Cuba which is essential and pre-revolutionary. One of them occurs in the lower
depths of Havana, a limited world, of transves tism and tinsel, but all the same a world of disquieting and profound sexual symbols. The second episode shows us a half-breed and Negro Cuba, the colorful surface of the tropics, a narration which is parody and satire at the same time as a cantata; the third part is above all
Spanish and Catholic Cuba, central Cuba. But what the book tells is secondary to Sarduy's purpose. What matters is how he tells it. Because by unifying the three parts, different in extension and in
a
terest, there is a medium which turns out to be the end, a vehicle which is itself the voyage. Here, the Havana slang of the author
(not of the characters as in Cabrera Infante) is the protagonist. His is a language which is baroque, not as in
Carpentier but as in Lezama Lima. A language which critically turns on itself, as happens with the French writers of the Tel Quel group, a group with which Sarduy is so involved. It is a language which evolves as the novel proceeds, a language which lives and suffers, which is corrupted and dies to resuscitate itself from its own corrupted matter, like that image of Christ which in the third part is taken in procession to Havana. With this novel by Sarduy, as with La Traicion de Rita Hay31
worth, the works of Nestor Sanchez and Gazapo by Gustavo Sainz, the theme of the Latin American novel which had been put up for
trial by Borges and Asturias, which had been brilliantly developed from different points of departure by Lezama Lima and Cortazar, which is enriched, metamorphosed, and fabulized by Fuentes, Garcia
Marquez and Cabrera Infante, achieves at this juncture a veritable delirium of poetic and prose invention at the same time. It is the subterranean theme of the newest Latin American novel: the theme
of language as the place (space and time) in which the novel really occurs.
Language is the ultimate "reality" of the novel.
JORGE DE LA VEGA. KING SIZED
VITAMINS. 196. ARGENTINA.
Cultural aspects of Brazilian literature FABIO LUCAS
INTERNAL CAUSES
It has frequently been asked whether Brazil has produced an autono mous literature with characteristics all its own, but in a vivid sense,
that is are
-
where the interdependence of internal and external factors
present; this is another way of questioning whether we, as an
independent nation, have created an autonomous culture. The an swer is, perhaps, that this autonomy is in formation; it is an evolu tionary process where opposing tendencies contend with each other dialectically. The Brazilian culture, encompassing language, represents the fusion of European (mostly Portuguese), African and Indian ele ments. The country's political independence in the last century resulted in the emphasis of Indian values during the Romantic period in literature in order to stress the more characteristically national traits. Jose de Alencar,' a very popular 19th century romantic novel ist, was the first exponent of this tendency. He went so far as to advocate the mastery of the Indian language as a prerequisite for nationalizing Brazilian literature. Since then, whenever Brazilian literature tries to affirm itself, it refers to its nearest source
-
Indian traits in our national character.
TriQuarterly 33
the
We should also note that in
poetry, Goncalves Dias" similarly defended the Indian element by writing a Dicionario da Lingua Tupi. Since poetry is less apt to convey cultural and ideological themes than other forms of expression with the exception of narrative and Jose de Alencar has a descriptive poetry now unfashionable greater following than Goncalves Dias. In this portion of our study we shall, to attain our objectives, draw on examples taken, whenever possible, from novelists and essayists. In our opinion, the essay being closer to philosophy ex poses the contemporary scene and presents schools of thought more distinctly, since it concerns itself with the ultimate question of the world's essence. Consequently, the essay is more easily linked with ideology and its inherent distortions. The novel, on the other hand, as an expression of reality, recreates these same ideas without elimi nating them; it indirectly apprehends the real and the distorted uni versal consciousness. Lyric poetry, meanwhile, since it is linked with existential and subjective concepts, seldom treats human relation ships; neither does it adequately present social reality. In closing this digression, let us observe that dramatic and epic poetry always focus on human relationships. Descriptive poetry links Man to tangibles and to Nature; lyrical poetry, however, in its subjectivity unites Man to himself. This is the reason why social aspects are better portrayed in the first two and lose their significance in the last. Mario de Andrade, the writer most responsible for the Modern -
ist Movement, which began with the Week of Modem Art in Sao
Paulo, 1922, mentioned his friend "Jose de Alencar, my brother,"
calling attention not only to the anti-academic and anti-European spirit in his work, but also to Alencar's importance in Brazil's literary development. In 1928 Mario de Andrade wrote Macunaima (The HERO Without Character), a disturbing book immersed in Indian mythology, which endeavored to present a language based on the country's peculiarities of speech. The main protagonist moves through various phases of the national culture while wandering through the country's vast geographical area. His "characterless" peculiarity discloses the present unfulfillment of Brazilian man as a representative national hero. 34
The search for representative Brazilian literature is one of the constants in Mario de Andrade's esthetic creed. It led
(and many of his contemporaries as well)
the writer
intransigently de
to
European influence in Brazilian letters. In a letter written to Manuel Bandeira on June 26, 1925, he said, "I am fighting Eu rope right now as much as I can. It's not that I don't recognize its worth; I do admire and love it; I must, however, destroy the Eu ropeanization of the educated Brazilian." In a famous lecture in Rio de Janeiro on the Modernist Movement, he referred in the same vein to the period preceding the literary renewal which he had led: "Not only did we appropriate European techniques and esthetic theories, but we did so after they had been fairly well established there after they had already become academic." In addition to stressing the Indian element in the quest for Brazil ian literary autonomy, other authors focused on the contrast between the coastal settlements with those of the inland. The rich and densely populated littoral areas were close to cosmopolitan awareness while the abandoned backland dwellers represented, they thought, the true Brazil. This explains the widely accepted backland movement in literature, which saw in the backlandman's customs and speech the unique collective element in Brazilian culture. The most important and influential book in the stream of back land literature was Euclides da Cunha's Os Sertoes (1902) a journalistic, sociological and anthropological account of the Ca nudos revolt. This incident occurred in the Bahian inlands shortly after the proclamation of the Republic. It was at first interpreted as a plot led by dissatisfied monarchists. Due to the book's literary virtues and powerful narrative force, it attained greatness and per manence. Os Sertoes glorified the inland dwellers the backlandmen who led by the magnetic and fanatic influence of a persuasive mystic, Antonio Conselheiro, withstood the federal government's punitive forces heroically. They refused to surrender until the last nounce the
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-
-
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man had fallen.
The critics have generally concurred that Brazil's most success ful literary composition in the last few years, Guimaraes Rosa's Grande Sertao: Veredas (1sted., 1956), would not have come about 35
without its predecessor
-
Mario de Andrade's Macunaima. Rosa's
novel, however, yields a complexity immensely superior to whatever had been accomplished before in the history of Brazilian fiction. Guimaraes Rosa appears to have profited by the Modernist Move ment and Mario de Andrade's esthetic achievements. He denotes a
profound esthetic awareness, and the desire to update Brazilian artis tic awareness, as well as the deliberated pursuit of a creative collec tive consciousness. In Grande Sertao: Veredas the author combines backland traits with a thorough knowledge of the Portuguese lan guage. His mastery of the complexities of word formation makes him a true creator of language in this remarkable book permeated with epical overtones. After his style had been securely established, Guimaraes Rosa has been repeatedly imitated by lesser authors, as have almost all great literary writers. His language is so insinuating,
expressive and functional that the author himself, after his major works had already been published (Sagarana and Corpo de Baile), he couldn't free himself from began to plagiarize his own style the prodigious communication process he himself had created. -
Guimaraes Rosa's novel, one could say, assimilates the themes which
inspired Euclides de Cunha's Os Sertoes; furthermore, it would not have been written without the contribution of Joyce's Ulysses. To the former he owes the boldness of the backland theme the possibility of its becoming national and subsequently universal; in addition, Os Sertoes served as an example of painstaking literary
-
effort. To Joyce he owes the esthetic conception, the story projected to the inner consciousness, as well as the discovery of an anthropo
logical and linguistic device for language elaboration. Guimaraes Rosa does not alienate himself from the indigenous experience the -
Indian or the backlander. He assimilates this as well as the classical
European tradition and the international modern innovations. The last attempt by a group of writers to establish an esthetic theory in conformity with the Brazilian experience may be found in the works published in the literary journal entitled Tendencia, which appeared between the years 1957-62. The collaborators' thesis was unusually well received by the Brazilian public, since the pursuit of a literary autonomy coincides with Brazil's affirmation as a country 36
They sought immanence in their work, a national character for the country's literature, as well as the discovery of autochthonic forms of expression which would transmit a native, spontaneous style. Curiously, the country's regional diversification and its artistic decentralization (Brazil's artistic output originated in the old capital, Rio de Janeiro, which exercised absolute hegemony over the rest of the country) have con solidated rather than fragmented its national expression. Until re cently, the regional and the particular were confused with the whole nation. This meant that the country's cultural reputation was reduced to a provincial stereotype based on unimpressive folklore and rural writings. Meanwhile, the metropolitan Rio de Janeiro derived its inspiration from imported ideas, usually after they had already be come academic in the country of origin. The advent of industrialization, the widespread urban growth and the founding and enlargement of universities in the several states throughout Brazil brought about the decrease of the capital's im portance, while the country's cultural unity served as a link between the different isolated literary groups. The writers began to group on the basis of a common spiritual identity, exactly the opposite of what had happened in Mario de Andrade's famous Macunaima, that is,
of great economic, productive capacity.
the somewhat artificial sum of the diverse elements. It must be emphasized that the Modernist Movement, a literary
experience formed by multifaceted values, coincides with the social diversification begun in Brazil after the 1920's and accelerated to ward centralization after 1930, to be decentralized again since 1945 a period after the Second World War characterized by a profound social change. The Modernist Movement permeated Brazil's cultural life with a sense of relativism attuned with the country's political and economic aspirations. As a reflection of the country's social scene, it dichotomized into the expression of the class struggle and the pursuit of national collective consciousness. We believe that the nationalistic assertion surpassed the portrayal of the class struggle, since it encompassed and absorbed the latter historically. The na tionalistic attitude is a deeper, more inflamed issue in the present stage of Brazilian development. -
37
Brazil has several levels of national identity, which render it to
be, within its continental dimensions, unlike the other big powers, such as the United States, Russia, China and India. The Portuguese
language is spoken throughout the eight million, five hundred thou sand square kilometers (five million square miles), with only slight dialectical variations among its eighty-seven million speakers; Cath olicism is practiced massively throughout Brazil, lightly tinged with African superstitions and rituals; there is no racial conflict, for mis cegenation, in a way, displaced these conflicts into other areas (the struggle between the rich and the poor, for example), in such a way that discrimination, although present, is attenuated by a general tolerance; the political diatribes are, for the most part, solved through compromise Brazilians are psychologically averse to vio lence and to the solving of conflicts through force; the central gov ernment's administrative power strengthens the Federal Union and consequently weakens the states' autonomy into almost nonexist ence; the national myths manage to integrate themselves in the -
national whole
-
the heroes, artists, scholars, and the great athletes
lose their local character in order to become,
through their worth, the expression of the whole nation in the eyes of the people; the collective psychology is manifested through the people's cordial ity, easy eloquence, playful spirit, love for public festivities and the implicit belief in magical powers and the solving of problems through soon
chance. To synthesize, there is in Brazil a cultural unity not sufficiently
recognized or utilized by politicians or men of letters. In Brazil, there are no profound ethnic or linguistic discontinuities; neither are there striking phenomena of geographic isolation. The inter-ethnical strat ification is not clear-cut. Among the intelligentsia, there is, rather, the wish to mold this raw material into aboriginal themes. This at tempt is frequently associated, whether by unawareness or sloth, with alien patterns and attitudes. While the search for internal causa tion continues, together with the ascertaining of immanent esthetic
theories (by "immanent" we allude here to its etymological meaning of "permanent") and the pursuit of the proper national pattern for the national content, there is, at the same time, the increasing devel38
opment of an intellectual colonialism manifested by a fascination for everything foreign. This is accompanied by a feeling of misgiving about the country's capabilities
-
an
open-mouthed fascination with
other people's providential technical competence, like the Brazilian Indian who exchanged all his belongings for the enthralling beads and little mirrors brought by European colonizers. There are also those who think in national terms but are cognizant of the mutual benefits derived from an exchange between nations. They respect
other countries' progress and try to adapt this to the national identity. mE INDUCED EXPERIENCES
The reader would no doubt like to know how Brazilians have as similated international ideas and expressions to their unique reality; in other words, how Brazilians have adopted ideas and experiences
proceeding from more economically advanced and culturally domi nating countries in their literature. Our contact with Europe is traditionally by way of France. This is the reason we ordinarily become acquainted with modem theories through that country's publications. Recently, however, the increas ing exchange with the United States, fostered by an intense propa ganda, has resulted in a similar interest, on the part of some Brazilian intellectuals, in the works of American authors. The greatest emphasis of the young Brazilian intellectuals in their pursuit of philosophical, political and ideological theories lies,
without a doubt, in Marxist studies. These have contributed toward a
greater variety of theoretical formulas and literary research meth
ods. We have reached, at the present time, a stage of development
where Marxist conceptions do not pertain exclusively to demagogical
simplifications, but reveal a fertile source for new methods of literary criticism. Structuralism, as exemplified in the work of Levi-Strauss, has awakened a great curiosity in Brazil, although it has already pene trated the dangerous realm of polemics. Now that the structural currents have taken the lead as offshoots of phenomenalism and as or gross
direct consequences of non-orthodox Marxist studies (the group identified with Althusser), the more refined factions in the univer39
sities are deepening their knowledge of
phenomenalism in artistic appreciation under the influence of E. Husserl, Roman Ingarden and J. P. Sartre.
One must take into consideration that the predominance of in trinsic and textual analysis in the field of literary criticism is a re cent development; the encyclopedic kind of criticism written weekly
in newspaper footnotes, highly influenced by eighteenth-century French mentors like Sainte-Beuve and Taine, has practically dis
appeared from the literary supplements. These, in turn, have war ranted less and less space in the newspapers.
Novelists in Brazil have also turned their attention to the French nouveau roman
with its laudable purpose of disanthropomorphism
and the intention of freeing the described objects from any possible
human influence. They are attempting to achieve a direct contact between the being and the object by intensifying the relationship of Man and the Nature of Things. The problem of the nouveau roman is more critical than fictional since there are as yet no Brazilian mani
festations of this kind of novel. Many have taken the nouveau roman as the a
expression of French literary regression. It has little value for
nation like Brazil with much still to tell in the realm of human
relations. In fact, the same has been said of structuralism
philo sophical partition behind which hides the impotence of the European bourgeoisie. Among the most important literary works of this century, the -
a
first to influence Brazilian literature was the work of Marcel Proust -
the foreign author with the greatest bibliography in Portuguese.
The easy accessibility of the French language has no doubt contrib uted to this end. Let us consider, as an
example, one of the most successful novels of Brazilian Modernism, Ciro dos Anjos' 0 Amanuense Belmiro (1st ed., 1937). As in Proust the author states,
"In truth things really exist in time and time is inside of us. The essence of
) has fled on the wings of time and we should things ( seek it in our spirit's duration only," says the major protagonist in a monologue. .
.
.
The second greatest influence comes from F. Kafka, who is more often quoted than analyzed. Nevertheless, 40
we must
refer to him
attempt to interpret the Brazilian magic realism. Murilo Rubiao's 0 Ex-Magico (1947) has been considered a priori as Kafkian, although its author has often stated that he came to know whenever
we
Kafka only after the publication of his short stories. We must con cede that Murilo Rubiao's atmosphere, based on his protagonists'
innocence and purity and tied to the world of childhood, animals and the fantastic, the symbolic and the marvelous, has very little to do
with the humanity in Kafka; a humanity conceived in a state of
pessimistic negation, human mutilation and social and religious imprisonment without escape. More recently the author of The Trial has acquired enormous prestige in intellectual circles after a period in which he remained in relative oblivion. The third influence is derived from W. Faulkner, well liked for the way he uses language to explore the inner labyrinth and the way his passionate imagination is structured like a mystery novel, a novel where the hidden thread of the plot is played upon with the
help of the reader. A few critics have already written about Faulkner; the most important work is probably novelist Assis Brosil's Faulkner and the Technique of the Novel (Rio, 1964). There is something of a parallel between Faulkner and Clarice Lispector's fic tion, especially in A Maca no Escuro (Rio, 1961). There are, no doubt, marked differences. Lispector has an appealingly intellectual ized style (similar in this respect to Virginia Woolf), a more abun dant and subtle feminine allegory, a lack of involvement in the social context (none of which is at all typical of Faulkner). Another influential writer is E. Hemingway. His matter-of-fact narrative and almost journalistic objectivism attracts the young writer deceived by the apparent simplicity of the plot structure. One of the books most closely connected with Hemingway's work is A Mae e 0 Filho da Mae (Belo Horizonte, 1966), by Wander Piroli, a short story writer deeply concerned with social problems. The translation of Joyce's Ulysses (1966), a task of great magnitude, by the essayist and philologist Antonio Houaiss should be mentioned as a seed of literary unrest. The possibility of reading the remarkable novel in Portuguese roused serious debates and stressed the vocation of literary research in the field of modern fie41
tion, altering Brazil's traditional dependency on 19th century French patterns. In the realm of poetry, experimentation is more volatile and
influenced more by European and American literary currents. There is a combination of Mallarme, A pollinaire, Pound and Cummings in the breaking of language fluidity and in its projection to conscious
through intensifying this communication with the help of visual aids and the fragmentation into sound units conditioned, rhythmi cally and psychologically, to the processes of their creation and de velopment. Along with these contributions we should remember that the Concrete and Neoconcrete poetic experiments, as well as those by the "Praxis" group, owe a great deal to Surrealism which proposed "a systematic exploration of the unconscious," and to Futurism ness
which believed that "a word inscribed on a page may be an incredible
jewel." They were also influenced by Chinese writing, with its use of ideograms as a form of expression, by pasting, the confection of billboards, the widespread techniques of modem communication, the findings of cybernetics, the probability laws, the problems of alternative forms and the "open work" method, especially as con ceived by the Italian Umberto Eco. So far it is not possible to say whether a definite style has emerged from this wild experimentation, although the output of the various groups is considerable, convening a wide following from various parts of the country. THE mSTORICAL CONTINUANCE AND ITS PRESENT STAGE
The latest echoes of the Modernist Movement are in the air. Gen erations of writers one after another attempt to establish a new mile stone in Brazilian
literature. Certain individual achievements are
surpassing the masters of 1922. Small groups and short movements shine briefly, then pass on before they may leave a striking influence. Modernism's esthetic relativity may have stilted the young writers' initiative. Innovations are few, the appreciation of literature has declined somewhat, or, perhaps, it has not kept up with other fields of endeavor. There is nothing that seems to activate the collective 42
national spirit; we could say that we are living through a period of intellectual stagnation. There is, however, a remainder of former achievements and certain stars do shine in the literary horizon. It is thus imperative that we allude to individuals rather than literary movements. We shall do so in the pages that follow by concentrat
ing on contemporary criticism, poetry and fiction, pointing out brief ly the more marked contemporary literary tendencies. a. Literary criticism. The Modernist Movement in Brazil also attempted to review its critical theories and to search, through its better writers, for an intrinsic vision of the literary work as a whole. Mario de Andrade" and Tristao de Athayde" made a substantial contribution, followed later by Sergio Buarque de Holanda (who abandoned militant criticism for the study of history after publishing Cobra de Vidro in 1944) and Alvaro Lins." Tristao de Athayde is probably the most representative critic of the period due to his esthetic and humanistic view of the literary problem. A liberal Cath olic thinker, he has influenced Brazilian thought both because of his ideas and the moral rectitude with which he debated literary, moral, religious and political questions. He abandoned literary criti cism a long time ago. He believes that Brazilian literature after 1945 entered a post-Modernist phase different from the initial Modernist period. Antonio Candido" was unquestionably the most penetrating critic after the Second World War; he combines sharp insight with solid literary knowledge, having also spent several years studying sociology. The change of attitude toward literary theory was brought about, to a great extent, by the extraordinary debate promoted by Otto Maria Carpeaux," an Austrian critic who fled from Nazism, emigrating to Brazil in 1939. He possesses an unbelievable wealth of knowledge and a tremendous capacity for work. He applied this vast cultural background to the literary and social problems of the country of which he became a citizen (he was naturalized in 1944). At the same time, Afranio Coutinho" working incessantly as a jour nalist as well as a university professor introduced "New Criticism" amid great controversy. He proposed textual methods of analysis as opposed to studies emphasizing sociological, historical and bio43
graphical aspects, which were strongly favored then. He was also responsible for other important works like the truly revolutionary A Literatura no Brasil.
Today the number of authors involved in intrinsic criticism and in documentary research is enormous, especially in the universities; it is impossible, therefore, to cite names, although we may call atten tion to the unusual activity in this field, resulting in a reappraisal of values by the national conscience and a reexamination of Brazil's literary heritage. Two recently deceased authors should be mentioned for their contribution to modern criticism in Brazil: Lucia Miguel Pereira," a remarkable scholar, wrote one of the most perfect histories of Brazilian fiction, and Cavalcanti Proenca," a highly cultured phil ologist, folklorist, novelist and essayist, who wrote a comprehensive study on Mario de Andrade's Macunaima, analyzing the intricate Indian mythology and the book's vocabulary. Fundamental studies on Grande Sertao: Veredas and on Augusto dos Anjos' poetry are other contributions. In the scholarly field of editing, bibliography, restoration and
analysis of texts two names stand out: Antonio Houaiss," an extra ordinary man of letters with fine perception for the poetic phenome non, and Darcy Damasceno, one of the most distinguished poets of his generation, who translated and annotated Paul Valery's 0 Ceme terio Marinho and wrote a study entitled Cecilia Meireles: 0 mundo contemplado. The
literary group which gathered around the University of Brasilia was dissolved due to the military events that took place in 1964. Oswaldino Marques was there, for instance. All his works were edited in Rio, being important for their vigorous analysis and penetrating criticism." In Rio Augusto Meyer" and Eugenio GomesH continue writing essays of high quality. b. Fiction. Recently the idea that the novel is doomed to dis appear has been foremost in everyone's mind. The novel is undeni ably undergoing a crisis, mostly because its classic basic elements the plot, character, time and setting have undergone radical -
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44
changes. The mere fact that throughout the world traditional fic tional values seem to be disintegrating does not preclude their ap proaching extinction. In Brazil there are, we must agree, vigorous renovating trends. The authors becoming prominent within the last quarter of a century have maintained fiction at the level set by the Modernist Movement's theoreticians. An exception must be made regarding Guimaraes Rosa's work. He is probably the most studied Brazilian prose writer and will, no
doubt, continue to warrant innumerable literary analyses and inter
pretations. Guimaraes Rosa juxtaposes a refined universal culture to the simplest manifestations of regional psychology in a Dionysiac excitement very much akin to the Brazilian spirit. He attains, fre quently, an epical majesty forged by the heroes' suffering and defi ance. The atmosphere of his fiction is impregnated with spiritualism and enchantment. It is defined within a religious context and in the absorbing quest for the unknown. The novelist has created tensions and invented words. Grande Sertao: Veredas, his masterpiece (a blend of rhaposdy and backland saga), narrates the backland ban dits' struggle for hypothetical power, ironically depicting the ludi crous pursuit of a dangerous existence. It is the novel of the glowing void." Otavio de Faria has continued to write his Tragedia Burguesa. This is a series of novels meant to portray, in a bold project, the
contemporary scene. The work is greatly influenced by nineteenth century French models and it moves through a religious atmosphere involving sin, guilt and salvation. The style is not very impressive. The theme of revolt does give to Otavio de Faria's fiction a flair and
intensity reminiscent of Dostoevski and George Bernanos. 0 Retrato da Morte (1961) reflects the tensions between pagan and religious interests, the conflict between reality and conscience: "In the midst of love the unwanted surge of thought; in the midst of orgasm the
conscientious, critical realization that the moment is passing, irrevo cably lost, mortal." These are the words of Branco, the main charac ter, in regard to his love affair. The limiting situation is death
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45
the
impossibility of all possibilities. The author contends that if life is a succession of moments the important one is the last one, "death itself.
"
Erico Verissimo and Jorge Amado enjoy a tremendous popu
larity; they are both well liked by the reading public, although not always as successful with the critics. Erico Verissimo's latest work, o Senhor Embaixador (1965), is a social novel of a different type. It represents, perhaps, his reaction to the legal government's over throw by the military in 1964. An imaginary republic is located in the Caribbean. The humiliating conditions of Latin-American re publics (where military revolutions arise from the internal oligar chies as well as from the international economic monopolies) are exposed, using this republic as model. Jorge Amado, on the other hand, has abandoned the treatment of the social themes which brought him fame the rural and urban conflicts in Brazil for the picaresque, imaginative, allegoric and festive novel. This change may be seen in Gabriela, Cravo e Canela (1958) and even more concretely in Os Velhos Marinheiros (1961). The latter includes two exceptionally brilliant novelettes touched with irony and metaphysical quest. Amado's latest book, Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos ( 1966), analyzes the fragility of human passions through humor. Marques Rebelo has been working on a roman fieuve 0 Es pelho Partido having already published two volumes: 0 Trapi cheiro (1959) and A Mudanca (1962). The work comprises a sequence of fragments and entries related to emotions and events taken from the country's daily life, and incorporating real people known to the author. The narrative flows in the scintillating style characteristic of Marques Rebelo. 0 Amanu Having exhausted the source of his great novels ense Belmiro and Abdias based on the lyrical and intellectually wrought reconstruction of a public servant's past (living in a socially Belo Horizonte) Ciro dos Anjos has turned to the stagnant city writing of memoirs with a book entitled Exploracoes no Tempo -
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(1963 ). Lucio Cardoso has proceeded in the same vein that character ized his former work, that is, the intimate description of an inner 46
atmosphere charged with insoluble dramas. He reminds us of Cor nelio Pena (deceased), the creator of impenetrable mysteries occurring in a phantasmagorical environment immersed in somber mysticism. Among the more recent writers there are some who must neces sarily be mentioned: Clarice Lispector's magic world enclosed in her novels and short stories is the manifestation of an extraordinary crea tive talent-a permanent challenge to literary criticism; Autran Dourado's last three books may be considered a sequence of discov eries and triumphs. A Barca dos Homens (1962), for example, is a.
complex narrative. The author isolates a small community on an island and inflates his characters with dramatic intensity in an analysis of psychological, philosophical and linguistic content. The short novel Uma Vida em Segredo (1964) was reviewed by the critics as a true masterpiece, for its bare simplicity, its Flaubert-like discipline, dealing with a defenseless character's primary reactions. He moves to the city with all his worthless possessions and experi ences an exhausting and impossible adjustment. A Opera dos Mortos (1967) presents a miraculous cross-section of the author's works. He seeks other, more hidden recesses within the literary experience without wavering in his purpose to explore the possibilities of word combinations, the challenge of language and the problems of literary structure. Geraldo Ferraz, after publishing Doramundo (1966), one of the most complex works in Brazilian literature, has devoted himself exclusively to writing on the plastic arts. We should like to add the name of Fernando Sabino to our roll of present day Brazilian fictional writers. His novel, 0 Encontro Marcado (1956), an analysis of adolescent psychology, owes noth ing to Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. We should also mention Macedo Miranda, whose A Cabeca do Papa (1962) represents the
allegoric sum of unimportant events; his 0 Deus Faminto (1967) depicts the struggle between progress and tradition in a small city in the hinterland. The literary genre in which the Brazilian literary renovation has
been most felt is the short story. The renewal of the short story in Brazil starts with the work 0 ex-magico by Murilo Rubiao, owner of a highly symbolic style, that projects onto the written
language 47
a
compact, beautiful and slightly ironical supra-reality. Among the
distinguished short story writers are Dalton Trevisan," the ingenious contriver of tense situations taken from uneventful everyday life, short-lived moments of dramatic intensity arrested briefly within the frame of one, two or three pages. Rubem Fonseca'? is making a name for himself in Brazilian fiction due to his
single purpose: por
trayal of urban tragedy in a progressive and cosmopolitan society. Unlike other writers, he is not a descendant of last century's stabil ized cultured society, which has been the object of sociable essays and subtle observations on uneventful everyday life. He also distinguishes himself for his adaptability to the new social environ ment and his refusal to mourn the peacefulness of country life, an overplayed theme with many of his contemporaries who moved from the interior to the state capitals and witnessed the impact of indus trialization and the sudden, disorganized city growth. Rubem Fon seca is a modem in style, swift, exciting and incredibly efficient in communicating a dramatic plot to the reader. Osman Lins is a writer of novelettes and short stories. His latest book (Nove, Novena, 1966) represents one of Brazil's boldest literary experiments in the world of fiction. He ties mastery over language with Man's mastery over life. In his major works the reader lives through a twofold simul taneous experience the search for word control is identified with the search for a way out of life's predicament. The problem is gen erally one of communication. It is in Luiz Vilela's work, however (Tremor de Terra, 1967), that this problem becomes the essence of the work itself. The social conflict reaches tragic and literary propor -
tions seldom found in Brazil in Wander Piroli's short stories (A Mae e 0 Filho da Mae, 1966). The fusion of magic realism and the
socially motivated class struggle expressed in symbolic language is found in Jose Edson Gomes (As Sementes de Deus, 1965, and Os Ossos Rotulados, 1966). The recent publication of several volumes of experimental short stories has brought great acclaim to the fol
lowing writers: Nelson Coelho (0 Inventor de Deus, 1962) and Jose J. Veiga, who after his first remarkable book Os Cavalinhos do Platipanto wrote A Hora dos Ruminantes (1966), one of the great est revelations of the last few years. Samuel Rawet (Os Sete Sonhos,
48
1967), on the other hand, has written several volumes of short stories in which he instills, in the protagonists' conscience, the equa tion of anxiety, death, the absurd; in short, the drama of existence: "I am alienated," says a witness to an accident, trying to free himself from a stranger's private tragedy. The theme of death, however, involves him and ties him to the unfortunate traffic victim. Nelida Pinon (Tempo das Frutas, 1966), a young short story writer, depicts the furtive and disenchanting aspects of love. She has just published a
volume of short stories after having written two novels. Brazilian fiction writers seldom identify themselves with minor
ity groups, as is frequently the case in the United States with respect to Negroes and Jews. They all try to denote a national accent in their works even when the setting is specifically regional. c. Poetry. Some of the Modernist Movement's major poets have continued to update their poetic expression. Manuel Bandeira, now eighty years old, has not been sidetracked in his remarkable career as poet. He did try his hand on some rare occasions at writing poems using visualized language to explore graphic space. He aban doned the attempt, however, when he decided that "there was no way out," that "it leads nowhere." Carlos Drummond de Andrade has also kept up with the times without forsaking his own poetic theme. His poetic subjectivity has deepened, although he has allowed
himself to make ironic commentaries on the drabness of daily life. Andrade's poetic content,
alloyed into an ever changing and re sourceful poetic frame, is a permanent challenge to critical analysis. He has run the gamut of poetic themes from poems on childhood memories and the social struggle to poems analyzing the depths of human destiny. His is a master's work the most admired and -
-
imitated Brazilian poet in the last three decades. Cassiano Ricardo
maintains, with his perennial language transformation, the myth of an ever reborn
youth. He yields to each new poetic attempt with a wild abandon. His intellectual inquisitiveness, allied with great inventiveness and craftsmanship, has permitted him to write a truly original book, Jeremias sem Chorar (1964) perhaps one of the poems in the Portuguese language most immersed in modern life. -
All cosmos-wide tensions and values of the space age are reflected in 49
his new book in a concept that is at once dynamic, rotative and dialectic. A writer of great critical sensitivity and solid literary knowledge, Cassiano Ricardo published an essay entitled 22 e a
Hoje during the fortieth anniversary of the Week of Modern Art (1962). In this essay, he regards the Concrete poets
Poesia de
as the Modernists' successors.
In 1966 he published Poesia Praxis e
22, a study of the poetic principles followed by the "Praxis" group. Murilo Mendes' Tempo Espanhol appeared in 1959. This book shows a new facet of his poetic universe. To the well-known meta
physical quest and baroque, surrealistic poetic vision characteristic of his former work, Murilo Mendes has added, with his latest book, Iberian influence and word plasticity. Some poems written between
1959 and 1964 reveal a certain cosmic terror. He defines earth as a "suburb of the Galaxies" and proclaims that "There is no alternative for the bomb/in the attempt to substitute Man." Vinicius de Moraes,
mostly engaged in the writing of popular music, is still one of the best lyrical poets in our language. His poems are a welcome change from those of poets who consider technical experimentation as an end in itself, a pleasure soon drained in the involved elabora tion of plastic and audio-visual schemes. His Antologia Poetica, now in its sixth edition, appeals to an ever increasing public weary of too much experimentation concealing, all too often, the inability
now
to communicate. Two poets stand out in Minas Gerais. Emilio Moura
is an important lyric poet. Since he began to write poetry in 1931, his poems have been variations on his fundamental themes: love, the contemplation of the universe, the frailty of Man, the conflict between the eternal and the transitory, the metaphysical concern for
Man's destiny, the unswerving faith in the transcendental qualities of beauty and poetry. All these are transmitted in rhythmically serene poems of
unusual communicative power. Henriqueta Lisboa began to write poetry under the symbolist influence. She has, how an
ever, through a strong yearning for perfection, purified her poems
both in a structural sense and in the discovery of new inspirational sources.
served
The themes of solitude, unrealized love and childhood
death. Lately, prelude to her all-important theme mysticism and individual inner-suffering have contributed to the 50
as
a
-
quality of her poems, juxtaposing a deep inward focus with a calcu lated word economy. The advent of Joao Cabral de Melo Neto's poetry after World
important development in the history of Brazilian poetry. This singular poet from the Northeastern State of Pernambuco arrived at the complete control of language-in his case language may be taken as pure geometry-through the erasing of conventional effects, the abolition of "smellingly facile" imagery, the absolute leanness of phrase and the radical eradication of the
War II
was
the most
extraneous. The Northeast becomes in his poetry a wasteland and
his language is in turn devoid of any sweetness. Joao Cabral's work
began with the publication of Pedra do Sono (1941) and culmi nated in A Educacao pela Pedra (1961) ; the poet defined this book of poems as an "anti-lyre." Stone by stone the poet has diligently pursued and superiorly solved the arid, arduous theorem of poetic composition. His many years of residence in Spain contribute to the discipline in his verse and to the arrested explosion of feeling char acteristic of his poetry mirrored in the bullfight's gracefulness and instant danger. His poetic theme may be synthesized in the poem entitled "Some Bullfighters"; exalting Manolete the poet says: "He gave to tragedy number,/to vertigo geometry,/ decimals to the emotion,/ and to fright weight and measure." He defines in this poem his own poetic conception, that is-"without perfuming his
fiower.Iwithout poetizing his poem." Joao Cabral de Melo Neto's poetry is directly opposed to mysterious, apocalyptic and meta
physical poetry, since he disanthropomorphizes Nature, leading Man closer to objects and to his capacity to transform them, that is, to recreate them into art.
In conclusion we must point out that almost all contemporary
Brazilian writers follow the Baroque style in their literary produc
tion. Many literary critics consider the Baroque style an old-fash ioned and outdated artistic vogue. Therefore, it has had its day and its area of influence. There are others, however, who conceive the
Baroque as a way of life always identified with the personality of cer tain individuals. According to this latter definition, the Brazilian national character may be identified with the Baroque style. Some 51
of the most genuine expressions of Brazilian culture have included this artistic concept. Brazilians
especially fond of the Baroque as an artistic
are
theme. Critics such as Afranio Coutinho, Lourival Gomes Machado,
Sergio Buarque de Holanda and Afonso Avila (in the book Residuos Seiscentistas em Minas, 2 vols., 1967) have turned their attention to
the Baroque style. When Jorge de Lima published his last work, Invencao de Orjeu
( 1952), the critics mentioned its inherent Baroque quality. The same occurred with the publication of Guimaraes Rosa's Grande Sertao: Veredas and Corpo de Baile. Due to the apparent overrule of reason through passion, Carlos Drummond de Andrade's poetry has been considered as being typically in the Baroque style. Murilo Mendes has also been called a Baroque poet, especially because of his book Contemplacao de Ouro Pre to (1954), dedicated to the city which experienced, in the eighteenth century, the apogee of the Baroque style in architecture, sculpture and music. In accord with the present Baroque tendency in Brazilian literature criticism, the "Literary Supplement" of Minas Gerais has fiction and poetry devoted two of its special numbers to the Baroque style (July 8 and 15,1967). While attempting to ascertain its true autonomy, Brazilian liter ature has not by-passed international movements and influences, during this our present stage of electronic and spatial communica tions, mass media and anxiety over the final holocaust. -
-
translated by A lexandrino Severino
NOTES 1. He wrote the following works pertaining to the Indian: 0 Guarani (1857),
lracema (1865) and Ubirajara (1874). 2. The author of several poems concerning the Indian, the best known being,
perhaps, Os Timbiras (1857). 3. The author of the following books on literary criticism: 0 Movimento Modernista (1942), 0 Baile das Quatro Artes (1943), Aspectos da Literatura Brasileira (1943) and 0 Emphalhador de Passarinho (s.d.). He also published several works
novelist.
52
on
music and folkloric research. He
was
an
innovating poet and
4. The pseudonym of Alceu Amoroso Lima. His major critical works are: Afonso Arinos (1923), Estudos (5 series, 1927-1933), Contribuicao a Hlstoria do Modernismo (1939), Tres Ensaios sobre Machado de Assis (1941), Poesia Brasi leira Contemporanea (1942), Estetica Literaria (1945), 0 Critico Literario
(1945) and Introducao a Literatura Brasileira (1956), etc. 5. The author of Historia Literaria de Eca de Queiros (1939), Jornal de Critica (6 series, 1941-1951), Da Tecnica do Romance em Marcel Proust (1950), etc.
6. The author of 0 Metodo de Silvio Romero
(S. Paulo, 1945), Brigada
Confissao (dealing with Graciliano Ramos' Legeira (S. Paulo, 1945), works, Rio, 1956), Formacao da Literatura Brasileira (Momentos Decisivos, 2 Ficcao
e
vols., 1964), Tese e Antitese (1964). 7. The author of Pequena Bibliografia Critica da Literatura Brasileira (1949), Presencas na Mesa
(1958), Historia da Literatura Odden tal (9 vols., 1959-1966), Livros
(1960), A Literatura Alema (1964), etc.
8. His works Literatura Barroca
are:
A
Filosojia de Machado de Assis (1940), Aspectos da
(1951), Da Critica e da Nova Critica (1957), Introducao a
Literatura no Brasil (1959), etc. 9. Her major critical works are Machado de Assis (1936), A Vida de Gon
calves Dias (1943) and Historia da Literatura Brasileira-Prosa de Ficcao (1950). 10. The author of Ritmo
(1953), Roteiro de Macunaima (1953) and Augusto dos Anios e Outros Ensaios (1959). e
Poesia
11. He is the author of Tentativa de Descricao do Sistema Vocalico do Por
tugues Culto no Area Dita Carioca (1959), Introducao ao Texto Critico das Memo rias Postumas de Bras Cubas (1959), Seis Poetas e um Problema (1960), Critica
Avulsa
(1960) and also the important and much debated translation of Joyce's
Ulysses. In 1967 he edited the work entitled Elementos de Bibliografia. 12. 0 Poliedro e a Rosa (1952), Teoria da Metafora e Renascenca da Poesia
Americana (1956), A Seta e 0 Alvo (1957), 0 Laboratorio Poetico de Cassiano Ricardo
(1962).
13. The author of Preto e Branco (1956), Machado de Assis (1958), A Chave e a Mascara
(1964), A Forma Secreta (1965).
14. His works includeD. H. Lawrence e Outros (1937), Prata da Casa (1953),
Aspectos do Romance Brasileiro (1958), Visoes e Revisoes (1958), Shakespeare no Brasil (1961), etc. 15. The author of Sagarana (1946),0 Corpo de Baile (1956), Grande Sertao:
Veredas (1956), Primeiras Estorias (1963), Tutameia (1967). While writing the present article we received the news of Guimaraes Rosa's death on November 19, 1967. His work,
we
feel, will prove time's antidote, prevailing beyond the great
novelist's untimely death. 16. The author of Novelas Nada Exemplares (1959),0 Anel Magico (1964), o
Vampiro de Curitiba (1964), Cemeterio de Elefantes (1964), Morte na Praca,
etc.
17. The author of Os Prisioneiros (1963) and A Coleira do Cao (1965).
53
Translating Cesar Vallejo: an
evolution
CLAYTON ESHLEMAN
A. The encounter from The Book of Y orunomado
I entered Y orunomado & sat down
Nightwindow the coffee breathed a slender tea
turning Open As a tiny monarch comes to
wings dilating above a hardening turd so I touched on his
spine
pages lifting in the breeze in
from the pine
We locked. I sank my teeth in his spinal throat, clenched, his head tore into my crotch, locked
in spasms of shattering pain we turned, I crazed for his breath to forward the word now back into flesh, turning, he
ripped & bored for food
Locked a month passed. As he increased lean I weakened, drained & tripling my energy drew blood; not what I was after; contracting in
full expansion he was clenched
furiously into my structure, turning, clenched in agony, thickening, I wide in terror he was all substance, dead cholo
eating into my cord, & saw deep down into his interior a seed-pit, in spring I burrowed, making myself into a knife I reached down, down, drawing out the earth, cold.
A hideous chill passed Another month; tired he turned himself into a stone I dulled on
grinding cracking my teeth splintered I fell back; another month a season. I was
wandering round the pebbled
compound the stone in my hand. I knew I'd reached the deadend, but Japan
help-until I also saw in the feudal rite of seppuku on the pebbles I lowered cammo. a way. was no
stonelike.
whereupon the false-Vallejo
raised before me;
cowled in the black robes
of birth channel; stern on the roka he lowered; diversing his fan
56
he invoked the character for earth on my gut I cut YA
HO of father AlE of mother degorged my system's acid spurt picketfence oldrope & buckeyes
beeches dogpens
the rock of Boulevard;
I unlocked Y orunomado from the depths of hell, undid his wrists & ankles chained to altars
of the multichambered sun Quick as one delves thru raw tuna, with
shooting contortions, not
moving an inch in bleeding pebbles I faced the man on sopped linen I inscribed the woman I cored Here I admitted the failure
the friendship, what had feared to come to birth; here I erased
'the child is the imaginative aspect of copulation' Here likewise is the suppertable of my past
Vallejo kept his word:
he was none
other than one year than himself
Goodbye all I've ever known
...
for this was the point upon which the knife worked ,
my contraries
frozen the blank zero without rim
the navel the I has nothing
loose
Kyoto, 1964 57
B. Letter to Cesar Calvo concerning the inauguration of a monument to Cesar Vallejo. The namesake. dear Calvo: I woke up this morning to the newspaper, & on the
john reading Artaud's Van Gogh: The Man Suicided by Society, thought I had the connection to take a good swing at a few who've made my life miserable in your city these past months, I mean how a monument is put up to Vallejo, ceremony attended by "distin including the guished elements of our intellectual community widow of the poet, numerous artists & prominent neighbors, who were later given a cocktail in a nearby salon ," this bust on a tall black base sitting out among the trees in the city of the man's country where you cannot buy an edition of his works; for a friend from my university in the States wrote me the other day asking for copies of .
.
.
...
Poemas Humanos to teach in a seminar & of course I had to tum him
down, the last "edition" of that masterpiece having to be printed clan destinely, in 1961, on about the same quality paper (the back break ing as one opens the book) on which I wipe my ass. But then some
thing happened that made me think perhaps this is all wrong now, there is more important stuff to do than swing grieved at others; for my mother-in law visiting the birth of her new grandchild we went off to the Larco Herrera museum to see some pots & weavings, & near noon, down in the room for erotic pieces, I met the owner, Mr. Larco and asked him why lhe erotic ones are separated from the rest, since it seemed obvious enough to me that the fuckers were but one shade of a vast spectrum of life and shd rightfully be seen in con text.
Mr. Larco is old and not well, as perhaps you know, and he
shook his head sadly, repeating "the children as
...
the children
" ...
if speaking of a loss more than answering my question, wch tho,
he did, the children it seemed it was decided should not see the sex
when they were led on tours thru the rooms above. Then he sat down, 58
on a
little chair, and said "You know, when Keensy was here he
said the word 'pornographic' was wrong, that the only word you could use about these pieces was 'erotic', and I've been thinking
about this now for two years" (and he was breathing hard, weighing his words as if he might not have a chance to change what he was
saying), "he said it was all an expression of love, and I've been thinking about this and I believe he is right. It is all love."
now
And he looked up at me, long into me without seeing me for a moment, and while I don't think he was really touched by what he was saying, I was, and it was something that seemed to lie outside Mr. Larco and
his fine museum. Now it is night and I'm still wondering where the true connection does lie. That is, can I say more to you among the
Lima dead, among all the crap that is here in this city tied up with your namesake's reputation, you a young poet who I tried to write a poem to the other night, having missed you again in Barranco,
having come to see you & your shameless girlfriend who like the rest has copped out on me here, & coming back I tried to catch the isola tion in the collectivo, and while that might have been caught, there was nothing in the poem to say to you worth keeping, so I've been on edge since, wanting to speak to you, since I have yet to speak to any Peruvian artist about anything more than how-do-you-do etc., and God knows I've tried, tho I will admit there is wounded pride involved. Does a vision of love hold, can it open the muck, clear it out of the way enough, to make human
response possible, or is one, talking about Vallejo in Peru in 1966, doomed? Or does it
really make much difference to you or Belli or Ortega or Hinostroza or anyone
of the other ten or fifteen poets here I've met? You see,
I'm trying to grasp something about you &
your people and I'm trying to do it in front of you, not say, as it was done to him, your
namesake, thought out for him, withheld as it is still withheld, then erected over the gross which he is not a
part of as I'm pretty sure
the widow is at least right about that; that he never wanted to re
turn, that his city is Paris, that he is about as cholo as I am, and that the "native son" bullshit is just that. I'm
thinking that maybe 59
your dead friend Javier Heraud is closer to him than any of you, who went to Cuba maybe somewhat the same way Vallejo went to Russia, only that Heraud came back to Peru, at his age he could not see Peru in a world or mind
perspective, thus died for Peru that Vallejo after sitting in jail in Trujillo a hundred days decided wasn't worth the pain, and returned to Paris, to his mind, to what he believed was happening not in a jungle or poet's award panel but in the world.
So I don't know whether it makes any sense or not to even ask you why those I've met here act like scared little children before the old woman (let's get her in the proper perspective) who can go to the cocktail party and grin at the dignitaries who you know and
I know she hates, as she hates all of Peru, who has his work tied up,
in short, the old hag that keeps his manuscripts not published 28 years after his death in her sacheted underwear and as much as I can
tell is an old Faulkner "Emily" sleeping with the ashes of what
never cleared or was
completely lived. The fact that she reigns, that Belli lacks even the guts to tell her she is "wrong," that Oviedo (who had the nerve to tell me certain poems of Vallejo couldn't be trans lated but hadn't the faintest idea of what or which those poems were) and Syzslo and Westphalen who I guess we should consider "distin
guished elements of the intellectual community" not only know noth ing about Vallejo, his poetry I mean, not the asinine anecdotes & gloss I constantly get instead of interest in the texts, why these people shd reign and pander to her, is there some sort of power structure at the base of your skull too, I mean is Heraud's act THE ONLY
ACT FOR AN ARTIST TO COMMIT today in Peru, or can you
explain to me the shoddiness, the grease & muck of which that old viper seems to represent the moon, in glory over the darkness of Lima, in any sense that we might be able to call it a city? I am sorry, I just can't write you about love or anything so nice and clean as Tom Merton writes his S.A. chums. I think all this can end in love, it can for me in the sense of my translations of his work,
wch simply is my way of showing love for him to others, but it seems as if we'll be up all
60
night to reach that dawn.
So. 1 hesitated before that word "underwear" above, but I'll keep it for 1 believe my con
nection with Vallejo is partially sexual, & that I've lived that connec tion thru enough to bring it up here. Maybe now would be as good a time as any to tell you why 1 am translating your namesake wch shd tell you in what kind of hands his work is with me in. (I didn't quit
QUENA for nothing-one of the strongest objections 1 had to con
tinuing the magazine under censorship was that it would be dishonest to Vallejo, and that 1 am here of first things trying to get that trans lation right 1 hope you'll give me-"dishonest" in that the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano had no objections to my printing 6 translations from Poemas Humanos, the author of wch was in at least name a Communist for 10 years & whose poetry's intellectual axis is revolutionary in all the violent implications of that word. Of
simple & sad enough: no one at ICPNA knows anything about Vallejo either. They take him as they take Lincoln or Frost, safe since dead & famous, or 1 shd really say here dead, for they couldn't take Heraud whose blood you can still smell course the answer here is
in the barriadas or in the sun on Jiron Cuzco, or for that matter,
Delgado's essay with which 1 have a number of questions, one of which is that if he pushed his statements & moot questions to con clusion the ICPNA's ban would be apt enough, for North Americans are just as involved in Heraud's death as plantation policemen and if Delgado could have risked the truth in that essay he would have said that not the cosmic night took Heraud's flesh but the lust for wch ICPNA is in business, those who use it as cultural shield for their
ownings & peons, the idea [fleshed] wch Heraud & his little band tried to invade) 1 took a Mexican magazine, special num ber devoted to Vallejo to Japan with me in 1961, having only read a few poems in English translation before. 1 bought that magazine on a hunch in Mexico City in 1959, feeling as many others do in North America that Neruda & Vallejo represent poetry in a vital
own
.
concentration for this century in South America (that may be true: but Neruda is the dark side of that moon, wch says nothing about sd 61
moon's perfection). I was married right before going to Japan, &
if you'll pardon what may look like digression, I'll pick that Mexican
magazine up in a moment. I'm from the midwest, Indiana, wch
when I say it often sounds like "Hart Crane candy country." There is that spectre, the landlocked ignorance & suspicion of all that cld be called creative activity in the North American midwest, moreso than in the East or West I believe, but I'd better speak for myself here & say that getting from being a middle-class youth in a frater
nity with a convertible to an artistic consciousness is difficult enough that I always fear I will risk writing about that threshold, centering my writing on the doorstep and not passing thru to where the past is past decision. 1 feel that at the center of any artist's life (by wch of course 1 mean writing/living) is his relation to other men & women, his sex life at large, and for me the squaring of such, the seeing of what that relationship is and how 1 must handle myself to my friends, unknowns, parents & enemies has been bitter and seems to have kept all my poetry to date in a kind of inferno chasing its own
penis. (I might say to you here that there is an attempt in a number of young artists in North America now to move this conflict into the consciousness of writing/creating. It looms large in what my genera
tion will tum out and what we do turn out may "tum" on to what extent "the body" is resolved.) Before I married woman was cunt and
1 treated her with all the disrespect generally due that word; of course
that fucked up my relation to men so badly that I really never had "friends" in any sense that I cherish now. I distrusted boys & men, told homosexual jokes, & had a soul life totally tied up with women, or my
mother, at best to get to know her (since I cldnt directly) thru
others & visa versa since 1 cldnt get to know any other woman be
mother, relation was hit & miss, nothing deep, no conflict plumbed, no real romance, no crucial fights, nothing, in short, but
cause of my
sly hand sneaking into under a Playtex, the bend in under the front seat rammed fuck, the sin there being that there is no release and I'd be willing to settle for the worst conditions for sex if there could be at least something raw & with endurance, not the slip off & driving out & getting drunk. Under these conditions (scanty, 1 know, but I'm trying to get at something else so accept, please, such incomplete 62
brevity) I married the woman I am now living with, it has been 5 years & who has just borne me our first son. I didn't know what to do when I started to live with her because I loved as I cld muster that, &I (foul word) her & of course cldnt square treating her
respected
as some
cunt. That all women are, well as all men are pricks, was
neither seen. But I wanted an art & cldnt be straight with that wish
thought of myself by completely running out on her. Thus I went halfway. I went into myself, masturbated when the ten sion wId have forced me to treat her as a cunt, sat in grim silence reworking & reworking the same draft in myself, but without quiet I mean breathless silence, silence that cannot be thought in, silence or with what I
you cant do anymore with than with your mind in a cocktail party. I rationalized that my semi (enforced) chastity was because energy
being put in creative activity but knew thru some light glimmer that was not true, for nothing was happening in the creative activity other than rubbing up against my own resistance, what had to be
was
done, but I didnt understand at all with whose energy & how it was
being done. I hope I can project something of the underlying idea of all this, that to talk about what is personal of myself may touch on
what is personal to you & to other men, that I am speaking of
something that lies a few strata under Heraud's body as well as in the Institute Director's who is alive, that I might better address what I must say to you as a man in the world who I as North American owe a revolution & for the other shitasses in America
(& the shitass I am
too), for you & I in that most personal sense must be neighbors if we are to talk at all & not with our bombers
turned kill each other.
I mean, Cesar, what is the war in Vietnam & the censorship of
QDENA more than the failure of two men/women to talk, to hear the other out. And North Americans are paying the price for exactly what they suppress, we are writing some of the worst & best poetry
in the world-how can that mean anything to you? The sexual must be cleared as it always shd have been & now that the Institutional traitor sky God is, has been, I mean your Catholic prince, dead for years, who in a GREAT prison lies, we no longer as human beings have any excuse but to live at the limit of our HUMANITY. 63
Or am
I all wrong? Am I
giving away secret that must be secret for a man to function ultimately together? I dont think so. My only real fear here is that if this is printed where it shd be read while we are in Peru my wife & child may be endangered. And I know
as
well too that what I am talking about lies not under your friend's
body, for he is dead & nothing "lies" under death. It
was
in
some
what the above psychic drain, what? constriction of energy, worrying & sewing myself into silence, that I opened the Mexican magazine
night in Kyoto & read poem #53 of Poemas Humanos, "Me viene, hay dias, una gana uberrima, politica," & was moved, deeply deeply moved, cld hardly read a word of the Spanish so I didnt know why, but the move was genuine & perhaps all my labor with Vallejo to this day has been to clear that movement, for as I tonight think of that poem the "desire" that is so rich & "political" is a desire for desiring, is not I feel something & do it BUT I feel a desire to feel something, the twice removed, the monument if you like & not the one
man, the widow & not the poet, I'll let you finish that series.
That
Vallejo was sexually tortured & bright too about the torture is pretty evident. That I wld hook onto him at that point in my life when I was trying to get out, hook into Poemas Humanos, makes to me per fectly genuine good sense. I believe that is my basic connection with your namesake; that it gives ground & grit that I pray can grounds well under & push into others' hearts whatever technical ability to voice my attempt may come to. For Poemas Humanos is a great
collection of failure, of a failure to be human without writing. Can
you understand what I am saying here? Of needing to write to be human & of never quite making it. It is always the cry kept chested even tho so much does get out, it is, in a sense not at all total, my need to reach you in such form that cannot wait for Walk IV or for any poem, the city's need for the monument & sadly, & not
very interestingly, Georgette's need to keep Vallejo in stall, in deep64
freeze til she die, for 10 if he gets away into the Word the mirror of her wld tum on itself & she wld see herself as she is, old, bereft, a
lonely woman in an unfriendly world, dying. I should say here that
that is by far not all: much compassion & pain does find a way into these poems, much agony is present, so much held in them it wld
make sense to me just how evasive they are to those in Lima who
pretend to know them, or who make money off literary acquaintance with Vallejo. But then if one is not directly involved with the poor or not directly with revolution, does it make sense that enough of the suffering will come thru to make these poems in one heart valid? Let me try to give the word "sexual" more ground: my aim in writ ing you is to explain nothing, I do not have to justify my translating Vallejo; it may be worthwhile for you to know what was on my mind at the time I decided to undertake what has been 5 years of drilling thru a wall, slowly, daily; there is in the best translations, or working of texts, the same impulses as in the poem: it is self-inspired, done for no exterior reasons tho what is outside prompts & wants return.
My reading & rereading Vallejo I see has been the attempt to know another man, ultimately why it is tough for me to live in the world, further what is the meaning of my life, why must I live. Why I am here has gained no more reason in 31 years than my son in 13 days, or has gained nothing but reason ! & my kinship with your kin is to not have to write those poems myself. I deprecate them only in the sense I think you shd too: they are a "last" people & not a "beginning" -language in them is not departure but the straining of an old mold, which includes manners as well as relation, that wont yield beyond the fullness of its own chains. But who is Vallejo for you? You run around Lima with petitions for jailed revolutionaries-are we speak ing of simply a good poet (say as Van Gogh is a good painter) who is being made way too much of right now (here, in this case) & who, when it comes to actualities, how to survive in Lima for instance, leaves you? Can you answer these questions for me? Do you believe it is fair of me to ask such of you? Whatever does any artist mean in anyone's life beyond a kind of expansion of some original soul-life never cleared from the womb on? I am coming to know that all but a 65
fraction of art is BURNT OFFERING,
returning to its ash, in a
word to have your sperm & eat it too: "I dont want to eat my poem -I want to give my heart to my poem" (Artaud).
A little before I
spoke of "my generation" & I smile here to recall I told you one night you cldnt in your poem speak for your generation in any sense of WE. What I say abt the sexual facing of difficulties of living of poets this generation in North America is pretty boring if the process is taken for poetry. One's responsibilities to one's body must be under stood to a great extent prior to the poem. It does not mean, as Camus
said, that only chastity is linked to personal progress, that one can not indulge in "sex" (the silliness of that statement reflects on any thing a priest ever writes) if one wants to produce; it means that the choice, as mine before, is as ground (fertilizer), the art not the earth's labor but what comes from labor, "not the sea" as Louis Zukofsky has written, "but what floats over it." However, just admitting process to voice is much; I am not aware of this idea operating in art (& not just in geniuses) before. I wanted very much to print the section (#2) of Zukofsky's long poem "A" in QUENA because its power seems to point to faith in one's own processes, of not fearing to voice the lightning flashes hitting thru a young person's
system, & chucking forever what is set up, or as in most 20th Century South American poetry that has stayed home & not gone to Europe, the deadly underlying assumption never investigated in the poem
that answers can be found in words like "earth" "light" & "sun." Can you tell me why this fake pantheism still rules in countries
dominated by the conquest of a foreign crown? Given widows,
monuments, the division of sex from love, given what you must feel to be the surrounding darkness, is there a way out? What
crass
does one do? Through the last couple paragraphs I've had in mind some
words from a letter of Rilke that friend of mine found for
what he wanted to say. "With (death)" Rilke writes "with its full, unmasked cruelty: this cruelty is so tremendous that it is just with it that the circle closes: it leads right back again into the extreme
of a mildness that is great, pure & perfectly clear ther: "toward the 66
" ...
And fur
experiencing of this most rich & most sound
mildness, mankind has never taken the first steps,-unless in its oldest, most innocent times, whose secret has been all but lost to us. The content of "initiations" was, I am sure, nothing but the
imparting of a "key" that permitted the reading of the word "death" without negation here I must turn again to Vallejo, as I think "
...
you must, & face what seems to me the total absence of what Rilke speaks of in the Human Poems. For the world to come through, man must make himself transparent & I believe
(for I must respond to
Rilke or to quote him is unjust) that the "mildness" is the seeing of
oneself, one's organ, as part of a bank tangled with trees & flowers,
wrestling perhaps as men in a river. The Bhagavad Gila helps me here, for it too sees ego as organ, and when one can live this, then it wld seem that death disappears, ceases to be separate, that sex can return, in the only meaningful apocalypse, to the place of seed and I can embrace my friend in all the fullness of our bodies, loving each other's shoulders for that moment of grasping (at which you Peruvians so often hint, but no more) tenderness. I have come out to stand facing that tangled bank & would like to leave you with
exactly that image, light wrestling with greenness, jungle in that it contains Javier Heraud, whose light is dependent upon dust to raise it, but whose light may too hold to mind/heart, be enough to be devoted to, what I can only suggest here, but will, for it is the most I can say to you. This is a workingman's letter, for my pocket a stone. Do as you choose.
Lima, Peru 1966
c. The black cross a pre/ace to Human Poems As I begin this paean to Cesar Vallejo over my head in joy Bob
Dylan sings to his virgin too, Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. The waters of the upper floor descend softly on my head. There could be no more accurate beginning to any word on Vallejo than the Chris67
tian Virgin Dylan conjures-alone in the lowlands at dusk, barely
seeable, the Mystery in her Arms, approached near & far by the
setting sun's beams. She too rises from man's Genital Floor, a Cathe dral which finds its Choir in his Upper Chest & Arms-in Joy & Feeling she is everpresent in this strange man's work; in its Eternal Sadness & Anguish she is cloaked in Black-this Blackness, or Dead ly Orgone Energy, now flows out my Left Arm; for Six Years I have been the Receptacle or Bearer of Vallejo's fortune. Now having lived the book you hold in your hands I discharge my Bent. I conceive my work as Translation-but to explore that Word in all its many implications. Ultimately I think it must mean Putting
off one's Selfhood-as Blake "translated" Milton in Milton: A Poem. It is too a contest, struggle, an Agon, in which two are engaged, one to wrest the prize from the other's arms-that Regeneration be drawn
from Generation; in this case, that English be drawn thru Spanish.
Language wants to stay in its Original, & it is only thru spiritual acts that we create it anew in Another. In these senses we could construct a
Mandala of Translation in which Heaven I would place Blake
translating Milton from Puritanism to his Bible-led Apocalyptic Condition. At the other pole of this spectrum place translation that passes from one language to another with the Spirit absent; Pablo Neruda & Rainer Maria Rilke have of our century suffered from
such abuse & in the Mandala They are found in a River of Ropes & Wrath locked in mournful
Aching-bite with MacIntyre & Belitt. Somewhere on earth I would place Zukofsky-Catullus for the lin guistic daring of that total adventure. Cesar Vallejo in Black Overcoat leans, or rests, against a lichen mottled Boulder, mostly White, or suggesting that Contrast in Juan Larrea's photo,
1926, Paris, bosque de Fontainebleau. There is an
aspect to Vallejo's face that recalls Artaud's sense of Van Gogh's
butchered, tho there is a quiet darkness & muteness in Vallejo that take the edge off the terror & stark electricity of the Van Gogh self
portrait of which Artaud speaks. Vallejo here appears to be in medi tation-the darkness where are the Eyes suggests a death's mask the head is Starved-Hair too high & feeling too Airy & Brushed 68
Back to be sensual. His shoes & socks suggest foreign students-he is at home mostly symbolically-he had been in Paris 3 years having
left his homeland, Peru, in 1923, never to return. He died in 1938, in Paris, & the actual death mask is pitted & full-fleshed. Looking at
photo of it in 1964 while I was in the 6th Strata of HUMAN POEMS I was torn, & moved, & wrote in a Ledger this poem: a
Vallejo en su lecho de muerte The face full-fleshed & human You look like my friend now
who now lives in Paris-
Cesar, Jack, men entangled in my veins, my veiny bloodcolored flesh Cesar-human to the last.
Why am I so moved here? It is that you are so human, so much a man-to see you
after having lived with you three years. The flesh heavy, pocked-
earlier before dying-a thin gaunt Indian aristocratic face & big
forehead. -now the face is
heavy in death-the eyes closed-the lids down over the eyeballs-lips
almost pursed to kiss?
Black hair in shadows wavy,
long.
The clothes, black, pulled collar close & down. Isn't there this poem Cesar, on how
you are living now that I see you deadcan I
begin to live? 69
The sheets, white, the face,
flesh, intercedesyour trinityman in center between the black & the white. How I want to hold you. You who first took me
into death,
willing now to let me lead myself into life?
are you
The horror of talking to a corpse.
-
for that, isn't that what you are?
Heavy tubercular flesh now weightless in bed? What I am unless
daily I tum, nightly, to her, but to her only as desire leads, never to force love.
never to force love. never.
please-no murderers here just a man, a woman the heavy Vallejo between with shoes on. the heavy, heavy Vallejo-a corpse between myself & my love. Ok. I'll throw you out nowa stone down one of your mountain
sides, the heavy, heavy longing, the desire-all outa stone in the road of South Fess.
The heavy odor of your sterile suffering The heavy, heavy, shadow against
the nose-
beagle, hooked-
70
I am not let offbut the face! who is the face?
Is it what I want to be in death? In life? The lips-god, the suffering
you went throughl=-all in the lips-slightly pursed
slightly-the pitted heavy skin. The glow of light as it lights the forehead-a lamp nearby the light-the intense inner
light & shadows the pits suck in-the handsome face. The hammer. The tongs. I have not touched your death. 2
Now I shall go lie down & sleep.
The moonlight from the streetlamp will come in-will not
illuminate my head-but I shall see it-& be flat to the sheet-the heavy mattress.
Her by my side-
The difference between sleep & death. No-not entirely for we live alone, alone we
live,
alone we die her hair so soft & tender to my hand.
asleep. asleep. She is spectral. Nov 12 1964
71
To resolve, then, the Antagonism between the Virgin, She who is dependent upon his death, & the Man, who is dependent upon her
life, is a Black Cross, jammed into a Stonepile at the crest of a mule
path, anywhere, in the Peruvian Sierra. In Vallejo the mute suffering of the Kechuan Indian for hundreds of years is given voice thru Trinity; at the center of which is Grunewald's Christ entirely human nailed through the chest; flanked by Darwin in darkness & in dark poets less in presence may be found in background-Descartes, Whitman, Ruben Dario, & dimmer, the ness too Marx. Other thinkers &
Spanish poets from the Golden Age on. I want to tell all about this man I knowI fear I do not know enough. *
It is difficult to know enough. While a biography exists for the
years in which he grew up & lived in Peru (he left when he was 31), there is no record for the remaining years he lived, 15, in Europe, the period in which all the Poemas H umanos were written. Also there is the problem that most of his writings are not available in any
language-his widow, Georgette Vallejo, who has lived for many years in Lima on a pension given her by the Peruvian Government, holds much of his writing-which includes critical essays, drama (influenced by Antonin Artaud & studied by Garcia Lorca), jour nals, a novel, & probably more poetry than the 4 published volumes which are said to constitute the obra poetica.: There is also a great
deal-200 articles at least-of journalism buried in the archives of the Peruvian National Library, most of which Vallejo wrote while in Europe and mailed back to Peruvian weeklies. This
journalism
constitutes an intellectual biography & I have read very little of it. 1. For example, in the second volume of her Diary Anais Nin remarks: "Gon zalo thinks about death. 'And suddenly the heart stops beating.' He tells me how
Vallejo never showed his poetry, that he had tons and tons of it all over his room that nobody had ever read. And that he told in one poem, how he would die on All Saints' Day, and then that day came and he did die." Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. Two, 1934-1939 (Harcourt, Brace & World). Gonzalo is GonzaIo More, another Peruvian, and one of Vallejo's best friends. 72
Vallejo's biographical "notes" on Vallejo, published in 1958, which mostly concern the European The entire years, but they are erratic and generally not dependable." biography, or "vida," is cloaked in mystery, for most Vallejo com mentators approach their subject as The Sad Eyed Lady of the Low lands-for Vallejo speaks very naturally in the tone & compassion of Jesus in Poemas Humanos; there is almost nothing literary about his Christianity-he lived it, dreadfully, died on Good Friday & a One does have access to Mrs.
few months before his death wrote his last book of poems, more a
sheaf, called Spain, Let This Cup Pass from Me. There is no satis factory explanation of his death. One of his critics, Xavier Abril,
reproduces a photo of the death certificate that states death was due to an "acute intestinal infection." Mrs. Vallejo claims this is false information (she hates all of Vallejo's commentators with such bitterness that all her "claims" become suspect too), that Vallejo died from a reoccurring case of malaria. There is no evidence I know of to this. At the end of his essay, H. R. Hays notes: "in the larger sense he was struck down by hunger and by Spain's agony." There is certainly truth in these words: "The Starving Man's Rack," written during the first years Vallejo lived in Paris, records a hunger that while physical is spiritual to the extent that it could, & most probably did, damage the poet's body. Vallejo's sickness often seems rooted in his stomach, to arise from the matrix of his being, a "slip-up" as he calls it, in the very framework of things. This framework was also social; Vallejo believed in the Russian Revolution, on one hand, to such an extent that when he extended his belief to Spain and then saw that belief crumble in the mid-thirties
(in 1937 he spent a month
traveling in Spain from city to city while the country was literally convulsing in flames), something collapsed in his own constitution Spain's agon became his own in the Espana sheaf, and too in the book you now hold, completed probably before the Spanish Civil 2. These notes may be found as the introduction to Vallejo's first book, Los
Heraldos Negros, reissued by Peru Nuevo, 1958. Rather than reconstruct a bio
graphical image from them which I know would be in part false, I have decided not to use them here at all. H. R. Hays' little essay, "The Passion of Cesar Vallejo,"
printed in New Directions' annual #15, says it as accurately as, given what we now
know, it can be said. 73
War poems were done-or I should guess, overlapped-although in Poemas Humanos this struggle is interiorized & then projected to all man, in Vallejo's own person, as contradiction & violence therein.
Only one of Poemas Humanos is overtly political, "Angelic Greet ing," written in the early thirties at the height of his Marxist Conversion. Even then he was not much off his own center: he believes and doesn't believe; revolution, he says, thru its violent means of
betrayal is and is not a solution; perhaps it is the best non-solution. For in Vallejo there is no solution other than death, as "solution" dissolving all (he is Pisces-16 March, 1892). All solutions as such fade, in Poem as Humanos, before all-powerful death; it is as if man never dies but lives eternally at the edge of death. Vallejo is the great poet of the End and in this respect he reminds one of Baude laire-he is filled with it, an anguish, a Black Midas. Yet how unlike Baudelaire he is. in the stark & natural directness
of his address; how much he let thru that the Symbolist would have elaborated. And how unlike a Pisces in the powerful grip of his verse and in the skull construction, the heavy frontal prow, the passionate driver. Aries rising? A guess.
The pain that killed him at 46 has everything to do with his
poetry: Death as End comes from a forced Rationalistic view of the World, and Vallejo, charged with the ghost of poetry, struggled in Descartes' Nets as well as paying homage to the Catholicism of his
family tradition. He was the last of 12 children and his middle name Abraham was given to him since he was born on that saint's Day; his household was saturated in religious devotion and Juan Espejo, biographer of his early years, tells us that Vallejo's family constantly and openly hoped he would become a priest." The village of his birth, Santiago de Chuco, in the northern Peruvian sierra, was, in a word, medieval at the end of the 19th century, and too it appears that, save for the few years Vallejo spent in high-school in neighboring
Huamanchuco, he never left Santiago de Chuco until 1910 when 3. On his tombstone in the Montrouge Cemetery in Paris is written: Cesar
Vallejo, in his work and in his role as a writer, is the interpreter 0/ his race, the representative writer of a people. What a beautiful fulfillment of his father's wishes. 74
days he made the trip to the hacienda Meno cucho which connected mountain-path with Trujillo by rail-Tru jillo being his destination where he was to enroll as a Literature student at the University there. What an image! I conjure Mary and the Child on donkey-back fleeing Herod as Vallejo rides on mule-back for four
into the 20th century with his Treasure in his arms-but what strug
gle to loose his Creature; as was the eternal Ryunosuke Akutagawa bombarded by four centuries of European thought on the top of a ladder in a Kanda bookstore, Tokyo, turn of the century, so was Vallejo hit by Marx, Darwin & the Rationalists a decade later. Aku tagawa could bear his charge only so long (he committed suicide in his thirties); Vallejo, of a stronger constitution and of a harder, more stubborn stock, brought his knowledge to bear on Christ, ulti mately, in Poemas Humanos, man. Yet this weight was too heavy for Christ to bear-and in Vallejo's sense of it, Christ came & went; the Second Coming had been fulfilled but had also passed over. "He who is to come has just passed" he writes, and elsewhere, "The day is going to come -the latter bears more revolutionary weight than apocalyptic clarity, but there is still faint hope pressed against darker despair. "Some are Born to sweet delight. I Some are Born to Endless Night," Blake writes in "Auguries of Innocence." We can see in these Poem as Humanos a burden never releasing placed on Kechuan-Catholic-Rationalistic man that nothing short of a New Initiation such as Wilhelm Reich, building out of the old society of psychoanalysis-to literally alter man's biological organization & thereby redeem him-can lift. I came to Vallejo moving to Japan in 1961, at that time still to be tested by the Sad Eyed Lady Who Is Poesy, and living in Kyoto I found myself in a predicament that created the stage for Vallejo and me to cross on the archetypical mountain-path and for a spell "
...
form The Black Cross, now to be released and allow each of us to go Our Way. In short, I was stuck in myself & could not get my
energy out, sexually in loving or in any other form of relation. The error seemed to come from a wrong idea formulated in me variously
by a muffled-Puritanic Presbyterian northside Indianapolis white middleclass only child Father Afflicted Scorpio Mother Unwatered 75
Lion tradition-that one has only so much
energy to spend, as if energy were coin-thus something to conserve, which runs counter to the Current of Creation, or The Natural Flow of Giving, & thus
jams the Trap. I was in a state of sexual tension all during this period & at one point found that I was literally unable to write tho I would sit & strain before (on) the typewriter for hours each day. Do not misunderstand me: I do not put this period down; in many ways it has been the most important, most revelatory moment in my past, for it was by getting fully stuck I escaped taking a route not my own & never never in my life encountering The Sad Eyed Lady in all her Power & Fury. Vallejo was on a mule bearing the Numinous Treas ure in his arms as I came at a 450 angle toward him down another mountain-path, straitjacketed on my mule; as one would not expect the mules did not veer but continued straight on & mine entered the side of his. The sight of a Man with a Child in his arms that he had obviously given birth to was too much for me-or let us say, I had never before, probably in any Karma, had that experience; however, as I was on a low level of Judgment rather than marveling at what I saw 1 tried to possess it-I partially, thru the Shock, Burst my Bonds & Wrestled for his Treasure which Vallejo would not release. As we live in life so is our art determined.
Living in Kyoto in 1963 one evening I left the room in which I wrote & walked, wanting at that moment some response to my feel ings about Vallejo. I was suddenly seized as I passed through the hall, grasping a post in love & need; I embraced the post & clung to it for some moments & in those moments the image of the death struggle came-that such was the dramatic literalness of the linguistic confrontation. I recorded this in "The Book of Y orunomado'" and this experience made me feel, for the first time, the delight and the
ripeness of everything I am talking about here. The act of translation became the act of translating myself into English-it was as if Vallejo was to be my Alpha-that I would come, but in my own good time. My presence in language would first be made thru Vallejo-and rather than doubt my own processes this idea was great encourage ment & made me work harder. On a deeper level the struggle repre4.
76
Poetry, July 1965.
sented the wanting to want in both of us-this Vallejo expresses di
rectly in a number of the Poemas Humanos; the twice removed; the seeing a woman & wanting to feel something about her-which in the act of creation becomes the desire to Possess, again that which is Governed by Rationality rather than the Intuitive, a higher power, which IS Possessed. So we crossed, which is the introduction to Human Poems. In
confrontation poetry is born; Who is Vallejo? I felt at first that his words could be improved on in English-the first 3 Strata of Human Poems are shot through with arbitrary words & line breaks. This was
Vallejo's failure to budge. What I bit at, at teeth. He, in contrast to Neruda, would not allow himself to be messed around with unless he was fingered with devotion-as in the case of Blake,
someone like
the poem had been written Selflessly; while Vallejo & Neruda had
crossed at the juncture of the South American Surreal
(Vallejo:
Trilce, Neruda: Residencia en la Tierra J), Neruda found in the 3d Residencia the key to becoming the 20th century South American Poet: the Revolutionary Stance which always changes with the tides
of time. -with that Recognition and its Acceptance Neruda became
Figure-or let us say his Detachment Worked; Vallejo traveled from country to country in Europe from 1925 to 1937-he was in Russia three times, and he lived for about two years in Spain-never could he come to terms with Reality, and it seems to be to his benefit, for he has produced a poetry dense in texture that holds his feelings &, in reading, releases them that, that in contrast to Neruda, makes the latter simply thin. What I compare here is less a dig at Pablo Neruda, whose poetry I translated & lived with a couple of years before encountering Vallejo, than to make this point: that in Vallejo,
a
and NOT in Neruda, the entire consciousness of modem South
American man is suffered & partially Redeemed; Neruda stays with in the bounds of what we (North Americans & Europeans) have expected from South America-the anaconda in the Brazilian swamp, contra Yanqui, gorgeous & metrical; the Poemas Humanos of Vallejo are still in South America not read (ask Neruda if you
doubt this-he told me when he was in NYC in 1966 that the book did not exist!); because the Consciousness is Altered. For a North 77
American, Vallejo does not budge because he attacks at root the Catholic-racist Colonial culture that many of the best in S.A. are still in the Nets of. He should make no more sense, on this level, to us than Fanon
and, as I have suggested before, he points out a more
realistic path than Guevara. The day is going to come-but it will be a meaningful day-which is to say a day of life, in which infants
only if man alters his springs of being in Vallejo the amount of physical suffering is the alteration that it seeks; he poses the problem for the poets who follow him even more crucially than Blake: given the fact that man suffers & that I, as a poet, am always responsible for his suffering, what can I do to lessen this suffering as a poet? Is there a point at which the true poet is no longer a literary man but resumes his place as primal Adam? At can grow untotalitarianized
the end of Jerusalem Blake overthrows all outward ceremony and
envisions the apocalypse in Self-sacrifice & Forgiveness; the Poetic Act becomes the Human Act-I forgive you! said with all my heart
this is greater than writing the poem-it is the poem, and it is our art that follows. For Vallejo, revealing the Rack in the Foundation of his Armature, tells us: You must get well. Vallejo's "poetic" truth
has been worked out by the tradition of those who preceded him: in him the Kechuan ceases to be mute. In him The National Libera
tion Front means its free elections: these are the stigmata of Poemas Humanos.
Alialioxen, all in free! VALLEJO IS ONLY A POOR IGNORAMUS DETERMINED NOT TO DECEIVE HIMSELF.
You must get well Vallejo told me, us bundled there at the J unc ture. You must, like water, not be intimidated by the rock; to not be
stopped is keeping flowing, seeking the low places all men despise. Our Lady rests up to her neck in the swamp of man's being; we Catholicize her, keep her a corporeal virgin. To be truly Virginal, Vallejo said, is to be Used, and he quoted Blake: "Never can the soul of sweet delight be defiled." Our bodies are Haunted, the Abodes of Hungry Ghosts, unless Rinsed with Sunlight-Shutters Open-to see In The Front Door The Glory & Splendor of The Furnishings and Out the Back. Vallejo said: There is a Period that is over, of the 78
Poet as Solitary in the Darkness of the Room. The better you feel the more Multitude you'll write. So was I charged. Utter enlightenment working out over the years. Since I knew at the beginning virtually no Spanish, I asked others to read each draft-or Strata as I now call them. The deeper I went the more literal I worked-I hope I have made a good literal version of Poemas Humanos. No thing to despise about that word. It only killeth when the spirit is not giving it life. Better, I decided, at about the 5th Strata, to stick with what is awkward at times when
it is written by a man trying very hard not to deceive himself. Zukof
sky's work on Catullus gave me a certain courage to try unusual constructions out: the crispness and precision of Cid Corman's handling of Montale & Basho gave me a sound-texture to strike at. Thank you Allen, thank you Cid, thank you Louis, thank you Rafael,
thank you Claudia, thank you Sidney, thank you Olga, thank you
Octavio, thank you Margaret, thank you Vinholes, THANK YOU MAUREEN,5 & thank you widow: altho we would like to strangle each other I must admit that your
Fiendish Stubbornness has con
tributed to the excellence of these versions, and ultimately your acceptance of what I have done allows North America, its left hand
weighted with AIR WAR-VIETNAM to hold in its other the mas terpiece of the man Thomas Merton has called "the greatest universal poet since Dante." A few rather factual things at this point should be mentioned.
Vallejo's first book, Los Heraldos Negros (1918), and his second, Trilce
(1922), were written in Peru. He left Peru the year after Trilce appeared & published no more books of poetry in his lifetime. 6 5.
Maureen Maurer in caps because this lovely Lima creature has spent two this manuscript, checking it with me and even more importantly check with years
ing it with Mrs. Vallejo, some of whose suggestions have been incorporated into the final draft. 6. Besides the four collections of poetry Vallejo also published: Escalas Melo
grafiadas (a collection of short stories, 1923), Fabia Salvaie (novel, 1923), EI Tungsteno (novel, 1931), Rusia et1 1931 (political reflections on Russia, 1931), Rusia ante el Segundo Plan Quinquenal (sequel to the first book on Russia, pub lished for the first time in Lima, 1965), plus hundreds of pieces of journalism most of which appeared in Mundial and Variedades, Lima weeklies, between 1925 and 1930. He also translated two novels by Marcel Ayrne and one by Henri Bar
busse into Spanish. It should be kept in mind that the published books constitute
probably less than half of what he actually wrote. 79
Poemas Humanos was published in an edition of 250 copies in Paris
by Mrs. Vallejo the year after Vallejo's death, and from her view point is the poetry he wrote (along with the Spanish Civil War sheaf of 15 poems) in Europe. Apparently Vallejo intended a collection of poems to be called Poemas Humanos and suggested this as a title to his wife sometime before his death. The poems themselves that
make up the manuscript were left in worksheets, and were copied
for publication by Mrs. Vallejo; thus there are words and punctua
tion that are her guesses. It is exceedingly difficult to determine how accurate the Spanish text is because no one as yet has had access to the originals. This basic problem is made even more complicated
by the fact that printing errors made in the first edition were copied in subsequent editions and new errors were made: some of Vallejo's intentional misspellings were corrected, periods & commas were left out, stanzas were inverted, and once one poem made of two, and once two poems made
of one. I don't think it is necessary here for
go into all this
(such work is the kind of scholarship that
me to
should have been done years before by one of the South American
Vallejo professors who have made their reputations off the poet but have done nothing in the way of establishing the clarity of his texts). Suffice it to say here, I used 5 editions of Poemas H umanos in making my translation, all of which were different, and then in Lima I read these 5 editions against Mrs. Vallejo's corrected first edition. Thus
the Spanish text in this book seems to me to be the most correct one available anywhere, but there are errors in it that will not be dis covered until Vallejo's worksheets can be properly inspected. The order of the poems in the book is also problematic. It appears that when Mrs. Vallejo originally copied out the poems for publication she made no attempt to arrange them with any specific order in mind,
chronological or poetic. Some of the poems were
dated; others were not. She now claims that these dates indicate when a poem was finished, not when it was written. That is, she would say that such & such a poem was written in 1931 and then
kept in worksheet until the fall of 1937 when Vallejo for the first time (it appears) made an effort to make a book, and revised or 80
finished the poem he wrote in 1931. This is not clear at all-but I am
recording it here as it was told me. Therefore, since Mrs. Vallejo
did not respect the dates on 52 of the poems in the collection she had them taken off in 1958 when
a
small Peruvian press, Peru
Nuevo, published the book in Peru for the first time. However, the order of the poems in the book remained unchanged & the book
ended, as it always had in previous editions, with the longest prose/ poem, "The windows have been shaken" at the end of which the author presumably dies." The other prose/poems in the collection
," and it has always placed right before "The windows appeared that Vallejo wrote the prose/poems right before he died. This is not true, nor is it true to disrespect Vallejo's ordering of his own life-work i.e., his dating of poems he obviously considered finished when he dated them in that gigantic autumn of his poetic
were
...
consummation 1937. When I lived in Lima I put all the dates back
night cut up a copy of the book & put the poems in order. An amazing curve resulted, totally coherent, of a build in intensity through September and October into the half dozen or so truly magnificent poems written in November. The only on the dated poems & one
poem dated in December is "Sermon on Death" which seems to end
that particular production. Therefore I believe the dated poems should be read in their chronological order. Qf course a new problem crops up for which a solution can only be suggested in this book: what to do with the poems that have no dates on them. Undoubtedly, these undated poems were, as were many of the dated ones, worked
(roughly, I'd say, the bulk of them, be tween 1931 and 1937). We know through the few available letters out over a period of years
of the poet that he was very very sick around the end of 1924 and I am
confident that the long "The windows
" ...
prose/poem refers
to this sickness. I have used this piece as a cornerstone to build the 7. Mrs. Vallejo now says that all the prose/poems belong to a separate collec
tion called Codigo Civil written between 1923 and 1928. If this is true, then why did she publish them as part of Poemas Humanos in 1939? They are so much of
piece of the fabric of Poemas Humanos that until there is definite evidence that Vallejo intended them to be read in separate format I will consider them part of a
Poemas Humanos.
81
other 41 inexactly dated poems around, and in
doing so I have taken into consideration changes in style, and Vallejo's themes (for exam ple, the poems overtly about Peru strike me as being written fairly soon after the poet came to Europe). I am sure I have made some poor guesses and that some of the undated poems belong to the 1937 fall period. However since such distortion seems minimal, I will elaborate no further; my work is done. Poemas Humanos / Human Poems belongs to the world, and may we all hope that in the near future a South American Angel will pry open the Hinges of Mrs. Vallejo's Heart and present us with a Collected Vallejo as well as a
Biography to substantiate when he lived what he did. NYC 17 Jan 1968 AUTHOR'S NOTE
These three short works concerning the translation of Cesar Vallejo's Poemas Humanos into the English language were written over a period of six years. The first piece was done in Kyoto, Japan, in 1964 and is part of a longer poem (originally
published in Poetry, July 1965) called "The Book of Yorunomado." "The En counter" was written about two years after I first read Vallejo and began to try and read his poems.
The second work, the letter to Cesar Calvo, was written in Lima, Peru, in 1966. It represents a mid-point in the evolution of the translation. I had gone, with my pregnant wife, to Lima to finish the translation in Vallejo's country and also to meet his widow and look at her original edition of the book. The third
work, "The Black Cross," represents a final statement regarding my relation to Vallejo and the text. It was written after the manuscript was completely finished and thus completes the arc begun in Japan in 1962. For biographical information on Vallejo I would refer the reader to Poemas Humanos/Human Poems published by Grove Press, NYC 1968, in which there is an introduction, part of which is devoted to biography. As should be apparent from these three works, translating
Vallejo changed my life. I made a poet out of myself and drove myself into areas
(such as a year and a half of Reichian therapy) which I would never have
been made aware of without him. These works are presented, then, in the hope that they show the inner psychic process of the making of a major translation, and
suggest my sense of what a "translation" truly is. As in all human relation, the other and the other's sense of life is precious. There is always, in my sense of it. a one to one
relationship of man to text, and man to man. Clayton Eshleman NYC 3 May 1968
82
FERNANDO BOTERO. THE PRESIDENTIAL FAMILY. 1967. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. NEW YORK.
NINE POEMS BY CESAR VALLEJO
��It was Sunday
" ...
It was Sunday in the fair ears of my burro,
my Peruvian burro in Peru (pardon my sadness) But already it's eleven o'clock in my personal experience, .
experience of a single eye nailed right in the chest, of a single goof nailed right in the chest, of a single hecatomb nailed right in the chest. So from my country I see the portrayed hills rich in burros, sons of burros, parents by sight, now
altering painted with beliefs,
hills horizontal to my sorrows. In his statue, back turned,
Voltaire closes his cape & looks at the socle, but the sun penetrates me & frightens a big number of inorganic bodies from my incisors. Then I dream on a greenish seventeen stone,
numeral boulder I've forgotten,
sound of years in the murmur of needle of my arm, rain & sun in Europe, & how I cough! how I live!
how my hair aches me descrying the weekly centuries! & how, by its swerve, my microbial
cycle,
I mean my tremulous patriotic hairdo.
translated by Clayton Eshleman
84
"The point of the man
" ...
The point of the man,
the ignoble mock of shrinking after smoking his universal ash;
point on striking into secret snails, point one takes hold of wearing gloves, point on Monday held back by six brakes, point inching out having heard its soul. On the other hand the soldiers would be a fine rain,
neither gunpowder squared returning from their
thoughtless blunders or lethal bananas; only a little sideburn on the silhouette.
On the other hand, wandering father-in-laws,
brother-in-laws on a noisy mission, son-in-laws down the thankless bin of a rubber, all the equine grace walking can flash a thousand suns!
o geometrical thought against the light! o not to die lowly of majesty so swift, so fragrant! o not to sing; to barely write & to write with a little stick or with the
edge of a restless ear!
Pencil chord, very deaf eardrum, dudududum served in robust halves & to eat from memory a nice piece of meat,
hamhock, if there's no meat, & a cheese wedge with female worms, male worms, dead worms. 14 September 1937
translated by Clayton Eshleman 85
-�
But before all this lady runs out
" ...
But before all this lady runs out, lose her
attacking her, measure her by yourself, if she exceeds your gesture; exceed her, see if she fits stretched in your own expansion. Well do I know her by her key,
altho I don't know, at times, if this lady walks alone, leaned on your misfortune or
fiamencoed, just to tease you, in your phalanges.
Well do I know she's unique, alone with a lonely wisdom. In your ear the cartilage is beautiful
& I write you for this, I meditate you up; don't forget in your dream to think you are happy, that this lady's a great thing when she ends, but when she comes she assumes
the chaotic odor of a dead lance.
Whistling at your death, hat rakish,
white, you tilt to win your battle of stairs, soldier of the stalk, philosopher of the grain, mechanic of the dream. (Do you get me, dumb-ass? do I allow my size to be compared? You don't respond & silent you look at me across the age of your
word.)
Ducking your lady like this, again & again your tongue'll beg for her, '11 farewell her, lady so unfortunate for never dying. Instead, you'll run out violently dentated stamped in flint, & then you'll hear how I meditate & then you'll touch how your shadow is this mine undressed & then you'll smell how I suffered. translated by Clayton Eshleman
"Today I like life much less Today I like life much less, but still I like being alive: I knew it. I almost touched the part of my whole & checked
myself with a shot in the tongue behind my word. Today I touch my chin in retreat & in these momentary trousers I tell myself So much life & never!
So many years & always my weeks!
My parents buried with their stone & their sad death-jerk that's not ended; completely portrayed brothers, my brothers, in short, my being erect in a vest. I like life enormously
but, after all, with my beloved death & my coffee & seeing the leafy chestnuts of Paris & saying: this is a man's eye, & that one; this is a woman's forehead, & that one. And repeating
So much life & the tune never fails me! So many years & always always always! I said vest, said
whole, part, anxiety, said almost by not weeping. For it's true I suffered in that hospital next door & it's good & it's bad to have watched
from below up my organism. I'd like to live always, even flat on my belly,
because as I was saying & I say it again So much life & never! And so many years, & always, much always, always always!
translated by Clayton Eshleman
" ...
"'The windows
" ...
The windows have been shaken, elaborating a metaphysic of the universe. Glass has fallen. A sick man launches his cry: half
through his tongued and surplus mouth, and completely intact through the anus of his back. It's the hurricane. A chestnut tree in the Tuileries' garden must have been toppled in the 60 mile an hour wind. Capitals in the old
quarters must have fallen, splitting, killing. From what point do I interrogate, hearing both shores of the oceans, from what point comes this hurricane, so worthy of credit, so
honorable in debt,
straight at the hospital windows? Aie the
immutable directions that oscillate between the hurricane and this direct effort to cough or defecate. Aie the immutable directions that thus graft death into the innards of the hospital and wake clandestine
cells, so poorly timed, in the cadavers. What would the sick man, the one asleep right over there, think of himself had he perceived the hurricane? The poor guy sleeps, face up, at the head of his morphine, at the foot of all his sanity. A dram more or less in the dose and they will cart him off to be buried,
belly ripped open, face up, deaf to the hurricane, deaf to his ripped belly, over which the doctors are accustomed to debate and ponder at great lengths only to finally pronounce their simple words of men. The family surrounds the sick man clustering at his regressive
defenseless sweaty temples. A sense of home no longer exists save around the sick relative's night-table, where his vacant shoes, his spare crosses, his opium pills impatiently mount guard. The family surrounds the little table for the space of a dividend of release. A woman puts back the cup at the
edge of the table, which had almost
fallen. I don't know who this woman is to this sick man, for she kisses
him and can't heal him with her kiss, she looks at him and can't heal him with her eyes, she talks to him and can't heal him with her words. Is she his mother? Well then, why can't she heal him? Is she his
beloved? Then why can't she heal him? Is she his sister? Then why
can't she heal him? Is she simply a woman? Then why can't she heal him? For this woman has kissed him and has watched over him and
has talked to him, even has real carefully covered his neck for him
and, the truly astonishing fact is, she's not healed him! The patient contemplates his vacant shoes and socks. They bring
cheese. They carry earth. Death lies down at the foot of the bed to
sleep in his tranquil waters and does sleep. Then the freed feet of the sick man, without trifles or unnecessary detail, jerk in circum flex accent and pull away, in an extension of two lovers' bodies, from his heart. The surgeon auscultates the sick for hours on end. When his hands quit working and start playing, he allows them to drift blindly,
grazing the patients' skin, while his scientific eyebrows vibrate, played upon by the uncultured and human frailty of love. And I have seen these sick die precisely from the surgeon's spread-open love, from the lengthy diagnoses, from the exact doses, from the rigorous analysis of urine and excrement. Suddenly a bed is en circled with a folding-screen. Doctors and orderlies were crossing in front of the absent one, sad and close blackboard that a child had filled with numbers in a great monism of chalky thousands. They
kept on crossing, looking at the others as if it were more irreparable to die from appendicitis or pneumonia than to die aslant the path of men.
Serving religion's cause this fly sails successfully all around the sick room. During the surgeons' visiting hours her buzzings un doubtedly absolve our chests, but then increasing to a roar they take over the air to salute in the spirit of change those who are about to die. Some of the sick hear this fly even in their pain and on them depends, and for that reason, the lineage of the gunshot in the dread ful nights. How long has this named-by-man anesthesia lasted? Science of
God, Theodicy, if I'm forced to live under such conditions, totally anesthetized, my sensibility turned toward the inside! Ah doctors of the salts, men of the essences, neighbors of the bases! I'm begging
you to leave me with my tumor of consciousness, with my raw sensitive leprosy, no matter what happens, even though I may die! Let me rack myself if you wish, but leave me awake in my dream
with all the universe imbedded, even if I go through hell, in my
gritty temperature. In the world of perfect health, the perspective from which I suffer will be mocked, but, from the same plane and cutting the deck
for the game, another laugh percusses here in counterpoint. In the house of pain, the cry assaults held notes of the great
composer, bottlenecks of character, which give us real chills, ardu ous atrocious chills, and, fulfilling what is prophesied, freeze us in
terrifying uncertainty. In the house of pain, the cry uproots excessive frontier. The cry
itself of happiness in ecstasy, when love and the flesh are exempt from the goshawk and when after union there is enough discord for
dialogue, cannot be recognized in this cry of pain. Then where is the other flank of this cry of pain if, to estimate it as a
whole, it breaks now from the bed of a man? From the house of pain cries break: so gagged and ineffable and
brimming and overflowing with so much fullness that to weep for them would be ridiculous and would really be smiling.
so
Blood riots in the thermometer. It is not a pleasure to die, master, if one leaves nothing in life and if in death nothing is possible except on the basis of what one
leaves in life. It is not a pleasure to die, master, if one leaves nothing in life
and if in death nothing is possible except on the basis of what one leaves in life. It is not a pleasure to die, master, if one leaves nothing in life
and if in death nothing is possible except on the basis of what one was able to leave in life.
translated by Clayton Eshleman
"The one who will come
" ...
The one who will come just passed
banished, to sit down on my triple unwinding; just passed criminally. Just sat down nearer,
body away from my soul, the one who came on a donkey to drain me just sat down up, livid. a
Just gave me what's finished,
the heat of the fire & the immense pronoun the animal suckled under its tail. Just
expressed his doubt concerning remote hypotheses that he withdraws, even more, with his look. Just bestowed on the good its rightful honors
by virtue of the foul pachyderm through what is dreamed in me & in him murdered. Just fixed (there's no first) his second afflixxion right in my shoulders
& his third sweat right in my tear. Just passed without having come.
translated by Clayton Eshleman
"Between pain and pleasure
" ...
Between pain and pleasure three creatures cut in, and the first stares at a wall, the second rides a sad spirit, and the third moves forward on tiptoe.
But, between you and me,
only second creatures exist.
Leaning on my forehead, the day comes together so that, really, there is great precision in space. But if you say through my mouth, finally, how big you are, cause of it all, Oh! who will ask me for my word? This meeting filled with black thread
equals the split-second shudder of eternity, but only what does not change equals your secular goodbye, your creature, the soul, my word.
translated by Stephen Berg
The soul that suffered being its body You suffer from an endocrine gland, naturally, or
maybe
you suffer from being me, from my stripped-down stoical wisdom. You groan under a transparent anthropoid, far away, close by, where the heavy darkness continues.
You stay close to the sun, hugging your soul, and you stretch your fleshy cheekbones
and adjust your collar-all quite naturally.
You know what hurts you,
what breaks your ass, what trips you onto the pavement with a rope.
You, poor man, are alive. Don't deny it
just because you die. Don't deny it just because you die at the right time. And even though you cry you drink, and even though you bleed you feed your hybrid fang your sad nightwatch and your things, you suffer and get crushed and groan and suffer horribly again, humiliated monkey, little Darwinian son, detective who spies on me, disgusting microbe.
And knowing it at all times you ignore it, and burst into tears. Consequently you have been born. This too, naturally, at a distance, unhappily and in secret,
and you limp down the one street that brings you luck and your belly button asks- Where? How? Oh my friend, you are thirty-eight years old completely, even to the
tips of your hair,
and I could be with you or with your abortion or with
myself, and, trapped in your immense liberty, dragged down by your gigantic personal force But if you count up to two on your fingers that's worse. Don't deny it, little brother.
.
.
.
Without? With, but without? Poor monkey! Give me your paw! No. Your hand, I said.
Good luck! And suffer! translated by Stephen Berg
"At best I'm somebody else
" ...
At best I'm somebody else, walking at dawn, somebody else who marches to the tune of a free wheel, a
mortal, figurative, risky diaphragm.
At best I remember to hope, and I annotate marble where, red index, cot of bronze, fox who is gone, I squirt water in a rage. At best, a man after all,
with the anointed shoulders of indigo mercy, at best, I tell myself, beyond that there is nothing.
The wheel gives me the sea, narrating it, with a little dry border, to my throat. There is nothing really more salty, more sweet, more kantian! But a stranger's sweat, serum
of rainstorm or meekness,
decaying or growing-that, never! Thrown away, perfect, I resurrect myself, without legs or adult mud or weapons, a pawned needle in a big atom, with punches, I enter a brew that swells.
No! Never! Never yesterday! Never later! From now on this fiendish potato,
this ethical molar of a plesiosaur
and these dead suspicions, this index, this bed, these tickets. translated by Stephen Berg
Report on the blind part IIIfrom Sobre heroes y tumbas ERNESTO SABATO
Oh, gods of the night! Oh, gods of darkness, incest and crime, melancholy and suicide! Oh, gods of rats and caverns, bats and cockroaches!
Oh, violent, inscrutable gods of sleep and death! I
When did this begin that now is going to end with my assassination? This fierce lucidity that I now have is like a beacon and I can direct its intense beam toward vast regions of my memory: I see faces, rats
in a granary, streets in Buenos Aires or Algiers,
prostitutes and sailors; I turn the beam and see more distant things: a fountain on our country manor, a stifling siesta, birds, and eyes that I stick nails into. Perhaps there, but who knows: it may be much further back, in the most remote periods of my earliest infancy. I don't know. Besides, what does it matter? I remember perfectly, on the other hand, the beginnings of my systematic investigation (the other, that I was unaware of, perhaps the more profound, what do I know about it?). It was one summer day in 1947 as I passed by Mayo Plaza in San Martin Street on the sidewalk in front of City Hall. I was going along thinking when, sud denly, I heard a little bell, a little bell as if somebody was trying to awaken me from a millennial sleep. I kept walking as I listened to the TriQuarterly 95
little bell that was trying to penetrate the
deepest part of my con sciousness; I heard it but I wasn't listening to it. Until suddenly that faint but penetrating and obsessive sound seemed to reach some sensitive zone of my being, where the skin of one's self is very thin and abnormally sensitive; and I woke up frightened, as if facing a sudden perverse danger, as if in the darkness my hands had touched the cold skin of a snake. In front of me, staring at me fixedly through her hard, enigmatic face, I saw the blind woman that hawks her wares there. She had stopped ringing her little bell, as if she had been sounding it for me only, to awaken me from my senseless dreaming, to inform me that my former existence had ended, like a stupid pre paratory stage, and that now I must face reality. We remained thus for those moments that do not form a part of time but which give access to eternity; she, motionless, with her abstract face turned toward me, and I, paralyzed, as by an infernal but frigid apparition. Then my consciousness again entered the torrent of time and I fled. That is how the final stage of my existence began. From that day on I realized that it wasn't possible to let a single instant more slip by and that I myself must begin the exploration of that shadowy universe. Several months passed; one day that fall the second decisive encounter occurred. My investigation was in full progress, but my work was delayed by an inexplicable listlessness, which I now think was an insidious fear of the unknown.
I kept watching and studying the blind just the same. I had always been concerned about them and on several occa
sions I had discussions about their origin, hierarchy, way of life, and
zoological status. At that time I was just beginning to piece together my hypothesis about the cold skin, and I had already received insults verbally and by mail from members of societies linked to the world of the blind. With the efficacy, rapidity and mysterious sources of information that secret societies and sects always have-those socie ties and sects which invisibly penetrate society and which, without its being known or suspected, continually watch us, follow us, decide our destiny, our failure and even our death. This is especially true of the blind who, to the greater misfortune of the unwitting, have 96
partly deceived by the Organization, partly as a result of sentimental, demagogic propa ganda, and, finally, to a large extent, through fear of physical and normal men and women at their service,
metaphysical torments that it is said are in store for those who dare in passing, I then pry into their secrets. Torments which, I might say felt I had already suffered in part, and the conviction that I would go on receiving in a more and more subtle and frightful form, doubt less because of my-pride, only accentuated my indignation and my determination to carry out my investigations to the very end. If I were a little smarter, perhaps I could boast of having con firmed through these investigations the hypothesis that I had imagined about the world of the blind since I was a boy, for it was the nightmares and hallucinations of my infancy that brought me my first revelation. Then, as I grew up, my prejudice kept mounting against those usurpers-those moral blackmailers who abound un derground because of that in them which links them to the cold blooded, slippery-skinned animals that live in caves, caverns, cellars, old passageways, drain pipes, sewers, catch basins, deep crevices, abandoned dripping mines; and, in the case of some, the most pow erful, in enormous subterranean caves, sometimes hundreds of yards deep, as can be deduced from unmistakable but hesitant reports by cavern hunters and treasure seekers, sufficiently clear, however, to those familiar with the threats that weigh over those who try to vio late the great secret.
Before, when I was younger and less mistrustful, although I was convinced of my theory I hesitated to verify it or even suggest it,
because those sentimental prejudices which tyrannize over our emo tions kept me from penetrating the defenses that the sect has erected, all the more impenetrable because of their subtlety and invisibility,
aided by truisms learned in school and newspapers, respected by the government and the police, propagated by charities, women and teachers. Those defenses keep us from getting to those shadowy
regions where the commonplaces begin to yield more and more, and the truth begins to be suspected. Many years had to pass for me to be able to penetrate the exte rior defenses. And thus, gradually, with a strength as great as it was 97
paradoxical, like the one that in nightmares drives us toward horror, I went on into the forbidden regions where metaphysical obscurity to here and there, at first, instinctively, like begins reign, glimpsing fugitive, equivocal phantoms, then with greater and terrifying pre cision, a whole world of abominable beings. Later I will tell you how I achieved that fearful privilege and how after years of search and threats I succeeded in entering the area where a multitude of beings mills around, among which mere blind people are scarcely noticeable. n
I remember very well that June 14th, a cold rainy day. I was observ
ing the behavior of a blind man who was working the subway to Palermo, a rather short, stocky man, extremely vigorous and very crude, who was running through the cars with ill-restrained violence, forcing pencils on a crowded mass of crushed people. The blind man belligerently pushes his way through the crowd with one hand held out to receive the tributes that, with sacred distrust, the wretched office workers offer to him, while in the other he holds the sym bolic pencils-for it is impossible for anyone to live from the sale of such wares, since some people need a couple pencils once a year or even once a
month, but nobody, madman or millionaire, buys a
dozen a day. So, as is logical and everyone will agree, the pencils
merely a front, something like the blind man's insignia, a kind of privateering commission which distinguishes the blind from other are
mortals, as does their famous white cane. I was observing, then, the course of events, ready to follow that
individual in order to confirm my theory once and for all. I made
innumerable trips between Mayo Plaza and Palermo, trying to hide my presence at the terminals because I was desperately afraid of
awakening the sect's suspicions and being turned in as a pickpocket or some other stupid thing just when my days were incalculably valuable. With certain precautions, then, I maintained a close con tact with the blind man and when finally we made the last trip at one-thirty, precisely on that June 14th, I was prepared to follow the man to his lair. In the Mayo Plaza terminal, before the train made its last trip 98
to Palermo, the blind man got off and headed for the exit to San
Martin Street. We began to walk along the street toward Cagallo. At the corner he turned toward the Bajo. I had to redouble my precautions, for that lonely, winter night the blind man and I were alone on the street, or almost. So I followed him at a safe distance, remembering how well they hear and their instinct that warns them of any danger which threatens their secrets. The silence and loneliness had that impressive force that they
always have in the Banking Quarter, a section much more lonely at night than any other, probably in contrast with the daytime bustle in those streets, the noise, the recurrent confusion, the urgency, the
huge crowd that throngs there during office hours. But also, almost surely, because of the sacred solitude that reigns there when Money is quiet. Once the last employees and managers have left, when that preposterous, exhausting task has ended in which a poor devil who receives five thousand pesos monthly manages five million and in which great crowds deposit with infinite precautions pieces of paper with magic properties which other crowds withdraw with similar precautions. A magic, fantastic process, for although they, the be lievers, think they are practical, realistic people they accept that dirty old paper where, with great attention, one can make out a kind of absurd promise by virtue of which a man who does not even sign with his own hand promises, in the name of the State, to give I don't know what to the believer in exchange for the piece of paper. The curious thing is that this promise satisfies this individual, for nobody, as far as I know, has ever demanded that the promise be fulfilled; and still more surprising, in place of those dirty pieces of paper usually another cleaner but still more foolish piece is handed back where another man promises that, in exchange for that piece, the believer will be handed n number of said dirty old pieces of paper -something like madness squared. And everything representing Something that nobody has ever seen which they say is deposited Somewhere, especially in the United States .in vaults of Steel. To begin with, words like credits and fiduciary indicate that all this is like a religion. I was saying, then, that these districts, when stripped of the mad 99
multitude of believers at nighttime, are the most deserted of all, for
night, nor could he, because of the tremendous solitude of the gigantic temple halls and the great vaults which guard the incredible treasures. Meanwhile (with pills and drugs), the pow erful men who control this magic, sleep fitfully harassed by night
no one lives there at
Also, for the obvious reason that in these quarters there is no food, nothing that permits the permanent life of human beings, or even that of rats or cockroaches, because of the
mares of financial disasters.
extreme cleanliness that exists in these redoubts of
nothingness,
where all is symbolic and papery at best, and those bits of paper, even though could represent a certain amount of food for moths
they
and other small insects, are guarded in formidable steel enclosures,
invulnerable to any race of living things.
Through the total silence, then, that rules in the Banking Quar ter, I followed the blind man along Cagallo toward the Bajo. His steps resounded softly, and momentarily took on a more secret and perverse personality. We went down to Leandro Alem and, after crossing the avenue, headed for the port district. I redoubled my caution; at moments I thought the blind man
could hear my steps and even my nervous breathing. Now the man was walking with a confidence that seemed terri
fying to me, for I discounted the trivial idea that he might not really be blind. But what astonished me and accentuated my fear was that he
turned again toward the left, toward Luna Park. I say it frightened me
because it wasn't logical, since, if this had been his plan from
the beginning, there was no reason why after crossing the avenue he should have gone off to the right. Since the supposition that he had lost his way was completely inadmissible, taking into account the surety and rapidity with which he moved, the (fearful) hypothe sis remained that he had noticed my pursuit, and that he was attempt
ing to throw me off the track. Or, what was infinitely worse, was trying to lead me into a trap. Nevertheless, the same tendency that induces us to lean out over an abyss, led me after the blind man with more and more determina100
tion. So, now almost running
(it would have been grotesque if it
hadn't been dark) an individual with a white cane and a pocketfull
of pencils was being pursued silently but frantically by another indi vidual, first along Bouchard Street toward the north and then, when the Luna Park building ended, to the right as if to go down to the
port district. I lost sight of him then because, naturally, I was following him
about half a block behind. I hurried desperately, afraid of losing a part of the secret when I almost had it in my hands (as I then thought)
.
I reached the corner almost running, and turned quickly to the
right, just as he had done. What consternation! The blind man was against the wall, excited,
obviously waiting. I couldn't avoid passing in front of him. He grabbed me by the arm with superhuman strength. I felt his breath on my face. The light was very dim and I could hardly make out his expression, but his whole attitude, his panting, his arm which squeezed me like a pincer, his voice-all showed rancor and merciless indignation. "You've been following me!" he exclaimed in a whisper that was like a shout.
Nauseated-I felt his breath on my face and smelled his moist
skin-and frightened, I mumbled monosyllables, I denied it madly and desperately; I said, "Sir, you are wrong," almost fainting from nausea and revulsion.
How could I have given myself away? At what moment? How? It was impossible to admit that with the normal resources of an
ordinary human being he could have noted my pursuit. What? Could it be his accomplices-the invisible collaborators that the sect has planted everywhere: maids, women teachers, respectable ladies, librarians, streetcar guards? Who knows? But in this way that morn ing I confirmed one of my intuitions about the sect. I thought all this over in a daze while I struggled to free myself from his claws. I ran away as soon as I could and for a long time I didn't
get
up my courage to continue the inquiry. Not only because of fear101
fear that I felt to
an
intolerable extent-but intentionally, for I
imagined that nocturnal episode might have set in motion the closest and most dangerous watch over me. I would have to wait months and perhaps years; I would have to throw them off the track; I would have to make them believe that robbery had been the only object of the chase. After three years another event led me to pick up the track again and finally I succeeded in entering the redoubt of the blind, of those persons that society labels Non Videntes, partly because of common sentimentality, but also, almost surely, as a result of that fear which induces many religious sects never to use the name of God. m
There is a fundamental difference between persons who have lost their sight through disease or accident and those born blind. To this difference lowe my finally having penetrated the redoubt, although I may not have entered their most secret caverns where the great,
unknown hierarchs govern the Sect and therefore the World. From that sort of vantage point I was barely able to obtain news, always
deceptive and ambiguous, about those monsters and the means they use to
dominate the entire universe, I did find out in this way that
they achieve and maintain that hegemony, apart from the simple use of ordinary sentimentalism, through anonymous letters, in trigues, spreading epidemics, the control of dreams and nightmares, somnambulism and drugs. It is enough to mention the marihuana and heroin traffic in U.S. secondary schools where they corrupt eleven- and twelve-year-olds in order to have them at their absolute and unconditional service. The investigation ended, of course, where it really should have begun-at the threshold of the inviolable. As for domination through dreams, nightmares and black magic, it isn't even worth the trouble to point out that the Sect has at its service for this purpose the whole army of clairvoyants, neighbor hood witches, medicine men, faith healers, fortune tellers and spiri tualists. Most of them, the majority, are mere humbugs, but others have authentic powers under the appearance of a certain charla tanism in order to dominate better the world that surrounds them. 102
If, as they say, God has power over heaven, the Sect has domin ion over earth and flesh. I don't know whether, in the end, this organization has to give an accounting, early or late, to what might be called the Luminous Power; but, meanwhile, it is obvious that the universe is under their absolute power, the power of life and
death which is exercised by plague or revolution, sickness or torture, deceit or false compassion, mystification or anonymous letters, naive
young teachers, and inquisitors. I am not a theologian nor am I ready to believe that these infer
nal powers may be explained by any twisted Theodicy. In any event that would be theory or hope. The other, what I have seen and suf
fered, those are facts. But let's get back to the differences.
On the other hand, let's not. There is still a lot to say about in
fernal powers, because some credulous person may think that it's
question of a simple metaphor, not of crude reality. The problem of evil always preoccupied me when, since I was very small, I used to put myself beside an anthill armed with a hammer and to start kill ing insects without rhyme or reason. Panic spread through the sur vivors who ran aimlessly. Then I hosed them down, a flood. I could imagine the scene inside, the emergency measures, the running, the
a
commands and countermands to save caches of food, eggs, the se
curity of the queens, etc. Finally, with a shovel I upset everything, made big holes, hunted for tunnels, and destroyed frantically, a general catastrophe. Afterwards I began to cavil at the general mean ing of existence, and to think of our own floods and earthquakes. Thus I kept elaborating a series of theories, for the idea that we were governed by an omnipotent, omniscient and kind God seemed so contradictory to me that I didn't even believe it could be taken seriously. When I reached the epoch of the band of attackers I had already worked out the following possibilities: 1.
God does not exist.
2.
God exists and is a louse.
3.
God exists, but sometimes sleeps-his nightmares are our
existence. 103
4.
God exists, but has attacks of madness-those attacks are
our existence.
5.
God is not omnipresent; he cannot be everywhere-in other
worlds?-in other things? 6.
God is a poor devil with problems too great for his strength.
He struggles with material like an artist with his work. Sometimes, at
Goya, but generally he is a fiasco. 7. God was defeated before History by the Prince of Shadows, and, defeated and converted into the supposed devil, he is doubly
some moment he gets to be a
disparaged, since the calamitous universe is attributed to him. I didn't invent all these possibilities, although then I believed them. But later I found out that men had been strongly convinced of some of them, especially the hypothesis of the Devil Triumphant. For more than a thousand years courageous, clear-thinking men had to face death and torture for having unveiled the secret. They were dispersed and annihilated, since, as is to be expected, the forces which dominate the world aren't going to balk at trifles when they are willing to do what they do in general. So, poor devils or geniuses, they were tormented alike, burned by the Inquisition, hanged, whole peoples decimated and scattered. From China to Spain the state religions, Christian or Zoroastrian, swept the world clean of any attempt at revelation. And it can be said that in a certain way they achieved their objective. For although some of the sects couldn't be annihilated, they were converted in their tum into sources of falsehood, as happened to the Mohammedans. Let's examine the process: according to the Gnostics the perceptible world was created by a demon called Jehovah. For a long time the Supreme Deity lets him freely run the world, but finally He sends his son to live tem porarily in the body of Jesus, in order to free the world in this way from the false teachings of Moses. Now then, Mohammed thought, like some of those Gnostics, that Jesus was an ordinary human being, that the Son of God had descended to him at baptism and abandoned him at the Passion, since, otherwise, the famous cry, "Oh God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?", would be inexplicable. So when the Romans and Jews ridicule Jesus, they are ridiculing a kind of phantom. But the serious thing is-and it happens to other rebel 104
sects in a more or less similar manner-that the mystification has not
been cleared up but fortified. Because, for the Christian sects which maintain that Jehovah was the Devil and that a new era begins with
Jesus, as well as for the Mohammedans, if the Prince of Shadows reigned until Jesus (or until Mohammed) now, on the other hand, defeated, he has returned to Hell. As is understood, this is double mystification-when the big Lie weakens, these poor devils rein force it.
My conclusion is obvious-the Prince of Shadows keeps on gov erning. And that government is carried out through the Sacred Sect of the Blind. It is all so clear that I would almost begin laughing if I were not possessed by terror. translated by Stuart M. Gross
DANIEL ZELAYA. DE LA SERlE DE LA JAULA. IX. WOODCUT. ZEGRI GALLERY. NEW YORK.
SIX POEMS BY JAVIER HERAUD
translated by Paul Blackburn
The poem 1
A whole year now I've slept,
perhaps I've died only once, or
I don't know.
went out and got shipwrecked
late in the afternoon and at night, a lot of fishes
beat out their brains in the sea.
But I do know
2
it's been a year
I'm here, however,
that I've been absent.
I'm back nonetheless,
I know that for a year I've
with a rare taste
copped out, I
for bitter earth,
know that in that time
I've stored up
berries and fruits
plenty of misery, hard to forget in just a year.
parching their roots pulverizing them willingly and with good cheer. were
I rested
in the sierra, and my heart, with its weird luck, did not dry out
It's difficult to put down
everything I've left, a year is always a year, and is never
with the humidity
enough. It's hard to lay everything down, pale green shrubs
of weeping, didn't
cover the heart
sob, didn't
with hatred,
demand
and to weed them out is always
my old evil moods.
to leave something,
Everything happened
a
very normal: and I sat down
a thin root;
the breath of hate
and rested,
lives untiringly
even the trains
in the heart and
weighed on their rails, ships
in the sleep.
106
hole,
3
4
Today I've turned back
I've come back now.
upon my roads. I left, well, it's
Mama, papa,
been a year now.
Brothers,
Now I'd deny
here I am,
all of it:
same as
don't know if I was born,
singing in the winter nights with my dry
I've come back.
don't know if I ever read a
book, I
always,
shall have skimmed perhaps
heart of
by Salinas which today I want to forget. A year is never enough when
bread and stone.
what is wanted is rest.
And you don't
If I was born, it's
count on your fingers yet,
because I have to end
or even read one
with my bones
letter at a time,
in the sea:
or dream
(the sea washes it all,
with the tigers
the sea covers
and elephants?
grasses and pasture both, it fills the hearts
But one thing's sure, brothers,
a verse
with salt and total darkness)
Gustavo, you 've grown.
father, mother, here .
lam.
But maybe I've died already,
I don't know if I rested,
a year is
always a year, really I've not managed
for on the road I met
to rest at all, or
is it that I want to
laughed in the wind to my steps, laughed
go back and lie down
with teeth and branches,
on the bed
that laughed at everything
from which stillness
like a child, and that
I listened to, in dreams,
gave me some doubt.
a willow that
the autumn watersheds
murmuring? 107
5
told myself,
One long year I've lain stretched out
you don't have to die but it's that we want
in the grass of forgetting,
to open our arms and say:
covered by
"see you tomorrow, thanks,
love's leaves and
nothing has happened, and I am as always
autumn leaves.
Now I've rested a little,
between rivers, and
I admit it, I
I am between the stones
left, taking no goodbyes,
as never before."
it's that there's no room
And I kept on walking,
in my heart for more flowers,
thinking of the hot
in my heart the hard secret
bread in the house,
of life has not come.
smelling the smell of rice my mother prepares,
6
I've come back slowly.
regretting my
(A little sleep is
bed, with
always necessary though it be short as
happy sheets.
the silence of
creeping ivy)
its
.
7
In every town I passed
The song of the
on the way
rivers
back,
I saw that its doors
accompanied my
were open
feet
for me,
cool from walking,
that its roofs were mine,
the river
that its fields,
singing with my arms,
its sounds,
in it
all belonged to me.
I looked at death, at
I walked and
life.
walked,
But one is always
I did not look back to my bed of leaves, a year is
enough, I
composite, a piece of death and a piece of journey, and one is always river, a
or song, or hidden tears.
8
don't know, maybe I'm only
I'm back. I slept
a dead man who
long year, I rested and was dead, but
box of suffocation,
I enjoyed april
I don't know if one
a
hammers at his
and the white flowers.
might call to mind in the bottom of one teacup a
9
I've come back today
whole life lost, but I
through the fields, running at times, suffocated, at moments resting once again at the foot
know that I was asleep:
of a tree with late
brown leaves. The sun up there
(as always),
harmonizing thunderous songs of triumph daring
or
me to race
across the whole field.
I stopped
submerged my arms . .
waters, It
chattered, cooling the brain. And again I saw myself reflected in the sea, and here I
had some doubts
again: I have understood nothing, one whole
of dreams and
forgetting.
10
They didn't reproach me at all: if I have been missing the whole of a long cluster of compact days, it's because I took for granted that one could never
live so long,
already my hands only exclamation and retreat.
at the spring, III Its
when it is a year
were hands for
at the spring,
�
one year is a century
I built my caverns
with my eyes, and the fingernails did not exist
neither for bread nor for the wheat. I'll never know if I
have rested, to know is not a
enough
year is always a year,
but I know that I have
slept, sleeping
year I've traveled through the dream
and there where I was
the flowers covered
towns, I
my head,
and I did not bother
myself
with the river or the valley,
rested, or without rest,
not with sea nor with the sands.
but without new dreams.
Today I return, today I'm back
Without a new dream which
might oblige me to return
after a year
to my couch of grasses
after a year
and flowers, without
of rest or of
a
perennial travel toward
I shall invent new
life.
words, shall, perhaps,
But the voyage of rest, or
with a cheerful face,
the voyage and the rest, all
smile, some-
is an assuagement for
time I shall greet
my dead eyes.
life,
Today I return bringing doubt
and I'll wait
and the word,
for death cheerfully
today I return with happiness in my throat,
with my dry heart.
long, new dream,
EMILIO SANCHEZ. CAS A RURAL. OIL. ZEGRI GALLERY. NEW YORK.
At home 1
My room is an apple with its
books, with its
peel, with its tender
bed for the hard night.
My room is everybody's, which is to say its oil lamp lets me laugh next to Vallejo,
lets me laugh the
2
eternal clarity of
Through my window, the sun
Neruda.
is born almost every
My room, in short,
morning.
IS
And in my face,
an
apple,
in my hands,
with its books,
in the soft
its papers,
exclamation of pure light,
with me,
I open my eyes in the
with its
dead of night in
heart.
between the tender
hope of staying alive an-
other day, of opening my eyes upon the
eternal clarity.
Only In the mountains or at the sea to feel myself alone, air, wind,
tree, an arid crop.
Smile, the features, sky and silence, in the South, or in the East, or in the birth of a new river.
Rain, wind, cold and it whips.
Beach, flash of lightning, waiting, in the mountains or at the sea.
Alone, alone,
only your lonely smile, only my lonely mind, only my solitude and your silence.
Some things Butterflies, trees, narrow streets and
those who are to come, how tell them that
when the hour of twilight comes, their
oncoming branches will tum to creak in the storm!
If, in the night, they force the widest river to withdraw, how deny them their
bloody candor, their clear courage illumined!
Butterflies, trees under the storm, in the clear river soar your
wings to the
rackety wind that between the two will emerge somehow the dawn.
The river
offer myself to the flocks and herds to drink,
"life runs like a wide river" -Antonio Machado
to gentle people.
1
day,
I am a river,
and
I run down over
at night trembling lovers
wide stones
sustain their eyes in mine
down past
and thrust their arms
hard rocks
into the dark clarity
by the path
of my ghostly waters.
sketched out by the wind. I have my trees
hereabout overshadowed
by the rain. I am a river, I flow each moment more
furiously, more violently, I run each
moment, then a
bridge catches my reflection in its curvature of beams.
Children crowd about me during the
3
I am the river.
But at times I am
wild and strong, at times I respect
neither life nor death.
Irunin
bone-breaking cascades, I run with rage and with
bitterness, smash against the stones harder and harder,
2
I make them one, of
I am a river,
one I make endless
a
river,
fragments.
a river
The animals
crystalline in the morning.
flee,
Sometimes I am
when I
tender and
overrun my banks
sweet-natured. I
glide through fertile valleys,
grope through fields, when I sow the slopes
thousands of times I
with pebbles,
leap into flight
when
5
I drown
I am a river.
the houses and pastures,
I am the eternal
when
river of happiness. I feel
I drown
the approaching breezes,
the doorways and their
I already feel the wind
hearts,
on my
the bodies and
and my journey across
their
mountains, rivers,
hearts.
lakes and meadows
cheeks,
becomes interminable. 4
And it's here when
6
I most fall headlong.
I am the river that voyages along the banks, tree or dry stone
When I can reach the hearts, when
I am the river that voyages along the selvage,
door or heart wide open
I can catch them by the
I am the river that voyages through the pastures,
flower or cut rose
blood, when I can
I am the river that voyages through the streets,
look at them
earth or moistened heaven
from inside.
I am the river that voyages through the houses,
table or hoisted chair
And my rage turns
mild, and I
I am the river that voyages inside men,
tum
tree
fruit
tree,
rose
stone
and I stem myself
table
heart
like a tree,
heart &
door
and I silence myself
restored.
like a stone, I am silent as a rose without thorns.
7
I am the river that sings at noon and to the
men,
who sings in front of their tombs, he who turns his face
before the sacred riverbeds.
8
my fertile fields,
I am the sunset river.
not see my green
I run through the broken
trees,
ravines,
my imminent wind, my cloudless sky,
through undiscovered villages forgotten, through the cities, thronged by the population in the display windows. I am the river, already I'm crossing meadows, there are trees all about me
my dark lake, my sun,
my clouds, nor will see anything,
anything, solely the blue sky,
covered with doves,
immense,
the trees sing along
and
with the river,' the trees sing
everything will be melded into a single flatness of water,
with my bird-heart,
in which one song of one poem more
the rivers sing with my
will be only small rivers that run down,
arms.
full-bodied rivers that run down to join
The hour will come
my new sunny waters, my new waters of light
when I will have to run
extinguished.
9
into the oceans let them mix my clear waters with their
turbulent waters, when I will have to
Epilogue
silence my sunny song,
I'm only
when I shall have to still my fierce cries to the dawn of all days, that
my eyes grow clear against the sea. The day will come, and in the immense seas, I shall never again see
a sad man who
wastes his words.
FERNANDO BOTERO. SIESTA DE LOS CLERIGOS. 1963. COLUMBIA.
Selfportrait with friends GUSTAVO SAINZ
I, for example, misanthropic, sullen, hunchbacked, prone to rot, in nocuous
exhibitionist, immodest, always disagreeable or discourte
gray or timid according to the dullness of the metaphor, a sometime erotomaniac, and as if that weren't enough, a Mexican ous or
to boot,
sleep badly and very little for the past few months, in fetal positions, under heavy covers, white or striped sheets, an electric blanket or in the open air, according to the weather, but of course, always embracing my wife, afloat on the river of dreams. Up at six in the morning, soaping myself. Rosita soaping herself under the hot-unrepeatable water of the shower. Done with breakfast and dressing by seven. In a taxi by twenty past seven. In the cinema by seven thirty: supervisory work, singular, compromised, mysteri ous, seemingly not so. And going on out, one hundred minutes later, buying the papers, returning to the apartment by taxi or on foot, and reading the newspaper, answering the telephone while Rosita pre117
pares lunch or comes and goes to and from her ballet class. Or wast ing my time in front of the typewriter, dying a little beside Claudius the God, Count Belisarius, Jvlian (Transl. note), Pedro Martinez or Mr. Martereau, on Gordon's last campaign, with the guerrillas in
Viet Nam, or in a hospital in Natchez, next to the dreadful redeemer Lazarus Morell. Or on the other hand,
going to the cinema in the afternoon and returning with an aching head due to the badly focused image and the comments of the people in the row behind me, so often bothersome. Just imagine, Gabriel going to the movies in the afternoon and walking, subject to the bour geois Flaubertian sickness consisting in detecting stupidity without being able to bear with it. Of all the pains of understanding, says Unamuno, this is the hardest. This trait of not discovering anything but the idiocies, the cretinity of others, could it not be a sickness of our arrogant vision? Or lack of charity, of love towards the fellow man, of humanity, after all And we start to walk back home always following a trail which will take us past several bookstores, and that's because I find pleasure in discovering new books on shelves I know far too well, I caress, I ponder, I read the book jackets, stray paragraphs, chapter begin nings, sentences, I sniff, I open at random, I dip into them, I consider the quality of the printing and the taste of the edition and for days and days the possibility of buying it is a torment I gather the money and no matter what the time is, even better if there's a storm raging, Rosita and I go out under an umbrella, we arrive at the bookstore, we buy the book, inexplicably we ask for it to be wrapped, and no sooner are we past the door we break open the wrapping, start to leaf through it again, start to handle it, and return home happy, as if we'd won something in a contest, we who detest contests and hierarchies. We began to read again. Rosita digs into A New Life, by Malamud, and I enjoy the Posthumous Memories ...
...
of Bias Cubas. And as anyone can see, with that sort of life (no drugs or alcohol, radio or idiot box, no parties, a great many books, books in industrial quantities and few friends, and above all with an overweening, neurotic, overwhelming desire to work on my new novel or to write letters, which is like writing
118
small novels), we don't need money once the expenses are covered for rent, maid, light, gas, telephone, clothes once in a while, books of course, but our friends sell them to us at discount rates, or on
credit, or they give them to us, anyone can easily see, I say, why I won't accept bureaucratic work no matter how well paid. Literature before my monetary equilibrium
but in rhythm with marital well being. To live, not in the imitation
of Christ, but rather, as far as is possible, like William, Henry, J.P.,
John, Alain, Malcolm, James, Marcel, Blaise, Thomas or Azorin. The secret of such men, I sometimes think, lies in the fact that they
enormously methodical and persevering: the mornings for writ ing, the afternoons for reading, days for walking, speaking little and watching everything, besides, quotable quote from Julio Camba, "there are years when one just doesn't feel like working." We go on walking homeward, we arrive, I make a note of the book acquired (I love order), and pour forth my enthusiasm over Mad are
Dwarfs, Negroes and Court Children in the XVI and XVII Centuries, by Jose Moreno Villa, while Rosita cries out with joy, as men,
Philip Roth pro-ba-bly sta-ted, I'm through with Malamud! casts her glance over the shelves, is dilatory in deciding, and takes out Lucre tius, Book I, On the Nature of Things, and pages, many pages later, after eleven or twelve at night, we go to bed, sometimes spreadeagled,
sometimes, as I've said, tenderly united in a complaisant embrace. I quote Emilio Prados: "the
night remains fleshless, throbbing,
alive." and at two in the morning, voices. Someone touches the window,
tapping softly on the glass. I get up, surprised (we live on a third floor). I open the curtains, and instead of pitch black sky, unex pectedly, there is the head of an adolescent. I can't hear anything through the glass, but the Holofemic mouth moves, makes sounds, and I understand although I don't want to understand, it's asking me to open the window. Rosita wakes up. We go into the living room, and are alarmed at the fact that there's a human pyramid lifting that idiot up to our room. I pick up the phone in the dark. I dial zero six. The police, I explain, my voice broken and very soft. Dial such-and119
such a number, I'm told, and they add a thousand numbers I can't set down because I can't see and which I quickly forget. I hang up
without resignation.
Open up,
the adolescent voice
yells,
and the human
pyramid
crumbles. I see police caps. We peer from behind the curtain, and make out police vans, uniforms, police badges. And suddenly we're
distracted by our female neighbor who undresses in the half light and makes gestures in front of a mirror. Voices, doors slamming,
sharply. Sudden silence and surprise: a tiny fear which crawls through the body and becomes lodged in the throat. The idiot who asked to come in is hanging from the window, swaying. We run, I open and take him by the arms, am hardly able to hold him, he's heavy and repeats incessantly that the cops have taken all the others, damn it. The naked neighbor notices us and puts out the light. I haul the guy in, he scratches the wall. We turn on the lights, Rosita gives him sugar. We heard several of them climbing onto the roof, we say. And the damn fool explains (more or less): I don't know a soul, I came to the party with a friend, and suddenly the cops arrived; there was a fat guy who kept saying, the cops, the cops, everytime the bell rang, and the last time we opened, it really was the cops. And he's dying of fright, he trembles, his voice breaks, he asks permission and makes a phone call, he checks his clothes, all over plaster and dirt, he brushes himself off, and I never thought I'd be a trapeze artist, he says as he leaves, man-fly, man-spider, and he leaves, still shaking. Rosita hasn't wasted time: she read. Parenthesis: she reads in taxis, in the bathroom, while she's cooking, going to the market and be tween one conversation and the next. She's probably reading right now. Close
parenthesis.
I flick the switch, and it's dark. Well, said another way, I tum off the
lights. Groping in the dark, we reach the bed and lie down. There are voices on the roof and I look at the time: four o'clock: one lighted hand at twelve and the other at four. If I woke up at six and heard those voices again, I think, I'd believe they'd been going on all night. And I stay awake, of course, but softly embrace Rosita, who is al
ready asleep, and lull myself into thinking that the noises downstairs have vanished 120
....
The phone rings at ten:
some
damn fool dialing a wrong number.
Wrong number, I say, I sigh, I grunt, I mutter, and I get up. Jesus, ten o'clock, says Rosita.
After the bath I go out for the Sunday papers for the funnies. I return
and the building smells of tequila and lemon. The owner of the apart ment where the scandal took place comes in at the same time, he
bumps into the concierge, retreats, crosses his hands, and states that someone informed the police that people were dancing naked in the patio, fortunately, there was a congressman at the party who saved them and they were set free. But damn the luck: after leaving the police headquarters, they went to a restaurant, and there was a raid on homosexuals, and they landed in jail again, but the congressman pulled a few strings again and how awful, I say as I'm sure Bruce Jay Friedman once exclaimed and an architect reported us, the neighbor goes on, a son of a bitch we were going to pump full of lead last night, but he got away, only because the worst always get away, but for sure today he's going to get beaten up, the goddamn stoolie. I leave the concierge listening to the rest of the complaints and go upstairs. I read the papers, file away the book reviews and clip out articles on urban planning, demo graphic growth and black humor, like one which says that a Bra zilian, 55 years old, took an overdose of vitamins and raped 14 girls. I tell Julio about this, during the meal, and then Nacho and Gabriel. We go to the University's cine-club, and under the influence of Nosieratu we find Jorge Ayala, Cuauhtemoc, Genaro, Margarita and Agustin, Beatriz and Luis Velo, Mario Solorzano and Laura, and we go back all of us in one car, ten in an R8, fourteen in a And during Rambler, twelve in a Valiant, nine in a Volkswagen the trip, with Rosita on my knees, I make plans, calculations, adjust ments, I improvise, I invent, I go over tales or anecdotes I've lived through, I invent at times, as I do before a typewriter, Olivetti 82. Have you read Gazapo'l At Gisela's, Menelao is trying to fix the record player when Mr. Medallas arrives, overflowing with children who run about, yell and trip over the tubes spread out on the floor. "Get the hell out of here, ...
121
you damn brats!" shouts Menelao. But they take them out onto the street soon enough, and Gisela's father puts them into the rear of the cab. Menelao helps Aunt Evangeline to walk, almost carrying her to get her into the taxi. Afterwards he lets Mrs. Mochatea get in, then
Mr. Medallas, Gisela's father, and her, who with noticeable tremors sits on Menelao's knees, who in turn settles down quickly, seeking a
comfortable position. Nobody protests, and they get going. The
kids shout and laugh, and houses, people and trees start leaving the car
behind, faster all the time, and the Catholic aunt recites:
"I believe in God the Father, maker of Heaven and earth, of all things
visible and invisible; in Jesus Christ, his only son, and in the Holy
Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified
" ...
Menelao is sitting
in front, by the window. Gisela settles on his knees and asks him if she weighs a lot, and he says no, but soon after his pants get wet at
the crotch. He tells her this, very low, and she laughs knowingly. When they arrive at the party, Menelao disappears for over an hour and then shows up, wearing a change of clothes and with his hair out
of place. Gisela runs towards him.
"Where were you?" she stammers. "You leave me here alone, I loathe you, I hate you, some guy grabbed my skirt, thank God noth
ing happened, what a creep, I was worried to death you weren't coming, and then I thought something had happened to you "Let me say something, okay?" "Yes. I'm sorry, but it's just that bang, suddenly you'd gone." "D'you really hate me?" "
...
"No.
"
"You just said you did hate me."
"Yes, but no. I'm asking you where were you." Menelao condescends and tells her everything. "He just went out to get combed and came back," someone says. He
runs
his hand through his hair,
bringing it forward. Gisela's
father says something along the same lines. "Darn it, he went straight to the barber's and came running right
back." Menelao rubs his eyes, which are full of dust. 122
It's said that during the trip he ejaculated because he was carrying Gisela on his knees. It seems he dirtied his pants and the truss. He didn't have a kleenex on him, and went into a public bathroom, a
filthy place, without even a washbasin, full of flies and ads for the prevention of venereal diseases. So then he ducked out in search of a bar or a cheap joint, and once in the street (so he dares say) he crossed in front of a big, luxurious house, saw two servants, and heard them say "Really, I don't expect them until tomorrow night." So, he walked resolutely up to them. "Are my aunt and uncle home?" he asked. "And who are you?" one of the servants inquired. "That's just what I was about to ask you
" ...
said Menelao.
"How long have you been working here?"
"Oh, for about two months. So what?" "I've got to get to the bathroom. I'm your bosses' nephew."
"Well then, you know they're not around, they always go off to Valle del Bravo and don't return until much later
" ...
"Yes, I know, but that doesn't stop them from being my relatives "No, I guess not." "So, why don't you let him in?" one of them said.
" ...
And the other one:
"Sure, do what you want, if you're sure
" ...
and she let Menelao in,
while he repeated he was a nephew of the owners and climbed the first set of stairs he came across with an air of certainty. "I sure hope
it's okay
" ...
he was able to make out one of the servants' voices.
And he found the strange bedrooms very comfortable, and had the
luck of finding, besides, clothes almost made to measure for him. He dropped the stinking pants and the truss into a wicker basket, and took a bath. He had just finished dressing when first the bell, and
then the sound of the front door caused him to start. He heard a man
asking after the owners, and one of the maids, the one who had let him in, answering that they weren't in, as was their habit, but that he could speak to the nephew. "Felipin?" the man asked. The maid said she didn't know his name, because she was new to the house, and that neither did her friend, who was there on a visit. 123
Menelao finished dressing, and with caricaturesque stealth started to climb down the stairs. But the unknown man caught sight of him.
"Felipin!" he wheezed out, offering his open arms. "Don't you re member me?" And as soon as he could he grabbed him by the shoulders.
"No," whispered Menelao, completely at his mercy. "Of course, you were just a kid! I'm your godfather! How you've
grown! I know you since you were two years old. D'you remember how we used to go off fishing to Zihuatanejo, and to play tennis? You rascal! D'you remember And in the same enthusiastic manner he went on saying things to which Menelao kept answering yes, yes, until the maids announced "
...
the arrival of the masters.
(The owners, of course.) The one who opened the door to let Menelao in took off down the street. He, on the other hand, took advantage of a slight lack of atten
tion on the fat man's part to free himself, and pretend to walk to wards the garage where a Caravelle towing an outboard was going
in, and actually running, running desperately, faster all the time, until he was able to make sure that nobody was following him. "You just got combed and came here right away," someone said, when he arrived at the party: it seems it was Gisela. He smiled his
Terry Thomas smile, and raised one hand to his head, to run the hair down forward again. Then she noticed the different clothes, the new shirt, the unknown trousers, the significant look, and asked to know the whole story, when his words were already bursting forth, dripping saliva, auto matically. And now I free the typewriter from the written page. Mechanically. A movement to which I'm condemned ever since, let's put it this
way, I embraced a literary career. I get up and peer into the bed room: Rosita is reading, lost to the world. I wander around for a
while, I drink Coke: it's been over six years that I haven't touched a drop of water, only Coke, five or six bottles a day, stone cold, even though Fact (Volume one, issue six) asserts that Coke can cause tooth decay, headaches, acne, nephritis, nausea, delirium, heart 124
disease, emotional disturbances, constipation, insomnia, indigestion, diarrhea and mutated offspring. The telephone squawks, and it's Patricia, our wellbeloved Patricia, radiant nymphet, irredeemed, who keeps asking questions about eroticism, literature and today's corruption, a conversation so pro
longed that it flattens my ears and makes them feel hot. Just think of this, Patricia, I read Pedro Paramo when I was in tenth grade,
during classes,
sometimes, and after them. In the classroom I used to hide it with
chemistry book while I pretended to follow the lecture. Have I mentioned that I no longer underline, or mark, or mistreat books? I had a pencil in my hand, the master called out my name, and due to the confusion of getting up without dropping Juan Rulfo's novel, I marked a paragraph on alogenes. I was a terrible student, and soon came back to normal, but not to my reading: I started to rub out the pencil mark on the chemistry text, which was suddenly grabbed a
out of my hands. This book is mine, said one damn fool to another,
I know it because of this mark, right? and pointed precisely to the one
I'd just made. And it's chemistry, he said to the teacher. The
class had just finished, and there was some disorder in the group.
D'you remember I'd told you one of my books had been stolen? Well, Sainz had it. It's this one, the chemistry, I can tell by the scratch, look, this one, I made it in front of him, isn't that true? And yes, teacher, the other one said, I'm a witness. I stayed in my place,
stunned, until the teacher said: Did you steal the book? I don't need to, I answered quickly, people keep giving my father books, he doesn't even buy them. This fellow says the book is his, and he can say whatever he wants, the book is mine, you can ask my father. It
doesn't have your name anywhere on it. I don't stain my books, or mark them, or get them dirty, just look at all my books, they're like new, right? and look at his books, they're all beat up
...
What do
you say to all this? he asked the boy. He stole it just after I'd bought
it. And the teacher said, well, I'll keep the book myself until the
whole thing clears up. And as an aside: you say they give them to your father, right? Yes, sir. Then why don't we give the book to this boy, and you can get your father to give you another, and he 125
smiled, with a wretched little smile, and come, he said, come with me
to the Dean's office, I'm going to give you a rubdown with the
lie detector. "Thief!" the other one yelled.
And I was overtaken with fear. My father really did get free copies of all the textbooks, but I remembered that, of all things, the chem
istry book was not amongst them. It was out of print at the beginning of the year, and we had to get it in a bookstore.
Besides, there
couldn't be a lie detector within the school grounds, perhaps outside.
they calling a lie detector? And what if they asked whether I masturbated? Did they give your father this book? We reached the office. The chemistry instructor terrified me even more by scolding me, and went off to finish his duties. It was twenty past eleven, and I opened up Pedro Paramo. I was on page 66, where What
were
he says: "I wanted to tell her that life had brought us together, roping us in
and placing us beside each other. We were so much alone here that we were
the only ones. And somehow or another we had to popu
late." The chemistry instructor came back. Let's go. Where? To the lie
detector, it's four blocks away, he said, and gave me a knock on the head. Did you steal the book or didn't you? I've told you already that my father gets the books free, why should I want to steal it I was pissing on myself with fright ...
we
...
started to walk down Naples street, and turned into Liver
pool. I was brainwashing myself. I couldn't be scared of the lie detec tor. My luck depended on the stupidity of the interrogator, and if I had an imbecile, I was safe, so there. We got to a car. It was three thirty in the afternoon. I had to piss. Where d'you live? The chemis try guy asked. In Colonia del Valle. That's too bad, I'm heading for Lindavista, here you are, and he gave me the book, put your name on all of them, and don't bring this one to class for a couple of weeks,
d'you have enough money for the bus? Yes sir. He gave me a pat on the head, and got into his car.
Months later, at the end of the school year, I finished up with an average of twenty percent for his course. I worked like a dog for days and days before the finals, and I got thirty percent. I only lived 126
in order to read Ellery Queen, Raymond Chandler, Isaac Asimov,
and to draw interplanetary comic strips. The idea of having to study
chemistry during the holidays, of not being able to get into college, suffocated me. But the teacher showed himself as lenient as ever, he passed me, quite sure that there would never be any further meet
ing between chemistry and myself. How grateful I am, Patricia. The conversation is too prolonged, and it flattens my ears. So long, Patricia, I've got to get to sleep. Rosita puts down her book. Again darkness and insomnia. Have I quoted Octavio Paz?
Thrown on the bed, I plead for the sleep of the beast, for the sleep of the mummy. Or as Pessoa says, disguised as Alvaro de Campos: " ...
we conquer the world before
leaving our bed,
we awake and it turns opaque, we go out on the street and it becomes
foreign
" ...
A friend calls next morning. He's also a writer, and they've brought
his novel, which is to be translated into Rumanian, Italian, and French. Wow! I'm so delighted I can hardly write. Besides, down
stairs, in Nacho Mendez's apartment, Matilde and Mario Patron
singing (rehearsing). Rosita begins to read J. S. LeFanu's Best Ghost Stories. So far this morning, she's already finished Howard Daniel's Devils, Monsters and Nightmares, and yesterday she was done with both volumes of the marvelous Lucretius. All this in spite of the fact that we get up at six and doggedly follow our routine: bathroom splashings, breakfast, the movies, the newspapers, the are
return home.
You can't make money writing, of course, and I write, but I want too many things, Grosz' Ecce Homo; a volume on Picasso put out
by Alianza Editorial; a movie camera, a tape recorder. And please forgive me: this paragraph is a trick I've used in order to drag in a little reminiscence. Fortunately for all concerned, it's over right now, as soon as I've announced that the last time I played a tape recorder was in
1961.
I could have bought one, but I preferred to buy some clothes: a vest, two very conservative suits. I went to Jacobo's store and ran into
Nacho. 127
The tailors took my measurements.
A girl, Greta, had lent me her tape recorder, and now was offering to sell it at a good price. As I'd spent my money on clothes, I got
Nacho interested, and asked him to come around to listen to it. But it's got to be today, he said, Jacobo and I are leaving tomorrow
for Acapulco. Okay, I said, and I invited them over to the apartment.
Shit, no light. So we loaded the tape recorder into a Renault and took it over to Greta's. But what the hell, we had no idea of the time, and it was after twelve.
Her family was fast asleep, and perhaps because of that, just to get her mad, we said serenade
and Nacho and Jacobo went to get their guitars. We removed the bulb from the streetdoor lamp and plugged the tape recorder into it. I can imagine your reaction: you awoke just when the second
contradictory ideas, a fuss, questions, curiosity. You peered out. Then, pleased, you lit your bedside lamp. The next day I picked Greta up: we had breakfast in front of the song was ending:
school, at EI Panuco; after, we walked over to my mother's apart ment, where we put the tape recorder away. I spoke before arriving. Mother was having a bath, and was just about to leave: she wouldn't be home till very late. With nothing much to do, and on our way to the apartment, we
stopped at the post office: Ernesto Sabato had sent me a copy of Of Heroes and Tombs, from Santos Lugares; there was a letter from Jorge Gaitan Duran (may he rest in peace); another, from Ismael Vinas, giving me his brother's address in Venezuela, at last. We got to the apartment. Think of Menelao and Gisela in Gazapo. I put a tape on the recorder:
on one
side there was a conference
given by Carlos Fuentes on the Presidential Succession in the United States; on the other, last night's serenade, but Greta didn't know that. And then, Nacho was singing with a bit of static in the background,
but stirred and stirringly
...
It's almost no use speaking about you: you kept asking yourself with
increasing anxiety how I was going to declare my intentions. Your 128
Botticellian face reminded me of an Emil Nolde. It was necessary for the whole thing to be beautiful, beautiful and
unexpected. Because, absolutely taken aback, naively surprised, you were allow ing me to undress you. I paraphrased Vinicius de Moraes: beauty was fundamental. Your fresh mouth (never damp!) was also extremely adequate. Returning from lust, while you were bathing, I put the tape recorder on to its slowest speed, I rubbed out the aphrodisiac serenade, and set every thing up to record our own voices. I took pictures of you while you dressed, sometimes by surprise, so that you seem sheltered behind a wall of modesty and your gestures have nothing to do with your body. Then again the anxious desire, and the possession well completed. I confessed: I'd spent my money on clothes, I couldn't buy the tape recorder off you. So what, you said. Nothing mattered very much to you at the time. But we agreed to go together to pick up my suits. There were many mirrors in the store, and I loaded the camera again to take pictures of you there, infinitely reflected, facing yourself, or
in front of trees or people, on Juarez Avenue. I tried on my suits, a coat of black antelope, and a kid leather wrap. We joked: boar cloth or chick skin. Will you buy them for me? I
said, like an idiot, and it's just that your family has always had lots of money.
Hugo, the salesman, and Luisa, the girl at the cash register, insisted we take the whole thing, ah, but we were going to the movies, and out to dinner before that. I didn't even want to take the suits which were ready, and we agreed to come back later in the afternoon. So long. We walked towards Bucareli Street, to the Gran Taquito, which at that time was known as the Michoacana, and no longer exists. We hurried, and hardly made it to the Paseo Cinema: A Plein Soleil.
You were speaking, and you were speaking about your family. They controlled your phone calls, they took you to school and came to
pick you up, they were unbearable. 129
If they had followed us,
they'd be able to reconstruct the whole episode with no difficulty: there was a tape in the apartment with our conversation, next to three rolls of undeveloped film, over one hundred photos, many of them showing you naked. When we left the movies, we started walking fast. The traffic was heavy, and far away we could see a column of smoke. It seemed as though we were walking within a photograph, the city in 1961. See the Fine Arts Museum, the Del Prado Hotel, the statue of General Zuazua with his rag sword. We were holding hands once again. On Luis Moya Street everything was chaos and we could make out the sirens of ambulances or firemen. We tried to figure it out: it must be the Alameda Cinema, no, it was in the Calvin Bakery, no, it must be a Chinese cafe in Dolores, no, the bar in front of Jacobo's store. But it was Jacobo's store. What a great sight a fire is! I went up to the hysterical cashier: no
body had got burned. No sooner had she told me than an ambulance swallowed her up. A counter, saved from the fire, was being looted by the crowd.
The street, jammed with people, was creating a traffic jam all over
Independencia, from San Juan de Letran to Balderas. A fireman was swearing. I took as many pictures as I could. There were as many people as in a football stadium or the bullring at Cuatro Caminos. When the fire died down, the warm Greta and I went to a newspaper office. I invented a recommendation, and got to the office of a bald dwarf who ordered the film developed and dismissed me. In exchange for the
material, I asked that my name appear in the paper. I'd never pub lished anything in a newspaper. We went back to the apartment for the tape recorder. I was sorry I hadn't picked up the suits, it wasn't that the money would be lost, no, it's just that I liked them.
And because we were tired, or excited, or afraid, or just because, we made
love again.
Then. an inferno: we couldn't find the tops of the rubbers any
where, and my mother would notice our activities, there would be 130
a scandal. We had no money, and we left
carrying the tape recorder,
too nervous, ready to climb into a bus.
We got into one. Greta realized that she had her dress on the wrong way out, and the
tribulations started again. We went back to the apartment. She wanted to call home, but after thinking it over, she decided to defy her parents once and for all. She wouldn't spend the night at home. We had dinner, and watched television to the end of all the programs: at that time, I could still put up with television.
At about two in the morning, Mother chased us out. She wanted to get some sleep. We went out into the night city, breathable.
I can see it well: we strolled up and down the Paseo de la Reforma
until dawn, always with the worry about the lost clothes and money,
thinking about Nacho and Jacobo, so removed from the disaster. We came back in a bus that left us on the very lively center of Buca reli, dirty with sweat and nerves, tired. Dawn was breaking, and the animated, the names of newspapers resounded in the morning air, we saw little boys wrapped in their coarse blankets, we
scene was very
foggy beggars. We bought a copy of Novedades. On the first page of the third sec tion, big, very impressive, were the photos of the fire, bearing my
saw
name.
Jacobo will see them in Acapulco, said Greta. We could make out the silhouette of a fireman amongst the smoke which seemed to rise from the paper. It was cold. I'm in the apartment of Rio Po again, wrapped in books, shelves, and pictures of authors. Rosita reads in silence. Jorge calls: we'll be
seeing Robert Flaherty's films in the cinema school. Did you know they've brought Metropolis and Dr. Caligari's Cabinet? Yes, I answer. I'm going to present them. It's useless to try playing those games. Polo calls, do I have Jorge Luis Borges' Introduccion a fa literatura inglesa? I say I don't. The Waning of the Middle Ages, One-Dimen sional Man? No to that, too. And I go out for them. I get a big discount, of course, and I enjoy 131
credit ad nauseam in almost every bookstore. I drop in on Carlos, in the gallery of the Del Prado Hotel. He greets me
with surprise. How many Gazapos d'you think I've sold today,
man? I look at him askance, I don't want to seem surprised. Fif
teen, he states. And twelve yesterday. And that's in spite of the fact that my bookstore is mainly for tourists. And damn it, that's enough to
keep me happy all day. There's no literature possible without
readers. I go back home, and it's time to eat. Nacho comes up, our great
neighbor, and pouf, Frank Harris jumps on the table, and we swal low him up alive. We spend over two hours talking of his lives and loves. With the stew, we change him for Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, our favorite hero. Then we speak of our affinities with the characters of decadent films. I think I'm a fatalist, I say, like the character in Fuego fatuo, and that I have no fighting spirit, like
Mickey One. Which is why I hold among my favorites such films as Citizen Kane, Dios y el diablo en la tierra del sol, Salvatore Giuliano, Let's Make Love, La iortaleza escondida and Singing in the Rain,
all of them films which affront my diminished vitality, my parceled VISIon.
Later, and like a stinking dessert, we speak of the Cultural Revolu tion in China, and other crises of supreme importance which worry us
and irritate us; the war crimes in Viet Nam, the New Left, the
menacing Black Power. Rosita gets up and reads The Fire Next Time in silence, until she comes to this: "There's a bill coming up which North America isn't prepared to pay a vengeance which truly does not depend and cannot be prevented by any police or armies: it's a historical vengeance, a cosmic vengeance." Ah, but we belong to a sentimental race, to a crowd of adolescents castrated by the volcanic city, vile consumers who ignore no causes but whose help is always inefficient. Pity. I write no urgent propa ganda, neither do I sign manifestos. I'd like to believe I contribute in some other way, by writing, for instance, on behalf of a new age of enlightment. It pains me, though, to watch an army marching, or the University pentathlon waffling about. It's a frustrated wrath, a pain born of society. ...
...
132
Or else, when football or the bulls distract people from political
problems, from their education, from the simplest lines of rea soning "Here is cold, green ire, and its tail of blades and cut glass Octavio Paz, says Rosita, identifying the origin of the last line, in El can taro roto. Nacho says goodbye, and makes a hundred jokes, one after the other, and leaves us gasping with laughter. The telephone is our perpetual enemy. It rings again when I'm ready to write, petrified in front of the blank ...
"
...
page. Call the lady, says some guy, mad as hell. What lady? What do you mean, what lady? My wife! But what number did you want? Who
you? Excuse me, but what number did you dial? What are you doing in my house? This is Mr. Saldana's house. I am Mr. Saldana, are
and I demand that you put me in touch at once with my wife. But she's not in. Who is in? Nobody. And who are you? I'm the guy
from the moving company. What moving company? Well, the one
they called for the move! And I hang up, feeling half devilish with laughter, half sorry for the poor guy.
Fernando calls, and I confuse him with the neurotic husband. I tell him about the incident, and from that we go on to something
else, when we remember the humorism in one of Losey's films. How Fernando carries on and on! After Otaola, whom as soon as I meet opens cages, loosens hundreds of words, wraps us all in them, turns us inside out, tickles us with
them, sets us free, opens more cages and more words pour forth, crackling, biting, seemingly harmless but incisive, cold or comically cruel, Fernando is the ablest conversationalist. What a marvelous story writer he'd be if only he'd change the tele
phone for a typewriter and a blank page. I am at his mercy for forty minutes and he finally lets me loose, feel ing groggy. I hang up, and disconnect the phone. Rosita gets ready to go to school.
I spend the whole afternoon alone. I write bibliographical notes, I make a summary of a novel and I read, I wander all over the house. 133
When I write, I try to regain what is condemned. A great novelist,
says Vargas Llosa, is the gravedigger of an era. To want to be a writer is to accept feeding on cadavers and carrion. To be half
vampire and half crow, to incur fetishism and necrophilia. My mind plans my novel and Rosita leads my body by the hand. On the way back, we run into Gabriel Carreaga and we invite him home, we, who so detest visits. We discuss the ideas of Robbe-Grillet, those affirmations where it is admitted that anything that tends to lessen the writer's understanding favors the ecclosion of the work. Alcoholism, grief, drugs, mystic passions, madness, according to Robbe-Grillet, have so filled the fictionalized biographies of artists, that it seems perfectly natural to see in them the essential needs of their tragic condition, or to see, at any rate, a conflict between con science and creativity. In Nacho's apartment, the Tamba Trio, Sonia, Matilde, Nadia, Mario Patron. I close all the windows and start to leaf through a
book. Gabriel reads my new novel, still fresh from writing, smooth
ing his hair. Rosita, in the bedroom, designs some skirts, gets caught up with some new ideas, cuts her own clothes. The whirring of the sewing machine.
Gabriel gets up and plays a record by the Rolling Stones.
Shit, I'm almost sorry that Curtius should have found this quotation from Stevenson before I did: "Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his
meaning; they find private messages, assurances of love and expres sions of gratitude, dropped for them in every comer. The public is but a generous patron who defrays the postage. Yet though the letter is directed to all, we have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends?" Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? translated by John C: Murchison
134
An anthology of Cuban poetry EDITED BY MARGARET RANDALL
This small "anthology" of Cuban poetry is arbitrary and limited but, I think, no
less representative for that. I have looked at Cuba (close up) as it is now,
its writers, what they are making of and with it. Collections are usually first attacked for their omissions; here the absence of Nicolas Guillen will be noted
immediately. He is a poet of the people and also, at times, an exceedingly fine poet of poets, but his work is at least partially known in the States and the attempt here has been to bring others to American readers. At the other
end of the spectrum--chronologically-the absence of most of the very young
poets will be felt. In a greater space some could certainly have been included:
Nancy Morejon, Gerardo Fulleda Leon, Tania Diaz Castro, Belkis Cuza Male to name only a few. I have bolstered this selection with poets largely in their thirties, however, for the following-purely personal-reason: The dominant force in Cuban life since 1959 is the revolution. Life is the revolution and revolution is life. Even in the old man of letters, Jose
Lezama Lima, or the Catholic poet, Eliseo Diego, the revolution touches,
shapes, determines. No one reading these pages is unaware of the fact that social change and art need great courage, strength-even genius-to come successfully together. I feel that these worlds have been joined with greater maturity in the generation of Retamar, Jamis, Fernandez; many of the young est Cuban poets have yet to come to terms with this explosion. Miguel Barnet is an obvious exception to the rule.
TriQuarterly 135
Quite apart from the social/economic/political changes in Cuba-or what one may think of them-the life of art is flourishing in all its aspects. The campaign that wiped out illiteracy on the island in 1962 brought with it a follow-up of study with reading as its central point of departure. The Cubans have not made the Stalinist mistake of forcing art "for the people";
they have, instead, brought the people slowly but steadily to the point where they want, need and can appreciate art. The Cuban publishing program is the largest in Latin America, and since Fidel's dictum that international copy right laws will be disregarded and books translated and published from every language, the bookstores in every corner of the island are full---of books and readers.
The UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) provides the Cuban writers with publication, materials, stimulus, jobs. The Casa de las Americas, cultural liaison with the outside world-in spite of the cultural "blockade"
continually offers congresses of writers, visiting lecturers, and one of the finest literary magazines in this hemisphere. This same organization, yearly, is also responsible for the most important literary contest in the Spanish lan guage when in January an international jury awards publication and $1,000 U.S. to the best works of poetry, novel, short story, theatre and essay. Wherever possible, writers are given jobs compatible with their talents and
interests. Although publishing (and paper) are government controlled, more young poets have the opportunity of publishing in Cuba than in most coun
tries in the world. In comparison with the majority of Latin American countries, the Cuban intellectual is exceedingly cosmopolitan and well-read. The North American
influence has not been entirely erased; most Cuban poets read English as well as Spanish and not a few of them know French and other languages as well.
Broadly speaking, the influences have been the modernists (Ruben Dario, Marti, etc.), the great Latin American poets Vallejo and Neruda, Eliot, Whitman, the French symbolists and surrealists. But the Cubans are well acquainted with the new work going on around the world: they know and have learned from the beats and black mountain poets, the new Russians; the
Nicaraguan poet-priest Ernesto Cardena! and the Peruvian Raquel Jodorow sky are well loved in Cuba. The Cuban people-and the Cuban poets-are living their history. They are living a very real life, and a life to a large extent freed from the smog of the "free world." Their fight is fresh in mind and body; and that, combined with their Afro-Cuban heritage and the aforementioned literary influences, has aided them in returning the word to its original purity and durability. They have returned language to its original state, and are working it from there.
136
Song of lost paradise It is a king, a purple
hump, a beast with gentle claws, a hill.
It is a
happy ship, a victory
a
city, the very tree of life. o paradise,
tumult of clouds melting
Calm This silence,
through final gold to silence!
white, without limits, ELISEO DIEGO
translated by Elinor Randall
this silence of the tranquil sea, unmoving,
which suddenly the trifling snails burst open
with a thrust of calm, can it be
spreading
from afternoon till night, eddying
along the fine sand of fire,
perhaps, the infinite deserted beach, so that
this silence
maybe never
ends? ELISEO DIEGO
translated by Elinor Randall
137
Boredom of the second day The descent of love consecrated
by a new fervor, by an oil of recent saps like the waters of a recent rainfall. Thus the new grape destroys the purple landscapes. That which comes from other infected blood,
growing like the nomadic leaves, turns on the consumed with early anger, just as the oath attracts irreverent wine. Behind the curtain he sends the other graceless smile while he revolves in a too puny dish. His desires moved from the figure to the uncreated Medusa, not from the palpable to a shadowy turning.
Always a black light falling on a fabric without names. They talked, but he could see behind the dialogued figure an entertainment without an appropriate form that goes from chair to attic leaving the advice untouched. He talked, embraced the proffered, and he accepted,
but oblique death contains an ultra-modem acid.
There's something primaveral congealing in the sigh and rolling on till it lodges in another solid body. For his sidelong look that hurdled his established luck, a fixed smile crowns the second
day of his agony. He pursued the inaccessible, dazzled in simple truths hidden behind the faces that gave him their mouths. On reaching the golden chair of partings, his desires burst into melodious aquatic flowers. As the sweet gesture of a moire shadow passes,
the dewy leaves propel his flight to the return. How indolent a death when his crystals touch new echoes;
he sees the coming of uncounted faces on fleeting stairways. The fleeting rounds itself out in new and transitory verdure; and so the leaves leap from carpet to larger carpet.
From the moist trunk, a refuge for white birds, the vegetal flesh returns with its swollen whip. The smile revives filled suddenly with light in which a finger points at it a hanging silence.
The same gesture, the smile come from the very spittle
brings to another flesh its thread and secret. In sweeping flights it falls into the center of the first fabric, the blindness fades into an endless whirlpool. Desires circle the body in another escaped body. The hand which weighs more now than a full fly,
though quiet, would like to hurt the weight imprinted on the incipient light. Desires like blown leaves. JOSE LEZEMA LIMA
translated by Elinor Randall
Now has no weight Now has no weight, the air dissembles, it leaves us with a fine dust
and this soft fine dust curses its shadow with a moan.
When crumbling, or smiling, it questions, and the elves respond with their dew.
The brash, the one who will not come,
submits in the arbor of emptiness. It says less than the breeze and weighs on the back like a belL
The smoke still hovers, the little smoke congeals the goat that shoulders morning; from under its bones its glance
puts horns on the thread of Nothing. JOSE LEZEMA LIMA
translated by Elinor Randall
The other 1 January, 1959
And so we surviveAnd owe our survival to whom?
Who was it died for me in his cell, Took my bullet, the one Meant for me, in his heart? I live through whose death?
Whose bones are locked with mine? Whose ripped-out eyes Are looking through my face?
Whathand,nothishand But not quite mine now either,
The cords
Is writing these broken words
The cords
holding the copper plate vibrate, the scuffles of the test
In this unlikely land, Survival, Where he is not to be found?
of leaping leaves
ROBERTO FERNANDEZ
climb or smile
RETAMAR
at nightfall.
translated by Tim Reynolds
The night, climber of cords, descends along the cymbals of foreboding air. Still the cords do not balance
those saucers of the night. The left cord,
rubicund marmalade eye, the outline polished with vinegar, the seeing testicle of a horse, open as an eye on the stroke of noon.
Twelve o'clock, the belching of phantasmal drumsticks, on the cold velvet of
shipwreck.
JOSE LEZEMA LIMA
translated by Elinor Randall
From the Vedado, a Cuban writes to a decidedly European friend I know you want me to tell you of the tom tom in my blood,
Of the great lustrous jungle where the parrot swoops, screaming, Of lightning fallen before my eyes And obatala white as snow in fire
(Along with the memories I must have of jet trinkets in my shirt, the treasures of a twelve-year-old) .
I know, friend, I know you need the savage sap I can bring you, with a chunk of sun in one hand
And, in the other, the maraca only the milky dawn can finally silence. But how can I write you with a busted airconditioner,
In this hotel room, this terrible summer day, La Habana shining at my feet
Like a necklace, full of loud dusty automobiles, With dozens of restaurants and bars and not a palm in sight? ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR
translated by Tim Reynolds
I hear my name I hear my name. I get up immediately.
Who called my name? that strange dead noise? First I'll open the window so the dust catches fire.
Come on! So how are you? I'm not talking about myself, it's the silence talking of days corroded away,
these papers will not shut up, they're aggressive, & so many of them.
Papers. This paper was to answer your letter. I'm not forgetting that. But this place is so small, friend, & I get so sleepy. Sometimes you don't have time to live. To work. Work. There's an abyss singing here. Sit down. I guess I'll read something of Rilke's. FAYAD JAMIS
translated by Tim Reynolds
Auschwitz was not the garden of my childhood Auschwitz was not the garden of my childhood. I grew up among plants and animals, and at night
poverty lit its lamp in my home. The trees were loaded with nests and stars, a very white mare
passed through the streets, dwindling.
Auschwitz was not the garden of my childhood. I can remember only the sacrifice of lizards, my home's dark fire on windy nights, girls bathing their smiles in the river,
my father's sweaty shirt, fear before the sea's brutal howling. Auschwitz was not the garden of my childhood. I ate caramels and tears, in my wooden airplane I conquered
clouds of grass and not of human skin.
Privileged in my time, I grew up under the fierce light of my country, no one made me crawl on hands and knees, and when they ask me my name one ray of light splits the shadow of a cottonwood. FAYAD JAMIS
translated by Tim Reynolds
Giron Beach We, the survivors. To whom do we owe our survival? -R. F. Retamar
These men died so that we may live --so that I may live! -Randall Jarrell
Death, I don't know you. You haven't touched these guts of mine yet, not even barely.
On Giron Beach
where my brothers died there was no place
forme. Put in among the trees,
camouflaged in open fields and in the rivers, you saw how they were falling full of hope, far off. I go to search you out, I follow you and the gun flash
always resounds in other flesh. When will I be the one you hunt for, the one already destroyed, a
simple silent witness?
Death, I don't know you,
and across the sea they're talking about you;
they want to cover my country with your name. HERBERTO PADILLA
translated by Elinor Randall
Anne Frank In front of Cologne Cathedral
-separated by two black columns the children are
singing again.
I've seen them running; most often I'd see them
jump from song to song, from one tune to another.
Today they gave me the photo of your gaunt face paling, girl come from the high Hebraic heaven. And how strange to be sitting on this bench
( a few yards from the Rhine) watching the water flow by! I who for so long thought that I was going to bleed
...
HERBERTO PADILLA
translated by Elinor Randall
from Barracks and nets to Fayad Jamis
I
The chronicles have been written, but not all goes by the legend. We must hurry to invent a few new myths.
Impossible always to be beneath the sun and not adore it: impossible to ignore all the hate we provoke in the gods. "Because if you give your life to even accounts with hate, there is still hate to spare." Impossible to belittle the sun without admiring the rain. And when neither one nor the other, when men are kept exempt from knowing and tasting,
when care is taken that those who know
do not act, then hate has no revenge and there's life to spare. It is true, there were wars, it is true there were slaves and one or another plague, and battles won and freedom for those slaves
and ingenious games. Time passing like that
...
No one made the foods sweet,
the clothing beautiful nor lush the dwellings of the people. If this were a chronicle certain names and dates would be polished (a few
statistics) He who imagines, knows all the poetry writes his own history: before men chose to change themselves in mulberry leaves, there was little .
of real worth.
Presumption changed the course of all the histories. Between good and bad, what difference?
Mysterious life. When did the IBM's arrive?
When did the first condoms come into port, the first jellies and diagframs and pessaries? We trafficked with lice and with rats.
Some of the men I know
signal one act or another, remember a date, but all struggle fades with time. Those were the days of great fear, when error, apathy, collaboration, enthusiasm, certainties, vehemence, duty and abstinence served to placate a great hate ...
and still there was hate to spare.
In those times the great abominations
took place. We always look to the portraits,
in certain places: a public square, a corridor dimmed by curtains, a screen that has lost its color and the stories of the old ones
only museum, our absurd library. The history has not been written, though there were typists enough : our
and accountants and one or two translators. But to the North, to the South and on the boundaries of the Sun one took
part in the barter of lands,
of clothing, of language, of gesture and of time,
exchanged them for vacant lots, rags, sharp tongues, the lazy and those without homes. Surely those days were dulled. Surely those were the days when faith was lost in the Judgment.
Last performance, absolutely the last!
Special attractions: sewer water, water from the basins and the latrines: tribe of God, canine tribe:
tribe of God,
feline tribe: tribe of God. The twelve disciples: spittle of God. Come one and all, the offers begin! Have you read the horoscope? Don't forget I have
Thursday. Don't be an egghead, come, I have four young boys to entertain you. When you say a canasta party on
you find my words obscure I think of the greyness of your soul. I don't see anything, I'm not clairvoyant, you know. Madam Sosostris died of pneumonia. In Europe these things happen every day. My neighbor bought land on Third Avenue-she goes to New York in the summer-, fireworks display. Last night she went to the beach to gather shells. Delightful girl, she is.
Sheba, Sheba, Sheba! Where could that girl have gone?
No, I've never read the Bible, my mother got my name from a Victor Hugo novel and at the baptism they slapped on two more for good measure. The Spanish are like that.
Sheba, Sheba!
.
..
they said I got her name after seeing
a Burt Lancaster film. I've
got to go, see you tomorrow at the
manicurist and don't forget about Thursday. I've got four
young boys to entertain you. Here we multiplied the vices of Babylonia, the vices of the Persians and the vices of Etruria. We specialized in ancient delights. It isn't necessary to speak of dead languages, our refinements left no room for
vulgarity. A live tongue is the only one needed here. We have all the vices, a veritable
drugstore. But who bothers about reality now? You're a bore. Reality is filled with red and green lights. Full of hieroglyphs you're a bore, my reality can't be yours. Look, I sell old aberrations and you sell sacred books. Good night. IV
These are not the chronicles, he who is writing knows, but we are done with memory. The 25th of December of 1956
Mayari Puerto Padre Holguin lababo Cacocum Banes Preston Tunas A rroyo Arenas
lands without prophets, without genius, full of so great a death while the small lives pass. The 25th of December of 1956
chosen by chance? Fools!
...
Death has its ways, they say,
and they lie. Death, so many times to
blame, the innocent,
would not take part in this crime. This is not a chronicle. I demand it be said with rage as a violent
tearing apart
white words and fire.
"Redemption of the dead" no
longer far from the truth,
a handsome verse adorned with
pages of prophecy, Man, redeem the living man. Get up and walk among the living, fight with the living, earn your
bread, and share it.
Man, see that the flowers are for those who live. See that the oil and the wine of life are for those with life.
Hector Infante Perez died of this great death,
Alejo Tomas died and Silverio Hernandez, Marcial Perez, Jose Mendoza and Alcides
Aguilera
died of this powerful,
organic, fecund death. Twenty thousand dead, all with their names, with their women, some
yet to know
their man; with their children, some
yet to be conceived.
Twenty thousand dead, all with their shoes. Redemption, useless now as a slogan. The chronicles will be made in days to come for every one of these deaths, and their names will not be
forgotten
by those who live. Dead ones, who freed you from the
body of this death?
PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ
translated by Margaret Randall
The absent friend I've had a letter from Albert: "It's a big warehouse, all made of aluminum,
it's cold working there but we keep going
There's a Negro here like old Napoleon, the guy who washed cars, remember?
he kept at me to write you I told him I liked you but you're with Castro I think they treat him bad but it's only natural
Everything here is in English you know I'm not so good with the language but, what can you do
...
If you answer I promise to send a picture of my youngest kid
Well, Miguel
" ...
Together, we'll never again gather the seeds of the orchard Nor will we rise before the roosters to see the shining leaves of coffee
We'll never again go together to the meetings of Pancho Socrates and come out saying:
What a good guy, that Socrates, he can't imagine how we laugh with him!
My friend went away, carrying death The doctrine of love in a bag full of holes eaten away, like a piece of old tobacco I've told my brother to open his window to the storm To remember that every past generation was tricked
To be stubborn, straight as a schoolteacher
To sink his feet in the river till
they stop bleeding
At the bottom of it all
Albert is an old, timid cry Weak fist that could not carve its
way!
And day before yesterday, hear this, an old man told me the earth
leaned back against a tree to hear a worker
reading CAMILO'S journal in a low voice
MIGUEL BARNET
translated by Margaret Randall
Errata Where it says great white
ship
it should say cloud
Where it says grey it should say a far-off and
forgotten land
Where it says aroma it should say mother I love
Where it says Cesar it should say dead and
already rotten
Where it says April it should say tree or column or fire but where it says back
where it says tongue where it says that strange love it should say
shipwreck
in capital letters MIGUEL BARNET
translated by Margaret Randall
Chapter One from The Green House MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
ART. NEW YORK. MARCOS IRIZARRY. BAQUINE. ENGRAVING. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN
The Sergeant takes a look at Sister Patrocinio and the botfly is still there. The launch is pitching on the muddy waters, between two walls of trees that give off a burning, sticky mist. Huddled under the canopy, stripped to the waist, the soldiers are asleep, with the green ish, yellowish noonday sun above: Shorty's head is lying on Fats'
stomach, Blondy is breathing in short bursts, Blacky has his mouth open and is grunting. A thin shadow of gnats is escorting the launch, and butterflies, wasps, horseflies take shape among the bodies. The motor is snoring evenly, it chokes, it snores, and Nieves the pilot is holding the rudder in his left hand as he uses his right to smoke with, and his face, deeply tanned, is unchanging under his straw hat. These savages weren't normal, why didn't they sweat like other people? Sitting stiffly in the stem, Sister Angelica has her eyes closed, there are at least a thousand wrinkles on her
face, sometimes she sticks out
the tip of her tongue, licks the sweat from her upper lip, and spits. Poor old woman, she wasn't up to these chores. The botfly moves
its blue little wings, softly pushes off from Sister Patrocinio's flushed
forehead, is lost as it circles off into the white light and the pilot goes to turn off the motor, they were getting there, Sergeant, Chicais
beyond that gorge. But he was telling the good Sergeant that there wouldn't be anybody there. The sound of the engine stops,
was
the nuns and the soldiers open their eyes, raise their heads, look around. Standing up, Nieves the pilot moves the rudder pole from left to right, the launch silently approaches the shore, the soldiers
get up, put on their shirts, their caps, fasten their leggings. The
vegetable palisade on the right bank suddenly opens up beyond the bend in the river and there is a rise, a brief parenthesis of reddish earth that descends to a tiny inlet of mud, pebbles, reeds, and ferns. There is no canoe on the bank, no human figure on the top of the rise. The boat runs aground. Nieves and the soldiers jump out, slosh in the lead-colored mud. A cemetery, a person's feelings could always tell, the Mangaches were right. The Sergeant leans over the prow, the pilot and the soldiers drag the launch up onto dry land. They should help the sisters, make a hand chair for them so they wouldn't get wet. Sister Angelica is very serious as she sits on the arms of Blacky and Fats, Sister Patrocinio hesitates as Shorty and Blondy TriQuarterly 153
put their hands together to receive her and, as she lets herself down, she turns red as a shrimp. The soldiers stagger across the shore and
put the nuns down where the mud ends. The Sergeant jumps out, reaches the foot of the hill, and Sister Angelica is already climbing
resolutely up the slope, followed by Sister Patrocinio, both are using their hands, they disappear among clouds of red dust. The soil on the hill is soft, it gives way with every step, the Sergeant and the soldiers go forward, sinking to their knees, hunched over, smothered in the dust, Fats is sneezing and spitting and holds his handkerchief over his mouth. At the top, they all brush off their uniforms and the Sergeant looks around: a circular clearing, a handful of huts with conical roofs, small plots of cassava and bananas, and thick under growth all around. Among the huts, small trees with oval-shaped pockets hanging from the branches: paucar nests. He had told her, Sister Angelica, here was the proof, not a soul, now they could see for themselves. But Sister Angelica is walking around, she goes into hut, comes out and sticks her head into the next one, shoos away the flies by clapping her hands, does not stop for a second, and in a
that way, seen from a distance, hazy in the dust, she is not an old woman
but
a
walking habit, erect, an energetic shadow. Sister
Patrocinio, on the other hand, does not move, her hands are hidden in her habit, and her eyes run back and forth over the empty village. A few branches shake and shrieks are heard, a squadron of green
wings, black beaks, and blue breasts flies noisily over the deserted huts of Chicais, the soldiers and the nuns follow them with their eyes until the jungle swallows them up, the shrieking lasts for a moment. There were parrots around, good to know if they needed food. But they gave you diarrhea, Sister, I meant, they loosened up a person's stomach. A straw hat appears at the top of the hill, the tanned face of Nieves the pilot: that was why the Aguarunas were afraid, Sisters. They were so stubborn, you couldn't tell them not to pay any attention to him. Sister Angelica approaches, looks here and there with her little wrinkled eyes, and she shakes her gnarled, stiff hands with dark brown spots in the Sergeant's face: they were
nearby, they hadn't taken away their things, they had to wait for them to come back. The soldiers look at each other, the Sergeant 154
lights a cigarette, two paucars are coming and going through the air, their black and gold feathers giving off damp flashes. Birds too, there was everything in Chicais. Everything except Aguarunas and Fats laughs. Why wouldn't they attack unexpectedly? Sister Angelica is panting, maybe you didn't know them, Sister, the cluster of white hairs on her chin trembles slightly, they were afraid of people and they hid, they wouldn't think of coming back, while they were there they wouldn't even see their dust. Small, pudgy, Sister Patrocinio is there too, between Blondy and Blacky. But they hadn't hidden last year, they had come out to meet them and they had even given them a fresh gamitana, didn't the Sergeant remember? But they hadn't known then, Sister Patrocinio, now they did. The soldiers and Nieves the pilot sit down on the ground, take off their shoes, Blacky opens his canteen, drinks and sighs. Sister Angelica raises her head: they should put up the tents, Sergeant, a withered face, he should have them put up the mosquito nettings, a liquid look, they would wait for them to come back, a cracked voice, and you shouldn't make that face, she had experience. The Sergeant throws away his ciga
rette, grinds it out, what difference did it make, you guys, you should move a
it. And just then there is a cackling and the bushes spit out
hen, Blondy and Shorty shout with glee, a black one, they chase it,
with white spots, catch it, and Sister Angelica's eyes flash, bandits, what were they doing, she waves her fist in the air, did it belong to
them?, they should let it go, and the Sergeant should tell them to let it go, but, Sisters, they were going to need food, they didn't feel like
going hungry. Sister Angelica would not stand for any abuses, what kind of confidence would they have if we stole their animals? And Sister Patrocinio agrees, Sergeant, stealing it would be an offense against God, with her round and healthy face, didn't he know the commandments? The hen touches the ground, clucks, picks a flea from under her wing, waddles off, and the Sergeant shrugs his shoulders: why were they fooling themselves since they knew them as
well or even better than he did. The soldiers go off towards the
slope, the parrots and paucars are screeching in the trees again, there is a buzzing of insects, a light breeze shakes the yarina leaves that form the roofs of Chicais. The Sergeant loosens his leggings, 155
mutters between his
teeth, twists his mouth, and Nieves the pilot slaps him on the back, Sergeant: you shouldn't get upset, you should take things easy. And the Sergeant furtively points at the nuns, Don Adrian, little jobs like this were too much. Sister Angelica was very thirsty and probably a little feverish, her spirit was still eager, but her body was already getting weak. Sister Patrocinio and she did not, no, you shouldn't say that, Sister Angelica, as soon as the sol diers came back she would take a lemonade and she would feel
better, you'd see. Were they whispering about him?, the Sergeant looks about with distant eyes, did they think he was a man or not?, he was fanning himself with his cap, that pair of buzzards!, and
suddenly he turns towards Nieves the pilot; keeping secrets together was bad manners and anyone who saw them, Sergeant, the soldiers come back on the run. A canoe?, and Blacky yes, with Aguarunas?, and Blondy, yes Sergeant, and Shorty yes, and Fats and the nuns yes, yes, they come and ask questions and go off in all directions and the Sergeant has Blondy go back to the top of the hill and tell him if they are coming up, the others should hide and Nieves the pilot picks the leggings up off the ground and the rifles. The soldiers and the Sergeant go into a hut, the nuns are still in the open, Sisters, you should hide, Sister Patrocinio, quick, Sister Angelica. They look at each other, they Whisper, they go into the hut opposite and, from the bushes where he is hiding, Blondy points at the river, they were getting out now, Sergeant, and he didn't know what he should do, you should come and hide, Blondy, you shouldn't fall asleep. Stretched out on their bellies, Fats and Shorty are spying out from behind the cross-hatching of the wall made out of tucuma strips; Blacky and Nieves are standing back in the hut and Blondy comes running, squats down beside the Sergeant. There they were, Sister Angelica, there they were now and Sister Angelica may have been old but she had good eyes, Sister Patrocinio, she could see them, there were six of them. The old woman, with long hair, is wearing a whitish loincloth and two tubes of soft dark flesh hang down to her waist. Behind her two men of indeterminate age, short, big bellied, with skeletal legs, their sexes covered with pieces of ochre colored cloth tied with thongs, their buttocks naked, their hair cut 156
in bangs around their heads. They are carrying bunches of bananas. After them come two girls with straw headbands, one has a ring in her nose, the other leather hoops on her ankles. They are naked, just as
is the little boy who follows them, he looks younger and he is
thinner. They look at the deserted clearing, the woman opens her
mouth, the men shake their heads. Were they going to talk to them, Sister Angelica? and the Sergeant yes, there went the sisters, you should be on your toes, boys. The six heads turn at the same time,
they remain fixed. The nuns advance towards the group with a steady pace, smiling, and, at the same time, almost imperceptibly, the Aguarunas draw together, soon form one earthen and compact group. The six pairs of eyes do not leave the two figures in dark folds that float towards them and if they resisted we would have to come out running, boys, no shooting, no scaring them. They were letting them approach, Sergeant, Blondy thought they would run away when they saw them. And the girls were nice and tender, young ones, right Sergeant?, there was no holding that Fats. The nuns stop and, at the same time, the girls draw back, they stretch out their hands, they clutch the legs of the old woman who begins to pat them on the shoulders, each pat makes her long breasts shake, makes them swing back and forth: might the Lord be with them. And Sister Angelica grunts, spits, pours out a flow of scratchy, rough, and sibilant sounds, interrupts herself to spit, and ostentatiously, martially, goes on grunting, her hands move about, they trace fig ures solemnly in the air before the motionless, pale, impassive Aguaruna faces. She was talking to them in pagan, boys, and the little old sister was spitting just like the redskins. They must have liked that, Sergeant, having a white woman talking their language, but not so much noise, boys, if they heard you they'd get scared. Sister Angelica's grunts reach the hut very clear, robust, out of tune, and now Blacky and the pilot too are spying on the clearing with their faces against the wall. She had them in her pocket, boys, the little old sister was smart, and the nuns and the two Aguarunas smile at each other, exchange bows. And she had a good education, did the Sergeant know that at the Mission they made them study all the time? They were most likely praying, Shorty, for the sins of the 157
world. Sister Patrocinio smiles at the old woman, the woman turns
her eyes away and is still serious, her hands on the girls' shoulders. I was wondering what they were saying, Sergeant, what they were
talking about. Sister Angelica and the two men make faces, gesture, spit, interrupt each other and, suddenly, the three children leave the old woman, run about, laugh loudly. The kid was looking at them, boys, he wasn't taking his eyes off here. Look how skinny he was, did the Sergeant notice?, a great big round head and a skinny little body, he looked like a spider. From under his mat of hair, the boy's large eyes are staring at the hut. He is as dark as an ant, his legs are curved and sickly. He suddenly raises his hand, shouts, the little bastard, Sergeant and there is a violent agitation behind the wall, oaths, bumping into each other, and guttural shouts break out in the clearing as the soldiers invade it running and tripping. You should lower those rifles, you dunces, Sister Angelica shows the soldiers her angry hands, oh, the Lieutenant would hear about this.
girls bury their heads on the old woman's chest, they flatten out her soft breasts, and the little boy is out of orbit, halfway between the soldiers and the nuns. One of the Aguarunas drops his bunch of bananas, the hen is cackling off somewhere. Nieves the pilot is standing in the doorway of the hut, his straw hat thrown back, a cigarette between his teeth. What did the Sergeant think he was doing, and Sister Angelica takes a little leap, why had you interfered if you hadn't been called? But if they lowered the rifles The two
you wouldn't see them for their dust, Sister, she shows him her freck
led fist and he, you should put down your Mausers, boys. Gently,
she
continues, Sister Angelica talks to the Aguarunas, her stiff hands sketch slow figures, persuasively, little by little the men lose their stiffness, now they answer with monosyllables and she, smiling, inexorable, keeps on grunting. The boy goes over to the soldiers, smells the rifles, touches them, Fats gives him a pat on the forehead, he crouches down and shrieks, he didn't trust him, the bastard, and the laugh shakes Fats's flabby waist, his jowls, his jawbones. Sister Patrocinio blushes, embarrassed, what was he saying, why was he disrespectful like that, the boor and Fats a thousand pardons, he shakes his confused ox head, it came out without his realizing it, 158
Sister, he is tongue-tied. The girls and the little boy circulate among the soldiers, they examine them, touch them with their fingertips. Sister Angelica and the two men are grunting in a friendly way and the sun is still shining in the distance, but a cloak has come over the
place, another forest of white and heady clouds is piling up over the forest: it was probably going to rain. Sister Angelica had insulted them before, Sister, and what had they said. Sister Patrocinio smiles, dunce wasn't an insult, just a kind of pointed hat just right for their heads and Sister Angelica turns towards the Sergeant: they were going to eat with them, they should bring up the gifts and the lemonade. He agrees, gives instructions to Shorty and Blondy, point ing at the hill, green bananas and raw fish, a banquet fit for a mother whore. The children sit in a circle around Fats, Blacky, and Nieves the pilot, and Sister Angelica, the men, and the old woman put banana leaves on the ground, go into the huts, bring out clay pots, cassavas, light a small fire, wrap catfish and bocachicas in leaves that they tie together with reeds and put them near the flames. Were they going to wait for the rest of them, Sergeant? It would never end and Nieves the pilot throws his cigarette away, the others weren't coming back, if they had gone away it meant that they didn't want any visitors and these here would leave too at the first chance they got. Yes, the Sergeant was aware, but it was no use fighting with the sisters. Shorty and Blondy come back with the bags and the thermos bottles. The nuns, the Aguarunas, and the soldiers are sitting in a circle facing the banana leaves and the old woman is shooing away the insects by clapping her hands. Sister Angelica distributes the gifts and the Aguarunas take them without showing any signs of enthu siasm, but then, when the nuns and the soldiers begin to eat small pieces of fish that they pick off with their fingers, the two men, with out looking at each other, open the bags, fondle mirrors and neck laces, divide up the colored beads and greedy lights suddenly come on in the eyes of the old woman. The girls fight over a bottle, the little boy is chewing furiously, and the Sergeant was going to get sick to his stomach, god damn it, he was going to get diarrhea, he was going to swell up like a fat-bellied hualo, toad lumps would grow on his body, they would break and give off pus. He has the 159
piece of fish next to his lips, his small eyes blink and Blacky, Shorty, and Blondy are screwing up their faces too, Sister Patrocinio closes her eyes, swallows, makes a face and only Nieves the pilot and Sister Angelica keep reaching towards the banana leaves and with a kind of hasty delight break up the white meat, clean out the bones, put it in their mouths. All jungle people had a little redskin in them, even the nuns, the way they ate. The Sergeant belches, everybody looks at him and he coughs. The Aguarunas have put on the neck laces, they show them to each other. The glass beads are garnet colored and contrast with the tattoo on the chest of the one who has six beaded bracelets on one arm, three on the other. What time were
they going to leave, Sister Angelica? The soldiers watch the Sergeant, the Aguarunas stop chewing. The children stretch out their hands, they timidly touch the shiny necklaces, the bracelets. They had to wait for the rest of them, Sergeant. The Aguaruna with the tattoo grunts and Sister Angelica yes, Sergeant, did you see?, you should eat, they were offended with all the faces you were making. He was not hungry, but he wanted to say something, Sister, they couldn't stay in Chicais any longer. Sister Angelica's mouth is full, the Ser geant had come to help, her small and stony hand drains the lemon ade from a thermos, not to give orders. Shorty had heard the Lieutenant, what had he said?, and he too that they should come back before a week was out, Sister. Five days had already gone by and how many would it take to get back, Don Adrian?, three days as long as it didn't rain, did you see?, they were orders, Sister, so she shouldn't be angry with him. Along with the sound of the conversa tion between the Sergeant and Sister Angelica there is another sound, a harsher one: the Aguarunas are conversing animatedly, they hit their arms and compare their bracelets. Sister Patrocinio swallows and opens her eyes, and if the others didn't come back?, and if they took a month in coming back? of course it was only an opinion, and she closes her eyes, maybe she was wrong, and swallows. Sister An
gelica wrinkles her brow, new wrinkles appear on her face, her hand strokes the tuft of white hairs on her chin. The Sergeant takes a drink from his canteen: worse than a laxative, everything got hot in this region, it wasn't the kind of heat they had where he came from, the 160
heat here rotted everything. Fats and Blondy are lying on their backs with their caps over their faces, and Shorty wanted to know if any one was sure
of that, Don Adrian, and Blacky really, Don Adrian
should continue and tell some more. They were half fish and half women, they lived at the bottom of the lagoons waiting for people
who had drowned and as soon as a canoe tipped over they would
grab the people and take them down to their palaces. They would put them in hammocks that were not made out of jute but made out of snakes and they would have fun with them there and Sister Patrocinio were they talking about superstitions now?, and they, no, no, and did they call themselves Christians?, nothing like that, Sister, they were talking about whether it was going to rain. Sister Angelica leans towards the Aguarunas, grunting softly, smil ing insistently, she has her hands clasped and the men, without mov ing from the spot, sit up little by little, stretch out their necks like cranes sunning themselves on a river bank when a steamboat comes along, and something frightens them, dilates their pupils, and one's chest puffs up, the tattoo grows clear, is erased, grows clear and they gradually approach Sister Angelica, very attent, serious, silent, and the long-haired old woman opens her arms and clasps the girls. The little boy is still eating, boys, the rough part was coming, you should stay awake. The pilot, Shorty, and Blacky are quiet. Blondy gets up with red eyes and shakes Fats, an Aguaruna looks at the Sergeant out of the comer of his eye, then at the sky, and now the old woman is hugging the girls, pressing them against her long and drooping breasts and the eyes of the little boy go back and forth between Sister Angelica and the men, from them to the old woman, from her to the soldiers and to Sister Angelica. The Aguaruna with the tattoo begins to speak, the other one follows him, the old woman, a storm of voices drowns out the voice of Sister Angelica who says no now with her head and with her hands and suddenly, without stopping their snorting and spitting, slowly, ceremoniously, the two men take off their necklaces, their bracelets, and there is a rain of glass beads on the banana leaves. The Aguarunas reach out towards the remains of the fish, across which a narrow river of brown ants is flowing. were a little but were wild, boys, They already getting they ready, come and
161
Sergeant, whenever he gave the word. The Aguarunas clean off the remains of the blue and white flesh, catch the ants in their fingernails, squash them and very carefully wrap the food in the veiny leaves. Shorty and Blondy were to take care of the kids, the Sergeant orders and Fats the lucky guys. Sister Patrocinio is very pale, she moves her lips, her fingers close tightly over the black beads of her rosary and you should remember, Sergeant, they were little girls, he knew, he knew, and Fats and Blacky would keep the naked savages quiet and the Sister should not worry and Sister Patrocinio oh if they committed any brutalities and the pilot would take care of carrying the things, boys, no brutalities: Holy Mary, Mother of God. All of them look at the bloodless lips of Sister Patrocinio, and she Pray for us, is shedding the little black balls in her fingers and Sister Angelica, you should be calm, Sister, and the Sergeant now, now was the time. They get up slowly. Fats and Blacky dust off their pants, they squat down, pick up their rifles, and now there is running, screams and at the hour, trampling, the little boy covers his face, of our death, and the two Aguarunas stay rigid amen, their teeth chatter and their eyes look perplexedly at the rifles that are pointed at them. But the old woman is on her feet struggling with Shorty and the girls are slippery as eels in Blondy's arms. Sister Angelica covers her mouth with a handkerchief, the dust cloud grows and thickens, Fats sneezes and the
Sergeant ready, they should make it to the top of the hill, boys, Sister Angelica. And someone should help Blondy, Ser geant, couldn't you see that they were getting away from him? Shorty and the old woman are rolling around together on the ground, Blacky should go help him, the Sergeant would take his place, he'd keep his eyes on the naked savage. The nuns walk towards the hill holding each other's arm, Blondy drags along two intermingled and gesticu lating figures and Blacky pulls the old woman furiously by the hair until she lets go of Shorty and he gets up. But the old woman jumps on them, catches them, scratches them and the Sergeant ready, Fats, they would slip away. Still keeping aim on the two men, they retreat, heel their way back and the Aguarunas get up at the same time and advance, as if attracted by the rifles. The old woman is dancing like a monkey, she falls and clutches two pairs of legs, Shorty and Blacky 162
stumble, Mother of God, they fall down too and Sister Patrocinio should not shout like that. A sudden breeze comes up from the river, it scales the slope and brings up active, enveloping, orange-colored and thick grains of earth that fly like botflies. The two Aguarunas
docilely face the rifles and the slope is very close. If they attacked him, would Fats shoot? and Sister Angelica stupid man, he was capable of killing them. Blondy takes one girl by the arm at the top of the hill, why didn't they go down, Sergeant?, he has the other one by the neck, they were getting away from him, they were getting away from him and they are not shouting but they are pulling and their heads, shoulders, feet, and legs struggle and kick and vibrate and Nieves the pilot goes by loaded down with thermos bottles: you should hurry up, Don Adrian, had you left anything behind? No, nothing, whenever the Sergeant wanted to. Shorty and Blacky are holding the old woman by the shoulders and the hair and she sits down shrieking, sometimes she swats them weakly on the legs and blessed was the fruit, Mother, Mother, of her womb and they were getting away from Blondy, Jesus. The man with the tattoo looks at Fats's rifle, the old woman gives a hoot and cries, two wet threads open narrow channels on the crust of dust on her face and Fats should not act crazy. But if they attacked him, Sergeant, he would
open up somebody's skull, only with his rifle butt, Sergeant, and the joke
would be over. Sister Angelica takes the handkerchief away from her mouth: stupid, why were you saying such evil things?, why did the Sergeant allow it?, and Blondy, would he start
going down?,
those wild girls were skinning him alive. The girls' hands cannot reach Blondy's face, only his neck, already full of purple scratches, and they have torn his shirt and pulled off the buttons. Sometimes
they seem to lose their spirit, their bodies go limp and they moan and they attack again, their naked feet kick at Blondy's leggings, he curses and shakes them, they follow along mutely and the Sister should go down, what was she waiting for, and Blondy too and Sister Angelica why was he holding them like that, they were only children, of her womb Jesus, Mother, Mother. If Shorty and Blacky let the old woman go, she would pounce on them, Sergeant, what were they going to do?, and Blondy she would grab them, you should 163
see,
Sister, couldn't she see how they were scratching him? The
Sergeant shakes his rifle, the Aguarunas balk, take a step backwards, and Shorty and Blacky let go of the old woman, they keep their hands ready to defend themselves, but she does not move, she only rubs her eyes and there is the little boy looking as if he were isolated by the whirlwinds: she squats down and buries her face between her flowing breasts. Shorty and Blacky are going downhill, a rose-colored wall of dust soon swallows them up and how in hell was Blondy
going to carry them down all by himself, what was the matter with them, Sergeant, why were those guys leaving and Sister Angelica approaches him swinging her arms resolutely: she would help him. She stretches out her hands towards the girl on the slope but she does not touch her and she doubles over and the small fist hits out again and sinks into the habit and Sister Angelica gives a little cry and withdraws: what did he tell her, Blondy shakes the girl like a rag, Sister, wasn't she an animal? Pale and wrinkled, Sister Angelica tries again, she catches the arm with her two hands, Holy Mary, and now they howl, Mother of God, kick, Holy Mary, they scratch, they are all coughing, Mother of God and instead of so much praying they should have been going down, Sister Patrocinio, why in the world was she so frightened and how long, and how long, they should go down because the Sergeant was already getting hot, damn it. Sister Patrocinio spins, jumps down the slope, and disappears, Fats ad vances
his rifle and the one with the tattoo draws back. The hate
there was in his look, Sergeant, he looked angry, son of a whore, and proud: that was what the eyes of the chullachaqui devil must
have been like,
Sergeant. The heavy clouds that enveloped those descending are farther away, the old woman is crying, twisting around, and the two Aguarunas are watching the barrels, the butts, the round muzzles of the two rifles: Fats shouldn't get so excited. He
wasn't getting excited, Sergeant, but what kind of a way was that to look at a person, damn it, what right did he have? Blondy, Sister
Angelica, and the girls also disappear into the waves of dust and the old woman has crawled to the edge of the hill, she looks down to wards the river, her nipples touch the ground and the little boy is making strange shouts, he howls like a mournful bird and Fats did 164
not like to have them so close to the savages. Sergeant, how would
they get down now that they were all alone. And then the motor on the launch snorts: the old woman grows silent and looks up, looks at the sky, the little boy follows her, the two Aguarunas do the same
and the bastards were looking for a plane. Fats, they weren't watch
ing, now was the time. They draw back their rifles and suddenly thrust them forward, the two men jump back and make signs and now the Sergeant and Fats go down backwards, still aiming, sinking up to their knees and the sound of the hoarse motor is growing stronger and stronger, it pollutes the air with hiccups, gargling, vibrations, and shaking, and it is different on the slope from up on the clearing, there is no breeze, only a hot vapor and reddish and biting dust that makes one sneeze. Dimly, there on top of the hill, hairy heads are exploring the sky, they move softly back and forth, searching among the clouds, and the motor was going and the kids were crying, Fats, what about him?, Sergeant, he couldn't make it. They cross the mud on the run and when they reach the launch they are panting and their tongues are hanging out. It was time now, why had they taken so long? How did they think Fats was going to get on board, they had all got so comfortable, the devils, they should make room for him. But he had to lose some weight, they should just look at him, Fats was getting on board and the boat was sinking down and it was no time for jokes, they should get underway at once, Sergeant. They were leaving right away, Sister Angelica, Sister An gelica, of our death amen. translated by Gregory Rabassa
165
ERNESTO DEIRA.
BONINO. INK DRAWING. GALERIA
NEW YORK.
OCTAVIO PAZ
Altar of the sun La treizieme revient
•••
c'est encor la premiere;
et c'est toujours la seule-s-ou c'est Ie seul moment; car es-tu
reine, 0 toi, la premiere ou derniere?
es-tu roi, toi Ie seul ou Ie dernier amant?
--Gerard de Nerval, Arthemis
A willow of crystal, a black aspen of water, A tall spout bent by the wind, A dancer with its roots in tight,
A rivery promenade that curves,
Advances, cuts back, spirals, And always becomes: a quiet lane Of stars or leisurely April,
Water oozing prophecies All night long through closed eyelids,
Unanimous ghost in the ground swell, Wave after wave until everything is under it,
Green kingdom without end Like the dazzle of wings When wings open in the center of the sky, A trail through the underbrush
Of days to come and the doomed
Radiance of a dying man, like a wood thrush
Freezing the grove with its tune, Good luck up ahead
Among dividing and vanishing branches, Hours of light already pecked by the birds, Omens that trickle through our fingers,
Translated 1959, San Angel, Mexico, on a Centro Mexicano de Escritores Fellow
ship (1959-1961). 167
A phantom of unexpected song, Like wind chanting in the fire, An endless gaze that balances high The whole world, its oceans and hills,
Body of light filtered through agate, Thighs of light, belly of light, harbors, Ignited cliff, body tinted with clouds The color of quick, pouncing day, The hour glitters and has flesh, Now the world is visible through your body, Transparent through your transparency, I wander between lanes of noises, I flow among resonant ghosts, I tap through transparencies like the blind,
A reflection blazes me away, I come to life in someone else,
Ah, forest of haunted columns, Under the arches of light I enter The porches of autumnal gauze, I pace your body as if it were the earth, Your belly is a bronzed courtyard, Your tits two churches where clandestine
Metaphors king the blood, My gazes cover you like ivy, You are a city bombarded by the sea, A barricade which the light halves In sections the color of a peach tree, A couple made of salt, rocks and birds, Ruled by the astonished noon, Clothed in the flush of my hungers You walked naked like my meditations, I swim through your eyes as if they were water,
Tigers guzzle sleep in those eyes, The hummingbird chars itself in those flames,
I pass through your brow as if it were the moon,
Like a cloud through your mind, I drift through your belly as if it were your dreams, Your skirt of corn ripples and sings, Your skirt of crystal, your skirt of water, Your lips, your hair, your glances,
All night you rain, all day long You free my chest with your fingers of water,
Close my eyes with your mouth of water, Soak my bones, in my chest You sink a liquid tree with little roots of water, I cross your shape as if it were a river, I ramble through your body as if it were a wood, A mountain path
Ending in a sudden hole, I climb your honed reveries
And at the exit of your white forehead
My shadow spills over a cliff and wrecks itself, I gather my fragments one by one And walk on without a body, dazed, exploring Incessant corridors of memory, Doors left open on a vacant ballroom Where all summers rot,
Rubies of thirst blaze at the bottom,
My face dissolves when I remember it, My hand falls apart if I touch it, Hair of turbulent spiders Over very old smiles, At the exit of my forehead I search, I search without
finding, I rummage an instant, A face of lightning and agony Running among the evening trees, Face of rain in a dark garden, Obstinate water that flows to my side,
I hunt for nothing, I write in private,
No one is here, the day falls, the year falis, I go down with the moment, hitting the bottom,
Invisible, I cruise over mirrors
Etching my ruined image, I trample days, minutes in transit, I tread the daydreams of my shadow, I pace my shadow in search of an instant, I seek a live date like a dove, I look for the 5 o'clock sun
Warmed by the fences of shale: The hour ripens its clusters
And when they explode, little girls emerge, Rise from the cold rose-colored guts of time, and scatter
Through the stone patios of the academy, Wild hour, like autumn riding high Sheathed with light under the arcade While space fits it with a gown Of transparent, thickly gilded leather,
Tiger the color of light, brown stag In the vicinity of the night, Vague, lounging girl On the green balconies of rain, Adolescent with over a million faces,
I have forgotten your name, Melusina,
Laura, Isabel, Proserpine, Maria, You have every face and not one of them, You are all hours and none of them, You look like the pine and the cloud, You are every bird and a planet, You seem to be the blade of a sword And near the hangman's cup of blood,
Ivy advancing, you dress and dismantle The soul, dividing it,
Text of the fire over jade,
Groove in the cliff, queen of snakes, Pillar of mist, fountain in the rock, Carnival on the moon, boulder of eagles, Grain of anise, diminishing thorn And mortal who inflicts continuous pain,
Caretaker of the valleys undersea And shepherd of the dead's glen,
Rope of grass hung from the sheer peak of dizziness, Vine, poisonous hedge, Blossom of resurrection, grape of life,
Lady of the flute and the lightning, Terrace of jasmine, salt in the wound, Bunch of roses for the firing squad, Snow in August, executioner's moon, Document of sea over the dark marble,
Inscription of wind in the desert, Testament of the sun, pomegranate, tassel, Face of flames, eaten head,
Hunted, teenage face Counterfeit years, ferriswheel days
Facing the same courtyard, the same wall, The moment glows, The successive masks of the flames are only one face, All names are a single name, All faces one face,
All ages are a single instant
And for every century of centuries One pair of eyes closes the road to the future,
There is nothing in front of me but a
split-second,
Ransomed tonight, held against a dream, A dream made of welded reveries,
Etched deep against the dream, Torn from the nothing of this night,
Wrestled and erected letter by letter,
While in the open, time runs wild And the world, with its carnivorous fist of hours, Batters the gates of my soul Just for a second, while cities,
Names, flavors, everything vivid, Crumble in my blind forehead, While the massive grief of the night Crushes my thought and my skeleton, And my blood runs down, slows, And my teeth wobble and my eyes
Fog and the days and the years Pile up their empty terrors, While time shuts its fan
And nothing happens behind its images The moment hugs itself and floats,
Inspecting death, menacing Throughout the night's dismal yawn, Adrift in the slang Of active death, the moment In masquerade hugs itself, loves itself Like a fist closing, a plum
Ripening privately, Drinks itself and, brimming over, The translucent instant looks And grows inwardly, puts down tiny roots,
Swells inside me, makes itself at home, I cough up its delirious leaves,
My thoughts are only its birds, Its mercury circulates through my veins, Mental tree, fruits tasting of time, Oh life made for living, already lived,
Time turned head over heels in a surf Dives down without showing its face, What passed never was, but is passing And noiselessly flows into
Another, disappearing instant:
Across from the afternoon of rock salt and stone A red illegible writing,
Armed with invisible razors,
Scribbles on my skin and those wounds Revive me like a jacket of flames, Fierce but not fatal, I look for water,
There is no water in your eyes, they are stone, And your breasts, your belly, your hips Are stone, your mouth tastes like dust,
Sometimes it reeks of cyanide, Your body tastes like a deep pit with no way out,
Alley of mirrors echoing The eyes of anxiety, hall That always veers at the point of parting, I'm blind, and you take me by the hand Through those violent galleries To the center of the circle where you straighten up Like a flare congealing into a touch, A light that flays, fascinating Like the stage of the damned, Flexible as a whip, slender, handsome, Like the twin arm of the moon, And your iron phrases break
Open my chest, empty my streets and spill out, You rip memories out of me one by one, I have lost my name, my friends
Grumble among pigs or rot In the teeth of a violent sun,
I'm filled with a long wound, A gulley no one crosses,
Phantom of braille, thinking That swerves, echoes, reflects itself And gets lost in its own transparency,
Conscience pierced by an eye
Watching itself until it drowns
In brightness: I see your horrible armor,
Melusina, brilliantly greenish at dawn, You sleep twisted among the sheets,
Waking up, you scream like a bird And fall eternally, broken and white, Nothing remains but your cry, And at the end of the centuries I find myself With a cough, nearsighted, shuffling Faded snapshots: there is no one, you are no one, A mound of ashes, a broom, A rusty knife and a feather, A skin full of bones hung up to dry, A wrinkled cluster now, a black hole At the bottom, the eyes of a baby girl
Drowned for a thousand years, Glances buried in a well, Gazes that watch us from the world's beginning,
Girlish stare of the old mother Who sees a young father in the grown boy, Mother's gaze of the only girl
Who sees a little son in the tall father, Such gazes that look at us from the bottom Of life are snares of the dead -or is it the reverse: we find the true life
again
When we drop into those eyes? To fall, come back, dream, while other
Eyes in the future dream of me, another life, Other clouds, to die another death, o tonight, tonight is enough, and this instant Has just blossomed, it shows me
Where I was, who I was, what your name is, What I call myself:
did I make plans For the summer-for every summer
On Christopher Street, ten years ago, With Phyllis who had two dimples Where the sparrows drank light? On the Reforma, Carmen said to me
"Don't weigh the air, it's always October here," Or did she tell someone else I lost it all Or imagined it, without telling me?
Did I travel by night to Oaxaca, Immense and lush like a tree,
Talking to myself, a gust of nonsensical wind, And when I got back to my room-always a room Did the mirrors know me? From the Hotel Vernet did we watch the dawn Dance with a chestnut tree-"Now it's very late," You said, fixing your hair, and did I find
Stains on the wall, and keep my mouth shut? Did we climb the tower hand in hand, did we see The afternoon drop to the stone road, Did we eat grapes in Bidart? Did we buy
Gardenias in Perote? names, places,
Streets and boulevards, faces, courtyards, roads,
Seasons, a park, lonely rooms, Streaks on the wall, someone combing, Someone humming at my side, someone who sees, Rooms, towns, streets, names, rooms,
Madrid, 1937, In the Square of the Angel women Wove and sang with their sons, Later the alarm rang, red cries,
Homes kneeling in the dust,
Cracked turrets, pimply foreheads, The hurricane of motors, held back, motionless:
They undressed and made love
To defend our eternal portion, Our ration of time and paradise, To touch our very roots and revive us, Refresh our heritage carried off
By robbers of life for a thousand centuries, They undressed and kissed Because, naked, close together, They leave time behind, they become invulnerable, Nothing touches them, they go back to the root, There is neither you nor I, tomorrow, yesterday, names, The truth of a couple with only a body and a soul, Oh to be whole
...
rooms adrift
Among cities living in danger, Rooms and avenues, names like scars,
The room with windows on other rooms With the same crummy wallpaper
Where a man in shirtsleeves reads the news Or a woman irons, the neat room
Which the boughs of the peach tree visit, The other room, outside it always rains,
There's a yard and three rusty children, These rooms are cruisers that sway In a gulf of light, or submarines:
The quiet scatters in green waves,
Everything we touch gleams, Vaults of luxury, the portraits Poor now, threadbare the rugs,
Trapdoors, cells, enchanted caves, Bird watchers and numbered rooms,
Everything is transfigured, everything flutters, Each molding is a cloud, each door Leads to the sea, to the fields, the air, each table Is a feast, time harmlessly
Charges them, these locked conches,
Now there is no time, no wall: space, space,
Open your hand, seize this treasure, Pick the fruits, eat life, Stretch out at the foot of the tree, drink the water!
Everything is changed, everything sacred, Each room is the hub of the world, The first night, the first day, The world is born when a couple kiss,
Glassy entrails of a drop of light The room half -opens like a shy gourd Or explodes like a speechless planet, And the eating habits of mice, The gratings of the banks and jails, The bars of paper, the wire fences, The stamps and the fang of time, the false victory, The monotonous lecture of guns, The gentle scorpion wearing a bonnet,
The tiger sporting a silk hat, president Of the Vegetarian's Club and the Red Cross, The pedagogical donkey, the crocodile
Dressed like Messiah, father of populations, The Chief, the shark, the architect Of the future, the uniformed pig, The favorite son of the Church
Who cleans his black dentures With holy water and takes classes In English and Democracy, the invisible
Walls, the rotten masks
Dividing the man from men, The man from himself,
they wallow In a great moment, and we get a glimpse Of our lost brotherhood, the weakness That means we are men, the glory of being men, The chance to share bread, sun, death, The forgotten dread of being alive;
To love is to fight, if two people kiss The world changes, desires come to life,
Thought walks, wings bud In the shoulders of the slave, the world Is real, tangible, wine is wine, You can taste bread again, water is water, To live is to fight, to open doors, To stop being a ghost with a number
Perpetuating a damned chain Through loves without a face; the world changes If two people look up and recognize each other, To love is to take off your names:
"Let me be your whore". are the words Of Eloise, but you go along with the law, You marry her and in return
They castrate you later; better the felony, The suicidal lovers, the incest Of brothers, two mirrors In love with their likeness, Better to munch poisoned bread,
The adulterer in beds of ash, Ferocious loves, delirium, Your poison ivy the sodomite
Who wears a carnation of phlegm Pinned on his lapel, Better to be stoned to death In the squares winding to the draw-well
That slowly oozes the fluid of life,
Eternity changes in empty hours, Minutes jailed, time Stamped in pennies and odorless turds;
Better chastity, hidden lily That sways on the trunks of silence,
The tough diamond of the saints That filters desire, quenching it at the same time,
Weddings of tranquility and movement, The solitude sings in its halo, Each hour is a petal of crystal, The world unmasks, And at its core, joyous lucidity, The One we call god, being without a name, He contemplates, at home in the void,
Being without a face, He comes from himself, sun or suns,
Abundance of presences and names; I follow my madness, rooms, streets, I walk the staircase of time with my arms outstretched, I climb over and under its rungs, I touch its walls and stand still,
I end where I began, I hunt your face, I wander through the streets of my being Under an ageless sun, at my side, you Prance like a tree, like a river, You grow like cornsilk between my fingers,
You throb like a squirrel in my palms, You soar like a sky of birds, your laugh Has covered me with foam, your head
Is a small comet between my hands,
The world gets green again if you smile,
Eating an orange, the earth is new If two people, dizzy,
holding each other,
Loll in the grass: the sky falls,
The trees take off, space Is only light and- silence, space alone
Opens for the eye's eagle, Overhead, a white tribe of clouds goes by,
The body's cables break, the soul weighs anchor, We lose our names and drift
Floating between the blue and the green, Time is complete, where nothing passes But your own appropriate, happy lapse of time, Nothing happens, silence, blinkings, (Silence: an angel crosses this huge moment Like the life of a hundred suns), Is this blinking all that happens? -And the banquet, the exile, the first crime, The mule's jawbone, the dense noise,
The skeptical gaze of the dead When they drop to the red, ashcolored plain,
Agamemnon's immense bellow, Cassandra's repeated cry More poignant than the waves breaking, Socrates in chains (the sun rises,
Dying is waking: "Crito, a rooster To Esculapius, full of life now") The jackal chattering among the ruins Of Nineveh, the shadow that rapes Brutus Before the battle, Moctezuma Wracked by insomnia's bed of thorns,
The journey to death made by the gallows cart, The endless excursion, minute by minute, But rarely for Robespierre,
The broken jaw held in the hands,
Churruca in his winecask like a scarlet throne, For Lincoln, on his way to the theatre,
Only a few steps left, The rattle in Trotsky's throat, his moans Of a wild boar, Madero and his gaze Which no one questioned: "Why do they kill me?"
The yells, the yeses, the silences Of the criminal, the saint, the poor devil,
Graveyards of phrases and anecdotes Scrawled by rhetorical dogs, Delirium, whining, the dark noise We make when we die and that murmur Of life called birth, the snap Of crushed bones in a scuffle The prophet's foaming mouth His outcry, the grunt of the hangman And the wail of the victim
...
they are flames, The eyes are flame, flames whatever they see, Flame the ear and the sound flame, White coal the lips, the tongue a branding iron, The touch and what is touched, thinking And what's thought, flame is the object pondered,
Everything burns, the universe is flame, The very same nothing burns, it is not nothing But a thought in flames, smoke finally: There is no executioner, no victim
...
what about the cry On Friday afternoon? and the silence
Speaking without words, Doesn't it say anything? Are the cries of men nothing, Does nothing happen when time passes? -Nothing happens, only a wink Of sun, a trivial gesture, nothing, There's no redemption, time doesn't run backwards, The dead are frozen in their death,
They can't die another death, Untouchables, trapped in their frown, From their solitude, from their grave,
Incurables, they watch us without seeing us, Now their death is the statue of their life,
Infinite noun of nothing, always nothing, A phantom King ruling your banter
And your last reflex, a fine mask
Decorating your mobile face: We are becoming the monument of a life Owned by others, dim, scarcely ours, -Life, when was it really ours? When are we really what we are? We don't take a good look, in private We're nothing but dizzy, empty,
Grins, leers in the mirror-horror and vomit, Life is never ours, others own it, Life is nobody's, all of us Are life-bread of the sun for others,
All those others we are-, I'm someone else when I am, my acts
Are more mine if they are everyone's as well, In order to exist I have to be someone else, Leave myself, look for myself among others, The others who are not if I do not exist, Others who give me total existence, I am not, there is no I, we are always ourselves,
Life is other, always over there, more distant, Outside of you, of me, constantly on the horizon, Life wants us, throws us out,
Builds a face for us, then eats it,
Hunger of being, oh death, everyone's bread, Eloise, Proserpine, Maria, When will you show your face and see
My real face, my face belonging to someone else, My face of Us, always everyone else's, Face of tree and of baker, Of chauffeur, of cloud and of ocean,
Face of sun and stream and Pedro and Pablo, Face of every solitary person, Wake me, now I am born:
life and death
Sign a truce in you, lady of the night, Tower of clarity, Queen of the dawn, Virgin of the moon, mother of mothering water, Body of the world, castle of the dead, I fall continuously from the cliff of birth, I hurtle down the pit of myself without touching bottom, Shelter me in your eyes, you gather the blown dust And reconcile my ashes,
Bind my divided bones, whisper Over my being, cover me with your soil, Your silence should pacify meditation
Against my ventilated self; open your hand,
Lady of seeds which are days, The day is evergreen, it rises, grows, It is just born and never over, Each day is being born, each dawn Is a birth, and I dawn, All of us dawn, the sun dawns With its face of sun, Juan dawns
With his face of Juan, his everyone's face,
Portal of being, wake me, dawn, Let me see the face of this day,
Let me see the face of this night,
Everything is in touch, everything changes, Arc of blood, bridge of pulses, Take me to the other side of this night, Where I'm you, we're ourselves, In the kingdom of married
pronouns, Door of being: open your being, wake up,
Learn to be like the rest of us, carve your face,
Model your factions, have a face To see my face so I can look at you, To look at life until death,
Face of sea, of bread, of rock and fountain,
Flowing that dissolves our faces In the face without a name, the faceless being,
Inexpressible presence of presences
...
I want to continue, go deeper, but I can't: This instant plunges from one to another, I had dreams of dreamless stone And at the end of the years like stones I heard my circling blood sing, With a rumble of light the sea sang,
One by one the walls fell down, Each door decayed, The sun entered and plundered my skull,
My closed eyelids opened, My being broke free of your skin, I dug myself up, I quarried Ages of stone from my brute sleep And your magic of mirrors rebuilt A willow of crystal, a black aspen of water, A tall spout bent by the wind, A dancer with its roots in tight, A rivery promenade that curves, Advances, cuts back, spirals And always becomes: translated by Stephen Berg
The switchman JUAN JOSE ARREOLA
The stranger arrived, quite out of breath, at the deserted station. His large suitcase, that no one offered to carry, had utterly worn him out. He mopped his face with a handkerchief, shading his eyes with his hands, and stared at the rails that tapered toward the hori zon.
Winded and preoccupied, he checked his watch: it was just
train time.
Someone-where could he have come from?-was tapping him
gently. Turning, the stranger found himself face to face with a little old man whom he vaguely identified as a station employee. He carried in one hand a red lantern tiny as a toy. He sized up the traveler with a smile, while the latter questioned him anxiously. "Excuse me-has the train left yet?" "You haven't been in these parts long ?" "I've got to get out in a hurry, I'm due in T. first thing in the morning." "Anyone can see you've missed the whole point of the situation. What you ought to do right off is check in at the Traveler's Hotel." He pointed to an odd, cinder-colored building that would have done ...
as well for a barracks.
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185
"I don't want to rent a room. I want to catch the train out."
"Find yourself a room in a hurry, if there are any still about. If
you get a place, rent it by the month. It'll be cheaper that way, and the service is better." "Are you out of your mind? I'm due in T. first thing in the
morning." "To tell you the truth, it would serve you right if I just let you
figure things out for yourself. But I'll give you a piece of advice." "Now, look here-" "This part of the world is famous for its railroads, as you know.
Up to now, we haven't been able to work out all the details, but we've done wonders with the printing of timetables and the promo tion of tickets. The railroad guide-books crisscross every populated area of the country; tickets are being sold to even the most insignifi cant and out-of-the-way whistle-stops. All we have to do now is to make the trains themselves conform to the indicated schedules
actually get the trains to their stations. That's what people hereabouts are hoping for; meanwhile, we put up with the irregularities of the service, and our patriotism keeps us from any open display of annoyance." "But is there a train that passes through this city?" "To say outright that there was would be a plain misstatement. As you can see for yourself, we've got the track, though some of it is a little seedy. In some places, the rails are only sketched in lightly on the top-soil with two strokes of a crayon. As a matter of actual fact, no train is really obliged to stop here, but then there is nothing to prevent one from coming if it wants to. In my lifetime, I have seen many trains pass by and known several travelers who have climbed aboard. If you wait for the right moment, maybe I myself will have the honor of helping you aboard a fine coach where you can travel in comfort." "But will the train get me to T.?" "And must it be T. and no place else? You ought to congratu
late yourself on just getting aboard. Once on the train, your life will take on some sort of workable direction. What does it matter if you
don't get to T. in the end?" 186
"For one thing, my ticket is made out to T. It stands to reason,
doesn't it, that I ought to be taken to my destination?" "There are plenty who would agree with you. In the Hotel, you will have a chance to talk with people who have taken every con ceivable precaution and bought great batches of tickets. As a gen eral rule, the far-sighted ones book passage for every point on the line. Some people have spent whole fortunes on tickets
" ...
"I was under the impression that I needed only one ticket to get me to T.
See here-"
"The next fleet of national trains will be built at the expense of
single individual who has just invested a fortune in return-trip tickets for a stretch of rail whose plans, including elaborate tunnels and bridges, haven't even been approved by the corporation engi
a
neers."
"But the through-train to T.-is it still running?" "That and a lot more! To tell the truth, there are no end of trains in the country, and passengers are able to use them fairly frequently,
considering that there's no regular, out-and-out service to speak of. In other words, no one who boards a train expects to be taken where he really wants to go to."
"How's that?" "In their eagerness to please the public, the management has
been known to take desperate measures in some cases. There are trains running to impassable points. These expeditionary trains take several years to complete their runs sometimes, and the passenger's
life undergoes important transformations in the interim. Fatalities are not rare
in these instances; so the management,
anticipating
every possible emergency, has added a funerary car and a burial wagon. Conductors pride themselves on depositing the passenger's
cadaver-expensively embalmed-on station platforms stamped on the tickets.
Occasionally, these emergency trains make runs over road-beds lacking a rail. A whole side of a coach will rattle dread fully as the wheels bump over the cross-ties. First-class passengers -it is another precaution of the management-are accommodated on the side with the rail. Second-class passengers resign themselves to a bumpy passage. There are stretches with no rails at all-there 187
c D
ZULEMA DAMIANOVICH. EASTERN EGGS. 1963. ARGENTINA.
all passengers suffer equally, till the train rattles itself to pieces in
the end." "Good heavens!"
"I'll tell you something. The little village of F. came into exis tence through one of these accidents. The <:rain tried to tackle unman
ageable terrain. Bogged down by sand, the wheels fouled clear up to the axles. Passengers were thrown together for so long a time that Some of many close friendships grew out of the inevitable chitchat. these friendships soon blossomed into idyls, and the result was F., a progressive village full of cheeky little moppets playing with rusty odds and ends of the train." "Well! I can't say I care for that sort of thing!" 188
"You must try to toughen your character-perhaps you will turn out to be a hero. You mustn't assume there are no chances for pas
sengers to demonstrate their bravery or their capacity for sacrifice. Once some two hundred passengers, who shall be nameless, penned
glorious pages in our railroading annals. It so hap pened that, on a trial-run, the engineer discovered a grave omission on the part of our road-crew-just in the nick of time. A bridge that should have spanned a gorge was missing from the route. Well, sir, instead of reversing direction, the engineer gave his passengers a little speech and got them to contribute the necessary initiative to go on with the run. Under his spirited direction, the train was dis assembled piece by piece and carried on the shoulders of the pas sengers to the opposite side of the gorge, where the further surprise of a rampaging river awaited them. The result of this feat was so gratifying to the management that it gave up the construction of bridges entirely from then on and allowed an attractive discount to all passengers nervy enough to face up to the additional incon one of the most
venience." "But I'm due in T. first thing in the morning!" "More power to you! I'm glad to see you stick to your guns. You're a man of conviction, right enough. Get yourself a room at the Traveler's Hotel and take the first train that comes along! At
least, do the best you can-there will be thousands to stand in your way. No sooner does a train arrive than the travelers, exasperated by the long delay, burst out of the hotel in a panic and noisily take over the station.
Often their incredible recklessness and discourtesy
lead to accidents. Instead of boarding the train in an orderly way,
they jam together in a pack; to put it mildly, each blocks the other's passage while the train goes off leaving them all in wild disorder on the station platform. The travelers, worn out and frothing at the mouth, curse the general lack of enlightenment and spend much time insulting and belaboring one another." "And the police doesn't intervene?" "Once, the organization of a station militia at all points was attempted, but the unpredictable train schedule made this a useless and exceedingly costly service. Furthermore, the personnel itself 189
showed signs of venality: they protected only the well-to-do passen gers, who gave them everything they owned in return for their services, just to get aboard. A special school was established where
prospective passengers received lessons in urbanity and a kind of basic training for spending their lives in a train. They were taught the correct procedure for boarding trains even when the vehicle was in motion or cruising at high speed. Still later, they were fitted with a type of armorplate to prevent other passengers from cracking their rib-cages. "But once on the train, are the passenger's troubles over?" "Relatively, yes. I would only advise you to keep your eyes peeled for the stations. For example, you might easily imagine your self in T., but find it was only an illusion. To keep things in hand aboard the overpopulated trains, the management finds it necessary to resort to certain expedients. There are stations that are set up for appearance's sake only; they have been posted in the middle of a "
wilderness and carry the name of important cities. But with a little
circumspection it is easy to discover the fraud. They are like stage sets in a theatre; the people represented are sawdust facsimiles. These dummies show the wear and tear of the weather, but are sometimes
remarkably lifelike: their faces show the signs of infinite exhaustion." "Thank heavens T. is not too far away!" "But there are no through-trains to T. at the moment. However, it might well be that you could make it to T. first thing in the morn ing, just as you wish. The railway organization, whatever its short comings, doesn't rule out the possibility of a trip without stop-offs, Would you believe it, there are people who haven't even been con scious of any problem in getting to their destination? They buy a ticket to T., a train comes along, they climb aboard, and the next day they hear the conductor announce: 'Train pulling into T.' With out any plotting and planning, they get off and find themselves in T., right enough!" "Isn't there anything I can do to work it out that way?" "I should certainly think so! But who's to say it would really help matters any? Try it, by all means! Get on the train with the fixed purpose of arriving at T. Have nothing to do with the passengers. 190
They will only discourage you with their traveler's tales and look for a chance to publicly denounce you." "What's that you say?" "The fact of the matter is that the trains are loaded with spies. These spies-volunteers, for the most part-devote their lives to stirring up the 'constructive spirit' of the management. Sometimes they hardly know what they are saying and talk just for the sake of talking. But the next moment they are ready to impute every pos sible shade of meaning to a passing phrase, no matter how simple. They know how to ferret out incriminating connotations from the most innocent remarks. One niggling slip of the tongue-and you are likely to be taken into custody; you would then pass the rest of your life in a rolling brig, if you are not actually dumped at a non-existent station right in the middle of nowhere. Muster all your faith and make your trip; eat as lightly as possible; and don't set foot on the station platform till you see a face you can recognize in T." "But I don't know a soul in T.!" "In that case, you must be doubly cautious. There will be many
temptations along the way, I can tell you. If you glance out of the train window, you are likely to be trapped by hallucinations. The windows are furnished with ingenious devices that touch off all kinds of delusions in the mind of the passenger. It's easy to be taken in by it all. There is a mechanism of some sort, controlled from the loco
motive, that gives the impression, by a combination of noises and movements, that the train is in motion. But the train has actually been at a standstill for weeks on end, while the passengers have been
watching alluring landscapes through the windowpanes." "What's the point of it all?" "The management has arranged it all with the sensible purpose of reducing the traveler's anxiety and eliminating all sensation of displacement. It is their hope that one day the passengers will leave everything to chance, place themselves in the hands of an omnipo tent corporation, and give no thought to where they are going or where they have come from." "And you-have you traveled the line much?" "I? I'm only a switchman, sir. To tell the truth, I am a retired 191
switchman, and turn up only once in a while to hark back to the good old days. I never took a trip in my life and never want to. But I hear a lot from the passengers. I know that the trains have given rise to all sorts of communities like the town I mentioned before. Sometimes the train-crew will get mysterious orders. They will invite the passengers to disembark, generally under the pretext of admir
ing the beauties of some particular landmark. They will talk to them about caves, or waterfalls, or famous ruins. 'Fifteen minutes to ad mire this or that cavern!' the conductor will announce pleasantly.
And once the passengers are a comfortable distance away, the train races off full tilt."
"And the passengers?"
"They wander about in confusion from one place to another for a while, but in the end they band together and found colonies. These makeshift halts occur in suitable areas far from civilization and rich in natural resources. Here a choice contingent of young men give themselves up to every conceivable pleasure-chiefly women. How would you like to end up your days in a picturesque hideaway in the company of a pretty young thing?" The old fellow winked and fixed the traveler with a leer, smiling
and benevolent. Just then, a distant whistle was heard. The switch
hopped to attention uneasily and began flashing ridiculous and chaotic signals with his lantern.
man
"Is this the train?" asked the stranger.
The old-timer began to sprint up the road-bed helter-skelter. When he was a fair way off, he turned about with a cry. "Good luck to you! You'll make it there by tomorrow. What was the name of that
precious station of yours?"
"X.," answered the traveler. The next moment the man had melted into thin air. But the red
point of his lantern kept racing and bobbing between the rails, reck lessly, toward the oncoming train. At the other end of the passageway, the locomotive bore down
with all the force of a clangorous advent. translated by Ben Belitt
192
An anthology of Peruvian poetry EDITED BY MAUREEN AHERN MAURER
The Peruvian poets translated for the first time into English in the selection
that follows represent the two consecutive and related generations that have come to the fore since
1950. The influence of Jose Maria Eguren and Martin
Adan coupled with that of European poets such as Rilke and Breton has run
its course. The indigenista school of the thirties and the social protest
poets of the forties belonged to hermetic groups that have lost their validity for the younger writers. These on the contrary take their point of departure
from the last great books of Vallejo, Poemas Humanos and Espana, aparta de mi este caliz, and having finally succeeded in freeing themselves from his
language, they leap suddenly forward to a sardonic and vital probe of them selves as Peruvians and of Peru as a reality, which puts them at the front of contemporary Latin American poetry.
This leap into the exploration of the particular in terms of the universal and the resulting ferment and explosion in literature here parallel similar
phenomena in the fields of economics and social anthropology that are
extending into education and politics. Washington Delgado's poetry has a lyrical quality and a meter that echo the poetry of such Spanish masters of this century as Pedro Salinas and Vicente Aleixandre. Yet Delgado turns this Castilian tradition to a sardonic and romantic contemplation of himself as a Peruvian who is also a world citizen.
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193
Carlos German Belli, who began publishing late by Peruvian standards, is very much of an individual.
Working within the culteranismo tradition
of Gongora and Quevedo he turns with savage bitterness to innocent themes that capture the grotesque---the human being in an inhuman society. Many of his poems
self-portraits; a shattering juxtaposition of style against content. Reading through the originals, with their archaic forms and diction of the Spanish baroque, there wells up the choked desperation of the twen tieth-century voice. Many young poets here say that he has influenced their are
poetry, yet like Vallejo his talent defies imitation. Belli's recent work shows
tendency to wind the stylistic bobbin tighter and tighter in a private exer cise that may stagnate his potential. Despite this, his reputation as one of the most original poets in Latin America today continues to grow. Juan Gonzalo Rose's poems are in many ways a bridge between the social poetry of a previous generation and the more personal search for simpler expression in the work of Heraud and Calvo. Other poets that belong to this generation are Gustavo Valcarcel, Alejandro Romualdo, Sebas tian Salazar Bondy (who died prematurely in 1965), Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Blanca Varela, Francisco Bendezu (three latter-day surrealists) and the cluster of poets like Augusto Tamayo Vargas, Alberto Escobar, Francisco Carrillo, Javier Sologuren, who as professors of literature and, due to their constant a
activities
as
critics and editors, have been friends and mentors to most of
the younger generation. This generation that began to publish in the early sixties gained immedi ate attention upon the death of their most famous member, the guerrilla Javier
Heraud. While to many of the young Peruvians it seemed a brave but futile
gesture, it has personified their dilemma and in the eyes of the majority of his generation has made him a martyr. His poetry is disarmingly simple but there is no doubt that it has an appeal very much of the moment in the light of recent events. Heraud had left and returned to Peru as part of the earlier
stages of the same revolutionary movement that culminated last year in the death of Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Both Heraud and his close friend, Cesar
Calvo, write in naive romantic terms of their homes, the rivers and the
jungles, time, love and friendship; however they do so with an ease of style and a simplicity that define their talents. Julio Ortega writes a more complex verse. His production has been sporadic, a reflection of a personal struggle with the perennial problem of how to live in Peru on what one earns as a poet and critic. The publication in 1964 of Comentarios Reales, written by a twenty-two year old student at the University of San Marcos, marks
a
high point in
contemporary Peruvian poetry. In it Antonio Cisneros exhibits an originality
that promises greatness. He sets out to explore Peruvian history with a subtle irony and an intellectual maturity that are impressive. By exploding these 194
myths he makes the reality his own as the indigenistas and socialistas never could. Yet the book in Peru is largely unappreciated. In the new prize winning Canto ceremonial contra un oso hormiguero", not only the line but the perspective has suddenly been lengthened to include his own journeys,
places and memories. Although Cisneros is among the very youngest of Peruvian poets, he is undoubtedly one of the most talented and exciting writers in the Spanish language today. Other young poets to read and watch among this group of the sixties are Pablo Guevara, Arturo Corcuera, Carmen
Bejarano, Raquel Jodorowsky,
Winston Orrillo, Marco Martos, Rosina Valcarcel and Antonio Cilloniz.
recurring theme throughout the best of contemporary Peruvian poetry is one of frustration in the face of the possibility that present-day the Latin American reality offers Peru offers. It is not surprising; for ". the writer a virtual orgy of motives for being a rebel and living dissatisfied. Societies where injustice is law, these paradises of ignorance, of exploitation, of blind inequalities, of misery, with economic, cultural and moral aliena tion, our tumultuous countries subsidize sumptuous material, examples galore to demonstrate in fictions, either directly or indirectly, through deeds, dreams, testimonies, allegories, nightmares or visions, that reality is distorted, that it must change."? The Peruvian poet tends to come from a middle- or upper-class back ground and whether from the coastal desert, the sierra or the jungle, he naturally gravitates to Lima, the center of intellectual activity which is at the same time- provincial enough for literary life to be intimate and often claustrophobic. Confronted with the blatant injustices of the social structure The
.
.
and immersed in the chaos of the universities, he becomes Marxist, whether
his poetry reflects this or not. And if he is serious about his talent he soon faces an urgent decision. "The writer in our countries has had to split him
self, separate his vocation from his daily action, multiply himself in a thou sand jobs that deprived him of the time necessary for writing; jobs that often revolted his conscience and his convictions. For in addition to not admitting literature into its midst, our societies have encouraged a constant mistrust 1.
This book has recently been published in an edition of 10,000 copies by
Casa de las Americas, Havana, as part of their Coleccion Premio, 1968; for obvious reasons it is difficult for U.S.
and other Latin American readers to obtain. However, the Argentine publishing house, Centro Editor de America Latina, is preparing another edition that by now should be more readily available. 2. This and the following quotation are from Mario Vargas Llosa, "Fate
and Mission of the Writer in Latin America", in Haravec, no. 4, pp. 55-59, Dec.
1967, Lima; translation of the complete text of the address given in Caracas in
August, 1967, on the occasion of his receipt of the Romulo Gallegos Prize for the Novel.
195
toward this
marginal being, a bit anomalous, who against all reason set himself to practice an art that in the Latin American circumstance was virtually unreal. This is why our writers have failed by the dozens, deserted their vocation or betrayed it by practicing it in a half-hearted and hidden fashion, with neither diligence nor discipline." So he must choose between remaining in Lima and compromising his talents and his ideals or, like Vallejo, Vargas Llosa and Cisneros, escaping abroad usually to the Con to insure their survival. Heraud chose still a third tinent or to England -
-
alternative. None of the poets translated are yet well-known outside of Peru. How ever, in contrast to ten years ago, a number of quality literary magazines are
being published in Lima by editors dedicated to helping young poets and reaching readers beyond national borders. The following bibliography will provide a more complete source of contemporary Peruvian poetry. BOOKS
Cesar
Vallejo, Obra Poetica Completa. Edicion Numerada y Con Facsimiles de
los
Originales. Apuntes biograficos por Georgette de Vallejo. Prologo de
Americo Ferrai. MoncIoa Editores, S.A., Lima, 1968.
Cesar Vallejo. Poemas Humanos/Human Poems. A bilingual edition translated by
Clayton Eshleman. Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1968.
Antologia General de la Poesia Peruana. Seleccion, prologo y notas de Alejandro Remualdo y Sebastian Salazar Bondy, con una bibliografia de estudios generales y antologia del mismo por Alicia Tisnado. Libreria Internacional del Peru, S.A. Imprenta Lopez, Buenos Aires, 1957. Antologia de la Poesia Peruana. Prologo, seleccion y notas de Alberto Escobar. Ediciones Nuevo Mundo, Lima, 1965. Antologia de la Poesia Peruana Ioven. Francisco Carrillo. Ediciones de la Rama Florida & de la Biblioteca Universitaria, Lima, 1965. Poesia Revolucionaria del Peru. Alfonso Molina. Ediciones America Latina, Lima,
1966. Los Nuevos (Cisneros/Henderson/Hinestroza/Lauer I Martos/Ortega ). Leonidas
Cevallos. Editorial Universitaria, Lima, 1967. MAGAZINES
Alpha. Elsa de Fernandez Davila. Las Mimosas 271. Barranco. Lima. Amaru. Emilio Adolfo Westphalen. CasiIIa 1301. Lima. Cuadernos trimestrales de poesia. Marco Antonio Corcuera. Casilla 151. Trujillo. Haraui. Francisco Carrillo. Bolivia 174. Chosica.
Haravec. David Tipton & Maureen Ahem de Maurer. Casilla 68-Mirafiores, Lima. Vision del Peru. Washington Delgado & Carlos Milia Batres. Ave. Petit Thouars
1749. Lima.
Lima, September, 1968 196
Question of time I
A bad deal you made Almagro.
*
From no stone
of the Atacama could you beg for bread
gold from its sand. And the sun's tinopeners exposed your soldiers to the hunger nor
of a cloud of vultures. n
In 1964, where your bearded eyes saw
only red cactus,
other vultures reap forests
deep in metals that a hundred Spanish armadas transporting them would have shipwrecked beneath the sun. so
ANTONIO CISNEROS
translated by David Tipton
*
AImagro was originally joint leader with Pizarro of the Spanish expedition which
conquered Peru. Sent back to Panama for reenforcements he returned to find Pizarro in complete command of the Empire. Charles V granted Almagro the southern part, which included Bolivia & Chile. On an exploratory expedition south, he crossed the Atacama desert but found no gold. Believing himself cheated, Almagro attacked Pizarro & thus began the Civil Wars between the conquerorS.-BDS.
197
Loneliness II "Friend, I'm reading your old poems on the north terrace. The oil lamp flickers. How sad to be lettered & a clerk.
I'm reading about the free & flexible rice fields. I raise my eyes & can only see
the official books, the expenses of the province, the yellowed accounts
of the Empire." It was last summer & that night he reached my hotel on
Sommerard Street I'd been waiting for him two years.
I hardly remember anything of our conversation. He was in love with an Arab girl & that war -the Fox Dayan's=was even more painful to him.
"Sartre is old & doesn't know what he's doing," he told me & also said that Italy had made him happy with its empty beaches, sea urchins & green water
full of fat glistening bodies, "Like the baths in Barranco," a summerhouse built at the turn of the
century & a dish of crabs.
He'd stopped smoking. And literature was no longer his trade. The oil lamp flickered four times.
Silence grew strong as an ox. And so to salvage something I told him about my room & my
neighbors in London, about the Scotswoman who'd been a spy in both wars, about the doorman, a pop singer & having nothing more to tell him, I damned the English & shut up.
The oil lamp flickered again & then his words shone brighter than some beetle's back & he spoke of the Great March, the Blue River with its turgid waters about the Yellow River & its cold currents & we imagined
toughening ourselves by running & jumping along the seashore doing without music or wine, relying
for wisdom on our eyes only, & none of this seemed like a mirage in the desert. But my gods are weak & I doubted.
And the young lions were lost behind walls & he did not return that night to the hotel on Sommerard Street.
Obstinate & slow gods, trained to taste bile every morning.
"Friend, I'm on the island that's going under north of the Channel & I'm reading your poems,
the rice fields are full of the dead & the oil lamp flickers." ANTONIO CISNEROS
translated by Maureen Ahern Maurer
Tupac Amaru relegated
*
There are liberators with long sideburns who saw the dead & wounded brought back after the battles. Soon their names
history & the sideburns growing into their old uniforms proclaimed them founders of the nation.
were
Others with less luck have taken up two pages of text
with four horses & their death. ANTONIO CISNEROS
translated by David Tipton
*Tupac Amaru was the leader of an abortive insurrection previous to the Inde pendence. He was pulled apart by four horses, then disemboweled.-EDS.
After the Battle of Ayacucho: a mother's testimony Some soldiers who were drinking brandy have told me that now this country
is ours.
They also said I shouldn't wait for my sons. So I must
exchange the wooden chairs for a little oil & some bread. The land is black as dead ants, the soldiers said it was ours. But when the rains begin
I'll have to sell the shoes & ponchos of my dead sons. Some day I'll buy a longhaired mule & go down to my fields of black earth to reap the fruit
of these broad dark lands. ANTONIO CISNEROS
translated by David Tipton
Life explains & death spies out Reality gathers my papers, arranges the furniture in my house, skillfully
piles up in the plazas, floats on the sea, proclaims its aroma in the market. In my dreams it builds
pyramids & letters. Reality enfolds me & is full
of sweet air & newspapers,
wherever I go I read it & breathe it. Confuse its size
Reality
& stumble into it
is within me.
or it
I judge, prejudge, ascertain
suddenly shifts
& stumbles into me.
& make mistakes:
In one way or another
an
it smashes my nostrils.
govemsme.
implacable reality
In bed I breathe; within me
reality breathes. Some day or some night I'll no longer breathe & reality will have gone from my house, my bed, my body
&my soul. WASHINGTON DELGADO
translated by Maureen Ahern Maurer and David Tipton
Plurality of worlds Fifty worlds lie on my table, parade around my room, turn on the taps, look at me & call me & divide among themselves each crumb of my body.
Fifty men live in my name, read the letters of my dead mother,
listen in the newspapers to the beats of a meaningless
history, caress the
yellow sands of Ancon near the garbage dumps of history or drink water & breathe air
infinitely transmuted by mouths, noses, lungs, immemorial hairs & roots. At this time of day the banana leaves shade me, a
fly buzzes & a small cloud
neither moves nor sounds. I read Marx & know
that history repeats itself &is a farce that makes one weep. I caress those looks on the faces of my children
who will die in the middle of new garbage dumps.
At the cinema I see the story of I van encircled by thick walls of stone, crouched before the narrow gates, smothered by eyes & words & saved from the dagger & poison
because history is a farce often repeated.
My books lie in heaps at the foot of my bed, on top
of the chair & on the table
where as I recall it's time to eat. The words of Horace & the small house will never suffice me. I'll not stand up against the sea's thrust, nor will I
slip on the winds,
I won't stay in my house. I'll live once & again the beautiful words that once & again are deceit, a gust of frustrated desires or game of love.
I sign the papers that prolong
the perhaps, in other words, necessity or sadness.
In the jungles men die & fight; I light a cigarette & divide it
among fifty
meaningless worlds. WASHINGTON DELGADO
translated by Maureen Ahern Maurer and David Tipton
Report for Isolda I
Last night, December 24th 1966
opened the presents-a blouse for mum slippers for me (a fragile peace in homes lit by innocence & a moment's calm) & for you a rubber doll that squeaked. We ate mince pies & on television listened to the phony promises smiling irrelevancies too absurd for anger; sliced the ham & pork while kids in the building fired caps celebrating gunpowder in their ignorance. At the same time a shantytown in Da Nang, South Vietnam was obliterated by a shelling-
we
(wrenched screams
smashed heads
brains spilt) -the villagers stunned at their Christmas Eve tables by a North American plane
exploding upon their small bodies in which love lived. The pilot & over a hundred people who neither chose Christmas nor a
sky scabbed by planes
were killed.
Milk spilt on their tables ash a hundred
the split brain of that land
surprised men. And you my daughter, remember those dead by fire & gasoline killed by error in an erring time.
n
That same night-last night in mudchoked Florence, Paul VI said mass. -Let us weep, he said, with the nations
that are suffering, for Florence, created by artists, has been bitten to the quick-
And he said that Art treasures were not mere objects of pride & contemplation but inspired the search
for universal & inmortal values. Rebirth is a grand word. Art in Florence has been attacked before
by water, its roots slashed; the city blocked by crude mud. But, Florence, it's useless to mourn for there will be no rebirth; other cities will carry your torch
through the world in the future; the birds no longer sing for you. The Pope in a red ermine-lined cape
surveyed the muddy streets & prayed. I hear him here where St. Peter shook off the dust
Rebirth, said this Peter, and---=Art will raise its values like tents on a battlefield
....
But you, daughter,
remember that here too we're trying to sow seeds among thoms, create signs that'll explode & fire worn-out bodies,
hunger
that's like dust in our houses-remember our thirst & the mud that's
everywhere
like a new god on this earth. JULIO ORTEGA
translated by David Tipton
The poet's room Come and see the poet's room. From the street to my heart
there're fifty steps of poverty.
Climb them. To the left. If you meet my mother on the way,
stitching her tenderness to my sadness ask her
for the poet's cherished room. If you meet Evelina
contemplating Spring die ask her about my soul and also for the poet's room.
If you meet joy weeping, oceans and oceans of
sand,
question it about everyone, question it and you'll arrive at the poet's room:
chair, a lamp, an inkwell of blood, another of absence, the spiders knitting muted sounds, a
dusty with alien tears, and a paper where time
stubbornly rests its head.
Come and see the poet's room. Come on out and see the poet's room! From my heart to the others
there're fifty steps of patience.
Fly up them, friends! (And if you don't find me then ask me where I'm firing the stakes.) CESAR CALVO
translated by David Tipton
From the liturgy Once again we've lived through our encounter.
We belong to the Stigma Sports Club. If we didn't exist
blue roses would fall on the
dirty rooftops of this city;
but we
check the physics of miracles, the oil of beatitude. In as much as I love
you
& you love me'
Assassins will take their places in the hierarchy of great banquets. JUAN GONZALO ROSE
translated by David Tipton
The beak of the dove In the next century no one'll want-nor talk of
doves. We've had our bellyful of doves.
They're three types: the dove of peace, the dove of peace &
lastly the dove of peace. But perhaps
in the next century
doves won't bore us,
simply because they'll celebrate their nuptials in empty cities & in the skulls time & greed
left upon the tables. JUAN GONZALO ROSE
translated by David Tipton
Tuesday siesta GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
The train emerged from the quivering tunnel of sandy rocks, began to cross the symmetrical, interminable banana plantations, and the
air became humid and they couldn't feel the sea breeze any more. A stifling blast of smoke came in the car window. On the narrow road parallel to the railway there were oxcarts loaded with green
bunches of bananas. Beyond the road, in odd, uncultivated spaces, there were offices with electric fans, red brick buildings, and resi
dences with chairs and little white tables on the terraces among dusty
palm trees and rosebushes. It was eleven in the morning, and the heat had not yet begun. "You'd better close the window," the woman said. "Your hair
will get full of soot.
"
The girl tried to, but the shade wouldn't move because of the rust.
They were the only passengers in the lone third-class car. Since the smoke of the locomotive kept coming through the window, the girl left her seat and put down the only things they had with them: a plastic sack with some things to eat and a bouquet of flowers TriQuarterly 209
wrapped in newspaper. She sat on the opposite seat, away from the window, facing her mother. They were both in severe and pooi mourning clothes. The girl was twelve years old, and it was the first time she'd eve] been on a train. The woman seemed too old to be her mother, be cause of the blue veins on her eyelids and her small, soft, and shape less body, in a dress cut like a cassock. She was riding with her spinal column braced firmly against the back of the seat, and held a peeling patent-leather portfolio in her lap with both hands. She bore the conscientious serenity of someone accustomed to poverty. By twelve the heat had begun. The train stopped for ten minutes to take on water at a station where there was no town. Outside, in
the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed clean. But the still air inside the car smelled like untanned leather. The
train did not pick up speed. It stopped at two identical towns with wooden houses painted bright colors. The woman's head nodded and she sank into sleep. The girl took off her shoes. Then she went to the washroom to put the bouquet of flowers in some water.
When she came back to her seat, her mother was waiting to eat. She gave her a piece of cheese, half a cornmeal pancake, and a
cookie, and took an equal portion out of the plastic sack for herself. While they ate, the train crossed an iron bridge very slowly and
passed a town just like the ones before, except that in this one there was a crowd in the plaza. A band was playing a lively tune under the oppressive sun. At the other side of town the plantations ended in a plain which was cracked from the drought. The woman stopped eating. "Put on your shoes," she said. The girl looked outside. She saw nothing but the deserted plain,
where the train began to pick up speed again, but she put the last
piece of cookie into the sack and quickly put on her shoes. The woman gave her a comb.
"Comb your hair," she said. The train whistle began to blow while the girl was combing her
hair. The woman dried the sweat from her neck and wiped the oil from her face with her fingers. When the girl stopped combing, the 210
train was passing the outlying houses of a town larger but sadder than the earlier ones. "If you feel like doing anything, do it now," said the woman.
"Later, don't take a drink anywhere even if you're dying of thirst. Above all, no crying." The girl nodded her head. A dry, burning wind came in the win
dow, together with the locomotive's whistle and the clatter of the old cars. The woman wrapped up the pancake with the rest of the
food and put it in the portfolio. For a moment a complete picture of the town, on that bright August Tuesday, shone in the window. The girl wrapped the flowers in the soaking-wet newspapers, moved a little farther away from the
window, and stared at her mother. She
received a pleasant expression in return. The train began to whistle and slowed down. A moment later it stopped. There was no one at the station. On the other side of the street, on the sidewalk shaded
by the almond trees, only the pool hall was open. The town was floating in the heat. The woman and the girl got off the train and crossed the abandoned station-the tiles split apart by the grass growing up between-and the street to the shady side walk. It was almost two. At that hour, weighted down by drowsiness,
the town was taking a siesta. The stores, the town offices, the public school were closed at eleven, and didn't reopen until a little before
four, when the train went back. Only the hotel across from the station, with its bar and pool hall, and the telegraph office at one side of the plaza stayed open. The houses, most of them built on the banana company's model, had their doors locked from inside and
their blinds drawn. In some of them it was so hot that the residents ate lunch in the patio. Others leaned a chair against the wall, in the
shade of the almond trees, and took their siesta right out in the street.
Keeping to the protective shade of the almond trees, the woman and the girl entered the town without disturbing the siesta. They went directly to the priest's house. The woman scratched the metal grating on the door with her fingernail, waited a moment, and scratched again. An electric fan was humming inside. They did not hear the steps. They hardly heard the slight creaking of a door, and 211
immediately a cautious voice, right next to the metal grating: "Who is it?" The woman tried to see through the grating. "I need the Father," she said.
"He's sleeping now." "It's an emergency," the woman insisted. Her voice showed a calm determination.
The door was opened a little way, noiselessly, and a plump, older
appeared, with very pale skin and hair the color of iron. Her eyes seemed too small behind her thick eyeglasses. "Come in," she said, and opened the door all the way. They entered a room permeated with an old smell of flowers. The woman of the house led them to a wooden bench and signaled them to sit down. The girl did so, but her mother remained standing, absent-mindedly, with both hands clutching the portfolio. No noise woman
could be heard above the electric fan. The woman of the house reappeared at the door at the far end
of the room. "He says you should come back after three," she said in a very low voice. "He just lay down five minutes ago." "The train leaves at three-thirty," said the woman. It was
a
brief and self-assured reply, but her voice remained
pleasant, full of undertones. The woman of the house smiled for the first time. "All right," she said. When the far door closed again, the woman sat down next to her daughter. The narrow waiting room was poor, neat, and clean.
On the other side of the wooden railing which divided the room, there was a worktable, a plain one with an oilcloth cover, and on
top of the table a primitive typewriter next to a vase of flowers. The
parish records were beyond. You could see that it was an office kept in order by a spinster. The far door opened and this time the priest appeared, cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief. Only when he put them on was it evident that he was the brother of the woman who had opened the door. "How can I help you?" he asked. "The keys to the cemetery," said the woman. 212
The girl was seated with the flowers in her lap and her feet crossed under the bench. The priest looked at her, then looked at the woman, and then through the wire mesh of the window at the
bright, cloudless sky. "In this heat," he said. "You could have waited until the sun went down."
The woman moved her head silently. The priest crossed to the
other side of the railing, took out of the cabinet a notebook covered in oilcloth, a wooden penholder, and an inkwell, and sat down at the table. There was more than enough hair on his hands to account for what was missing on his head. "Which grave are you going to visit?" he asked. "Carlos Centeno's," said the woman.
"Who?" "Carlos Centeno," the woman repeated. The priest still did not understand. "He's the thief who was killed here last week," said the woman in the same tone of voice. "I am his mother." The priest scrutinized her. She stared at him with quiet self
control, and the Father blushed. He lowered his head and began to write. As he filled the page, he asked the woman to identify herself,
and she replied unhesitatingly, with precise details, as if she were
reading them. The Father began to sweat. The girl unhooked the buckle of her left shoe, slipped her heel out of it, and rested it on the bench rail. She did the same with the right one. It had all started the Monday of the previous week, at three in the morning, a few blocks from there. Rebecca, a lonely widow who ,
lived in a house full of odds and ends, heard above the sound of the
drizzling rain someone trying to force the front door from outside. She got up, rummaged around in her closet for an ancient revolver that no one had fired since the days of Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and went into the living room without turning on the lights. Orient ing herself not so much by the noise at the lock as by a terror devel oped in her by twenty-eight years of loneliness, she fixed in her imagination not only the spot where the door was but also the exact height of the lock. She clutched the weapon with both hands, closed 213
her eyes, and squeezed the trigger. It was the first time in her life that she had fired a gun. Immediately after the explosion, she could hear nothing except the murmur of the drizzle on the galvanized
roof. Then she heard a little metallic bump on the cement porch, and a very low voice, pleasant but terribly exhausted: "Ah, Mother." The man they found dead in front of the house in the morning, his
bits, wore a flannel shirt with colored stripes, everyday pants with a rope for a belt, and was barefoot. No one in town knew nose blown to
him. "So his name was Carlos Centeno," murmured the Father when he finished writing.
"Centeno Ayala," said the woman. "He was my only boy." The priest went back to the cabinet. Two big rusty keys hung on the inside of the
door; the girl imagined, as her mother had when
she was a girl and as the priest himself must have imagined at some
time, that they were Saint Peter's keys. He took them down, put them on the open notebook on the railing, and pointed with his fore
finger to a place on the page he had just written, looking at the woman.
"Sign here." The woman scribbled her name, holding the portfolio under her
girl picked up the flowers, came to the railing shuffling her feet, and watched her mother attentively. The priest sighed. "Didn't you ever try to get him on the right track?" The woman answered when she finished signing. "He was a very good man." The priest looked first at the woman and then at the girl, and realized with a kind of pious amazement that they were not about arm. The
to cry. The woman continued in the same tone:
"I told him never to steal anything that anyone needed to eat,
and he minded me. On the other hand, before, when he used to box, he used to spend three days in bed, exhausted from being punched." "All his teeth had to be pulled out," interrupted the girl. "That's right," the woman agreed. "Every mouthful I ate those
days tasted of the beatings my son got on Saturday nights." "God's will is inscrutable," said the Father. 214
But he said it without much conviction, partly because experi
skeptical and partly because of the heat. He suggested that they cover their heads to guard against sunstroke. Yawning, and now almost completely asleep, he gave them instruc tions about how to find Carlos Centeno's grave. When they came back, they didn't have to knock. They should put the key under the door; and in the same place, if they could, they should put an offer ing for the Church. The woman listened to his directions with great attention, but thanked him without smiling. The Father had noticed that there was someone looking inside, his nose pressed against the metal grating, even before he opened the
ence had made him a little
door to the street. Outside was a group of children. When the door
opened wide, the children scattered. Ordinarily, at that hour there was no one in the street. Now there were not only children. There were groups of people under the almond trees. The Father scanned the street swimming in the heat and then he understood. Softly, he closed the door again. "Wait a moment," he said without looking at the woman. His sister appeared at the far door with a black jacket over her nightshirt and her hair down over her shoulders. She looked silently
was
at the Father.
"What was it?" he asked.
"The people have noticed," murmured his sister. "You'd better go out by the door to the patio," said the Father. "It's the
same
there," said his sister. "Everybody is at the
windows." The woman seemed not to have understood until then. She tried to look into the street through the metal
grating. Then she took the bouquet of flowers from the girl and began to move toward the door. The girl followed her. "Wait until the sun goes down," said the Father. "You'll melt," said his sister, motionless at the back of the room. "Wait and I'll lend you a parasol." "Thank you," replied the woman. "We're all right this way." She took the girl by the hand and went into the street. translated by I. S. Bernstein 215
CARLOS GERMAN BELLI
20 poems from o Hada Cibernetical 1
Why have I been moved from the maternal cloister to the terrestrial cloister,
instead of being spawned
in water or air or fire? 2
Although for so many the sky is so much, for me it's hell, there I remain at each step leaving
for two straws my skin yes and even my bones and even my marrow. 3
When the brain is about as big as a grain of sand Of the books the luminous plectrum it could be said comes to be dregs of the rectum,
for after so much reading without raising up
nothing has been held. 4
Some day love at last I will grasp,
such as it is for my dead fathers: not inside eyes, nor outside,
invisible, but perpetual, if not of fire, of air.
5
In this unfinishable fecal valley I find I am laggard
shinbones, hide, gullet; but I'm fed contentably up
having less ties, less weight, less days forward. 6
(in the manner of Pedro de Quiros) Not even once are they coveted my dwelling, your oak,
my love, yours, my rebeck, your canto, aie turtle-dove! is it this
how brief, coveted, how great, scorned?
way with you too,
7
The cold fear because looking at you I see you more reserved than yesterday angered makes each of my body's pores
eye secretly spying; but Will it be like this forever,
an
this bristled hide in a thousand eyes transfigured? 8
Instead of sweet humans
why didn't my fathers exist as that stone, that elm, that buck, that apparently do not discern and never say to each other:
"don't leave this copse where now you know from where cometh the boreal, there goeth the austral." 9
An unknown voice told me:
"you won't lie with Phoebe, no, in that meadow, if with irons they draw you out from the luminous cloister, my foetus"; and now that in this grim inn I still find myself after severallustrums,
I ask why was I not hurled
from the highest cliff,
stutterer, cripple, one-arm or squinted. 10
If there's only air in my purse and brain
I then lamentable fix infer the sales of my ferrous bars
during so many years, and my voracious reader even,
have been for my lay belly, in whose unknown heart
they remain converted first in feces, then in crude dust,
ultimately all in nothing. 11
o pitted my soul pitted with thousands of Carlos resentful for not having known the free-choice to arrange their days
throughout all the time of life; and not one time even to be able of itself to say
"open the door of the orb walk wherever you want,
throughout the south or through the north, behind your austral or behind your septentrional 12
Down with the exchanges! o Cibernetic Fairy!,
when with a puff you'll wither the
Exchanges
that have me in their clutch, and free me at last so that I can then
dedicate myself to look for a woman sweet as sugar,
soft as silk, and eat her up in little
pieces,
and scream after:
"down with the Exchange of sugar, down with the Exchange of silk!"
...
!"
13
If by chance to this orb sometime at last the Cibernetic Fairy comes, we who don't run
through the valley yelling: "long live wine!, long live coupling!," perhaps not so brief will our passage be, nor with leisure and love
debauched,
for the magic stamen of life, so
copious will it be
like that on which the bird
firmly rests flight, or its highest boughs the tree, or the stones their weight. 14
o nutricious bolus, but of dust!, Who has formed you? All turns on the tenuous relation
between death and the hurricane, which itself rests on that death polishes the contents of the bodies, and the hurricane the places
where reside the bodies, and that afterwards they jointly convert and ensalivate
bodies well as places, in what an immense and rare nutricious bolus, but of dust.
15
Papa, mama, so that
I, Pocho and Mario
would always keep in human line, how both of you struggled in spite of the incredible Peruvian salaries, and after so much so alone I say:
"come, death, that I may abandon this human line, and never return to it, and among other lines at last choose a cliff
face,
an elm
face,
an owl face."
16
If the nutricious bolus enters internal space,
leaving in my back traces of its step,
and the fire balls in cosmic space of a sudden cross
pole
to
pole,
then I inquire: What nutricious bolus will perforate my belly, or what lethal ball
loosing its embers will wither my ship?
17
o parents, you knew it well: the insect is intransmutable into man, but man is transmutable into insect! ;
Perhaps you didn't reflect, my parents, when here on the orb without thinking you killed an insect-any insectyou found lodged obscurely from the woods in the meekest and most distant comer,
by humans neither at day nor during the night,
so as to not be seen
you didn't think, then, that to pass the time some of your children would turn themselves into unarmed insects, even in
spite of your thousands of efforts
so that all the time
they might weigh and measure up like humans? 18
On coming out of the belly your shinbone had not a splinter of foot nor your gullet
splinter of tongue, but Why others foot and morning starred tongue had from the belly on without decline in order to walk, in order to speak? How many spills you've watched other firm shinbones passing when between the hunters' whistles a buck swiftly crosses, even more than the powerful wind that goads you; a
and how much talkative tongue
day and night, for two straws, stirs even though the master doesn't want it, and you catch on fire, you roast under the leather
seeing that before a shepherdess won't break off not even one word the gullet.
19
Thus it will be; I confess to you: I've decided to smooth out the creases
of my guilty soul, so just as those of the purse in which are kept a hundred thousand ferrous
bars,
and, like Holland cloth, it will be pure, smooth, although to achieve such white linen from now on I'll do it excessively purifying with the growth of a hump, as invisible as it is big, that I bear like cargo on my shoulders
along with the terror and the shame of seeing myself with my victim or dreaming him up; and although already I suffer my sentence that is superior to my hurt, I don't lament it, death, because I want to come to you really imbedded
in my pain, senseless;
the leather within smooth linen. 20
What to do with this dwelling-place, this leather, this brain, if nobody covets them a
little,
papa mama;
and I ask if it's been in vain
that I've been loaned this dwelling-place,
this leather, this brain,
papa, mama.
translated by Clayton Eshleman
The intruder JORGE LUIS BORGES .,;. '"
�
� z
..: a:
4: z '" OJ
o
o
:l:
OJ
J: 0-
..: z
;: 4: :::J
� o z
4: Cl z
I u 0W
�
III
o Z J: 0-
� ,_
;;: a: ,_ a:
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� ( m
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Z Kings 1:26
They say (which is improbable) that this story was told by Eduardo, the younger of the Nilsens, at the wake of his older brother Cristian, who died a natural death sometime during the 1890's in the district of Moron. What is certain is that somebody heard it from somebody 224
TriQuarterJy
else, between sips of mate tea, during the course of that long, for
gotten night, and repeated it to Santiago Dabove from whom I came to know it. Years later they told it to me again in Turdera, where it
happened. The second version, a little more prolix, corre sponded for the most part to Santiago's with only those small varia tions and differences that are to be expected in such cases. Now I am writing it down because, if I am not mistaken, it sums up in a brief and tragic image the character of those men who lived on the outskirts of town in the old days. I shall write with probity, but I see that I will give in to the literary temptation of emphasizing or adding
had
some detail.
In Turdera they were known as the Nilsens. The parish priest told me that his
predecessor remembered, not without surprise, having seen in the family's house a worn-out Bible with black covers and Gothic letters; in the last pages he glimpsed handwritten names and dates. It was the only book in the house-the depressing chronicle of the Nilsens, lost as everything someday will be lost. The large house, which is no longer standing, was built of naked brick, and from the hallway you could make out two patios, one with red tiles and the other unpaved. Except for the family, few people entered there; the Nilsens guarded their solitude. In the run-down rooms they slept on cots; their luxuries were horses, riding gear, short bladed knives, loud outfits for Saturday nights and fiery cane liquor. I know that they were tall and had reddish hair. Denmark or Ireland -countries they probably never heard of-flowed in the veins of those two creoles. The district feared the Redheads: there is at least
possibility that they were responsible for someone's death. Shoul der to shoulder they once fought the police. It is said that the younger a
one
had a quarrel with Juan Iberra in which he did not come out
badly, and that, according to those who know, is saying a lot. They were
drovers, skinners, horse thieves and, sometimes, gamblers.
They were notorious for being misers, except when drinking and gambling made them generous. Nothing is known of their kin or where they came from. They owned a cart and a yoke of oxen. They differed physically from the gang which gave the Costa Brava its wild name. This, and what we do not know, helps to explain 225
how close they were. To offend one of them was to reckon with two enemies.
The Nilsens were reckless, but up until then the episodes in their love life had been confined to hallways and houses of ill fame. Com
lacking, therefore, when Cristian brought Juliana Burgos to live with him. It is true that he gained a housekeeper, but it is no less true that he lavished horribly cheap trinkets on her and showed her off at fiestas-at the poor tenement parties where shimmying and shaking were forbidden and where people still danced far enough apart so that light showed between them. Juliana was brown-skinned and wide-eyed; if someone just looked at her, it was enough to make her smile. In a plain neighborhood, where work and neglect wore out the women, she was not bad looking. At the beginning Eduardo went around with them. Later he took a trip to Arrecifes on some kind of business, exactly what I don't know. Upon his return he brought home a girl he had picked up on the road, but in a few days he threw her out. He became more sullen; he would get drunk by himself in the general store and he avoided everyone. He was in love with Cristian's woman. The neighborhood, which perhaps realized before he did, foresaw with traitorous delight the latent rivalry of the two brothers. Getting home from the corner late one night, Eduardo saw Cristian's dark horse tied to the hitching post. His older brother was waiting for him in the patio with his best outfit on. The woman was walking up and down with the mate in her hand. Cristian said to
ments were not
Eduardo: "I'm going to the dance at Farias'. Here is Juliana. If you want
her, use her." His tone was half commanding, half inviting. Eduardo stood still for a moment just looking at him, not knowing what to do. Cristian
got up, said good-bye to Eduardo-but not to Juliana, who was just
object-mounted his horse and rode away at a trot without giving it a second thought. From that night on they shared her. No one will ever know the details of that sordid union which outraged the suburb's sense of propriety. The arrangement worked for a few weeks, but it could not an
226
last. Between themselves the brothers never pronounced the name of Juliana, not even to call her; but they sought and found reasons for disagreement. They would discuss the sale of some hides, but what they really discussed was something else. Cristian would raise his voice and Eduardo would keep quiet. Without being aware of it
they were watching each other. In that tough neighborhood a man never said, not even to himself, that a woman could matter to him except as something to be desired or possessed, but both of them were in love.
That, in some way, humiliated them.
One afternoon in Lomas' plaza Eduardo crossed the path of Juan Iberra, who congratulated him on the nice thing he had gotten
hold of. It was then, I believe, that Eduardo insulted him. Nobody, in his presence, was going to make fun of Cristiano
Submissive as an animal, the woman waited on both of them; but she could not hide some preference, undoubtedly for the younger one, who had not rejected the partnership but who had not arranged
it either. One day they ordered Juliana to take two chairs out into the front patio and not to show her face there because they had some
thing to talk over. She expected a long conversation and lay down for her siesta, but they awakened her in a little while. They made her fill a bag with everything she had, not forgetting the glass rosary and the little cross her mother had left her. Without explaining any thing to her, they lifted her into the cart and began a silent and tedi ous journey. It had rained; the roads were thick with mud and it must have been eleven at night when they reached Moron where they sold her to the madam of a brothel. The deal was settled; Cris tian collected the money and later divided it with his brother. Back in Turdera, where they had been lost until then in the tangle
(which was also a rut) of that monstrous love, the Nilsens deter mined to take up their old life of men among men. They went back to
cards, to cock fights, to occasional sprees. Perhaps there were moments when they thought they were safe, but each of them would slip into unjustified or quite justified absences. A little before the end of the year the younger brother said there was
something he had to do in the Capital. Cristian went to Moron, and there, tied to the 227
paling of the house we already know about, he recognized Eduardo's dark horse. He entered; the other man was inside, waiting his tum. Apparently Crist ian said to him: "If we go on like this, we're going to wear out the horses. It would be better if we had her nearby." He spoke with the proprietress and took some money from his belt; then they led Juliana away. She went with Cristian; Eduardo spurred his horse in order not to see them. They resumed the way OL life already spoken of. The infamous solution had failed; the two of them had given in to the temptation of cheating. Cain was stalking close by, but affection between the Nilsens was very strong-God only knows what hardships and dangers they had sharedl=and they preferred to take out their exas peration on others-on a stranger, on dogs, on Juliana, who had brought about the discord. The month of March was almost over and the heat did not let up. Coming back from the general store one Sunday (on Sundays people used to come home early), Eduardo saw that Cristian was
yoking the oxen. Cristian said to him: "Come on. We have to deliver some hides to Pardo's. I've already loaded them; let's go while it's still cool." Pardo's market lay, I think, further south. First they took the cattle route, and then later a side trail. The countryside widened
with the deepening of the night.
They skirted some grassland; Cristian threw away the cigar he had lit and said calmly: "Let's get busy, brother. Afterwards the vultures will do the rest for us. I killed her today. Let her lie here with her trinkets. Now she won't hurt us anymore." They embraced, almost crying. Now another tie bound them: the woman miserably sacrificed and the obligation of forgetting her translated by Ronald Christ and Paschal Cantatore
228
An anthology of
Argentine poetry EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY PATRICK MORGAN
obviously important to have some sort of idea of a country's social, economic and political organization, of its history and general background, its racial and even its geographical characteristics, in order to appreciate
It is
fully and to evaluate its artistic production. In this respect, however, Argentina is at a particular disadvantage since its image abroad is certainly a confused and sketchy one and the country suffers from the general ten dency in Europe and even in the iso-continental United States to lump more
together all nations south of the Rio Grande under one vague and undis
criminating tag called Latin America. Cassius of course might have something illuminating to say about where the fault lies, but unfortunately in a short survey of this nature it is impos sible to make up for a communications deficiency of at least a century and a half (i.e. from the date of Argentina's independence) so that the best that can be done is to remind the reader briefly of what he already knows about the country and to proceed from here to fill in a few of the more conspicuous gaps. An interesting method of approach perhaps is to use as it were a tech
nique of association. What does Argentina mean to the average citizen of the world whose curiosity about the southern hemisphere is only a passing one? One finds, on traveling through Europe and the United States, that the usual associations are with Fangio, Peron, Che Guevara, beef, playboys from rich estates, vast grasslands and a tropical climate. Of these, the beef and the grasslands are undeniably one part of the truth, the playboys who made such a bad reputation for themselves in Paris have long ago been superseded as a factor of social and economic power by a thriving and sophisticated business community, and the question of the tropical climate of course is entirely false. Spreading from the sub-tropical so far south that it
TriQuarterly 229
has claims on a sector of the Antarctic, Argentina includes a wide variety of
climates with clearly defined seasons. Thus moods of Winter and Spring are as
real in Argentine poetry as they are in American or European, and the
bleakness for instance in Marechal's Southern Epitaphs is no mere aesthetic
symbol but a concrete expression of the inclemency of the elements. Another common association, and a correct one, is of political instabil ity, of revolutions and military intervention. The average picture in the minds of foreigners to Argentina is of a land of social upheaval, of a country perpetually on the brink of internal violence, where personal safety is constantly at stake. Here, however, there is an important distinction to be made. Unlike the majority of other Latin American countries, it is the Middle Class in Argentina which is dominant, by sheer force of numbers, and the Middle Class is notoriously un-revolutionary; its aspirations, all achievable here, are mostly for a new television set, a new car, for a quiet family life and peace, for personal advancement, cultural or material. Thus, commu nism for instance is academic rather than popular (Guevara was a univer sity man from an aristocratic, land-owning family) and the coups d'etat which have hindered Argentine democratic evolution have been entirely military affairs, not only without the intervention of civilians, but accom panied by a growing disgust with the Armed Forces on the part of the public at large. Thus, when the ineffective government of President Illia was re moved from power the role of the military was limited to that of the care taker, and because the Armed Forces were no longer prepared to risk any further their diminished prestige, all technical sub-presidential power was passed into the hands of qualified civilians. To put it in a nutshell: Argentina is not at present a democracy, in the sense that it is not the people who have chosen their leaders, but it is a quiet, peaceful country governed by right of-center civilians who are free to institute economically necessary if unpopu lar measures since their continuance in office is ensured not by the tactics of
electioneering but by military force. Why, one might ask, is this necessary? And here it is well to remember that in the pre-Peron years, before the Second World War, Argentina was in the enviable position of having one of the strongest currencies in the world, whereas now, despite its vast resources, it is impoverished to the point that it is by no means meaningless to speak of a national inferiority complex and a widespread feeling of frustration and failure. What exactly was the
effect of the Peron government on Argentina? An objective view shows that while he considerably improved the lot of the so-called working classes, which
long overdue, he pitched them in doing so against the aristocracy, in particular the landed aristocracy, to such an extent that he precipitated a social revolution, and created a climate of inter-class hatred which is only was
recently beginning to dispel. At the same time, while the riot of social bene230
fits and the economic disorganization of his government drove the country to virtual bankruptcy
(and left an unmanageable inheritance for the politi
cians of the future) it is true to say that by closing imports he started up a necessary movement toward local industry, as a result of which Argentina today has changed from an almost entirely rural economy to one that is half
rural and half industrial, with the obvious effects that an evolution of this nature can have on all forms of artistic expression.
Apart from such characteristics as the political, the social, the historical, etc., there are obviously others whose influence is also felt, such as the racial and geographical, and it is well to point out some of the major ones to com
plete what must of necessity remain only a very panoramic picture. Thus, racially, it is important to bear in mind that Argentina is a melting-pot, first of the branches of the Indian family that spread across the Americas, who, though they have largely disappeared, mixed to an extent with the invading Spaniards, and then of the continuous immigratory currents which came in particular from Italy and Central Europe. This makes it an all-white and mainly European or European-rooted population. The language, Spanish, is a borrowed one, and it has developed, locally, to the extent that there is a street Argentinian with innumerable idioms that are strange to Spanish ears, with variations in the sounds of the consonants, and modifications in some of the pronouns and verbs. A certain amount of literary and creative tension arises as a result, since schools still faithfully abide by the grammatical and
pronunciation rules of the Spanish Royal Academy, whereas most writers insist quite rightly on using the truly local forms of speech. There is a half way sea too, where the timid can navigate without doing violence to academic Spanish or committing themselves too openly to Argentinian but this is a limiting method of work which diverts creative energy. -
Geographically, while there are low-lying hills in the center of the coun try and a high, snow-capped mountainous range, the Andes, running down the western border, on the limits with Chile, it is worthy of note that Argen tina is in the main a flat land, with interminable extensions that disappear toward
ubiquitously visible horizons. However,
of the total
population,
which is approximately 23,000,000, only about half is in daily contact with the spirit-opening expanses of vastness and distance; the rest is concentrated
in urban centers. and of these urban centers,
one
is
so
dominant that it
exerts an absorbing and sometimes suffocating influence on the remainder of
the country. This urban center of course is Buenos Aires, which congregates no less
than one-third of Argentina's total population, a fact which makes it
this is
one of the world's principal capitals, rarely realized abroad exceeded in size only by a handful of other cities such as New York, London and Tokyo. An industrial, commercial, and cultural center, highly sophisti cated and cosmopolitan, it is very lively indeed in all of the arts. In music, for -
-
231
instance, it possesses the famous Colon, and with ten to fifteen concerts a
day during the season, its activity is such, both interpretative and creative, that it has produced composers and musicians of international relevance. Unfortunately, it does not have the wealth as a city to sustain great art collections such as other world capitals. However, contemporary art keeps over 60 art galleries permanently busy. In cinema and theatre, there is alter nation between local and foreign production, weighted in favor of the latter, especially in the case of cinema, but the levels achieved in local art cinema are high. As far as prose is concerned, at least two leading figures, Borges and Cortazar, are world-known. Both, incidentally, exemplify the Argentine tendency to look afield; Borges, because his broad European cul ture (among other things he is a specialist in Anglo-Saxon) protrudes in evitably in the midst of his autochthonous subject-matter, and Cortazar by refusing to live in his country of origin. In contrast with the alienating tempo and cosmopolitan influence of Buenos Aires, which fan out toward the interior by means of all sorts of media, among them television, and which produce art and poetry of an unavoidably international character, there is a reverse current, telluric, which has its roots in indigenous traditions and which ranges across the country bringing back to the Capital expressions principally musical but also poetical of an entirely different order, folkloric and local as opposed to universal. In a sense, it is this division which creates the main dilemma of the Argentine artist. Is he to follow foreign influences, adopting and adapting European models to suit his local needs, or is he to build direct from entirely Argentine material at the risk of provincialism? In music, particularly, there is a marked trend from the local to the universal, and this has produced successes such as those of Ginastera and Castro. There is also a wide and living tradition of so-called folkloric music, which is based on dance rhythms and is serious and almost solemn in intent. Thus, like music of previous ages, it is both popular and classical. In the case of poetry,
however, the dilemma is still very much present and far from
solved. In the poems that follow it will be easily seen how these currents cross, from the local to the universal, from the rural to the urban. The selec
tion takes a sample of contemporary poets, either firmly established or in ascent, and attempts to give a representative picture, within the obvious limitations, of the state of Argentine poetry today. To venture a generaliza
tion, which of course is perilous, it will be appreciated that Argentine poetry on the whole tends to be a
poetry of impatience, of haste, of clarity, often more
metaphysical than social. It is also a poetry of content rather than of form. Taking precedence over the preoccupations of verbal variation and the modulations of cadence is the lonely and continuous search for national but above all for personal identity. 232
Those who are alone The mirrors are a luminous cruelty a demonstration of my
aging face
whilst solitude dresses itself with my body and throws me towards repeated gestures the pattern made by my steps, trying out a false
companionship that shall never arrive.
Sometimes the echo of a word can
expand in dreams as if it were a gas
that reaches into all corners.
Then, for long days, silent telephones destroy imagined conversation; and, one night, with the first shadows, I shall return to the walls of my house
with this obstinate solitude on my back.
Nightmares shall return my voice climbing up to the roofs like a lugubrious spider, bouncing off the furniture, in lights I turn on to cover the shadows of absence. Clocks shall go over their solitary plot on a slow carbon that is impossible to tire, I take my hand to a book, and words swing me into sleep.
Already nobody remembers me. My life is the beginning of death. HORACIa SALAS
233
Friends One meets them again, after many years,
when time's snakes have unfastened their ancient skin, and as if one looked into the splinters of a broken glass one tries to remem ber the shared dreams
and childishly evokes the unreal color of the sun over the trees of
Palermo,
on a distant stroll.
But it is all useless because other streets,
other names,
perhaps some other love, have managed to disrupt the line of a coffee cup, the spiral that destroys a half cube of sugar, the butts dyed with empty words. And those men realize without saying so that the past is not sufficient to remake magic, that infancy is far away, behind the yellow walls, the letters painted in tar, beyond the hurried steps on rainy nights. They think perhaps that this unknown person might be the grandfather of the dead friend of the friend who is still under the sun
with his hands on a map of the Orient
inhabited by the better women who are to dance naked for us both. But he has remained trapped in the threads of a misty story of
adventures, deformed like the countenance of a child against a window-pane. And that strange man hardly knows us.
So, after writing a few numbers, the two ghosts separate, with relief perhaps. They know that lots of old magazines must die before they realize again, face to face, that a cup of coffee is not very much compared to the power of time
and that very soon a hooded man will travel over the moon
just as in those tales with yellow covers when we wandered around Mars like a patio. But nevertheless, from time to time,
the friends will talk with their children,
will say some phrase in bad taste, a
recollection, a theorem, the pages of forgetfulness
and amongst their children too-for surethere will be a friend
whose face also begins to vanish in air. HORACIO SALAS
picture girl with great aged beings seated at the limits of the eye
the girl escapes into the depths of the brushstroke; all the girl does is to look at us. her opening to the world is still sweet,
she doesn't know the pain of moving;
beyond her hands she contemplates, quietly, our passage understands the fatigue of death. tiny and straight-backed the girl lives in the surroundings of her eyes. CARLOS J. MONETA
the emperor of rain for Elsa
because it rains today, and I can only give you one
drop.
because we are alone, each one of us in his small world of water.
because there is nobody who wants to share you, the way I sometimes accept to leave my flesh and rise in tatters.
because I have interned myself in your body and in the island where, at times, you think.
because I tire of roaming whilst your time rests in my inside.
because I have learnt the continuation of
children;
because, simply, I have need of you, I give you a man. CARLOS J. MONETA
the struggle of poets in the fabulous bark of time
the poets struggled with One, that sentiment of not being tied to substance of any kind.
years later in the excavations made at the side of the sea
quinquireme of poems was discovered deeply
a
sunk in a coral keel. CARLOS J. MONETA
FERNANDO BOTERO. MRS. RUBENS. 1964. COLOMBIA.
Eternity Don Johann Sebastian Bach was a happy sort of fellow,
vespertine friend of good quality beer; when he grew tired of frequenting the gods he did damage to leisure in noisy taverns. He had his friends to delay the sentences: don Fritz, don Franz, don Wilhelm the good harness maker who had two daughters but no dowry being the great artisan of ten Burgos, minimum. All honest people. Peaceable citizens who poked fun at the innkeeper Karl. a
Of a sudden they would fall quiet, for long intervals;
the four of them roamed through the same silence. ARMANDO TEJADA GOMEZ
The wind and the weathercock The world being round, it is recommended not to position oneself left of left,
since, along that slope, those who are absent-minded end up on the right. Cases are known. They are repeated often in these days of confused urgency so he who wishes to
change the flower
from one hand to the other must exercise science and patience.
But not in brief raptures or flashes or
beating with sticks the auguring eagle,
nor in conversed salamancas
of sex and sex and of haired snow. Those rare forms of disgust are often entertainments that do not last
typical symptom that endemic leisure substitutes history with hysteria. a
One must be consequent with fury.
Choose between the weathercock and the wind. ARMANDO TEJADA GOMEZ
The fish dies by the mouth If the dove dies from a slingshot
taking peace out over the fields if it dies as a dove, which is just, then perhaps death has done its duty by life. And if the singer dies of his singing, because as he sings his heart grows, he is dying then of shouting out life or from
and, if so willed, of his own death. Thus should one century be, and another: summer, autumn, winter, spring,
revolving on the shaft of the winds with the rhythm of the keg and the spindle. It should be thus. The assassin
destroys the harmony of nature. He mixes up the seasons and the winds. He cuts off the hands of the potters.
If Peter enters the wood this morning and does not return from hunger and the rattlesnake
if John dies as a soldier and far away and a Napalm drops upon a school,
then life must arm itself to the teeth and massacre death to the marrow.
Then, the century can revolve again, with the rhythm of the keg and the spindle
in the shaft of the watermill wind: summer, autumn, winters and springs ARMANDO TEJADA GOMEZ
...
Americania 1
This body of woman by my side and this tam-tam voice with love dripping upwards in its silence -it rains in Mexico I knowand my memory of new year nights a while ago just
before sleep-we were children in April and we ran naked over the bedroom
pavements just as they were shooting
somebody in Spain I knowAnd this drunkenness of pain hidden in a handkerchief and pressed against the temples almost ordering a shout-a man moans in the
apartment next door
and my fingers travel through the mirror-
somebody has cried Behind the window the city is a whisper
-nothing has changed in my hair nobody has come to visit usmy kindness is a necessary void Why my little one do we digress? are we mad? why did you mark my leg with your blood after breaking all the glasses
in the house? trace a path to my ear begging me to be brutal?
A constellation of broken crystals here whilst you sleep and the light hurrying out of the night-table lamp through
its basket of straw-dry branches hang from the wallI'm alive
I understand you But something escapes you rotating amongst the caresses -your little girl has called you a moment ago she has eyes and a mouth and walks and doesn't know the world your belly is afraid of me I know
Nightmares drag you to pregnancy and in my bed I await your return And a month has passed and I still appear at your door you wait in the darkness as if I came from a world that was strange-
but it's only the West with its minor tyrannies its cobalt bombs its teeth of gold
its guided rockets Each stroke I gave you had a message in it your fear is an immobile dance your body is half a star
your madness is the reverse of contempt your impotence an unused notebook but I love you idiot don't misunderstand me 2
I push off my canoe towards an imaginary destination
-asylums in the mist and barracks bombedbut my mouths know a different breath my nails drag out no scab from within
my knees abandon the old lie -not now radiation and apology-
there are men who are submitted who sharpen their answers spiderwebs above I know Dirt civilized, cybernetic procuracy
here from my ship I see the fall Love boils in fury under the nocturnal countenance
children understand the omen my girl of today imagines the sea A sad tango the Plate
I find its colors behind the railings at the Botanical Garden I love you The throne is on fire, erect fire
the wind brings a dawn of volcanoes
Hurry, Daughter of the Sun I know MIGUEL GRINBERG
To Elbialove unsung Elbialove, they say I only sing of abstract women, of the female Principles, of the madonnas of Geometry.
They say I have not erected for you a single house of music, nor built the sky of words your angel required. They adorn their loves with the master pincers of the jeweler; light with the splinters of the language their public fires to Doris or Amaranth they carry in their sides, very visibly, the arrow of the Archer; and all is easy for all in the rhyme or the ram age in the plume or the plumb.
Elbialove, you know I could cast your name in tides of sound,
and sit you suddenly on the warm knees of the Muse.
But; how talk of the unsung, the terrible and the just, and not irritate the god who keeps
your allegory and my silence?
They ignore, Elbiamine that your delight is a flavor defended by seven bolts of a metal that damages the fingers. They ignore that the keys to your world have been lost; so autumn has remained
outside, and inside
there is only green and laughter
standing to attention with its leaf intact.
They do not know that your Day is like the history of a people and their laurels, where your right hand launches the ships of Ulysses to the perverse gulfs; where your left hand
prepares the wine of the heroes and the ointment of the lepers; where every flag is a child and a reason and a death; and where they gallop
together,
the horses of the sun and of man.
They will never know that your Night has been constructed with the plan of the Alchemists
who scourge the mercury, in secret like riding thieves or lovers on
foot,
with the distrust of witches who scratch at the earth in search of an
onion,
with the meditation of the saint
faced by the skull of a prince, with the sleeplessness of
evangelist cocks, the innocence of frogs who were present at the flood
Elbialove, thus begins the torture of an inexpressible song. How say the sweet, tired animals, for refreshment, walk towards
your voice? that in waking you turn on the rose,
and put it out with your
sleep; imposes
that your exalted heart
its rhythm on a time of sorrels; that when you walk you invent
Space
that your laughing makes the first guitar;
that your lung is the workshop of the air your backbone the foundation of Architecture, your tongue the origin of salt, your kidney the stubborn anvil of war?
Elbialove, your memory is like the resurrection of a happy year.
Elbialove, in thinking, your Reason is a virgin mounted on a white bull.
Elbialove, in your works the Will imitates the footsteps of the carriers of wheat.
Elbialove, when you dream, the building of the world is a laughter of masons. Because your fable is like the dove
who said to the hawk: "I am your bread and die." Your legend is like the king
who went out hunting and returned with the skin of a centaur. Your history is like an army which fell asleep by the grapes. Your myth is like the flutist
who saw the countenance of God
through the holes of his flute. And it is true that your science is a pomegranate inscribed in a right-angle triangle. Your justice is the fish that returns
the rings cast out to the sea. Your wildness the child
of the wind and of the vine. Your charity the broken maw
of the pelican.
Elbialove, they say I only sing to women in the form of numbers,
that your eulogy is like a babe that cannot be born.
Leave them to their world, and let them leave us, me in the mine of your grace,
you in your poet's equator,
Elbiallsilence and elbialovingly unsung. LEOPOLDO MARECHAL
Michel Michel was seven years old and he used to talk to the ants. Michel was seven years old and he would put the photograph
of the dead girl to sleep, and he would ask the worms: "what time is it?"
Hurriedly we went by, and sad, because in our heart the seasons died continuously, and a taste of ash suffocated us. But Michel played at tag on the pavement, at hide-and-seek, at the white timbrel of the butterfly.
Hop-scotch was a game with a longing for wings, and from its dancing rhythm numbers issued, pigeons, amulets, and a perfume of almonds from his mouth. Now I see an abandoned street like a dry bough,
procession climbing the steps of the afternoon. Now I wander through an endless void now I search in the depths and I climb, a
I climb towards never,
I return towards never along the streets. And I walk, one step after another, one after another, one after
another,
but Michel isn't there. And I take the raindrop to pieces, but he isn't there, he isn't there.
My arms droop with weariness, I feel pain in my bones; because I climb the slope of absence, because I climb the street of his laughter, because he isn't there, he isn't there. And then I look for him in the hidden bed
of life and death. And so in the afternoon, which wants to be the sky, my eyes fall inwards, there are pupils in the spirit. MAXIMO SIMPSON
Melancholy hotel The melancholy hotel in the night
navigates towards death, with its black passages where wander field marshals of the great czar Alexander, with its old samovars and sad demijohns, its broken tiles, its extenuated autocracy, its illustrious patina: armchairs in tatters, the minor archaeology of the poor boarder who keeps amongst ruins one half of his soul,
atmosphere of winter from elsewhere the suspicious patios and the tall cypresses an
that defend the house: there's a collector of miniature beings,
gentle entomologist of musical enigma, who crosses the patios with a bar of soap and a piece of thunder; a
a thin reed translator of novels:
every day he eats his ration of consolation, but it's all useless because his soul
is overpowered by the vision of a celestial scandal.
And Maria I vanovna with her large recollections: It was a fine life those days
in the salons of Petrograd. The air convalesces in the beaten pride of the house: there's a strange climate of pardon here,
and old adolescents, like the young spider with the millenary face who installed great and ferocious machines in his small room, that of an ancient dead young man. And there's the little woman who lives in the tenebrae, who dresses in mourning just in case, or in
apprehension, perhaps, in her imperial chamber covered by dust. And there's also the widow of the king of Tasmania with her red English general's hat. And there's me too, I who write this: I look for the balance of things,
which is why I navigate in this deep hotel towards my great destiny:
I, who am happy, serene and Apollonian,
preparing with my slide-rule the laws of the earth. MAXIMO SIMPSON
Of men and years to one side and the other of the ramparts
the years are shut off in their first laps in the eyes opened towards the dawn I speak of the thirst and the liquid sleep of man
of the desires the hope the insomnia at the extreme of the valley the swarm of remembrance and our strong jaws
the tremor the hoarse membrane of the rails the smoke from the settlement I speak of the slow glass at daybreak
the woman in childbirth threatening the midnight with her screams and her pure chains I speak of the muskets and the issuing flesh wounded
decomposed of the hours to come of the fruits of tenderness of the digital eyes mixed into the rallies and the multitudes I speak of adolescent love of the windows of the morning
of the lost expeditionaries
immobile waiting for clarity I speak of children, of madness bordering on poetry
of falsehood humiliation renewed torture
I speak of simple things of extended hands
gratuitous it is necessary to reinvent the world illuminate the eyes see the wideness that is open to our a branch in the
impulse
light
sung to by the voices of anonymous heroes punished by the dead weight of consolation the happiness of ingenious conversations the contagion of the senses the good appetite the thirst of good law the forgetting and the word absorbed in the foliage the afternoon rest at the level of the earth the sluggish debate of the reptiles the placid moaning of the reeds the dust of the roads choking the vines the haste of multiplications and the inevitable void
of signs past and new EDGAR BAYLEY
theory re daniela rocca and so it was that daniela had a chat one day with the angels
slightly crumbled upon their gothic bosoms fatigued by the critical moment but lucid and lubricious and daniel a had noticed their contrary similarities
the doors that open so as to continue living the doors that close so as to continue living the doors in general their missions their angles
angles of the fugues the unbelievable fugues the parallelograms of hate and of love breaking into daniela to open out onto other doors with the help of diverse drugs and alcohols or of signs that lie under the alcohol or daniela taking off her bras taking off her breasts widely divided due to exercise of love in contrary circumstances of the world crazy daniela rocca the magazines say of a poor italian woman who it is true
practiced ferocious methods of forgetting and didn't kill her parents and was charitable and pissed one day in september under a tree and was full of grace like Ave Mary. JUAN GELMAN
from "Fragments" 1
I hear the rain outside, inside I feel the rain. My earth flesh
disintegrates. 2
In the midst of the noise and the terrors a voice calls. It comes to me alone. It is the cry of the Spirit possessing me.
Its message I know. My horrified tongue rhythm. Till when, walls of the skull?
obeys its cursed
Until eternity is consumed. 3
The only truth I possess is my death. My life is the only lie.
4
I come from the night. Towards the night I go. One sole flash of dark light my flesh.
5
This terrible relic of pain: the hallucination of memory.
6
The years of fat cows are the fever's illusion.
7
Gather the grapes of the sea. Make the sky's wine. Get drunk on earth.
8
Of wood was the forest made, of meat your body, of blood
oblivion. 9
Write whilst it is possible. Write when it is impossible. Love the silences.
lOIn the Heavens the stones of sleep are rolling through your eyes. 11
Open the door, the only door. The door of Sleep.
12
Kill the bird. Put away the song.
13
The Holy Ghost to Mary: I shall make you conceive, but you shall remain a virgin, so I shall not feel jealous of my own self.
14
And where shall madness lead me if not unto the heart of man?
15
The god of antimatter fears the fall of matter into hell.
JORGE DE LA VEGA. YOU ARE WELCOME. 1967. ACRILIC ON CANVAS. ARGENTINA.
16
Electra, premonition of the Virgin Mary. Made pregnant by the Spirit of her father she engenders crime.
17
A bird sings, it sings the song of the blood in a world of dust
and agony. 18
Sun, recover in your gullet the sea that has been promised unto you.
19
Oh, your mouth's map, your belly's ocean, your sex's hell!
20
I hear the voice of the stars. She tells me that space is unending,
that time is our blood's utopia. That the stars which inhabit
every atom of our body are also listening to us. That the clamor is total and desperate. That death is a dream from which we shall wake in the hallucinated kingdom.
,
21
It was a land of marble with rivers of dark milk and ships of
gold. The enameled wall of the sky burst into burning clovers. A light as thick as blood filled all the objects and the souls. In baskets of unknown straw human heads were dying. Beyond the horizon leapt a white and wounded sun, drops of pus and mercury were converted into rays. Lined up as in a pruned forest lay necks of snow. A dagger stank of viscera and dread. The scourge of that sabbath of revengeful children slept by the iced sea with a peaceful sleep. 22
On the grass, beneath which the sleeper softly breathed, she loved again, with the same chastity, the same moans of delight and madness. She used of the same love, that still lasted, nailed
in the timeless memory of him who wanders through the King dom of the Dead. .
23
.
She believed in god, the god of the sanguinary breath. The altar
is her body, her sins the host, her memory the infernal bell. 24
Mount Calvary, for protection I pray. Lord of cruelty give me your disease. Because you are god you can fill me with this evil. By harming me you save me from the world.
25
Herodes has cried to you from the sky: Virgin, Virgin, strangle your son. Reign alone on the plains of Hell.
26
Every mother kills her child with the knife in her nipple.
27
Once, on looking through a window, I entered into the dream. All things, and beings, and light, took on before my eyes the wonderful shapes of sleep, were covered with a mist that was
gold and sad. Above all and everything there was a great silence. I have remained trapped, submerged, hallucinated by this light and this wind that come from the unknowable abyss. Does someone wish to cover with a desperate mouth, with empty eyes, the portal that opens onto vigil? And would this someone, who, who knows, whoever it be, if I ask for it tenderly, slash up the throat of day? MIGUEL ANGEL BUSTOS
The shared thoughts, free prose, of BASILIA PAP AST AMATIU
Life was not an object, a form for me; it had become a series of rationalizations. -Antonio Artaud, "Concerning Suicide" Soon he will have the sensation of being misled by carelessness into an animated museum where he will be an episodic or central character, at the
time, in all the paintings, none in the same shape or by the same artist. And from there he will have to begin. -Pbillipe Sollers, "Drama"
same
I
In this city inhabited by millions of inhabitants, in a hyper-civilized
country, on the largest continent, on this planet, our planet, a sphere, the center of the world, a universe divided, infinite, everything so remote, so absolutely infinitely remote and so near at the same time, your head in the oval of my hand (this gem, this small gift) your
fingers, these fingers that stroke the surface of the wood nervously we are
two, soon we shall be three or four, the number can
vary, so can our states of spirit, always multiple, changing, differing,
seizing the least hint, the slightest clarity, oh light, how you linger in TriQuarterly 255
appearing, in shining everywhere, and my eyes seeking the move ment of other eyes, and that abyss all around us
sometimes I do
not understand you, and I make an effort, and despair seizes me then,
the
oh you and me, always in despair of losing you forever search of love, submerged in the deepest of dreams, beloved country each time that I think how far I am from you I shudder with sorrow,
traveling, voyaging toward some farther place, on your breast, be tween your legs, in the depth of your eyes-among mirrors and dubi ous flowers-, and that brilliance, that small radiance, behind the window panes (and behind, a long, shadowy corridor, which un doubtedly leads to a concealed place, the place in which ages back ), the movement which swathes me and does not give me a all alone with my thoughts, with my single moment of peace memories a veritable torrent of memories, of confused images struggling to emerge, happy and torturing at the same time, appro priate to a guilty conscience, one belonging to those who have lived a good deal, who have known all that can be known (and even more), those who have crossed all the boundaries, overcome all the obstacles, frightened by nothing, and who, distancing themselves from friends, deprived of all protection, insinuate themselves seeking danger (perfect symbols of destruction), trusting only in their own temper, their own moral fortitude, and convinced that thanks only to their intuition and to their poor and diminished powers, in spite of indigence, the lack of means, the absurd possibilities of triumph I remember our happiness that afternoon, the sun stroked us, kissed us, inflamed us on the grass, time had ceased existing, and outside our
love nothing seemed to have meaning us
gradually
the slow loss
until the sorrow, invading
and that mortal silence all around us
my beloved, my life, or death, beloved death, a thousand times
desired, sought,
my life is you, everything is in you, I find it in you,
what would my life be without you, an enormous void, a well
of suffering, absolute, total darkness,
a destructive
passion, mortal and eternal like death, with hallucinations and evocations of other worlds, of other lives, surrounded by reminiscences, of useless objects, 256
waiting, an eternal love, farther than obstacles., than hate, an eternal
and the sweet spring nights, the sweet fruits, the play of lights and
shadows, natural reflections and sounds-unknown creatures which our eyes have not yet accustomed themselves to
seeing-the activity continues, nothing has stopped, we have not hindered anything, increments, enrichments, privileged destinies and the absolute liberty with which we soar and let our thoughts fly in an unceasing meditation, possessors of a strong conscience, capable of registering the whole horror even in its worst details
and the infinite move
ment of the words, their different shades, the emotions they embody, a true universe in each
voice, in each gesture, unique, unrepeatable,
impossible to convey exactly during the thousands of nights we have passed together, the surprising attacks of laughing or crying, the multiple expressions on your face, trying to reflect serenity, the passion, near the fire, in touch with nature, and again the liberty, the infinite length, dimension, with the clarity of a mirror, suddenly, on admiring the pleasant sight of you, walking along the street, our eyes really open, our steps sure, smell ing danger, alone or accompanied by your friends, or by that woman who has loved you for so long, who only thinks of you and of the drama you suffer, and who considers herself happy with only being able to walk silently at your side, in such a way that not even you notice her presence, transformed into an invisible, protective halo: light, lithe, flowing, oh, if only the body could fly, could float and displace itself freely like the wind, I am the leaf of a tree, this bird of ephemeral life, we no longer get to see anything, we are already too distant, we ...
have crossed all the frontiers of life and dream
(with the bril liant luminosity of the sun reflecting in the widest mirror) and I cross the widest seas, forests, deserts, seeking a shadow of
happiness, the miracle of seeing you, of contemplating you as you are,
you are evil, all the misfortunes and all the catastrophes, ages and ages of agonies, there is nothing good in you, you would be incapable of engendering anything good and your presence alone produces an
extraordinary terror in me 257
(I love to be alone, in the shade of the wide crown of a tree, tranquilly resting against its trunk, on the moist ground furrowed by roots, reading a book or
simply thinking about you, delighting myself at the same time with the placid beauty of the place which surrounds me J ...
n
The profound emotion produced in me by contemplating the won ders that life offers us, the tremendous vision of insoluble mysteries, this anguished waiting for an end undoubtedly near-the sound of
steps of someone who approaches, your portrait hanging on the wall in front of my work table-the cursed problems, which necessity sets
for me and my absolute lack of means (a young woman crosses my room and greets me, I greet you oh
girl, there is nothing else to do), your portrait, a pallid brunette with sad eyes, with languid lips, how much exhaustion, everything reflects our exhaustion, we have scan dalized so much, we have squandered so much, the feelings that grow old and die, the enormous ambition that dominates us and does not give us a single moment of peace, the passivity with which the weak like me wait for a favorable opportunity
in this sacred
place, in this refuge of our most sublime ideals, where we have we do enjoyed, we have reaped the delights which any man not commit nevertheless any excess, the marks they leave on our body and in our spirit our uncertain, common destiny, the cracks in this building, its scant stability bless the privilege, the modest I would like to be able to love privilege of being at your side you, able to tell you without hesitating, without leaving my gaze I crush against my chest with great delicacy hanging in the void I breathe a perfume difficult to distinguish among all the other sensations I experience I am at your side and speak softly, so 258
that no one not even you yourself can hear
I conceal my feel
I hide behind an expression of indifference ings acting with suitable manners assures me
sobriety,
m
My love waits for me, we are in the dark and verdant depth of my it garden, the garden of my heart, over which flies majestically is a rare day, the best day of my life, I am awaiting the arrival meanwhile, it delights me to talk with you, it is a true pleasure, you have all the virtues, all the attractions that I, for a long time my search nevertheless has been fruitless until now, I threw myself into Mexico for traveling, into knowing other worlds, other regions example, the Mexican sky, the Mexican plateau, the delirium of a and we town, the final decadence of a race gilding ourselves in the sun, thinking, not being able to stop thinking until one but I am not trying to frighten you darling, I am day poof not trying to hurt you with these arms fierce as claws on your frail limbs on your delicate body I would make, I would capsize but why why should we not your icy breasts, your stony breasts have known each other before (with woman, the whip, the and a caress and then again the whip, the whip, whip, the whip the whip, and a caress, the whip, the whip, the whip ), I fear you, your way of approaching, your haste, I would have preferred that does not mean that I do not share the customs of this period, my spirit is completely contemporary, I never look toward the past, furthermore I experience with great intensity my single goal, my single ambition certainly you believe that it is owing to my ignorance, to my lack of convictions, of a cosmic vision, but it is not my fault, nor that of circumstances, it is a question of education, above all of affection amidst this refuse, in the middle of this filth disagreeable to your sometimes behind a con sight and to anybody's view, I keep there are paths temptible appearance, repugnant even, is hidden still unknown, routes totally unexplored, not even discovered (in order to clear a path through the densest undergrowth, through the darkest, most suffocating forest, through this obstinate, impenetrable 259
forest, where no place is sufficiently safe-even the crown of the high
danger, an unforeseen ambush-and where sunlight neven manages to filter through to the spot where we find ourselves and the infested waters-a hellish boiling-incubating innumerable plagues, contaminating everything they touch I do not know if it is prefer nothing closer to madness, to death able to die from the bite of a snake or between the teeth of a tiger a whole if family of tigers, the male, the female, the cubs we separate one of those cubs from its mother, raise it in a domestic surrounding, without privations, where it does not have to face and accustom it to the softest caresses, to playing, to human con-
est tree conceals some
)
tact
IV
Your reaction yesterday was inhuman-I am certain I would have
found more response in Ines, she knows how to grasp, with her ex
finally I end quisite tact, even without knowing all the details by turning to her, in spite of differences in our personalities, our different ways of facing but that does not make a serious diffi we have known each other since childhood, culty between us -when I told you "my heart beats terribly because together Oscar is approaching" (Diana and Oscar: "We have just discovered that when we were children, we lived in the same neighborhood, and not only in the same neighborhood, but also in the same street, on the same block, a few meters away "), he is everything to me, I like him better than anything else, anyone else, I would embrace him, kiss his face, his hands, how foolish I am, I cannot hide it, I am like a
mirror, transparent as water, my conduct is always so simple, my lack of aplomb, of integrity, my gestures betray me, through them -I know how to read minds, to one can read, clearly, into me foretell the future, to order the brain of any man to the point of -although I have often attempted to hide, producing in him
futilely but my suffering did not interest you, you did not give me the slightest
attention, to such a degree that I have come to think that nothing that happens to me or can happen to me, no matter how serious, 260
matters to you at all, that is to say my future, my happiness, abso
lutely do not matter to you, and that, therefore, your supposed friend ship is owing to reasons I'm ignorant of, or if not ignorant of, reasons that had seemed secondary to me until now ("for example, what 1 always liked in you was your practical sense, your rich imagination, your adventurous spirit, your way of standing, of seating yourself and as for your physical qualities ") you cannot respond to Julia, don't keep trying to show me, I've known you for too long, no one ceases so brusquely being what she was, we all know that you pretend, that you live performing, it is impossible to know what is true or false in any of your words, you contradict yourself every minute, you yourself are surprised on dis covering it, as if it were beyond your control or as if you were various persons at one time, nevertheless that preoccupies you less than it should preoccupy you, at times apparently it even amuses you, you have too much imagination, you get excited quickly, you let yourself get carried away by impulses, by situations, and by fault of your if we let you run, fly freely credulity, of your haste as in yes, it's true I'm capable of any excess, any exaggeration these moments, 1 wail, with despair, like a child, nobody listens to me nevertheless, 1 insist without result a family buries its dead, it is my family war with its ruins, with its havoc the over the same scythe, the same implacable flowing, packed jails, hand, there are no exceptions, a wretched destiny, God forgot us, abandoned to our own means, to our own pain and our obses sive memories, the past which revives, interfering, preventing us from living, from coming again to start anew our function has not a light, not a small crevice at ended, slowly we have lost least there's left to us the recourse of mourning but why did they remain so silent, make at least some comment (I have the feeling that they are dead, of having killed them) yes, it is true that 1 was moved, that I lived my role intensely, drama is my specialty, I let myself be deceived, undoubtedly I'm an excellent actress, I'm gifted for that, I must profit by this predisposi to dedicate myself firmly do not believe tion, this facility nevertheless that this story has anything to do with me or that 261
it reminded me,
stirred in me my grief
not at all, my present
situation is, in general, fairly good, so much so that I would dare to affirm that I am happy, I don't have great preoccupations,
an
guishes, my time passes agreeably, without upsets, feelings of frus Carlos and I, together almost all day long, tration, of failure share
I could even affirm that I've come to know and control in
myself even the most minimal wishes, motivations, whims to the point of being able to manage at will for that reason when I now tell you that I'm in love, you must believe me, I'm cer
tain, it never happened to me before, I never desired in this way, I feel full of love, I'm opening up, I'm surrendering, I'm emptying
myself, they are emptying me, Horacio this is exhausting destructive, gradually I'm losing my lustre, my vitality, my enthusiasm wanes, my strength becomes insufficient, as if my soul were sick, broken, my body itself no longer responds to me, it declines to sustain me, I feel it strange, alien, what happened to Andres, happens to me, I notice that I resemble him more and more, I acquire his fragility, his indifference, his cowardice, every in spite of the thing slips from me, slides over me superficially intense vibrations from within, imperceptible from outside a cold but correct man, there are few like him, repelling any stimulus, -it is the retreat, the depriving himself, cutting himself off beginning of the end, the definitive descent, the hours prolong them selves, they become each time more monotonous, more interminable, we cling to the past, to our possessions, other hours fly, another form of life, men change, beliefs, the landscape itself one would now we lack convictions, sufficient agility, only the pride, say the consciousness of what we were, makes us go on, obliges us to preserve until when, I grow weary, I need to rest, to sleep, to sub merge myself in a deep sleep, to live another life, to know other people, to replace my tastes, my passions My name is Polly, we are in Thule, a country surrounded by the sea, save for a small tongue of land which connects it to the continent, our principal food is the flesh of birds, it is a land of hunters, of nomads, of valiant my mother never abandons the house to my brothers
and with respect
men
or
_
but, to forget my past, my own identity, to make my mind a void, 262
completely blank, to begin again, not to know who I am, what this street is, who these people are who so amiably offered to aid me in this difficult crisis that life has fated me with, and who also offered me a cup of warm tea, a slice of
bread, a sip of gin thanks to which I
experienced the most agreeable sensation of having lightened my mind of its many preoccupations, and a heavy blanket to protect me from the deadly chill of this frightful night and without which I susthis is all I have, pect I would never have survived till morning all that existence has offered me until now
or
better yet, to
return to the past, to recapture the beauty, the freshness, the vigor
of infancy, to be, for example, 15 again
ah, yes if I could be
15 once more, I assure you, Elsa, that I would not commit the same
again, I would act in an entirely different way, I would take full advantage of all my intelligence, all the experience on which now I depend "I only want ("I present this orange to you" "I don't like oranges, if I gave half, the other half is for you" it to you, it's because I thought perhaps you liked them your skin has the perfume of oranges ") I don't mean to say by that that I'm repenting for the way I've acted until now, no, I am not repenting any of my actions, I absolutely do not regret my lot, which neither signifies that I believe my history is a succession of lucky shots, that I consider myself a conqueror, someone chosen by fate, someone who has arrived and who for that very reason, from her privileged position having in her power at her disposal I know my defects very well, my timidity, the gaps in my breeding but I think that all my experiences even the most unfortunate ones, far from having prejudiced me, in the long run, I can assure you, have served me, enriched me, the wounds educate, they have their benefit, their reason for being, sooner or later we discover it the cruelty, the indifference, with which we we go on hardening ourselves daily stumble along graduwe to understand our vision our ally begin expands power errors
...
...
increases time is the only thing which in its unrestrainable course undermines our
possibilities, our ability to build, to undertake without great
difficulty until it ends by leveling inevitably
(this is my theory, my 263
way of seeing things, although I don't try to impose it, if I referred to it it is simply because it is still useful at times to manifest one's
points of view and to submit them to the judgment of others, without coming to fall, of course, into excesses of confession, of un bounded surrender to others, with which we invade others, forcing their will, prevailing on their sympathy for us, trying to get from them ), although time, it's true, destroys nothing forever, everything is we have transformed, leaves its imprint, its indelible mark even the most passed through here, we have founded, raised own
remote and isolated civilizations
for that reason we ought to be
attentive, to trust, in a world so fluctuating, so extraordinary as ours, the future is going to offer us, perhaps
great discoveries
great events approach,
for my part I live with the hope of a change
far-reaching that it may free me violently from everything which still holds me, immobilizing me, retarding my steps, restraining my impulses and which makes me hesitate exactly at the moment I'm no more of a I'm sometimes lacking in decision, in valor man than the rest, one of the many millions who inhabit our insignif icant planet, these are not really heroic times we live in, I'm not try ing to deceive myself with absurd illusions
so
now we have sufficient consciousness of our
human destiny
smallness, of our wretched
bound to the wheel, always obliged to complete
the same circuit, subjected to the foreseeable course of events, lack
(fundamentally no different from the most ing liberty, eternity wretched vegetable or from this filthy little creature which flees des perately on noticing our presence, but which finally I flatten with my foot, without there being any use in the slow maneuver it took in I don't know why I did it, what pleasure pushed order to evade it me
and consciousness, consequently, of the foolishness of genius, of the
superior man, despotic, which eludes cleverly all the barriers, all the amply con obstacles, nothing resists him, a brilliant trajectory achieving in short space great firming all hopes, all predictions successes, the greatest rewards over the highest step glory We are profoundly grateful, only upon me my coronation 264
o Lord, with all our heart, for the favors and graces received
until
...
suddenly, at the most unexpected moment, when nothing
seemed to announce it, neither the most watchful eye, nor the most
prescient mind, there begins gradually the wasting away, the decom position, all is tom apart, pulverized (not even rock is immutable) and so slowly, so subtly, to the point of accustoming our senses in order not to be able to perceive in all its dimensions, the transforma what I have tion which in spite of us has started to take place just said is nothing new, nevertheless all through its history human ity has been confirming it each time with greater precision, testifying to it more exactly, in more detail making use each time of a sharper perception, perfecting the method, the organization, the managing of the data, of the materials, until opening out into speed, into the modem efficiency, the level of production, power, science, industrialization, mechanical work, monotony, vertigo, alienation I need to get away from here badly, to change surroundings, profes sion, to travel, to enrich myself, to know other worlds, other re the warm seas of the north, the night falling over the gions islands, the bay illuminated by fire, the light reflecting itself in the waters, the wind, the rain beating our half-naked bodies, and our dazzled eyes trying greedily to lay hold of what in those moments this has been, darling, the best they have the fortune to see vacation we've had in our life
my heart nevertheless rebels, I prepare to fight, I believe in my
strengths, I'm not going to weaken, I have plans, ambitions, and thanks to me I am convinced that when clearing the path one wants something fervently, he thinks about it without end and prepares himself fervently to get it invariably (faith moves we will build our happiness together, a destiny full mountains) of promise opens before us and love, the affection we profess for each other is the best guarantee these are not simple words, generally when we announce something it's because we are sure although it is true, I recognize it, that what I have reached up until now is far from being what I had longed for, but I prefer not to think of that, I am more vulnerable, less firm than I seem, I sink into the worst of pessimisms, the worst of depressions, I lose courage, 265
the serenity, a weariness seizes me, a sadness (I know that in reality what do you offer me father, mother, my love: I
I am alone)
laugh at your friendship, at your compassion, at our profound com munication almost without need of words, at your kindly eyes which promise paradise or seem to have attained it (PABLO to HECTOR· and to ALICIA: "Are you lovers?" ALI CIA to PABLO:
"No, but we seem to be, isn't that so? Everyone believes it; we are very good friends nothing more." (Short pause as if to reflect and then
with emphasis again to Pablo:) "Do you want to be our lover?" HEC TOR to ALICIA: "I have the impression that you are depressed, what's happening to you?" ALICIA to HECTOR: "I don't know ...
if [ myself knew, I'd tell you, but [ assure you that it's for no spe
cial reason, neither is it anybody's fault, it must be because [ feel
myself empty, nothing [ do or have at this time fills me, is of any use to me
" ...
ALICIA to ESTER: "I desire someone, but still [
can't tell you who it is, [ think of him all day, I'm desperate
" ...
PEDRO to ALICIA: "I think that you and Hector would make a
beautiful couple. (Alicia, thoughtfully) PEDRO again to ALICIA: What you will have to do "), I don't want to inspire in the others, I want that by myself, by I have learned to control myself, to dissimulate my own means I try not to show in front my saddest, most unpleasant problems of the others ("I love to look at your face, it has such a soft, ...
serene
it produces a sensation of fullness, of internal
expression
did you notice what passionate eyes this woman has? peace it swathes you in a halo of tenderness, of happiness") but you .
*HECTOR is
a
man
.
.
who, despite being rather uncommunicative, attracts
you from the first moment you meet him; a pleasant, almost permanent smile on
his face effectively substitutes for words; his intelligent gaze similarly establishes with us an immediate and seductive complicity; his silence does not bother us at
all; but rather, just the opposite, one gets, at his side, the sensation of having arrived at a pool of cordiality and peace; he arouses at once our trust and strong desires of
establishing with him a deep and indestructible friendship, since we experience the conviction that not only will he never cheat us but that he will even in time confirm the excellent impression that he produced in us from the beginning; he provokes, moreover, in all who meet him, the interest of confiding in him, since one notices
easily in him the existence of a rich, interior world which ought to be brought into light, which, nevertheless, he resists with great modesty. 266
lose time in this city, in this universe so hostile and cruel for those
like you who don't know it thoroughly, it is not made to your order,
they have not reckoned any space for you in it, we are not able to give you what you need, it is beyond our reach, our possibility, we are cowards or effeminate or impotent or we drag the burden of our our ancestors those who have founded, years, of our history as you can really ap built, saved (their remains, the legend) a whole generation sacrificed, wasted with weak preciate and the idea of death which body, with weak moral fortitude pursues us without rest
no, I do not want to suffer, I want to
suffering, help me hide my misery poor miserable town in the middle of the plain nothing, nevertheless, will be able to destroy me wholly, my resistance is inexhaustible life never really was easy for me, I didn't find things prepared except that with my own hands, thanks only to my effort (my iron will) out of solitude, out of absolute privation I am accustomed permanently at war, but still we are trying to redeem from the ruins, from the depths in time let's thank providence for having saved, at least
cease
v
This is our house, our garden, the nest of our love, we are walking side by side, he gladdens my life, he has been the only one able and my exaltation now
In this
dwelling happiness has been born, and close to us, keeping us company (guess my thoughts, me in a moment real of weakness my feelings, my intentions, surprise ) A building surrounded by nature and in every direction the infinite and dazzling panorama when we still didn't hope for anything and even had lost the illusion of a single happy moment to preserve sweetly in memory (you are not happy but you were I know what it is to attain for a moment the most abso happy lute peace at the same time as the most absolute pleasure and a vibration that I cannot reproduce with images or with words what I lived, suffered, with difficulty I desire you because you are the most delicate being I have known and because what I find in you I have found in a woman for the first time
listen to me
well, I do not believe that anyone will ever love you again as I do 267
) In this room, over this door or over this window, I'm going to hang ever
I'm not only taking account of my preferences (when
I fell in love, provided that I loved someone with complete
intensity
I hope that my words have not troubled you, I did not
want to hurt
you, I assure you
crying in front of me
no woman ever
succeeded in
) and I'm going to fight against all the
opposition, all the obstacles
and with respect to our home, to
that comfortable appearance it acquired thanks to our attention, to the love with which we place in each of our acts true
that there
storms
are
impossible goals, lost causes
It is true, it is
weathering
it is true, it is true
VI
Let's stay calm, what happened is in no sense a catastrophe, if we
coldly analyzed the situation, from any point of view, we should discover that the causes are neither too many nor excessively grave and even though in these moments it may seem irremediable to us, a subsequent examination, more careful and more rigorous, it should permit us to open would bring us to the conclusion to find the way let's preserve above all the lucidity, the up common sense, finally we will find the solution, we shall rise above this conflict, although at times it may seem not even a trace or -and what I say is in no consequence of this crisis will remain way utopian, an absurd hope, an absurd hope the fruit of my despair pro ("too weak a man, the slightest blow transforms him into he cannot tolerate being put off, abandoned, left duces in him to one side, he is capable of clinging obstinately to any false sign, to any ridiculous
fantasy in order to eliminate the anguish which
dominates him and he thus is able to live without anxieties a little
just the idea of failure, of abandonment, provokes in him ") actually, gradually the scene changes, the dreamed-of disentangling finally comes although at the beginning nothing could have let one suppose it has happened to me, it cost me to conhere I am nevertheless, still preserving quer myself, to overcome while longer
there's no reason to blind oneself, to lose one's reason to hesitate, 268
to lose footing, let's maintain serenity, the way out is surely much
suspect (man, in spite of his great capacity, never would be able to contain, to control in its totality ) let's seek the auspicious occasion, seeing in greater depth, foreseeing, it cannot fail, I in assuring ourselves, devoting all our senses
nearer than we ourselves
self-sufficiency don't leave devise a plan, know it perfectly in this way triumph always ends up on our side, it does not depend on chance at all moreover, on the other hand, this will never happen again, we are forewarned your place others free
confidence in oneself,
vn I am going to transform you into a perfect woman, and I am
going to construct a splendid
edifice where you will be able to rejoice at my side until -R. S. bursting •••
In this world, in this heart, nothing better
the world, my heart
what are you waiting for, oh what are you waiting for, we were so
united, so strongly united
tied by knots
I cannot separate from you, I am
in spite of sorrow, the wounds on my back and
within me a tremendous void impossible to fill, is
alas, alas, oh
stupid, ohstupid, we can't go on this way, it is better that we separate, in the most critical moments, most difficult, when I need you most, I
don't count on your support, presence,
do you see? see? this
skin that one intuits under the dress is not in reality skin, I don't
have skin, not even a body, I lack my own life, I'm no more than an
object, fabricated by others, possessed by others, when they touch me I put myself into motion, when they stroke me I smile and only raise myself from the ground when I think I recognize the delicious sound of your voice and my hair (I lack moreover ) and if I'm at your side now, if I cleave to your warm breast, fra -this is true pleasure, the only happiness, the grant, vigorous man who robs us of our sleep, the reason, the supports, to the point ...
269
of going mad and totally losing control
-
...
and if now I watch
you with so much insistence it is because I'm enchanted in contem plating the accentuated curve of your hips, your rounded, erect -for a man like this
breasts
and all the strength that is left
my treasure, no one can live without you and words, my best will, would not be sufficient to show to me, all my breath
but as always nothing has changed and our efforts turned out futile
again, we did not act with good effect, we did not succeed in reflecting sufficiently, we did not take into account all the factors, only the feel ("how sensitive you are, I say ings, the spiritual, moral climate to you, I repeat to you that you are so sensitive") it is not this that
sought, isn't it true that it wasn't this that you expected from me, I wanted to I only tried little monkey, rich little monkey, where a bring you from those fertile lands, so favored by nature, pine which here would need forty or fifty years, in only eleven or twelve can reach its maximum development (don't you think that we
exactly that for which we both have yearned so long?), and where at certain distances, at a short distance one from the other, fresh streams, clear, crystalline, in the depth of I should never abandon this which one can distinguish clearly paradise, I was born here, here I was raised, I saw growing around is marvellous?
me
.
.
.
isn't it
and I am here my God in order to venerate you, give you
completely surrendered, intoxicated and When I lie sheltered in submerged in the sweet nectar of hope
thanks and wait meekly,
...
your arms like a child I think of all this and I grow happy, I half close my eyes and remember all the pleasures that embellish our existence and the existence of all men, and all the possibilities, each of which
tempting than the other but do not speak to her of these things, when she falls into a state like this the best thing is to leave her alone, I've known her more
for some years, I have learned to deal with her, to know what she
expects in similar circumstances, this conduct nevertheless is de very common in her, usually she comports herself like a little,
not
fenseless, penned-up animal, she surrounds herself with a fantastic world created by her delirious imagination, she never smiles, she does not approach others for fear of receiving some injury and only re
lates herself through courtesy, if for her it were 270
everything af-
fects her too much, she is fragile as a mirror, a dove, and at any moment
on
trying to leave
; not being able to leave
death which obsesses her without truce and
and
which hangs fatally
all, lulling us, paralyzing us, impeding our shouting I don't know how to shout, I don't know many other things, in reality
over us
all the things indispensable for being able to survive on this miserable ; no, I was not born for this, there is a depth of goodness, plateau of purity within me, no, they have no rights, your caresses, your no, you have no right, at last show your nails bloodied by gifts the crime, you have done this to me, you whom I love so much, whom I adore the savage howls of the multitude, the inflamed Co clamor of a multitude blinded by terror which tries to destroy for ever 0) no, they are not my brothers, I was not born for this but to throw myself at your feet and kiss the generous earth that nour 0
0
0
0
ishes you
C "Your name is Beatrice, you are the first woman
I've known with such a delicious name, it is a name to be loved, all of you deserves to be loved, you need on the other hand to be loved, you cannot deny it, one notices it in your skin, in the intense brilli ance of your eyes 0" "He is not a good person at all, neither 0
0
can one consider him as a human
being
0
0
0")
I'm going to die Enrique, it isn't that I have desired it from the
beginning, I resisted the idea as much as I could, but now I desire it, it is difficult for you to understand me, to be able to imagine the state in which I find myself,
feel what I am feeling
you would have to be in my place and In my situation, I assure you, it is better
to stop living, it didn't come
easily to me to decide, but I have come to scorn myself enough, so as now to prefer a thousand times to eliminate myself rather than continuing to endure my existence And if you should experience some affection, some sympathy for me, you should help me, I beg you, make one last effort for me, clasp me with violence to the point of choking me and do not give up although in a moment of weakness or of intense pain I may ask you to set me free I am going to burst, to explode into a thousand pieces to free myself finally finally end the pain, the sensation of re I try to convince myself moreover peated, interminable torture making use of all the arguments, all the certitudes within my reach 271
JULIO AUGUSTO ZACHRISSON. EL TORO. ETCHING. ZEGRI GALLERY. NEW YORK.
VIll
Our life was really a wretched life, the tremendous dissatisfaction,
the fear, at times awful, the great necessity
in general things did
not happen as we desired, the constant shocks, the badly spent en
ergy, gradually we were losing our will, our interest, we knew that it could break loose, that it was going to burst at any moment and that unsupportable sensation of solitude becomes difficult to overcome, don't trust therefore in this apparent peace, it is nothing
but the calm of ruination, of exhaustion, an insuperable weariness,
frigid at bottom, insoluble problems whose recognition would pro duce terror in us the entire sacrifice of a life, not blurred nevertheless by shameful de
tails, indescribable weaknesses, preserving always the required lofti ness, an iron will, inflexible, facing the attack, valiantly fighting until the end, holding off the fall as long as possible, undoubtedly, it was not an easy conquest, never had a triumph cost us so much, to the extraordinary resistance forced us to use thoroughly I am not nevertheless accomplish an extraordinary display. a partisan of similar conduct, in no way would I lend myself to futile heroism, to the defense of something which, in spite of our effort, ...
...
...
.
inevitably ures
.
I love all that surrounds me, the innumerable pleas
which life offers to me impel me to think, to act
even the
simple air we breathe has for me IX
My loyalty, my devotion and my ability for war transform me into the principal adviser to the king, I am moreover his most faithful friend, the only one to whom he confides all his fears, all his suspi cions, on more than one occasion I have seen him tremble before me with fear or despair, he grasps my arm with an extraordinary force then-a force that the weak frame of his body would never have permitted you to suspect in him-, without the least loosening
diminishing of his grip for hours, thus remaining crestfallen, with his eyes half-closed, reflecting or letting his imagination run on, or waiting simply for the time to pass, trusting perhaps that with that single recourse the solution will miraculously come, and I repreor
274
senting in those circumstances his only physical contact with the world, a kind of indispensable umbilical cord, and discovering sur prised at the same time-confessing it to me myself-that he needs me as much as I need him, it would be impossible to explain the reasons for our strange and intense union (a friend, unlike the their differences, the advantages of the friend woman we love our com his loss would produce in me, in everyone ship plicity, the long confessions, the impassioned disputes that take up a single thanks to your help, to your mediation whole nights word was enough at times, the complete comprehension, mutual one day a certain coolness which you discernment, the silence thought you noticed in my voice pained you, a certain light shade of something had come up between us, a misunderstanding, irony a distance and my eyes which ran distractedly over the room without lingering on anything special, not even on yours, attentive, affectionate, expectant, and which acquire in the darkness a very with my later nevertheless I succeeded special brilliance ) supplications, with my humility there are those who predict or think My loyalty, my devotion they foresee Daily, during interminable hours, without granting ourselves any breath, we treat the multiple problems which beset our country this great nation of more than one hundred million inhabitants, into whose infinite extension fit all the climates, all the promontories,
forests, lakes, deserts, zones still unexplored, unexploited, the tropical climate, sub-tropical and a blue sky, so intensely blue and immense clouds of birds or insects and this blinding light that
filters dangerously even into our room, illuminating the bed, our the animals, the plants this garden, the flowers I cultivate animal for example, the velvet which covers it, the casing of gold and silver
and you, so similar to it
your gestures reveal it, your brutal and unexpected way of making love
"We used to make love in one of the rooms of the palace, or perhaps in a pavilion in the garden, I can't specify it with certainty because my memory did not retain it-since the dream dates from way back-or really because its decor was itself so vague and confusing. 275
I am neither the queen nor any of the other women whom he loved in the course of all his life, but rather nothing less than his counselor, but far from disturbing me in those moments by the usual character of such an episode, I experienced on the contrary a violent and un
expected pleasure, completely unknown by me until then and which induced me to think-engendered in me the conviction-that I would
really be able to experience it also in reality." I do not look at all for the opportunity, but if destiny or chance should offer it to me, in no way would I avoid it, such is my anxiousness for new and
strange pleasures. I appeared in the dream endowed with long blonde hair that fell to my feet, covering my figure like a thin veil, and which
without doubt the
representation of the remnant of modesty that I still preserved (your golden hair falling delicately over your shoulders, your arms, your hips encircling your breasts, your waist hiding your beauty like a warm mantle of gold, giving you pleasure, warmth your moist lips, palpitat) ing, waiting was
.
Now the blood rushes to your cheeks, you shudder before any of my words, everything surprises you oh king, mirror of my soul
it is really good fortune to rely on a true friend, some
one who shows without restraint all his states of
spirit, all his feelings or opinions with respect to us, even his reprobation of our lack of and who gives of himself, disingenerosity or simply of tact And for it nothing better than a terestedly, dispassionately woman her ability to approach at the most appropriate moment, her way of listening, of understanding, of satisfying our most mini mal desires, our most difficult aspirations, and her way of leaning over us even permitting us to feel her hot breath, the rubbing of her skin, and being able to admire the brilliance of her young, ardent nor like yours, weary of seeeyes Evidently not like mine and your body also weary, ing so much, of knowing so much weakened, exhausted
the wrinkles of your face, your grey hair,
the scars that cover you and which are the result of innumerable
battles and adventures (with weapons always within your reach), so much blood spilled, the possessions lost
diabolical minds in the
service of evil, of unlimited cruelty, destroying without vacillation, without considering at all 276
chopping
And our emperor tolerating or feigning not to know
taking totally foreign part in scandalous feasts, exquisite libations This is perhaps, friends, our last chance to enjoy with violent ardor what we see now, feel, what glides so merrily around us, these lights, these ephemeral movements, the intensity and the liquor with which we moisten our lips and which our emotion causes to spill down to our feet moistening our clothes, our jewels and we, charmed, stupefied, desirous Even our own king, although oppressed by the extraordinary burden of his empire, a powerful empire, huge, lacking boundaries extracting unimagi nable strength from his labor, a labor of centuries ...
oh love, oh flower
marvellous adventure and on the waters of this sea blessed waters, warm bed
translated by Ronald Christ
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.
Nine Paraguayan poets EDITED BY RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER TRANSLATED BY JOHN UPTON
I once maintained that the generation of 1950 (which includes the first four
poets who appear here) had reaffirmed the direction of the new Paraguayan poetry, a course which had been set by the poets who came of age between 1935 and 1940. Today I think this is still partly true. When I first made that
statement, the generation of 1950 was the only one to be fully formed and
clearly defined; now there are two more, of which one at least (the group including Maricevich, Cabanas, and Vallejos) has already shown its own characteristic modes of expression. Now it can be said that three succeeding
generations have corroborated the first. When one generation does not break. openly with its predecessor, but instead sets to work to complement it, to amplify its views and objectives, it is affirming a fundamental position. This can be said only in a general way, since each age group has its own
characteristics and each writer within that group has his own personality. The following selection is offered as a demonstration of this poetic "af
firmation," this search throughout three generations. I have chosen for this purpose nine names who with their diversity can present the idea of a trajec tory. I have included writers who have shown a poetic continuity in their
published work. By this I do not mean quantity: Gomez-Sanjurjo appears in spite of the fact that he has been published only in an anthology-although he will soon bring out a volume of his own. 278
TriQuarterly
JORGE DE LA VEGA. INK DRAWING. 1966. ARGENTINA.
I said earlier that the trajectory of these three generations constitutes a
search. In defining this idea, one must bear in mind that the group of 1950 was
accused of producing a poetry of compromise. This is true: in view of
the socio-political conditions at the time it could not have been otherwise. But let it be clearly understood that it was a total compromise with man and
his milieu-not a
simple poetry of social protest, but a search in depth for the Paraguayan human being in all his multiformity. This journey to the roots, with all its complexity-and here I refer to all three generations naturally presents a "social" facet as part of the total assumption of the society in which and facing which the poet stands to define his function. I use that term to mean an active element,
at times as
a
although that element may function kind of apparent evasion of reality-but as a function of it. It
cannot be otherwise if we remember that the writer is the living conscience
of his society, the multitudinous voice that speaks through an artist and his
work. The following nine writers will
give some idea of the poetry that is
being written in Paraguay today. The fact that the selection has been limited to this number is not to be construed as deliberate exclusion or
ignorance of
the existence of many other excellent poets; it is merely an attempt to show a certain
diversity of tendency and style. 279
"The wind vacated" The wind vacated, I sought the dove. The fish vacated, I found the rivers.
Man vacated, his loneliness was clothed in his bones. Time vacated, its anguish wanders like an old horse without a home. The slow wasting of his days vacated, in his mirror of innumerable fire the loneliness of God turns its empty back.
Reptiles growing gloomy leaves their hide appeased by moonlight Old yellow students with hungry laughter peopling windows One turns the page and begins the first line the first letter and the viper, without breaking rhythm, ascends his endless staircase into the night
Slippery limbs along smooth ceilings I would love to have flowers hands bodies and a museum of perused pages a collection of dead kisses
and to deflate egos that move along to cover lengthy panels of nostalgia.
ESTEBAN CABANAS
"Flour from lifeless roots" Flour from lifeless roots -ancient hunger-
Beyond the doors of homecoming your reluctant cooks are stirring up their roaring ovens. There is a great to-do
for the guest and her whims. First the night with its new sheets. Skin stretched naked over the sea
of blood
-throbbing festal drumEyes tilted to the plane of hands and tongue. Take the adobe's time to draw mire from the depths to bake
Fragment And what say the dead? "The dead implore, too; but they are voiceless now and faceless."
"Will you keep me with you, mother, on the other side of time?"
in the glare of siesta sun. Scabs of ancient hatreds. RAMIRO DOMINGUEZ
Lesions of a thousand hostilities;
abscesses of superstition and gadflies of dread:
three, one two three, one two
the devil is cooking his stew.
Hurry, vampires, run to poison the wind.
Let the children come out first,
saying a paternoster. The bullet has been blessed
and marked with the cross; so
forward, march!
RAMIRO DOMINGUEZ
All on meeting you A blue river ran between your breasts and rose to meet the eager thirst. Your hair a black moon among the stars and in my hands.
Some in the sea like sunken ships others crushed by sudden trees that toppled from my hands like joyful seeds, your ruined bucklers lay rusting for eternity. Lying there in silence, you were the world.
My weather fell upon your face like rain and my desire burned on your back like fire.
We were identical-oh, my girl, how love made us one! Our hands came from distant days to learn caresses
while afternoons went by like islands, like fish and the dawn, because of you, came to meet us.
Ah, but you were mute, you let my questions course through you without seeing them and your intact reality, your light were no
tangible thing
for the hand that touched you to bring your elusive essence into our world.
As if you had risen from the sea cool reality still trembled on your skin
and beads of delicious, beloved liquor
glowed in the sun on your finger tips. In spite of loving me-loving me! strange spears of what sprang up on the banks of your
faraway rivers
and I, watching them sprout up like words,
asking their names and kissing your mouth, plucked your answers like grapes of silence. RENE DAVALOS
Colophon Everything may return, but this bitter, pitted heart, this eager viscous tumbling its dying essence in the blood,
beating, dreaming, aching insomniac, this ancient fragment of my flesh still clinging to the past in a nuzzling embrace,
hoarding yesterdays, austerely mine, this tragic and absurd organ that is forever saying goodby and never going, this scrap of my life for all time must and yet cannot
return.
Evenings flee, summers throb,
dogs gnaw purple bones of crepuscular despair. Old beads, worn and dull,
preserve the silence of rosaries,
evening, time, the sun, the rain, the wind, bitter words, eyes that have looked and moved on, and here within me,
crepitating, this clock of perishing flesh,
always running, always bustling about, this scrap of my life for all time must and yet cannot
return.
JOSE-LUIS APPLEYARD
There is a place There is a place in the world where I live, small and singular, a
place of my own,
fragrance of lumber, and people like myself, with stunted, bleeding, saddened imprisoned hearts. a bit of earth with the
A scrap of earth, a few men, and a cutlass of steel for a river. I live there, a part of that tiny part
of the world. I have friends who have been cutting up time and draining its blood
slowly, unhurriedly, for years. Life is very simple, it is enough merely to perform the rites faithfully: kill truth each morning and let it die every Sunday. One who knows the secret can live
pleasantly and quietly here. Words retain all the purity of their smooth, round shapes, but being words, their content leaves on every lip a different flavor. The grammar is strict, unlike any other. Only in the sounds of the words
is there any resemblance to a tongue I once called mine.
There are clear, transparent synonyms: to be free is to vegetate, mindlessly, to steal is to work, love is hate,
and living is dying without ostentation.
Solitude is called fellowship,
and betrayal is loyalty to one's friends.
Novelty: the same old story. Everything new wears a dark patina of antiquity. There is a place in the world where I live, small and singular. A place of my own, a bit of
rotting earth, and people like myself, with stunted, bleeding, saddened imprisoned hearts. JOSE-LUIS APPLEYARD
Still (fragment) Still the solitary stone Still the twanging wind
and the shaded word Still the muffled light Still the spring alone with its expectations Still men on windy, alkaline
plains still sorrowing still imprisoned Still the new-sown fields
screaming for rain Still still the melancholy. FRANCISCO PEREZ MARICEVICH
Poem 8 A street and houses and I, among them.
Noon looses
Sea bed
its agile beasts.
Where the sea fell back
Life is a drop
came death
of sweat; weariness mires us in its sallow sands.
Everything has sunk into itself obstinate and sullen.
The glare stuns us and runs us through
with its innumerably edged slender knife.
geological lichens and bare bones
skeletons of cows and men's frames But the sea has not given up
with its withered waves its spume of steel hate
immemorially rising with its bitter salts
and its leaden fish
The loneliness of all things
red stone fish
grows hostile
covering the beach of splintered stones
and aches,
the trees
aches
the yard
...
Streets and houses and I, among them.
Here nothing of earth remains
but the color of blood the smell of a blinding cloud of dust
FRANCISCO PEREZ
or, at times, of gunpowder
MARICEVICH
The pollen of rubbish devastation
the tide waves waves of shit rose over us
up to our mouths. RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER
Awakening Because someone wove the dawn
With new-made dew And dozing limes Because someone embroidered alternating fish
On the river's back
And unwound the tangle of misty leaves Because someone roused the fog drip's web The cycling of the zodiac
And crushed the stars like lightning bugs Because someone stripped the tower of its soundless leaves
And peopled the bell with crystal
The foliage Because someone propped open the eyes of memory And lifted the linen sheets Because someone wove the dawn
With wet grass-threads
Because someone sounded the hom of day. RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER
"I cannot find
" ...
I cannot find the right words to say when your hands are
lying in your lap.
When your eyes are huge and wet as if all your fondness were as
flowing from them,
quiet and gentle as the caress of a slender rain.
You shape your lowered eyelids to an arching bridge of silence,
bowed by the shadow of a dream's rope-dancing whims. You surrender to the stricken joy of knowing
that love is a recurring story ending in grief, and you are saddened to foresee
that you will kiss these lips as lovingly again as you kiss them
tonight.
I will empty over you a towering cornucopia filled with stars so your hair may dream a
glittering highway when you let it down.
But I can find no caress for your hands when they lie lightly in your
lap. I do not know the right words to say when your eyes are wet with
gentle fondness. JOSE MARIA GOMEZ-SANJURJO
"If the breeze today" If the breeze today
should glisten in the sun and whisper, as it once did, the perfume of glicinas. *
If this tall window to the wind
should open wide again,
lonely as before, still drawing in the distant blue.
as
If the wind
should repeat her name along the cornices, I would call out to her
foolishly as an echo. With a voice shadowing as
her voice. And I would offer
Early morning
all I own: one last
memory
start of joy.
Since already we were prepared
JOSE MARIA
GOMEZ-SAN JURJO •
Wistaria sinensis, Chinese wistaria.
to love each other
after all our nights
pale with moon faces (after almost kissing under an endless expanse of trees
after almost loving each other) I am ashamed to have so often tried to rebuild your love with patches
in your absence. It was merely a brave embrace and a few long, absent-minded kisses
under a lantern dark at noon and blown out at midnight. But all that remains to love me and for me to love are the words wasted in smoke
with your colors and my colors identical and remote. ADOLFO FERREIRO
Masquerade We stood stubbornly on the edge of dawn
refusing to leave resolved to salvage the sunken wind not seeing our grapnel hung in the wrong depths. Suddenly as though the wind had died the smiles altered
(I still recall that girl with her senseless laugh) and slowly, contrary to what usually happens, the masks swallowed their owners' faces with their sweet mouths.
Everyone was left with his bone face and his blackout revealed; that night to the music of toasts and wine
everything could have died. In the end we were as drunk as the
melancholy faces laid bare
when the masks fell. ADOLFO FERREIRO
from The Drunken Archangels
9 The dead trouble me
waiting in vain
7
under the earth
There are times when no one
in their only suit.
remembers
Death like an anchor
mooring their bones,
eternity like a worm drilling their flesh. Theirs is a dry season, with a ruined well, such emptiness must lie heavy on their
shoulders,
the sad
that we exist; when life shrinks and is too small for us, when it is hard to arouse the blood in our veins every morning
Days of talking with our skeleton, folding inward, and weeping in the dark over these
said bones,
of wearing our own skin for a shroud, and telling life there's nobody home:
geometry of leveling shadows,
the useless calculations of the height
come back some other
ROQUE VALLEJOS
of death. A cold place to live. The wall. God's river mouth.
The shore of hell.
Dust has regained its stature.
Eternity sleeps again. Nothingness begins. ROQUE VALLEJOS
toppled
day.
TWO STORIES BY
DALTON TREVISAN
Good evening, sir He was waiting for me outside the dance. Standing on the corner, he
adjusting the tips of his bow-tie and from a distance, thin as he was and of uncertain age, he was smiling at me. He said "Good evening," and I answered: "Good evening, sir." He walked alongside me, saying that he had seen me dancing with that blond girl. He thought she was pretty with her painted mouth. I replied that I didn't want to see her any more. He said that he had gone through a lot of suffering from women-he gave a furious tug on his small blue bow-tie. He didn't want anything to do with his own wife, he was married. He spoke so much and so fast that his voice became sticky with saliva. I confessed that the blond had kissed me goodnight at the door. I lit a cigarette, and when my hand trembled he asked me if was
she had excited me, but I didn't answer. He said that he understood
quite well, women could drive young men crazy, no pity for them. A blond who attracted young men and their devilish green eyes was
capable of killing. "Look, my eyes aren't green!" He winked at me, once with each eye. Although he was talking
about the cold air, the leaves from the plane trees on the sidewalk, the funny faces on the musicians at the dance, it was obvious that 292
TriQuarterly
ERNESTO DEIRA. INK DRAWING. GALERIA BONINO. NEW YORK.
he was giving me a challenge. I knew nothing about the world, he
said, and his voice grew huskier with every word. He was gently mingling the plane trees, the blond, the very moon in the sky. Oh, the sound of that voice and the snail-like saliva on his gold tooth
...
He wasn't talking about the blond, about me, or about himself; he
talking about someone else-as if I knew who it was. Close to the church we could hear the squeaking of the bats. He asked what time it was. I didn't have a watch. We stopped at the corner of my street and he brought up the blond, he said that she had her mouth painted, she was a picture of wild delights, but was
her look was cold, her blond heart was bitter. He knew about other
mouths, his, for example, which was the queen of a thousand pleas ures.
He wet his lips with the tip of his red tongue: there was the
froth of a dying man on his mouth. He had known me for some time, I had never seen him, but he knew all about me, who I was: "A good
looking boy deserves to sit on the throne of the world." I could even ask him for money, he said, he would give me presents that no blond girl would ever give me. I asked him why he hated her, she was a girl from a good family. He looked at his wristwatch: three o'clock in the morning. I said: "Good night, sir." He didn't answer, his trembling hands 293
climbed up to the knot of my tie: rats with hot and humid jaws ran
underneath my shirt. "You've got hair on your chest!" The tips of his fingers were tracing the peaceful gestures of a person consecrating his chalice.
"Oh, all men do." His eyes opened up towards the moon and I could swear that
they were green. "My, you're strong!" That laugh was the squeaking of an old, blind bat. Now he was talking about the weather, it looked like rain, and then there was an expression. An expression of the blond girl's, the tip of his tongue along his mouth, like a piece of paper underneath a door. "Aren't you afraid?" A cat jumped off the wall. When I looked from the cat to the I saw that the street was empty to the comer: he had knelt
man
down to the moon.
Drops of rain were splattering on the leaves like the steps of people running. I was already saying "Good night, good night, good night." He began to cry, mouth up, biting at the night with his gold tooth. The rain was beating on his face as if all of it were crying, until he hid it behind his hand as his watch glimmered on his wrist. "Is that my present?" He looked at the watch:
"It has meaning for me
my mother left it to me." The damp leaves were shining on the sidewalk. All of the trees ...
dripping. Two doors before my house I stopped.
were
"You'll have to
" ...
It didn't seem right to call him "sir." "
go back now." As if he wanted to grasp my hand; I kept it in my pocket. ...
He asked:
"Wait a little bit longer." I pretended not to see his Adam's apple as it rose and fell as if
he were drinking in the drops that fell down from the leaves. All of the trees were dripping. I stood there at the door of my house-the watch in the palm of my hand. He asked me what time it was. 294
The elephant's graveyard There is a drunkards' graveyard in my city. Way to the back of the fish market and on the bank of the river there is an old ingazeiro
tree-the drunkards are happy there. People think of them as sacred animals and provide them with their necessities of cane liquor and fish with manioc mush. For their regular diet they content them
selves with leftovers from the market. When their stomachs growl so much that it disturbs their napping,
they leave their shelter and, dragging their heavy feet, they fling themselves into the struggle for life. They sink up to their knees in the mangrove swamp hunting for crabs, or, lifting up their red trunks, they watch for a ripe inga to fall. They know that they are condemned like sorely wounded ele phants, and they scratch their sores without complaint as they sprawl among the roots that serve as beds and chairs, drinking and nibbling on some piece of fish. Each has his own place, and they politely warn each other: "Don't use Pedro's root."
"He left, didn't you know?" "He was here a while back
" ...
"That's right, he felt he was going to snuff out and he took off. I hollered: 'Go ahead, Pedro, and leave the door open.'
"
The muddy surface of the swamp has bubbles on it-a lost giant's
steps? Joao puts his fish wrapped in banana leaves onto the coals. "Did Bellywhopper bring the worms?" "Didn't you know?" "Jt us now h e
" ...
"He gave me the can and said: 'Jonas, try to catch some red weakfish.' "
A dying elephant arrives in port from other shores.
"Please help me, friends."
They give him a root of the ingazeiro tree, a mug of cane liquor, and a fish tail.
In the silence the buzzing of the mosquitoes shows where each one is
posted. Sitting among the roots, they are in awe at the mystery
295
of the night-the lighthouse as it blinks on the top of the bluff. One of them amuses himself by sinking his finger into his swollen
ankle, he gets up, and dragging his pachyderm feet, he goes off among farewells spoken in a low voice-so as not to disturb the sleepy heads. The latter, when they awaken, will always ask where the missing person went. And if they asked intending to bring him a bunch of daisies, what could anyone tell them? Each person's path is revealed to him at the hour of death.
The afternoon breeze stirs up the botflies that stick to their deformed feet, and the leaves of the ingazeiro tree are flashing like
silvery lamberi fish-with the sound of falling fruit, the nearest drunk ards laboriously get up and fight among themselves, rolling in the dust. The winner peels the inga and sucks the sweetish core with a greedy look. Blood never flows in the graveyard-the small knife at the waist is to scale fish with. And it is sufficient for them, in
capable of movement, to curse at rowdies from a distance. And as they tolerate delirium, pestilence, the bitterness of gall upon their tongues, the muggy weather, the blood cramps, they also cultivate that obtuse hatred that elephants have for inoffensive little animals: the sparrows active up in the trees, who spit upon their heads before they sleep-their restless chirping is a poison to their drowsiness. On the shore they watch the fishermen dipping in their oars. "Have you got a few fish, buddy?" The fisherman throws them the fish he has discarded in the
bottom of his boat. "What makes you drink, Bait-Sucker?"
"A mother's curse, what the hell." "Doesn't Chico want some fish?" "Poor guy, he died from a tumor." With the haste his swollen feet allow him, he takes leave of his
companions dozing along the bank, forgetting to bait their hooks. Spitting out the black inga seeds into the water, the others ask him no questions: the ivory tusks pointing the way are empty bottles. Chico disappears into the sacred graveyard among the skeletons of grotesque feet that rise up in the moonlight. translated by Gregory Rabassa 296
EIGHT POEMS BY PABLO NERUDA
"It was the grape's autumn" It was the grape's autumn.
The dense vinefield shivered. The white clusters, half-hidden, found their mild fingers cold, and the black grapes were filling their tiny stout udders
from a round and secret river. The man of the house, an artisan with a hawk's face, read to me
the pale earth book about the darkening days. His kindliness saw deep into the fruit, the trunk of the vine, and the work of the pruning knife, which returns to the tree its simple goblet shape. He talked to his horses as if to immense
boys: behind him
the five cats trailed, and the dogs of that household, some arched and slow
moving,
others running crazily under the cold peach trees.
He knew each branch, each scar on his trees,
and his ancient voice taught me
while he was stroking his horses.
translated by Robert Bly and James Wright
297
They receive instructions against Chile But we have to see behind all these, there is something
behind the traitors and the gnawing rats, an
empire which sets the table,
and serves up the nourishment and the bullets.
They want to repeat their great success in Greece. Greek playboys at the banquet, and bullets for the people in the mountains: we'll have to destroy the flight of the new Victory of Samothrace, we'll have to hang, kill, lose men, sink the murderous knife held to us from New York, we'll have to use fire to break the spirit of the man who was emerging
in all countries as if born from the earth that had been splashed with blood. We have to arm Chiang and the vicious Videla,
give them money for prisons, wings so they can bomb their own populations, give them a hand-out, a few dollars, and they do the rest, they lie, bribe, dance on the dead bodies and their first ladies wear the most expensive minks. The suffering of the people does not matter: copper executives need this sacrifice: facts are facts: the generals retire from the army and serve
vice-presidents of the Chuquicamata Copper Firm, and in the nitrate works the "chilean" general decides with his trailing sword how much the natives may mention when they apply for a raise in wages. In this way they decide from above, from the roll of dollars, as
in this way the dwarf traitor receives his instructions, and the generals act as the police force, and the trunk of the tree of the country rots.
translated by Robert Bly and James Wright
Hunger in the south To all this I am a witness:
the wailing in the coal at Lota, the crumpled shadow of the degraded Chilean
bitterly hacking at the deepest seam, life, birth among the cruel ashes
-
death,
-
cowering, drooping as if coming into the world and leaving it meant black dust and flames, and all that you could expect
-
coughing in winter and a horse stepping into black water where, like a dead knife, a
eucalyptus leaf has fallen.
translated by Malcolm 1. Parr
Murderer's sleep The belt wine-spotted
the glasses crushed shattered the light of dawn run wild
in the whore's sob a moistened rose
the fever wind
cutting through the paneless windows inside the killer sleeps his boots still on bitter smell from pistols blue color of lost eyes. translated by Malcolm 1. Parr
Ode to broken things Things keep breaking in the home as
though impelled
by an unseen and willful brute: not my hands, not yours,
not the girls
with the hard nails and starry feet:
it wasn't anything or anyone, it wasn't the wind, it wasn't the orange noon, or the earth's
shadows, it wasn't a nose, an elbow, a
curving hip,
an ankle
And the clock
or the air:
from which the sound
the plate split, the lamp slipped
was
and all the flowerpots toppled
our life's
one
by one,
voice,
the hidden
in the middle of October,
thread
crimson-heaped, weighed down with violets,
of the weeks,
joining
and one other pot, empty,
so many hours
spinning, spinning, spinning, through the winter
by one to honey and silence,
until all that was left
to so many births and tasks,
was
powder,
a shattered
memory, a glowing dust.
one
even that clock
fell and among the broken pieces of glass its delicate blue entrails throbbed and its long heart spun out.
Life goes on grinding
glasses, wearing out clothes, destroying, pulverizing patterns, and what time lets last is as it were an island or a
ship at sea,
passing, locked in by brittle dangers, and the menaces of relentless waters. Let's put everything at once,
clocks, plates, wineglasses carved in ice, in one sack and carry our treasures down to the sea:
and all our possessions
will be lost
smashing and roaring like a river bursting its banks; and may the sea
in its toiling tides
bring back for us all those useless things that nobody breaks but were broken nevertheless.
translated by Malcolm J. Parr
from Lautreamont" regained I
Arriving in Paris, he found there was much to be done. Here, the streets were authentically human, drilled through the city like tunnels, or as the worm works in the dark of the cheese, in winter's barbarity. The long houses loomed up, as if to belittle a boast of omniscience that scuttled away like a rat in a granary,
leaving only a shadow, the poisonous life of routine, to harry the occupants. He bought a spray of minuscule flowers in the market at HaIles, breathed the militant nausea of Clignancourt; not a stone went unturned as the little Isidoro
pared his face to the width of a tooth, turned sallow and gaunt as the waning moon of the pampas, took on its diminished equivalence day after day. Night pillaged his face with each passing hour the Parisian night that swallows whole regiments, heroes and dynasties, the young and the aged, the haves and have-nots and the whores; Ducasse was alone, to bear what was left of the light, hand-to-hand to defy the devourer, fabricate wolves to keep watch on the light, consolidate anguish and salvage some part of his life to thrust past the world's evil in order to come on the good. -
-
*Isidore Ducasse, who later assumed the name of Ie Comte de Lautreamont, 1846-
1870, born in Montevideo, Uruguay, educated in the lycees of France, died ill the faubourg Montmartre. Author of Les Chants de Maldoror, destined to become a surrealist classic after his death.
D
I knew him in Uruguay
already so tiny he wandered inside the guitars of July and was lost. -
It was a time of warfare and smoke,
when rivers ran rampant, floodwaters swamped all the plummets. He hardly had time to be born.
Forced backward again and again, climbing every desire,
traveling back to his origins, at last he arrived when the blood and the drums were hammering hard at his door and Montevideo blazed like the eyes of a puma. Time's turbulence stained the world purple, an assassin's
pavilion in rags.
A bellicose wind from the forests
blew stench and confusion over the blaze of the prairies. Rifles lay smashed on the riverbanks; sank underneath; and at midnight
turned themselves into guitars. The wind blew its barcaroles, dividing the kisses and tears. V
From the child we recover the enigmas he left us: the smashed gift of his songs, the shadowy wings of the ship of his mourning,
his black destination, known to us now. His word is revealed.
Behind every shadow, a wheat-blade. In all eyes, an iris to light up the dark. A rose in the space of his
probity. Hope wafting up from the suppliant. Love brimming its cup. Duty's immaculate child in the whorl of the wood. The dew racing to rally the leaf. The good, with more eyes than the stars.
Without castles, without medals: his honor. translated by Ben Belitt
Opium in the East From Singapore on, all smelled of opium. The good folk of England know how to manage.
In Geneva they ranted about an underground market in drugs while every Colonial port smoked in a pillar of authorized opium
stamped with a government number and a juicy entitlement. The legitimate gentleman from London impeccably dressed like a nightingale (pin-stripes on his cutaway, starched like an armament) trilled about "shadow-merchants," but here in the East he showed his true colors and peddled his lethargies on every street corner.
I wanted to know. I went in. There were the ledges with the addicts laid out,
nobody spoke, nobody laughed, all seemed to be smoking in silence. Then a pipe next to me crackled as the needle-point crossed with the flame: a tepid well-being rose with the milky effluvium, and the wraith of his ecstasy blissfully entered the man, some faraway door opened up on a succulent void: the flower of the opium's sloth, the immobilized joy of pure act transcending all motion.
All turned to purity, or seemed to be made pure, all slithered on hinges and oils till the quick of existence was touched
and nothing was left for the flame, nobody mourned,
there was no room for agony, no coal for the wrath of the world.
I saw them: poor, fallen creatures, all,
peons and coolies delivered from rickshaws and plantations, trotters trodden to pieces, street mongrels,
the injured and indigent.
Here, after blood-lettings, after leg-work devoid of all living, brute beasts of burden
plodding and plodding and sweating and sweating, sweating blood, deprived of their soulsit was here they all came, in the end. Prostrate and alone,
stretched out to the length of their hard little hooves, each came with his hunger and the price to buy into the sweets of a
shady prerogative
all gathered under a torpor's corolla,
dream or delusion, good luck or disaster-this was the peace that eluded their lifetime, at
last, their
place in the world, under a star, in the end. translated by Ben Belitt
Religion in the East It came to me there in Rangoon-all gods are our
enemies, like the God
of our humbled humanity. The gods of the worked alabaster,
poised like white whales; gods gilded like sheaves or wreathed in the crime
of conception, like serpents; the finical nudes of the Buddha
smiling into his cocktail of eternal vacuity like Christ on his odious cross each stopping at nothing, taking
the kingdom of heaven by force,
ready with pistol and ulcer to purchase our piety or bum in the blood: the implacable gods of the human who conceal every cowardice. It came to me there in Rangoon,
till the whole earth stank of heaven and the heavenly junk turned to chattel. translated by Ben Belitt
Paseo JOSE DONOSO
1
This happened when I was very young, when my father and Aunt
Mathilda, his maiden sister, and my uncles Gustav and Armand were still living. Now they are all dead. Or I should say, I prefer to think they are all dead: it is too late now for the questions they did not ask when the moment was right, because events seemed to freeze all of them into silence. Later they were able to construct a wall of forgetfulness or indifference to shut out everything, so that they would not have to harass themselves with impotent conjecture. But then, it may not have been that way at all. My imagination and my memory may be deceiving me. After all, I was only a child then, with whom they did not have to share the anguish of their inquiries, if they made any, nor the result of their discussions.
What was I to think? At times I used to hear them closeted in the
library, speaking softly, slowly, as was their custom. But the mas sive door screened the meaning of their words, permitting me to hear only the grave and measured counterpoint of their voices. What was it they were saying? I used to hope that, inside there, abandon ing the coldness which isolated each of them, they were at last TrlQuarterly 307
speaking of what was truly important. But I had so little faith in this that, while I hung around the walls of the vestibule near the library door, my mind became filled with the certainty that they had chosen to forget, that they were meeting only to discuss, as always, some case in jurisprudence relating to their specialty in maritime law. Now I think that perhaps they were right in wanting to blot out everything. For why should one live with the terror of having to acknowledge that the streets of a city can swallow up a human being, leaving him without life and without death, suspended as it were, in a dimension more dangerous than any dimension with a name? One day, months after, I came upon my father watching the street from the balcony of the drawing-room on the second floor. The sky was close, dense, and the humid air weighed down the large, limp leaves of the ailanthus trees. I drew near my father, eager for an answer that would contain some explanation: "What are you doing here, Papa?" I murmured. When he answered, something closed over the despair on his face, like the blow of a shutter closing on a shameful scene. "Don't you see? I'm smoking he replied. And he lit a cigarette. It wasn't true. I knew why he was peering up and down the street, his eyes darkened, lifting his hand from time to time to stroke his smooth chestnut whiskers: it was in hope of seeing them re appear, returning under the trees of the sidewalk, the white bitch trotting at heel. Little by little I began to realize that not only my father but all of them, hiding from one another and without confessing even to themselves what they were doing, haunted the windows of the house. If someone happened to look up from the sidewalk he would surely have seen the shadow of one or another of them posted beside a curtain, or faces aged with grief spying out from behind the "
...
window panes. In those days the street was paved with quebracho wood, and
under the ailanthus trees a clangorous streetcar used to pass from time to time. The last time I was there neither the wooden pavements nor the
mg,
streetcars existed any longer. But our house was still stand
narrow
308
and vertical like
a
little book
pressed between the
bulky volumes of new buldings, with shops on the ground level and a crude sign advertising knitted undershirts covering the bal conies of the second floor. When we lived there all the houses were tall and slender like our own.
The block was always happy with the games of children
playing in the patches of sunshine on the sidewalks, and with the gossip of the servant girls on their way back from shopping. But our house was not happy. I say it that way, "it was not happy" in stead of "it was sad", because that is exactly what I mean to say. The word "sad" would be wrong because it has too definite a con
notation, a weight and a dimension of its own. What took place in our house was exactly the opposite: an absence, a lack, which because it was unacknowledged was irremediable, something that if it weighed, weighed by not existing.
My mother died when I was only four years old, so the presence of a woman was deemed necessary for my care. As Aunt Mathilda was
the only woman in the family and she lived with my uncles
Armand and Gustav, the three of them came to live at our house,
which was spacious and empty.
discharged her duties towards me with that propriety which was characteristic of everything she did. I did not doubt that she loved me, but I could never feel it as a palpable ex perience uniting us. There was something rigid in her affections, as there was in those of the men of the family. With them, love existed confined inside each individual, never breaking its boundaries to express itself and bring them together. For them to show affection was to discharge their duties to each other perfectly, and above all not to inconvenience, never to inconvenience. Perhaps to express love in any other way was unnecessary for them now, since they had so long a history together, had shared so long a past. Perhaps the tenderness they felt in the past had been expressed to the point of satiation and found itself stylized now in the form of certain ac tions, useful symbols which did not require further elucidation. Respect was the only form of contact left between those four iso Aunt Mathilda
lated individuals who walked the corridors of the house which, like a
book, showed only its narrow spine to the street. I, naturally, had no history in common with Aunt Mathilda. 309
How could I, if I was no more than a child then, who could not
understand the gloomy motivations of his elders? I wished that their confined feeling might overflow and express itself in a fit of rage, for example, or with some bit of foolery. But she could not guess this
desire of mine because her attention was not focused on me: I was
peripheral to her life, never central. And I was not central because the entire center of her being was filled up with my father and my uncles. Aunt Mathilda was born the only woman, an ugly woman moreover, in a family of handsome men, and on realizing that for her marriage was unlikely, she dedicated herself to looking out for the comfort of those three men, by keeping house for them, by taking care of their clothes and providing their favorite dishes. She did these things without the least servility, proud of her role because she did not question her brothers' excellence. Furthermore, like all women, she possessed in the highest degree the faith that physical well-being is, if not principal, certainly primary, and that to be neither hungry nor cold nor uncomfortable is the basis for what ever else is good. Not that these defects caused her grief, but rather they made her impatient, and when she saw affliction about her she took immediate steps to remedy what, without doubt, were errors in a world that should be, that had to be, perfect. On another plane, she was intolerant of shirts which were not stupendously well-ironed, of meat that was not of the finest quality, of the humidity that owing to someone's carelessness had crept into the cigar-box. After dinner, following what must have been an ancient ritual in the family, Aunt Mathilda went upstairs to the bedrooms, and in each of her brothers' rooms she prepared the beds for sleeping, part ing the sheets with her bony hands. She spread a shawl at the foot of the bed for that one, who was subject to chills, and placed a feather pillow at the head of this one, for he usually read before going to sleep. Then, leaving the lamps lighted beside those enor mous beds, she came downstairs to the billiard room to join the men for coffee and for a few rounds, before, as if bewitched by her, they retired to fill the empty effigies of the pajamas she had arranged so carefully upon the white, half-opened sheets. But Aunt Mathilda never opened my bed. Each night, when I a person
310
went up to my room, my heart thumped in the hope of finding my
bed opened with the recognizable dexterity of her hands. But I had to adjust myself to the less pure style of the servant girl who was
charged with doing it. Aunt Mathilda never granted me that mark of importance because I was not her brother. And not to be "one of my brothers" seemed to her a misfortune of which many people were victims, almost all in fact, including me, who after all was only the son of one of them. Sometimes Aunt Mathilda asked me to visit her in her room where she sat sewing by the tall window, and she would talk to me. I listened attentively. She spoke to me about her brothers' integrity
lawyers in the intricate field of maritime law, and she extended to me her enthusiasm for their wealth and reputation, which I would carry forward. She described the embargo on a shipment of oranges, told of certain damages caused by miserable tugboats manned by drunkards, of the disastrous effects that arose from the demurrage of a ship sailing under an exotic flag. But when she talked to me of ships her words did not evoke the hoarse sounds of ships' sirens that I heard in the distance on summer nights when, kept awake by the heat, I climbed to the attic, and from an open window watched the far-off floating lights, and those blocks of darkness surrounding the city that lay forever out of reach for me because my life was, and would ever be, ordered perfectly. I realize now that Aunt Mathilda did not hint at this magic because she did not know of it. It had no place in her life, as it had no place in the life of anyone destined to die with dignity in order afterwards to be installed in a comfortable heaven, a heaven identical to our house. Mute, I listened to her as
words, my gaze fastened on the white thread that, as she stretched it against her black blouse, seemed to capture all of the light from
the window. I exulted at the world of security that her words pro
jected for me, that magnificent straight road which leads to a death that is not dreaded since it is exactly like this life, without anything
fortuitous or unexpected. Because death was not terrible. Death was the final incision, clean and definitive, nothing more. Hell existed, of course, but not for us. It was rather for
chastising the other in
habitants of the city and those anonymous seamen who caused the 311
damages that, when the cases were concluded, filled the family coffers. Aunt Mathilda was so removed from the idea of fear that, since I now know that love and fear go hand in hand, I am tempted to
think that in those days she did not love anyone. But I may be mis taken. In her rigid way she may have been attached to her brothers
by a kind of love. At night, after supper, they gathered in the billiard room for a few games. I used to go in with them. Standing outside that circle of imprisoned affections, I watched for a sign that would show me the ties between them did exist, and did, in fact, bind. It is strange that my memory does not bring back anything but shades of indeterminate grays in remembering the house, but when I evoke that hour, the strident green of the table, the red and white of the balls and the little cube of blue chalk become inflamed in my mem ory, illumined by the low lamp whose shade banished everything else into dusk. In one of the family's many rituals, the voice of Aunt
Mathilda rescued each of the brothers by turn from the darkness, so that
they might make their plays.
"Now, Gustav
" ...
And when he leaned over the green table, cue in hand, Uncle
Gustav's face was lit up, brittle as paper, its nobility contradicted
by his eyes, which were too small and spaced too close together. Finished playing, he returned to the shadow, where he lit a cigar whose smoke rose lazily until it was dissolved in the gloom of the ceiling. Then his sister said: "All right, Armand And the soft, timid face of Uncle Armand, with his large, sky blue eyes concealed by gold-rimmed glasses, bent down underneath the light. His game was generally bad because he was "the baby" "
...
as
Aunt Mathilda sometimes referred to him. After the comments
aroused by his play he took refuge behind his newspaper and Aunt
Mathilda said:
"Pedro, your turn
" ...
I held my breath when I saw him lean over to play, held it even
tightly when I saw him succumb to his sister's command. I prayed, as he got up, that he would rebel against the order estab lished by his sister's voice. I could not see that this order was in more
312
itself a kind of rebellion, constructed by them as a protection against
chaos, so that they might not be touched by what can be neither explained nor resolved. My father, then, leaned over the green cloth, his practiced eye gauging the exact distance and positions of the
billiards. He made his play, and making it, he exhaled in such a way that his moustache stirred about his half-opened mouth. Then he handed me his cue so I might chalk it with the blue cube. With this minimal role that he assigned to me, he let me touch the circle that united him with the others, without letting me take part in it more than
tangentially.
Now it was Aunt Mathilda's tum. She was the best player. When I saw her face, composed as if from the defects of her brothers'
faces, coming out of the shadow, I knew that she was going to win. And yet
.
.
.
had I not seen her small eyes light up that face so like
brutally clenched fist, when by chance one of them succeeded in beating her? That spark appeared because, although she might have wished it, she would never have permitted herself to let any of them win. That would be to introduce the mysterious element of love into a game that ought not to include it, because affection should remain in its place, without trespassing on the strict reality of a a
carom shot.
2
I never did like dogs. One may have frightened me when I was very young, I don't know, but they have always displeased me. As
there were no dogs at home and I went out very little, few occasions
presented themselves to make me uncomfortable. For my aunt and uncles and for my father, dogs, like all the rest of the animal king dom, did not exist. Cows, of course, supplied the cream for the dessert that was served in a silver dish on Sundays. Then there were the birds that chirped quite agreeably at twilight in the branches of the elm tree, the only inhabitant of the small garden at the rear of the house. But animals for them existed only in the proportion in which they contributed to the pleasure of human beings. Which is to say that dogs, lazy as city dogs are, could not even dent their
imagination with a possibility of their existence. Sometimes, on Sunday, Aunt Mathilda and I used to go to mass 313
early to take communion. It was rare that I succeeded in concen trating on the sacrament, because the idea that she was watching me without looking generally occupied the first plane of my conscious mind. Even when her eyes were directed to the altar, or her head
bowed before the Blessed Sacrament, my every movement drew her attention to it. And on leaving the church she told me with sly
reproach that it was without doubt a flea trapped in the pews that prevented me from meditating, as she had suggested, that death is the good foreseen end, and from praying that it might not be painful, since that was the purpose of masses, novenas and communions.
This was such a morning. A fine drizzle was threatening to tum into a storm, and the quebracho pavements extended their shiny
fans, notched with streetcar rails, from sidewalk to sidewalk. As I was cold and in a hurry to get home I stepped up the pace beside
Aunt Mathilda, who was holding her black mushroom of an um brella above our heads. There were not many people in the street since it was so early. A dark-complexioned gentleman saluted us
without lifting his hat, because of the rain.
My aunt was in the
process of telling me how surprised she was that someone of mixed blood had bowed to her with so little show of attention, when sud
denly, near where we were walking, a streetcar applied its brakes with a screech, making her interrupt her monologue. The conductor looked out through his window: "Stupid dog!" he shouted. We stopped to watch. A small white bitch escaped from between the wheels of the streetcar and, limping painfully, with her tail between her legs, took refuge in a doorway as the streetcar moved on again. "These dogs," protested Aunt Mathilda. "It's beyond me how they are allowed to go around like that." Continuing our way we passed by the bitch huddled in the cor ner of a doorway. It was small and white, with legs which were too short for its size and an ugly pointed snout that proclaimed an entire genealogy of misalliances: the sum of unevenly matched breeds which for generations had been scouring the city, searching for food in the garbage cans and among the refuse of the port. She was 314
drenched, weak, trembling with cold or fever. When we passed in front of her I noticed that my aunt looked at the bitch, and the bitch's eyes returned her gaze. We continued on our way home. Several steps further I was on
the point of forgetting the dog when my aunt surprised me by
abruptly turning around and crying out: "Psst! Go away
...
!"
She had turned in such absolute certainty of finding the bitch
following us that I trembled with the mute question which arose from my surprise: How did she know? She couldn't have heard her, since she was following us at an appreciable distance. But she did not doubt it. Perhaps the look that had passed between them of which I saw only the mechanics-the bitch's head raised slightly toward Aunt Mathilda, Aunt Mathilda's slightly inclined toward the bitch -contained some secret commitment? I do not know. In any case,
turning to drive away the dog, her peremptory "psst" had the sound of something like a last effort to repel an encroaching destiny. It is possible that I am saying all this in the light of things that happened later, that my imagination is embellishing with significance what was only trivial. However, I can say with certainty that in that mo ment I felt a strangeness, almost a fear of my aunt's sudden loss of
dignity in condescending to tum around and confer rank on a sick and filthy bitch. We arrived home. We went up the stairs and the bitch stayed down below, looking up at us from the torrential rain that had just been unleashed. We went inside, and the delectable process of breakfast following communion removed the white bitch from my mind. I have never felt our house so protective as that morning, never
rejoiced so much in the security derived from those old walls
that marked off my world. In one of my wanderings in and out of the empty sitting-rooms, I pulled back the curtain of a window to see if the rain promised to let up. The storm continued. And, sitting at the foot of the stairs
still scrutinizing the house, I saw the white bitch. I dropped the curtain so that I might not see her there, soaked through and looking
like one spellbound. Then, from the dark outer rim of the room, 315
surprised me. Bent over to strike a match to the kindling wood already arranged in the fireplace, she Aunt Mathilda's low voice
asked: "Is it still there?"
"What?" I knew what.
"The white bitch
" ...
I answered yes, that it was.
3
It must have been the last storm of the winter, because I remember
quite clearly that the following days opened up and the nights began to grow warmer.
The white bitch stayed posted on our doorstep scrutinizing our windows. In the mornings, when I left for school, I tried to shoo her
away, but barely had I boarded the bus when I would see her reap pear around the comer or from behind the mailbox. The servant
girls also tried to frighten her away, but their attempts were as fruit less as mine, because the bitch never failed to return.
Once, we were all saying good-night at the foot of the stairs before going up to bed. Uncle Gustav had just turned off the lights, all except the one on the stairway, so that the large space of the vestibule had become peopled with the shadowy bodies of furniture.
Aunt Mathilda, who was entreating Uncle Armand to open the win dow of his room so a little air could come in, suddenly stopped
speaking, leaving her sentence unfinished, and the movements of all of us, who had started to go up, halted. "What is the matter?" asked Father, stepping down one stair. "Go on up," murmured Aunt Mathilda, turning around andgaz
ing into the shadow of the vestibule. But we did not go up. The silence of the room was filled with the secret voice of each
object: a grain of dirt trickling down between the wallpaper and the wall, the creaking of polished woods, the quivering of some loose crystal. Someone, in addition to ourselves, was where we were. A small white form came out of the darkness near the service door. The 316
bitch crossed the vestibule, limping slowly in the direction of Aunt
Mathilda, and without even looking at her, threw herself down at her feet. It was as though the immobility of the dog enabled us to move
again. My father came down two stairs. Uncle Gustav turned on the light. Uncle Armand went upstairs and shut himself in his room. "What is this?" asked my father. Aunt Mathilda remained still.
"How could she have come in?" she asked aloud. Her question seemed to acknowledge the heroism
implicit in
having either jumped walls in that lamentable condition, or come into the basement through a broken pane of glass, or fooled the servants' vigilance by creeping through a casually opened door. "Mathilda, call one of the girls to take her away," said my father, and went upstairs followed by Uncle Gustav. We were left alone looking at the bitch. She called a servant, the telling girl to give her something to eat and the next day to call a veterinarian.
"Is she going to stay in the house?" I asked.
"How can she walk in the street like that?" murmured Aunt
Mathilda. "She has to get better so we can throw her out. And she'd better get well soon because I don't want animals in the house." Then she added:
"Go upstairs to bed." She followed the girl who was
carrying the dog out. I sensed that ancient drive of Aunt Mathilda's to have
every
thing go well about her, that energy and dexterity which made her sovereign of immediate things. Is it possible that she was so secure within her limitations, that for her the only necessity was to over come
imperfections, errors not of intention or motive, but of con
dition? If so, the white bitch was
going to get well. She would see to it because the animal had entered the radius of her power. The
veterinarian would bandage the broken leg under her watchful and protected by rubber
eye, and an she herself would gloves apron,
take charge of cleaning the bitch's
pustules with disinfectant that
would make her howl. But Aunt Mathilda would remain deaf 317
to
those howls, sure that whatever she was doing was for the best. And so it was. The bitch stayed in the house. Not that I saw
her, but I could feel the presence of any stranger there, even though confined to the lower reaches of the basement. Once or twice I saw
Aunt Mathilda with the rubber gloves on her hands, carrying a vial
full of red liquid. I found a plate with scraps of food in a passage of the basement where I went to look for the bicycle I had just been
given. Weakly, buffered by walls and floors, at times the suspicion of a bark reached my ears. One afternoon I went down to the kitchen. The bitch came in,
painted like a clown with red disinfectant. The servants threw her out without paying her any mind. But I saw that she was not hob bling any longer, that her tail, limp before, was curled up like a feather, leaving her shameless bottom in plain view. That afternoon I asked Aunt Mathilda:
"When are you going to throw her out?" "Who?" she asked.
She knew perfectly well. "The white bitch." "She's not well yet," she replied. Later I thought of insisting, of telling her that surely there was
nothing now to prevent her from climbing the garbage cans in search of food. I didn't do it because I believe it was the same night that Aunt Mathilda, after losing the first round of billiards, decided that she did not feel like playing another. Her brothers went on playing, and she, ensconced in the leather sofa, made a mistake in calling their names. There was a moment of confusion. Then the thread of order was quickly picked up again by the men, who knew how to ignore an accident if it was not favorable to them. But I had already seen. It was as if Aunt Mathilda were not there at all. She was breath
ing at my side as she always did. The deep, silencing carpet yielded under her feet as usual and her tranquilly crossed hands weighed on her skirt. How is it possible to feel with the certainty I felt then the absence of a person whose heart is somewhere else? The following
nights were equally troubled by the invisible slur of her absence. 318
She seemed to have lost all interest in the game, and left off calling her brothers by their names. They appeared not to notice it. But they must have, because their games became shorter and I noticed an
infinitesimal increase in the deference with which they treated her. One night, as we were going out of the dining-room, the bitch
appeared in the doorway and joined the family group. The men paused before they went into the library so that their sister might lead the way to the billiard room, followed this time by the white bitch. They made no comment, as if they had not seen her, beginning their game as they did every night. The bitch sat down at Aunt Mathilda's feet. She was very quiet. Her lively eyes examined the room and followed the players' strate gies as if all of that amused her greatly. She was fat now and had a shiny coat. Her whole body, from her quivering snout to her tail ready to waggle, was full of an abundant capacity for fun. How long had she stayed in the house? A month? Perhaps more. But in that month Aunt Mathilda had forced her to get well, caring for her not with displays of affection, but with those hands of hers which could not refrain from mending what was broken. The leg was well. She had disinfected, fed and bathed her, and now the white bitch was whole. In one of his plays Uncle Armand let the cube of blue chalk fall to the floor. Immediately, obeying an instinct that seemed to surge up from her picaresque past, the bitch ran towards the chalk and snatched it with her mouth away from Uncle Armand, who had
bent over to pick it up. Then followed something surprising: Aunt
Mathilda, as if suddenly unwound, burst into a peal of laughter that agitated her whole body. We remained frozen. On hearing her laugh, the bitch dropped the chalk, ran towards her with her tail waggling aloft, and jumped up onto her lap. Aunt Mathilda's laugh relented, but Uncle Armand left the room. Uncle Gustav and my father went on with the
game: now it was more important than ever not to see,
not to see
anything at all, not to comment, not to consider oneself alluded to by these events. I did not find Aunt Mathilda's laugh amusing, because I may have felt the dark thing that had stirred it up. The bitch grew calm 319
sitting on her lap. The cracking noises of the balls when they hit seemed to conduct Aunt Mathilda's hand first from its place on the edge of the sofa, to her skirt, and then to the curved back of the sleeping animal. On seeing that expressionless hand reposing there, I noticed that the tension which had kept my aunt's features clenched before, relented, and that a certain peace was now softening her face. I could not resist. I drew closer to her on the sofa, as if to a newly kindled fire. I hoped that she would reach out to me with a look or include me with a smile. But she did not.
4
When I arrived from school in the afternoon, I used to go directly to the back of the house and, mounting my bicycle, take turn after turn around the narrow garden, circling the pair of cast-iron benches
and the elm tree. Behind the wall, the chestnut trees were beginning to display their light spring down, but the seasons did not interest me
for I had too many serious things to think about. And since I
knew that no one came down into the garden until the suffocation of midsummer made it imperative, it seemed to be the best place for meditating about what was going on inside the house. One might have said that nothing was going on. But how could I remain calm in the face of the entwining relationship which had
sprung up between my aunt and the white bitch? It was as if Aunt Mathilda, after having resigned herself to an odd life of service and
duty, had found at last her equal. And as women-friends do, they carried on a life full of niceties and pleasing refinements. They ate bonbons that came in boxes wrapped frivolously with ribbons. My aunt arranged tangerines, pineapples and grapes in tall crystal bowls, while the bitch watched her as if on the point of criticizing her taste or offering a suggestion. Often when I passed the door of her room, I heard a peal of laughter like the one which had overturned the order of her former life that night. Or I heard her engage in a dialogue with an interlocu tor whose voice I did not hear. It was a new life. The bitch, the
guilty one, slept in a hamper near her bed, an elegant, feminine hamper, ridiculous to my way of thinking, and followed her every320
where except into the dining-room. Entrance there was forbidden
her, but waiting for her friend to come out again, she followed her to the billiard room and sat at her side on the sofa or on her lap,
exchanging with her from time to time complicitory glances. How was it possible, I used to ask myself? Why had she waited until now to go beyond herself and establish a dialogue? At times she appeared insecure about the bitch, fearful that, in the same way she had arrived one fine day, she might also go, leaving her with all this new abundance weighing on her hands. Or did she still fear for her health? These ideas, which now seem to clear, floated blurred in my imagination while I listened to the gravel of the path crunch
ing under the wheels of my bicycle. What was not blurred, however, was my vehement desire to become gravely ill, to see if I might also succeed in harvesting some kind of relationship. Because the bitch's illness had been the cause of everything. If it had not been for that, my aunt might have never joined in league with her. But I had a
constitution of iron, and furthermore, it was clear that Aunt
Mathilda's heart did not have room for more than one love at a time.
My father and my uncles did not seem to notice any change. The bitch was very quiet, and abandoning her street ways, seemed to acquire manners more worthy of Aunt Mathilda. But still, she had somehow preserved all the sauciness of a female of the streets. It was clear that the hardships of her life had not been able to cloud either her good humor or her taste for adventure which, I felt, lay dangerously dormant inside her. For the men of the house it proved easier to accept her than to throw her out, since this would have forced them to revise their canons of security. One night, when the pitcher of lemonade had already made its appearance on the console-table of the library, cooling that corner of the shadow, and the windows had been thrown open to the air, my father halted abruptly at the doorway of the billiard room: "What is that?" he exclaimed looking at the floor. The three men stopped in consternation to look at a small, round pool on the waxed floor. "Mathilda!" called Uncle Gustav. She went to look and then reddened with shame. The bitch had 321
taken refuge under the billiard table in the adjoining room. Walking over to
the table my father saw her there, and changing direction
sharply, he left the room, followed by his brothers. Aunt Mathilda went upstairs. The bitch followed her. I stayed
in the library with a glass of lemonade in my hand, and looked out at the summer sky, listening to some far-off siren from the sea, and to
the murmur of the city stretched out under the stars. Soon I heard Aunt Mathilda coming down. She appeared with her hat on and with her keys chinking in her hand.
"Go up and go to bed," she said. "I'm going to take her for a walk on the street so that she can do her business." Then she added something strange: "It's such a lovely night."
And she went out. From that night on, instead of going up after dinner to open
her brothers' beds, she went to her room, put her hat tightly on her head and came downstairs again, chinking her keys. She went out
explaining anything to anyone. And my uncles and my father and I stayed behind in the billiard room, and later we sat on the benches of the garden, with all the murmuring of the elm tree and the clearness of the sky weighing down on us. These nocturnal walks of Aunt Mathilda's were never spoken of by her brothers. They never showed any awareness of the change with the bitch without
that had occurred inside our house.
In the beginning Aunt Mathilda was gone at the most for twenty
returning to take whatever refreshment there was and to exchange some trivial commentary. Later, her sorties were inexplicably prolonged. We began to realize, or I did at least, that she was no longer a woman taking her dog out for hygienic reasons: outside there, in the streets of the city, something was draw ing her. When waiting, my father furtively eyed his pocket watch, and if the delay was very great Uncle Gustav went up to the second floor pretending he had forgotten something there, to spy for her from the balcony. But still they did not speak. Once, when Aunt Mathilda stayed out too long, my father paced back and forth along the path that wound between the hydrangeas. Uncle Gustav threw
minutes or half an hour,
322
away a cigar which he could not light to his satisfaction, then an other, crushing it with the heel of his shoe. Uncle Armand spilt a cup of coffee. I watched them, hoping that at long last they would explode, that they would finally say something to fill the minutes
that were passing by one after another, getting longer and longer and longer without the presence of Aunt Mathilda. It was twelve
thirty when she arrived. "Why are you all waiting up for me?" she asked smiling. She was holding her hat in her hand, and her hair, ordinarily so well-groomed, was mussed. I saw that a streak of mud was soiling her shoes. "What happened to you?" asked Uncle Armand.
"Nothing," came her reply, and with it she shut off any right of her brothers to meddle in those unknown hours that were now her life. I say they were her life because, during the minutes she stayed with us before going up to her room with the bitch, I preceived an
animation in her eyes, an excited restlessness like that in the eyes of the animal: it was as though they had been washed in scenes to
which even our imagination lacked access. Those two were accom
plices. The night protected them. They belonged to the murmuring sound of the city, to the sirens of the ships which, crossing the dark or illumined streets, the houses and factories and parks, reached my ears. Her walks with the bitch continued for some time. Now we said
good-night immediately after dinner, and each one went up to shut himself in his room, my father, Uncle Gustav, Uncle Armand and I. But no one went to sleep before she came in, late, sometimes ter
ribly late, when the light of the dawn was already striking the top of our elm. Only after hearing her close the door of her bedroom did the pacing with which my father measured his room cease, or was the window in one of his brothers' rooms finally closed to exclude that fragment of the night which was no longer dangerous. Once I heard her come up very late, and as I thought I heard her singing softly, I opened my door and peeked out. When she passed my room, with the white bitch nestled in her arms, her face seemed to me surprisingly young and unblemished, even though it 323
was
dirty, and I saw a rip in her skirt. I went to bed terrified, know
ing this was the end. I
was
not mistaken. Because one
night, shortly after, Aunt
Mathilda took the dog out for a walk after dinner, and did not return.
We stayed awake all night, each one in his room, and she did not come back. No one said anything the next day.
They went-I
presume-to their office, and I went to school. She wasn't home when we came back and we sat silently at our meal that night. I wonder if they found out something definite that very first day. But I think not, because we all, without seeming to, haunted the windows of the house, peering into the street. "Your aunt went on a trip," the cook answered me when I finally dared to ask, if only her. But I knew it was not true.
Life continued in the house just as if Aunt Mathilda were still
living there. It is true that they used to gather in the library for hours and hours, and closeted there they may have planned ways of re trieving her out of that night which had swallowed her. Several times a visitor came who was clearly not of our world, a plain clothesman perhaps, or the head of a stevedore's union come to pick up indemnification for some accident. Sometimes their voices rose a little, sometimes there was a deadened quiet, sometimes their voices became hard, sharp, as they fenced with the voice I did not know. But the library door was too thick, too heavy for me to hear what they were saying. translated by Lorraine O'Grady Freeman
324
An anthology of
Mexican poetry EDITED BY MARGARET RANDALL
When the Spaniards conquered the Aztec Empire in the 16th century, they did an excellent job of demolishing and erasing the great culture and imposing
the
golden age of Spain on Mexico-with all aspects implicit. The great nahautl poetry, in the codexes and rich oral tradition, was relegated to the dusty chambers of a few monks and scholars and not rediscovered as "litera ture" until Father Garibay published his famous translations in the 1930's! Mexico, then, was handed a "mature" poetry from Spain, and produced little more than careful copyists for almost four centuries-with the exception of the great mystic poet of the 17th century, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. What happens in a literature--particularly in poetry-when it comes ready-made from across the sea, when formulas without their natural roots and motivations are used over and over again? The literary figures on an entire continent-Latin America-were few during these centuries. Spain's golden age diminished too, however, and it was from the new world that the shot of vitamins was to finally be injected into the Spanish language. Poetry in Mexico, around 1870, may be characterized by such lines as "entre tu y yo, mi madre
como
un
diosl"
(between you and I, my mother, a god) of
Manuel Acuna.
TriQuarterly 325
In the late 19th century a group of poets scattered over Latin America
began to publish in a magazine which marked new life in the language: AZUL. Ruben Dario in Nicaragua, Julian de Casal and Jose Marti in Cuba, Manuel Gutierrez Najera in Mexico-among others-made contact with one another. The school of "modernism" was born. Up to this time the panorama of modern poetry in Spanish was very weak. Even in Spain (with the possible exceptions of Bequer and Rosalia de Castro) little can be said for verse. The modernists renovated the language completely and their offering found its way back to Spain. Even Miguel de U namuno, who began by attacking Dario, later recognized his debt to the great modernist. Modernism influenced the Spanish generation of '98 (Unamuno, Pio Barroja, Ramon Jimenez) and changed the Spanish language everywhere. Although the spirit of modernism is still very much alive, the movement as a "school" became an academy itself after twenty years. The most impor tant post-modernists, reacting to modernism even during its period of bril liance, were Tablada (with his particular Mexican haiku) and Lopez Velarde. Lopez Velarde can be considered the first really great Mexican poet. He, with his verse, and Mariano Azuela, with his novel Los de Abajo, inaugurated the 20th century in Mexico, and gave living description to the country. The great man of letters, Alfonso Reyes, also wielded great influence at this time. After modernism there is a brief parenthesis carved by a poet named Manuel Maples Arce. He conceived the Mexican "estridentismo", intro ducing surrealism into the Spanish language, in close contact with Huidobro in Chile, etc. While the Peruvian Cesar Vallejo was starving to death in Paris and Pablo Neruda was becoming known in South America, while Miguel Her nandez and Garcia Lorca were dying in Spain, the next movement of any
impact in Mexico was a group of poets who called themselves "los contem poraneos": Xavier Villarutia (to whom Octavio Paz owes a great deal), Carlos Pellicer, Gilberto Owen, Jose Gorostiza, Salvador Novo and others. These men were conscious of what was happening in Europe and the United States, as were some of their
predecessors, but they brought Europe to Mexico: they translated Eliot, Baudelaire, Nerval, Rilke. With the "contemporaneos" Mexican poetry entered the stream of world poetry.
In the 40's, poets of a group which called itself "el taller" began to see
publication. Octavio Paz, of course, is the real force here, though the work of Ephrain Huerta is also known. With Paz, Mexico gave the world her first poet of truly international stature. He is still a strong and beneficial influence on the younger poets, and, more important, is still changing, writing, moving forward in the place he has made for himself. With Paz's Piedra de Sol and Juan Rulfo's novel Pedro Paramo, Mexico became conscious of itself in the 50's.
326
The new generations in Mexican poetry combine a number of strong
voices. As in much of Latin America, Eliot remains an influence, along with French symbolism and surrealism. Vallejo, Neruda, Whitman, the U.S. "beat
generation" (used in the broadest sense of the term) and the Oriental philoso phies have taken their toll. Jaime Sabines and Marco Antonio Montes de Oca follow Paz, chronologically, but some of the most exciting work is to be found among the youngest poets: Jose Carlos Becerra, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Isabel
Fraire, Homero Aridjis, Joaquin Sanchez Macgregor, Raul Garduno, Gabriel Zaid, Juan Banuelos, Juan Martinez, Jaime Labastida, Thelma Nava, Sergio
Mondragon, etc. There is great individuality among these voices. The metaphysical instinct runs high; at the same time the poets are rarely unconscious of the social reality of their country (this is evident almost never as "political" poetry per se, but, rather, lives behind and under the work). Many ingredients mix-the "mestizaje" which characterizes the country-in the workof these poets: a rediscovery of the pre-Columbian legacy, a mysti cism bred in the language, an ever-present realization of the Latin American situation now, and a sophisticated place in the current of world poetry in general. Mexican poetry, with this generation, has "grown up". There is little "scene" as regards poetry in Mexico. There are few read ings of any note. The poet in Mexico City is a solitary individual (though most of the young poets know each other) and the poet from the provinces eventually comes to the capital. The most active literary magazines are DIALOGOS, EL CORNO EMPLUMADO, PAJARO CASCABEL, LA PALABRA Y EL HOMBRE, REVISTA DE BELLAS ARTES, REVISTA DE LA UNIVERSIDAD, P ARVA. A few of the generally bad Sunday liter ary supplements publish occasional poems. But the Mexican poet is in contact with the world-and he's writing. Perhaps the best introduction to Mexican poetry in general and con temporary Mexican poetry in particular is the recent anthology Poesia en Movimiento, prefaced by Octavio Paz and published by Siglo XXI Editores, S.A., Mexico City.
327
The written word The first word Written (never the word
Planned, the other-which Does not express it, contradicts it, Says it in not saying it) The first word Written (one, two, three Sun high, your face In the center of the well,
Fixed like an astonished sun) The first word
Written (four, fiveThe pebble falls and falls, Watch your face as it falls, tell
The vertical tale of that falling) The first word
Written (there is another, down there, Not the one which is falling, That which holds up face, sun, time
Over the abyss: the word Before fall and tale)
The first word Written (two, three, four You will see your face smashed,
See the sun shattering,
See the stone enter the smashed water, See the same face, same sun,
Fixed in the same water) The first word
Written (go on, There are no words but the tale's words)
OCTAVIO PAZ
translated by Tim Reynolds
Nocturno Night, the eyes of horses that shiver in the night, night, eyes of water in a sleeping field, night in your eyes, horses' eyes, that shiver in the night, in your eyes of secret water.
Eyes of shadowy water, eyes of well water, eyes of dream water. Silence and solitude like two small animals guided by the moon drink from these waters, these eyes. If you open your eyes
the night opens its moss doors, the secret kingdom of water opens, water which drips from the center of the night.
And if you close them,
river, a gentle soundless current, floods you inside, moves on, darkens you:
a
night washes the shores of your soul. OCTAVIO PAZ
translated by Tim Reynolds
The return In the middle of the road I
stopped. I turned my back on time and rather than continuing into the future -where no one was waiting for mel turned back, traveling the traveled road. I left that line where everyone
since the beginning of beginning waits some
ticket, some key, some verdict,
while hope hopes hopelessly
for the door of the centuries to open, for someone to say: now there are no doors, nor centuries I crossed streets and squares, grey statues in the chilly dawn and only the wind lived among the dead things.
Beyond the city the country and beyond the country the night in the desert: my heart was night, was desert. Then I was a stone in the sun, a stone and a mirror.
And then the sea out of the desert and the ruins and over the sea the black sky,
huge stone of spent letters: nothing showed me the stars. I came to the end. The doors torn down
and the angel, weaponless and sleeping.
Inside, the garden: intertwined leaves, a breathing of stones almost alive, drowse of magnolias and naked
light between tattooed trunks. The water embraced the red and green meadow with four arms. And at the center the woman, the tree, hair of fiery birds.
...
My nakedness seemed natural: I was like water, like air. Under the tree's green light,
sleeping in the grass, was a long feather abandoned by the wind, white. I wanted to kiss it, but the water-sound
touched my thirst and the transparence there
invited me to contemplate myself. I saw an image trembling in the a curved
depths: destroyed mouth,
thirst, oh old miser, creeper, fatuous fire, a
cover my nakedness. I went,
slowly.
The angel smiled. The wind woke and the sand of that wind blinded me.
My words were wind, were sand: it is not we who live, it is time lives us. OCTAVIa PAZ
translated by Tim Reynolds
Lightning, in repose Stretched out, stone shaped of noon,
eyes halfclosed where the white blues, intumed smile.
Partly you sit up, shake your lion's mane. And then stretch out, thin trickle of lava through rock, a sun's ray
sleeping.
I touch you while you sleep, polish you,
slender hatchet, arrow I set fire to
night with.
With swords and feathers, there, far, the sea struggles. OCTAVIO PAZ
translated by Tim Reynolds
The dunes wind strokes the dunes
creating waves, mountain ranges, faces erasing waves, mountain ranges, faces sea falls over sand
wets it moves on
rises a
dirty necklace of spume
withdraws
leaving the sand dry sea lifts itself and falls to land once and
again again again
ISABEL FRAIRE
translated by Tim Reynolds
"This was in the time
" ...
this was in the time of burning harvest full of birds full of fruits full of silences hanging
light cracked like a whip in that night of worlds dust was gold and glances transparent airplanes and was this in time? it all flowered
things stripped of their names and opened blazed hands
sketched roads thirst had lips water was light
and it was in time
great towers time-worn dawned at the very zenith of terror ISABEL FRAIRE
translated by Tim Reynolds
Fallout shelter Panic. It is inside this skin where I sprout a secular fire
against my chest and points pelvic dust It is the shameless thing, god of abomination
extremely human skins flayed and flowered to sing the joys of those who again spring up in veins always of camphor or really primaveral buds
Polar ice
burst open
for in the midst of so many
These evil or refulgent
savage
boneheaps spread out
sands,
from moon to sun
you'll see the continents
o evil
lick back
wastelands voiceless and tasteless
the ashes to emptiness.
but with a pure
JOAQUIN SANCHEZ
hunger of all hungers pressing on
MACGREGOR
these unmerciful moons
translated by Elinor Randall
till I die my eyeless eyes open wide and at night or a little
plant
without a bit of warmth that comes to calm us and yet existing
without anybody
barely hurt by anything. or
JOAQUIN SANCHEZ MACGREGOR
translated by Elinor Randall
I LOVE YOUR confusion the restless birds of your tongue
your simultaneous words your Delphi your Babel
sibyl of enemy voices I love your confusion when you say night and it is dawn when you say I am and it is the wind your wounded Babylon the ambiguity that makes you fable silence HOMERO ARIDJIS
translated by Elinor Randall
NIGHT dies on a crushed apple
creation begins again Dawn grows insuperable
compact in its disturbances Man takes the pulse of memory opens the new instant with transparent hands
Everywhere the fantasy of being between the hours prowess shouting resurrection Also out of the humid earth
of occult events comes movement
presence the perpetual second a word cuts
your lips in two
HOMERO ARIDJIS
translated by Elinor Randall
Urns, flies and locusts Here I am again involved in words
the forest voices sparkle electric and ethereal you can hear the poem galloping, you can hear it coming
the odor of incense plays with language, this language of solar flies,
plays with this stick, with my shyness for being stranger to this medium what medium? the locusts asked from behind a brightness the original medium, the wheel's axis, the basket heaped with
vegetables and you, poem, why that face? is it the face of my hands trembling or the face of the moon or is it the
early morning puddle among the apocryphal gods and stone prostitutes and smoke sessions and glassfuls of dew which one is it? and I, who am not the poem or the horse or the river bank I who am only a figure, one more in the interminable list I who piss at the sky
o I am this piece of iron waiting for the resurrection ha ha, said the locusts with their horns flaming
why wait? cried the statues and a dog from the underbrush barked and another looked north and fled to wait is to be and you are walking in the middle of paradise,
shouted the stars o what an outcry and what a bestial uproar o shelf of bones, you can't sign what has been already rhymed you can barely stoop down to the water you are like me, desolation and a field of urns what urns? the locusts cried again
their wings poised, shading their eyes with their hands
what urns well the urns that hold us the urns filled with gold and the urns in black and white the chess urns, the harlequin urns, the urns from which we drink the water of life, the water that slips away quickly
and when we look for it, it's gone my hands are sweating and the words congregate and start flying I had left the window open and with all this about urns and statues
the poem too started to fly it's flying now, it's outside me, I'm not the same any more
nobody's the same now
language jumped head first into the chasm of flies
SERGIO MONDRAGON
translated by Elinor Randall
In July and in Hebrew Two birds in the air are making love
they fly apart and kiss again two dead leaves on the short laconic lines
of a picture on the palm of the hand the juice of two oranges and the disciplined observation of my substance
in a prudence of inner searching,
legs crossed, the reason playing with the square root of the circle. this .s the beginning of my morning while the sun flies and some dogs bark and my two daughters chatter and love each other in July and in Hebrew like the two birds I saw at the start of this adventure in the window
SERGIO MONDRAGON
translated by Elinor Randall
Chapters from El habitante amoroso Blind man after blind man, and fool after fool, thus we go seeking our fortune; the more we possess, the less we have, like dreams and moon shade.-Juan de Mena
VII Naked Ember
It is the moment of desire.
Lying down, naked, You're outstretched like the skin of a sun-bitten hillside.
I start contemplating you beginning with your foot asleep in air Your punctual legs, as my eyes move upward,
Keep their appointment in a black snug harbor, compassed By moist coals, coals made of lips, Liana coals. This is the instant when I come to the time of desire On the tenderest face of evening.
The fruit slides, Grows each minute, swells burning. At six by the clock I enter you
Like the most expected guest,
Simple as the river of day I cover you with my man's skin, I am the tongue running over your veins to quiet you, I take your eyes away painfully,
Give you two other arms to weigh heavy on your life,
My mouth drizzles on your breast, I score your back to write your name, Talk to you with my bones, Your wail is the longest the night will hear.
What most beautiful of human animals. When it is over and we are naked and alone, The feeling that the air has discovered us Hails down.
IV mner
Song
Because I understand the sad answer of the roads, Because I listen to the grasses growing thirsty behind me, I am a spying silence, on watch against the invisible sun
That sutures the wound that licks the shadow left On the red-hot iron which vibrates if plunged in water. And if only I had told them how the warm salt crowds us On the mute side of dawn, How many encounters had happened without respite
In the streets and the tree which for some time Has been seeing its feet fall into the abyss.
Ah the beautiful word that opens in the night and flowers in the song
The way the dawn's humid hand opens, The way thighs open, the thighs That melt the ice Of this dark sadness. And if perhaps I should ask what fruit has touched
my dream
Which one out of them all would say That the branch is the forehead of a child who
peoples
The night with phantoms? The wind slaps me in the eyes, The echo beats against my blood, The feeling of the ivy of your chill strikes against And I don't want to look for you and tie you to
my entire life. my shadow
And I don't want to regret that your mouth is made of stone For fear of snuffing out this summit of flames
And feeling you distant. Ah the love that dawns
Shameless in the grass.
x So They Listen to Our
Steps
I need you here, nearer than I myself, I need you inside me like other eyes, other hands And other lips;
To walk with double feet so the world
May listen to illustrious steps. I want you to come so I can divide With you inside me like a portrait That shows all people At every step.
Strange woman, With your veins running through my live body, If you stay at my side,
Daily you leave me your mouth So when you move away I only shout to you in treble;
My ear carries your heart, each beat In your absence sounds like muffled tin. I go through the streets, to the movies, to a park
With one half of me; the other half-love-you've taken. How simple to lose you, what an easy absent gesture;
For you to be inside me, how complicated. I need you here, nearer than I myself.
My eyes are drowning because of you, 0 blind woman; o blind woman, tear them out. JUAN BANUELOS
translated by Elinor Randall
Brief flower NELIDA PINON
Her inconsistency was racial. The sure orientation of her blood. Amidst a glass-like clarity, the softness of her steps as they passed
through heaven and earth, such was her framework, her undirected drive. She had lost her direction among the admonitions of her
friends, and she would laugh raucously at how funny stones were. She would even decipher them, unlocking secrets, for she had recent ly acquired the gift of words. She played at hiding, fascinating men, that would be her trick. They would always have to look for her,
thinking that she was lost. The offense which they committed on her was funny, it made her vibrate and become aware of herself. In one way or another she would repair the shambles and put on a new dress, with the gamut of its material shining in the light of day. On certain evenings, right there in front of the mirror, she would
get rid of the discovery of her body. She would stare until she enjoyed
it, the comfort and the feeling. She did not blush at the thought that she could be dazzled by that minute and exciting examination of her flesh. In that wayan area that she had always imagined as dark and dirty was becoming clear and clean. As she mastered the miracle,
TriQuarterly 341
she would run along the beach, the sand would come at her with the speed of the wind,
a
tickling that always irritates, even with
innocence. She sat down on a stone to think: now I can decipher any expec tation there is. And she got a stomach-ache, just as when she had eaten too much chocolate, or when her body went through its modifi
cation, altering its flow of blood, the surprise of that initial abundance that upset her, the realization that she was becoming a woman. With that realization, she became shrewd and daring as she faced the
exaggeration of the resources she had just received. She would guess at answers until she could learn and breathe.
Men would pass by thinking how nice a woman is when she is young like that, and I am destined to rule that thing that grows in her or in some other one, for I am meant to possess the one who is
waiting for me to lead her into the green fields, and if it is not this girl, I will enjoy her in another one for just as long as I live. She grew tired after eating some ice cream. Despite her courage to go on, for the sun was still shining. The company of small crea tures, nervous things protected by a shell and who left a trail, a molecule betrayed by its own brilliance. So funny, and more than company, they offered her astonishment, at any moment she could discover an immediate world, one that had risen up and reached
completion through its own precarious science, where guesses were all.
She picked up a periwinkle, with the urge to stick her tongue inside of it, into the restriction of that opening, to taste its savor and its grace. Suddenly taken by the torpor of the small thing and want
ing to understand its trick, hiding there inside, so much the prisoner of itself that it became excited and lost, fleeing now into the way of its species and its mystery. And the girl, wanting to stick out her tongue, feared the encounter of her tongue with that soft thing to be undone, until she broke the secret, wresting away the fragility of the little creature, the intimate craving of one who opens her legs, without selection, engulfed in the vital flow of strange resources. The girl was afraid that with the arrival of the time there would never be any impediments to procreation, better and more serious 342
things, or lost things, which do not cede before the strength of grace and her whim, which is also perfection. She threw the creature far away, its truth, after the necessary
ripening of her inconsistent race. Later, other men, different from the first, tried more daring approaches, preparing for the advances that discipline races. As if they were going about tasks to dominate vague and circumspect women. Who let themselves be sheltered in spring by any domination whatsoever, after which they store up virtues in honey for sweet and strange palates. My name is Pedro, one of them said to her, and he was boldly waiting for the falling of the fruits. Kicking at the ground, feigning embarrassment, distraction, he sat down beside her. The girl, chang ing stones, going from the highest one to the lowest, said nothing. Disdainful, the boy smoked a cigarette, and protected by the smoke, he shouted and yours, what's your name? Bewitchingly, she said: a girl is nameless. Like a serene horseman atop the restlessness of his mount, replete with code and shining sword, he answered her: from now on, even if you haven't got a name, you've got a master. Afterwards she cleaned the house, took care of the wild plants, decorated the table in a dedication to life. Delicate with the cleaning of the objects. Until she was pregnant and pretty, the violence of growth. She had barely noticed it because she was simple, feeling its effects. Such was her modesty. Every day the boy would occupy the house, with a loss of ceremony and respect. He would scratch him self where the chair had abused him, after which he would drag her to bed. The girl, still fascinated, would let herself be led, somewhere
between feeling irritated and exalted. As it became a habit, the man drained her of her will and urge. The orientations of her nature were
scarcely defined. And that was how they were becoming, until the child was born.
Strong and daring like his father, continuously unfolding with no beauty in him now that would not later change. The boy decided to disappear, never to be seen again. That disturbed the girl profoundly. Even though she had experienced such violent flights, she would still look at the stars, the same intensity. She had a precarious intui tion of the freedom of any worthiness that might comfort her, she 343
would make use of the flour that ennobles man after it has received the delicate mixture of some ferment. She dedicated herself to the subtleties that memory suggests, until she attained the vulgarity of such rendering. Only then did she rest a little. To join a new com
panion in bed and at the table. At first there was strangeness, the hesitations with a different
body, the imposition of other habits. That yellow and dazzling laugh that would always dominate the man, even when they were making love, as if it too were part of the rite. Then his teeth began to fall out from being shown so much, and the girl found herself joined to an old man who, in addition to being ugly, was also imposing the sordid ness of his now flabby flesh upon her. Even though it was difficult for her to show her disgust, the sight of those gums, she could barely hold her vomit back, the penury of intense cohabitation. She would run to the bathroom and
give herself abundant relief there after the hope, after the abolition of so many things. Even so, the man's pres ence was strong, and in addition to her body, it filled the whole house, the lust for gold showing on his face. One day she took her son, quite large now, and left the house. Abandoning the city just as she had left shelters so often in the wake of new disturbances. For she had lost the essential notions of living together, and even in a search of
kindness, she would release herself in a torment of really wanting to live.
When another man chose her, as one casually chooses some
thing that he is prepared to discard at any moment, she accepted in confusion. She went off to raise chickens, healthy and early-rising, to take care of cows, stubbornly thrusting her hands into the full udders, until her life changed, just as the smell of her skin. Even in that way she was following the path of her star and its false brilliance, as if freedom could be experienced in that way, in its excess. Every morning she would massage the cows, after the man had massaged her body. She would delude herself by thinking that they would rest when they got old. But that was taking time and her son was growing in a rapid and exaggerated way, and the woman hesitated as she faced the innovation of that world that had detached itself from her womb,
marginal and operative. The struggle seemed hard and wild. One day, dragging her son along, she went to the city, where 344
she had not been for a long time. They delicately watched the epic
passing-by of men. And they had some ice cream, which she liked so much, giving in to that vital appreciation by closing their eyes and enjoying, the tongue as it slipped across, with no greater de mands. As if she were teaching the boy procedures for the future when he would invade the realms of pleasure. And if the boy imitated his mother, it was because the intimacy of that face made him feel
good, it had become a powerful presence, and by having to discover his own expression that acknowledged the pleasure he was to feel when, even carelessly, he would be unable to spare his body its neces sary exhibitions. Later on there were other things, sordid and color ful, that touched bottom. After that she could no longer tolerate at all either the man or the cows. It was a disquieting peace and she forgot the attributes of the earth. She admitted
again her inborn inconsistency and she
laughed in compensation as she met her ancestors. She woke up the boy cautiously, they put a few things into a suitcase and daringly slipped away. The man would never follow them or disturb the earth with his vain pursuit. They rested only when it grew light, and they continued on immediately after, oriented by a simple independence that lays out roads with the illusion of building new cities. Brief stops, the simple necessities of sleep and food. Mother and son were ruling the world with the insouciance of emperors, nothing disturbed them, neither fatigue nor the imperfection of exigent shapes. At last they came to a house with high walls, surrounded by trees and a lawn. A nun dressed in black came out to greet them, her face
protected by a veil. Inviting them to rest and have some hot soup. As one who dares to look so as to observe and appreciate,
they
entered. The boy looked at his mother as if in reprimand: really, was this what we had fled for? The mother closed her face and, illumi
nated, she had something that deformed her expression and her patience. In her whole life she had never recorded a deed that had been more heroic. After prayers they ate. Mother and son were still upset when they looked at each other, imprisoned in a modest cell, a common
bed-this before they went to sleep. When bells pealed
forth in place of the lowing of the cows, more than the sound, they could perceive the sadness of the prayers, and they arose as if wish345
ing to flee, forgetting the caprice of miracles, changes that, even if they do not come about, dominate the world and make it marginal. But-the high wall and its locked gate-they waited, until the nun asked them: after all, you must be a religious woman, since you've always dreamed of stars. She could not resist the intensity of such wooing. She went with the nun, her son following. She found herself to be an emotional pioneer, a torch-bearer, and her sudden adolescence was so colorful with its fruits and shrouds. They shared everything, prayers and hates, women made daring by the stimulus of prayer, confusing devotion and martyrdom, for war had honest roots in the world, death and hunger were savage. The boy was dazzled by the freshness of the prayers and the women's work, as they scarcely allowed compliments, a distant trace of friendship, and if, perhaps, they thought of love, they reflected on it as a necessary privation. The woman had learned to fulfill her human duty as her body inhabited others, and in this multiplicity, the combinations of revolv ing works, she accepted everything, because here, as before, she found herself convinced that she would rule the stars in their pas sage, in the briefness of their brilliance. And as she ruled, she would dazzle herself with belief and faith, letting her son grow up among the women's austerity. Until when he was quite large and the mother
superior warned her, you must leave, or you may stay and have your son discover the world. Sad and predestined, she looked at the son of her flesh, who was imposing successive sacrifices upon her, and in chapel or at the table, she would become upset. She asked her son: what do you think? He did not answer as he lit the candles in the
chapel, one of his daily chores. The mother saw pacification and love in that look, and she put the problem aside. Later on, it rained so much one night that even though she could not bear it, she imagined him leaving, discovering the world and its deep rivers. She knocked at his door, careful not to startle him: even though he was grown now, she called to him in a whisper and told him: whenever you want, we will leave together, I will not be separated from you. They took leave the next day, stifling a certain faith that can 346
EMILIO SANCHEZ. WINDOWS. OIL. ZEGRI GALLERY. NEW YORK.
squelch necessary decisions, and even though they could see the beginning of a greater struggle. They walked on, the boy slowing down his pace now so that his mother would not sense her own weakness and become ashamed, and so that the age already showing on her face would not become the
only point of interest for the two.
Fear that the mother might take a look into some mirror after her
dishonor in the life of a recluse. They would only stop when neces sary, always talking and looking at the countryside. And they loved one another as never before, now that they were free from things and life had become more difficult. The son was always afraid that
he might weep at any moment, and that too was the inconsistency of his race. He would look at his mother, he was learning.
The mother had kept her nun's habit and from time to time,
children on the roads would run up and ask for her blessing, offering her bread and trinkets. They found a hut, ugly and in shambles. He 347
took a job at the mill, amidst the thick, white flour. He would return to the house, grave and circumspect, while his mother took care of
it, cooking and sweeping the floor. Even though the world around them had forced communication, wounded in their love and glory,
they did not pay much attention. Until the woman's body began to pain, it was her spine which hurt. She could no longer walk, and this was followed by a violent trembling, and she was pitiful to see. Age had imposed itself. The boy carried her everywhere on his back, the way one takes a child, so that she could appreciate the changes in nature and would not forget that, in spite of her debilities, she was still alive.
The son liked to look at her white hair, for his eyes did nothing
else, and then, of a different race, as they well knew, they found that other joys were strange. Until he became owner of the mill. But the mother could no longer stand the impatience of living in bed, coupled to her son's sight, and he was a compassionate and solitary person.
Once she asked him for some gold coins, telling him, if you love me,
throw them into the river for me, the time has come for you to begin to suffer and to free yourself. The son did as she asked. Sad, but not
losing the money. His arrogance was something else. He could recognize it in all that hesitation in the face of life of one who is soon to die. They hung in the water for a moment and the mother had given the first sign of her independence. Later on they ate, and as they filled themselves, she could feel
over
the restlessness of death. She found it strange to die before she had
intensely assimilated her old age. Distracted still, she might have let a stranger into her bed and not be offended by any of the actions he might come to practice. Such a disposition seemed like youth to her. Her inconsistency was racial, and she understood, looking up, smiling at the ceiling, that she was approaching the strength of her star. Her son had also inherited from her the illness and gravity of life. They both knew from pungent and audacious attestations. When her son buried her, he decorated her grave with the brevity of flowers. translated by Gregory Rabassa 348
SIX POEMS BY ENRIQUE LIHN
Mud I
Mud, endless malice. All source ends by yielding to the pressure of this original matter.
The days of the water are numbered, but not so the days of the mud that takes the place of water when the well is filled. Not so the days of the mud that returns us to the seventh day. As children we played with it, it is not strange that it plays with us.
those created in the image and likeness of it. II
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost: earth and water; then the mud that was in the beginning. One single feeling in the origin of everyone: this endless malice. m
Sooner or later we will be reasonable again. It is in the order of things, nothing is known about them until we as if
take them with relative calm,
nothing had happened.
IV
There is nothing more strange than one's self. It is the appearance of another who ended up by visiting us,
by finally accepting a repeated invitation. It seemed to me that 1 saw my shadow when 1 opened the door, just as we were about to leave.
The show had started. "Come in. Come in." "We were waiting for you," 1 said and she said "I don't recognize the ungrateful"
with a curious trembling in the voice
translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria 349
The dark room' The mixture of air in the dark room, as if the bare ceiling threatened
bloody drizzle. Of that liquor we inhaled, the dirty nose, symbol of innocence and precocity to renew our struggle together secretly, but we did not know we did not ignore what cause; a game of hands and feet, twice villainous, but equally sweet as the first loss of blood avenged with teeth and nails or, for a girl
a vague
sweet as the first flow of her blood.
And so the old wheel began to revolve-symbol of life-the wheel that gets stuck as if it did not fly,
between one generation and the other, in the winking of bright and dark eyes with an imperceptible mossy sound.
Centering on its axle, in imitation of the children who used to roll two by two, with red ears-symbol of a modesty that savors its offense-angrily tender, the wheel partly revolved as if in an old age prior to the invention of the wheel
clockwise and counter clockwise. For a moment confusion reigned over time. And I bit,
into the neck of my cousin Isabelle for a long time,
in a winking of the eye of one who sees everything, as if in an age
prior to sin because we pretended to struggle in the belief that we were doing so; belief on the edge of faith like a game on truth and the facts scarcely dared to disbelieve us with red ears. *The Dark Room is a children's game somewhat similar to our Hide and Seek.
We stopped revolving on the floor, my cousin Angel victor over
Pauline, my sister; and I over Isabelle, both nymphs
wrapped in a bud of blankets that made them sneeze-the smell of neftaline in a fuzzing fruit-. Those were our victorious weapons and their beaten ones
mixing up one with the other in the manner of nests like cells, of cells like hugs, of hugs like chains on the feet and on the hands. We stopped revolving with a strange feeling of shame, without
managing to formulate a reproach other than having to demand for such an easy success. The wheel was revolving perfectly, as in the time of its apparition in the myth, as in its age of wood recently worked with a sound of medieval sparrows' songs; the time was flying in a good direction. It could be heard advancing
toward us much faster than the dining room clock whose ticking
burning to break so much silence. Time flew as if to flood with a sound of foaming waters was
faster in the nearness of the mill's wheel, with sparrows' wings-symbols of the free savage order-with all of it as the single overflowing object and life-symbol of the
wheel-speeds up to pass tempestuously making the wheel revolve at an accelerated speed, as in a grinding of time, tempestuous.
I let my captive go and fell on my knees as if I had
grown old
suddenly, preyed on by sweet, cloying panic as if I had known, beyond love in the flower of its age, the cruelty of the heart in the fruit of love, the corruption of the fruit and then the bloody core, feverish and dry. What will become of the children we were? Someone plunged to turn on the light, faster than the thought of grownups. They were already looking for us inside the house, around the mill: the room dark as the clearing of a forest. ...
But there was always time to gain from the eternal children hunters. When they came into the dining room, there we were sitting at the table like angels
glancing at our illustrated magazines-the men at one end, the women at the other-
in perfect order, prior to blood. The wheel detached itself from counter clockwise before revolving and neither we ourselves could meet at the turning of vertigo, when we entered time as in still waters,
serenely fast;
we scattered ourselves in them
forever, the equal of the remainder
of the same shipwreck.
But a part of me has not revolved to the rhythm of the wheel, with the stream.
Nothing is real enough for a ghost. I am in part that boy who falls on his knees
sweetly overcome by impossible omens and I have not completely come of age yet nor will I obey like him once and for all.
translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria
Jonah I could damn all things equally. Don't ask me
in the name of what. In the name of Isaiah, the prophet,
but with the gesture
grotesque and incomplete of his cohort Jonah
who was never able to finish his petty commission
given to the lows and highs of good and evil, the shifting circumstances of history, that left him lost in the uncertainty of a whale's belly. Like Jonah, the clown of heaven, obstinate always
in finishing his minor assignments, the incendiary briefcase under the sweaty armpit,
the umbrella worn down to a lightning rod. Above him, the uncertainty of Jehovah,
swaying between forgiveness and fury, between taking him up and flinging him down an old tool of uncertain usefulness
fallen at last into perfect disuse. I will end also under a tree but like those old drunken bums who despise all things equally,
don't ask me anything, all I know is we will be destroyed. I see as a blind man
the hand of the lord whose name I don't remember, the delicate fingers twisted and clumsy. And something else, that has nothing to do
with this. I remember something like thatno, no it was more. A thing,
it doesn't matter. I don't know again where I'm going
Lord, in thy abandonment, attend me. translated by Miller Williams
Coliseum In the last phase of its eclipse: the monster, the pride of all Rome looks to heaven
perplexity filling up its empty sockets. Only the sun's gold, not minted nor sweated nor filtered to the blood
daily fills and empties the crumbled cistern. Now time is moss, a seedbed of dust and the mutilated columns would like to rest
from their imaginary weight. translated by Miller Williams
Y ou are perfectly monstrous in your silence You are perfectly monstrous in your silence. I know it; it is better than to reason
without any sense: from the womb out, from the mouth out, from the heart out. But time bites me with which you fan; armed with a feather, between the cub and the wall,
naked I pretend to bleed
when, although I joke, I am bleeding. As in my childhood but more cruel than its
persecution of all against one or the punishment for crying during class, this silence, that monstrous silence of someone who made you enter, by touching you, to his own little circus. Roman.
translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria
Market place Tall wax candles that bum forever, stone jets, towers of this city
in which, forever, I am passing
like death itself: poet and stranger;
marvelous ship of stone in which kings and gargoyles watch over my dark existence. The old weavers of Europe drink, sing
and dance altogether and solely for themselves.
Only the night doesn't change place, on board ship even the night watchmen with their beat-up faces know it. Not even the stone escapes -it's the same everywhere-the passing of the night. translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria
The favorite JUAN JOSE HERNANDEZ
And the woman which thou sawest is that great dty, which reigneth over the kings of the earth -Revelation XVH, 18
She has filled the bath almost full. While I undress, she watches in
silence, with tears in her eyes; and then, no longer able to hide her emotion, she exclaims: "You are more lovely every day, my
princess." Sometimes my mother's affection is overwhelming: her pamper
ings, her praises, remind one of a noble and devoted old servant to whom the custody of a precious object has been trusted. She carries out without a complaint the weary chore of emptying pans upon pans of warm water into the bath; immediately after, she wields brushes, sponges, she soaps my back, she carefully removes the hair from my legs. When I marry Amin, her cares will be over. For the time being, my only occupation is to represent well and with dignity my betrothed's feminine ideal. Faithful to the customs
of his forebears, Amin despises that type of emaciated women which appears in the fashion magazines. To preserve my beauty it is 356
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enough, against all logic, to keep a simple diet. The more ambitious members of the community, eager to win the goodwill of my be trothed, in vain send me as gifts trays of pastry and sweets smelling of orange blossoms, which my mother hastens to sell to the neighbours. Perhaps my aversion to such sweets comes from the time in which she forced me to eat them in order to please clients of the store. But I adore dates; and these, along with my almond eyes, and my black brows united in a single arch, evoke the purity of my breeding. Although born in a humble family, my appearance was always that of a person fated to leisure and wellbeing. That is why my betrothed has not spared expense in furnishing the room in which I receive him with rugs, mirrors, and silken cushions. Of course, my mother's pride in me is justified. My body, under the spell of Amin's fortune, multiplies its charms daily; it emanates
warmth, and distracting vapours. After lavishing his caresses, it is not unusual for my betrothed to run to the window, his forehead beaded with sweat. When my engagement was made formal, I
stopped going to school. It was a relief to abandon my studies. Due to my develop ment, I was obliged to sit by myself in class, and my schoolmates took every opportunity to mortify me. Often, they would pretend to ignore the spelling of a word: "Does barrel take one or two l's?" they would ask the teacher, with malice. I would tum red with rage, and ask with the same disingenuous air: "Miss, is consumption spelled
with two m's?" That same year, my mother closed the grocery store. It was hardly right for the future mother-in-law of Amin to be surrounded
from dawn until dark by boxes of noodles and bottles of liquor. Be
sides, she had no intention of working so much. Thanks to me, soon after she became a widow, she was able to pay her debts and to live in a becoming manner.
Everyone knows that I was, as a child, the main attraction of the store. No
sooner
would it open than my mother would seat me
strategically on the counter, next to the cash register; she would ruffle out my organdy skirt, and set a great starched bow on my head. The clientele, mainly composed of women with somber eyes 357
and men with light blue tattoos on their hands which clutched small
glasses of anise, watched me with fascination. They would kiss me on the forehead, they praised my rosy cheeks, my full double chin; they wanted to know my name, my weight, my age. And when my mother, after warning them that she was in no way exaggerating the facts, would satisfy their curiosity, they would give soft exclamations of surprise. My mother would allow the ones who doubted her word to pick me up in their arms; whereupon they would renew their kisses, their exclamations. Since some clients, in their fawning, would combine their ca resses with furtive pinches, my mother decided to protect me against them by placing me in a high wicker chair, behind the counter. And so I would spend the day, replete with the sweets given me by my admirers, and which I had to eat in order to please them. Satisfied with the success of her business, my mother decided to name it after me.
One can still read above the door: "The Mascot.
Grocery and Liquor Store." Nevertheless, she now recalls with bit terness those years of work in the store. "So many sacrifices," she
laments, "and I was never able to save enough to install a marble baseboard on the front of our house." After I am married we will live together in the mansion that Amin is having built in the suburbs of the city. I have seen the plans
of the building. The amount of bedrooms and bathrooms surprised
My mother explained that Amin, due to his high rank within the community, had twelve wives; but since the laws of the country did not allow him to keep such a numerous family, he pretended to be running a hotel. "But don't worry," she added, "all of them will be me.
your servants. Not one of them can match your small toe."
To be the most sought after woman of the community has its
disadvantages. I have only to show myself at my door to have the first cyclist who passes feel obliged to pay me some tiresome compli ment. The words are usually embellished by some obscene gesture. I cannot avoid blushing. "Trash!" I shout to them, while I slam the door on their insolent laughter. When the notice of my engagement was published in The Leban358
ese
Echo, the siege of my admirers intensified. Daily I receive
sentimental anonymous notes which abound in references to my
youth, the age of my betrothed, and the greed of my mother. Some include photographs and even locks of coarse hair stuck on the paper with glue. My admirers place me in the role of a victim, when I am really the power of Amin, the fist which closes on them, the showy abundance denied them. My marriage should remind them that the union of beauty and wealth is inevitable, and that they, being poor, must bear the burden of their mediocrity: bus trips, cheap cigarettes, insignificant sweethearts caressed on a lonely park bench, or in the no less uncomfortable seats of a second rate movie house.
Other than Amin, and two or three magnates who frequent the
community social club, who could aspire to marry me? The romantic love stories flourishing above economic penury (a favour ite theme of the anonymous notes) are as difficult to imagine as a same
boabad in a pot or a whale in a bucket of water. Those with evil minds suppose that I am ready, through ambi
tion, to please my betrothed in his slightest whim. In the same way,
they degrade my mother. They gossip that Amin, due to the exorbi tant price exacted for my hand, had to borrow from his partners, and that I am not marrying a man but the whole board of directors of a
company. I understand the causes of those mistaken impressions. After all,
my betrothal offers quite a contrast with the neighbourhood. Satur
day afternoons, when the enormous white car stops in front of my house, the neighbours stand watching agape. Before Amin gets down, two burly individuals who act as his servants and bodyguards, roll out a red carpet from the car to the street door. I don't deny that my mother should be extremely sensitive to the
generosity of my betrothed, and that I myself, instead of sewing my trousseau, much prefer to pass the time trying on the jewels he gives me to salve his conscience. Because Amin, in spite of the natural delicacy of his soul, sometimes gives in to certain bursts of passion not becoming a gentleman. Slyly, he invents suspicious children's games. Sitting on the rug, he purses his mouth and lets out a sharp squeal. "I'm your little mouse," he says. And tries to slide between 359
my legs. Or else, suddenly, his trembling hands, spotted brown, lift the hem of my dress. Then, as though struck by lightning, he staggers back a few steps and collapses. "I am a worm," he moans. And then
he asks me to squash him. When I recount these scenes to my mother, she smiles malicious
ly. "You will have plenty of time in which to squash him," she says. And we make plans for when we move to our new mansion. My total withdrawal will save me from any possible revenge. For some time now, I have observed a coincidence between my
glandular activity and the neighbourhood's disturbances. Cave-ins, explosions, fires, street riots and other calamities are constant when ever I remain indisposed, reclining on my bed with an agonizing expression. After a week of suffering, relief comes: I become a torrent of blood. The house smells of warm intestines, of slightly rotten fruit. Locked in my room, under the mosquito net which protects me from the moths which try to alight on my body, I hear the whining of the neighbourhood dogs; their humid snouts worry the sill of my window. Drunkards come to sing under it; they ponder my charms, but, perhaps upset by the stubborn silence which is the only reward for their homage, they become furious, they stop sing ing and they insult me. On leaving, they urinate on the sidewalk, and they vomit. On those days, my blessed mother gets up earlier than ever; she carefully cleans the sidewalk and scrubs out the obscenities and the wine stains off the walls. When I marry Amin, these scandals will cease.
The electrified fence which will surround the mansion will
keep those overbearing suitors at bay. Still, I am sure that I shall miss my unmarried life. I know, through my mother, of the obligations I shall have to assume when I become the wife of the most powerful man of the community. Although I will spend most of the day reclining in bed, or in a bath, on certain nights, after a party or a meeting of the board of directors, Amin will want to dis play to his intimate friends the splendours of his favourite. I must be understanding and submit to those fantasies dictated by the vanity of my future husband. Like some cities erected for the exclusive pleas ures of the rich, I will offer the sight of my nakedness to a group of serve to
360
the privileged. The friends of Amin can buy anything: a province, a
country, a continent. It will be exciting to have them surrounding me. My teeth, so very white, will remind them of the dark holes of their mouths; my thick tresses, like snakes, of their shiny baldness; my opulent form, of their own miserable skeletons. For them, as for my betrothed, I represent the triumph of the abundance they searched for so anxiously and which at last turned them into a bunch
of tiny old men, as arrogant and withered as fragile mummies. Only death will return to them the ancient rapture, transfigured, which once ruled them:
the brilliant ebullience of the maggots so like the
gold they were able to gather while they lived. translated by John Cameron Murchison
JORGE OE LA VEGA. 1000 CALORIES by SQUARE INCHES. 1967. ACRILIC ON CANVAS. ARGENTINA.
EIGHT POEMS BY JORGE LUIS BORGES
To a coin Cold and storm-threatening the night I sailed from
Montevideo.
Coming round the Cerro, I flung a coin from the upper deck and watched it flash, then sink into the murk below-
thing of light swallowed up by time and darkness. And through me went a sensation of having committed a
an irrevocable
act,
of joining in the history of the planet two incessant, parallel, and perhaps infinite series:
my own destiny, compounded of anxieties and love and
pointless struggles, and the destiny of that metal disk which would be borne by tides into the soft chasm or out to remote seas still silently gnawing at Saxon or Viking spoils. Each moment of my sleep or my waking is matched by another of the blind coin's. At times I have felt remorse, at times, envy,
of you, like us, walled in by time and its labyrinth
without knowing it.
translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
Copyright © 1968 by Emeee Editores, S.A., and Norman Thomas di Giovanni
362
Rafael Cansinos-Assens The image of such a people, detested And stoned, and in their suffering eternal, In all the blackness of their fearful vigil Drew him on with a kind of holy dread.
As with deep drinks of vintage, so did he
Drink the Psalms and the Song of Solomon; He felt that such a sweetness was his own, He felt that all this was his destiny. Israel called him. And Cansinos heard Her intimately, as Moses the prophet
Heard at the secret summit the secret word Of the Lord talking from the burning thicket. Then let his memory walk with me forever; And all the rest of it glory will tell of. translated by John Hollander
Emanuel Swedenborg Taller than the others, this man
Walked, among them, at a distance, Now and then calling the angels
By their secret names. He would see That which earthly eyes do not see: The fierce geometry, the crystal Labyrinth of God and the sordid Milling of infernal delights. He knew that Glory and Hell too Are in your soul, with all their myths; He knew, like the Greek, that the days Of time are Eternity's mirrors. In dry Latin he went on listing The unconditional Last Things. translated by Richard Howard and Cesar Rennert
Someone A man worn down by time, a man who does not even
expect death
(the proofs of death are statistics and everyone runs the risk of being the first immortal)
,
a man who has learned to express thanks
for the days' modest alms:
sleep, routine, the taste of water, an unsuspected etymology, a Latin or Saxon verse,
the memory of a woman who left him
thirty years ago now whom he can call to mind without bitterness, a man who is aware that the
present
is both future and oblivion, a man who has
betrayed and has been betrayed, may feel suddenly, when crossing the street, a mysterious happiness not coming from the side of hope but from an ancient innocence, from his own root or from some diffused god. He knows better than to look at it closely,
for there are reasons more terrible than tigers which will prove to him that wretchedness is his duty, but he accepts humbly
this felicity, this glimmer.
Perhaps in death when the dust is dust, we will be forever this undecipherable root,
from which will grow forever, serene or our
horrible,
solitary heaven or hell.
translated by W. S. Merwin
A soldier under Lee (1862) A bullet has caught this soldier by the bank
Of some bright-running creek whose name he does Not know. He drops among the trees face down.
(This story is true: the man was many men.) The golden air displays the drooping needles Of the ranks of forest pine. A patient ant Clumsily climbs the man's unheeding face. The sun gets high. Already many things Have changed and more will change, without an end, Until a certain day when I will write Of you who died unceremoniously, Falling in war the way a dead man falls. No marble marks the place or tells your name; Six feet of ground are now your shred of fame. translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni
The sea Before our human dream (or terror) wove
Mythologies, cosmogonies, and love, Before time coined its substance into days, The sea, the always sea, existed: was. Who is the sea? Who is that violent being, Violent and ancient, who gnaws the foundations Of earth? He is both one and many oceans; He is abyss and splendor, chance and wind.
Who looks on the sea, sees it the first time,
Every time, with the wonder distilled From elementary things-from beautiful Evenings, the moon, the leap of a bonfire. Who is the sea, and who am I? The day That follows my last agony shall say. translated by John Updike
To a Saxon poet The snowfalls of Northumbria have known And have forgotten the imprint of your feet, And numberless are the suns that now have set Between your time and mine, my ghostly kinsman. Slow in the growing shadows you would fashion
Metaphors of swords on the great seas And of the horror lurking in the pine trees And of the loneliness the days brought in. Where can your features and your name be found? These are things buried in oblivion. Now I shall never know how it must have been For you as a living man who walked his ground.
Exiled, you wandered through your lonely ways. Now you live only in your iron lays. translated by A lastair Reid
Edgar Allan Poe Marble splendors, black anatomy Slandered by the worm in the winding sheet
All the cold symbols he collected Of death's victory. And feared them not.
What he feared was that other shadow,
Love's, the usual happiness of Most People; he was not blinded by Burnished metal or marble, but by the rose. As if on the wrong side of the mirror, He yielded, solitary, to his rich Fate of fabricating nightmares. Perhaps, On the wrong side of death, solitary And unyielding, he devises more
Magnificent and atrocious marvels still. translated by Richard Howard and Cesar Rennert
The perfect adventure VINCENTE LENERO
She yawned, reclining on the bed, and turning the page she came across the
photograph that entirely covered a page of the magazine. A little heavier, perhaps, older, she thought; that is, a mature man now, proud of his gray hair, but still just as smiling and happy and handsome. As if instead of ten or twelve years only ten or twelve days had gone by and not surprisingly they had run into each other again in this newly enlarged cafe with its new gray carpet. What color had the wallpaper been before? Also gray, like the waitresses' uniforms. Nothing had changed. Next to the window with the amber colored cafe curtains hung the same landscape: a section of moun tain surging imposingly from the blue lake, amidst a dark forest of fir trees. The same then as today, she had her back turned when he said, perhaps in other words, but said: a place like that for the two of us, far from everything. Although they were obviously other words, she tried to keep in mind the intention and exact meaning of his sentence, and especially the look with which he sought her eyes as she glanced around the room turning toward the picture TriQuarterly 367
and again to the table, the curtain, always avoiding his eyes. Why? Ten years ago she had an answer: because she was afraid. Afraid? he asked. Afraid of not being happy. Afraid of yourself, he said.
Perhaps. Why? he asked again. And she could not find an adequate excuse. She simply let him walk away. They said goodbye allowing time for him to retain her hand, captured so many other times in this same place where today they were once more attempting new smiles.
What a coincidence. What a small world. Business: I came for two
weeks, I'm leaving Friday. What have you been doing with
yourself all this time? Nothing, as usual. And you? Nothing. In the large black and white photograph that filled the page of the magazine, the man appeared with his head cocked slightly to one side but his eyes looked just as they were looking at her. May I introduce my friend? It's nice to meet you.
They exchanged greetings and smiles. She had to go now be cause she was expecting an urgent telephone call at her house. They wouldn't see each other again at the cafe, nor in the city, nor in any other part of the world. The only redeeming factor was to suppose that during the course of the night he would cherish the memory of their meeting and that their mutual recollections would bind them together recalling those happy evenings ten, twelve years ago. Were they really? She wanted to think so, but didn't dare confess it to the friend who asked her, in the taxi taking her home, who he was. An old suitor from her unmarried years, she replied. A faithful beau. A temptation she feared because life, she had said, is not a week at the seashore.
She was wrong. No promises either. You were wrong, he said. I loved you for a lifetime. It sounds trite, but what does it matter if it's true. It isn't true,
she thought. But what difference does it make now. It was ten years ago; you, looking at me from that same spot, framed in the land scape, fearful that I would insist until I convinced you, and I, not
knowing any more what arguments to use to make you leave the 368
city with me. One week. A lifetime. A week is, sometimes, a lifetime. She didn't dream that he would phone her that same afternoon, two hours later. How had he managed to find her married name and the telephone number she answered, raising the receiver to state mechanically: the house of her husband's name. Smiling, he an swered her questions. Not a police investigation. All he did was dial her former telephone number, the home of her parents, and there they informed him of the three sets of numbers through which he could stealthily penetrate the walls of the cloister that guarded her. He smiled. She placed her fingers around the mouthpiece and tried to say you shouldn't have called me, but her voice betrayed her: she stammered. Searching for a calmer and more natural tone, for words that would protect her from her unmotivated confusion, she tried to refer to their meeting that afternoon as if it were any meeting with
anybody, and to add, suddenly, without giving him time to interrupt her, that it had been very pleasant to see him again and would he pardon her for having to leave the cafe that way-but she had had to be home early to answer an urgent call, this one perhaps-all said as if he were nothing more than an old friend, and she a happy woman sure of herself and insensitive to memories.
She wanted to;
she thought it, but the surprise of hearing him, the shadows in the room
and who knows what hidden sentiments lulled by time sud
denly revived that afternoon by just an exchange of glances hindered her from shaping an appropriate sentence. She closed her eyes, she felt cold, she was afraid that her husband would pick up the exten sion phone and discover what? There was nothing to discover and she had nothing to feel guilty about. She said: why did you call me. And he made a date for the next day, in the cafe with the newly papered gray walls, amber curtains and the landscape of the lake. ...
I can't, she said.
Tomorrow at six, how does that seem. At six. I can't, she said again.
And he, looking in her eyes:
What are you afraid of. The index finger of the white hand on the table pointed to him. The other fingers, clasped like a shell, made it stand
apart. He de369
posited his cigarette in the little cafe plate and lifted his hand to his forehead to trace the course of the furrows drawn on his frowning brow. A few words in white letters, printed on the extreme lower right hand corner of the large photograph, distracted her attention for a few seconds. The palm of her open hand caressed the page. How many years have you been married?
Eight. Eight? How nice. And four children. Two of each.
No one would know it. He too was married but had no children. He was happy, also, if by happiness you mean, what everyone means. He spoke of his
wife, of his money, of the business affairs that brought him once
again to the city so filled with memories for him and of course for her, but he referred particularly to what still tied them together by the fact of not having been consummated. Now he was going to explain to her, with the warning that she not misinterpret his words, that it wasn't really correct to speak of lifelong love stronger than distance and time. Yes, I'm contradicting myself, he said before she became aware of it, but understand, he added after picking up his cigarette only to stub it out immediately in the ashtray; what I mean, and you know, is that the truth is we really have no love. You under stand? It's as if we had left a book half-read, or left a film halfway through. As long as we fail to complete the circle both of us will feel this way, as we feel now, unsatisfied with everything even though we may have everything. She yawned. Her arm had begun to feel numb and she shifted her position on the pillow. That's what he had said or that's what she had been thinking while he tried, naturally, to convince her with different arguments, but after all was said and done it came to precisely that. I must go.
No, I must go. I don't know why I came. Yes I know, she thought. The book half-read, the film half-seen, the dissatisfaction of not having completed the circle. You could call it fondness, passion, need, desire. It was all of that at the same 370
time under the inspiration of the landscape opening behind her back like the theme of her temptation. I will only be here till Friday. You said you had come for two weeks. I'm leaving Friday.
And perhaps he would never come back. So much the better, that would make everything easier. One afternoon in his hotel. The best way to enjoy a dream without hurting anyone. A warm summer
afternoon, in October. Then they would say goodbye, making no
promises without even the need to cherish their memories. Each would return to his day-by-day happiness. She to the care of her children and to the regimented love of a husband who would never discover in her gestures-because there would be no gestures-what only occurred in a dream. The skin holds no traces, nor the lips; caresses fade the moment clothing covers one's body again and the evening breeze barely grazes a happy face. Infidelity is taboo when it does harm and demands repetition but not when it's only once, one afternoon, where nothing is destroyed and nothing transformed, when perhaps, indeed, to the contrary, it represents a break in the routine that will return her rejuvenated and more faithful to the arms she truly loves and betrays only once, which is nothing as they say. Extraordinarily easy. Free from risk. He will go back to his country and only in his country mention her name, one evening, with some friends and without their knowing to whom that woman's name belongs. Like the perfect crime; the perfect adventure, she thought. And she shivered now with desire to feel herself caressed in the room on the tenth floor. Loved in a way different from the
way she had been loved for eight years. Another voice in her ear, other words saying the same things, in another accent. Only once,
why not? From then on bound to the promise she was making to her husband and children so removed from all this to consecrate herself
entirely to their care, love, and service. To be from tomorrow, with the plane barely off the ground, a slave; a loving mother who never stints her efforts and who will never, I swear it, say again: I'm tired, I can't bear them, the devil with the children. The faithful wife,
obedient to the whims of her husband. Well disposed to bear every
thing happily, to complain no more about the clothes she doesn't 371
have, the money he doles out to her, the diversions he never provides her, interested only, selfishly, in his own pleasures, in the lovers he
sleeps with the nights he arrives home late or doesn't arrive at all and calls to say that he's tied up on a matter of business or doesn't call and then makes up an unheard-of excuse. He has a lover, she
knows it, and scolds him about it without succeeding in making him
confess, but now, from the morning, the plane barely off the ground, she swears not to complain any more. She will forget the whole
thing, in exchange for making possible the fleeting adventure she never dared live ten years ago that he promises her again today with the warm glance that rises to her lips. The magazine slipped from her hands and fell to the floor. She sat up to pick it up and again lay back on the bed. With her thumb she turned the pages of the book until she found the large photo and stopped. She sighed. You can't deny yourself. Yes, I can, she said. But you're not going to deny yourself, he said.
One afternoon, nothing more. Three hours, maybe less, in the secret of the hotel. Tenth floor. Room 1028. To the right as you get
off the elevator, down the long, silent, carpeted corridor trod so many other times by the hesitant step of some woman like herself who doubts, shivers, doubts as she advances. And why? On the con
trary, she is going happily. Her trembling is the prelude to calculated emotions that no one will ever know about. No one, she repeats. The perfect adventure, she says again. The former friend who arrives
from a foreign city, who will stay only two weeks, until Friday, and will go away forever. The ideal circumstances, she thinks. The happy adventure. An eternity of three hours. A dream for me, for me only, without offending or hurting anyone. Intimate, innocent, delicious.
Mine, she says as her knuckles rap on the door. She watches the knob tum. She enters at last, behind the useless but inevitable words with which they meet again. Here I am.
Come in, he says. But she doesn't want to talk more. They mustn't waste a second.
She doesn't want to reflect, to feel like a married woman, unfaithful. 372
Her children. She doesn't want to hear her name. She wants to be a woman without a face or a conscience or a name for three hours
of the warm October afternoon. The fear was behind her now. The one danger that someone she knew might see her entering the hotel had been resolved in her favor. As it would be resolved three hours later. Five, six, ten dozen possibilities against six million inhabitants. Here I am, she says. And then, because she's still trembling, how
elegant, what a beautiful room. I've always dreamed of coming some day to a hotel like this. With my husband, she explains. He smiles. I understand. But better with you, she corrects, as she places her purse on a
chair and takes off the jacket that he, solicitous, takes from her hands to hang up.
He offers her a drink. She refuses. She doesn't need anything
They shouldn't lose any time, they both think, and finally their mutual reserve is broken by the prelude of the first embrace which is the point of departure en route to the pro longed vertigo of the dream that she has succeeded in making a reality. Other skin, other hands, other nails, other breath enclose and measure her. Other warmth revives hers. It is experience that should never end because it includes everything: heaven and hell, she says into his ear. I have the right. I am a woman. I'm not harming anyone. I hurt no one, offend no one. No one can blame her for being happy
now
to give her courage.
three hours out of a lifetime. You don't have to make an accounting to anyone, he says.
Perhaps to God, she says. Does that bother you? he says. God always forgives, she says. She opened her eyes, withdrew her hand, and during the silence observed him take out a second cigarette that he placed in the little plate as soon as he lighted it. Don't you want another cup of coffee? No thank you.
Something cool? I have to go.
Wait, he said. 373
No, I have to go. I don't know why I came. With the gesture of one who writes in the air, he called the wait ress as
he realized that he could add nothing new to convince her.
With women like you, it's impossible. Pardon, I meant to say, he said interrupting himself. And smiled. She smiled, too, sad. She thought how easy, how marvelous, it would have been. Like a dream. After all, what can we do, one is a
romantic. One lets her imagination fly, she invents the happiest
circumstances and in spite of that still feels fear and scruples and fear. She closed the magazine. I would never have been capable of doing it, she thought. Even
if ten years ago I had fallen in love with a man like that, from out of the country, and we had separated and I had encountered him casu
ally some afternoon, in a cafe, and he had called me two hours later to tell me he would only be in the city until Friday before returning forever to his country. Although all the ideal conditions for a perfect adventure were united, I wouldn't be capable of living it, she thought, I would be afraid, ashamed, I don't know. She put down the magazine on her bed. She went to tum on the television. She heard her husband say: Wouldn't you like to go to the movies?
translated by Margaret S. Peden
374
An anthology of Chilean poetry EDITED BY ALFONSO CALDERON
POETRY TRANSLATED BY JOHN UPTON
THUS IT IS-IF YOU THINK IT IS
During a large part of this century Chilean criticism remained buried in efficient biography or in the accounting of accessory facts, under the sway of positivism or the stain of impressionism, far removed from the most recent, and real, instances of the poetic
phenomenon.
Pablo de Rokha, the great avant-garde poet, suffered-as great innova tors do-at the hands of "watch
of order without realizing
dogs" who were protecting the appearances they were guarding a cult of unburied dead. Ga
briela Mistral, Vicente Huidobro, and Pablo Neruda did not receive ade quate critical analysis from their own generations. They were planetary poets at a time of criticism
by peasants.
When it was necessary to choose the new Pope of poetry, there emerged someone who had made his first vows to
the ghost of Garcia Lorca: Nicanor
Parra. He made possible-and what difficulties he encountered!-a poetry of change which
superseded that of egocentricity. Parra brought about the decline of the "tortured brow" school and pro fessional secretism. He sponsored an open door policy. Dreams, neuroses,
TriQuarterly 375
frustrations, hysteria, colloquial language, the fauna of the day, gestures and tones, movies, disease and death found someone who would pipe the tune to which they wished to dance.
With black humor of the highest category, and occasional attacks of furious storminess, Nicanor Parra sought words to express the problems of
contemporary man in contemporary language. Paralytics dance, the dead wink their eyes, their impudence and frivolity fade into the new dance of
death, without the macabre quality of the Middle Ages, but exhibiting the terror of civilization.
The new Chilean poetry which began to emerge in the early fifties had the good fortune to find waiting solid, reputable critics with university train
ing and a wide range of methodology capable of bringing texts to life, at the very moment of their appearance. It is the moment of requiem for undis
ciplined criticism. In the difficult task of choosing ten contemporary poets for a small anthology we are aware that some have been excluded. Nevertheless, there
is no doubt that those included here will produce a vivid and true picture of Chile today.
Gonzalo Rojas, the elder, born in 1918, is an exemplary case. For almost
twenty years, alone, he reexamined his poetry, revising, trimming here,
cutting there. His Contra la muerte (1964) offered to the country a vigilant conscience and very lucidly exposed experience that concerns itself equally with rhythm and metaphysical preoccupations, satire and the duty of the poet in the kingdom of this world. Implacable, assured, participating, Rojas produces a very lively response in recent generations who see in him a master of work and word.
The most important book of
Miguel Arteche is Destierros y tinieblas
( 1963). The harvest of ten years, it stresses content, but is not rhetorical; it is religious, without the least concession to the edifying; pure, without being schematic. His mastery of language recalls
in English
-
-
Gerard Manley
Hopkins in its desire for the recreation of words and for unusual structure. Enrique Lihn has understood through his books, the most important of which is, without doubt, La pieza oscura (1963), that established poetic
language lacks any meaning and that it is necessary to revive it by displacing afflicted metaphors and vacuous ornament and inserting in its body modali ties from dramatic and narrative language. Arteche and Lihn have an obvious relationship with T. S. Eliot, although
both apparently have seen tonalities different from those seen by the author of "Four Quartets". It occurs to us that Lihn observed how Eliot had "learnt to -
get the better words" (East Coker)
through
terms
that
-
without devaluing poetic language
permit, according
to
Schwartz, describing the content of modern life. ,
376
the statement of Delmore
principally in Otro continente, the play
Arteche seems to have seized,
of Christian symbols immersed in today's world of crisis and the terror of solitude
-
the radical solitude of contemporary man submitted to constant
despiritualization. Alberto Rubio in La greda vasija has taken shelter beneath the good tree Cesar Vallejo. There he extracts a very fresh image from the other face of
language. Upon this verbal canvas he imprints a Chile that issues from the unfulfillment of situations he attacks, through the method of establishing another mythic empire with a change of guard, on the national scene. Efrain Barquero is primarily a poet of the land, a kind of Chilean Robert Frost. His intent is to formulate
a
visionary image of material man, but
man raised above the
ordinary level; a ceremonial notion of existence. Land scapes, conversation, families, tastes, food and drink, dreams and history take on their meaning only when they acquire true internal projection. Hernan Valdes, in Apariciones y desapariciones (1964), offers his poetry in movement as a manner of protecting oneself from death, perpetuating situations and times. Attentive to cinematographic resources cuts, displace ment of camera, sets of colors, magic lanterns, double planes Valdes constantly recreates the world by means of subtle intuitions. Armando Uribe sums up all poetic tradition in his poetry. From Sappho to Pound, everything that is conciseness interests this poet. The poems seem to emerge against the will, as if he felt a special antipathy to lengthy forms. Catharsis is produced by the image the poet offers the reader concerning the -
-
bareness of the word and its successive reductions. Almost, almost, it seems, he was a poet before there were words. For the critic Pedro Lastra, the poetry of Oscar Hahn, particularly Vision de Hiroshima, has a visionary character that is formed with maximum
efficacy, assuring that the audacity of the poetic word never enters into disloyal competition with discipline. The newest of these, Gonzalo Millan, is one of the "emerging" poets, to use the
felicitous phrase of a contemporary critic. If he still pursues echoes
from here and there, he does not dilute his voice nor sing for the sake of
singing, but projects an image of the seeker who knows what he must find and only awaits the propitious moment.
Thus it is
-
if you think it is
...
translated by Margaret S. Peden
377
Legacy of honey My grandfather was the river that made this land fertile. Endowed with innumerable hands and eyes and ears.
And, at the same time, blind and uncommunicative as a tree. He was the ancient graybeard and the deep voice of the house. He was the sower and the sown. The wrinkled root. The index of time and benign blood.
My grandfather was winter with blossoming hands. He was the very river that populated the earth. He was the very earth that died and was reborn.
My grandfather was the bough bent by childbirth. He was the face of home, seated in the kitchen. He was the odor of bread and hoarded apples. He was the pilgrim's hand and the voice of prayer. He was the poverty of long winters rolled in sugar like a cooky.
Fifteen children fed from his miraculous hands.
Fifteen children slumbered under his eagle sleep. A throng of grandchildren and great-grandchildren have passed
through his sinewy arms. But his is still the hand that kneads the flour and water. He is the silence of night filled with sleeping birds. He is the hearth of childhood with its stream of tortillas.
It was my father who was most like the earth. He must have sprung up with the corn or the wheat.
My father was dark, and slept on his horse. He was like spring's reluctant rider. The other men in my family were like local birds. There was something tree-like and mountain-like about all of them. Some were as strong as Percherons.
Others wore faces of stone or roasted wheat. But they all seemed to grow close to the earth. It was a turbulent swarm that filled the house.
It was a flock of queltehues* announcing rain.
They were the thrushes who stole the cherries. *
A long-legged Chilean bird.
They were old men when I was born; when my grandfather's hair had turned white, and his beard blew him away like fog. I was born when the bonfires of May were burning. And my first memory is the voice of the river and the earth. EFRAIN
BARQUERO
The house It seems so low, so dark. I can hardly make out the entrance, or the hall.
Where the door stood, a stone. Where the bed was, a well.
Wondering where it went, and when; this is the house where we lived.
Coming home too late is knowing the hour of entering untimeliness. We went into it and ourselves to be born, to love, and to die.
And we remember the house as a
single room and a single door.
How many rooms I have lived in, each one like an exit from this. Dark chambers where someone or other is still awake. For I come home after nightfall. And others are there at my table.
Someone waits in my bed. The fire is dying in the kitchen.
They all look up, bewildered. And I myself am all the faces. All the gestures not made to me.
All the glasses of wine unoffered. EFRAIN
BARQUERO
XXI My father, I never thought that one day when we sat down at the table you would be lying there spread out like the most generous of suppers. And that it would be you yourself who portioned out your
richest earth. I never thought that when we gathered for the last time you
would grow out of yourself until you were taller than we. And that you would be sitting there amid the silence of the
harvest. Like slow and weary sowers, at the earth's great table, we are all messmates and a strange fruit of the gods. We seem to eat, and to be eaten by someone. We seem to take something in our hands, and it is the earth's mouth opening before us. One should think of seeds, of their stony, sealed kernels. One should think about the time for sowing them. EFRAIN BARQUERO
Winter Rain is brought by rain angels.
They take the guitar with its rain-strings and begin the seminal song of winter. A cueca* of birds is soaring backward. Clouds are handkerchiefs covering the sky. Up there Chilean angels are dancing the cueca, hovering in silence, sifting the heavens. Trees, without their melodious leaves, grow tipsy on a cordial of foliage running in the sap. Root by root they are rising, rising. The trees are dancing a cueca for spring. ALBERTO RUBIO *
A popular dance in Bolivia, Peru, and Chile.
Grandmother She became so crafty in the chilly dawn, the closing of doors, the categorical set of the shoulders,
making herself a strange kind of kerchief. She dropped her eyelids and locked them forever with an infinite key. Black sailors came to put her aboard a black ship.
And the ship, with spermatic masts and sails of purple flower-wreaths, was the ship that carries inscrutable grandmothers to strange ports. She would listen to no one: neither to her elder daughter, nor to her eternal rosary: she became so so
crafty,
mysterious-grandmotherishly busy with her sewing.
Now neither the surf of faces nor the tide of tears can wash her
ship back to this coast:
now no one can make her take off her
funny kerchief!
ALBERTO RUBIO
To silence Oh voice, singular voice: all the hollow of the sea, all the hollow of the sea would not suffice,
all the hollow of the sky, the entire cavity of beauty would not be enough to hold you, and even if man fell mute and the world should sink oh Majesty, you never you never would cease being everywhere, for you are replete with time and being, singular voice,
for you are present and not present, you are nearly my God, and in my darkest moments, almost my father. GONZALO ROJAS
Coal I see a swift river glistening like a knife, cutting * my Lebu in two fragrant halves, I hear it, I smell it, I caress it, I run my lips along it with the childish kiss
of yesterday, when I was rocked by the wind and the rain, I feel it pounding like another artery between my temples and my pillow. It is he. It is raining.
It is he. My father is coming home drenched. It is the odor
of a wet horse. It is Juan Antonio
Rojas crossing a river on horseback. Nothing new. The torrential night is falling in like a flooded mine, and quivers under a lightning bolt. He's coming, Mother: let's open the door,
give me the lantern, I want to meet him first, before the other children. Let me take him a good glass of wine to revive him, so he will hold me hard and kiss me
and stick me with his barbed-wire beard. Here comes man, here he comes covered with mud, raging against misery, furious at exploitation, dying of hunger, there he comes
under his woolen poncho. Oh immortal miner, this is your house built of oak, raised with your own hands. Come in: I have come to meet you, I am your seventh child. It is no matter
that so many stars have moved across the sky of these years, that we buried your wife in a terrible August,
for you and she are multiplied. It does not matter that the night was just as black
for both of you.
"Come in, don't stand there
staring at me, unseeing, under the rain." GONZALO ROJAS *The capital of the Chilean province of Arauco.
And I keep singing you like a bad
popular song Covered with creamy frosting from the cakes
my face has faded away like the brief bubbles in Coca-Cola behind the navy blue of your uniform, and sticky with pomade, in my striped tie, I am one more victim
of the sound of the orchestra at children's parties,
and just another name written in ink on the cover of your school-girl satchel. GONZALO MILLAN
Clinical bulletin Hour after hour, every day in yellow, foaming urine I expel the rotten little eggs
and the worm I bit from your apple:
Leather-hearted lady, well-thumbed and greasy card from a second-hand deck. GONZALO MILLAN
Vision of Hiroshima "
cast down upon the triple city a single projectile. loaded with the power of the universe." •••
-Mamsala Purva, thousand-year-old Sanskrit text.
Look out for the bomb's numerous eye, unleashed under the burning mushroom. Beware of the brilliance of unseeing Man, beware.
The old people fled, beheaded by the fire,
angles impaled themselves on sulphuric horns, beheaded by the fire, virgins in their radioactive halos ran aground, beheaded by the fire. All the children migrated, beheaded by the sky. It was not the maimed eye, nor the shriveled skin, nor the blood
spilled in the street that we saw: it was coupling lovers taken by surprise, turned to stone by hell's incendiary, lovers immobilized on the thoroughfare, and Lot's wife
turned to a pillar of uranium. The scorched hospital is running in the drains, your frozen heart is running into the latrines,
people are running under beds on hands and knees, on all fours like burned kittens
mewing ashes. The crow turns white in the shuddering rain and you can never forget the skin stuck to the walls, for you will drink devastation, milk gone to rubble. We watched the cupolas glowing, the orange rivers grazing, the pregnant bridges
giving birth amid the silence. Strident colors ripped out the heart of things themselves: blood red, leukemia pink,
ulcer crimson, all maddened by fission. The oil tore out our toes by the roots,
chairs slammed windows
tossing in a surf of eyes, we watched melted
buildings flow
around trunks of headless trees, and between Milky Ways and suns or luminous
empty shells,
swine
splashing in celestial pools. Footsteps ascend the radioactive stairs, shattered fish ascend the funereal air. And what shall we do with all these ashes? OSCAR HAHN
The living man There was the
Living Man, and the mill wheel
turning. Blood, sweat, and tears were bursting
from the flour sacks. And black
priests with baskets
filled with bread went
away and came back with silver coins, and chanted
glorious canticles. And the Man watched them
sadly
from the top of the wind-blade while the sun,
violently red,
burned the wheat fields. OSCAR HAHN
cross,
The lost dominions To the memory of Alaln-Fournier
Red and white stars sprang from your hands. It was more than sixty years ago, at twilight, it was 189-, in La Chapelle d' Angillon,
they were the eternal stars in the sky of childhood. You blew out the lanterns in the night so we could find the hidden
paths
that bring us to a broken lute and costumes of another day, to a ruined stable and a gala granary
where girls meet with old men who forgive everything. For what matters is not the candle we light from day to day but the one we sometimes snuff to keep light's secret memory.
What matters is not the everyday house but the one hidden around a bend in dreams. What matters is not the carriage but its tracks found by chance in the mud. What matters is not the rain but remembering it behind tall windows in high summer. We found you on the last street of a southern town, you were an unshaven bum with a little girl in your arms, it was your shade-the shade of one who died in 1914who stopped at our side to watch the children
playing cops and robbers as they do in every village in the world or chasing geese under a weary, drizzling rain or helping their mothers shell peas, while clouds drifted over a nameless woman's tomb,
the only one who had ever really loved us.
Night was falling and at the sound of the fiesta bell the hard shell of appearances fell away and we saw the house wrapped in wisteria, a
girl reading in the garden under chirping sparrows, the sound of the wheels of a distant ship. Secret reality glistened like ripe fruit. The village lights began to come on. We were on the last street of a southern town.
The children went into their houses. We heard the puppet-master
whistling for you. As you disappeared you said to us: "There are no houses, nor
parents, nor love-only
playmates." And you blew out all the lights so we could see, glittering in the sky of childhood, the red and white stars that sprang from your hands in a village twilight in 189-. JORGE TEILLIER
JORGE DE LA VEGA. TRY, TRY, TRY, AGAIN. ETCHING AND SUGARLIFT AQUATINT ON SIX PLATES PRINTED IN COLOR, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. NEW YORK. INTER-AMERICAN FUND.
Leave-taking Goodby to my hand that could dart like lightning or lie as still as stones
under yesterday's snows.
Goodby, white paper and azure ink, you wellspring of sluggish rivers, swine in the streets, and empty windmills. Go back to sands and forests.
Goodby to the friends I have trusted most;
rabbits and moths, tattered summer clouds, my soft-spoken, confiding shadow.
Goodby to this planet's virtues and delights: bankruptcies, music boxes, bats that drop at dusk like leaves from grooves of wooden houses.
Goodby to laconic friends whose principal concern is where to get a drink,
who use each passing day for nothing more than crooning last year's song hits.
Goodby to a girl who, never asking if I loved her, shared my walks and went to bed with me any evening when the streets were heavy with the smoke from leaves burning in the gutters.
Goodby to a girl whose face comes back in dreams,
gleaming in the mournful glance of headlights of departing trains under the rain.
Goodby to memory and goodby to nostalgia -the salt and water of my pointless daysand goodby to these verses:
words, words-a little air
shaped by the lips-words to hide, perhaps, the only thing that's true: that we breathe awhile and then we stop. JORGE TEILLIER
The cafe Sitting in the cafe you count the year, the day, and what not, you count the cup you sip from, astonished; and in your goodby the eye's house is dead and pale and empty. Sitting in yesterday, the cold cup shifts from place to place, and in the slender light death goes by dressed as a French girl, gnawing, all alone, on melancholy. Sitting in the cafe you can hear the river running, running, and something cold beating its wings: this moment, perhaps. And the empty, lonely cup is left standing in the cafe, and through its handle
the wind shudders, nothing but the wind. MIGUEL ARTECHE
Rain I awoke at midnight. The whole house was afloat. It was the rain, rain
of the last morning. The whole house was silence, and that night's mountains were silence. There was no sound
but falling water. I found myself awake at midnight
groping for the window; but there were no brothers, sisters, mother, or anything in the house or on the face of the earth. And the ship carried me along
into dark, cold, cold space. Who was handling
all those solitary sails? No one told me to leave. No one told me to come in, and I drew back inside, inside
myself: the whole house watched me as I went, and I looked back
from I -will-be and saw it in the distance, and I could no longer lay down my youth upon the pillow.
At midnight I looked for myself while the house sailed on. And over the earth there was no sound
but falling water. MIGUEL AR TECHE
While a man no older than
you
flies into space and returns at the very hour of revolution
while a man is dying to alter life
you listen to Marlene Dietrich and hope the elevator will bring you a VISIon
you live in the days of magic of chivalry of pretty quotations from before World War I what is this what does this way of life mean
you believe in the revolution and visions you understand everything except your own life
you wonder why the things you love are
always appearing and disappearing
there must be something you tell
yourself
that's permanent the door of your house is like a vaudeville
stage you clap you weep
your day ends with a vanishing act
everything happens in a magical and fortuitous way only love can put you in touch with other people what does all this mean how can there are people who behave
you live like this
quite differently
there are better problems there are more serious there are people who sing about these the old
things phonograph records had the right idea
come come
problems
perhaps you are not completely stupid maybe everything will finally be explained everything will appear and disappear to suit you everything will come in your lifetime provided you want to keep on living but meanwhile life goes on how can you keep going what a way what a way to live HERN AN VALDES
I am as poor as a mouse I am as poor as a mouse.
Sad as a spinster. And I blow this paper hom for the birthday
of tiny hunchbacks. And the sky's guitar sounds by itself with the indolent anguish of night. And prayer-doves strew the mute earth with ashes.
HERNAN VALDES
Oh King Achilles Oh King Achilles who ruled
the Scythian land, and I who rule nothing Are we the same hideous body ready
for the devouring tomb? HERNAN VALDES
...
from Strong wind MIGUEL ANGEL ASTURIAS
,;_ 0:
o >-
�Z ,_: 0:
« Z 0: "'
�
c
o
::; u,
o
::; ::J "'
(J)
::J
::; "'
I ....
,_: ::J
U
::; ::J "' -'
o z
::;
ui w "'
0: ....
e a: ur
Z
� o ::;
� « o
A naked sun,
so
terrible that spiders came out from among the
stones, not by ones but by hundreds, not by hundreds but by thou sands in an endless outpouring, coming out so as not to burn
inside. Everything in a daily and nightly oven and not a
up drop of
water. The people would stop to look at the
sky, their skin dry, their breath dry, sweating, suffocating. The blue tint of the sky. The animals defeated by the heat and thirst would double over like limp rags. The trees were part of the immense bonfire, like flames that did not burn, and the banana trees were
sucking up all the dampness of the earth for their thirst. The Shaman took out the jars of whitewash he had prepared and he set out for the graveyard. He TriQuarterly 393
alone in the great flat space that extended to where the horizon
Step by step, he alone with the jars of whitewash. The ground creaked in the graveyard. It was necessary to take advantage of noon on the ninth of March. He could be seen entering the ceme curved.
tery. He alone. So much alone that the half-buried dead could grasp him with their hands of cold fire, for the ground was like an oven and the dead had the temperature of living people. A cemetery of hot bones, of green and reddish flies with the buzz of fans flying over a
vegetation the color of old hair.
He alone. So much alone that the dead could have spoken to
him. Short in stature, wrapped in clothing the color of the bark of a
tree, rags that had been soaked by the rain, clouds of dust stuck to the threads so that they were like cardboard and had a wrinkled
vegetable quality. His jacket, without shoulder pads, buttoned up to the neck. A dark, carbonized tinge on both sides of his cheeks, like a beard. He could be seen making a great effort to open his eyes that were entombed in wrinkles, his lids nothing but wrinkles, his forehead wrinkles, his ears wrinkles, his hands wrinkles with
fingers, his feet toes with wrinkles. "Sugusan, sugusan, sugusan
" ...
That was what the Shaman was saying as he went into the grave
yard. The jars with whitewash splashed on the road, it sprinkled his feet. Thick, fat, white drops. He passed among the first graves with his slow step. Sugusan, He left other graves behind, the ones behind sugusan, sugusan the first. Sugusan, sugusan, sugusan And he left even farther be hind the graves that were behind the ones he had just passed. Sugu ...
...
san, sugusan,sugusan.
His mask of wrinkles began to change from sadness into joy. He raised his head, covered by a hat that was shaped like a toadstool, shade for a frog, to be able to see something, since he could no longer open his eyelids very wide in order to see well, he raised his head, stretching it out, and he scurried towards a rock pile, where he left
the jars of whitewash on the ground, and he huddled for a long time to
...
who knows what for.
Some sign
...
Sugusan, sugusan, sugusan 394
...
The Shaman's eyes closed on him, the lids fell, but he was not made him arise electrified. From one of A sudden
shaking asleep. the recently covered graves where the earth was still fresh, and the wooden cross still new and the inscription clear, he took out a dead man. With a great swipe of his knife he separated the head and threw it into one of the jars of whitewash. Then he went back the way he had come. He alone, sugusan, sugusan, sugusan, he alone with two
jars of whitewash, one to cover his tracks, and the other with the head of Hermenegilo Puac. When he got to his house, the Shaman Rito Perraj took the head of the dead man out of the jar. Fetid, heavy, white with cold lime, the firm and grainy teeth between the purplish lips. And he threw it back into the jar. He would go to the sea along with that moon which does not drink water, leaving the head of Puac in his house, pointing towards where the sun rises, on a pillow of hawk feathers. He did not take off his hat, he took off the roof of his house, which was like a straw hat above his toadstool hat. He walked away two steps by two steps, three steps by three steps, five steps by five
steps, ten steps by ten steps to the sea. The beams of the hut, its ribs, its arms, its shinbones
.
.
.
The foundation stones of the hut at his
feet. And then it came, it let itself come in from the sea against all
things, turning them into pieces. The wind picked up a hut the people said and they all hid, because the wind was blowing strong, stronger and stronger, the wind became a hurricane, devastation Hermenegilo Puac died because when he had no one to fight with, his heart became paralyzed. That was why he died! And he did not have anyone to fight with because when he resolved to kill the Manager people told him: You kill this Manager and they'll send another Manager, you kill that other Manager and they'll send still another Manager! He buried his nails into the flesh of his workingman's hands, not knowing what to do. They had to write to Chicago. The great people up there were the ones who had the last word. Hermenegilo Puac did not know where Chicago was, but he would have gone there on foot, finding out where it was, to save himself from ruin, ...
,
...
...
from which he did not save himself in the end. And who are those 395
people, he asked. Everybody, it seems, knew who they were, but nothing concrete. Chicago. The people up there. The bosses. The day when he was left with his fruit, with his bunches of bananas larger than a normal-sized man, unpurchased by them, he wept and said:
"Gringo sons of bitches, if they've got something that can't be seen and crushes us and which a person can't fight against, not even by killing, we too, hal I'll cut my balls off if there isn't some kind o f revenge '" ....
And he went to see the Shaman Rito Perraj, so that the Shaman could oppose that indeterminate will with an invincible force that
would ruin them, and the Shaman asked for his life, and he, Her
menegilo Puac, gave it to him, and the Shaman asked for his head, and he, Hermenegilo Puac, gave him everything, as long as there would be vengeance. A force that leaves nothing standing. Hermenegilo Puac asked for that. A wind that would blow from underneath, uprooting the banana trees of Tropbanana, uprooting them forever. The wind that
sinks its teeth into the earth, dirty, atmospheric, salty, and unburies
everything, even the dead. Hermenegilo Puac asked for that with the presence of his death of the heart and the giving of his head to Rito Am Perraj. Will everything change shape? It will. The railroad tracks will wiggle like snakes. Nothing will stay put. The poor vege table resistance to the unleashed elements of the natural will be
beaten down by one lone element unleashed within the supernatural and the magical with the destruction of man, the strength of great
beasts, and the incessant pounding at the roots of the foundations, the paws of the animals, the feet of the horrified inhabitants. Her
sea
menegilo Puac asked for that. And the avalanche of a hurricane like an aerial earthquake, a dry tidal wave, would be, would come, would overcome because of what Hermenegilo Puac had asked Rito Perraj, the one who manipulates the fluid and stony breaths of Huracan and Cabracan with his fingers. That night. The following day. The second night. The second day. The third night. The third day. The boxcars on the railroad lines began to move against their will, jumping off the rails, while 396
the cattle lowing in the corrals came surging out like so many loco
motives, running blindly away and jumping the tracks. Little by little houses were leaving their foundations, the wind was blowing that strong. Water pumps passed by like lightless stars, iron towers broken into pieces, telegraph poles pulled up out of their mud, and in the banana groves nothing was standing, everything was beaten
down to the ground and had become an unmoving vegetable misery. The soft metal of the hurricane in the hands of the Shaman Rito Perraj blew wrathfully like dust made out of swords. The first
impulse of the banana trees, not to let themselves be uprooted, was just an impulse, because the whole sea, transformed into whirlwinds of air, fell upon them, and then, torn up by the roots, trunks snapped, falling down suddenly, offering no resistance, so that the wind could pass by more rapidly to sweep away everything that it was sweeping away, houses, animals, trains, as if it were sweeping trash. The presidents of the Company, the vice-presidents, the local all of them, all of the representa agents, the superintendents, the tives of the great people up there, those people who had neither face nor body, but did have an implacable will All of them were spin ning about like blond rats, dressed in white, with eyeglasses on their poor myopic eyes, in their tumbling houses that were about to be torn up and swept away. They were all trying to find the face of that someone else who was opposed to their designs, who was facing them with superior elements, who was annihilating them in spite of their foresighted system to avoid any possible causes of loss. The dry wind, hot, almost fire water, not only knocked down everything in its path, but it dried it, left it like stuffing; it emptied out the substance of the banana trees it had knocked down, just as if many, just as if many days had passed and they had lain there in ...
...
the sun.
Sugusan, sugusan, sugusan
...
The Shaman went back to the
graveyard with Hermenegilo Puac's head and he buried it. The crosses had fallen into pieces when the hurricane passed over the graves. Of the village which fed the cemetery with its dead, there was just the mass, with great destruc tion, a great sad mass, a pile of collapsed houses, some roofless, 397
others without front walls, as if they had been disemboweled, leaving their viscera of furniture at the mercy of the elements; over the
empty alleys, where the frames of stores, warehouses, and bars faced each other, flew the bodies of cats, dogs, chickens, and an occasional child.
Sugusan, sugusan, sugusan
...
Fear took hold of inanimate objects in the midst of the wind
that was pushed from behind as it blew, pushing everything, every
thing, everything, wherever it passed, so that nothing would be left where it passed, and what resisted did so at the cost of great destruc tion and the suffering of living things, to such a degree that nature itself seemed to have surrendered and was going along with the hurri cane, trying to save the large trees that were standing up elastically with all of their foliage now pieces of the great wind. "Leland!
" ...
Lester was repeating the name mechanically, heading towards his house in the midst of the wind. "Leland!
" ...
"Leland!
" ...
Inside his skin his nerves and his blood vessels and his muscles and the bones of his neck were twisting with the urge to let out his
earthy laugh as if to announce "everything a seamstress needs," and he had to bring up his fist to squelch that desire to laugh, laugh, laugh. "Leland!
" ...
"Leland!
" ...
"Leland!
" ...
The hurricane was almost knocking him off his feet as they weakened on the surface of plants that had been twisted by the wind,
and now not even by clutching the trunks of the trees could he go forward. He was being dragged, he was face down, on all fours,
snaking along for whole stretches so that the hurricane, which left no solid mass in its place, would let him reach his house. or
"Leland!
" ...
"Leland!
" ...
The laugh of other days, the ya-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, came to him 398
like a vomiting of laughter and blood, and when he felt it pouring out of his teeth he swallowed it, he made it return, soaked with water
changed into wind, with sea changed into wind, with light changed into wind, with trees changed into wind, with stones changed into a wind that was blowing crudely with the smell of an ocean beast, wild, prideful, a mixture of the shriek of the elements and the roar and complaint of an inland creature in the complete affiiction of death. It made the banana plants vanish, it swept them away, it lifted them up to throw them farther, where least expected. Tables, chairs, beds, everything destroyed and scattered hither and yon for miles, over trees, under bridges, in the lashed waters of the rivers which were also infuriated, not because of any increase in their flow but from the snake-like passing and passing of the windstorm. "Leland!
" ...
"Leland!
" ...
He was about to let out his laugh when he saw his wife as he
reached the house, in the midst of the storm, her hair in disarray, her clothes about to be torn off, struggling with the horse and the sulky. "Leland!
" ...
He fell on her like a part of the windstorm. To touch her. Touch
her. See that she was there. See that the wind had not carried her off and broken her to pieces. Broken her to pieces, left her flung down,
inert, dead, or unconscious, the way so many already were in differ ent places, indifferent corpses in the path of the hurricane.
"Leland!
" ...
She did not
him, mute with terror, trembling at the thought that it was the last day of her life, but not thinking it, feeling now that it was like a brutal imposition, like something inevitable, absolutely inevitable, right there, there with her, there with every answer
thing that was happening and what would come afterwards
...
The horse, once out of the stone corral behind the house where
they had the chicken house, the buggy shed, the stable, did not stop for anything. The sulky was a ball of fire and Lester Stoner (danger hammered his real name into his ears) was back in his good old student days, when at college, dressed as a Roman, he had driven a chariot in some bastard pageant. The applause of thousands of spectators was there in the thou399
sands of leaves shaking constantly, branches with a thousand tongues
savoring together the bitter bravado of being firm branches and not the ones that were going off loose, flying away like aerial objects. The wheels of the vehicle began to weaken. In a moment they felt that they were traveling on one wheel, because the other one had already flown off. Luckily the thing did not fall down, and they could still go forward, flee, cover ground towards the town, even get to Lucero's house. Her whole being clung to Lester, made into a single person with him, her head sunk into his back, in back of him so as to give him room to work the reins, but at the waist her arms were like a taut rope to hold on better. If they fell, they would fall together. Their ears were full of that world in movement, gust after gust, of those hundreds of thousands of banana trunks flying off as if they were leaves which at any moment would be transformed into the wings of green buzzards to carry them through the dust that pre vented them from seeing more than a few yards. The road slipped down a small incline where, as the sulky struck a stone that had rolled into the middle of the road, they remained after a tremendous fall to the ground, leather seats and all, he with the end of the reins and she pressed between Lester's back and the ground, with a horri ble scratch on her face from her forehead to her ear, where her skin was
torn, although she did not feel pain but fear, a fear not of the
immediate resolution of everything, because they had already come to that: there was not much hope of surviving now that great stones
had begun to roll, passing over them like silent worlds
.
..
The
horse, down below, had been crushed by an immense tree that one of the big stones had knocked down quickly as it rolled towards the bottom. The poor animal had fallen to its knees helplessly, with all four legs broken, changed into a single stain of blood, horse, and moan.
Lester knew the terrain, but in the midst of the catastrophe and
with the anguish of what might happen to Leland, he was disoriented. If he had been alone, he would have known where to drag himself;
but with her
...
He half arose from the ground where they were lying so as not 400
lying down and hanging on to the the place called roots, and he could see that they were not far from to be swept away by the wind,
the Gambusino caves, a mile or so from Lucero's. That was what the covers a wide area" "The
phenomenon Meteorological Institute said. The Shaman knew it, Hermenegilo Puac's whitewashed skull knew it, back in the graveyard, laughing with all of his teeth at the Gringos, at their power, at their machines, at the great people from up there, the secret heads who governed them and who, in all truth, were not a single head, or two, or three, but the heads of all the stockholders put together in the great head of the Green Pope. Hermenegilo Puac, with his white skull, was laugh ing at the twelve million banana trees that the strong wind had knocked down, tearing them out of the damp soil where they had been placed like bowling pins. In the small depression in the ground there, along which they were crawling, they could go forward without being knocked down, and they went behind each other, leaning, leaning over so as not to expose their heads to the windstorm, which was coming more from the side than from the front, in short, staggering steps, as if they were .
..
drunk.
When they reached the Gambusino caves, Leland let herself go, without any sign of life except a moaning breath between her lips. She was as white as hardened wax under the greenish gold hair in the midst of an atmosphere that was murky like salt water. Lester
had brought one of the cushions from the sulky and on those remains of horsehair and leather he placed his wife's head as he looked for a
handkerchief to sop up the stream of blood that was running down her neck behind her ear. The shadows of ghost trees, of trees that did not exist, but which did exist there, began to prowl around and come into the cave like
gigantic animals. Lester knew it. Sarajobalda
had told everybody. When there is
a
storm, the shadows of the
trees that had been cut down many years ago during the
lumbering come into the Gambusino caves like ghosts, and the person they discover inside will have everything alive under his skin taken out and he will be left as a doll of skin and bones. Lester opened his green 401
eyes as if he saw a wild beast coming at them, he strangled in his
throat the laugh that was coming from his chest like a gravel train and he shouted: "Leland!
Leland!
" ...
The shadows of the giant trees, ebonies, mahoganies, matilisgua
tes, chicozapotes, guayacanes, which no longer existed, continued
crawling fantastically, coming into the cave with the movement of animals, of the waves of a heavy sea. "Leland, let's get out of here, the shadows are coming in," and he pointed with his stiff finger, "look how they're craw ling, look how they're advancing, look how they're spreading out, look how they're cornering us, look how they're catching us, and if they wrap around us they'll empty us inside and tomorrow the only thing they'll find of us here will be two dolls of hide and bones!"
They ran out of the cave so fast that Leland tore her clothes, with half of her leg exposed; and they fled on to Lucero's, between the tall poles on the top of which the distant splendor of the day was trembling at ground level; still fleeing, with their looks now lost in the irremediable, under the immense stones that the hurricane was
moving along like trash. They managed to arrive, breathless, footless, like robots, at a place near the woods by Lucero's house, and there they stopped. The hot dust that was rising up from the ground would not let them see well. But what was passing by near them, frightening them, almost hitting them, could be made out in a kind of lightning flash of aware ness. A truck that looked like the roof of a house ran into a pole that was still showing its wires, a pole or a hand that was saying: see how I didn't let go of my telegraph line, herds of cattle, cattle that had become hard leather from so much beating, their legs stiff, dragging their tails, and a great chunk of house with the name of the boys' school, and desks and blackboards, giving the idea that they too had gone out for recess, everything scattered among thousands of banana trunks that did not seem torn up from the earth but rained down
from the sky, loose
...
"Leland, let's not go on, we should wait here until everything is over, because it's all over. I knew it 402
" ...
The wind was whistling among the trees against which they were
leaning, wrapped in the torrent of destruction. An awning and a piece of bench came tumbling down, just like a great broken bird, and the remains of colored chairs passed by in the gusts, the same as things from kitchens and bedrooms, becoming motionless when they hit the ground, but only for a moment, for then the strong wind would lift them up and carry them off and toss them where things no longer had any use. It was the awning from Tury Duzin's house. And some human shape passed, it passed like a Judas making the gestures of an animal caught in a trap. They did not know who it was. Very close by they heard the wail of a woman. Then nothing. Everything went back to the noisy silence in which the hurricane was dancing about. Chickens with chicken house and all; dove-cotes with many blind eyes of terror; and bureaus with clothes hanging out like entrails, and mirrors where the faces of the catastrophe were smashed; rugs like pieces of paper, spinning at the mercy of the wind
...
They did not see anything more. Lester repeated, his breathing cut off by doubt and fatigue: "Leland, let's not go on, we should wait here until everything is over, because it's all over. I knew it
" ...
Horses and horses and horses went by at a gallop, raising clouds of dust that mingled indecisively in the
'light of the salt water and
muddied up the atmosphere. From the dust and their shape of flow
ing free beasts it was known that they were passing, because the hurricane was whistling to erase even the echo of their gallop, while strong wave of the smell of oil made one suppose that the sheds where the gasoline was stored were jumping about. a
Leland, milk-bland in her whiteness, only moved her features when she made efforts to swallow her dry, sticky saliva, or when pain mounted up in her, pain, undefined and undefinable pain. It was no use.
Who would have believed all of that. Covered with earth from
head to toe, she tried to make her husband feel that
they were to gether, that she was his definitive companion in the hurricane, but she did it without reasoning, without speaking, hugging him as he repeated: 403
"Leland, let's not go on, we should wait here until everything is over, because it's all over. I knew it; I knew that a great darkness
waiting for us, a great darkness, a time without time, a hurricane with the skin of a sea frog, terribly vengeful. That's it ter a cluster of all the most elemental forces, because ribly vengeful in the end this, all of this, is wind, just wind, a wind that is passing by, a wind that is howling, a wind that never stops passing by His back, the trees, the starless night, without a light, had fallen
was
..
...
...
"
...
like a chunk of darkness.
"Leland, I knew it, I knew that a great darkness was waiting for us
" ...
They no longer saw each other. They no longer saw each other. All ears. That was what they were. Just ears. And not even that, not even ears. What for?
.
..
To hear the sea advance over them,
because now that they were in the dark, completely in the dark, they
felt themselves on a great tongue that was twisting to speak without
saying anything but the same thundering sound, on an immense tongue of torrid sea that had changed into wind, and wherever it passed with its unleashed force it burned, lashed, swept, dried, over turned, dragged, tightened ...
"Leland, let's not go on, we should wait until it's all over, because it's all over. I knew it.
..
I knew that a great darkness was waiting
for us."
Everything was blended into a single depth at their feet, a pit of fatigue into which she felt herself slipping, into not being able to stand up anymore, her back against the tree that was like her whole body, paralyzed with terror; she was falling out of her body, she, out of her body; her body was still able to be like that leaning on the immensity of a tree, while she was falling, beaten down, just like any poor animal that was breaking itself apart to flee, harnessed to death which was waiting for it there, right there, there now. Yes, she slipped out of her body and fell, changed into fatigue, only fatigue, nothing but fatigue; but when she reached her feet, she brought down the rest, the matter, and now she was a body and she was fatigue, a single motionless thing, resolutely abandoned to what .
ever God willed
"Leland! 404
.
..
...
Leland!...
Leland!
" ...
.
Lester was calling her and shaking her mercilessly, as if the hur
ricane had got into his body too. His hot hands rubbed her, he wanted to touch her heart underneath her full breasts, and it was painful to
feel that he was not caressing her as before, but that he was rubbing her to find what he could not feel underneath her breast, because he
would not let his hand rest now
...
until at last, yes, now, now, now,
...
"Leland!
" ...
he leaned over to kiss her, his teeth hit her teeth
and he repeated in a low voice, almost in secret, ".
great darkness was waiting for us
.
.
I knew that a
" ...
He sat by her side. He made a pillow for her with some branches
and he took her carefully by the waist to hold her better, because she had fallen, all crumpled up, just like the branch of a tree.
"Leland
" ...
with his eyes closed, hugging her,
perhaps tomorrow
" ...
" ...
Leland
...
he used his hand to push away a black branch
that the hurricane had not moved, a branch of mourning leaves that had fallen on her forehead his hand. as he
hand
.
.
..
The hand was no longer there
It had gone away, it had gone away with the branch
grasped it ...
.
...
.
.
.
...
as he went away where he was now without his
without either of his two hands, handless and footless as
his feet lay there far away like a pair of tired shoes. translated by Gregory Rabassa
405
THREE POEMS BY NICANOR PARRA
translated by William Witherup and Serge Echeverria
To the ·chicken guts On the top of a hill of one thousand slopes two ballerinas chattered
tooth to tooth. Tooth to tooth, yes,
potatoes with seaweed, two little birds hugged craw to craw.
Craw to craw, yes, embrace and kiss, two skeletons struck
bone to bone. Bone to bone, come on, Pancho is a nickname for Francisco,
don't. get the idea that I'm from the National Treasury. That I'm from the National Treasury, yes, the nightingales
will never tire of sucking flowers. A sneeze is not a laugh,
laughter is not weeping; the parsley is good, but not good enough. Come on, laughter with weeping, the song is over. 406
Arnan A man's mother is seriously ill
He leaves in search of the doctor In the street he sees his wife with another man
They are holding hands He follows them at a short distance From tree to tree to tree
He is weeping Now he meets a friend of his youth It's years since we've seen each other!
They go into a bar They talk, laugh The man goes out into the patio to piss He sees a young girl
It is night
She is washing the dishes The man approaches the girl Takes her by the waist
They waltz They go out into the street together They are laughing There is an accident The girl has lost consciousness The man goes to make a phone call He comes to a house with lights He asks for the telephone
Someone recognizes him
Stay for dinner, man No Where is the telephone
Eat, man, eat Then you can leave He sits down to eat He drinks like a condemned man He laughs
They make him recite He recites
He falls asleep beneath the
writing desk
407
Unpublished artifacts ULTIMATUM
Either God is everywhere or
absolutely nowhere.
SYMPOSIUM
Cuba, yes, Yankees, also. BUTIERFLY
You must pull out its wings to see how it flies. USA
Where liberty is a statue. ONE DIES OF GRIEF
From each thousand Chileans one dies of
grief.
"CRE" GUEVARA
Eli Eli
Lama Sabachthani. TWELVE SYLLABLES
Let me know if I annoy you with my crying. OCTOBER 31
Then we'll see each other tomorrow.
Meeting place: Pavilion 31-Niche 339. The crypt of Violeta Parra.
CARLOS CASTRO SAAVEDRA translated by A meen A lwan
The insides of horses I lift the skin of horses with my fingers, the shadow that covers them,
and I see the substance of which they are made, the red nights, the wine that inhabits and lifts them. What abysses joined by the thread
of breath and blood.
Descending slowly through their veins I take communion with scarlet bubbles and allow myself to be invaded by the scales that horses dream at the edge of water. I climb joints that suddenly open themselves for me like snow ftowers warm and hard.
I cross forests of sperm
visceral tissue, filaments, membranes elastic and transparent.
Inside, a gallop is a wave the color of night. Oh the profundity of horses, their fiery resins, their obstinate and inundated timbers. I have seen their inner countries: all green like a leaf and the fire that is born on summer days at the root of the eye
when they watch sun and ripe fruit.
I have lived, believe me, among the salt of horses and have contemplated the iron and steel of their tendons and skeletons.
Slowly their manes are born like wet silk and their hoofs grow like stones
full of music and nails. I crossed their throats
with the water and honey of stables. Their throats are long
and dark like tunnels
through which the sea plunges with its foam and its sonorous alfalfa.
Whole days, months I have slept on the flowers
that horses make with saliva and the juice of their glands. But it isn't all a navigable life
of soft organic matter. There also is a sky and a tenderness, white spaces, moons that cannot be measured or sung.
Friends, horses
suddenly full of memory and time and through their most profound courtyards phantoms pass, generals that one day galloped over great battles. are
Cluster of children My children enter my arms. Their feathers and silken eyes come closer: Carlos Eduardo, king of the notebooks,
clear, small river of his school. Pablo-made of bread, and clay that smiles and suddenly the earth turns generous.
Santiago, he of the solitary moons, the one most deep in the milk of his mother; captain of the spinning top and the flowers of music that open themselves on the floor.
Dieguito, like a grain of sun among my hands. Smaller than a boat dreamt among grass by a drop of dew. And Gloria Ines, the last dove
of this innocent procession.
My children inhabit my forehead falling asleep in the midst of my white hairs and my groves, rocked by the wind.
Family orders
NEW YORK. MARISOL. THE FAMILY. 1962. PAINTED WOOD AND OTHER MATERIAL. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART.
JORGE EDWARDS
Je dis seulement, chose generale dans Ie monde, que les femmes conservent I'ordre existant, bon ou mauvais. S'il est mauvais, c'est bien dommage. Et s'il est bon, c'est probable ment encore dommage.
-Henri Michaux
I think, now, that Veronica's invitation to go to the country seemed
quite natural to us, in spite of the fact that we hardly knew her. We found out later that my mother had arranged everything. My mother was quite close to Veronica's family, ever since the good times; besides, she was an expert at that sort of thing. My father wasn't feeling at all well at the time; he was pale, forgetful, and had a harried look. Shortly before we left, he had a spell at midnight. He slept badly, and spent the night pacing around the house. His best chance to get some rest, he insisted, would be to remain in Santiago for the summer; but after my mother talked to Jose Ventura, we
guessed that business wasn't good, and that Father couldn't afford to rent a place in Vina. My mother said that Jose Ventura had be haved very well, the only one in the family who had. And you took me aside and told me, in an unusually serious tone, that we shouldn't insist on spending the summer at Vina. I nodded, and looked into your eyes without saying a word, to show you that I understood the situa tion was serious. "It's probably very nice there", you added, as a consolation. "Probably", I said, "of course." I remember I woke up
night and my father was in the bedroom. He had turned on the light, and was looking through a table full of books. "Is the tele phone directory here, by any chance?" What an idea! I've never kept the telephone book in my room. "I'm looking for an address", he said. With his hands in his pajama pockets, his eyes wandering, his hair askew, and his pants drooping, he went out into the hall, where he had also left the light on. I had to get up, turn off the light in my room, and close the door. I heard his voice through the wall, asking you the same question. To think that that was almost five years ago! one
TriQuarterly 413
From the very first moment, Veronica was extremely warm and
welcoming; we were old friends at once. She showed us our rooms, the wine-cellars, and the chapel of the estate. You said you loved the smell of the wine-cellars. When we went into the chapel, you crossed yourself automatically and stared at the roof beams, without making any comments. The houses, colonial in style, had been redone, and were full of modern improvements, hot water by the gallon, buzzers, refrigerators, even a house phone to call the pastry cook. I couldn't get over it, and surely you couldn't either, although you'd seen grander things, but we both acted as though nothing was out of the ordinary. We went out for a walk that afternoon, and Veronica told us she was bored to death in the country; it was great
that we had come; it was great, also, that her parents weren't there; their presence was a hindrance. "They're arriving on Saturday, with Jose Raimundo,
a
cousin of mine who happens to be a pill. I'm
sorry for you", she added, giving us a pitying look. We smiled. Veronica's warnings couldn't alarm us; we were having a ball, and
Saturday seemed too far away. "They must be powerfully rich", I said to you that night, when Veronica had left the room to get some more ice. "I suppose so", you said, showing little interest and some irritation. My comment had destroyed a little dream world in which you had felt very much at home. Veronica came back from the pantry, and you went on chatting with her, oblivious to my trivial comments.
"And tell me", you ask, "did they give you a raise?"
"No", I say, "it was just a rumor." You lower your glance, disillusioned, and go on sewing. It had been the assistant accountant's fault;
an
inveterate
optimist, he
thought he had heard that the whole staff was getting a raise. "Since when are they giving raises just for the hell of it?" The assistant started to argue, hotly, and finally convinced himself definitely that he had really heard that. That night I came here for dinner, and announced it to you. Just to give you, once in a while, a piece of good news. With the difference, I would buy, on the installment plan, a trip to Mexico. "A consolation trip. Since one can't get to Europe You enjoyed my little joke. "I'd also love to take a trip", you "
...
414
said, "but how? Who'll take care of the baby?" "Certainly
not
my mother", I said. You shrugged. Certainly not! Then Veronica arrived, and you gave her my good news, and she congratulated me .. We celebrated with a glass of pure pisco. I wanted you to take a sip,
and you grimaced. "How can you drink that muck!" Veronica took
drink, and lit up like a candle. "Do you remember the time we got plowed, out in the country?" You smiled, although the subject a second
of drink doesn't strike you as the least bit amusing. Veronica and I
singing at the top of our lungs, without the slightest attempt at carrying the tune, while you held us both very firmly by the arm. The tenants of one of the cottages came out to see what was going on; when they realized it was the landlord's daughter who was screeching a filthy song, they went back inside, without a single gesture. Thank goodness Veronica's parents hadn't decided to return that night. You put our heads under the shower, with a lot of shoving and pinching. Veronica, under the shower, went on singing. I calmed down, dried my head, and tried to give you a kiss. "I'm sorry, my dearest little sister!" You kept moving back, and I kept trying to reach you in the dark, feeling contrite. At last you let me kiss the fingers on your left hand. "Why don't you make it with him?" said Veronica. "What's the difference? We just ask the Pope for dispensa tion She threw herself on the bed, laughing. It seems that the room, suddenly, started to revolve around her. She got up, her face haggard, a hand against her belly, and ran, all doubled up, to the
were
"
...
bathroom. The vomit fell on the tile, before she could get to the basin. You rushed to hold her forehead, with that never ceases to amaze
efficiency which
me, even when you feel repulsion. I often think
you would have made
good doctor; when you are faced by bodily miseries, you display really stunning energy. I would also have liked to study medicine, but the sight of blood is too much for a
me.
"And how is my mother?" you ask, raising "She's well
very quiet." "I haven't had a moment free to
your glance again.
...
go to see her", you say. "I'll go
tomorrow, no matter what." "Yes, you should go!" I say. 415
She's been complaining about you, these past few days; she says
that you're ungrateful, that you've abandoned her like a dog. Her taste for melodramatic phrases is unique, and it keeps growing, as if
they afforded her some secret and perverse amusement. "What a horror!" she exclaims, "how desolate is the life of a woman alone!" "And tell me, don't I count at all?" "You're the only consolation of myoid age", she declares, "but as to that other one
...
!"-"Don't
talk that way; she's behaved very well towards you." "Behaved well? Behaved well? Raise a raven, and it'll steal your eyes!"
Although you know her as well as I do, I'd rather not repeat these things to you. What's the use. Sometimes I think you react with a blind rage, as if you took no notice of who it was that's offend
ing you. You often reveal, suddenly, a sort of stubborn dignity, an untouchable and strange matriarchal sense.
The family arrived on Saturday, as Veronica had predicted: the
parents, a slight and bossy aunt, and a boy about ten years old, with
something of a monster look on his face. Veronica had already warned us that her younger brother was a monster. Behind them, in a
brand new convertible, arrived Jose Raimundo. I found him dis
agreeable at first sight. Short and flabby, he gave the impression of a spoiled brat, both soft and tyrannical. All his clothes for the country seemed to come straight from the store. I can see him getting out of
the car, rubbing his hands, and greeting everyone the same way, with a
slight bow and a fixed little smile. He didn't show any preference for you, at the moment. Or that
afternoon, when we went out for a walk with the aunt and the monster. But by the next afternoon I noticed that he kept sticking close to you, trying to crack jokes, which you accepted indifferently.
Fortunately, after dinner he announced that he had to return to Santiago. "Unfortunately", he said, "I have some business in San tiago first thing in the morning." We waited until we heard the car going off, and then Veronica and I rejoiced over his departure, Veronica, uproariously, and I, more discreetly, since it wasn't my house. Charito, the aunt, jumped to Jose Raimundo's defense; she said he was "a whiz", always the best pupil in his class, both at school and at the university; and that his merit was all the greater since he 416
only son, the pet of a rich family. "Besides", added Aunt Charito, slyly addressing herself to you, "it seemed to me that he paid you quite a bit of attention." You rejected with some heat, blushing was an
a
bit, Aunt Charito's hints. "Poor Cristina!" Veronica exclaimed.
"What a great boy friend she's got!" "Why
poor Cristina?" asked Charito. "He's an excellent match! What more could anyone want?" "Tell me", Veronica asked, exasperated, appealing to your own
judgment, "what do you think of my cousin? Be honest!" "I didn't find him such a bore", you answered, trying to be conciliatory, and both Veronica and Aunt Chari to thought that your answer agreed with their opinion. "There, you see!" the aunt exclaimed, and Ver onica, equally certain, stated that you had answered that way purely out of politeness. There was no doubt, as far as I was concerned, that Veronica was right. With his fat, flabby body, his stereotyped man his immaculate clothes, Jose Raimundo fit nerisms, exactly the sort of person we held in low esteem, the sort who would access to the little band we formed. We could
never
have
differ in a great many
things, you, Veronica, whose affinity with us was an instant revela tion, and I, but any disagreement on something like that was un
thinkable. The argument over Jose Raimundo went on for
while, and at last Aunt Charito went off to her room,
quite a
disgruntled, declaring emphatically that no one could escape being gossiped about in that household. "Don't tear me to
pieces, please," she said, resentfully, before she left the room, and no sooner had she stepped
out of it than Veronica let out a
chortle that must have left her ears
stinging. We had a marvelous time with
been a long time since we'd
Veronica, beyond a doubt. It had
enjoyed ourselves so. The monster was pretty quiet, all things considered. Pale, with a sickly, odious expression, he spent his time hanging rather a pest, at times; but he was
about his mother's skirts: she put up with his most absurd whims. One time he threw a tantrum in the dining room, grabbed a steak and
hurled it on the floor. I felt like
beating the life out of him. But most of the time, he stayed away from us, clinging to his mother. Instead, Aunt Charito loved nothing better than to stick her nose into everything and to voice her opinions. Of course, she avoided the 417
subject of Jose Raimundo. During our afternoon walks, she would turn philosophical, and start speaking about religion and death. She would look at the sunset, for instance, and say: "How can there be people who deny the existence of God! There couldn't possibly be a sincere atheist! There just couldn't be!" I dared to disagree; not everyone has received the gift of grace that allows one to believe;
Catholic doctrine itself maintains that
...
"That's true", she would
say, and nevertheless the evening, the huge horizon, full of red clouds, that she regarded in ecstasy, her arms crossed We were silent. ...
At times, the exaltation of Aunt Charito was contagious.
"What time is it?" you ask, without taking your eyes off your
sewing. "It's still early. Five to nine." We were standing at the top of a rise, and at the bottom one could see the
narrow
stream, of deep waters, which the willows
gently lapped. One day we got onto a raft, of wood which had rotted through, in our bathing suits, and Aunt Charito, from the shore, started to shout, hysterically, for us to come back, that the raft might break at any moment. To upset her, Veronica, who was a very good swimmer, started to rock the raft, and you clutched at me, yelling with fear. I swim very well, but that day I was scared, the idea of falling into the cold, slow water, full of fishes that would suddenly jump out of it near us, terrified me: we couldn't see the fishes (only the circle on the surface; we guessed at slimy beings in the depths, toads, larvae, the mud on the shore would crumble when we tried to get out, the roots would be eaten away by the damp, and resemble
serpents). Veronica sensed our panic and prolonged the journey, with sadistic delight. Only your laments managed to affect her, at last, and she brought the raft to shore. "Don't you dare do that again", pleaded Charito, beside herself. Veronica, without paying the least attention to her, dived in, and swam to the other bank. "Come on in!" she shouted from there, clutching onto some roots, but you said that you swam very badly, and I didn't want to. The mud of the stream filled me with loathing. "That's strange!" you say. "It's grown quite late." You make a gesture as though you were about to stop sewing. 418
You glance at the dining room. Then you decide that you've nothing
better to do, that your work is the best remedy for your impatience.
The clock, a few minutes late, strikes nine. "You see?" I say. "It's not that late."
When we returned to Santiago, my father had grown a lot worse. His insomnia wouldn't allow him any rest. At the dining room table, he would drum his fingers and stare at nothing. At times, the rhythm
grew, and became disquieting. The meals seemed flavorless; after a couple of bites, he would push the plate aside with a grimace. "If you don't like it, don't eat, but don't put the plates in the middle of the table." The only answer was an increased drumming. It's not that he didn't wish to answer: it's just that he hadn't heard a sound. He
kept forgetting the most elementary things-his tie, his buttons and he spoke in disconnected phrases. His habit of pacing the cor ridors at night and coming into the bedrooms without warning had grown worse. One time, when he woke me up at three in the morn ing, we had a bitter row; I locked my door in his face, trembling
with rage. I got the impression that he stood for a long while outside,
dazed, without daring to move, thinking in a confused way that he had had an argument with someone, with whom, about what We missed Veronica, who was still in the country.
.
.
.
Only she
could save us from total boredom, before classes started, without a
(there was never any money in the house). We went all over the city on foot, in every direction, until we often reached the nearby cent
hills or the open country. In the afternoons, which were
starting to grow shorter, lost in a forest or on some new development, where the planners had traced the ways of future streets, or on the foothills, we discussed everything under the sun. You kept insisting that men bored you, that you would never get married, that all the insinua tions and
vigilance of my mother produced in you exactly the
opposite results from the ones she wanted. You were resolved to go to the
University, and you announced that you would earn your living by teaching. No matter how badly they paid. You needed very little to live on. I stated that I had no intention of
getting married
either. Perhaps we could live together; even if we didn't make
very
much, the two salaries would be combined. Of course, we had to 419
save a little every month for travel. You
thought that it was a pretty
good idea. Not bad at all. Even if one of us earned more than the other, we would have the money in common, and we'd spend the travel money equally. "Or perhaps not. If one of us wants to travel, and the other would rather remain at home Perhaps not, then. It was fundamental that we would be independent; a rigid pact; neither would try to impose any rules, settle on a particular time at which to return home, or on any kind of rituals. No questions asked, "
...
either. We were t ling to contradict the order my mother unsuccess
fully kept trying to establish with threats and lamentations. We would carry the denial of that order to its ultimate consequences.
"Don't you think so? Are you quite sure?" You would say yes, of course.
"Great!" I'd yell, and my arms would go up in exultation.
Night would fall too soon, with the cold wind from the mountains, and you would suggest going back. We'd start to feel hungry, but we could imagine what a letdown the alphabet soup would be, or a plate of spinach; a fried egg on the spinach would've been too much of a luxury at the time. I'd like to know if you can still remember those long talks. One day I came across Raimundo in our parlor. He had just
dropped in. My mother, very lively and somewhat artificial, as if be ing natural, among us, was a gift that had gone with our money, kept the conversation going. I sat opposite Jose Raimundo and didn't say a word. I wasn't about to give in a single inch. Shortly after, you came in, and you greeted him politely, but without much enthusiasm. The conversation centered on the holidays, which were just ending. Jose Raimundo said that he had come from Pucon. "I love to fish",
he said. "Don't you?" "I adore it", you said, and I stared at you in reach. My rage. Pucon, fishing, all those things were beyond our mother insisted that Jose Raimundo stay for dinner. She left the a
room, and sent Domitila to buy some ham and wine; I peered
into
the pantry, and saw Domitila, who was no spring chicken, who was
constantly tired out, leave, grumbling. "What on earth did you invite him for?" I whispered. "What's that to you?" answered my mother in a low voice, coloring with anger. "Are you going to start
telling me who I can invite to my house?" "Cristina can't stand 420
him", I said, "she finds him a dreadful bore." "That's not true!" my mother replied. "Where did you get that idea? He's a very charming young man. And every inch the gentleman. Why wouldn't she like him?" "He's a perfect ass!" I exclaimed, without controlling my voice
entirely, and left the pantry so as not to hear her reply. In the parlor, Jose Raimundo, very much at ease, spoke of music. He was completely insensitive to hostility: as thick-skinned as an elephant. He considered himself an expert, and said that the Beethoven quartets were the most extraordinary things ever com posed. "Do you like them?" "Yes, quite," you said, brazenly. I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs that you'd never even heard them, that you knew nothing except the latest pop tunes, that as for myself I preferred the sonatas a thousand times, and Bach, and Wagner's operas, God knows what, but I restrained myself, and wound up saying that I liked Stravinsky, the Rite of Spring. Jose Raimundo pulled a face. "It's marvelous!" I insisted. Instead of getting into an argument, Jose Raimundo kept silent. "I don't like it that much", you said, proving that you were resolved to give your opinion no matter what, with total impudence. "What I like best is the Ninth Symphony. I think the choral section is fascinating." Jose Raimundo gravely nodded his agreement, and took advantage of the moment to announce that he was going to invite you to a concert. "There'll be one that's really worth it in just a couple of days." I glanced over at you, to see how you were going to get out of it, but you remained expressionless; you didn't forward an answer. I asked you if you liked concerts, to give you the chance to say you didn't, that you weren't really very fond of them, which is actually true, anything to discour age him. And you said, surprisingly, just the opposite: "Yes, yes I like them." In a way which suggested that you didn't really like them too much, but that you didn't actually dislike them, not completely, without letting on, besides, that you'd only been to one, when my father took us, years ago, and that you'd been horribly bored, al though you obstinately refused to admit it, you never allowed your self to be pushed. "He's a complete fool!" I repeated, as soon as he left that even ing. "He's not so bad", you said, "just a bit phony, that's all." "A 421
damn phony! Coming here to brag about his little trips to Pucon
...
What the hell do we care! And what's more: when have you ever been fishing? Going around saying that you love to fish!" "I've never been fishing", you said, "never. But I'd love to do it." "You're an idiot!" "You're the idiot!" You had suddenly got as red as a tomato, and your anger made me smile: "Give me a little goodnight kiss." "Go away! Don't be such a pest!" My father showed up in his shirt
sleeves, with a lost expression. "Did that boy leave?" he asked. "What does he do?" he asked after. "Nothing! He's a little mama's boy! He has cars, and all sorts of deals." My father withdrew and came back at once: "Did you put out the lights downstairs?" "Yes." "Are you sure?" "Yes", I said, vexed, "I put them out myself." "Are you sure? I'm going to take a look." And he went downstairs to inspect. We heard him banging against a chair. "Damn it!" he said, in the
pitch black of the parlor. "I hope he'll let us sleep", you said; "he's so worried about the lights now, and then, when he can't sleep "Goodby, little sister!" I said, and you smiled with the end of your lips. "It seems they were all out", said my father, climbing the stairs with a discouraged expression, pained, soothing his knee. When he got to the corridor he stopped, with his mouth agape. "Who was that boy?" he asked, suddenly. "An idiot, haven't I hold you? But mother plays up to him because he's got money." My father raised his eyebrows, as though he understood it vaguely. "I hope I can get some sleep", he said, rubbing his face, "but I doubt it." He sighed, and walked to his room slowly, unsteadily. "Good night", he said, without turning, with a vague wave of the arm. One Friday afternoon we went out for a walk to the hill of San Cristobal. Classes were starting on Monday. We were taking advan tage of our last hours of freedom. "Jose Raimundo is coming for me at six thirty to go to the concert", you said: "But I don't feel at all like going." "Then don't go!" "I don't feel at all like going," you re peated, reflectively, with your eyes fixed on the sky, a stationary, dull blue. From the city, down below, a sort of vibration reached us, a dull rumble, as of something that stirred and was crushed continu ally. You kept saying that you would like to live in some quiet province, and give your classes there. The noise of big cities, all that "
...
422
screeching bustle, and heat, and dust, put your nerves on edge. To live, for instance, in one of the northern valleys. To give your classes, and live in a house with hens, with vegetables, with dogs. "And what about me? How are we going to stay together?" "You can come with me." "But 1 like big cities. The country is great for a visit. Think of You went on speaking, with the boredom, of the narrow minds out listening to my objections, of eating fresh, country bread and butter; of drinking milk fresh from the cow. "You're very bucolic today." "Today 1 feel bucolic." You threw your head back, pleased, showing your strong, graceful neck, bronzed by the summer. You had a special aroma, which 1 wanted to compare to shrubs in bloom, to plants after a drenching rain, on summer days. "You wouldn't think of marrying Jose Raimundo, 1 suppose You straightened up, indignant. "I'm just saying it, that's all; since you see so much of "
...
"
...
him now, and mother treats him so well
" ...
"What an idea! Besides,
I've told mother, if you must know, that she's got to stop fawning all over him.
It's really embarrassing." "Tell him that you haven't the
least intention of getting married, to him or to anyone else. Tell him he doesn't have a hope." "I've already told him that." "And what did
he say?" "Nothing. Just the usual sort of things." 1 got up and started throwing stones. 1 was trying to hit a rock
twenty feet away, downhill. The rock was an enemy cruiser; if 1 hit it three times in the middle, it would sink. That would some
mean that the road was
clear, that there were no obstacles. Mean while, you were absorbed, watching the grey landscape with your knees clasped together in your arms. I grew bored with my game, and tried to play with your hair, which fell, loose, down your back.
"Let's go."
"Why so soon?" "That guy is coming for me at six thirty. What time is it?" My watch, which was slow anyway, showed five to six. "We'll have to run!" you said, worried. "Why not keep him waiting? What do you care?" "I can't. I've made the date." 1 started to throw stones again against the rock, which wasn't sink ing; the stones obstinately kept missing the dead center. "If I were you, I'd just stand him up. It'd be the best way of getting rid of him." "I can't," you kept repeating, and started to go down in great strides, without paying further attention to my arguments. 423
At home, I kept Jose Raimundo company while you were getting
ready. I would have had no qualms about leaving the parlor on any excuse, but I preferred to observe him carefully, to try to get things out of him, to see which way the shoe fit on him. I didn't wind up
with anything much, either then or on other occasions when I've tried the same thing. He regarded me with ostensible lack of appre
hension, as though I weren't really worth talking to. That, and his suede shoes, his silk shirts, the weave of his ties, his soft, pudgy hands, kept throwing me into a rage. I remember the acute suffering of knowing that you'd appear looking lovely, your lips red, in a white dress that Veronica had lent you, and that you'd go off with him to the concert, while I remained in that house with the darkness coming on.
That evening, the only one who remained home was Domitila,
and I went into the pantry to talk to her. "Something's got to be
done," I told her; "mother keeps pushing that idiot on her all the time." "She
probably wants her to marry him," said Domitila. "That's just it! That's why we've got to do something!" "Let them
get married, then!" said Domitila; "if the miss wants to
" ...
The very
fact that Domitila could accept the idea as not being impossible, that she should allow herself to think that way, which meant that it wasn't an absurd idea in itself, at least not to Domitila, and therefore,
that it wasn't completely absurd, made me feel ill. I left Domitila with my spirits downcast, and then I thought that I could drop in on Veronica. She had returned from the country some five or six days before. She saw me from one of the windows, while I crossed the garden
full of dahlias and roses, with a statue of Diana the Huntress in a
gazebo covered with vines, wrapped in the autumn dusk. She shouted that she was coming right down, to wait just a second. The butler showed me into a small parlor, crammed with tiny chairs and por celain vases, with replete bookcases on the walls. I waited without moving at all, sitting on the very edge of a chair, almost without breathing. I had glimpsed, on entering, a marble gallery, the wrought iron of a railing on a staircase, spacious rooms where the dark had settled too early. The books on the shelves were mainly useless inven tories, compilations in Latin, old volumes, some classic works in tiny bindings. Extravagances of the rich, I thought, and at that mo424
ment Veronica came in, and asked, before anything else, after you.
She knew that my visit could have no other motive. I raised my brows, with a worried expression: "I came precisely to talk to you about her." My sense of the ridiculous would prevent me now from
adopting such an attitude; but at the time we affected, I and you well, theatrical gestures. "What's the matter?" Veronica asked, alarmed. "Tell me first," I asked, in order to grade my effects, "does "but tell anyone ever read these books?" "No one," said Veronica;
as
me, what's the matter with Cristina?" "Nothing. Nothing's the mat
ter." After a silence, I added: "The only thing is, that if we don't do
something soon, she's going to wind up marrying Jose Raimundo." "Do you really think so?" "I'm afraid so." "We've got to do some thing, then," said Veronica, pensively: "I'm going to speak to her." "You won't get very far by speaking to her, I assure you. She'll never admit that she likes that guy." "You think she really likes him? That couldn't be. I'm sure she doesn't like him." "I'm not that sure. At "
any rate, you can talk to her better than I can. I'll leave it to you My father's stroke took place on the Wednesday of the following ...
week, as I was getting up to go to school. From the bathroom I heard
people running, doors slamming, my mother's voice, strangely hoarse and tense, the telephone dial where someone was calling a number, and was cutting off, impatiently, before finishing the dialing, and dialed again. And soon, the imploring voice, broken, hardly re pressed, which suddenly would lift its tone: "It's very urgent, I tell you." Someone running back. You gave three discreet, but energetic, knocks on the bathroom door. I dried myself off with a certain tremor which I couldn't repress, and dressed quickly. Some voices were heard on the ground floor. My mother ran up the stairs, look ing very pale, followed by a doctor and a nurse from the ambulance. You followed. "It seems he's had a stroke." I peered into the bed room, and was able to make out, between my mother and the two men
in white, my father, lying on the bed, with one hand on his
breast, the pajama top open, one leg drawn up, his face livid. The sudden flash had left him openmouthed, stupefied, as if the mean discomforts, the petty miseries of the last few years had been ac cumulating, inadvertently, and had overflowed in a burning, stun ning wave, terrifyingly destructive. One of the men in white closed 425
the door. "I think I'm going to vomit," I said. "Don't be a ninny," you answered, "get hold of yourself." A few minutes later the door bell rang, and it was Doctor Briceno, the family doctor. He greeted us
in
a
low voice, and went straight to the bedroom. The door
opened, but all I saw were some white shapes moving, my mother's contrite face, the face of one of the men looking over his shoulder, and the door closed again. "Do you think it's very serious?" I asked, just to say something. "Very serious," you replied. We walked to the end of the corridor, and looked out at the sky through the window. At that moment the door opened, and Doctor Briceno came up to us. "I've got some bad news for you." You weren't able to repress an exclamation, half fear and half disbelief, as you pressed the knuckles of your right hand to your mouth. The doctor made a gesture of sorrowful assent. "He wasn't able to resist the attack." I saw
that the door had remained half opened, and heard sobbing
inside the room. "You have to be brave," said the doctor, pressing your arm. You drew away with ill-concealed impatience, and walked
down the corridor, biting a knuckle. I would have liked to accom pany you, but I felt in the way. Doctor Briceno gave me some friend ly pats on the back. "I'm going to speak to Domitila," he said. "Your mother needs something to drink." I looked into the bedroom and I saw you standing by the bed
side, with your head down, crying. You were crying quietly, but your shoulders were shaking with sobs. A sheet had been placed over father. His insomnia, his nocturnal walks, came back to me. I also saw him in
happier moments; next to the blue Chevrolet, putting on his cap and driving gloves, smiling, a master of the world and of himself. I remembered his tone of voice, and a fit of rage he once had because I hadn't wanted to lend you a toy, on my eighth birthday; he had given me a stunning slap, and the tears had blinded me. As for myself. I didn't feel the
slightest wish to cry; only a heaviness of the heart, as if its very beating were a double effort, as if the recent event and the accumulation of memories had crushed it. Jose Raimundo arrived at six in the evening, wearing a dark
grey suit and a bereaved expression. They had placed my father in his coffin after lunch, and they were about to take him to the church.
"My deepest sympathy," Jose Raimundo murmured, and looked 426
intensely into my eyes. I thanked him vaguely and kept silent, feel ing uncomfortable. Thank goodness you showed up immediately. Jose Raimundo said something to you that took longer, which I couldn't make out. Your eyes were a bit swollen, but you carried
yourself so well that I was surprised. You asked him to sit down, and you told him how the stroke had taken place, at what time it had happened, what Doctor Briceno had said about his lack of resistance, his fatigue, his nerves. Then Veronica arrived, looking elegant and serious, and you repeated everything for her. They both showed up very early for the mass the following morning. Veronica accompanied you back home, and Jose Raimundo followed the cortege. My uncles acknowledged him and greeted him with what seemed to me a secret complicity, with a kind of satisfaction which they weren't able to hide, an abject complaisancy The time had come to do I decided to have it out with something drastic; if it wasn't done you, one evening. "There he is," you say, when you hear the jingle of keys outside. You give a final stitch to your sewing, while I go out to the hall. The clock shows ten past nine. "Hello!" he says. I feel like kidding him about his baldness, which is
getting worse.
But I don't. He might not like it. It's always best to preserve the del
icate balance in our relations. He leaves his briefcase, bulging with papers, and kisses you on the cheek. "How come you're so late?" you ask. "Too much work!" he exclaims, dropping into a chair. He sighs
noisily. "My secretaries are so stupid!" You nod your head, agreeing that those people are impossible. "How's the boy?" he asks. "Asleep. "I'm too tired to go up to see him," he complains. To relieve my conscience, guiltily aware of my leisure time, of my easy schedule as a bureaucrat, out at six sharp, I offer to make "
the drinks. He asks for scotch on the rocks.
"What about you, Cristina?"
"Nothing for me, thanks." 427
"Are you crazy?" you said; "where on earth did you get that
idea?" "I'm sure of it. Especially now that father's dead. Even Veron
ica, if you want to know, has come to think the same way." "Veron
Why are you surprised? She's convinced of it." "You're both completely insane." "We may be, but I can see the ring coming up any day. Mother will get her way. And more so now that we've been left without a penny." All the money left in the house was being spent in buying you
ica?" "Of course!
dresses and on dinners for Jose Raimundo. Mother, with your tacit
agreement, sold father's clothes little by little, and some of the furni ture; the upper story was slowly left almost bare. I asked nothing for myself. I'd be out of school in a couple of years, and start to work. That was settled. Anyway, I wasn't particularly drawn to any pro
fessional career. You were mother's capital, all she had; there could be no question of putting me through six years of studies. All I did was
to point this out to mother, in order to ask, as compensation,
for a mahogany desk. She accepted at once, without demur; that same
afternoon, when I went into my room, the desk was installed in a
place of honor, under the window. It's still there, in the same place. "Well?" he asks, "did you get the raise?" "Just a false alarm."
Disillusioned, he changes the subject: "You just can't work in this country," he says. "Taxes, all the red tape
...
There's no incentive for people who produce."
You glance at him in agreement. You call the maid for the wine.
The air is stifling. Couldn't a window be opened? My head is pound
ing with blood. I drink some wine, and the heat in my head grows more intense.
Towards the end of that winter, you started to go out with him more
often. Mother kept smiling with pleasure; Veronica used to
kid you about it, and you didn't reject her insinuations with quite
the same conviction you had shown before. Our usual quick under
standing had disappeared. We'd find ourselves alone in the dining room, for instance, and we'd have nothing to say to each other. "Go ahead, get married, then!" I hurled at you one time, suddenly: "if 428
you want to get married, go ahead and do it!" You stiffened, and played with the fork on the table, without answering. "Get married! If you like the guy
...
or if you
like his money," I added, after a
few seconds; "it's the same thing, anyway." "I'm going to ask you a
great favor," you said, full of suppressed rage: "I'm going to ask
you not to get involved in what's none of your business. Will you please do me that favor?" "All right," I said, "agreed." I think the words came wheezing out of me; I know I felt humiliated, ridiculous.
"Agreed," I repeated. But I couldn't compose my expression, and I had to hide my hands, which were shaking uncontrollably, under the table. Mother came in, wearing a satisfied look, and I felt like insult ing her. I couldn't find an excuse. "This corn is lousy!" I exclaimed, after sinking my teeth into the steaming grains, and pushed away the plate which had just been set before me. "Why, what's the matter with it?" asked mother, disingenuously. "It's as hard as a rock!" "Would you like an egg instead?" "No!" I stood up, exasperated, and left the dining room. If I had had an axe in my hand, I would've demolished the furniture in the parlor, the cabinet with the china. I went out into the street, and walked around for a long time, or for what seemed a long time. It was a warm night, and the Alameda was full of people. A kid, who was playing around with a bunch of others, stepped back, and gave me a violent shove, unawares. "You jerk!" I exploded, beside myself with fury. The others in the bunch stared at me, perplexed, then hostile, and muttered a few insults. I went into a bar and drank a beer. I suddenly felt exhausted, and my muscles went limp. Luckily, a bus went by just then, half empty, and I got on, returning. The twists and turns of the bus helped me overcome my exasperation, which was replaced by a feeling of emp tiness, of incurable desolation. I kept thinking, as I undressed, of our adventure on the raft, of your frightened screams. I hugged the pillow to protect you. You were no longer, definitely, the same per son I had spoken to before dinner, the one who would soon show up wearing Jose Raimundo's ring, suffused by an idiotic delight (diffi cult to find a word less harsh). The certainty that you had departed, that that itch that I was forever, void, perhaps engendered trying to quell, to cheat, by uttering secret words into my pillow. 429
Predictably, the ring arrived shortly after, in a scene suffused by domestic beatitude: the initiation into the order of the families, with all the trappings. I came in, that day, and found a strange atmosphere in the parlor, at once festive and somewhat solemn. The smile you gave me was ambiguous, almost ironic. "Do you like it?" I looked at the ring attentively, giving myself time to answer. The blood was draining, and leaving behind an anemic brain, whose words seemed to come from someone else: "Very pretty." "Beauti ful, isn't it?" I nodded, assenting: you know very well that I've never been enticed by jewelry, and besides, in this case Every must have been on behind because Veronica thing going my back, arrived shortly after, completely aware of the whole thing, and there was a very good dinner. Veronica hugged you and kissed you effu sively, and let out great admiring exclamations when she looked at the ring. "What date is it set for?" You blushed. Mother stepped in, to help you: "They still haven't set the date." "You see?" I wanted to say to Veronica, "didn't I tell you?" but the phrase would have ...
fallen into the most absolute indifference. It was Veronica, of all
people, strange as it may seem, who displayed the greatest euphoria; perhaps because she could see the business as an outsider, and wasn't directly concerned. Mother had achieved what she had wanted, after a year of patient, astute waiting, and there was no capacity in her for joy, only a serene satisfaction, apparently profound, but possibly beset since then by God knows what phantoms. Because from the moment of your engagement, we noticed that she would wrap herself in
enigmatic silence, and that attitude, after the marriage, when the task of achieving her ends no longer interfered, grew more intense; until I perceived, one afternoon, on returning an
from the office, the unmistakable odor on the breath, and the eyes
glassy, fixed. I once heard that father, with his quixotic attitudes, his uncon
trolled outbursts of generosity, his absurd business ventures, had made mother very miserable. The gist of the comment was that he had been harebrained and flighty; the brilliant promise of his youth had grown tarnished with the years, and it was exclusively his fault. When all was said and done, in spite of his wit, or of his qualifications 430
qualifications at best, he had shown himself to be a useless individual, incapable of providing some security for his wife and children, of improving the world, a story
as a friend or
at a party, social
teller whose anecdotes would find a ready ear in any bar, but which useless in less amiable company: poverty, for example; an other: a vertical plunge from a situation which had seemed, by virtue
were
of an illusion cherished since youth, to be so mightily defended by the myths of the tribe. In any conversation on the subject, the word
"fool" was omitted, out of consideration for me, and its place was taken by "unfortunate", or "poor devil"; but the ineffectiveness of my father's resources
was
then revealed in its most pathetic di
mension.
I've also heard Jose Raimundo being placed at the other extreme,
unconsciously at times, at others, deliberately so: the model hus band, who has managed to make you happy. It's probably all true, and quite reasonable. As far as I am concerned, as the years go by, and it becomes more obvious that I am vegetating with a miserable job, I find myself being placed, with even less right to argue the point, in the same position, or, better yet, in the same back quarters, that my father used to occupy. But turning back to Jose Raimundo, I can't see that good husbands make anyone's happiness. What do they call happiness? On the other hand, it's true that a bad husband can make his wife a bad
miserable, as my mother was made miserable; that
husband would have made you miserable. There's no doubt
about that. The only certainty is on the negative side of the question. But you remain indifferent to these subtleties; you take it for
granted that Jose Raimundo is a good husband, and you take it for granted that your life is everything you could wish for, that it's as much as can be asked. Meanwhile, I am at sword's point, unable to say a word. The language which allowed us to communicate with each other, sprinkled with secret words, full of allusions and hidden
meanings, behind everyone else's back, has been lost to you. I try,
foolishly, to insert it into our conversations, but it's no use, it's like a dead language; I'll soon start to forget it myself. Jose Raimundo gives a mighty yawn.
"You're so tired when you come home," you comment, "that 431
we can never
get to the movies. We haven't gone for months."
Do you remember when we used to go together? I liked you to pay the ticket, even with my own money; and to hand the tickets at the door, and to choose the seats you liked best. All I wanted to do was to
sink into my seat beside you, waiting for the darkness to
come.
The lights would go out slowly, the first images would be
reflected on the curtains as they were being drawn, and my pleasure could only be disturbed, later, by the unhappy conviction that the film would soon be over. But now, in the way in which you mention his weariness, I can make out a shade of pride and of respect. And I notice, for the hundredth time, that you have no respect for me, that you only bear
slight tolerance for me, sisterly, vaguely nostalgic. For you, as for all the women I know, what really counts is money, worldly success, no matter how it's arrived at. You hadn't adopted that attitude before, and I thought, foolishly, that you could go on living like that, free from thinking the way you do now. But you took up the orders without much difficulty, with less difficulty than a lot of other people. To sacrifice details such as going to the movies, so that your husband might rest, is part of your present role, it is the indispensable dose of abnegation your character needs, that character you inter a
pret with innate mastery. "Well," I announce, "I'll be leaving, I think." Jose Raimundo yawns again and shakes my hand.
"Good night," you say, "tell mother I'll drop in on her tomorrow or the
day after."
I walk up to Providence Street, and take a bus into town. I get
off there, to stretch my legs. The evening is warm, and the sidewalks are
full of people. I stop at every corner, and watch the cars going
by. I see pale, familiar faces, used to the night. For them I must be another familiar face, part of their nocturnal landscape; someone who doesn't know what he's doing, why he exists. Standing at the doors of the cafes, I watch their crowds. I hear the screech of brakes, and then angry, confused voices; a motor starting again, at full speed. I read the titles on the bookstands.
After an hour of walking around, I cross Bulnes Square and 432
walk down the Alameda. I want to go by the brothels on San Martin Street before going to bed. We live on Manuel Rodriguez, not too
far away. The women, with their plunging necklines and their red, round mouths, call me from the windows. One of them speaks to me in a low
voice, more urgently than the others, and 1 stop; 1 can't
make out what it is she's saying, but 1 understand the leer and the call of the fleshy, moist lips. 1 walk on. 1 hear an insult, and see her
filthy gesture; probably one who has seen me go by before, and not go in. 1 turn into a side street. From a window in the gloom, a hoarse voice addresses me; someone takes hold of my arm, in a moment of indecision. "Just a second. I'll let you in." 1 mutter a denial, but the woman has already hastened to open
the door.
"Come on in," she says, standing behind it. "1 can't."
"Come in! Let's talk in here." "1 can't. 1 don't have any money."
She comes out, and takes my arm again: "Come on in, sweetie!" "1 tell you 1 can't. 1 don't have the money."
"You can give me a cheque, if you want." "I don't have any cheques, either."
"You damn liar!" "I swear 1 don't have any!"
1 pull away brusquely, and the woman draws back, with a hos tile look. I'm upset by the incident, and start
walking back home quickly. Two cops on the corner observe me going by, indifferently. Soon, 1 am far away from the crowds. 1 see a brothel on a second floor; behind the lighted windows 1 can hear music, but 1 can't see the people. To avoid any more calls, 1 hide behind a tree. After a
while, 1 go on. 1 come into deserted, arid streets, lined with low houses and spindly trees.
Domitila, in her dressing-gown, with a hand on her hip and a tired look, shuffles down the corridor. "Has mother gone to bed?" 433
"She's been asleep for quite some time." "How was she?"
"All right," says Domitila. "She hasn't been drinking?"
"No," says Domitila. "I found out she'd bought a bottle of pisco, and I hid it. She didn't even ask me about it."
"That's all right, then." Before dropping off to sleep, in the darkened room, I think of the clusters of women in the windows. Their dresses open, and I see the surge of their turgid breasts, the round bellies, showing their
fatigue. I feel the impulse to get up and to go out again for them. I could pay with a cheque. Then I think of the raft, of the calm, treacherous waters, of your screams. You come forward in the dark,
wearing the same bathing suit you wore then. Your tense, white thighs, in contrast to the elastic black cloth. I know I won't go out: I'd rather settle into my bed, and wait for you to come. But you never come.
You delay, interminably, in coming. The other night
mother walked in,
stammering, stinking of alcohol, complaining
about you because you never come to see her. "That's because this isn't a nice place to come for a visit," I told her, and she burst out
crying. Her whole body was racked by sobs. I felt sorry for her, but I had to expel her from the room in order to get some sleep. Instead of sleeping, I remained with my eyes wide open, in the dark, waiting for you. Like now. Knowing that you weren't going to come, that the darkness would remain the same, empty, barren of miracles.
translated by John C. Murchison
434
FOUR POEMS BY RAFAEL PINEDA
translated by Ben Belitt
Chich a
*
talking it up
The hanged man who wrote out his will with all the names blank; the gagged letter under the bricks; the sheriff's stripped
bandolier; the little ant who found a centavo
while sweeping the sidewalk; shock-headed poets; the cornucopia cracked
before the funeral went by;
All goes mealy
paraffin roses
and white in my thought.
with their fetor of school-girls
Cane-juice and pineapple candy my words. My teeth tum to gold
sick with love nausea; herons painted into the halls
talking aloud in the night, used to soliloquy, like myself:
in the corn kernels. In the vat's fermentation I groan for the rice's malignity as farmers
heave me into their mouths. I speak from my gut, as
*
they say in the mountains.
A drink made by Los Andes Venezuelans, with a base of pineapple, com, and
fermented rice.
435
1926 My father touched his ear to the ribs of my mother and announced, as if signing an amnesty: "We'll call him Rafael Angel, so he'll not get lost on the mountain!"
My mother hid under her hair, scary and pale: it was agony, holding her there by the forehead, tugging her back, without breathing the underground gases.
My father lit a fire in the forest. She needed a handful of herbs, a
glass of repose, so he thought,
a flower for her
hands,
pillow to catch her dropped tears in the silence of feathers. a
Like an epoch of crystal, a trickle of rain in a
wash-basin,
like a meadow intent on its love, the ribs of my mother kept on with their gnashing
down below in the depths, a
parturitive stupor that
bled off into new living filaments, a roaring of threads in the skein.
"Bring me only the water you can hold in the palm of your hand," said my mother, crouched at the right side of twilight in the shade of her terror. "Hide all my pictures, my girlhood!"
she instructed her cousin. Then she stretched out the whole breadth of her life
though grubbing for roots like a peasant and prayed for the grace of divine intervention, the ward of the child-bed as
and bliss yet to come.
I never saw clouds until then.
All night I listened while a phantom
gave cry. I saw the world circle
infinity while my mother paced an equinox off on the patio. Brittle in bone and in
flesh, naked as I was, I sank to my knees as if
asking a grace in advance,
and was part of her labor. In the darkness I called to the beasts
who hunt down the hunted. A thing would take shape all at once, I would loom like a wall for a hero. With each passing moment the nap of the web
pointing my footprints toward the lap of my mother; I would have what I wanted: the right to pursue my own death, to terrify death with my presence
was
and divide the hawk's feathers.
Nobody heard me cry out:
"I'm here, at the bottom of the well."
Nobody answered, not even my brother
counting the hours till I came and holding his breath with the ants.
"I can't see: light the blessed palm-leaf,"
begged my mother. The frond hissed on the fire, yellowing, a
caught serpent biting its tail,
and went out in a wishful hosannah. Then the ashes took over. The bed cast its lines in the dawn: my mother's look was triumphant
pointed the way toward departures unguessed by the rest. "Next Sunday you'll be playing the guitar as though nothing had happened, you'll die laughing,"
as she
my father assured her, shielding her grief with a palm. But her tears were too much for her;
clenching her fists on her heart, eternized, my mother dropped senselessly into the dark. You all know me. I was born in that instant.
The commission "I haven't forgotten the cords, little godchildren.
Your dead mother takes away with her all remembered nostalgias tied up in a handkerchief." Bent under the pansy's
habitual heaviness as if worn
by the funerary weight of her urn, my godmother dropped into our hands the knots of divided affection.
"Confide your last secrets to the vigilant dead,
that, pleading your case in the dark, she will know the true causes," so
the godmother whispered, and shook the coarse fan of her tears.
Then, under your head in its burial
bandage, the colorless forehead wan with its prayers for the help that waits in the hills, we placed the drawn cords: one for the son whom the leopard devoured, one for all unthinkable thoughts bleeding off to oblivion, and one for the terse thump of your stricken guitar. Consider these cords, most afflicted of mothers bedded under your linens:
they measure our countrified tears so that now on your pillow of alien earth you will remember and make place for us there. Did you ever surmise the dead
expecting you there, on the corner, smiling with one foot in the stirrup and a violin poised on their shoulder, spruce in their Sunday best, waiting to greet your return?
were
We sawall the dead from the transom
saddling their horses of smoke. But no one dared speak of it lest the blood that broke forth like a spray from your secretive
anguish should be stopped in your breast. Then we took down the mirrors and hid them away in the forest.
Death threw its counterfeit gauzes on
the green of the surgical stitches.
An owl blew out the lamps we lit for the saints. The neighbors ground underfoot a cross I had traced on the as a charm
patio tiles
against rain.
The dogs fled past the river
poisoned with fear by the face of Saint Lazarus they had lapped on the page of a missal. Godmother, spirit that kindled the candles, protectress, standing guard on your children, it was then that death moved out of the trees and asked: "Are you ready, my sister?"
For Maricastana, with a spray of immortelle Maricastana lives on,
giving sugared water to the ants behind the tradesman's entrance. When malaria thinned out her top-knot, she wore a spider-web wig like a small silver urn for the mummied
mosquito that dinted her ear. "She'd open her bow-ribbon bosom
night after night like a night-blooming plant!" said my grandfather Pedro, one of her gentlemen-callers.
Street corner gossips
spoke of her clandestine lovers, now civil war veterans
with mustaches like fountain-jets.
My big-mouthed godmother told me one day: "The day that the locusts came over, stripping the altar-cloths down to their last paper roses, there was Maricastana, pulling her stocking-seams tight and dropping her fan in a panic. I saw with my own eyes. They made her eat dirt." Maricastana signed all her love letters with sighs. Shaken by five consecutive waltzes
she had hardly a minute to see herself twice in the gold-bordered mirror;
slumped on her shoulders, her partners wanted to know if she carried a wire like the thread in a music-box to hear more
distinctly inside her.
Hour after hour, on the
stairhead,
the sheriff took it all in
without daring to put it in words: "They'll get nothing from me!" Her gossamer body withstood the whole weight of her starch-stiffened petticoats, the flatirons of four hundred nude and the wing of a thrush
like the cope of those saints who hide under plaster and flesh the demi-urge of a devil.
negresses
All that whalebone and petticoat like a steel armature
holding an obsolete time to its forms behind locks in the attic, while the young men, feeling eerily aged, cried out: "We're so much older than Maricastana!" without guessing why: the harsh will to exist, the flash-flood in the blood,
the whiplash of life in the flowering web of chemise: the want of these things. Maricastana erased
all of that, ashing a cross on her foreheadall the concupiscent thoughts that never once entered the mind
of a creature who shared the dove's secrets and lived as their confidante,
her hands scored with arrows, her throat in blue ribbon,
holy water beading her fingertips, her mandolin dark.
Appearances lie: no one knew that better than Maricastana. Time left her one eyetooth, honed fine as the wind; yet my finicking cousin with a jawful of animal molars bites nothing but tap-water. Whenever the pitchfork bears down
Maricastana remembers the day she pelted the soldiers with hibiscus.
She lights her slight candle and weeps her heart's bitterness then, as if someone
lay dead in her arms.
THREE POEMS BY ENRIQUE MOLINA
translated by John Upton
Old ferret If you strip bare, keep The rocks in your luggage Black Africa is blue With the arcing of its blood Who speaks of vocal cords?
The earth is flaming with ants There is a sun buried alive With Altamira's bisons!
When you walk you change your shape What splendor for your laughter! The centuries wag their tails
Deep in the ashes If you hope let it be for insomnia
Worship the faces of fire Those monkeys gesticulating Through the bars of your terror If you hope let it be for froth
The planet's brutal panting
Renegade
Indecision blinded by the fury
Spit out that noble head Whose fragrance gathers flies
Of a few stammering days
A child is like the rain: He worships the flower of maps
Who summons those sextons With their consecrated rats? This place bares its teeth: Its bed has not been exorcised A pardon for the witless ones
Rotted by embraces Those emetic couples Who have torn out each other's eyes
"What trade can suit me?" What trade can suit me? I am ignorant of all tongues I have learned only the syllable
Of water etching stone
My blood was pledged An open wound would have saved me!
A simple crime in bright sunlight To restore my pride Do not repeat like the dead
The same gesture the same dream That rodent's caress For your cozy cowardice Claim your bed of fire The perfection of your downfall The hopeless rebellion In exchange for a single day Now there are holy words
Soaked in wine and soup Communions with janitors: But be faithful to your rage!
THREE POEMS BY MARCO ANTONIO MONTES DE OCA
translated by John Upton
With fixed bayonet The first waves of people are arriving With their perfectly serious jack -0' -lanterns, to light The wick of my scars.
The yam unwinds The skeins' tormented length; Water clears miraculously And the fruit from the fog wall Is peeled with a fixed bayonet.
Phrygian caps have The shape and color of the heart; The light today has a slanted look, An air of unsmiling lightning, trusting no one: Forward, then, swarm of derided flesh,
People who can pick up the sea by one corner And wave it like a huge enamored handkerchief. For the hour is yours, yours the com in the ear; Yours the right in search of a face,
Stature and proportion On the summit of your reforested shoulders.
Who excavates sleep-walking clouds as well as you And penetrates the miserly reaches of Antares To come upon the bones of airplanes?
Who meditates, dreams or bleeds And descends the stairs of sulphurous apocalypse To choose a worthy vocation, The proper color For life's glittering eyes?
Who else, who if not these people angered in a thousand whirlpools, Rises from the root, with the celestial court For his valet, And with his aspergillum made of flowers
Floods regions unforeseen in dreams,
Cypress groves that wear today The palest green, Quite unlike the ancient sombre hue.
People, take what you need From the thief who robbed you: Air and tools,
Cool oils for your young body; Galaxies of flour for your pantries,
Rooms, books, swords, dynamite; Lilies and garden vegetables; The hinges you need To become the door of history.
Assumption of the triple image The smile white as flour, The harlequin woods set ablaze in broad dawn, The swimming girl who cleaves the bridge with the shadow of her arm, But is sometimes careless of her aim and whom she tumbles;
That smile, I say, that forest, That swimmer stretched out like a necklace In her foaming jewel case;
Softly, hardly hurrying, They overflow the chest of visions, Erect their fleshy ghosts To be witnesses, dazzled presences,
Images or right arms of the mother word,
Hung abruptly on a cross That prods its timbers awake And rows up the air Toward the sonorous sweetness of the west. That smile, that forest, that swimmer,
Speak for the dead and the living Grow fond of the lip's fiery realm, Bathe ancient enchantments in torrents And raise, like any true mirage, A sparkling screen
Of indestructible lather Around the word, their chalk-white mother Who forever tarnishes my finger tips And the farthest regions of my armies. For the smile and the forest,
The swimmer crossed by infinity, Are throbbings that render an account Of everything glimpsed,
Nocturnal instruments
Demolishing the thing that resists the dawn; Bottles cackling with the volatile juices of resurrection, Emissaries of astonishment knotted in the throat,
Images, mere images whipped together at random, Tied like a ladder of yellow tresses Dropped from the highest snow-capped tower To the bottom of buried ships. The smile, the woods, the swimmer:
This is the triple blossom of my poem,
My three-headed dog To watch over day-after-tomorrow's dream, My blind triangle, My trident for prodding reluctant whales; My images, my burning crystal cliffs Born to conquer Not to be conquered.
Nameless I
You shower thunderbolts along the cliffs That stand on cemeteries of eagle glances.
Through a hole in my shoe you regard Something that boils deep in the appeased earth And with snow spiraling on your lips you fling me Among prophetic shadows that dance and whirl Like an endless screw.
You set me down in the midst of unspeakable trophies That weigh nothing in the hand And so easily capsize high noon, When a specific and transparent resin Guards the images of swollen gold The sluggish mirror no longer keeps. Oh dweller where echoes incite the sands! You say you are God, but I would choose
To give you no name at all, To evoke your seismic lamp, Your bee-writing on my forehead, In silence taller than the poem. I would be slow-witted,
Like the mirror without a magnet for ecstasies; I would be foolish, like a four-footed Nebuchadnezzar With fingers wound in roots, If I dared inquire
What my flesh already knows. I have no name for him who is seated on the dawn For the dawn is his throne.
You are the tree, the tireless smoke
Where the planets hang; The roaring torch encircled
By wheeling angel-moths Who never tire of dying in the flames.
n
A dialogue springs up,
Strangely fruitful, Plagued by naive remarks That slowly, gravely strip away like petals The long, stiff, golden eyelashes With which daybreak brushes us. Before you, I could never learn to multiply
Light's delicious dew; But today, barely Monday in the week of centuries, I know how to rest my hand lightly On the back of things; I know how to talk for hours on end
With the objects in my ever-disordered room. In a season of diamonds like reefs, I never tended the ropes of flowering onions
That garland your unexhausted morning And I seated the poor man at my table
Only after I had eaten my fill. So then I beg you: dig up again and redirect The sleeping sound, the landscape of wings
And fruit in a burning zenith, Of the days when I was the bewitched seed Of a mobile temple
Consecrated only to you. This I humbly implore
Although, strangely, I know You are determined never to hear me.
In the middle of a man a child rises from the
dead
And I plead with you to pick me up by the comer of my
tears
And carry me before you on your saddle Toward the living plain, oh nameless river, Abundance in gentle gusts That issue from your blood Yet never empty your veins.
Made of leaves, The fierce man trembles
And everything becomes a turning of the head, a remembering,
Sweeping with feathered fingers The cellar of the crystal ball,
In whose bosom dead visions blink And the holy colors fuse forever, The colors of that immense first occasion When I wound the spring of my song, In the castaway's three-quarter time,
My distended call to the cavern Where the moon embarked upon its first parabola.
The siren CARLOS MARTINEZ MORENO
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I was the most imaginative sort of kid; the thousands of things I
thought of there and can't remember now. Because I, from the very first day, had seen the tableau going up: first the drums, the empty oil drums; then the ropes, and finally the floor
must have
boards on which I now reclined, the little staircase with four or five
rungs-I can't decide whether there were four or five, but they weren't more-the little staircase hammered together at full speed and stuck on to a corner of the tableau on the last day, the last afternoon; the papier-mache figures, made beforehand-probably in Pietro marchi's workshop-and placed there. The thousands of things I must have thought. Because I used to fancy that perhaps the oil drums weren't completely empty and that at any moment someone might throw a cigarette and the whole thing would go up in flames. And I was all wrapped up, tied, corseted, unable to move, in the middle of the fire like a fish on a grill; or, better still, like a fish placed in the middle of a skillet, one of those fish that they butter first and then wrap in oil paper. 452
TriQuarterly
It was only once there and it was also many other times, on
many other tableaus. But, I don't know why, the time I most pre ferred, the time I remember best, the one that becomes the only one in my mind is the one of the presentation of the Siren on the tableau
of the Frogs, on the comer of Dante and Patria streets. Perhaps because it was the one of my neighbourhood, or because it was the most original, the one that always got first prize, year after year, the same way that the Siren got
it, there and everywhere, on the Mardi
Gras in which the Frogs took place, gigantic green frogs playing on
harps with long, skinny fingers, on both sides of a cascade made with two huge spools which rolled and unrolled the painted cloth-painted green, blue, with white specks to simulate the foaming water-and the cloth which moved, making the fake water fall end lessly between the fake frogs, but it was more beautiful than real water and especially more beautiful than real frogs. The allegorical float of EI Chana and the tableau of Dante and Patria were the two Mardi Gras prides of our neighbourhood. And they won, time and time again, the first prizes in their class, until both were declared out of competition, and then they stopped making the tableau, and the float went on parade with a little sign which stopped it from competing, a great can of coffee surrounded by Chinese pagodas or strange Indian temples. And in the neighbourhood you could see the photos of those legends; but instead, there was never a photo taken of the Siren. Later I'll tell you why. The pictures of the float in the store windows or on the counters of EI Chana, mentioning the year and the prize. And the tableau of the Frogs and the tableau of the Hen and Chicks and the tableau of the Butterflies in the windows of the hairdressing salon, La Artistica, between the diplomas for Water Waving and for Marcel Waving which the Laurinos had won, the father and his sons. enormous
Because the tableau of Dante and Patria was one of the honours of the Laurinos, the same as their diplomas for
waving, the same as were, for my parents, the prizes gathered in that one year by the Siren. I went to that salon for years. Now they've also closed that; the Laurinos started to go into bureaucracy, and the father died. And sometimes, while I sat there, with my hair half done, the boys would 453
go down from the upper level where the ladies were attended, in a
hairdressing salon of the old kind, with none of those helmets, of those hot mitres, those electric hairdriers there are now, with noth
ing more than the comb, the skill, and the scissors of the Laurino family. They would go down, to the storewindow, and bring back the photo of the tableau of the Frogs, and we would say, "Do you remember?", and they would again talk about the presentation of the Siren that year as the most fantastic thing in the world. One of the Laurinos was always on the Tableau Committee, and usually one of them was the president of the committee, and that year-who was it?, they couldn't remember-but surely one of them had given me first prize, they weren't saying it now to get in my good books, to be fair. The year before the Frogs they had won first prize with the tableau of the Hen and Chicks, a fat, spongy hen, and chicks like
golden pompoms, very plump between us kids, who Used to run around on the tableau and were later taken down, when they lit the reflectors and the parade could start at any moment, as soon as a brass band, or a gaucho and his girl, or a masque all by itself, or a singer, showed up. And the year before the Hen and Chicks they won
with the tableau of the Butterflies, two
or
three
enormous
butterflies surrounding an absurd flower basket with a huge bow on the handle, but with no flowers. It was on that tableau of the Butter
flies that I heard a phrase from a drunken singer, a phrase which
intrigued me with two words I didn't know, at the age of nine. Be cause I was nine years old when they put on the tableau of the Butterflies, and ten for the Hen and Chicks, and eleven for the Frogs. "To the distinguished audience which circumspects this prosce nium," said the singer, and they took him down at once. I wondered for a long time if he had insulted someone. The one of the Butter flies was the first of the series, and the least lovely. And besides, as Father and the Laurinos used to say, neither the tableau of the Butter
flies nor the tableau of the Hen and Chicks could move, no tableau in all of Montevideo had any movement until they invented that waterfall between the frogs. It was senseless, I can tell you, that the tableau should have movement and the Siren, instead, should have 454
none, should have been thought of as having none, and that even
so
I should win prizes without moving a finger, without moving those
long tresses, without so much as batting an eyelash, simply by wav ing one free arm. There was plenty of movement at home, as much as you could wish for, though, while I was being readied. Tonin walking around me, asking for a profile view while he prepared his takes. Now I think that even then-he must have been eleven, he's the same age as
I am-he was in love with me, but he was my cousin, my play
mate, and wouldn't say it, he wouldn't say it for anything in the world, and not for anything in the world would he think that the kisses we used to give each other as cousins, and which so bothered
Mother-"icky cousins," she used to call us-we might some day give each other as sweethearts, I don't know. Tonin would ask me to get into profile, half combed, and then he would say "I'll take you like
that," and Mother would get furious, holding the curling irons in the air, those dreadful curling irons which were heated red hot on the
primus and then were applied, with their pincers like a cylinder, and they always scorched the hair and made an untidy curl, flat and frazzled because I kept moving and my mother kept yelling. The smell of scorched hair and that phrase of Tonin's, "I'll take you like that," are both together in my head, they come and go whenever I think of the preparations for the Siren. For that, Mother had already put on my dress and had made me lie down on a mattress in the patio; those were my last fumbling steps-"like a strung chicken," as Tonin used to say-that I gave in the patio, to get to the mattress, and there both of them, Mother and Tonin, would help me to lie down, in a difficult position, the same I would have on the tableau, because that was the first part of the
rehearsal. As still as I am now, how can I tell you?, as still as I am
here, and not even in a position as comfortable as this one, because I had to remain leaning on my left elbow, first on the mattress and
then on the floor of the tableau, while they scorched me, and once I was on the tableau
my father would touch up my hairdo, which was
not to lie on the floor. To curl me there with the irons, with the cos
tume on, was quite an adventure. But there was nothing we could do 455
but to run the risk, because the neck of the costume was very nar row, and my hairdo would have been ruined if I had put it on after, if
I had already had the hairdo. "Get in profile, and I'll take you like
that," Tonin would say. He didn't have his camera in hand, but since Tonin-besides being an amateur photographer-could also sketch,
he would trace me with his fingers in the air, but with no pencil held in them, which went on further away than those other pirouettes that
Mother was making, with the curling irons in her hand, tracing
cylinders in the air like corkscrews while she pulled and scorched my curls, just before Father, on the tableau itself, with no more than a tortoise shell comb, would smooth out the ends of my hairdo, as if
they were the fringes on a rug. It was Tonin who cleaned out the truck; first with a broom, then
with a little whisk in the grooves of the box. Because Father used the truck to carry building materials in during the week, and there was
always some sand left on the bottom, and some gravel on the sides. Tonin would climb up, and stomp around on the boards, trying the floor. The floor was always tested twice; that of the truck itself, and that of the tableau. That was because we were afraid that someone
might hide razor blades in the grooves, with the cutting edges up, and I might cut myself. I don't know how the fear began, but it surrounded my childhood: and it was absurd. Father was the strongest, so he would pick me up. I can see
myself in his arms and Mother chasing after me with the comb, with the rouge, with the pins, pulling out from her broad bust a needle with black thread, to touch up a pleat, strengthen a seam, I don't know. Father would ask her to hurry up, because it wasn't very comfortable to hold me up extended and motionless, the same way
picks up from the street someone who has had an accident, and still going on stitching on the stiff body and on top of the muscles of the person holding me. They say, I remember from the Institute, that in the olden days one
the husband lifted the wife so that she wouldn't have to step over the
threshold of the new house herself, which she was going into for the rest of her life. I wonder if there was any symbolism in that I should
have left my house for the tableau without ever stepping on the 456
threshold? What do you think? But I'm thinking of that now, after a great many years; don't pay any attention to me. At the time, it was Mother again placing the needle back on her bosom, grabbing the comb from her apron pocket for a final touch up, because the last one always took place on the tableau, and the neighbourhood
crowd surrounding me, moving around in a circle, just as they mill around when they take out a coffin from one of the houses and they say goodbye to a neighbour forever. Just the same, but, of course, it
happy anyway. Howprettyyoulook, Betterthanever, Heyloveli ness, Y ouregoingtowin: they said all that and I would listen, I would hear it all and blush, just like a little girl after giving a piano recital for her family and listening to their clapping in an empty hall. Just like that. Father would get impatient, and ask for room, he seemed to get swellheaded and to disdain his neighbours, his friends all year round, now that he carried me in the air and had to place me in the
was
box of the truck. I went first, then the beach chair in which Mother
sat, then the rug with the waves, and finally the contraption of
painted board which Tonin had made and which represented the rocks around the Siren. Yes, stage props, as they say in the business. They would make me lie down on the floor, on a square of sackcloth that Tonin had laid out after sweeping. Then Mother would climb up, helped by all the neighbours. In contrast to Father, she seemed at the time more effusive and charming than ever; she greeted everyone, she laughed-I'm thinking now that she even laughed too much-she would say goodbye to each one of the wom en, as if we were setting out on a very long trip. And when they wished her good luck, she would answer with things like We'll need-it or God-willing. I can only imagine Father's face on hearing that, because that would always happen just as we were leaving, and Father and Tonin were in the caboose and from my place on the floor I couldn't see them, all I could see was Mother's face, red and smiling and looking back in a farewell
gesture. But I know that
Father couldn't have been too pleased with phrases like the last one, because he always claimed he was an atheist, and had forbidden, before they finally settled on the Siren costume, other costumes like Sister of Mercy or Angel or Virgin, "or any other Catholic stuff," 457
as he
said, winding it up with a show of temper. "What do you want to do," he would yell, "visit bad luck on the child?" So you can just
imagine. Of the trip to the tableau, to each tableau, I'll say very little: it
dark, for one thing. And besides, from where I was, I could only see the treetops, like those shots in the movies, taken precisely to
was
describe a trip. The treetops like a street above the street, the tree
tops whirling when the truck turned a corner, some streetlamps strung on steel wires, the double tracery of the tram lines, little yellow
light bulbs, like a wreath from end to end, when we got near the tableau. I rode there, all wrapped up and motionless, beset at times by Mother, who would draw up her beach chair and start again on my hair or on the tail of the costume, stepping on both points of the fish tail to smooth it out, and other stuff of the sort. When Father blew the horn it was because we were getting near the tableau and he had to make way through the crowd to stop as near the little lad der leading up to it as possible, as though it were a wharf and the truck were a boat or something like that. Before setting me down, Father would climb on the tableau and Tonin would come and let down the back end of the truck. Then the people gathered round the tableau would come near to watch. But it wasn't the people on our block, it wasn't our neighbourhood
friends, and so it was a rather unpleasant moment. "What's that?" "Some kind of fish?" they would ask each other, without addressing us directly. And they even said other things, taking advantage of the fact that Tonin was just a kid and that Mother, in spite of her energy,
just a woman, and that neither could protect me. They didn't touch me, oh no. But it's as if my memory were clogged with indecent jokes that I couldn't understand but which they made between them was
selves, obscenities that I was too young to understand. But Mother, I'm sure, could understand them, and that's why she'd ask Father to hurry, although without telling him why, so as not to get him mad. Father would speak first with one of the members of the com
mittee, which sat behind a little table, on a corner of the tableau. He was obviously explaining what my tum was. Yes, that's right, my tum
...
458
what else would you like me to call it? There was a moment,
Tonin used to tell me, in which the members of the committee were
doubtful, and argued among themselves, and checked with each other, and then, every time, finished by saying yes. But Father would still not come to fetch me. He would go to the middle of the tableau, Tonin told me. Tonin would tell me what was going on, and now I think he used to do it to distract me from the jibes of the people,
speaking close to me, clinging onto the side of the truck, between my ear and the faces of the people. Father would go to the middle of the tableau and start examining the boards. Because there would be no sackcloth there, like there was on the truck, and Father had the mania of checking the boards, to assure himself that some de
generate hadn't placed, just in that spot, a razor blade which might cut me in two. Yes, you can laugh, but it wasn't at all funny. It was like a lifelong obsession. And before the tableaus and the Siren, I used to go through it in the parks with the slides. It was absurd, I assure you, because I was at the top of the slide, grabbing the iron
railings, feeling a bit dizzy if I looked down behind me, and the other kids, who had just gone down and wanted another turn, hurrying me, while Mother slid her hand down the whole length of the groove.
It was humiliating and, besides,
absurd, because the kids behind me who were pushing me had just gone down the slide, and they would have been cut in two if there had been a razor blade. Sure, I know, Mother was just carrying out Father's orders, and Father used to say always, and in every circumstance that "you have to make sure." Do you think that that's why he didn't believe in God? But I used to say to them, "At what possible time could the pervert show up?" At home, the pervert was spoken of as of someone con stantly lurking around, from whom I was to be protected at all times: all my childhood was spent under the shadow of the per vert. At what moment, if we were there,
watching how the other kids slid down, squatting, on their bellies, or lying down, without the least worry, could he show up, to place his razor blade in the groove for me and then disappear? From the top of the slide, with out feeling dizzy when I looked forward and down, and my eyes slid down the curve of the slide, surely then I would have seen him. And still, Mother made sure. Mother made sure and Father made 459
sure
now, passing his hands over the floor of the tableau, rougher
than the boards of the slide, wiping those great fleshy hands which sometimes got a splinter. The razor blade never showed up, of course, but now I'll tell you something not very nice yes, you've ...
asked me to tell you those things too. Well, I don't know if it's not
very nice, or just natural, because my upbringing was too narrow, how can I tell you?, too full of stupid shames, and I don't know any more
if it was wrong to feel certain things or if it was natural and
if all women, in my place, would have felt the same thing. Well, the
thing is that when I had my first menarche, the year after the Siren, and in spite of the fact that Mother, behind Father's back, and just a while before, had dared to warn me about it, on seeing-so she said-that my body was taking a woman's shape, in spite of all those explanations I felt as if at last I had slid down along the razor blade and were bleeding on account of it, as though I had opened myself up at the time I became a woman. I haven't had sons, as you know, and perhaps that's why my periods-instead of what happens with most other women-are days in which I let down my guard and get relief, days in which I let myself go with some aban don, and this isn't easy to explain, with complete freedom. If it weren't for the bother of it, I would like those days to last longer and that way I would be able to live and run about, free of the fear of the razor blade, in that state of complete relaxation, all over the
place. At last they would get me up: Father would take me in his arms,
Mother would carry the cloak of blue cloth with pleats and whimsical
designs in white, which resembled the sea and the little waves, and Tonin the contraption of the rocks, ingeniously made with lumpy cardboard over some flats and painted in black, white, and brown patches. Father would set me down on the floor, because the cloak with the little waves never stayed under me, but was laid surrounding me, fluffed up to resemble the
tide; and the rock or rocks were
placed on my left. It was only one piece with several humps, and we sometimes referred to it in the plural and others in the singular. Tonin would place it, with all the disingenuous vanity of the artist, of the creator. I've never been very feminine, either in my taste or in 460
of telling the my description of clothes, and I've gone through years story of the Siren and confusing spangles, beads, bangs, and little mother of pearls. Thank goodness Mother used to correct me. But I think I've finally learnt it. I still hadn't developed as a woman, like I've just told you, and so Mother had made two false breasts with a
couple of cones made of cushions of bristle and covered with cloth: the breastplate, as we called it, in order to avoid any embarrassment. The breastplate was a slip they used to put on me before they eased me
into the costume. After that they would put on the lower part,
which was closed to the waist and had something like two cases or sheaths of flannel in which I placed my naked feet and imprisoned them in a certain position, which Mother had decided was the most
appropriate shape for a Siren, for the fish tail and the play and brilli ance of the scales. And then, on top of the breastplate, as tight as though it were a jersey, although it was of satin, very formfitting, shaped to the body and to the false breasts, covered all over with "clair de lune" spangles that's what they were called, I'm not which made a long glimmer under the klieg lights making it up and moved with a tremor of fabulous fish scales, while I only waved one arm, in well rehearsed movements, like so many spokes which sprang from my hairdo and disappeared at once, incessantly. That was the animation of the Siren, the only thing that moved during .
.
.
.
.
.
my turn, while the tableau, in the time I like to remember, frolicked and came down with its waterfall between the frogs. Of course it
just there, as we used to recall with the Laurinos when they were cutting my hair or combing me, that everything suddenly moved at once, and how!, when Tonin fell down from among the trees thrown by his own flash of light. But that adlib certainly wasn't in the
was
program. I can't tell you much more about my costume, which I haven't seen for years,
and I don't even know if it still exists. I am a bit
wary of my own memory, when the events of the moment haven't struck my imagination, haven't impressed me very much, haven't
really interested me so much. What I could tell you about, to the point of boring you, is the way in which I felt a prisoner, way down there, bathed and swept over by the floodlights, abandoned even
461
by my parents while I moved my right arm, being careful not to touch my hairdo, in those gestures in the shape of a swan's neck, like an amphora, that nobody but Mother could ever imagine as the movements made in mythology by the classic sirens. That feeling of being imprisoned in clothes, of being imprisoned in my body, is what has always remained of the costume. Later on, when I was studying to be a teacher, and could give my studies as an excuse not even
to show up for the tests, I started to say no to Mother if she called me, with a blouse or a skirt she had just finished stitching. Tonin
had gone to live in Rivera, and besides, the contraption that Father
thought up would have been too complicated for Tonin to build, too detailed for Tonin to make, as he had been able to make the
rocks. The thing was a mannequin which followed down to the last inch the shape of my body from the neck to the hips. Instead of
the head, there was a shiny knob; and where the knees began, it
stopped suddenly and joined a wooden tripod, with three curved legs. But the whole thing had my exact height. Father had it made in the mannequin factory, to end the rows between Mother and my self, horrible rows which usually ended with my shouting and Mother's crying, bringing her dangerously near to swallowing the jungle of pins she held between her lips. They made it, they brought it, and it finished up in the attic where Mother did the sewing. I used to study in an attic facing hers, across the patio, and sometimes I'd spy on her. Mother would treat the mannequin almost tenderly, very carefully, with maternal regard: and I used to feel an inexplicable pride at seeing myself from the outside, as it were; the mannequin seemed much more graceful, much better shaped than I considered myself to be, within myself. And yet, they were my measurements. Also, at times Mother would allow herself certain liberties with the
mannequin which I wouldn't have borne: she would drape a measur ing tape across its knob of a neck, and even take out some of the pins which filled her mouth and stick them into the breast, near the simu
lated place of my own heart. In some tribes those operations are made on dolls, to provoke illness on the place which is stuck, be
supposed that the illness goes into the place represented in the doll. But it wasn't like that with Mother, and she would have
cause it is
462
been horrified at any such insinuation. It was much simpler than
that, she merely played with the mannequin, she would delay, she would try on one halter, touch up a pleat, or smooth out a sleeve: the mannequin had no arms, and the rows could begin again if she tried to fix up the sleeves on my own body. And all the time I, in the attic room opposite hers, lit by the same skylight, but away from all those worries, would read or study. No, no, it wasn't simply for
comfort, it really was in order to avoid the spells that those endless
fittings brought about: you shouldn't look for any hidden meanings. Look: right there in the place where that tableau used to be, my parents took me once, years later, to listen to a famous Doctor, who was running for President. "Y outh should get interested in these
things," Mother used to say. He was a famous surgeon, and not to be compared to the other candidate, who was a general. "A General and an Architect," Father would snap. "A General first and last,"
Mother would insist scornfully. The Doctor had once operated on an aunt of
Mother's, and he was pretty formidable: he arrived every
day at dawn at the hospital, and by seven a.m. he was already making the rounds of all his patients, in an impeccable white gown. That's what the country needed, a man of order, Mother would insist. And
besides he'd been in the World War, from '14 to '18, he had oper ated in the blood hospitals of the Allies, had saved hundreds of lives, and had received the Legion of Honor from the French. And what was his
relationship with the other President, with the one in power,
the one Father called the Dictator? Brother-in-law, I think. "Yes,
but the General is his cousin," Father would say. And then add: "It's
family affair, let them settle it between them. I'm not even going to bother to vote." Father was a determined "batilista", as they were called then, and I think he would have wanted to go on voting ex clusively for Don Pepe, who had died ten years before. I remember that day very vaguely, although I was very young, because Don Pepe also died in the neighbourhood, two blocks away from those tableaus, and because it was the only time I've ever seen Father break down. I'll tell you that the Doctor, whom Mother had painted in such glowing colours, turned out to be a great disappointment. He spoke from one of those little stands that they make for politics, which a
463
must be portable:
today on this streetcorner, tomorrow on another. A wretched little stand, in the very place of the famous tableaus: that already set me against him. The Doctor was bald, with a sharp nose, serious and very stiff, always looking as if he smelled a stink. He spoke for a long time with his hands in his pockets, holding himself very straight, without moving forward once, without leaning even once on the railing of the stand, as the ones who had spoken before him had done, when they were presenting him. He spoke very for mally, and as distinctly as you're made to speak in school, and I think he even lisped a little. His voice, which wasn't very pleasant, came out at the very tip of his lips. His enemies said that he squeezed and retouched his lips for the photographs, but that was almost surely a lie. Because there's no doubt that he was very much a man, although the General was more of a ladies' man. There are those who say that's why he won, because it was just at that time that women started voting, and the General had a little moustache, thin and a
bit cruel, like John Gilbert's, and in the propaganda photos, dressed in civilian clothes, he seemed to look at every woman who looked at him. The Doctor, in spite of his talents, hadn't known how, or
perhaps hadn't wanted, to reach the people. "Because he's an aristo crat," Father would say. Not even when he held himself so stifily, with his face as if it had been starched, or even when he took his
hands out of his pockets and waved them about slowly, with the
grand gestures of a great surgeon. He was standing in the same place where one of the frogs, with its green fingers very widely spread, had played on the harp, quite still on the tableau of the water fall. And now, with the Doctor's carefully studied and measured movements, with his pointed fingers, it was the frog's fingers which were moving, for the ideas to come out. It was as if the place itself were giving him the forgotten gestures of the frog on the left, the one facing October St., the gestures nobody ever saw the frog make, but which it might well have made when the tableau, late at night, remained alone. But I'll tell you frankly: I imagine the frog must have made them with a good deal more grace, with a more con tagious sensitivity, don't you think? Yes, don't shrug; I know you never saw it, and that's why you can't feel it. I couldn't vote that 464
time, and, what with my age, I wasn't about to become involved in
politics. My parents were the ones who took me to the rally, just so as not to
leave me at home alone. But if I could have voted, I
wouldn't have voted for the Doctor, but perhaps for the General. It isn't that I liked him much more, because I also thought he was sort of stupid; but at least he hadn't wanted to copy the frogs, and
that made him seem better.
Quite removed from all that, I felt again as if I were the Siren, but this time placed at the side of the tableau. As if I were the Siren, but not as if the Doctor were the Siren, because that role of the
Siren, that character, that impersonation, I don't know how to say it, I never wanted to pass on to anyone. As if I were the Siren, lying there, very still and detached from it all, and one of the great frogs
giving a political speech and Tonin-but I haven't told you about that yet-were just about to appear, with his flash of mag nesium, this time to take a picture of the Doctor, leaping from the top of one of the trees that still stood there, steady in the night, all
were
about. It was my cousin Tonin who drew the model of the Siren. At the
time, and on the recommendation of his teacher, who saw great possibilities in him, Tonin was going to an art academy, the Michael Angelo Academy. As a joke, we used to call him Michael Angelo, and I think he rather liked the nickname. After going through the usual plaster models and vases, they made him take sketches from
life, with a model. That's what Tonin's papers said, to accredit a progress that was costing his parents more money each day. He
drew naked women, old women with fallen breasts, very long, droop
ing like elephant's ears. They were drawings that my elders wouldn't let me see, scandalized as they were that Tonin's artistic progress should have to go through all that. But he used to show them to me in secret, during the siesta, in the attic of our house. And I would ask him what he had done with those women, whether they really posed in the nude for him, if he could talk to them and make them move this way and that, and sit down, squat, kneel, and everything, since they were getting paid. And afterwards I got a bit bolder, and I asked him if, since he had them so near, he had ever touched them. 465
I asked him without any conscious malice, because I didn't really
know what he would have got out of it if he had, and besides they horrified me, they were so old, so ugly, and so flabby. Tonin would
laugh and assure me he didn't. Because of that, and because he'd get so nervous when he laughed and told me no while shaking a pencil, and because he knew so much about women's clothes, much more than I did about clothes and models, I began to suspect, one day, without knowing really what it meant, that Tonin might be a bit of a pansy. A bit of a pansy, what did that mean? Somehow like
although I didn't know how much. But he wasn't, you'll see he wasn't. Tonin drew the model, as I told you, taking it from books, painting in with water-colour over the ink sketch of the scales, women,
of the fins, of the hair and the breasts of the Siren, very different breasts from the ones on display at the Michael Angelo Academy,
pink, erect little buttons that he must have taken from some German illustration. Mother then decided on the satin and the "clair de lune"
spangles, and she made up the breastplate, holding before her all the time Tonin's drawing, held up on an embroidery frame. Prettier and more satisfying than a dream, more mysterious than reality. Tackier, do you think? I don't know. At the time, I though it marvellous. But I must admit that my critical sense isn't very high, and frankly I couldn't care less. I hope you can see what a job the Siren was, all the time it had
taken' to prepare that exhibition which only lasted a couple of min utes. How many minutes it was, exactly, I can't tell you, because
since they pounded on my nerves, they seemed to go on forever; but
it really must have been very few. It was just the contrary of what it should have been, I think every time I see myself on my favourite
tableau: the one that moved, with the water falling between the
frogs, without wetting them, and me doing my turn without moving. You smiled when I called it "my turn" just a moment ago, lacking a better definition.
was
Well, let's see, what would you call it? Because it
like that story: it wasn't really either a costume or a spectacle,
allegory or an act. It was simply the Siren, it became the Siren the moment my mother, bigger than ever under the floodlights, stepped back, holding the comb she'd just used to touch up a ringlet or
466
which had started to droop, and after my father had settled the last little wave made by the blue cloak at my side. It was the moment in which my father would turn to those gentlemen seated around a
table, in a corner of the tableau, and must have told them that the
business, or the thing, or my turn, was being presented. I say "must have told" because I, from my place on the floor, couldn't hear a word he said. But I know he used the word "present"; that, I remem ber. Because sometimes at home, even that was rehearsed. "Let's see, how are you going to tell them?" Mother would ask. And Fa
ther, in front of us, but as if he were in front of a mirror, would lean towards an invisible table which must have been between him and our
bodies, and without drawing his eyes off us, would make a little
speech, in which he didn't leave very clear just what the nature of the phantasy of the Siren was, but which always finished by saying: "With these words, gentlemen, the Siren has been presented." An absolute silence would follow, a silence which I wouldn't be able to calculate now in minutes or in seconds, a silence of indef inite duration, while my father negotiated in order to get them to move
the floodlights of the tableau, which in principle was to stay
put, and make the light fall on me, on the scales, on my curves sheathed in "clair de lune" spangles, on my right hip, which was the raised one, the one the public could see, and which until that moment was there with its lights dulled. Suddenly I would feel that
rush of light, which was like a spreading warmth, and all the spangles would start to vibrate, to move like the lights of an underwater
world, leaping like quiet little waves, bringing forth a round of ap
plause, a clapping which would finally break that silence, and which descended upon me like a breath of warmer air; and I would stir it
by drawing a swan's neck with my right arm, fanning myself like that. It was my greeting, my way of saying thank you, and even the waterfall of the tableau seemed to start rolling more rapidly; that's an arbitrary impression, I know, but it isn't my invention. You think I'm beating around the bush a lot, that I feel my way around what I'm going to tell you. Don't think it's because I'm being brusque, or that I'm looking for the right words. No. It's just that I can't remember all that as if it were very fixed, very precise, 467
like something with a neat border. It's fluid and a bit formless,
surrounding the figure I was portraying on the boards. The applause would end with a bit of suspense, with some seconds of indecision, in which, every time, the fate of my turn seemed to be in the balance, a sort of uncertainty as to whether it would be refused or admitted. Strange, though: once it was admitted, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, and even inevitable, that it should take a prize. The whole question lay in being admitted, and in being classified in a category: was it a live turn, a costume, an allegorical tableau? "What tableau?" Mother would say. "The one she does alone?" "Oh,
no," Tonin would answer: "The whole thing, with her and the waves and the rocks," as though they all counted as more people. I was never able to know in what category I'd been given the
prize, and the Laurinos couldn't remember. But what I do know is that the Siren was always admitted, after the silences and the con ferences, and that it won a number of first prizes. Tonin, poor fellow, fell completely in love with me when he saw me dressed as the Siren. Or, better still, when he saw me trans formed into the Siren, not into the Siren he had drawn, but into that
which, suddenly, taking ideas from his drawings and getting into the costume made by Mother, I had become. Because I'm no actress, and I've never, since then, thought of being one. But the fact is that, as the critics say of a good actress, I used to identify with the role, and I even transformed it. In the neighbourhood there were several kids younger than myself, and my costume hadn't been around much, not even in the tableaus of the following year. And
still, no one ever asked to borrow the costume, to try their luck. It was as though the role had been exhausted, as though when I left it, it became like something dead, as though I had changed my skin, and the old one was no longer worth anything. So, if you'll pardon my vanity, I was the Siren, and only me. And Tonin was in love, and I don't know whether it was with me or with the Siren, probably with both at the same time, and without making any differences. Tonin's love for me showed up in lots of things. He always seemed to grow after the prizes, when we were heading back home. He would rush to put the waves and the rocks back into the truck, 468
so as
to be ready when Father, between the clapping of the same
crowd which a few minutes earlier had tortured me with filthy jokes, would raise me in his arms again, and march back to the stairs of the truck. Tonin would act like a page, walking just ahead, with his
spread out, to make way for us. He could have said, "Excuse me, excuse me, make way for the Siren, please," but all he said was "Excuse me, excuse me," because everyone knew that I was leaving and left a little path between two sides of applause, and never once touched me, no matter how near they were. Then we would get to the truck, Mother would also climb up, and Tonin, giving some ex cuse or other, would also climb on suddenly, and take my hand in front of Mother, and tell me, with his eyes shining, "You were great," and kiss the tips of my fingers. Mother was never upset by these pettings, she thought it the most natural thing in the world, a show of brotherly affection. Because since both of us were the only arms
children of our parents, it was as if we were brother and sister. But Mother didn't know about some other things. She didn't know, for
example, that a price started to be put on seeing the naked women from the Michael Angelo Academy, up there in the attic: one kiss, two kisses on the cheek, until it became-every time-one kiss on the mouth. Without knowing why, but his eyes would shine more than ever. Mother didn't suspect the way Tonin felt, but I did. One after noon there was a
Spaniard visiting Father at home, a builder, who
worked with Father and had come for him. The furore with the Siren
had passed, but it was what they still talked about at home, as soon as we had a visit.
Mother started to described the turn, and Tonin,
cheekier all the time, suddenly became enthused and, grabbing my
face, kissed me. He did it as if on an impulse, and immediately low ered his head, shyer and meeker than ever. The Spaniard must have noticed it, because he asked at once who the boy was, and Mother told him it was my cousin. "Ah, yes, I should have guessed it," said the Spaniard, "these squirts always wind up marrying their cousins, or running off with a showgirl, one or the other." I was taken aback, but made up my mind to remember the word: what could it mean? As soon as the old man left, I ran to the
dictionary. It wasn't easy for 469
me to a
find, because I didn't know whether it was spelled with a d or
t, or whether it had an r or not. Finally I found what I thought it
was, and I remember the definition word by word:
"Squid. Any of numerous ten-armed cephalopods having a long, tapered body, a caudal fin on each side, and usually a slender internal chitinous support." So Tonin was a squid, I thought to myself, aghast, since I could think of nothing less romantic. But look, where the spic wasn't wrong was in the other thing: Tonin didn't marry me, of course not. But he did run away with a showgirl, with someone who was even worse than a showgirl, and I'll tell you about that as soon as
the time comes. But what was even more ridiculous and even more tender than
his love, was his obstinacy in getting a picture of the Siren. He had a little box camera that his parents
had given him for his birthday,
and I think he used to take pretty good pictures. And I've already
told you that he was quite clever: he used to read The Book of
Knowledge, the parts which dealt with home experiments, and also every kind of scientific magazine for young people. And he would think up the wildest things. That's how he put together, as we learned after the incident, the flash for the magnesium: with an old spoon he found in a rubbish heap, twisting it around. That's what he had to resort to, since nobody wanted to oblige him, neither me nor my parents. I certainly regret it now, not having a single picture of the Siren. Because Tonin used to say: "Come and I'll take your picture," "Get in profile, and I'll take you like that," and would fix the lens of the camera, like a fish-eye, on me. But when it was early after noon, and the light came in full strength through the skylight, I still wasn't in costume. And if I was dressed, it was already dark, and the lampstand in a corner of the courtyard wouldn't have been enough for a photograph. My parents could have dressed me in mid afternoon, made me lie down on the tile floor, draped the waves around me, and placed the rock beside me. But they would have had to go to a lot of bother, and give me curls that might not have lasted until the evening, and it would never have occurred to them to go to all that trouble just for Tonin, just for one of Tonin's stupid whims, as my father used to say about his photos. Because they didn't think that the picture would be for everybody, once it was 470
taken; to them, it just seemed like another one of Tonin's crazy ideas. It was then that Tonin decided to invent his flash, on the sly,
without even telling me about it. They didn't have bulb flashes in those days, and every time a picture was taken at night, there was an
explosion of magnesium in the photographer's uplifted left hand. You had to coordinate the flash with clicking the shutter, a pretty difficult thing to do, it seems to me. If the picture was taken in the open air, the cloud of magnesium floated up, round, and very white, until it merged with the night sky. If it was indoors, the magnesium
would float up, growing wider all the time, until it flattened itself
against the ceiling, and when it spread in the room, there was always someone who would start to cough. Well, Tonin fixed up the spoon, twisting the handle so that he could hold it aloft, and then he got hold of some magnesium, in a hardware store, or goodness knows where, and with that he was ready to take my picture precisely on that night, the night of the tab leau of the Frogs. He must have hidden all the stuff in the truck very early, and taken it out when we were all hanging on to Father's presentation, and the admittance of the Siren. Because no one saw him doing it, at any time. He had already passed beside me, and placed the rocks around me, and then I noticed that he smiled at me in a peculiar way, as though he were plotting something. I remember thinking at the time that it might be nerves, because the whole busi ness of the presentation of the Siren used to get him very nervous. So I didn't pay much attention.
Tonin was clever, I can tell you. With just about any bit of junk he could make some kind of a
weapon, or a firecracker for the tram way line, whatever he wanted. Look, if it weren't because he's done
something pretty bad, and has other reasons for being a fugitive, he could have been a good engineer, if he wanted. But something had to go wrong: the magnesium flashes must have had some sort of spark, or a detonating device, something to produce the flash. That's what Tonin didn't have; and it was silly to think that with only two hands he could manage to focus the camera on me, hold the
spoon
aloft, and light a match. He would have needed three hands, at least. And that's where it went wrong. I was already lying on the floor of the tableau, and Father was 471
presenting me to the members of the committee, when we suddenly heard a noise, almost like a gun going off, and saw a flash wrapping itself around one of the trees, and something that fell from the tree top, all the way down to the ground, and tearing off branches on the way. I still hadn't been able to realize what it was, when, in the middle of the silence that used to last until the floodlight reached me, and which hadn't been broken by the surprise of the incident,
I recognized Tonin's voice, coming from below, and shouting to us:
"I'm all right! I'm all right!" And that's how I knew he hadn't
hurt himself, before I even knew that the thing that had fallen from the treetop was Tonin. He had only scratches on his hands and fore arms, and some scrapes on his knees and thighs, as we found out
later. But Father, who was furious, and had
only kept quiet until we were all back in the truck, said that he could have got tangled up with the electric wires and electrocuted himself, so as a punishment he would never again be allowed to go to the tableaus with us. The next day I went on strike for the first time in my life, and it worked pretty well: I was already combed, I was already dressed, and I was already painted. And then I said: "If Tonin doesn't come, I won't go either." Father could have picked me up by force, since I was all trussed up as the Siren, wrapped up in the costume. But he believed, like everyone else, that the success of the Siren depended on my charm, on my great doll-like eyes, on my arm, making the swan's neck, on some sort of mysterious attribute. And when I puckered up, and Mother started to scream that if I started to cry, all the makeup would run, Father gave in, and Tonin was forgiven, and came with us like always. "He's been punished enough with the machine break ing down," I said, to explain my protest. Because I wanted, you see, to justify myself too. And it was true, the machine was completely broken. Look: although the whole thing lasted only an instant, much less than the time I'm taking to tell it to you, I could give you all the details of the scene, because it really impressed me. When the flash and the report went off, right in front of my eyes, and sideways from the committee, what I thought was falling down wasn't Tonin-because 472
I didn't even know he was there, on top of the tree-but the facade
of a hardware store, a narrow little facade which stuck out at the
crossing of Cerro Largo street with Dante street and Patria street, because that's where Cerro Largo street crosses Dante street. They demolished the hardware store some time ago, and all you can see
empty lot full of rubbish, but it wasn't because Tonin had made it blow up. That's what I thought at the moment, though, that now is an
it seemed to leap with the flash of light, and tremble with the mag
nesium, and it seemed that its darkened door and its flat roof with the row of little bottles-yes, the bannister, that's what it's called, thank you-it seemed that the bannister-is that right?-was com
ing down like ninepins. It all lasted much less than a second, but it felt as though all that masonry was coming down on top of the frogs, on top of us. The Laurinos had seen it from another place, from the committee table or near there. They thought that someone had ex ploded a firecracker in the trees, or in a short circuit. But the lights went on working, and they saw, against the background of the trees, something in the shape of a boy falling, breaking the branches. Luckily, there was no one beneath, and so, scratching his hands and arms, and also his legs, Tonin could hang on and lessen the fall, while the camera flew out of his hands and shattered farther away. And immediately we heard "I'm all right! I'm all right!", and that's how I knew it was Tonin. Almost at once, from the
somebody
committee told the audience that a child had climbed up a tree, the way it always happened when a number was being presented on the
tableau, and had fallen down, fortunately with no great conse quences; and he asked the parents to watch their children more
carefully, and the police to keep order. As though that had been an everyday occurrence, apart from the flash, the cloud of magnesium which had remained floating around the tree, without quite disap pearing. Poor Tonin: he fell, he shouted, and then vanished. Because the
officer of the Ninth tried to find out what had
happened, but the
people helped Tonin to hide, to mix with the other kids, and avoid the blame. Later, he told me he had walked around in the pitch around with his black, feeling foot, bothering the people who were 473
already applauding me, until at last he found his camera, crushed and worthless. "And what about the spoon?" I asked him, after he told me how the whole thing had been. "I couldn't have cared less about the spoon," he answered, laughing. "I only needed it for that night, that's all." And he was so smart, that he was already back there, with his hands red with blood, when Father brought me down from the tableau. With his hands all red from the scrapes, and saying "Excuse me, excuse me"; and I don't know if that time they made way for me, between the clapping that died down somewhat when the people could see his hands up closer, or if they made way for him, so that he could get first aid as soon as possible. For years I've wondered if that wasn't some sort of horrible premonition, that image of Tonin at the age of eleven, his hands covered with blood. Father abused
him very much in the truck, he called him a ruddy idiot, he promised him a real beating from his parents, and then started to yell-com
pletely incongruously-that he himself was the only one to blame, allowing such a g-d- brat to come along with us. "What are we going to tell your parents?" he kept repeating. And Tonin answered, with really astonishing calmness: "Tell them exactly what happened, without adding anything." That's why I refused to have my picture taken by a professional photographer, when Mother finally thought of it. I don't know if I did it like a second strike, or for Tonin. There was a place called Photos Niceri, on 18th of October street between Municipal street and Defense, near our place. It was run by the owners, a couple that Father knew. I'm sure they would have allowed him to set up the waves and the rocks, instead of the usual background, some dreadful screens which figured in the pictures of all the neighbourhood girls they had on display in the window. That's where I had my picture taken when I was fifteen, in a dress with great big flowers, really awful: and Mother still has it hanging just above her bed, and gets annoyed whenever I offer to buy it from her, to pay her anything she wants. It could have been done at Niceri, but one of the neighbours said that Niceri never got published in Uruguayan Life, but that 474
other establishments, also on 18th of October street, but further Civitate and Faig-did get published. I got hold
uptown-between
Uruguayan World: the photos they published were atrocious, and the titles, above all, were incredible. "A Gallery of Infants," one of the pages read; "The Rich Kids," said another. I flatly refused to go, even to get dressed. Mother nagged for a while,
of a copy of
and then left me alone. Father didn't want to get involved. And that's how there's no photo of the Siren, and I doubt that even
the costume still exists. It was in a box, and I've never gone
down to the cellar to look for it; I'm scared to death of spiders. But the costume was quite torn, almost to pieces, when I saw it last. And I haven't even heard about it since Tonin left for Rivera. I wonder
if he didn't pinch it, and take it with him? I sometimes suspect he
did, but I still want to doubt it. Actually, it would be all right: he had taken a part in the Siren, and had a right to the costume, anyway. And now there's something to miss that's much more important
than the Siren's costume: Tonin himself,
a
fugitive in Brazil, for
good. There are all sorts of people, believe me. In those days, there was a store on
Sarandi street called The Siren. And we even had
neighbours who proposed to Mother that she should hire me out, yes, that's right, that she should hire me out as publicity for the store. And then-only by saying something about the store while my turn was being presented-we would get money for advertis ing as well as the money for the prize. Mother didn't even dare sug gest it to Father; I wonder if she thought of the idea as something along the lines of a prostitute, even as the symbol of a prostitute: she was so adamant about it. Besides, I don't really know, let's face it, whether they cared about the money that came with the prizes, or just for the prizes. But I don't think they did it for profit, and I can even see that from a money angle, it wasn't worth it: all that time spent on making the costume, all the fuss, all those days that the truck wasn't used, simply to be ready for the Siren, I don't think that the prize money made up for it, no matter how much it was. And it couldn't have been very much, way back then, as you can imagine. Why did they do it, then, you say? Well, I don't know, perhaps it some
475
was due to
vanity, and besides, there was a strain of fancy in Mother, much stronger than in Father, a sort of wish to be tops in something, no matter how trivial. Do you remember that aunt of Mother's, the one the doctor operated on? Well, she's a widow now. But long before her husband died she was able to marry off one of her daughters, and when the fiance came to propose, she made her daughter dance the Dance of the Water-flies, while she played the piano. My uncle, who was a sarcastic old man, used to mortify her by telling the story over and over: he and the fiance without speaking to each other, sitting very stiffly in a sofa, with the slipcover off for the great occasion, Mother's cousin running around, swathed in tulle and ribbons, be tween the draperies and the columns of the living-room, the aunt thumping on the piano, and the whole thing serving as a betrothal. Afterwards, they all stood up, very formally, and had a glass of champagne, and the marriage was settled. The Dance of the Water flies! "That's the way my family has always been," Mother sometimes says, although she never notices it when it can be applied to herself. Nowadays, the cousin who got engaged by doing a dance, and sipped champagne dressed as a water-fly, is divorced-she married again, but with no dancing, I imagine; the uncle died, the aunt lives with two spinster sisters, the piano was sold at auction. Perhaps it was that strain of fancy which took hold of Mother, because the idea was
hers, the idea of the Siren. Since I've told you about the water-fly's wedding, I suppose I'll
have to tell you about mine, although frankly it's a dull story-very dull! Ever since Tonin went off to Rivera, an empty phase opened
in my life. I grew up, I had some boyfriends, I won't say I didn't, but
nothing of any consequence. Until my husband showed up on the scene. Well, I'm making it sound as if he had been my husband already; and it wasn't like that. He was in business with Father, he was forty years old, and I was twenty-three. He was a steady man, Father said, and had made his pile. "Owner of a chain of hardware stores": that's how I was introduced to him; the introduction was made after he had left, of course. But it was the first actual fact, be sides his name, that Mother and I were given about him. "A chain of
hardware stores"! The symbol seems too good to be true: chains, 476
iron, what more could you want? You'll think that it was my fate to be a prisoner, first in the siren's costume, then of a chain of hard ware stores.
And perhaps it's true. I must warn you, though, that
I may not have been very happily married, but I was never unhappy
about it, either. When the proposal came, almost without a court
ship period, it seemed to me a way out, an escape from my career, which I didn't like. I had gone through some practice teaching, but evidently I hadn't been born to spend the rest of my days teaching classes to a great bunch of kids. I wonder if you can tell me what I was born for? I ask that myself, some nights, especially after what
happened to Tonin. And I assure you I don't know the answer, that I can't see any answer possible, stronger than any other answer, over whelming any other answer, which would be the only way to know that it was the true answer. I've told you, I have no children. The
capital grows, and, as the lawyer tells us, there are already some stores which are pure profit. Damned if I care, I can tell you. Like my parents with the prizes for the Siren, I don't know if I would have any use for the money that my husband's business keeps bring ing in. Money and comforts, anything you want. But what he hasn't been able to give me is a son; or I to him, let's be fair. We never found out, either, because the years go by, and we've lost hope. Hope or fear, I don't know. I'm not sure that I really wanted it that badly, that I really wanted so much to be a mother. It's like the answers I wait for: if the wish had been strong enough, really strong, the son would have come,
somehow.
Tonin wrote me the last time from Rivera, when my parents told him that I was getting married. He sent me a little note, just a few
lines, which I've kept. It was a note of congratulations, but it didn't hide his sadness. At home, they were already saying that Tonin had gone wrong: he had stopped studying, he liked liquor, gambling, and women, the easy life. That's what Mother herself would
say;
and she was his aunt, and wouldn't have spoken that way about him
for no good reason. "He'll wind up as a smuggler, any
day now," she used to say; because that's the only thing she could imagine about gangsters in Rivera. The letter said that he congratulated me, and that he couldn't 477
come to
the wedding, but that he sent me a big hug. And then he
asked me, and I think it's where he got sentimental, if I would al ways remember the Siren, the drawings from the Academy, the pic ture he had tried to take, and the afternoons in the attic. That's all he said; because Tonin, who could draw so well, wasn't so good at
writing. I never answered him. And now that I'm sorry, and would like to, I don't know where he is. I don't know, and neither does
anybody else. With the note, I've kept the cuttings from the newspapers, the wires from Rivera that they published in the "Interior." I'm not
going to say much about this story, because it really hurts me, it hurts me very much. At a dance in Rivera Chico, Tonin challenged another man to a fight, and killed him with a knife in the heart. He challenged him, because some time before that, he had taken a woman away from the man yes, Tonin challenged the dead ...
fellow, well, the other fellow. He had taken his woman, and the man wanted her back no matter what. The three of them met at the dance,
they had it out, and it seems that the woman herself wasn't too sure which of the two she wanted. So then Tonin challenged the ex-hus band, who probably wasn't her husband, because everything's sim pler with that sort of people, and they hardly ever marry. He challenged him, killed him right then and there, and made off with the woman, who by then had decided to remain with the one who was left alive. They crossed the border, and got into Brazil. That was five years ago, and not even his parents have heard anything more about him. The lawyer at home says that Tonin is waiting for the crime to prescribe, and that he'll come back someday. But Tonin's mother says he won't, because the dead man's brothers have sworn revenge, and Tonin knows it. And there's four or five against him: they'd get him for sure. You know how things are, way over by the
border. What I say is, how was Tonin capable of such a thing? And I can't find an answer to that, either. I'd like to know something about
him, it seems impossible that I should never hear from him again. Tonin, who was so good, so delicate, so kind: how could he have done it? 478
Do you think that I might have something to do with all this, that
Tonin wouldn't have gone so far-so far in life, I mean-if I had shown some kindness and affection for him, when they told me he was on the wrong
track, if I had answered his letter, for example, or
if I had called?
But, to begin with, my husband doesn't know anything at all about the whole business, and I feel as if I were tied. Sometimes I
think that the moment will come when I'll no longer care, when I'll dare do anything, when I'll just get going and go up to Rivera, to see if Aunt knows the whereabouts of Tonin, and we can convince
him to come back, and get a good lawyer for him, and help him to
present himself at court, and avoid the revenge, and when he can, to be set free, and then we could all leave Rivera. It seems there might be witnesses who could testify that Tonin killed under provocation,
although the lawyer says it would be very difficult to argue that he killed in self-defense, because there was a challenge, and they both accepted it. But the main thing wouldn't be the time he'd spend in jail, if only he could come out alive from the whole thing. Yes, I know, don't tell me that all these suppositions are absurd, because we've lost all trace of Tonin, and we don't even know if he's alive. He doesn't write to anybody, not even to his own mother, who will
just die of grief one of these days, tired of waiting for him, and he should think of that, wherever he is. For the rest of them, it's a lot easier. The rest of them are content with saying, poor Tonin, he's
been swallowed up by Brazil. Swallowed up by Brazil, which is like
saying the whole earth swallowed him up. translated by John C. Murchison
479
TWO POEMS BY JOSE EMILIO PACHECO
translated by A gnes Money
The fire waned (fragments of the third part) 1
Brusque odor of sulphur. Sudden green color of the water
underground. Waters of the flood still
rotting under Mexican ground. The lake swamps. Its quicksand traps us preventing a
possible escape.
Dead lake in a stone coffin, sun of contradiction.
(Once there were two waters with an island in the middle to keep the salt from poisoning
lagoon where myth still spreads its wings, our sweet
devours the metal snake
born among the ruins of the eagle. Its body is one's own
and forever rebegins.)
Greening thickly underground lie the putrid waters that washed the conquered blood. Our contradiction: water and oil
stays on the shore dividing like a second God
everything: what we want to be and what we are.
480
(Try it yourself. If you pick up a piece of earth you will find the lake, the thirst of mountains, the niter that devours the years. And this mud, the noble ruined city of Moctezuma lies in it; and you will also taste our sinister
palaces of reflections very loyally, faithful to the destruction that keeps you alive. )
The Axolotl is our emblem: it incarnates the fear of being nobody and falling back
into the perpetual night in which the gods rot under the lake, and their silence is gold-like Cuauhtemoc's gold invented by Cortes.
Open that door tum on the light come closer it's very late
but it never is the time has not come we're leaving it's late already it's very late
there's time still today or tomorrow take hands you can't see it's dark
give me your hand please so long 2
All night I saw the fire grow 3
The city in these years has changed so that it is no longer my city its resonance of vaults in echoes and the steps
that will never come back.
481
Echoes steps memories destructions
Steps no longer there. Your presence, a hollow memory resounding in vain. A place no longer there where you went by, where I saw you last in the night of those yesterdays that wait for me in the mornings of the future that has receded into history of this continual today in which I am losing you. 4
Late afternoon in Mexico over the dismal
mountains of the West
...
(There the sunset is so forlorn, one might say: night born this way will be eternal.) 5
I know madness and not
holiness: the terrible perfection of being dead. But the rhythms, the imperious rhythms,
the secret beating of the sap burns throughout the meekness which in Mexico is night. And the willows, the starving roses and the palms, funereal cypresses enduring are thistied
paths, unplowed land
for the arid snake who dwells in muddy regions; those caves
where a royal eagle flaps his wings in arched confusion, crawling
through the night of Mexico.
Eyes, eyes, so many eyes of anger staring us down into the night of Mexico, the vegetable fury anxious for a bonfire: that black blaze devastating the city at night and the next day only the traces, no love or anything -only those eyes of anger staring us down. 6
Until when, on what barren isle free of omens
will we find peace for the waters
that are so bloody, so dirty, so remote,
essentially, and so subterraneously now, our poor lake and muddy eye of the volcanoes, God of the valley that no one saw face to face and whose name the ancients silenced.
What became of so many
gardens, vessels
laden with flowers-where are they? What became of the rivers, the currents of the city, its waves, its murmurs?
They filled them with shit, covered them up to smooth the way for the carriage of the new lords, the recent
Mexican nobility. What became of
the forests, the pines and the willows that at one time decked the plateau, this lunar crater holding the shifting city, the wavering,
already faceless capital? They sold them to build a palace for the boss,
to build a palace for the boss,
the general, the leader, the scribbler.
The viceroy said: "The men of this land
beings condemned by fate to eternal obscurity and abjectness." The viceroy's insult floats in the waters. Surely no period of the past are
was worse, nor was it better.
There is no time, it does not exist, there is no time: measure the old age of this planet with the air as it crosses,
implacable and tearful.
7
The powerful Underground Mexico viceroy, emperor, satrap, ...
had the whole desert built for himself. We have created the desert;
the mountains
-rigid with basalt and shadow and dust are immobility. Oh, what an uproar the dead waters resounding in the concave silence. It is rhetorical,
rhetorical iniquity, this crying.
8
Do only stones dream, their lineage is immobility, is the world only
these immobile stones? The cliff grazes the air to wear itself down, to find calm.
Inconsolable,
the descent of vertigo: tides
of thousands of aerial zones breaking. 9
Today, this afternoon, I meet by myself with all that has been lost and nevertheless the future too. And as time goes by
beside me it is growing dark:
mingling in a fire of no one's are light and night, a past that has not died, or that
apersonal instant lived by the viscous laziness of the spider, the fly and its devastating little snout. Between the bird and its song flows the sky.
Yes, it flows, it is flowing, everything flows: the road slowed by the mornings the wandering planets, calcinated,
serving their sentence by wearing themselves out as they ceaselessly pierce the darkness. 10
The wind brings the rain. In the garden the plants shiver.
An investigation of the bat Bats have no idea of their literary prestige.
As for blood, they like the defenseless kind in cows:
big useful ladies incapable of making a necklace of garlic buds, a silver bullet, a stick on their
breasts, a crucifix;
they only respond to the bloody joke: the contaminated kiss (it transmits rage and hate and can annihilate the matriarchy) with a passive swing of the tail that doesn't even scare the horseflies.
Taking revenge on revenge, the owners of the herd have fun crucifying the drinker like a butterfly become too aloof. The bat accepts his martyrdom and consecrates the act of smoking the cigarette they hang from his snout obscenely and in vain he tries to make the torturers who have wet their lips with vinegar believe. I have often heard it said that the bat is a winged rat, a
tiny monster, an aberration of a mosquito
like those somewhat anomalous ants that burst into flight when the rains come. I know a bit abou t vampires though my ignorance of bats is complete
(laziness keeps me from confirming their fame in a dictionary).
Obviously a mammal, I prefer to envision it as an enchanted neolithic reptile checked in its transition from scales to feathers, in its already useless will to become a bird.
Naturally it is a fallen angel and has lent its wings. and (carnival) suit to all the devils. Short-sighted, it refuses the sun and melancholy is what defines its spirit. Huddled up, it inhabits caves and for ages has known the joys and hells of the masses.
And maybe it suffers from that sickness which theologians call accidia -so much laziness generates even
nihilism; it doesn't seem
illogical that it should spend its mornings meditating on the profound emptiness of the world, making foam of its anger, its rage at what we have done to the bat. I have read that when it leaves the cave it emits an extremely sharp
sound (inaudible to us) which reverberates on the walls, and this echo, this radar gives it a sense of direction in the darkness and lets it come back by night without fear after its erotic visit to the passive seraglio of countless
magnificent heads. A perpetual hermit, it lives and dies upright and makes of every cave a Tebaida.
Man confines it to evil and detests it because he shares
the viscous ugliness, the egoism, the human vampirism; it recalls our origins in caves and it has a horrid thirst for blood And it hates the light
that nonetheless someday
will burn the cave to ash.
YORK. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. NEW ANTONIO SEGUI. LOS QUEBRADOS. 1964. LITHOGRAPH.
He who howls LEOPOLD TORRE-NILSSON
I had come to New York on one of those brief, almost incognito
trips which are impregnated with a certain sense of shame and rest, in hopes of selling a film that was neither too good to part with happily nor too useless to forget, and a co-production that wouldn't dishonor my national standing too greatly. The opprobrium was accompanied by visits to vast offices with candy pink walls and telephone switchboards where more and more calls could accumulate to wait (in New York, an ineffable artificial
paradise, they have already practically eliminated the mysterious and exciting itch of a busy signal) Then back at my hotel, so that the night wouldn't be generous with its insomniacs and their nightmarish faces, I invariably went out for a few gin fizzes and something to eat at a bar called "Gats by's," a high-ceilinged room whose walls were decorated with red .
satin that evoked visions from the gay twenties or the alcoholized
thirties. I felt as though I might meet Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda any minute, or the pathetic Dick from Tender Is the Night, or
Anthony Patch or the Great Gatsby himself. They were preparing an exquisite Coq au vin which I mixed, after cocktails, with a warm and thick Burgundy. My aloneness was not too noticeable in that
TriQuarterly 489
center of close tables, dim light and overlapping conversations.
One night I noticed that I was being stared at by a man with a
drowsy face, presumably thin and attractive not so long ago. I had hardly looked back rather attentively, almost as if to invite him to justify his curiosity, when he got up, and with an overly firm step, the step of a well-controlled drunk, he approached my table. It seemed as if the effort to come that far had exhausted him: he put
his hand on the table heavily and asked me if I spoke English. The
question was absurd. In New York no one doubts that the next man speaks English; when it is discovered that he speaks it with difficulty, heads turn in surprise and irritation. In my most solemn, put-on accent, I asked him the reason for that silly question. He asked to be excused. I looked like a friend he had known years ago in Stockholm. "I'm South American," I said; "Argentinian." He suddenly felt relieved. "It's all the same; I had to find a foreigner. A businessman?"
Incapable of replying evasively or angrily: "More or less." I smiled to myself. "Reporter? All the Latin Americans I know are businessmen or reporters.
"
"I'm a writer," I lied. He broke into a laugh. He called the waiter in a blase way and
continuing to laugh, asked for a vodka martini. "I've been looking for a writer for more than a year. But not the kind that write for TV or movies or teenage magazines. You, what do you write?" "What the hell do you care?" I think I would've said in Buenos
Aires, Rosario, Avellaneda or Salta. But one can afford those luxu ries only in one's own country. I stared at him. After a while, as he kept looking at me with the same pretentious curiosity, I mumbled, almost under my breath:
"Different things. Poems."
"Poems, eh?" He drummed on the table as if suddenly overtaken by serious
doubts. He drank his vodka martini slowly, staring, as if he'd just 490
discovered him, at the Negro who seemed to be playing the piano with his whole body.
(Turning himself into a piano, I had thought
on other
nights.) "I've been looking for a writer for months. A foreigner. What made you come to Gatsby's? Do you work for the United Nations?" (Gatsby's is two blocks from Unesco's Babylonian building.) "I live nearby. I eat here every night. I like the piano and the Coq au vin," I added, suddenly eloquent. "You're like me," he said; "but being alone doesn't depress me." "I have children, a family, families." "That's up to you." He downed the rest of his drink. Abruptly, he pulled out a roll of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket. "Publish this," he said. "Publish it as yours, or as something you found at the hotel or a dying man gave you. I want it to be published somewhere. Here," holding out his arm as if embracing all Manhattan -"it's not worth it. Besides, the people I want to hide it from would recognize themselves." He didn't give me time to reply. "I trust you," he added without listening to my protest. He had time to give the waiter a bill which amply paid for my gin fizzes and Coq au vin and he rushed out, openly and unconcernedly drunk. I went back to Gatsby's many times. Even after having finished with my business and solitude. If I had an interview, I had it there, as if the key to the impossible answer might be written on those high walls of red satin. I will not comment on the manuscript. I translated it as faithfully as possible, trying to retain some of its local flavor and its stubborn analytical self-destruction. I know I will go back to Gatsby's again and again each time, as soon as I set foot in New York, searching for that man, I don't really know why; maybe to cast off the responsibility he has given me: that of transforming my self in a precarious, elemental and at once painful way, into him. Gladys hung heavily on the arm of a young man with a curiously round head, and who was wearing a well-cut shiny gray suit. She swung her head gently as she went by. She was undoubtedly hum491
ming the melody of a song by Nat King Cole that was out of style. I had just put the change in my pocket after buying the Herald Trib une, ready to initiate my mad search for news, with a curiosity that renewed itself every morning, and then she crossed 34th Street, head ing toward Second Avenue. I don't know why I keep reading the newspapers word by word with a curiosity that's never satisfied; it's as if I had a hunch that some day a final truth would be hurled at me like a jug of cool water to quench this indescribable thirst. I was tempted to follow them. Nothing stirred my curiosity where she was going or what she was doing was easy to predict, but following them could, in a certain sense, be a projection, a tangible way of following myself; or the way to discover how I walked some time ago, when I could still stand something hanging on my arm, or I would ask questions or give out answers, or answers to questions which in turn required other answers and questions on them. And my legs had certainly walked like those rather short ones, sheathed in gray trousers, relaxed by sex, making her long back move, suddenly protruding from her buttocks; and my head like his, beside the swaying, would recount steps, doubts, dreams, imagining -or better yet, reasoning each piece of skin and possible action in the future. Knowing not only the name of every street in the Village where they had met, but also the sound of every future word and the word that lay at the end of all the words of the day and the days to come, inhabiting that rather calm give and take which she played at with a ferocious normality. Because he and I, and possibly someone else between us of whom I, not he, was unaware, were the sick ones;
always with something to a greater or lesser degree, not in relation to her, but to ourselves. Not that Gladys could feel or show that she suspected the origin of that word or caress that was excessive, or forgotten, or undesired. That absence grew where her skin and her intelligence formed a neutral region which we were trying to inhabit -with something that wasn't adjusted to her or to ourselves; like when my mouth ran over her pores in an obstinate demand for grati
tude, putting pressure on the most remote curves of her muscles, letting my tongue rest in her armpits or her sex, tracing the lines of 492
future sweat. It wasn't a search for gratitude from her, or for pleas ure, but rather the desperate arm of a sinking man stretched out
towards a faroff ship, a ship that surely did not exist. I took five or six steps, relishing the idea of a triangular lunch at
which he and I would discover each other; the past-him, the present
-myself, and the future-both; trading stamps, looking for the very remote one which we would both surely lose. I shouldn't lie: I even called her. But not "Gladys" or "Miss Jen ning" as I should have. I called to her in a shrill, acid voice, a voice that was hardly mine: "Peludita!" It was the very remote and solitary nickname, not even made up consciously, that she and I had used to refer to a recently and abruptly discovered Gladys. I repeated it again, surprised by my energy. I had never remembered her as "Peludita"; and during the last two years I had never used the word agam. There wasn't a single sign which hinted at the recognition. He looked around a bit curiously, searching for the origin of that almost visceral howl, with a glance that wasn't quite anxious or surprised, as if men
howling "Peludita" to no one at ten in the morning were part of the routine on 34th Street. That was my prize; the trophy I used to have my share of happiness after having read the whole H er aId Tribune line by line, leaning my shiny and well-cut though worn out gray suit against a Coca-Cola ad. We are eating little pieces of cheese. We cut slices, smaller all the time. I don't want to reach the end: she looks divine with her
wide-open, vast green eyes, and her teeth which the cheese makes shiny and her small red tongue like a fish out of an aquarium touch ing her eyeteeth, wetting her lips, pointing at me, promising. She asks me to repeat the joke that amused her this morning. I know it won't work this time; and as I start I prepare my jaws to say the last words which justify the story, which loses all its meaning if I can't manage to fully imitate Buster Keaton's deadpan expression. Her eyes wander and my jaws go limp because this time I try to attract her attention by adding to the story other levels that cross my mind for no logical reason and make me talk very fast; because suddenly 493
all I want is to reach the end and come back, with my silence and
cheese, to an equidistant and proportioned giving and receiving. "That's not how it goes," she says in a soft, deceived voice. "You never tell a
story twice the same way."
Then we both reconstruct the story as it was that morning. I let
her play the game and take the initiative only when I'm sure that she wants me to, as if Gladys actually knew that the real meaning of the
joke is in the harshness of my voice or the natural air I have when I say certain words which she dares to repeat only in sighs or covering half her mouth with her hand. We're both laughing, eating the crumbs, licking up the last bub
bly drops of the pink Chiquot. The waiter is looking at us. Maybe he's been standing there for the last ten minutes, surprised that we haven't jumped into bed. He surely knows by now that we're not a married couple on a trip to see their in-laws. Not even newlyweds. Strangely devoted to illegal ity, as if only an illegal situation could extend a passport to special pleasure, or sadnesses, or faces expressing both at once. He is as soft as a pimp as he takes away the little table, and his eyes, which have just discovered, can't face ours; ashamed and awk ward as if he were both male and female, perspiring, breathing and shouting the words he knows he'll be able to hear if he would only stop for a few minutes in the pale, bluish light of the corridor where they sound, like the results of a nightmare or the unnecessary repri manding of a playful creature. I open the door to my room. It is no longer lonely. The walls,
with all the pictures taken down, look clean and clear. First I threw
away the most recent ones, in which my face was intolerably round and rosy, as if the bones were covered over with oily slices of plasti cene. Then I continued with the ones from my so-called
happy youth
in which I may be seen surrounded by dogs, skis and tennis racquets. For more than two months, I gazed with irresolute anxiety at a repro
duction of two snow white ballerinas by Monet, and a Utrillo garden
framing two black trees. This time my decision did not consist of throwing them into the wastebasket as I had done with the pictures: 494
I sent them to an Arts and Trades School which hides its humbleness two blocks from my apartment, with a letter signed by a philanthro
pist whose name I took from Tolstoy's Resurrection. After that the rest was all quick and orderly: my parents, my brother with a zebra in Kenya, my grandfather with cow-eyes and a
heavy moustache like Groucho Marx's. The armchair was invincible. Who wants a fat armchair covered
in cold white leather that always reminds you of a corpse's embrace, with a couple of red ink stains that everyone thinks are blood? Here
Tolstoy's character became an anonymous Thomas Brown and the chair was sent to a veterans' home where I hope they've resigned themselves to using it. I sit on my bed and peel two hard-boiled eggs. I eat them as I watch my wide jawbones in the vast mirror where the white walls, the bed and I myself are reflected to resemble an academic painting from the nineteenth century. Maybe the time has come to donate the mirror too. After that, the last living object in the room will be myself. She looks with a concentrated expression. The scissors in her hand point from nail to nail as she decides which to choose. Now she is cutting with a care which I jokingly call tender. Gladys laughs, blowing between the toes on one of my feet while my other foot caresses her head and neck until it finally comes to a rest next to her mouth. She bites hard. "Slutlovermotherdaughtersister," I shout. It burns. With the point of the scissors she punctures my big toe and a thin stream of blood paints arabesques on my heels and
finally on my
ankle. She follows the stream of blood with her
tongue and erases it as if she were killing ants with her saliva. Now she's near my chest and shuts her mouth tightly. She presses her lips against my bones and immediately tries to tickle my armpits with her nose. I stop insulting her. On the record player the last of Mozart's Versaillesque nonsense dies out and Bach's
impregnated stomach, rigid and impos
ing begins to be heard. I try to pray: SEX OF GOD ON EARTH GRANT ME TODA Y'S DESIRE. AND AFTERWARDS SHOW US THE ARID KINGDOM OF WHATEVER YOU ARE. But
there's no need to pray. We grow for each other, old and
young. My 495
fingers are compressed steel everywhere opening, closing, erupting like rockets burning up in their own fire. She still contains the end of a laugh, already like her first howl, murmuring a rhythm I can't decipher because I'm absorbed in my old business, happy, like a dwarf climbing a mountain. We know we're not going to answer the telephone. We've already learned how many times the bell will ring and the alarming pause of some twenty seconds that there is before another call (time enough to drink anything, or sigh, or scratch your nose before making the dial spin seven times again). If it's early, in the morning, we know it's Arturo informing us that Peruvian or Bolivian money is getting inflated; or advising us that we shouldn't lose a minute this morning, that we should buy more stock in Iranian oil because there's a revolu tion in Persia or vice-versa. Later on, we know it's Helen, who's just received L'Expres or Les Temps Modernes and who's excited at
having discovered a new German writer (he writes about dwarves or something and next week he'll be acclaimed as a genius, a mix ture of Goethe and Thomas Mann). Later on the agency will be
asking, each time less vehemently, for my report on rain in Algeria or Mesopotamia (actually, I knew a lot about things like this a month ago). This time I'll answer. I lie with swift monotony. I'm sure that someone must get pleasure from hearing me lie; the very person who morbidly delays the letter in which I'll be asked to resign. "Philip," says Gladys. "Drunk at five o'clock in the afternoon." "It's drugs, not alcohol," I reply. "Same results. No erection." "A race that's almost extinct, the Irish."
A pause. The telephone rings again. We talk only while it's
ringing. "He must be broke." "I sent him fifty dollars yesterday."
"Which is worse: drugs or rum?"
"Rum; it eats up your liver. It leaves little holes in your stomach." "Doctor, my tongue itches." "Rub it against a glass and a blotter. Drink the urine of someone you love." 496
Silence. She plays bicycle �ith her long legs. She drinks a glass of milk, I bite off half a sandwich, I put my head in the icebox and run my
burning tongue along the chunks of frosty ice stuck to the
freezer.
"The meat's rotten; it permeated the whole freezer," I remark,
pleased. "Put it in the oven. I've never had really rotten meat."
Quite excited I run over and turn on the gas, burning my anxious,
quivering fingers. "No butter," she says without ceasing to gargle an insipid potion
that someone has given her. "I already told you, that shit gives you bad breath." "Let it roast in its rotten juice." We keep up a parallel dialogue. It doesn't have questions or answers.
We know the meat is going to turn into charcoal, and then
we'll add all sorts of scents to kill the smell. We're like boxers jumping in their corners, getting ready for the savage moment of blows and clinches. The windows and the door are hermetically shut. The air in the room is from yesterday and the day before, which were impreg
perspiration and lunches; Femme, Bond Street and contraceptive tubes covering the bedside nated with the fumes of intercourse,
rug like deformed worms and the hall, into which I've kicked some on my way to the bathroom. I wake up early. The sun filters in through the blinds and distracts
my light sleep. But there's no need to get up. I try to entertain myself with various colloquies which I try out on various and unexpected
people. The words are all mine. To others I concede only the possi bility of being amazed, happy or worried. In this way I comment on different topics that invariably refer to myself and my attitudes, which I reveal to them tediously. This feverish entertainment, which exhausts me after two hours and leaves me anxious for news which
isn't specifically related to me, began when I was a boy. I gave it up
during my five or six years of active service and went back to it again several days after Gladys left with her bundles and an almost ridicu497
lous arrogance, betrayed only by the crooked, ripped seams of her
stockings. What happened before that, those forty-five days of wait ing with a certain petrified curiosity, not powerful enough to give me the strength to call the hospital where she was, or even answer the few calls from who knows whom, is almost part of another story; the story of a long pause leading to nothing, but sure of the need of a few lines before
reaching the abrupt end; the few lines that could be interpreted in that already cold and distant look (not even say ing "good-bye" or "bastard") she threw at me before calmly cross ing the hall, toward the bedroom that was ancient now, anxious only to claim her belongings. The Times is under the door, I have a glass of milk as I read with rapid, mechanical curiosity. It's already after ten when I finish reading. I am very organized, neat, so it takes me more than an hour to finish my hygienic activities, dressing, and cleaning up my room. I work severely, giving myself orders in a very loud voice, imitating a Sergeant Andrews, who took advantage of us in Denmark. It's not easy to support yourself without a permanent job. My
bank account (left over from other times) shrinks incessantly. One
day a week I try to sell some of myoid articles on artificial rain, new ways of fertilizing plants, controlling the humidity or cross breeding insects, plants and worms in complicated copulations. No one has any idea of the number of small and almost anony
magazines that are printed and sold by subscription to field laborers. I have them all cataloged and visit them with an inquisi torial air. They've been publishing some of myoid foolish pieces without paying for the rights, and by forcing them to accept another original manuscript I allow them to have a clean conscience. "Mr. Jacobs isn't in," the secretary always says cautiously. "Tell the old rascal it's James Oliver," I say, handing her an old card. (There's always an old rascal involved.) The faded blonde lazily moves her bony behind, disappearing from among the dusty mous
desks and dark corridors. "A great pleasure, Mr. Oliver, it is indeed a great pleasure." I am
pleasure. 498
"
tempted to say: "I never call a great pleasure a great
"I've been reading your magazine with growing interest." The little thief is already alarmed. "A great honor for our humble effort, Mr. Oliver. 1 shall inform calm now. our collaborators; it will make them very proud," he adds,
"My lawyer and friend Dr. Wilson has been observing with a curiosity which 1 would almost call professional the many coinci dences which exist between the notes in your magazine and my
private research." "All right, all right," he says, very worried this time; "some of the young people who work for us have followed your research very closely." "Very young?" He's surprised. 1 see that he's tempted to give in to making alarm ing confessions, perhaps to tell me that the collaborators don't exist; only he, and the bony secretary and two pairs of long scissors. But that would ruin me. Once she had shown me his dirty behind he wouldn't let a coin fall out of his pockets. 1 prefer him as the proud and invisible Thelonious Jacobs, responsible editor of a vast pub lication. "Don't worry, Jacobs," 1 say in an accomplice-like tone. "I've
brought you my last article, written especially for your magazine. A revolutionary experiment to fertilize wheat." He doesn't dare insinuate that this has been talked about for the
last two years. He takes the yellowed pages as if they were a first
edition of Verlaine. And tempering his false excitement he says: "We pay thirty days after publication." 1 put out my hand to recover the sheets of paper.
"I beg your pardon, 1 must have been mistaken. Are you The-
lonious Jacobs?"
"Thelonious, yes." "Then you should pay upon receipt." "
"My bookkeeper "Your bookkeeper doesn't matter, Jacobs (I play my weakest card here) : you've been cheating and publishing articles of mine for the last three months. (I put my hand in my pocket and produce a long envelope.) We have all the proofs, and only my pride and pity ...
499
have kept my lawyer from taking action. You publish this article and I'll forget the past. As a symbolic pact, you will pay me the small fee of one hundred dollars." Now he has become the master of the situation. He calls in the
secretary and dismisses me, inviting me to continue my business with her. "Just send me any new piece you write, Oliver"
(without the
"Mr." now); "we'll publish it if it's really worth it."
Doing business with secretaries is always the same. The old witches have no pride, delicacy or doubts. They always put me in my place, as they say. Free to insult, they remind me in a harsh voice that any student can turn out the nonsense I write. That in the last few years things have changed and evolved to a degree which I can
hardly imagine. They laugh, swinging the pages in the air to clean off the moths. "Ten years, this piece of archaeology must be ten years old at
least," they always say.
Finally they decide to pay and fight over every dollar as if it were coming out of their mothers' pockets. I never get a hundred dollars out of a secretary. Sometimes
seventy-five, usually not over fifty. But it always gives me pleasure to see them suffer as they pull out the wrinkled and dirty fifty dollars from small boxes full of medicine and packages of Kleenex. This time it's Lennie Rubinstein. He can't believe it. He must have thought I'd been dead for years. I apologize for being alive. It's an error which I don't dare correct for his sake. Once he has
controlled his surprise mechanism, he seems really happy. I try to
justify his happiness by keeping my eyes wide open and a permanent smile on my face. He touches my face, my chest, my shoulders; he has me sit down in front of his desk and calls over lots of employees,
exhibiting me to them as if he had recovered a lost Picasso. I am quite surprised that the others don't come touch me too. Finally, I myself touch my face and hair happily, convinced by now that I am an agreeable, pleasing thing to contemplate. It darkens everywhere. Lennie is very close to me, interposing himself between lights and walls. "You have to come work here," he says. "We've been looking 500
for someone with your qualifications for the last few years." I begin to suffocate. The lack of air in my lungs and nose be comes
intolerable. I push him away and stand up, taller than both
him and myself. We smile now. All of a sudden he has discovered
the scrofulas coming out of my shirt and breaking out on my neck. After a hesitant pause he starts to read myoid article. He manages to say words that attempt to resemble "magnificent," "incredible."
This time there won't be a secretary: a vast and beautiful, heavenly
check is signed by myoid friend Lennie. I try to seem indifferent as I crumple it into my pocket without checking the sum, and I promise to return the same amount if I decide to accept the job; he has al
ready said good-bye three times, but I take notice only the last time.
Why did they keep bothering me? Who kept ignoring my resig nation and trying to make me go back to what was definitely dead? I slammed the stupid glass door on the grinning idiots who tried to direct my rage: "embezzlers," "drop dead all of you," "menopausic," the words pursued the currents of air in an indecipherable puzzle. Then the corridors, the doors and rooms of monotonous, equal di mensions began to blend together pushing me toward the very ones I had left with little hysterical watchmen, exhibiting, in a mixture of rage and madness, long notes with my inalterable signature always at the bottom and where I told them what their mothers were; at a certain moment I
regained control of my thoughts and speech and recalled exactly what their names and rank were, more vividly than what I remembered about them themselves. I forced them to re
member every past and present source of embarrassment: the ones
they were trying to forget in their infinite misery as perspiring slaves. For the first time I stopped with some sort of hidden pleasure at the places which had been an intolerable call for more than fifteen years. An aseptic tomb that sterilized one's kidneys and head, always dictating the same joke, not too obscene, which could be told at parties or in that other aseptic tomb called home. This time I was the executioner, enormous and revengeful, pun ishing right and left until someone pushed me out, patting me on the back tenderly, calling me "old friend," suggesting a long rest, absten tion from barbiturates and cocktails. 501
I was cold in the street and I felt feverish and weak for the first
time in several months. It was already after four. Gladys must have been back at the apartment hours ago. This was the first day we had
spent apart since we had been living together. Suddenly I felt stupid and guilty; I started to walk quickly, looking backwards to catch the first taxi that came along. We had all the red lights against us, winking jeeringly at
my anxious and solitary chatter that was promising her no, she wouldn't be alone in the future. It was already dark when I jumped out of the taxi and mixed up my keys for the first time. Why did I keep the keys to Scarsdale where Mildred had already changed the lock after I had sworn to
kidnap Roy and give a kick in the pants to the first male I saw on top of his mother? It was too quiet, like a conspiracy against my delay. I opened the door, shivering, knowing beforehand what I would find. Gladys was lying on the floor, surrounded by bottles of Bitter and Gin and clots of vomit and broken dishes. The words "delirium tremens" seemed to be written on her scratched face and in her almost awry eyes and her drooling mouth. I sat down and looked at her
for some minutes, forever it seemed, not trying to do anything, but
imagining a world without her and myself. The world which I am now sure started the moment after I called the hospital. I looked at her legs, her body, her neck, her face, with a surgeon's eye, killing every possibility of present or future desire or tenderness. I imagined my own jaws and lips matching hers in an indiscernible future of sickness and sex. I even tried to kiss her mouth and neck which exuded hours of anguish, loneliness and alcohol. It was then that I called the hospital. I wasn't her brother or her father or her husband. Not even a friend of someone she knew before she met me. I must say that those characters in the hospital are very efficient. They were there in less than half an hour; I avoided signing any sort of papers.
After all, I was only someone she had met at a cocktail party. I asked them not to mention me when they spoke to the relatives. "She's
only seventeen," I said to the smiling male nurse as I put a hundred dollar bill in his hand.
translated by Agnes Money 502
Contri butors (continued
from back cover) diplomat, essay
ist, poet PABLO NERUDA recently translated Romeo and Juliet BASILIA PAPASTAMATIU is
a
young
into Spanish.
Argentine writer now living in Paris.
English translator from Glam. NICANOR PARRA and is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Chile. His Poems
MALCOLM PARR is
an
PEDEN Antipoems was published in 1967 by New Directions. MARGARET teaches at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Venezuelan poet, critic, and
playwright RAFAEL PINEDA contributes regularly as journalist and editor
to
El Nacional and Revista Nacional de Cultura in Caracas. CARLOS SAAVEDRA whose work has appeared in The Southern Review. JOHN is a Columbian
poet
UPTON'S translation of Ramon Diaz Sanchez's novel Cumboto will soon be published by the University of Texas Press. He is currently at work on a volume
Gongora, Quevedo, and Garcilaso de la Vega. ENRIQUE LIHN has written four volumes of poems, the most recent Poesia de paso (1966).
of translations from
He was awarded the first prize from the Casa de las americas in Cuba for 1966. WILLIAM WITHERUP lives in
a
mountain cabin
near
Sante Fe. His
own
poems have appeared in numerous American literary magazines. Mr. Witherup, with co-translator SERGE ECHEVERRIA, will soon publish translations of Lihn
(Lillabulero Press), as well as translations of Vicente Huidobro (Sixties Press). Argentine poet ENRIQUE MOLINA is the author of Las Cosas y el delirio. He is one of the major voices of the "generation of 1940". VINCENTE LENERO's
published in 1964 in Barcelona. CARLOS GERMAN BELLI works as a professional translator in the Senate in Lima. WASHINGTON DELGADO, a professor at the Univerity of San Marco in Lima, co-edits the magazine Vision del Peru, which he founded in 1967. Poet, dramatist, and editor JUAN GONZALO ROSE is presently coordinator on the staff of the prose maga
novel Los Albaniles was
zine Cuadernos Semestrales del Cuento, CESAR CALVO and
a
second young
poet, Reynaldo Naranjo, have made a recording of their poetry, arranged for the Guitar by Carlos Hayre. After traveling to the Soviet Union, Asia, Europe, and Cuba in 1961 and
1962, JAVIER HERAun was killed the following year in guerilla action in Peru at age 21. A posthumous edition of his poems and letters, Iavier Heraud: Poesias completas y homenaje, was published by Industrial Grafica in 1964. PAUL BLACKBURN has translated Heraud's El Rio and four other poems in Guerrilla
No.3, 1967. Mr. Blackburn spent last year in Spain on a
Guggenheim fellowship. ANTONIO CISNEROS is a lecturer in Spanish at the University of Southampton. His volume En memoria was awarded the First Prize in Poetry in the 1967 competition sponsored by the Casa de las Americas in
Havana. JULIO ORTEGA's latest play was produced in Lima early this year.
American-born MAUREEN AHERN MAURER is chairman of the department of modern languages at the Universidad Peru ana in Lima. She co-edits Haravec with English poet and novelist DAVID TIPTON, who will publish another selec
tion of Peruvian poetry, co-translated by Maureen Ahem Maurer, in Flame, University of Essex Union. PATRICK MORGAN's poetry has appeared in peri
odicals in many countries. He is a critic, lecturer, and businessman in Buenos Aires. MIGUEL GRINBERG is a poet, art critic, and editor of the literary magazine Eco
Contemporaneo.
EDGAR
BAYLEY
has
written six
volumes of poetry
503
and has translated Gaetan Picon, Sir Herbert Read, and Wassily Kandinsky into
Spanish.
He works in the human relations
department
of the National Post
Office in Buenos Aires. LEOPOLDO MARECHAL's most recent work is El
Banquete de Severo Arcangelo (1965). CARLOS MONETA studied international relations at
Pennsylvania University and presently teaches political science in Buenos Aires. ARMANDO TEJADA GOMEZ, author of five poetry volumes, also writes popular lyrics and has made six recordings of his poems. JUAN GELMAN works as a journalist in Buenos Aires. Formerly an actress, MAXIMO SIMPSON is currently living in Mexico and studying pre-Columbian culture. HORACIO SALAS, art critic and poet, recently published La Corrupcion. MIGUEL ANGEL BUSTOS is a painter and writer in Buenos Aires. JOSE LEZAMA LIMA's novel Paradiso was published in Havana this year. ELISEO DIEGO, of the older generation of Cuban poets, teaches at the University of Havana. ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR taught at Yale University and, following the Cuban revolution, served as Cuban cultural attache in Paris. He edits the literary magazine Casa de las Americas. Poet and translator HEBERTO PADILLA works in international cultural exchange in Havana. FAYAD JAMIS edits the literary magazine of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, teaches art, and has translated the work of Eluard and Atiia Joseph into Spanish. PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ began editing Lunes de Revolucion in 1959. MIGUEL BARNET recently published El Cimmaron, the life of a 107-year-old ex-slave. ALFONSO CALDERON has been Ecuador's ambassador to Columbia, and has
taught at the Universidad Central. He works as an engineer and architect. MIGUEL ARTECHE co-edits Finis. He has won the Premio Municipal poetry prize, and also published a novel, La Otra Orilla, in 1964. HERNAN VALDES is the author
of Apariciones y Desapariciones. GONZALO MILLAN studied at the University of Chile. He practices law at present. GONZALO ROJAS is professor of literature at Universidad de Concepcion. Among OCTAVIO PAZ's books are Labyrinth of
Solitude and Sun Stone. He was formerly Mexico's ambassador to India, resigning
Olympics. JOAQUIN SANCHEZ MACGREGOR is chairman of the department of philosophy at the University of Puebla. JOSE EMILIO PACHECO recently co-edited Poesia en Movimiento, an anthology of Mexican poetry. SERGIO MONDRAGON co-edits the bi-lingual his post after the uprisings prior to the 1968
literary quarterly El como emplumado
with MARGARET RANDALL. Miss
Randall's books of poetry include October (1965) and 25 Stages of my Spine (1967). ISABEL FRAIRE recently left Mexico to live in the United States.
publishing house in Mexico City. HOMERO ARlDnS resides currently in Europe on a Guggenheim fellowship. TIM REY NOLDS has translated for the New American Library (The Peace, by Aristo phanes), and the National translation Center at the University of Texas, where JUAN BANUELOS works in
a
he teaches classics. ELINOR RANDALL has done extensive translations of Ramon
Sender, as well as of Moreno and Pareja. JOSE-LUIS APPLEYARD has published two volumes of poetry: Entonces era siempre (Then Was Always, Asuncion, 1963), and El sauce permanece (The Willow Tree Still Stands, Asuncion, 1965). Sociolo
gist, critic, and poet RAMIRO DOMINGUEZ published Dithyrambs for Flute and Chorus (Ditirambos para cordo y fluta) in 1964. JOSE MARIA GOMEZ 504
SANJURJO is presently at work on
a
novel and
a
volume of collected poems.
published his Biografia de ausente in 1964. He is editor of Alcor magazine and teaches at the University of Paris. FRANCISCO RUBEN BAREIRO SAGUIER
PEREZ MARICEVICH has written Axil Stride
of Man.
(1960)
and Paso de hombre
1963). ESTEBAN CABANAS has published
one
(The
volume of
poetry: Los monstruos vanos (The Hollow Monsters, 1964). ROQUE VALLEJOS,
journalist, medical student, critic and poet, published The Drunken Archangels (Los arcangeles ebrios), his second poetry volume, in 1963. RENE DAVALOS published Search for Reality (Buscas la realidad) in 1966. A student of law and philosophy in Asuncion, ADOLFO FERREIRO is the author of La Huella desde abajo (The Footprint from Below, 1966). Brazilian DALTON TREVISAN was a
listed in Who's Who in Brazil in 1966. LEOPOLDO TORRE-NILSSON is a film
director
as
well
as
a
writer. He has published poetry and
fiction, and his films
have been shown in many festivals. MARCO ANTONIO MONTES DE OCA's
works include Testamonial Document. JUAN JOSE HERNANDEZ is the author of Claridad Vencida. He is known both MORENO's works include the
as
a
poet and fiction writer. CARLOS
novel, El paredon. GABRIEL GARCIA MAR
QUEZ is a journalist and novelist. His most recent book is Cien anos de soledad. In 1961 he
won
the National Literary prize. NELIDA PINON's books include
Guia-Mapa de Gabriel Arcanjo and Madeira Feita Cruz. JOSE DONOSO, guest co-editor for this Latin American issue of was
TriQuarterly,
born in Santiago, Chile, in 1924. He spent three years at the Instituto Peda
gogico of the University of Chile, and two years at Princeton on the Doherty Foundation Fellowship. He received a B.A. from Princeton in 1951. In 1956 Sr. Donoso was awarded Chile's Municipal Prize for his first collection of stories; in 1960 he received the Chile-Italia Prize for journalism; in 1962 he won the William Faulkner Foundation Prize for Chile for his novel Coronation, which was his first work published in the United States,
followed, in 1967 by This Sunday. Sr. Donoso has taught in Chile, and from 1965-1967 was writer in residence at the State University of Iowa. He with his wife and currently resides in Spain,
daughter, where he is at work on a new novel.
505
The first annual collection of the best
from the literary magazi nes.
THE AMERICAN LITERARY ANTHOLOGY 1 Stories, poems, and essays selected from nearly 300 little maga zines and literary journals by William Alfred, John Ashbery, Rob ert Brustein, Robert Creeley, Benjamin DeMott, James Dickey, F. W. Dupee, John Hawkes, Walker Percy, Susan Sontag, William
Styron, and John Thompson. Clothbound, $6.95; Noonday edition, $2.95 FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX
�
19 Union Sq. W
.•
New York 10003
EI Como Emplumado the truth of the americas through the eyes/ears/hands
of her poets in recent issues:
.
·
homage to ernesto "che" guevara ernesto cardenal's HORA ZERO for
the first time in english ·
·
·
·
·
poetry by latin american guerrilla fighters
jorge seferis' important long poem greek revolutionary poetry new drawings and photos from cuba blackburn, dorn, quin, cohen, bruce, etc.
in this era of CIA-subsidy for too many "literary" magazines,
support and read the magazines publishing what's really happening
buy a subscription ($3 for one year) or a single copy ($1 from the publishers, or in most good bookstores) catalogue sent on request in this exploding world:
EL CORNO EMPLUMADO
apartado postal # 13-546 mexico 13, d.f., mexico.