STORIES TO THE SOUTH OF THE WORLD 4

TAPA bs as caba inglés FINAL.pdf

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

2/9/10

16:03:51

3 Frankfurt- ingles CUYO

1/9/10

20:04

Pรกgina 6

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:42

Pรกgina 1

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 2

Head of State Minister for Education

Dr. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Foreign Office, Trade and Cult

Prof. Alberto Sileoni

Foreign Secretary Héctor Marcos Timerman

Consultants´ Chief of Staff Mr. Jaime Perczyk

Chief of Staff Ambassador Antonio Gustavo Trombetta

Secretary of State for Education Prof. María Inés Abrile de Vollmer

Frankfurt 2010 Organizing Commitee President

Secretary for the Federal Council

Ambassador Magdalena Faillace

for Education Prof. Domingo De Cara Director for the National Reading Program Margarita Eggers Lan

Selection, editing and design

Graphic Design

National Reading Program

Juan Salvador de Tullio Mariana Monteserin

Selection

Elizabeth Sánchez

Graciela Bialet, Ángela Pradelli,

Natalia Volpe

Silvia Contín and Margarita Eggers Lan

Ramiro Reyes Paula Salvatierra

The texts included in this book have been selected by the corresponding Region coordinator Angela Pradelli Contact: planlectura@me.gov.ar plecturamarga@gmail.com Spanish to English translation by Daniela Gutierrez. She is a graduate in Literature and Education, an essayist and, above all things, a serial reader. Academically, she works as a researcher and professor at FLACSO and UNIPE, but for over twenty years she has managed to merge her academic activity with the edition and translation of academic and fiction books.

Pablo Toledo: He won the Premio Clarín de Novela in 2000 for his first novel, Se esconde tras los ojos (2000), awarded by a jury made up of Vlady Kociancich, Augusto Roa Bastos and Andrés Rivera. He published the novel Tangos chilangos in digital serialized form in 2009 (www.tangoschilangos.wordpress.com), and on the same year Editorial El fin de la noche published his third novel, Los destierrados. His short stories have been included in anthologies such as La joven guardia (2005 in Argentina and 2009 in Spain), In fraganti (2007), Uno a uno (2008). He also writes the blog www.lopario.blogspot.com.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 3

FOREWORD

Stories to the South of the World is an anthology that intends to “read” our Argentina from head to toe. In a country of widely diverse cultural identities -as diverse as each region and province containing them- this small selection aims to offer a sample of the valuable productions comprising Argentina’s Cardinal Narrative.

The National Reading Program reaches out beyond its natural limits in order to show the world the richness of our words, and to make those having the chance to go through these pages, feel passionate for a good reading, which keeps growing day after day, in every corner of the nation.

We hope for these stories, selected for each one of the Program’s coordinators, to meet new eyes and to continue astonishing the world.

National Reading Program Ministry of Education of Argentina

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 4

CONTENTS

The stolen day Ema Wolf

Pág. 29

The art of show business Jorge Di Paola

Pág. 33

Sand PROVINCIA DE

BUENOS AIRES

Chapter One Miguel Briante

Pág. 8

Mousy Benítez sang boleros

Guillermo Saccomanno

Pág. 41

Eucalyptus Ángela Pradelli

Pág. 45

Timote Ángela Pradelli

Pág. 46

Ricardo Piglia

Pág. 12

The Father Antonio Dal Masetto

Pág. 21

The Passion according Saint Martin Mario Goloboff

Pág. 49

Two pants suit

The skin of the water

Hebe Uhart

Ema Wolf

Pág. 55

Pág. 26

Night swimming Islands

Juan Forn

Ema Wolf

Pág. 58

Pág. 28

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

CABA

1/9/10

19:43

Página 5

Ciudad de Buenos Aires

Those who came back

Another baby

Esther Cross

Soledad Barruti

Pág. 65

Pág. 89

When we talked to the dead

Hundreds of emails Ariel Bermani

Mariana Enriquez

Pág. 94

Pág. 70

Two pesos store Pablo Toledo

Other pictures of Mom Félix Bruzzone

Pág. 78

Song of grandparents Vicente Battista

Pág. 84

Pág. 99

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Pรกgina 6

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Pรกgina 7

IA DE PROVINC

AIRES S O N E U B

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 8

Chapter One Miguel Briante To Jorge Cedrón

08

T

here was no hope: my grandmother said, as we ate. My uncle just shook his head in an ambiguous, almost clumsy, gesture. The effect of those words would rise just a little while, with my aunt’s sob. She tried to conceal it with a similar sound coming out of her nose; she even used a handkerchief. But it was useless: I noticed that she fought against the need of taking it to her eyes. At that time I would have needed to know what they thought. In the courtyard, suddenly, the scenes again, one by one, while my uncle passed. He caressed me. I’ve tried to dispel those images, pulled them back to where my rage was heaped. Above all, what got me furious was the fact that they would not dare tell me, but kept saying rare words or making estrange gestures, as when playing cards. Your dad –grandmother said– is not very well. But nothing more.

Nobody told me why I was spending all the time with them now. Or why, every now and then, the scenes returned: Dad arriving late; Mom saying: Let´s find your father.

But no, it was not like that now. She said: Go and fetch your father.

It was one o’clock of a summer afternoon. There was nobody on the streets. The town, by noon, was always quiet: until four. Before then there was this little world of siesta: playing Jacks at the shop’s threshold, riding Don Juan’s cart, or chatting in a train’s coach on a siding. I walked two blocks: in the bar behind the window, I saw my dad, lying on a table. I entered the bar. Come on Dad, I said, let’s go. I touched his shoulder. Beyond that table, there was nobody. The owner

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 9

wanted to close the bar. Take him at once, his eyes were saying. Come on, I repeated. Then Dad looked up. I never knew how or why, but there was something in his eyes, a kind of signal or warning. His eyes had this look, with a different intensity, so different that I felt afraid.

No, he said with a determined voice, a voice that he never used when addressing to me: no. Leave me alone, I’m not going. His hand rejected me and his eyes as well; then they would hide again, while collapsing upon the table, burying his face in his hands.

–What is it? –They’ve asked me– boy, what wrong with you? I had re-entered the kitchen: they were washing dishes. I felt like telling them everything: suddenly I’ve flushed and was about to cry. I went outside: walked towards the house while remembering how, after having shaken Dad once again, he had asked me -once more- me to leave him alone.

Don Pedro coming from behind the counter said: Fine, Vicente. Is time for lunch, do what your boy says and go with him. This also made me furious: that man telling him once again to leave, grabbing him by his shoulders and dragging him towards the door. I felt rage. My Dad could not stand on his feet by himself and said that he would leave just because he wanted to do so, that there was no need to drag him. But he only murmured some words that were impossible to understand.

Then Dad, slid to the floor, pressing his back against the wall. I felt a strange pain somewhere in my body.

But pain is not always the same, not the kind of shame I felt every day, when helping Dad to return home. Everything else -the town, the people in their windows- did not exist, would be fading until there was nothing but me, there, over my father, who was lying shabbily on the floor. I was afraid and needed, without knowing why, to see his eyes.

And now, to top it all this: three days at Grandma's house without seeing Dad. Mom had come only once. In addition, at the table, everyone was serious: when talking, it was to say things that I never understood at all. And they looked at me; they stared at me all the time.

Later, my grandmother and my uncle spoke to me softly saying: Tomorrow you will go home. They said: Go outside and play. Nothing was said about Dad. As if he did not exist, as I would not remember that three days before I was repeating: Come on, Dad. And he answered: No, Pablo, you go home, leave me alone. Go home, to mom.

And I said: You too, you have to come home as well, dinner is ready and Mom is waiting. I cried. As I wept, too, when returning alone, and then when we were with mom and we saw him from afar, approaching us, staggering, leaning on the walls and making hand signals: a grotesque gesture to tell us to wait for him.

But we continue walking and then we run when we saw him

09

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

10

1/9/10

19:43

Página 10

crumble in the middle of the street when crossing. When we helped him get up, he had blood on his hands. I wanted to say something, Mom had the same lifeless face she always has, but now her lips had a tremor and her eyes were wide open, as if she was scared. I did not talk. At the house front door, Dad had fallen again. He stayed there: talking. Lowering my eyes, I found Mom’s: further down I saw their two faces together, with a similar, almost identical face. The same gesture: I felt frighten again and that unexplained pain somewhere in my body.

Dad's eyes were had the same look I´ve seen before at the bar. And there it was, again, that strange feeling. I walked around the garden. I wanted to tell everything to someone, in a loud voice. I wanted to say that Mom told me to go to eat: the table was behind the counter, hidden by a partition. The food was already cold and I could hear that the noise of cutlery, getting slower, subdued by my own grief, had something sad as when the bells from the church sounded during the night. Slowly, everything went flat, reducing to silence. Things had decided to invent a new calm. I was floating, wrapped in a transparent layer that -as in dreams- did not let any noise in. And then this happened: Mom said -with a sudden voice like a whip only attenuated by distance-, Vicente, why do you drink?. And then, as if she understood that she was being too hard on him, she added some other words with a sweeter tone. But it was already done: Dad had burst and I could guess he was trying to stand up. Meanwhile, he screamed that wanted to be left alone and I felt, behind the partition, how she tried to calm him down; I could imagine the fight they were having at the shop’s door. The screaming grew, the sore insults, the voices I would not have wanted to hear.

I kept pressing my ears with my fingers, until I heard a louder noise.

When I showed up, Dad was on the ground: in the first half of the door with a hole and blood running through the splintered glass over his head. Mom was holding his arm: he had blood coming down from his clenched fist. He was asking her to be forgiven. She said yes, fine, Vicente, let´s go now, you need some sleep. And he said this: –Forgive me Sitting on the grass I could see the cane moving slowly, fluttering the silent siesta wind. Suddenly, a former calm had gone around me. I felt like crying and did so quietly, burying my face in my hands, waiting for someone to come and find me mourning. But nothing happened: I could no longer wait for anyone’s explanation. They did not see me crossing the yard, opening the screen door. As I passed by a window, I heard my uncle talking. I stood still, at the risk of being locked up again.

Yes, he said, he is worse than other times. And he repeated that there was no hope. Then, the voices went away, into the house. I kept

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 11

walking: the street was muddy; at the Convent School there was a woman's face sticking out the window. What were also there were the scenes, showing me how Dad was got up again with difficulty with our help. And then the siesta. I pretended to be asleep; Dad was lying on the big bed with his cloths on. I heard Mom coming in as if it was a dream. I opened my eyes: she stared at me, silent and sad as if she wanted to say something. She came to my bed and when she opened her mouth I knew something weird had happen, a sort of trap, because she told me to get dressed because she would take me to Grandma´s place.

It returned. Grandmother, my uncles, everything was behind: I was almost there and no one had stopped me. When arriving to my house’s block I saw Don Juan’s cart, moving dully, as if it came towards me.

After that I saw a group of people surrounding something, in front of my house. The minute I had started running I could hear the sound of the engine getting started. I suddenly remembered, my uncle’s words, my Dad's eyes. I kept running and went among the people. A long white car, perhaps the same one I saw many times in front of the hospital, had reached the corner and turned, getting out of my sight. Then I saw Mom: she was in the middle of the street, with her arms tight to the body. She walked toward me and put her hand on my shoulder. Above the noise of the engine getting lost, the giddy sound of the siren began to grow in the distance.

MIGUEL BRIANTE Was born on May 19, 1944 in General Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Writer, journalist and screenplay writer he died on January 25th of 1995.

Among his books, Las hamacas voladoras (1964), Hombre en la orilla (1968), Ley de juego (1983) and Kincón (novel), originally published in 1975 and reprinted with some corrections in 1995. Since 1987 until his death, he was critic and editor of the arts section of Página/12 newspaper.

11

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 12

Mousy Ramirez sang boleros Ricardo Piglia

1 12

I

shall never know for sure whether the Viking was trying to tell me what really took place in the Club Atenas that dawn, or if he wanted to get rid of his guilt, or if he was crazy. The story, in any case, was confusing, disconnected: pieces of his life, the disheartened Scandinavian war cry, and a crumpled cutout from El Gráfico rolled up in rags, with the Viking´s very fine and luminous face looking straight at the camera.

From the start I had suspected that something was not right in the story told by the newspapers. But if I had some hope that he himself would decipher the events, it was erased as soon as I saw him arrive, distrustful, his face pocked by the sun, hiding his hands in his chest, with an obsessive and brutal air. He moved slowly, in a gentle swaying, and it was fatal to remember, with melancholy, of his way of walking the ring so indolently to keep distance, of his natural elegance, coming out swinging and working his hips to prevent infighting. There he was, cornered, his back against the wall, half-lost; he looked toward the end of the hallway without seeing the afternoon’s last light, already dissolving among the poplars and the bars of the hospice. I handed him a cigarette; he made a hollow with his hands to shelter the flame, without touching me, embarrassed by the grease spots that stained his skin; he smoked, dejected, until almost not being able to remove the embers from his lips; then he remained still, with his eyes empty, and all of a sudden he was poking around in the pockets of his shirt,

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 13

digging out a bunch of rags which he started to open up nearly until he found the withered cutout from El Gráfico, where one could see his face, young and blurry, next to the face of Archie Moore. He stretched the paper out toward me, breathing with his mouth open, speaking with difficulty, with a guttural incomprehensible voice, piling up words without any order until, by chance, he became silent: he looked at me, as if waiting for an answer, before beginning a new, returning every single time to that dawn in the Club Atenas in La Plata, to the destroyed, little body of mousy Benitez flung on the floor, face up, as if he were floating in the quivering light of daybreak.

Somehow the entire story leads to the Club Atenas; the story or what is worth telling of it, begins there the afternoon in which Mousy Benitez approached the Viking´s desolate and fierce figure and in a show of loyalty, of unforeseen loyally toward that outlandish monster, he, with his squalid little body and his face like a monkey’s , went up to the others, to the ones who were harassing the Viking, and snatched the trophy –the only insignia or heraldic shield that the Viking had managed to conquer in years of lost battles and heroic failures –away from them. He shooed them away, furious, on the verge of tears; then he retreated next to the Viking and tried to calm him, not knowing that he sought out his own death.

No one will ever know what happened, but it is certain that one must look for the secret in that broken-down boxing club whose dilapidated walls and peaked roof rose up at the end of an empty street there, one afternoon in May of ´51, the man who years later would find himself obligated to be called The Viking, put a pair of gloves on for the first time, threw his left leg forward, raised his hands, put his guard up, and started boxing.

Introverted and delicate, he was agile, quick, and too elegant to be efficient. He moved with the looseness of a lightweight and everyone praised the purity of his style, but it was impossible to win with those punches that resembled caresses. Deep down, he had not been born to be a boxer, and even less a heavyweight, with his sweet face like a gallant from the silent movies, with his svelte and romantic figure he would have played a better role anywhere else; but he was a boxer without having chosen to be so, fatality of being born with that splendid body, and so close to the Club Atenas. It was sad to see him resist, intrepidly and without a shadow of a doubt, the assaults of the brutal mastodons of the category He was rather a man to be boxing among lightweights, at the most in some welterweight; in any case inexplicably and in a kind of betrayal that carried him toward disaster, his body, as strict as a cane, always surpassed the ninety .kilogram mark even if he starved himself. He never got anywhere and he never had another

13

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 14

virtue other than the purity of his style, a crazy obstinacy to assimilate the punishment, stubbornness, a pride that forced him to stay on his feet, absorbing the assault even if he was destroyed.

He reached the height of his career one anonymous afternoon one afternoon in August of `53 in the half-lit gymnasium of Luna Park, when he stayed on his feet against Archie Moore in the only training session that the world champion held in Buenos Aires before fighting the Uruguayan Dogomar Martinez. It was a vertiginous afternoon that was always painful for him to remember afterward. No one dared to be Archie Moore’s sparring partner; he decided to do it because he still had that inalterable quality, let us say adolescent, of disregarding the risks and of trusting without the least hesitation in the strength of his senseless will; full of hope, he thought this was his chance, he convinced himself that he was capable of fighting at the same level for five, three .minute rounds with that perfect boxing machine that Archie Moore was.

14

He was alone for a long time, sitting in a corner near the showers, waiting. He watched the only light that felt from the bulbs in their wire caging, mixing with the clarity of the afternoon, without thinking anything, trying to forget that Moore was, at that time, one of the three or four greatest boxers in the history of boxing. At one point he thought he was falling asleep, cradled by the confusing sounds of the men who moved toward the back, but suddenly the photographers arrived like a whirlwind and he found himself in the ring with Archie Moore in front of him. They started lightly, exchanging leads and working the ropes. Moore was shorter, wore red gloves and little velvet boots. The Viking felt very stiff, tied up, too attentive to what was happening outside the ring, to the powder flashes that went off unexpectedly each time Moore moved. Besides, he felt curiosity rather than fear. Wanted to know how much the punches from a world champion were going to hurt. Shortly Moore had cornered him twice, but both times he managed to slip away by faking with his hips. The champion stood out of place, facing an empty space, and stopped smiling. The Viking started going around in circles, always out off reach: jabbed with his left, stationary, swaying, and all of a sudden he would drive at him with fulminating speed. The Viking did nothing but look at Moore’s hands, trying to anticipate, with the dark feeling that the other could guess what he was going to do. One of those times he moved a little slower and Moore hit him with two right crosses and a left to the body: it seemed to the Viking that something was breaking inside. Moore touched him softly with the left, as if taking distance, faked taking a step to the side looking to set up the right, and when the Viking moved to cover himself, Moore’s left slashed down like a whip and found him midway. The Viking’s eyes clouded over; he raised his face looking for air but saw only the gymnasium’s globes of light, spinning. Moore leaned away, without touching him, waiting for him to collapse. The Viking felt himself become

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 15

cross-legged, swayed to let himself go, but held himself up on something, on air, who knows on what he supported himself; the fact is that when he lowered his face, his hands where once again up on guard.

From then on Moore started to go after him seriously, to knock him out. When they where in the middle of the ring and there was room, the Viking got by with his leg work, but each time Moore cornered him against the ropes he felt like lifting his arms and starting to cry. Soon he was navigating in an opaque fog, without being able to understand how they could hit him so hard, all of his energy concentrated in not removing his feet from the earth: the only proof that he was still alive.

He tried to stay loyal to his style and come out boxing, but Moore was too quick and always got there first. Toward the end he had lost everything, except for that fatal instinct that made him look for the most classic way out, to maintain certain elegance in spite of being halfblind, undone by the crossing punches and the jab combinations and the uppercuts which stopped him as if he were continuously running into a Wall. At that point Moore himself looked like a merciful man, forced to hit because that was his job, with a gentle lightning bolt of respect and consideration illuminating his slightly crossed eyes, a kind of supplication, as if he were telling him to let himself fall so that he would not have keep hitting him.

When it all ended he almost did not realize it. He continued to cover himself and he did not ever lower his arms when he saw the photographers come up, as if he were afraid that they thought Moore had been able to knock him out in the end. Only when someone put him next to Moore and he saw a photographer in front of him, did he understand that he had managed to resist; then he looked at the camera, became rigid and tried to concentrate so that he would not close his eyes when the flash went off. He got down from the ring thinking about each move, stunned by the pain but triumphant and satisfied, having acquired forever a confidence in his courage and his manhood, as if he had really fought Moore for the world title, between tides of intoxicating fame and without seeing the emptiness, the sickly clarity dissolving the faces, the silhouettes of the men surrounding Moore, without anyone to look after him, alone as he would never be again.

2 In the five years that followed there was nothing other than a long succession of heroic massacres, in which he could only offer the strange beauty of his face -which often filled the ringside ladies with uneasinessand a grim haughtiness, a perfectionist’s mania that was imperceptible to anyone not with him between the ropes. Of course the feelings of the

15

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 16

ringside ladies were always a secret anxiety; none of the rivals ever turned out to be gentleman enough to respect that suicidal pride.

So his career broke off, without any surprises, one night in February of ´56, in the Club Atenas. In that nearly-deserted shed he boxed for the last time, facing a brutal unknown with a turbid look who went after him for ten rounds throwing heavy blows, which he opposed only with that absurd perseverance and the futile purity of his style, the elegant work with the hips that seemed destined to fin all the punches that were floating in the air. He fell four times but finished standing, cloudy and staggering, his gaze fixed into space. When the bell rang they dragged him to his corner; he looked at them, surly, his eyes very open, as if he were hallucinating or dazed, his face broken, blurred by the blood.

16

He never decided to stop boxing, because to do so he would have had to doubt himself and it was useless to assume that he would do this; they simply stopped offering him fights, they watched him circling around the offices for the promoters, they saw him arrive at the gymnasium every morning with his handbag and start to train, reticent, inexhaustible, inspiring that irritated pity that tends to be caused by an overvaluation and an excess in confidence. Self-assured and ruined, he never asked for anything other than a chance to fight again to show what he was worth.

Finally, when he was about to starve to death, someone shook him out of his lethargy and hooked him up as a professional fighter with a wrestling troupe. Thee, at least, his grayish eyes, his delicate, aristocratic face were worth something; he would get into the ring with a red beard that embarrassed him and with a kind of horned helmet to justify his fighting name. He had to spread his arms wide and invent a spectacular rite that, according to the promoter, was the Viking greeting. He did it poorly, awkwardly, and without realizing it he tried always to face away from the audience, as if he did not want them to recognize him.

The troupe toured through the interior; he would spend the afternoons locked inside the broken down rooms of the sad, little provincial hotels, flung face up on the bed, waiting for the night, waiting for the absurd jumps and the laughter, without anything to console him other than digging out, every once in a while, the yellowish cutout from El Gráfico in which he appeared, his triumphant and young face next to Archie Moore’s. He would spend hours smoothing the paper out against the table, trying to undo the wrinkles that were deforming his face in the picture, slicing his beautiful, blond face that seemed to have aged, cracked on the brittle paper. Everyone put up with him because he was useful to them, because his melancholic expression and his very tall figure, the reddish mane and the beard in the wind, attracted the audience who did not notice his awkwardness, his absent air that showed openly that he was thousands of kilometers from that roped-off

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 17

square elevated in the middle of the plaza.

To excuse his indifference they ended up saying that he was Swedish or Norwegian, that he did not speak one word of Spanish; and that fable invented to strengthen the myth favored his surliness, his silence. With time, everyone ended up believing it, even the person who had made it up, and perhaps he himself became convinced that he had been born in some remote country, of which he only still had left a vague nostalgia.

He was in this for more than two years during which he barely spoke with the others, was always distant and alone, and trapped by the vertiginous and monotonous succession of little towns, of brutal faces and Viking greetings. No one was surprised when he disappeared unexpectedly one afternoon. The troupe had landed in La Plata and he left without telling anyone, suddenly, as if he were obeying a calling, without taking anything other than an old cardboard suitcase, the pseudonym which he was to keep until his death, and the beard brightening his face. He walked through the deserted streets in the burning heat of siesta-time in February, covered up in a black tricot turtleneck, attracting attention with such a tall body, with his outlandish figure, without looking at the people who turned around to watch that blond giant pass by; he traversed the thick, sweet aroma of the basswood and sought out the Club Atenas like someone returning home after a storm. He had nothing to offer than the same obstinacy, but he stayed until he brought about the tragedy.

It was there, after crossing the Atenas´s dilapidated lobby and ducking down through the small door that led to the gymnasium, that he saw for the first time the diminutive body of Mousy Benítez. The kid, a seventeen-year-old featherweight with a lot of promise, but who could not decide between his innate talent for boxing and his desire to be a singer of boleros, was toward the rear, lost between the ropes and the smell of resin. And it is said that he barely made a gesture, a slight swaying, and that this was his way of saying that he had always been waiting for him. The two looked at each other, nearly motionless, and after an instant Mousy kept hitting the punching bag, which was taller than him, with his small, delicate hands, his whole face concentrated in an effort to look fierce. The Viking continued to walk toward the middle, as if he were looking for him, while Mousy hugged the punching bag and saw him approach, already fascinated by that figure, framed in a phantasmal air by the siesta sun coming in through the clouded windows. He stood watching him, a slight smile soothed upon his womanly little mouth, as if he caught a glimpse of the Viking´s haughtiness and secret rage, or better yet, as if he could guess that that haughtiness and the rage were dedicated to him.

17

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 18

Perhaps due to this, from then on Mousy was the only one who seemed to pay attention to the Vikings ´s existence. Captivated, attentive to his slightest gestures, he watched over him, imitating strange signs, facial expressions, murmurings, well-balanced representations in which his body acquired the harmony and splendor of a small statue. These celebrations culminated when the Viking was nearby: then Mousy would drop what he was doing, bend his neck back, fix his eyes on the Vikings desolate face, and with his highpitched voice, very sad and almost like a woman’s , he would sing a bolero from the golden era, in the style of Julio Jaramillo.

18

The Viking did not seem to hear him or know that he existed, as if he moved in another dimension, always absent. He would withdraw into a corner with his eyes lost and spend hours, dazed by the rustling of the gymnasium, without doing anything other than shifting his position every once in a while. Sometimes, however, he seemed excited, he would move about nervously with a blue glow in his eyes and suddenly, in the most unexpected moments, he would be struck by a strange restlessness, he would tremble lightly, he would start to murmur in a very low voice, agitated and groping at the air, until he ended up enraged, telling in an indecipherable tone a confusing story: the story of his boxing session with Archie Moore. He would repeat the moves, boxing alone, crouched and with his guard up, throwing timid, sluggish blows. He would jump or move, heavy, awkward, trying to rescue something of all that, even a fleeting vision of that pact with Moore, of that mad, senseless and ever-valued heroism.

The others (all those who used the Atenas as a temple of their dreams of their catastrophes) would form a circle around him, they would ride him up by cheering him on, laughing and knowing that at the end, unfailingly, sweating and tired, breathing with his mouth open, he would dig through his shirt with sluggish and careful manners until he found the cutout from El Gráfico, which he would hold up firmly but distant from his body, in a gesture of sadness, of dejection, and secret pride.

Mousy was the only one who seemed impressed, the only one who looked at the picture from the cutout, at the Viking’s face, a little battered, that could be deciphered in the piece of paper. The others made jokes, laughed, while Mousy moved away, seemed to hide, taking refuge in a corner; from there he would watch over everyone who crowded around the Viking’s swaying body. Afraid, without finding the courage to intervene, he watched with pain as the Viking tried to tell about that fight in any way possible, about Moore’s fulminating speed and his little velvet boots.

And that afternoon, when someone grabbed the piece of paper, the

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 19

Viking remained motionless, as if he did not understand; then it seemed like something clouded his eyes, because he passed his hand across his face and suddenly he was in the idle of them, without seeing Mousy next to him, enraged and diminutive, insulting the Viking and touched him lightly with the palms of his hands, slowly, herding him as if he were a large, sick animal. He took him aside, far from the others, and began talking to him in a low voice, lulling him, while the Viking stopped moving and moaning, already calmed, his eyes lost in space, his beautiful face peaceful.

From that day on they were always together, separate from the rest.

They would withdraw to a corner toward the back of the gymnasium, still, silent and all of a sudden Mousy would start to sing boleros, very quietly, just for the Viking, letting himself go with the high notes as if he were going to fall apart.

It is said that in those times the Viking seemed to have been reborn.

He started to enter the ring with Mousy and act as his sparring partner.

Some attribute the cause of everything to this; they speak of a accident, of an out-of-control hand. In any case, it was comical to see them exchange punches: Mousy minute, nearly a child, jumping nimbly, with his face like a titi monkeys, next to the large, curved mass of the Viking, moving heavily. Just one of the Vikings punches would have sufficed to break Mousy in two: Mousy, however, entered the ring self-assured and strutting about, like a trainer in a bear cage. They would put their guard up and begin a simulacrum of a fight, the Viking standing pat in the middle, Mousy dancing constantly around him, and put his face out with impunity, proud of having recovered his fabulous resistance to punishment. Finally Mousy would get tired of hitting and would dedicate himself to jumping rope. The Viking would sit to a side, his eyes fixed on the other’s face, tense with the effort, his whole body shining with sweat.

When afternoon fell, the two would get into the showers together.

Mousy´s shrieks could be heard from outside; spending hours under the water, he would sing with his eyes closed hile the Viking got dressed and waited for him, stretched out on one of the wooden benches without a back, his hands behind his head, dozing off until Mousy appeared, his skin bluish, smelling like coconut soap; and then Mousy would start getting dressed, elegant and theatrical, making facial expressions in front of the fogged mirror. The two would go out to walk through the city in the late afternoon and the people would stop to watch them as if they had come from another world, Mousy looking like a jockey but dressed like a dandy, walking next to that melancholic giant with the reddish mane.

They always ended up around the train station sitting at a table, on

19

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 20

the sidewalk of the bar Rayo, under the trees, drinking dark beer and breathing the soft air of summer. They spent hours there as night fell, watching the movement of the station, guessing at the arrival of the trains by the torrent of people who passed in front of them. They did not speak, they did not do anything other than watch the street and drink beer, peaceful, as if they were not there; until finally, without either one of the saying anything, they would get up and leave, led by Mousy who looked attentively to one side and the other before crossing the street, always walking a little behind the Viking, as if he were herding him through the cars.

20

That is how they spent what was left of the summer: more and more isolated, perfecting between the two of them the final secret of the story. Everyone thought that during that time Mousey spent the nights in the Atenas. They were even seen, one morning, sleeping together.

Mousy´s head resting on the Viking’s chest: it looked like he was cradling a doll. In any case, no one predicted or could have known what was to happen that night; the light from the Club was seen until dawn and someone heard Mousy´s high-pitched, smooth, and out-of-tune voice singing “El relicario”. A dense wind blew all night, dragging the smell of burnt wood from the river. It seemed strange that no one came out to open up; the door was broken, as if the wind had taken it apart, and on the other side, in the quivering light of dawn filtering in through the windows, they found Mousy, dying, shattered by blows, and the Viking on the floor, crying and petting the head, which was dirty with blood and dust. The whole gymnasium empty, the soft murmuring of the wind between the sheet metal, and toward the back the curved figure of the Viking hugging Mousy´s body, whose face was destroyed and whose womanly little mouth had a smile upon it, like a dark sign of love, of indolence, or of gratitude.

RICARDO PIGLIA He was born in 1940 in Adrogué, Buenos Aires province. He lived in Mar del Plata. He published his first collection of short stories, Jaulario, in La Habana, where it received a mention at the Premio Casa de las Américas. The book was then published in Buenos Aires with the title La invasión. He lives in the United States, where he is a professor at Princeton University. He has also worked extensively as a critic and essay writer. Some of his works are: Nombre falso, Respiración artificial, La ciudad ausente, Plata quemada, El último lector.

Gerardo Gandini composed the opera La ciudad ausente, premiered at the Colón theatre in 1995, based on his novel of the same name.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 21

The Father Antonio Dal Masetto

W

hen I think of my father I recall going back home at the end of our workday. We returned at night, he rode a bike and I trotted. I run beside him, sometimes I was a bit behind but could always catch up. He rode a lady’s bike, the seat was too low and my father, a little thrown back, pedaled slowly along a dirt road. I'm sure we did not speak. Actually I have the impression that we never talked. It is impossible for me to recover any dialogue of us. Just isolated sentences. This event of returning home happened in Salto, the town in the Province of Buenos Aires where he went to live when we emigrate from Italy. One of my father´s brothers was already in Argentina before the war and he offered him to share the butcher’s shop. I was twelve years old.

We went this route for many months. No matter the cold, the heat or the rain. After so many years, the memory retrieves only one single night race that summarizes them all. That image keeps returning and dominates over other memories; although I do have many sharp and strong images of my father. Most of those images belong to my childhood in our Italian village before we got on the ship and cross the ocean. I could try making a list but it would be endless.

There, my father’s dark and quiet silhouette under a snowfall, waiting for me at the covent school’s front door. In a hill which overlooked the lake, my father guiding me through a short cut on a hill until reaching

21

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 22

the mouth of a river where we fished. In the woods beyond the last houses of our village my father walking cautiously a few steps ahead of me; he carried his Belgian double-barreled shotgun under the arm. He was proud. My father gardening from dawn until sunset, employed by a landowner, stopping only a few seconds to get an edge on the scythe, wiping the sweat from his brow and having a glass of water.

22

My father cleaning the latrine and carrying out two buckets hanging from the ends of a long wooden pole he passed on his shoulders. My father fertilized the farm furrows with the contents of those buckets. The image of my father chopping logs with his teeth gritted and releasing a grunt on every shot. I remember him, coming home late at night before Christmas with a pine that he probably torn from a forbidden place. He patched up the inner tube of a bicycle. My father, his torso naked, shaving in the courtyard with a mirror hanging on a nail, and explaining to me why there were two areas of the face that needed to be lathered more than the rest. I can picture the image of my father making a flute for me. I can remember him washing a sheep in the river and shearing it afterwards. My father did masonry work, carpentry. He did some farming, harvesting, picked grapes for wine making, grafted fruit trees.

We had a plum tree that bore yellows fruits y one branch and reds on in another. We had a pear tree that gave pears in different seasons. I was amazed with all those skills my father had. That man could do everything. Nothing seemed to have secrets from him.

My father was a quiet and timid mountain man. But he could be easily irritated. Once I saw him chasing a guy down the street until that man jumped over a fence overlooking a ravine and escaped. It was a dispute between neighbors. I do not remember the reason or maybe I never knew. I have a very clear picture of that violent act on the street. I can still hear the panting of the two men running. I wonder what would have happened if my father could get his hands on him.

But he never got angry with us. He loved and respected us. I did not have many opportunities to use de word respect in such a proper way.

Is him, no doubt, who I have inherited unconsciousness and stubbornness. I'm thinking of my father's attitude during the war. He worked at a gas plant and sometimes his shift ended in the middle of the night. My mother´s prayers and the advice of his peers were useless. He did not wait for daylight to return home, defying the curfew and the bullets, because he wanted to sleep in his bed; he had the right to do so and there were no Hitler or Mussolini or war that could prevented so. He left for America in 1948.The day he was leaving he laughed and made jokes, but I thought he was doing so to cheer himself up and try to cover up his uncertainties. I remember the reunion with his brother at the Buenos Aires port, after two years of separation,

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 23

his awkward and silent embrace. During our train journey towards the town, crossing the winter plain, he did not speak much. He sat beside me and kept his arm around my shoulders all the time. Every now and then his fingers were compressed my shoulder with a tender squeeze.

Then I can remember working together at the butcher shop, where I learned the faces of the customers before knowing by heart half dozen of Spanish words. During the morning shift I did the delivery and in the afternoons I helped at the shop. There was always something to do.

Clean the meat grinder, the power saw, cleaning the floor, peeling garlic for making sausages and give water to the animals.

I started playing football in the sixth division of Compañía General Club. I was happy with the football shoes, the pants and the t-shirt that had been given to me and that I could also take home. We played on Saturdays after noon so sometimes I arrived a bit late because of the job, so I spent all afternoon in a silent accusations atmosphere. My uncle and my two cousins were silently accusing me, but my father did not say anything. At most the murmured some words when seeing me returning at full speed. He felt an obligation to his older brother who had brought him to America, and that debt included me. I am sure this dependency bitters him. But there was nothing he could do. He remained silenced. Us two were also foreigners in the small territory of the shop and we had to win our space and bear with the humiliation when it happened. I sensed that my father would have liked a different destiny for me. One night, five years after arriving to town I took another journey. I left to discover the city. At this point my father had separated from my uncle and had set up his own butcher shop. He was not doing well. My father was not who he used to be. America had beaten him up. I was not with him at the new shop. The latest years I had worked at a pharmacy store. I left town without letting him know. My mother and my sister saw me leave the house because they awoke while I prepared the suitcase. They could not make me stay and they did not dared call my father. I ignore how much she suffered my run away. She never said anything. Then, whenever returning home I discover changes all over the place. There were some new amenities in the bathroom or the kitchen. Once I heard that when buying a water heater, my father said: “For whenever Antonio comes” So I think he thought of me with every improvement.

I was far away when he died. A nurse went to see him every two days and gave him the shots. The last time she saw him was on Saturday. She said goodbye and left until next Monday. My Dad said: “let’s see if I can make it until Monday”. He couldn’t. At the end he asked for me. I got home the day after his funeral, coming from Brazil by train and bus. At the door my sister’s husband told me “Dad died”.

Many years after his death, as we looked at some pictures, I heard my

23

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 24

sister whisper: "How beautiful our Dad was" I never thought of that.

Those were pictures of him when he was twenty-seven, he was holding a baby boy in his arms, he had a tan and I could see his muscles under the clear t-shirt. He looked happy. I was that boy.

24

From those things related to my father I can especially remember those moments when we returned home after work. These were always big nights, full of stars and silence. So I see them now. We walked through a setting of silent houses and ghostly lights in the windows and patios. I felt lost in the darkness and didn’t like that feeling. I wanted to get home quickly, I wanted the night to end and then the day then another night, another day, until the siege of the nights and days would break. My father? What was he thinking? What did the transit from the bustle of the day to the promise of rest meant to him? Was my presence any company, incentive, of relief to him? Would he look at me the same way I look at me now in the memory? What I see is an eager puppy, squatting at the bottom of himself, waiting for his chance to jump. My father pedaled and I trotted by his side. We did not have other reference that the bicycle light on a oval piece of dirt, hypnotic and emerged as if from a dream, renewed on a street that may not have an end. That minimum light pointed the way and eventually took us out of the darkness. The light drove us to the family table set already for dinner; it guided us to the rumors of the chairs on the brick floor and silverware on plates.

But during that trip we stayed away from everything. There we were alone and we were together. We moved in this emptied area between a world that no longer existed, lost across the ocean, and another one projected over future days and made of needs and dissatisfactions, contented fury and stubborn hope.

ANTONIO DAL MASETTO Was born in Intra, Italy, in 1938, of peasant parents, Narciso and Mary. After World War II, in 1950, he immigrated to Argentina. The family settled in Salto, Buenos Aires. Dal Masetto learned Spanish reading books he selected at random from the town´s public library. "I suffered immigration very much. I felt a Martian on earth" says Dal Masetto from his first arriving to the new country.

The immigration issue is present in his books, as in his novels Oscuramente fuerte es la vida y La tierra incomparable. At 18 he arrived in Buenos Aires were he worked as a construction man, a painter, at an ice-cream shop and a household street seller. Then he became a state employee, a journalist and since he was 43 years old, a writer. In 1964 he published his first book that was honored with a mention in the Premio Casa de las Americas. He received

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 25

twice the Second Prize for the local Government award with -Fuego a discreción and Ni perros ni gatos-. His novel Siempre es difícil volver a casa was translated to English language and also turned into a screen script directed by by Jorge Polaco. La tierra incomparable, received the 1994 Planeta Biblioteca del Sur Award. He is a regular contributor to Pagina/12 –a Buenos Aires Newspaper.

25

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 26

The skin of the water Ema Wolf

26

S

eeing that his disciples had trouble controlling the boat because of the strong wind against them, the Carpenter's Son took off his sandals, picked up the edge of the robe and began to walk on the waves in their direction.

The disciples were terrified because they thought it was a phantom, but he told them not to be afraid, it was him going in their aid.

Indeed, as soon as he reached them and jumped into the boat, the wind calmed down and they were able to reach the coast smoothly.

Everybody was astonished and asked how it was possible that someone could walk on water. He told them that only those whose faith was quite powerful would be able to do so.

Now the Carpenter's Son is on the shore, resting of the miracle’s fatigue.

Leonardo is beside him, he is a genius, who left the brushes for a while and is preparing to test one of his theories. Leonardo takes two large bags made of pig’s skin and inflates them with air from his lungs.

Then he ties the bags tied to the soles of his feet. Wearing such devices as shoes -so to speak-, he starts walking on water. To avoid losing his balance, he helps himself with two long poles that he sticks on the soil, alternatively in every step.

He proceeds with difficulty, his walking is awkward, hesitant, groping here and there, is difficult for him to stand, he is about to fall almost a

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 27

hundred times, but hey, we have to admit the obvious: he is walking.

Leonardo has just dug up Archimedes discovery; the one the old man made the day his bathtub overflowed. Leonardo is ready to improve it with a touch of Florentine inventive. Currently teaches the world that a man can hold standing over the water as long as he respects the principle that says that his weight should not exceed the weight of the water he displaces. That is way he docked at the foot the two inflated bladders: when increasing the volume of displaced liquid, he also increased the thrust of water from the bottom up, therefore there was not danger of sinking. With the bladders, then, and a pair of resistant poles to prevent the subject from collapsing to one side, walking on water is very possible.

Leonardo sits down to recover from the stress of his demonstration.

Humanity will applaud him, among many other things, by the latter.

The third, on the shore there is a small brown lizard with a long tail, so-called 'basilisk'. It is a small lizard. Without shoes or without taking its shoes off, it begins to walk on water.

It runs along the surface at high speed, with long and graceful strides, standing on its sturdy hind legs, with membranes at the fingers edge. While it goes back and forth through the water, it hunts flies. It is not trying to prove anything; walking on water is in their nature.

–Are you watching, Leonardo?

–Yeah.

–It is doing it well. Did it do it before?

–Every day, so its said –Oh They can take their eyes of the basilisk. Its walk has them impressed and confused too. The Carpenter's Son sees it walking and thinks of the admirable anatomy of the animal, with legs designed to take advantage of surface tension, there, where the molecules narrow and the water is transformed into an elastic. Its sharp tail functions as counterbalance and rudder. He thinks of the accurate calculation of speed that allows it to propel, in the insuperable machine its body is describing the acceleration reaction principle: he is in front of a perfect hydrodynamic model.

Leonardo, however, sees it walking and thinks it is a miracle.

27

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 28

Islands

–

H

ow wonderful, Porfirio! Since I'm here I can not stop looking at these islands. They make my head spin, I swear, they make my head spin! Unbelievable! Seen from far away, with that bit of haze, they seem giant tortoises. Have you noticed?

–Well, I would not know, never saw it that way.

–Do not worry, it is a poetic comment. Take it like that, nothing more, as a poetic comment. It's something that I pop up with sometimes. It comes to me, I swear, it comes to me just like that, all of a sudden, I can not suppress it. I must keep some childish capability of amazement. It is said that poets are men who kept their child soul. Do you never get poetic? Confess...

–Well, yes, sometimes. Not many 28

–Cheer up, man! Mankind dreams through its poets! Cheer up with poetry, which is for everyone. There is no soul, no matter how simple it is that is not prepared for poetry.

–Think of Neruda's postman. You remember that movie? So cute!

With this raw boy, without having gone to school he was able to understand the beauty that emanated from those verses. Put some imagination, then, and you will see the islands as I see them, as fantastic tortoises! It is very sad that you live here, because as you live here since you were born, facing the sea, and not be able to observe the tortoises in a more ... How could I say...? Do you know what I mean?

–It is possible. Actually, what you say confuses me. Since I remember…

–Okay, okay, let’s leave it there, I will not insist on the topic. I realize that sometimes you must have a foreigner’s eye to discover things. For those who see them every day, they are the most common, there is nothing wonderful in those things. Do you know the Chinese proverb?

"Whoever looks at the sky in the water sees fish in the trees." I think that there is something related to what I`m saying. It's like magic, do you understand? Magic is not something that is in things, but something that one brings inside oneself and sometimes…..sometimes it wanders off.

–Of course.

–Now help me getting on my feet, Porfirio, and let’s go to the house,

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 29

they are waiting for us. Besides, it’s getting cold and I’m hungry already.

I guess I got you to think, or am I wrong?

–You are not wrong, you got me thinking. Let me help you.

She fits the pieces of her skeleton and completes the difficult process of staying upright. He assists her maneuvering, delicately. After taking her arm he guides her by the beach’s steep road to the building with the red roof.

Before getting inside she looks back and gets to see the huge shells rising in the middle of the water. They find their way through the surface ripping it with pain. Their wrinkled necks, as Paleolithic rocks, stretch and force the legs to move heavily into the sea, once again, at sunset, as the beginning of time. At dawn they will be back from their monstrous journey.

He recalls that his mother always said that those turtles, seen from the beach, seemed islands. He will find out if that is poetry as well.

The stolen day

–

P

epa, what day is today?

–It's Monday, Juan Sebastian.

–Isn’t it Sunday?

–No, it's Monday.

–Are you sure?

–told you seven times already

Elcano looks at the Guadalquivir River really absorbed while resting in the arms of Pepa. He deserves the rest: he just arrived from a journey around the world.

No one had done this before. Three years navigating, fourteen thousand miles, all the seas with their storms, every fire: San Telmo, San Nicolas and Santa Catalina, all the demons lurking the keels, and, for his greater fatigue, always escaping from the Portuguese who wanted to get their hands on them just to hang them by the neck on the

29

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 30

mainmast.

From those five ships and two hundred and seventy crew members that were the expedition, only Victoria has returned to Spain with a handful of unfortunate men on board . Eighteen unhappy men in total: seventeen sailors and him, Elcano.

When departing from Sanlucar they were fat and healthy, their souls clean by confession, with all their hair on their heads, with almost all their teeth. They returned bent by the guilt, dirty with crusts, without flesh, so consumed or damaged that it seems they have aged twenty years.

During this incredible journey he ate cookie that were wetted by rats urine and soaked leather of rigging. He saw the Captain General die and almost all the other men. Dead by arrows, rough seas, of betrayal, cold, sickness in the gut, hunger; eaten ... Other chiefs were ineffective or dropped. He never imagined it would come to him, a man pulled out of jail to be sent on board without no further rank than that of boatswain, command the only boat that would complete the feat.

Because when it happened, when he had the chance to command he had no other idea than going forward. For something he is Basque.

30

–Pepa, is it really Monday and not Sunday? Aren’t you crazy as the Queen?

–Monday and Monday, you stubborn man, stone head.

Something strange is happening. The numbers do not close for Elcano. Each day of the trip here was recorded. Every day, without missing one, a notch was made with a knife on a wooden board. The Italian chronicler, -although young, very faithful-, did not left a single hole in his diary, he skipped no date from the calendar. Neither Alvaro, the pilot, was distracted, who scrupulously record his logbook.

But now they count again and again and discover that Victoria came to Seville with a day less. On land it's Monday and on board is Sunday.

A true mystery. Never before anything like had occur. Elcano thinks where he might have lost that day. Or, rather, when.

Many things had been left behind on that trip. The ship had arrived at the port so rickety, so much like a sieve that the missing day might had fallen through one of the holes and now it would be floating around in the huge sea, or it might be inside a fish’s or sea bird’s mouth. Maybe it just went away, just like that, or had been forgotten on the shore or was inadvertently changed for a sack of rice. He recalls eating meat on Good Friday. Would this be the punishment? Although seeing how things are now, maybe it was Saturday, not Friday. It could have happened that in such an ambitious undertaking, where they had lost

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 31

so many lives, health, sleep and money, time had lost a slice. Or is it the work of magic, which evaporates things?

–t's not magic; Juan Sebastián– Pepa caresses the lice.

La Pepa is wise. In a very short time she made him recover the memory of tastes he had forgotten. Apparently it is also wiser than sky scientists, because she says: –The earth is not only round, as you may have noticed, but also spinning. It turns on itself from west to east like a top, without stopping, because nothing or no one stops it. That job lasts almost twenty-four hours.

–Is not the sun spinning?

–The sun too, but that's not what you should care about right now.

–Is that so, Pepa?

–It's like that. You’ll see: who accompanies the earth on its journey towards Levant and wraps it in its full roundness, that is to say about seven thousand two hundred leagues from the widest ...

–I’m confused.

31

– . . Who accompanies the earth in its journey towards Levant, as I said, can take from eternity a whole day and keep it for him. But who does the opposite and moves toward the west, loses it. This is your case, Juan Sebastian: you lost a day for having undertaken the journey against the rotation of the earth. Well, that’s the way men do things.

–Why nobody told me that before?

–They don´t know this. They will learn.

He is not convinced. He does not understand Pepa´s explanations.

Where does she get these stuff from? If she is not making it up, someone must have told her. Someone from the dark world gave her the knowledge ignored by good Christians. So this is how dangerous women are, better not ask them anything. Elcano doubts and believes at the same time. He crosses. He wants to believe that what Pepa says is as the secret power that guides the lodestone.

Meanwhile, he can not avoid the unfortunate idea that a bit of his life was stolen. Not a very big one, but it was his, after all, and belonged to him for just being born. Everyone in Seville had one more day than he, and his sure they’ve enjoyed while he was rowing.

Elcano does not resign himself. He thinks the world owes him something.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 32

EMA WOLF Was born in Carapachay, Buenos Aires, in 1948. She is a writer. She graduated in Arts, worked in journalism, and devoted herself to children’s literature. In 1984 he published his first book, Barbanegra y los buñuelos.

Since then she alternated fiction texts with articles, meetings with readers and conferences in Argentina and abroad. Some titles that stand out for their humor: Qué animales!, Libro de los prodigios, Pollos de campo, Los imposibles. Among other awards, she won the National Children's Literature Prize, Alfaguara de Novela (in collaboration with Graciela Montes) and a Mention in the Iberoamerican SM Prize 2008. Her books can be found on IBBY´s Honor list, White Raven and Banco del Libro of Venezuela. Between 2002 and 2006 she was nominated by Argentina to the Hans Christian Andersen Prize. Some of her titles had been translated into several languages. These three stories belong to the Libro de los Prodigios, Ed. Norma, Colombia, 2003.

32

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 33

The art of show business Jorge Di Paola

Today Gardel - Razzano Today Duo 34 Australes Do not bring nylon clothes

W

hen I got off the bus, thirsty, the poster did not catch my attention. I just glanced at it, but did not see it. As they say in my hometown, the peasant has two moments.

So I drank the Paso de los Toros, and then. Then I jumped and looked again, backwards.

This might be local stuff, I thought. Nobody pays too much attention, so is the south. But I asked, anyway. The boy, smiling with some sarcasm, told me: –These are Pardal´s issues.

–What Pardal? I asked.

Gomez-Pardal, the inventor -he said, as if I, being a foreigner, should have known-.Look, there are people who say this was and is true. It should be, but I would not enter that tent by no means.

–What tent?

–Pardal´s tent,– he said and went to serve another table I had to keep asking because the company sent me with to open the market. I`m a gear sales representative for Pierre Dupie,, T-shirts with the Cross of Lorraine on, though manufacturers are Korean.

In this business there is no point in just popping up like that, to the

33

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 34

first shop you see and open the suitcase, show.

Finally the waiter came back and told me, there was no need to drag information from him: –Go to Pituco´s and ask for Churri Molinaro on my behalf now, he is manufacturing double-breasted and stripes suits...

–And who is going to wear that?– I said.

–Who? In town you will see lots of people their hair combed with gel and dressed that way. If not they cannot enter the tent. El Churri and Pardal are partners –What for?

The waiter left out of the blue without answering me.

–Hey!– I shouted –Where is that?

–What is that?

–The Molinaro´s factory

34

–See –he showed me,– go just straight down here, and five or six blocks ahead you will see a sign saying: "Molinaro` s made”. You ask there.

I went out walking. I have very little expenses. Luckily the suitcase weights almost nothing.. There were posters everywhere, I mean those saying Gardel Razzano, half displayed and also others announcing Juan Moreira.

I was already asking myself if that town was really going backwards when… ... In the office of Molinaro, quiet and very nice guy, like a duke, out of place in this world, the busnissman began to speak: –going backwards? Not at all, we are evolving back to before, that is not the same. We increased our production by 89 percent. And that we owe to Gómez Pardal…

–that´s what a individual can do…– I said. Actually, I thought aloud.

–Two individuals, "said Molinaro, digging his finger in the sternum,– do not forget that an invention is useless without production and marketing. What´s Coca Cola?

–a medicine– I say just to say something –Bullshit,– he said. How about lunch? O would you like an aperitif before? Let go to the best place in town, come on.

He bottoned his jacket, ran a comb, and left.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 35

... When we found a table in "Hugo` s food "and the maitre helped us with the chairs and he almost brushes us, the busnissman stared at me for a while and began to talk. "He is into something”, I thought .Do not worry. Chirom is that your name, isn´t it? Do not worry, Chirom. No more t-shirts are sold in the area, so you are not wasting time having cocktails ... Here we will not lose you –he said, and laughed a little. Not at all. I'm in need of an experienced seller, one that knows the Capital. Before working for Pierre Duppy, who did you work for? Ah, are you an engineer? Now I understand your curiosity about Pardal´s machine ...he should be arriving any minute now. No, no. Gardel Razzano is not impersonators, no, –he said a little offended–.

Everything is authentic. Today is the first show of the tour that the 28th will be at the Cervantes. A good cold chablis?

–Great wine!– I said, savoring.

–Look, Chirom, I took the liberty of inviting Gómez Pardal, because as you are an engineer I think you will get along. He´ll come late because he is with Margot–. Cheers! he added. To business!

We ate salmon with blue cheese and had another bottle. Pardal arrived at dessert time, with company.

35

He began to eat backwards, started with the crème boule with wiped cream. Meanwhile, he set out his theories, drawing diagrams on the tablecloth. After the explanation, that changed everything I knew about physics, I was rather confused.

Pardal looked at the watch in his right wrist. He got nervous and also looked at the watch on the left. He ate the melon with ham, which for him was the dessert, in a hurry. While he looked at his watches.

On the one on the Left, the regular, the needles marked 1 and 16. In the one on the right, that had twenty-four hours it was almost midnight.

"It must be Cinderella”, I thought and I looked at Margot’s shoes.

They were patent leather, very shabby as if trampled in the subway. She was very pretty, dark.

They went on the run but it did not surprise me.

I had another drink and thought: “Maybe this town is weirdo for me because I lived for so many years in the Capital City. I am originally from Ramallo, and many times I dream with the river and the bird´s tweets at dawn. In my nightmares I hear the noise of the parrots. As a kid I knew how to hunt them, with glue” –Pardal is such a nervous guy!– I told Molinaro Very calm, the busnissman went on the booze and then, out of the

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 36

blue, he asked me: –Do you know he is 35 years old?

–He looks like he`s 60 with that white hair!

–Yesterday he was dark haired….but he traveled more or less five times during the day and returned looking like this.

Making the calculations I had been taught, I commented: –It doesn´t seem possible…

–Do not give me equations! I have enough with Pardal,– Molinaro said. I also studied, you know? But in year 66 they got me out hitting me with a cane. When I got over the bewilderment I made a decision: "bucks, in this country all you can do is money” –I got a job at the energy company, to start with.

He looked at me upside down and said nothing. At the time he raised the issue: –Look, Chirom, let´s put funyi into fashion –And the shows, what will you do ?

36

–Oh! No! We´ll leave them for Pardal. It was his idea when he was desperate –Desperate for what?

–He was under pressure by a money issue, you know. He was doing the machine with some guys at the workshop, gathering valves and capacitors. Electronic waste. But in the end had to ask for a loan to buy an oscilloscope, if not, he would have been technologically outdated.

Twelve thousand dollars that eventually became ninety thousand. And where would he get the money? – He stood silent for a while and stared at me. Then he added: –Yoa see this all very calm, don’t you? Nice people. But when it comes to loot, the Montejo brothers start to play. They are from a very collecting family.

–What happened?

–Let me talk, man. Pardal came to my factory, he was pale, and he asked me for advice. He bought me glyptodont as a gift that in only one day ate the whole garden. He doesn´t have a clue! "Pardal, Pardal,– I said , relax. Relax and let´s go to “Hugo´s” for a drink".

"What if the Montejo go?" – He said. “Do not be a wimp. You are with me." And there, at the bar, I said, "Did you do the damn machine for nothing? You can get money out of it, silly. It is unique. And with the

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 37

money you get rid of the Montejo. I have no cash, but for a few days I can stop them with checks. Leave them to me, but you only have one week. " –But what was he going to do with the machine? – I said. Molinaro interrupted me: –No doubt he is very intelligent. Smart enough to do it, but a salami to use it, to get profit from it..., –Did not occur to him buying some dollars? ...

–Yes, it´s good business to by dollars and then sell them again the same day but for more money and return and buy more. And that´s it, coming and going …buying when money is cheaper and selling when its expensive…again and again. Look, it is possible to rule the world with that machine –Fantastic! Minkowski's bicycle!

–I do not know; do not know the Russian guy. But in the end the financial trick didn´t work out ... travelling so much wears you out.

Unexpected.

–And you, why is that you would not come and go twice or more?

That way they might not be dangerous ...

–Look, I’ve been supporting Pardal for ten years, I know him really good. He's a friend, of course. I could feed him; he would not lack any food. But let him do his business and I do mine. You never know what will come out with. But those of us who are in production we are balancing on a hair. But he comes and says, with the attitude he has for begging: "I can’t take less there are many", I told him "Well, do them”, “come on man, you can’t be so abusive” He took out his fountain pen and dramatically did some calculations. And when he saw the numbers he froze, as sometimes happens to cats, and looking at who knows what. "What´s up?" I asked. "Look, there is something I still do not understand, It not clear. In mathematics we would say that is not converging.

–Speak English, man!

–…must be the cold –What cold?

–I'll tell you ... a journey through time is a journey through space ... but we do not travel as a whole, we travel scattered into particles ...we are ... as a cooperative, but it spills and gets back together ...but yet in another time .

37

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 38

–For me this is Chinese.

–Imagine that you have a mirror in front of you but you cant see yourself, because you travel faster than light. But the issue, according to this,–he showed me a napkin full of signs,– has two solutions ...

–Two solutions are a problem, I told him– the businessman added.

–Then Pardal sat down and thought. Then he said: –Big problem if A and not B! –Te l l m e , – I s a i d . H ow m a ny t i m es d i d yo u g o , a re n ’ t yo u exaggerating?

–I went many times –You’ve got a black eye, man…The other one is fine –If it only was that…–he told me–. The guy looked terrible…

I could not think about the topic because Pardal´s theories exceeded everything I knew. But somehow, Molinaro, with his hearty way, had understood that if his friend had abused he was in danger, a mysterious danger.

38

Today Gardel - Razzano Today Duo 34 Australes Do not bring nylon clothes

In front of the tent I could read the sign but it had increased it´s in price since the morning of my arrival. But we were not going to pay the entrance.

–Look, Chirom, a single trip is not going to do anything to us right? ...

We waited for Gómez Pardal at the entrance, to pass for free. Cold, real cold, you feel it. I glimpse a s green and frozen sun. I do not know how that was possible, as we were scattered and fired at that crazy speed. But memory is a mystery and perhaps it also invents.

We stood shivering at the theater´s door. We were the first to enter because we were introduced by Gómez Pardal, which seemed to prevail in that environment. That means having relations. Over a hundred could not enter and waited outside. There, in the dressing rooms, all greeted the inventor as if he was the host. Carlitos in person patted his shoulder. I shook hands with the singer but he startled because it was frozen. The voices echoed a bit, as if the speakers were poorly regulated.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 39

Gardel, who was fat, was swishing and then he spitted into a basin.

Although I am not a tango man it was exciting to be near him. I was struck with the fact of seeing Pardal tuning a guitar. Do you remember the two guitarists, those that sound without purpose in old long play records? Well, there were three. Pardal in person completed the trio.

We were ordered to seat in the first row with a gesture. It was about to begin. With a gesture we were asked to be seated on the first row because I was about to begin.

It was unbelievable. Pardal, doing the strings was as bad as the others. But Gardel is much better live.

The inventor, who had turned gray and zarco, was weird on stage.

He did not seem to belong to the present time, neither did he appear on the photographs, as seen later.

Margot, la parda, sitting next to me, threw him kisses.

He was distracted and because of looking at her so much his voice went out of tune –What do you think of this affair?– . I said softly to Molinaro.

–Shh! Let me listen, damm! This is unique!

Then, during the interval, he answered me: –What do I think? That Pardal never changes, not even scattering his cooperative particles in space-time. But look at all the people hanging from the boxes. He should have already gathered all the loot for Montejo.

Except for being such a beauty (o she will be or was) Margot seemed a pin up that had grabbed Pardal and drag him from one party to another. He bought her some pilchas3!

After the encore and the applause, the show ended. Pardal approached and invited us to dinner, with Champagne Pommery. He spoiled his minusha4. He did not spend the mony but threw it to the air.

I believe she uses him.

When we returned, Molinaro and I were the first to leave the tent and we were waiting at the entrance.

–What are the Montejo doing here? –I said.

–Where? –Molinaro jumped and went straight to the brothers, who got lost in the crowd that was beginning to emerge.

Molinaro run back. He pushed me towards the entrance and said: –The idiot did not pay!

39

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 40

–We must tell him! –I shouted at him.

But it was just saying that and the Molotov bomb blew up. We jumped back, scared. Barely lit by the glow of the flames we saw the Montejo who escaped into the darkness of the field holding a trabuco5.

The fire ate the tent with the sound of rain. There was a smell of burning rubber and the pipes were bursting.

I don´t know when they were caught by the fire, light as the stroke of a brush.

When the fire was already over we went to see the burning. We looked but did not find any body.

I saw a patent leather shoe, half burned, which was near the hatch of the machine.

We remained thoughtful for a while, smelling like ashes.

–Who knows– said Molinaro, sad. Who knows if they went on tour with El Mudo6, if they did not pulled prior to New York.

40

–Maybe– I said, while we went back–, maybe the fire did not pass on the other side and from this night on, Gardel sang with three guitarist.

1 Argentinean currency during the `80s 2 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “hat” 3 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “clothes” 4 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “babe” 5 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “gun” 6 Gardel´s nick name, The Mute

JORGE DI PAOLA Was born in Tandil, Buenos Aires (1940-2007). He published the short stories book La virginidad es un tigre de papel (1974). He worked for Panorama, Confirmado and La Opinión as a writer, and was one of the founders of El Porteño magazine. He published Hernán (1963), the novel Minga! (1987). He wrote, in collaboration with Roberto Jacoby, the spy novel Moncada. El arte del espectáculo (2001) is a book of stories.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 41

Sand Guillermo Saccomanno

N

ot long ago the raining stopped and it dawned on the field.

The truck jolted along the path and gets buried in the mud.

The speed is getting slower. The engine drowns. My grandmother, my mother, my sister and I are travelling at the back of the truck. We travel holding each other, back there, in the middle of our suitcases, bags and packages, protected by a cloth. It's January and we're going on vacation. Grandmother's relatives have a home in Santa Teresita. And we were invited to spend a few days.

My father does not like these relatives. According to grandmother, her relatives prosper because they are hard workers and believers. If they could have a beach house is due to a reward from heaven. God helps those who work, she says. And looks at my father: Not like some others. My father replies: Slaves and fanatics, he says. That's what your relatives are.

Grandmother was silent. Her eyes sparkle with mischief. It is true that grandmother admires those relatives of hers. But looking at the situation from another perspective, when grandmother says that her relatives invited us to their house on the beach, this admiration is, as ever, another way of lowering my father. By becoming the union delegate in each tailor´s shop my father works, he is fired soon because of confronting the employers, and has to seek other job.

I f i n d i t h a rd t o u n d e rs t a n d w hy i f my fa t h e r d es p i ses my

41

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 42

grandmother´s relatives, he did not object that my mother, my sister and I come to the sea. These days my father has a new job at a tailor´s shop. He does not have a vacation yet. But he will come to visit whenever he can. Is not the proper time to be faking being rich, says Grandmother. No doubt she is referring to my father. So together with my mother and my sister we got on the back of our relatives truck toward Santa Teresita.

The house of our relatives is a cottage standing on a field, a few blocks from the sea. This beach house is another thing our relatives have over my father. Grandmother takes it as its own. Days get long, endless, like walking with my mother along the beach. To find a store will also have to walk a lot. Santa Teresita is an emerging town in the middle of sunburned thistles, huge extensions delimitated for a few fences. The rough and hot wind raises dust and sand. At night the wind brings the sound of the sea.

It is good to fall asleep listening to the waves, like a whisper. I fall asleep imagining how it will be going to sea with my father, whenever he comes.

But days pass and he is not coming.

42

One Sunday morning my mother took us to town. My father got down from a bus. He kisses my mother, lifts my sister up in his arms at pats me in my back. No, he did not bring any luggage. Not even one bag, he is fun. He has only this jacket that now is hanging over his shoulder. He only came for the Sunday, because tomorrow Monday he has to be back in tailor´s. Does not want to waste time, he says. He asks me to go with him to the sea.

Is still early yet, but the sun is burning. I´m certain it will be a heavy, suffocating day. Instead of going to the house my father would rather see the sea first. My father moves with agility and speed. And, as we approach the coast, my mother and my sister are left behind. I jog after him. My father faces some dunes. We climbed. He does it first. I go behind him. There is a moment when I lose sight of him. My father is already at the other side of the dune. I am still trying to reach the top.

And when I reach, I see him again Down below, my father runs along the beach towards the sea. He takes off his jacket, then his shirt. Without losing any speed he takes off his shoes, socks, pants and shorts until he only keeps his underwear on.

He runs nonstop until the first waves. He dives. Again and again he appears in the foam and jumps into the waves again. My father is not an experienced swimmer. His style is chaotic, with lots of improvisation. In his strokes the effort is more noticeable than the skill. His silhouette is visible only from afar. Soon he is devoured by the highest and violent waves I hurry behind him, collecting the cloths he left lying on the sand. I stop before reaching the water. With horror I realize that his body, a

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 43

silhouette of a moment ago, has disappeared after a giant wave. Now my mother and my sister are by my side. Scared, my mother calls him.

Screams out his name. She yells his name several times, almost crying.

I sum my voice to hers. My sister thinks we are playing. And she laughs imitating us. Despair gets hold of us. We shout at the sea.

It takes time until my father appears into the distance. The waves keep hiding him. He is trying to get back. The tide pulls him inside, but with his stubbornness and his being obstinate he manages to swim back to the beach. When he emerges from the waves, now on his feet, raises his arms with joy as a kid, like inviting us to a dive. When he comes close, when it is already with us, he notices the anguished expression of my mother face. She is crying. My mother´s shock makes him laugh In French the sea is a woman, he says. Your mother was jealous.

My father is excited by the sea.

And he tells me this story. On the third day of creation the earth was flat and the water covered it. Fulfilling an order from God, the waters were distributed crossing valleys and mountains. But the waters were arrogant. And the water rose threatening to drown all. God told them off and put one foot in front of them setting the limit of the sea. When the waters saw the sand they made fun of God. Sand grains were insignificant. "We do not fear them," said a wave. And another: Any of us, even the smallest, can destroy them." The sand grains were panicked. But one said: "It is true that we are insignificant when we're apart and even a gentle breeze can dissolve us. But it is also true that if we unite we can withstand the onslaught of arrogant waters. " I asked my father if he believes in God. I believe in the grains of sand, he says.

And the four of us walk through the field, my father, my mother, my sister and I, along a sand street into the house of relatives.

GUILLERMO SACCOMANNO Was born in 1948 and lives in Villa Gesell, Buenos Aires.He worked as a comic writer for Skorpio, Súperhumor and Fierro magazines. He also worked as a journalist and in creative advertising. Among other books he published Situación de peligro, Bajo bandera, Animales domésticos and La indiferencia del mundo. Among his novels Roberto y Eva: historia de un amor argentino, El

43

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

P谩gina 44

buen dolor and La lengua del mal贸n. Saccomanno won several prizes: for Short Story Premio Municipal, Latinoamerican Fiction Prize Crisis, Premio Club de los XII, National Novel Prize and Best Novel Award by Seix Barral.

44

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 45

Eucalyptus Ángela Pradelli

F

rom here, from the top floor, is possible to see in its scope, the little woods in the lot in front. Every day I open the bedroom window to let in the early hours breeze and cool the still air that got loaded during the night with heavy breathing of dreams. Eucalyptus imposes over the other trees: pines, limes and some small paradise that never finish growing properly because there is too much shade in such denseness. Up here, viewed in perspective, the top frame of the window, from far away, coincides with the top line of the leaves. Eucalyptus tree is the tallest of them all and perhaps its crown is also wider. There are days when the branches swing lethargically. Others, the branches are so quiet that seem to be dead. In winter storms winds cross as whips and make the thicker branches crazy until leaving them nude at the top.

Sometimes there is an idea I hate spinning in my head. Some mornings when I open the window I think that from this height, the only way to see the sky more full –that is, without the silhouette of the eucalyptus top-, would be tearing down that tree. That’s a truth I detest.

Perhaps because the fallen tree would became over the time in a bed of splinters on the ground. The powdered trunk, roots, branches and leaves already destroyed would be a fertilizer for the other trees to grow less fragile or higher. And then, once again the sky will be cut off and over again.

But I recognize that is not always the case that sometimes

45

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 46

something else prospers. There are days when I woke up and mistake the window with one of those trick mirrors because the deform the contours and are always there lying to us. These are the happiest mornings when I not even think of lacks and cuts. And even less, in the fullness of the whole sky.

Timote n 1970 I was eleven years old, my parents had just separated and at home we were living the tremor that usually come with the breaking ups. That year, when there were only to days to go for the winter holidays, Teresa, a red-haired woman who came home twice a week to clean and iron some clothes, asked me if I wanted to go with her to spend some days in her relative’s house in a small town.

Where do they live? I asked her. In Timote, she said. During the previous month and overnight, Timote had risen from obscurity to fame when newspapers, television and radio gave the news that General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu had been shot by Montoneros a guerrilla group at that location. It is true that the first days of June when the news was known nobody had any idea where Timote was, but in a few hours, its name transcended not only in social discourse but also in almost all family conversations.

I 46

We took the train to Timote the first day of the winter holidays. Teresa settled our bags in the luggage rack and sat on the aisle seat so that I could look out the window. We arrived a very cold but sunny evening and as we walked along the dirt road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks we saw several cars that were going in our same direction.

"I’m sure they are heading towards the house where Aramburu was killed," Teresa said. The building was actually a ranch that was opposite the house where Teresa's relatives lived, a low-roofed house, which had no electricity or gas.

During the days we were in Timote, at all times, we saw cars parading in front of the house. They came from the towns near by but it is also true that many of them traveled specifically from Buenos Aires.

Everyone wanted to get closer to the murder scene.

Some called it “Montoneros´s house”. Others, however, named it “Aramburu´s house”. Almost all the cars parked, people got off and

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Pรกgina 47

stayed there for ten or fifteen minutes. From across we saw them coming and going the width of the land where the house was built.

Only a few dared to jump the fence and get to the other side. But one way or the other, inside or outside, all conjecture and drew conclusions.

That this would be the gate through which the Montoneros enter the car and Aramburu. That the trial would have taken place in the room overlooking the front, which would probably be the main room. That Aramburu would have been killed here, said a man pointing out a window facing west. No, someone answered from the other side, it will have been here. They also argued that the basement where they had found him would occupy pretty much of the construction and likely Montoneros would have bought in the town the bags of lime under which later the body of General Aramburu was found. No, said other man, the bags would be in the house, perhaps they were left over from a construction work. Most of them assured that the guerrilleros had bought the lime at Carlos Tejedor, a town near by where there was a large shop for construction materials.

After they had run out of speculations about how the events had occurred many of them crossed the dirt road to ask Teresa's relatives if they had heard the firing. Some also asked whether they had seen the Montoneros entering and leaving the house during the days of the kidnapping or buying groceries at the shops near the station. They wanted to know if the rebels waved to neighbors and even if any music was heard in the house. The most suspicious wondered if from across the road they had never noticed any suspicious movement and how was it possible that the shooting had not been heard by those living so close.

On Thursday Teresa herself asked her relatives for the shooting. The day was cold and overcast, and we were in the kitchen waiting for a big bucket of water to heat so we could bath. Did you hear the shooting or not? Teresa asked while settling her red hair. We had planned to stay in Timote over a week but that afternoon Teresa decided that we were returning to Buenos Aires and asked me to go with her to the station and buy train tickets for the next day. That last night in Timote, in the cold darkness of that house, I woke up at dawn by a boom noise that yet, judging by the stillness and silence of the rest, no one else seemed to hear. Back in Buenos Aires for several months, I woke up in the middle of the night all of a sudden because I heard a shot that rang in the middle of my head. Afterwards I could not go to sleep until dawn. It was so because of fear and because I knew the shot had not come from a dream.

47

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 48

ÁNGELA PRADELLI Was born in 1959 and always lived in Buenos Aires. Poet and novelist, she teaches language and literature at secondary schools, gives lectures and writing workshops in different countries. His notes on education and language were published in Clarin and Pagina/12 newspaper and she also collaborates in other media. He published Las cosas ocultas, Amigas mías, Turdera, El lugar del padre, Cómo se empieza a escribir una narración, libro de lectura, crónica de una docente argentina, Combi, y Un día entero. She compilated together with Esther Cross La Biblia por 25 escritores argentinos. She won national and international awards and was resident writer at Atlantic Center for the Arts, Florida, United States and also in Geneva, at the Pro Helvetia Foundation; she also was guest writer in the 13th The Art of Storytelling, organized by the System of Public Libraries of Miami, USA

48

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 49

The Passion According to St. Martin Mario Goloboff To Oscar Terán "Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

Ist. Epistle of St. John, 5-21.

T

he copybook had his name, and boxes of pencils, pens, erasers, uniforms. And on top of it he was all morning in front of us, above, at the core of the main wall of a huge classroom with three high windows to the street from where the rumors of the day rose, the voices of the fruit sellers and the people walking.

My sheets were messy, every homework full of stains that were impossible to remove. At first, I intended to preserve the paper almost intact, but as the week progressed I saw how they were wasted with stains, deletions, ruined corrections, injured up and down with those ears that twisted their angles and saddened the page. I also was a sad boy, and maybe that was the reason why I could not avoid the slow corruption of my promising white sheets of paper.

However, the image of the Great Captain adorned the first sheet. In sixth grade the ritual stipulated that we should begin (and go on and settle and cover) all with him: exactly 100 years ago had died in a France a man whose name, strange pronunciation, seemed to speak about the sea and exile. I would appropriate of my first and beloved sheet of paper, my almost always selfish pencil, my best wishes and began the overwhelming attempt to reproduce in lines and contours that which was undoubtedly beyond my patriotic efforts.

His virtues were so magnificent that escaped a child’s improvisation;

49

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 50

and yet, I insisted once and again. I began with the upright nose, went down towards the thin and yet strong and tough mouth, then I took the unique chin where the line could not be hidden, fell on the neck, and went back still undecided over the shadow of the face struggling with the grim ears and the endless sideburns, I got entertained with the arabesques at the middle of the visible uniform, and left eyes, forehead and everything that was above for a delayed but inevitable end. Those eyes were for me the worst of the evidence. I could not place them in a specified place, nor find their exact measure or the appropriate shape, color, or, much less, the clear and eloquent expression: an unchanging spirit of independence that led him to win.

I felt alone in that unequal battle. There was nobody around me. The other children moved away as in a fever dream. The Eyes of the Condor of the Andes scrutinized me from above. I penetrated them until I swallow them, but when the pencil risked the stroke, the real lines vanished.

50

Finally, however, I finished. I would be liberated by the bell calling for break time, the end of the school day or face of the teacher who, when approaching my desk will shout "please finish that at one, you are not going to spend the whole week doing such a mess." And indeed, when I opened the copybook at home, I looked sadly at my work because the picture was a caricature, so far from the image we had in the front of our class as of any human figure.

Was not I patriotic enough? Did not I felt the same as everyone else and therefore I failed? Or he does that crap because he is a Jew and does not love Argentina? This last question was snapped by Mrs. Bileto to a class speechless because of the bizarre question. Ana Maria (I learned later, when I went back to school after a short illness) was the only one who answered no, or only that at least said something, arguing vehemently that I drew badly and that was it: she knew I loved my country more than anyone, and had never spoken against the Saint of the Sword or any other national hero.

In those years we lived, everything was becoming particularly difficult. Perhaps every generation of our hostile world can say the same. And very probably they are right. But each one must bear witness to the conflict that tore him, and maybe by the sum of these we could know some truth, and because of these hard-working truths (in an uncertain future) we could know the history. Ours started off facing the eyebrows of a titanic Liberator, in a village school, when we were eleven or twelve years old, and ended long after that or perhaps it only finish now that I’m at forty something I try to draw, with no other devices than words, a face that already escaped from me, that of Ana Maria.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 51

She was among the best students in our class, only and adopted child (it was an open secret) by the school´s caretaker; she kept decently her humble condition, preferring to be loved for her behavior and partnership. "Behavior" was much more important than any other academic aptitude, and although she did not lack them, her power in the class came from the few and appropriate occasions she spoke. She did so very gently, to be heard, creating an oasis in the midst of our endless hustle and our mess. Naturally sparing with words, naturally fair and, of course, Catholic in a town where the exceptions were few, the sober defense that she made of me that closed forever the insidious question launched by Mrs. Bileto. And at the same time opened a road between us we'd never explored: that of my gratitude, a mutual solidarity that would break neither age nor time nor the hard wounds that happen over time.

I wrote that it was a difficult time, its vicissitudes were not able enough to dent our growing fraternity. I must qualify it like that as I can not argue that we have been friends: sex differences at that time had much more importance, and we could not think of seeing each other.

We neither knew the possibilities of love, perhaps our dreams have ever touched, but I fear mine were only those who sought it, and if so it seems to me that giving account for them is not fair with her memories.

I am not writing to talk about me or my nights, I do it to draw a dream that is not mine, one uncatchable breath, that girl's face against the tempest. No, we did not love, we did not have each other or we did not lose each other: the idols did all that for us. The idols and my incapability to adore them.

After the sixth grade, I´ve started secondary school with a Literature orientation and she one with economic orientation, I increasingly preferred the company of lazy and street friends, I think I´ve desired and obtained some success among girls. Fortunately, Ana Maria had always remained far away from my relationships and of those cumbersome contacts. Sometimes we crossed each other in one of these limited corners, we maintained an innocent dialogue on our respective peers and studies, we follow our way knowing that we lived there, everyday, present in a still visible universe.

On year 52 I saw her marching through the naked streets of our town with huge crowns; behind and in front of Ana Maria sad men and women were marching. Agricultural workers, construction workers, those workers from the only oil refinery that was in the suburbs of our town, modest employees and servants were also marching. They kept a vigil over the picture of Eva (for them, "Evita"), recently dead that they already call a saint. Bodies canceled within the crowd, at every step returning to weep under the silent trees without leaves. I thought that

51

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 52

night I´ll irretrievably lose the films at the Rex: Sterling Hayden and Jean Hagen would be forever behind the screen without showing me what happens when "The City Sleeps," because this, my own, will never sleep: it was living a nightmare that just begun, and did so with all the achievable pomp. That spectacle seemed grotesque to me: sheltered behind the living room window, I smiled. When I saw Ana Maria again, this time with her mother, her pain and my having smiled hurt me. I was unaware of the limitless evil of which human beings are capable, and played with the grief of others as an evil god.

In June 1955 the expected storm began. By then we would asphyxiate even in our own home, and not even in front of Francisca (she had worked for us since before my birth) we could raise our voices. The military coup failed, but even during those short hours of hope dad asked not to discuss with her. The good woman with elementary language, expanded on the misfortunes of the country and against the "traitors”, the ones who, in his cluttered script, “have killed Moreno and Belgrano, San Martín and Evita." We let her talk, because of compassion and affection. Also for caution: the official radio started very soon calling for vengeance, and at home the lights in the dining and living room went turned off.

52

Only September brought the long-awaited freedom. What we accused of tyranny, fell, and with it their names and statues. The biggest and most ridiculous statue, which ruined the beauty of our Main Plaza, was pull down by us, the students in 5th year. At that time I had begun to write and discovered (or others made me discover) an innate oratory facility. Impelled by these adolescents’ blunders, I said fiery speeches of victory, and also opened the prom party of our school with two or three sentences that the tempting spreaders of my own words had allowed. Ana Maria was there, representing her School, and heard, of course, all my nonsense. At that moment I did not care, or even approached her, perhaps I even had uploaded my patriotic indignation and my flushing to point tacitly some distances.

Afterwards we began to dance with two orchestras. I who had never gone any further that some timid waltzes, jumped wildly from rancheras to rock and roll. At one point, out of that obscene shaking (which had been helped by more than a few drops of alcohol), noticed her. I thought she looked at me, along with two other friends, without dancing. Defiant, crossed the room, but when I was so close to her hand, ostentatious, unfaithful, unable to retreat, I felt the fear of rejection. She greeted me warmly, introduced me to her friends, and invited me to share her table. I told her that I preferred to dance, and she nodded. I understood she did not need man's testimony because she knew what men kept.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 53

We dance. One, two, many pieces. The singer mistaken the lyrics of "GarĂşa" and I commented that to her. Could not see anyone crossing the corner. On the street, the rows of lights made the asphalt shine with dim light. And I go like waste, always alone, always apart, remembering you. She celebrated my memory and occurrences, and gave my a serenity I do not know if she had for herself. Embarrassed, I looked into his eyes to hear: "Fear not, someday all this sadness will turn to joy." I forgot that we were dancing, I forgot the place, I forgot the fervor I had a moment ago: I did not forget, however, that this was the first time I hugged her.

We talked about inconsequential things, and also about her hours and mine. But we did not mention, fulfilling a implied agreement, anything that could separate us. Our understanding was there, fresh, still untouched, playing a bet against corrosion.

The memories that come after this are those of the unlikely awakening to maturity. I left my hometown, and went down in a cold city where the diagonals deepened the confusion: they simulated the dreams of a strange and hermetic despot who had wanted to cause continuous and false deciphering. I walked anxiously those diagonals seeking the contact of ancient walls with my child hand, but neither the houses nor my hands were the same and I learned to recognize myself as a changing person in a changing world.

Occasionally I returned to my home town to see my parents, those moments were hard and even aggressive. I was doing the selfexamination all our generation had started then, and reviewing the gap which separated us from what we pompously called "the masses."

Intellectuals adrift, we tried to reincarnate historically, and to do so we had to see the past with their eyes and heart. My father concluded our discussions by saying that it was the University to blame for my whims, "and who knows what other companies."

On those trips I looked for her intimatly. I was chasing something more than just a reunion and a return to our lost dialogue, something more than the recovery of her eyes and her face which I could never remember, something more than the realization of an impossible love fantasy. Facing my changes, my new ways of seeing the country and its restless destiny, needed her agreement, possible now, and her immeasurable forgiveness.

I could not see her. Also she and her mother had left town, and nobody knew (or wanted) to give me clear information about where they were living now. Someone told me that the mother had died in Buenos Aires, someone slipped hints about Ana Maria´s "dangerous" activities of in northern province. But nothing else. The years have

53

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 54

continued passing and running over our heads and in our blood in a wild way. The country is today, all of it, a pile of ashes, and the few logs remaining are just feeding a tyrannical fire. Ana Maria has probably fallen; she had only her body to spread her message, and so must have delivered: mixed with the flowers flying pollen, the water that nourishes the plants. I've never known for sure and may not want to know. I look for her name here and there, but I have never seen it and that lights my foolish hope. I know, deeply, that she is gone. She has passed as a shadow or a wind that shakes the trees. Others have loved and followed. In our shivering south or in our deserted Pampa, in our vast saline, in our slums or the hungry altiplano; they might have received her silent communion, her sacrifice, her good news. I, small in my endless Diasporas, draw her, foreigner. I don´t do not succeed in the lines nor in the color or the facts; I feel that I do it right with her silhouette. She covers my hand gently as a child, and sings so I would not to cry over the movements of the sea.

Lunel, Languedoc, 1978-1979.

54

MARIO GOLOBOFF Was born in Carlos Casares, Buenos Aires. Writer, Lawer and University professor. He was part of “Grupo Poesía La Plata” y la Cooperativa Editorial “Hoy en la Cultura”, el Consejo de Redacción de El Escarabajo de Oro, y fundó con Vicente Battista la revista de ficción y pensamiento crítico Nuevos Aires (1970 1974). Algunos de sus libros son: Leer Borges, Genio y figura de Roberto Arlt, Julio Cortázar. La biografía, Elogio de la mentira (Diez ensayos sobre escritores argentinos) Los versos del hombre pájaro; Caballos por el fondo de los ojos, Criador de palomas, La luna que cae, La pasión según San Martín. Fuera del país, hay trabajos sobre él y su obra en Alemania, Estados Unidos, Francia, Israel, Italia, y la ex Yugoslavia. Sus textos y obras de ficción han sido traducidos a numerosas lenguas

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Pรกgina 55

Two pants suit Hebe Uhart

L

ong ago I lived in an apartment Atilio my mom bought me because he said the previous depressed him and therefore could not work. It was for less: In the previous department had an elevator would stop since about seventy, we dropped a glass and put a board and prepared to lead a new life in a newer, smaller. I fantasized fix my taste, a little taste I have had, but did not know how people brought home all those nice things were there. I was very careful with the decorations because Atilio insults, broken or encountered. Yes, we in the former department's bed where we slept, it was a single seat, but I saw this discomfort as if fate had in store to me. At night, he came late to walk around, with a recurring story: That he had run down the street with a big military, filled with epaulets and he had won. I told her "slumber" with some caution because I knew the speech was coming next: I was referring to poor people who do not understand the meaning of a heroic deed. When I went to work leaving him asleep and wrapped in a fog of alcohol. One day I was very diligent and said, "I'll help make up for that." We went to see a doctor, who prescribed vitamins, but even the vitamins that were prescribed to him than those of the human race: he prescribed some brown balls, like small meatballs grainy. I also took to the psychiatrist "The doctor told Doormat. And the interview was also different from what they usually are. Atilio came talking loudly and thickly and Dr. Doormat said

55

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 56

–Shhh ... you feel me and stands there quietly.

He obeyed, because he was afraid of the police, military, doctors, mothers of brides, dogs and travel. He told me to work I needed a new suit and it was nothing to miss the occasion: my mom gave me money to buy a suit at home Muñoz, where weight is worth two, who came with two pairs of trousers. He was always in a suit, shirt and tie, never wore a jacket or jeans, because basically he wanted to be very good, but everything he played against. Once worked for a few months in an insurance company, and some criteria unknown to me, he was named secretary of the trade and to do the minutes of meetings. But such was the anxiety that caused him to write down everything he said because he did not remember after the middle of things, "he told me that he threw the book of Acts in the creek. And then I had the anxiety of possible punishment and humiliation of having to lie, because he told his colleagues that he lost.

56

Now, I went home Muñoz, with the assurance of which plays an important role and he waited at the bar around the corner "I always waited at the corner bar-efficient as I fulfilled my duties. I had an inch, so I took a string to measure the length of the pants, with a life so busy and eventful one centimeter is an irrelevant detail. We entered this beautiful shop with vendors so elegant, I realized that I was doing something wrong, but I was not deter me and put the thread on the counter. The seller said: –But this ...I can not handle this. Bring the subject.

–t's in the bar on the corner – I said weakly.

–Bring it.

As if it were easy, I had to convince him terrified and followed me to the store. At the door were two top sellers, very well dressed, arrogant poise. Atilio was very thin, his clothes were soiled and the store looked like giants who can not believe what he sees. We took two of those measures huge and prestigious vendors in the corner, and when we left, one of the giants, it was like a guardian of the door, he said: –You have to eat more, boy, is very thin I had to return home again Muñoz because once the two were ruined pants. The first pair I do not know where he disappeared and the second had crossed a thousand wars, had some strange things stuck, sticky, appeared chewed and was broken. I thought, "I must take to have it repaired." The vendor looked at him and said, hesitantly and shocked, trying not to touch: But this! How could he have broken it?

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 57

–I do not know, I very worried for my ignorance.

–No, no remedy –said.

"What a pity, I thought, as he waited in the house covered with the blanket, and could not accompany me because I had no pants. I would like the seller lift the pants to the light, albeit with a stick, but no poles in the stores, he grabbed a nail of the cuffs. To determine the unfathomable mystery locked up those pants.

HEBE UHART Was born in Moreno, Buenos Aires, some years ago. Studied philosophy, worked as elementary, secondary and university professor. She teaches a literature workshop. Alfaguara Publishers will soon publish her narrative book and Editorial Malón her non fiction book. Uhart is working on a new book about her travelling all Latin America, Argentina and Europe.

57

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

PĂĄgina 58

Night Swimming Juan Forn

58

I

t was too late to be awake, especially in a borrowed house and in the dark. Outside in the garden, stubborn and furious crickets summoned the rain, and he wondered how they could sleep in the rooms upstairs, his wife and the baby, with the deafening buzz.

I had insomnia, was wearing shorts, sitting in front of the open window overlooking the terrace and garden. The only lights on were the lights inside the pool, but it was waved by the water and it could not completely kill that feeling of being in a strange house, that indefinable malaise aroused by the mock holidays.

In fact, he was not resting but working there. Although the work did not involve any particular effort, although he did not have to do anything except live in that house with his wife and daughter and enjoy the possessions of his friend Felix while he and Ruth went up the Nile and spent fortunes in photograph film and Egyptian toothless guides, on the account of an Italian travel magazine.

To calm down, to catch the sleep, he thought he would not be in Buenos Aires for a whole month. He would live in shorts and unshaven, cut the grass, take care of the pool, watch videos and listen to music while her daughter grew before his eyes and his wife’s, in the kitchen, invented rare desserts. And during all that time maybe a minimally stimulating message or at least catastrophic would be left in the answering machine at his department.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 59

Meanwhile, maybe Felix and Ruth decided to extend their trip another month, or had an accident or they would fall in love with the same young androgynous and illiterate EFEBO in Alexandria. One month could be much longer in some places; one month could be almost a life, as for his daughter. He had to start living at her rhythm, as he had told his wife. Day after day, hour after hour, slowly. Once for all he had to assume fatherhood, as Felix and Ruth would say, in case they have not said so yet.

Then he heard the door. Not the bell but a smooth, polite, knocking.

As if who knocked was aware of the time it was. Each house has its own logic and its laws are more eloquent at night when things happen without any mitigating sound. He did not look at the clock, nor felt surprised, nor did he think the beating was his own imagination. He just got up, without turning on any light as he passed and when he opened the door he found his father standing before him. He had not seen him since he died. And then, he incongruously knew that he already had the idea of not seeing him anymore.

His father was wearing a buttoned raincoat, his abundant hair well groomed, as usual, but completely white. They had never been very expressive with each other. He said: "Dad, what a surprise", but did not move until his father asked him with a smile: –May I come in?

–Yes, of course. Sure The father crossed the dark living room, the open window and sat in one of the chairs on the terrace. Being there he looked inside, he called with his hand while touching the empty deck chair beside him. He went obediently to the terrace. He said: –Do you want to give me your raincoat? Something to drink?

His father said no to both offers moving his head. Then he stretched as much as he could and took a deep breath without losing his smile.

–Is going to start raining any minute now– he said–. How wonderful.

Is it like this during the day too?

–Better. Specially for Marisa and the baby –Marisa and the baby. You have a lot of things to tell me, right?

He felt his jaw slacken. In those dreams, when his father returned to him, he was always aware of everything that had happened to them in his absence.

–Yes, sure– he said. I guess so.

59

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 60

–Of course, I do not mean you should put me up with the news.

Let’s forget about politics, work, and the world in general, if possible. I’m interested in the domestic things. Your sisters, you, Marisa, the baby.

Those things.

He was surprised that he mentioned the word domestic. And even more that he had appointed all but his mother, but did not know what to say.

–I'm going to serve me a whiskey. Sure you do not want?

–No, no, thanks. By the way, the lights inside the pool, what a great idea.

–It's not mine– he said before getting inside–. The house, I mean.

When he reappeared with a glass quite full, he stopped behind his father’s lounge chair and he suddenly felt that they had not yet touched.

–I thought– he said, from there–, that you'd see everything that happened here, from where you were.

His father’s head moved slightly to one side, and the other, several times.

60

–Unfortunately not. It is quite different from you can imagine.

He looked at the pool and felt that it did not control what he was saying or what he would say.

–If you knew how much stuff I did in these years because of you, thinking you were watching me.– And he laughed a little, without joy, but without bitterness, just to get his lungs empty. – So, you do not know nothing about these four years. That’s incredible.

The father made himself confortable in the lounge chair and looked at him sideways.

–Maybe there are changes, where we are sent now. If that comforts you.

He looked at him blankly.

–There was a transfer. From now on I'll be elsewhere. Not only me, many more. The things there are not as orderly as assumed.

Sometimes there are contingencies. I mean, being here with you now.

–Why me? Why you did not see Mom? For a while the father looked at the undulating light from the pool.

His face changed slightly; there was a gesture of sadness.

– With your mother it would have been much more difficult. One night is not a long time, and I need you tell me as much as you can.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 61

With your mother we would talk about other issues. Especially the past, her and me, and the many good things we lived together. And that would have been unfair.

He paused.

–There are certain things that are technically impossible in my current state: to feel, for example. Do you understand? To some extent, what I am tonight is something that will not count for your mother. With you, however, it is much simple, to put it mildly. You always chose to locate yourself in a panoramic position in terms of emotions; with your mother, with your sisters, with yourself.

He paused again.

–I also thought you would handle in a better way the feelings aroused by this visit. After all, I've never been so important to you, is not it?

He felt something he had not felt for a long time: A kind of SUMISIÓN and the need to oppose to it. Suddenly he knew that in the last four years he had not be what he was now, again: his father's son.

He went to the edge of the pool, took off his moccasins and sat with his legs in the water.

–If you had not been so important to me, then I would not have done the things I did for you, because of you, over the years. You do not think about that?

–No He remained perplexed. The answer was so fast and brutal that sounded sincere. And because of that it seemed so unlikely. Coward.

Almost unfair.

–So, now that you already know what? He managed to say.

–Nothing– the father replied.

Then he arose, took the lounge chair to the edge of the pool and sat with his hands in his pockets.

–I guess nothing changes. What you did, you did. And I think that it makes no sense you get mad now, either with me or with you. Am I right?

It was not only useless; he also began to feel that it was not lawful, considering his father's status, to question anything, or permitting him that unusual aggressiveness. The need to oppose vanished, leaving only the submission, not addressed to his father but to a state of things, to an obtuse and incomprehensible abstraction.

61

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 62

–True,– he said–. Sorry.

They were silent for a while, until he said: Anyway, I’ve exaggerated a little. They were not so many things I did thinking about you.

The father giggled.

–I thought so.

A lightning cracked in two against the sky. When the thunder sounded the father shrugged and his giggle was heard again.

–I almost did not remember these things. It is remarkable how the memory works, what it retains and what it leaves behind.

–Crickets– he said–. Do you hear them? They would not let me sleep. That is why I was awake when you arrived.

After saying these words he hesitated. The crickets? But he thought better and decided to remain in doubt.

–Well,– the father said with a very soft voice.– Let’s get to our business.

–can I ask you something before?

62

The lounge chair creaked. He made an effort to keep looking at his father in the eyes.

–As you wish. But you know how this is: once you know it is difficult to get it off your mind. It is not a threat. I say this for your sake, just that.

–Yes, I know– he said. And asked with a faltering voice: – Do all go to the same place? Does it matter what each one has done before?

–That's something I could have answered since I was twenty years old or less. I always suspected that it mattered more during our life than later. Regarding the other question, it is not exactly a place where they go. But yes: all go to the same place, to the extent that we are all relatively equal. Your neighbor’s lifestyle of and yours, for example, differ as much as your height and his. They are just shades, and shades do not count. Let's say there are basically only two states: yours and mine.

It is rather more complex, but you would not understand now.

–Then you and I are going to meet again, sometime,– he said.

The father did not answer.

–Does it matter being there together?

The father did not answer.

–And how is it? He said.

The father looked away and to the pool. –Like swimming at night–,

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 63

he said. And the undulating light reflected in his face. –As night swim in a huge pool, without getting tired.

He drank all the whisky left in the glass and waited for it to reach stomach. Then he threw the ice in the pool and put the empty glass on the edge.

–Anything else?– said the father.

He shook his head. Moved his legs a bit in the water and looked at the base of the chaise, the raincoat, his father’s gently timeless face. He thought about how reluctant to any body contact they have always be and those hugs in the dreams where his father appeared seamed now incredibly naive and artificial. This was reality: everything was as it had always been, and was starting again at almost the same spot where it stopped four years earlier. It did not matter that it was only for one night.

–Where do you want me to start? – he said.

–Wherever you want. Do not worry about time: we have all night. It will not be day time until you finish.

He breathed deeply, took off the air and knew he had entered the longest and secret night of his life. He began, of course, talking about his daughter.

JUAN FORN He was born in 1959 and joined Emecé publishing house at the age of 20 (where he worked as a phone operator, proofreader, translator and Argentine fiction editor). He lives in Villa Gesell, Buenos aires province, from where he writes the back-page features of Página/12 newspaper. Some of his books are: Corazones cautivos más arriba, Nadar de noche, Frivolidad, Puras mentiras. He created the collections Biblioteca del Sur (fiction) and Espejo de la Argentina (non fiction) for Editorial Planeta, and in 1996 created the culture supplement Radar for Página/12. In recent years he has translated the books Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata; Bullet Park, by John Cheever; and Mescalito,

by Hunter Thompson. His best journalistic writing has been compiled in the book La tierra elegida. He was awarded the Premio Konex de Platino for the best literary journalist of the 1996-2006 decade. In March 2010 he published a new book of non-fiction, Ningún hombre es una isla.

63

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

CABA

Pรกgina 64

Ciudad os Aires de Buen

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 65

Those who came back Esther Cross

our left and three came back. Then the house, and everything around it, came to life. My father and the boy’s father, the butler, the foreman, the journeymen, even a hobo who had arrived the day before crossed the gate that led onto the woodland with bright eyes and lowered heads. Latour, the boy’s father, seemed to be in less of a hurry. As if my father was sure that something very bad had happened and the boy’s father was not.

Or as if my father thought they were still in time and the boy’s father knew instead that it was too late.

F

My brothers and Latour’s older brother had run their way back. They walked into the house together, as one, and they jammed at the door.

Then my mother asked about the boy: Where’s Martín? All three of them looked down. My father shook my elder brother by the shoulders.

My youngest brother stepped aside, with his hands in his pockets.

Martín Latour’s brother closed his mouth as if his life depended on it.

But he could not hold back a tear. My father whispered something to my mother; then he knelt by the older of the Latours and put his hands on the boy’s shoulder. He talked to him, trying to get the boy to look in his eyes. My mother hurried to the phone and called the father of the Latour brothers. When Latour arrived, my father was almost done with the butler’s instructions.

The Latour brothers and my brothers were not very close. But they still played together from time to time. The Latours were our neighbors, and

65

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 66

the families kept running into one another –on the road, in town, at the La Rodada restaurant on Sunday nights– until one day they started meeting more often. That’s why my parents took us to the Latour’s to play some afternoons, and they brought their children over for a few hours.

Sometimes, Latour would swing by – that’s the way he put it, swing by– to say hello. He came in his pickup truck, after his ride around the estate, with his two children and the dog in the back. He had a gentleman’s face and hardened hands. That was the combination.

66

The Latour boys and my brothers looked alike, like the sons of mothers who buy the same kind of clothes. My mother used to dress my brothers up in clothes that copied those of English boys. The mother of the Latours went into town and bought clothes that copied the clothes my mother bought for my brothers – the Latours hardly ever travelled to Buenos Aires. The boys got along rather well. They had a similar gait, with moves that walking around the countryside –jumping across fences, stepping hard and cautiously, stopping to listen– had stamped on their heads. But there were differences. The biggest one was that the Latours lived on the countryside and my brothers didn’t.

My brothers knew about jets, building blocks and collectible picture cards. But whenever they wanted to find out what armadillo meat tasted like, why owls sometime appeared hanging from the mill’s weather vane, where trash got burnt, what the sex life of sheep was like and things like that they consulted the Latour living encyclopedia. The other difference was that they did not have a sister. I had no double in that mirror. There was only time between the older of the Latours and Martín. That afternoon, when they found the body of Martín Latour in the woodland, all resemblances were lost.

They found him lying under a tree. He was so young he couldn’t even read. Blood was trickling down his nose. He was face up. His white skin was soiled with dirt. His head was tilted to one side. He seemed asleep. But there was something strange. As if he was sleeping in a sleep of subtle alteration. An impossible sleep, from another planet. Perhaps from a planet where nobody was ever awake.

He had snapped his neck. And his mouth was open, as if he had not finished what he was about to say, or as if surprise had been the last word he spoke in his life.

I stayed at the house with my mother, my brothers and Martín’s oldest brother. Since we were all quiet, every movement seemed slower and the noises from the kitchen were too clear. Nobody explained anything to me but I understood all too well what was going on (tragic events are clear and exact). The three boys behaved as if they didn’t know each other, each was locked in a world of their own. But when somebody talked to any of them –the maid asked them whether they

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 67

wanted something to drink, my mother asked them where they had left the horses– it was as if the three of them were but one person. Six eyes and one mouth, shut.

That afternoon, grown-ups seemed bigger and their voices boomed with excessive might. The voices of the men carried from the woodland to the house. We could hear the name of the boy. Martin. They were crying out his name, surely funneling their hands. The louder they said it, the further Martín seemed to get from us. Then the worst happened.

The mother of the boy had not obeyed her husband. Rather than staying at home, waiting for news as it got darker and the rooms grew larger like shadows, she had come. We heard the sound of wheels on the path, preceded by a dog. Mrs. Latour got out of a jeep. The foreman of her ranch had driven her over.

My mother squeezed her hands and walked out to receive her. I saw them through the window. The woman looked dead straight at her. My mother ran her hands through Mrs. Latour’s shoulder and they walked into the house. The woman’s oldest son stared at her. Worried people who don’t talk are a bit scary. This woman was extremely upset and she didn’t open her mouth. She sat on the armchair, with her eyes open. I think she never blinked.

67

The horse showed up in the sheds, foaming at the mouth and with bulging eyes, before the men returned from the woodland with the body of the boy. It was a rather fat horse. The journeymen called him Coffee, but we did not like that name. We switched names each summer, depending on the books we read or the films or series we watched.

He showed up running through the sheds, with his tack loose and a frenzied face. Campello, the horsebreaker, who had stayed just in case, grabbed him by the reins. Then he unsaddled him, hosed him down and let him go. Campello was sure he had been whipped or scared off.

He was so tame it was impossible to imagine him running away. Kids’ stuff, said Campello some days later. But on that day I discovered that even the calmest creature can go crazy. It may run to make an escape without realizing it’s leaving a victim behind. That was what had happened. I couldn’t make sense of it any other way. That horse didn’t have a mean streak. And he was quite a sight. He tossed his head. He kicked at the floor. He pulled his head back as if someone was trying to kill him.

But the water and finding himself in a familiar place calmed him down.

Or perhaps it was not that. Perhaps horses have no memory. What happened a while ago is one thing and what is happening now is something else. When Campello let him go, the horse rolled in the dirt, as he always does, to dry himself and then ran off. A short dash and then a

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 68

halt. Again and again. Nothing out of the ordinary. That was his afternoon routine, when he was let loose. But that was not a regular afternoon. The kid who had ridden him was dead, lying in the woodland. Mute forever.

Like the horse, my brothers and his brother. Mute.

The reconstruction of that near, irreparable past which we didn’t see: the horse bolted, dashed even though Martín Latour was pulling back on the reins, then stopped suddenly to dodge something and Martín Latour was hurled over the horse’s neck, slammed the log, lost his life.

That was it. He had lost his life. But we still didn’t know why the horse had bolted. On one hand we had the body of the youngest of the Latours, and on the other hand we had the graveyard silence of his brother and my brothers.

First we heard the dogs. When Latour walked into the house, his wife looked at him. It was as if they had been alone. Latour shook his head, staring at the floor. His wife held her head in her hands. My father came in through the kitchen door. He laid the boy’s body at the couch on the hall by the entrance. He covered it with a jacket. It was no longer necessary, but they still called the doctor.

68

That afternoon, my mother had told me to let the boys go play alone.

I had to understand. Sometimes the boys wanted to play on their own. I took offense. At the countryside it didn’t matter that I was a girl, I one more kid. I also realized that they were right. So I said nothing, although I didn’t agree with them either. We had tea together. Then I saw them move, in haste, around the house, like boys do when they are about to go somewhere together. They were organizing themselves, as if they were a body. When they closed the mosquito net, it was a little less hot already.

Mrs. Latour went to the hall by the entrance and then we heard the scream. It was the first. And then you lost count. It felt like a single scream, which stopped when she had to breathe in to carry on. She screamed many times. She didn’t say anything. They were empty screams. My brothers stared at each other and the oldest of the Latour boys closed his eyes. The screams bounced against the walls and so did Mrs. Latour, or at least it felt as if she was doing that down at the hall. We heard thuds, the voices of my father and Mr. Latour calling her by her name. and those screams which were in another dimension, because at that moment Mrs. Latour was unreachable. She wandered around the hall –maybe it wasn’t that she flung herself against the walls, but that she didn’t see them–, gravitating around the lifeless body of her youngest son.

The doctor arrived and even though he knew the boy had died he ran into the house. There was nothing he could do for the boy, but he

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 69

cared for the mother. We saw them walking her to the jeep. Her husband was holding her by the waist. He set her on the front seat and walked inside again, looking for his eldest son. He was going to take care of the paperwork with my father, and the Latour boy had to return home with his mother.

He told him as if it were an order, but we also understood that if he went he ould be doing his father a favor, andbesides he was going to take care of his mother for the first time in his life. The boy was wearing a blue T-shirt. His face was soiled with dirt, with the dried tracks of his tears.

His father grabbed him by the shoulders to take him outside. My brother and the boy looked at each other. Had they meant to play a joke on Martín and therefore had scared his horse? Had the horse freaked out at something they did unintentionally? Maybe they had stepped on a dried branch and that had scared the animal. Or had they fought and hit the horse with their riding whip? Or could it be that Martín had galloped too hard to get away from them, because they were chasing him during play?

And what if the boy had run away like that because he had done something to them? On that day, the resemblance between my brothers and the Latour boys broke like a spell but something stronger than the spell bound them, even though they never played together again. I was fortunate to realize it was best not to ask my brothers any questions. I would have hit the silence of truth.

ESTHER CROSS (Buenos Aires, 1961) has published Bioy Casares a la hora de escribir and Conversaciones con Borges en el taller literario, books of interviews with Argentien writers written in collaboration with Félix della Paolera; the novels Crónica de alados y aprendices, La inundación, El banquete de la araña and Radiana, and the short story collections La divina proporción and Kavanagh.

She translated Richard Yates’ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness into Spanish. In 1998 she was awarded the Fulbright-Fondo Nacional de las Artes scholarship. In 2004 she was awarded the Civitella Ranieri scholarship. She also translated La misma sangre y otros cuentos and Ángeles y hombres, by William Goyen. She teaches writing workshops. She collaborates with several literary publications.

In February 2009, her novel La señorita Porcel wone the Primer Premio de Novela Siglo XXI in Mexico. The novel was published in Mexico and Argentina.

That same year, together with Ángela Pradelli, she edited and wrote the prologue for La Biblia según veinticinco escritores argentinos.

69

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 70

When we talked to the dead Mariana Enríquez

70

t that age there’s music playing in your head, all the time, as if you had a radio broadcasting at the back of your neck, right under your skull. That music starts turning down one day or it just stops. When that happens, you stop being a teenager. But that wasn’t the case, not even close, in the days when we talked to the dead. Then the music was playing at full blast and it sounded like Slayer, Reign in Blood.

A

We started with the Ouija board at Poland’s, locked in her bedroom.

We had to do it in secret because Mara, Poland’s sister, was scared of ghosts and spirits, bah, she was scared of everything, she was a stupid little bitch. And we had to do it in the daytime, because of said sister and because Poland had a large family, they all went to bed early, and none of them approved of the Ouija because they were super Catholic, the church-going rosary-praying kind. Poland was the only cool person in that family, and she had got hold of a great Ouija board that came in a special offer with some magazines on magic, witchcraft and inexplicable facts called The World of the Occult, which were sold at magazine stands and which you could bind into a collectible volume.

They had given away the Ouija board with the magazine several times, but they always sold out before any of us could gather enough money to buy it. Until Poland took it seriously, saved up, and there we were with our beautiful board, which had the letters and numbers in grey, a red background and these very satanic, mystical drawings all around the middle circle. It was always five of us: me, Julita, Pinocchia (we

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 71

called her that because she was as thick as a block of wood, the daftest kid in school, not because she had a big nose), Poland and Nadia. The five of us smoked, so the board seemed to be floating in smoke when we played, and we stunk up the room for Poland and her sister. To make things worse, it was winter when we started with the Ouija board, so we couldn’t open the window because we froze our asses off.

Locked in with all the smoke and with the Ouija cup all freaked out, that was how Dalila, Poland’s mother, found us, and she kicked us out. I could rescue the board –and have kept it since then– and Julita could save the cup from smashing, which would have been a catastrophe for poor Poland and her family, as the dead guy we were talking to then seemed very nasty, he had even told us he was not a dead-spirit but a fallen angel. Anyway, by then, we had already figured out that the spirits were big liars and cheats, and they couldn’t scare us any more with their cheap tricks, like guessing birthdays and our grandma’s middle names. We five took a blood oath –pricking our fingers with a needle– that nobody would move the cup, and I trusted it was so. I didn’t move it, I never moved it, and I really believe none of my friends did. The cup always had trouble starting up, in the beginning, but once it got up to speed it seemed like there was a magnet connecting it to our fingers, we didn’t even have to touch it, we never pushed it, not even lay a finger on it: it slid over the mystical drawings and letters so fast that sometimes we didn’t have time to write down the answers (one of us was always in charge of taking notes) in the special notebook we had.

When Poland’s mother, that crazy bitch, caught us (she accused us of being Satanists and whores, and talked to our parents: it was a colossal bummer) we had to give up the game for a while, because it was difficult to find another place to go on. My house, no way: my mom was sick back then and wanted nobody around the house, she barely put up with me and Grandma; she would have just murdered me if I had brought friends from school over. Julita’s was a no-go because the apartment where she lived with her grandfather and her little brother had just the one room, which they divided with a wardrobe so there were two bedrooms, so to speak, but it was just that room, no intimacy at all; then there was just the kitchen and the bathroom, and a little balcony full of aloe vera plants and crowns-of-thorns, it was a no-go any way you looked at it. Nadia’s was impossible too because it was in the shanty town: the rest of us did not live in posh neighborhoods, but our parents would never let us spend the night in the shanty town, that was too much for them. We could have just run off without telling them, but the truth is we were a bit scared of going there ourselves. Nadia didn’t lie to us, either: she told us the shanty town was very rough, and that she wanted to get out of there as soon as she could because she was

71

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 72

fed up of hearing the gunshots at night and the screams from jackedup guys, and of people being afraid to visit her.

So Pinocchia’s was the only place left. The only problem was that her house was very far away, we had to take two buses and talk our parents into letting us go there, to the back of beyond. But we did.

Pinocchia’s parents didn’t pay us any mind, so at her place there was no risk of getting kicked out with all the God talk. And Pinocchia had her own bedroom, because her brothers had already left home.

72

Finally, one summer night the four of us got permission and went to Pinocchia’s. It was really far, her street wasn’t even paved and there was a gutter next to the sidewalk. It took us two hours to get there. But when we did, we realized right away that going all the way there had been the best idea ever. Pinocchia’s bedroom was very big, there was a double bed and bunk beds: more than enough room for the five of us to sleep.

It was an ugly house because it was unfinished, with the plaster on but no paint, naked light bulbs dangling from ugly black wires, no lamps, the floor was bare cement, without tiles or wood or anything. But it was big, it had a terrace and a yard with a barbecue grill, and it was much better than any of our houses. Living that far was not good, but it was worth it for having a place like that, even if it was unfinished. Out there, away from the city, the night sky looked navy blue, there were fireflies and the air smelled different, a mixture of burnt grass and river.

Pinocchia’s house had grates all around, and it was guarded by a big black dog, I think it was a Rottweiler, you couldn’t play with it because it was fierce. Living far away seemed a bit dangerous, but Pinocchia never complained.

Perhaps because the place was different, because we felt different that night at Pinocchia’s, with her parents listening to Redonditos de Ricota and drinking beer while the dog barked at the shadows; perhaps that was the reason Julita came clean and dared tell us which dead spirits she wanted to talk to.

Julita wanted to talk to her mum and her dad. *** It was great that Julita finally talked about her parents, because we didn’t dare ask her. There was a lot of talk about it at the school, but nobody had ever said anything to her face, and we always stood up for her if anyone started blabbering stupid shit. The thing is that everyone knew Julita’s parents hadn’t died in an accident: Julita’s parents had disappeared. They were disappeared. We didn’t quite know how to say it right. Julita said they had been taken, because that’s how her

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 73

grandparents talked about it. They had been taken, and luckily they had left the kids in the bedroom (perhaps they hadn’t checked the bedroom: anyway, Julita and her brother didn’t remember a thing, about that night or their parents).

Julita wanted to find them with the board, or ask some other spirit if it had seen them. Besides wanting to talk to them, she wanted to know where the bodies were. Because that was driving her grandparents crazy, her grandmother cried every day for not having where to lay a flower. But Julita was really something, too: she said that if we found the bodies, if they tipped us and the info was good, we had to go to the TV or the newspapers, and then we would become more than famous, everybody would want us.

I for one thought that Julita’s cold blood was too much, but I said to myself that it was OK, that it was her thing. What we need to do, she told us, was start thinking of other disappeared people we knew about who could help us. We had read in a book about the Ouija board that it helped if you focused on a dead person you knew, remembered their smell, their clothes, their gestures, the color of their hair, then it was easier for the actual spirit to come. Because sometimes you got lots of dishonest spirits who lied and played games with your mind. It was hard to tell.

Poland said her aunt’s boyfriend was disappeared, they had taken him during the World Cup. That came as a surprise to us all, because Poland’s family was all squeaky-clean and square. She explained that they hardly ever talked about it, but that her aunt had told her one day she was half-drunk after a barbecue at her place, when the men were waxing nostalgic about Kempes and the World Cup, and she blew a fuse, had a glass of red wine and told Poland about her boyfriend and how scared she had been. Nadia contributed a friend of her dad’s, when she was a child he would come for lunch often on Sundays and one day he had come no more. She hadn’t really registered that friend’s absence, especially because he usually went to see football matches with her dad and they never took her along. Her brothers noticed more that he wasn’t coming, asked their dad, and the old man didn’t have it in him to lie to them, tell them they had quarreled or something. He told the boys that he had been taken, the same thing Julita’s grandparents said. Then, her brothers told Nadia. At that moment, neither the kids nor Nadia had any idea where he had been taken to, or whether taking someone was an everyday thing, whether it was good or bad. But now we all knew about those things, after the film Night of the Pencils (which made us cry and wail, we rented it like once a month) and Nunca Más –Pinocchia had brought it to school, because they let her read it at home– and what the magazines and TV said. I contributed my

73

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 74

back door neighbor, a neighbor who hadn’t lived there long, less than a year, who didn’t go out much but we could see him walking around the back (the house had a back lawn). I couldn’t remember him much, it was like a dream, it’s not like he lived in the back yard: but one night they came for him and my mother told everybody, she said that it had been close, that because of that son of a botch they almost took us as well. It could be because she kept talking about it that this neighbor stuck in my mind, and I was not at peace until another family moved into that house, and I realized he wasn’t ever coming back.

Pinocchia didn’t have anyone to contribute, but we came to the conclusion that the disappeared spirits we had were enough. That night we played until four in the morning, by that time we started yawning and our throats were raspy from so much smoking, and the coolest part was that Pinnochia’s parents didn’t even knock on the door to get us to go to sleep. It seems, although I’m not sure because all my attention was focused on the Ouija, that they were watching TV or listening to music until dawn came, too. *** 74

After that first night, we got permission to go to Pinnochia’s two more nights, on the same month. It was amazing, but all of our folks or guardians had phoned Pinnochia’s parents, and for some reason that talk had eased their minds. The problem was something else: it was hard to talk to the dead we wanted. They beat about the bush a lot, they had trouble making up their minds to answer our questions, and they always got to the same place: they told us where they had been kidnapped and that was it, they couldn’t tell us if they had been killed there, or if they had been taken to another place, nothing. They lingered for a little while more and then left. It was frustrating. I think we talked to my neighbor, but he left right after spelling ARANA’S CAMP. It was him, for sure: he told us his name, we looked him up in Nunca Más and he was right there on the list. We were scared shitless: he was the first real, certified spirit we talked to. But still nothing on Julita’s parents.

The fourth night at Pinnochia’s, that’s when what happened happened. We had got through to someone who knew the boyfriend of Poland’s aunt, they had gone to school together, he said. The spirit we were talking to was called Andrés, and he told us he had neither been taken nor disappeared: he himself had fled to Mexico, and had died there later, in a car accident, nothing to do with any of that. Well, this Andrés was super-cool, and we asked him why all the dead left right after we asked them where their bodies were. He told us some left because they didn’t know where they were, so they got nervous,

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 75

uncomfortable. But others didn’t answer because someone was troubling them. One of us. We wanted to know why, and he told us he didn’t know the reason, but that it was so, one of us shouldn’t be there.

Then, the spirit left.

We thought about it for a while, but decided not to make much of it.

In the beginning, in our first games with the Ouija board, we always asked the spirits that came whether someone troubled them. But then we stopped doing it because the spirits loved to fool around with that and they jerked us around, first they said Nadia, then they said no, everything’s cool with Nadia, Julita is the problem, and they had us taking our fingers on and off the cup all night, even leaving the room, because there was no limit to what those bastards demanded.

But Andres’ thing got us so upset that we decided to go over the conversation we had written down in our notebook as we opened a bottle of beer.

Then there was a knock on the door. We were a bit startled, because Pinnochia’s parents never interfered.

“Who is it?” said Pinnochia with a shaky voice. We were all shitting our pants a little, to be honest.

–It’s Leo, can I come in?

–Come on in, you jerk!

Pinnochia leaped to her feet and opened the door. Leo was her older brother, who lived downtown and visited his parents just on weekends because he worked every weekday. And he didn’t come in all weekends either, because sometimes he was too tired. We knew him because when we were younger, in first and second year, he would sometimes pick Pinnochia up at school, when her folks couldn’t come.

Then we started riding the bus on our own, when we were old enough.

That was a shame, because we stopped seeing Leo, who was gorgeous, with green eyes on dark hair and a killer face, something to die for. That night, at Pinnochia’s, he was as beautiful as ever. We all sighed a little and tried to hide the board, just so he wouldn’t think we were weird. But he didn’t care.

“Playing with the Ouija board? That’s fucked up, it really scares me, you kids are so brave,” he said. Then he looked at his sister: “Kid, can you help me get these things I brought mom and dad out of the truck?

Mom’s in bed already and dad’s back is acting up again...”

–You’re a real pain in the ass, it’s so late!

–Come on, this is the only time I could make it, what do you want

75

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 76

me to do about it, it got late. Give me a hand here, if I leave that stuff out in the truck it could get stolen.

Pinnochia agreed unwillingly, and asked us to wait. We sat on the floor around the board, whispering about how cute Leo was, who was like 23 then, much older than us. It was a while and Pinnochia didn’t come back, which was weird. Like half an hour later, Julita suggested we go and check out what was going on.

And then everything happened very fast, almost at once. The cup moved on its own. We had never seen anything like that. Alone, all alone, none of us had a finger on it, not even close. It moved and spelt really quickly “it’s done.” It’s done? What’s done? Then, there was a scream in the street, from the door: Pinnochia’s voice. We dashed off to see what was going on, and we saw her hugging her mother, crying, both sitting on the couch by the table where the phone was. We didn’t understand anything then, but later, when things settled down a little –just a little–, we more or less reconstructed what had happened.

76

Pinocchia had followed her brother around the corner from the house. She couldn’t understand why he had left his truck there, when there was room all around, but he didn’t reply. He had changed when they left the house, he had got more distant, didn’t talk to her. When they got to the corner, he told her to wait and, according to Pinnochia, disappeared. It was dark, so he may have walked away a few steps out of her sight, but according to her he had disappeared. She waited a while to see if he got back, but the truck wasn’t there either and she got scared. She returned to the house and found her folks awake in bed. She told them Leo had come, that he was acting very strange, that he had asked her for help getting some stuff off of his truck. Her folks gaped at her like she was crazy. “Leo was never here, girl, what are you talking about? He starts work early tomorrow.” Pinocchia started trembling with fear and saying “it was Leo, it was Leo,” and then her dad got mad and yelled at her asking if she was stoned or something.

Her mother, who was calmer, told her “Let’s do this: we can call Leo’s home. He must be sleeping there.” She was in doubt by then, because she could see Pinnochia was very confident and very upset. She called, and a quite a few rings later Leo picked up the phone, cursing because he was fast asleep. His mother said “I’ll explain later” or something, and started calming Pinnochia down, because she had a hell of a nervous breakdown.

They even had to call the ambulance, because Pinnochia kept shouting that “that thing” had touched her (its arm just around her shoulders, as in a hug that made her feel colder rather than warm), and that it had come because she was “the one troubling them.”

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 77

Julita whispered in my ear that “the thing is she doesn’t have anyone who disappeared.” I told her to shut up, poor Pinnochia. I was scared shitless too. If that wasn’t Leo, then who had it been? Because that person that had come for Pinnochia looked just like her brother, like an identical twin, she hadn’t doubted him even for a second. Who was it? I didn’t want to remember its eyes. I didn’t want to play with the Ouija board or return to Pinnochia’s ever again.

We never got back together. Pinnochia was a mess and their parents blamed us –poor folks, they had to blame someone–, saying that we had played a practical joke on her that had driven her half crazy. But we all knew it wasn’t so, that they had come for her because, like the dead guy Andrés had told us, she was troubling them. And that was the end of the days when we talked to the dead.

MARIANA ENRIQUEZ Was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. She has a degree in Journalism and Social Communication from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and works in Radar, the arts and culture supplement of Página/12 newspaper. She has published two novels, Bajar es lo peor (1995) and Cómo desaparecer completamente (2004), and a book of short stories, Los peligros de fumar en la cama (2009). Several of her short stories have been included in Argentine and Latin American fiction anthologies.

77

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 78

Other pictures of Mom Félix Bruzzone

78

esterday, on Saturday, I met Roberto, one of mom’s exboyfriends who was a member of the Communist Party and who could flee the country before she disappeared.

I had made contact through an uncle of mine who went to high school with him, so I called him last week and he invited me to his home, where he received me, visibly moved.

Y

The house, which was pretty comfortable, seemed very big, but I don’t know whether it actually was or it just seemed like it because of all the light that came in through a glass ceiling. We sat on the living room and at first Roberto talked about Mom and showed me two photos: in one of them they are both hugging by a canal; in the other, she is smoking in a balcony, looking down. When I asked him if he had copies he said he could have them made and promised he was going to look for more photos. Then he asked me to stay for lunch and I said yes. Roberto’s wife, Cecilia, said she had prepared a tomato and nut sauce, and before we had tried it she was already talking about its exquisite taste.

Over lunch Roberto talked about his exile. I guess he likes telling those stories. Cecilia hardly said a word and I only intervened to nod in agreement or to keep Roberto going with his story: he talked about Rome, about an Italian girlfriend and the son they had, who lives in Torino now and sends him postcards from unbelievable places every time he travels. About Mom, however, he said very little. It wasn’t clear

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 79

to him when they had been together for the last time or why they had stopped seeing each other.

Later, as he encouraged me with my search and promised to ask around with some acquaintances, he remembered that one morning, shortly after people stopped hearing from Mom, they had met by chance in a corner. He was waiting for the bus –it was winter, yet it was hot–, and when he suddenly saw her approach he meant to go greet her, but she made a gesture to stop him and then he stayed in place, almost still, and just returned the gesture. That was it. He doesn’t know if they were already after her then, but he does know that it wasn’t long before he left the country because things, for everyone, had got more complicated than they expected.

We said goodbye around four. Part of the sky, which had been clear, was covered with black clouds. The last thing Roberto said –he stared at the glass ceiling as if he was about to come up with something important– was that it would soon start to rain.

As Cecilia also had to go, I offered to give her a ride. She had a painting class and the place was on my way. On the road we made small talk. She had met Roberto at a carnival parade and they had been living together for two years. She had two children from her first husband, one who was my age and a younger one who still lived with her. None of the things she said actually mattered much to me, and I was feeling a bit restless. I wondered how old Cecilia might be, but I was more concerned with learning more details of the morning Roberto had seen Mom for the last time. Where had it been? How long before the disappearance? Would that be the last news I would get from her or would I ever find out anything else? Besides, I had a feeling that the meeting with Roberto had stirred more things up in him than in me.

Before talking about the coming storm, he had said he wanted to go for a walk, and I guess that he did want to, but I am also sure that walking, for him, was a kind of need, a warm urgency before going back home and setting something up for that evening.

The car advanced slowly, so we talked a lot but I don’t know very well what about because while Cecilia was talking I was thinking of Mom and the things I think about when I get sad: parks full of people, sun, umbrellas blocking the sun and I get there when there’s no more room or umbrellas and I have to stand alone at the sides.

Before turning a corner into the road where Cecilia’s class was, she remembered she had to buy something for her youngest son. She said he played rugby and he had asked her to buy studs for his boots: he had a big match on Sunday. And now the problem was that, after her class, she would not find any open stores. She didn’t want to let him

79

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 80

down, he didn’t deserve something like that. Then I told her I could buy them and she could pick them up at my place later. At first she refused, she said she was going to figure something out, that driving her to her class was enough, things like that, very kind, but once I insisted it didn’t take us long to arrange everything. I would be home until late, I was planning to write everything Roberto had told me in my Mom-stuff notebook and then get drunk. Every time I find out something new about Mom I buy two or three bottles of wine and drink them on my own in the patio.

But I didn’t do any of that. I just bought the studs, remembered the time when I bought them for my own rugby boots, and waited for Cecilia.

80

About six, the storm made evening come early. I should have turned on the lights but I preferred to leave everything in the dark. My two housemates had told me they weren’t sleeping at home and I liked to hear the drops hitting on the roof without any distractions. I wondered what Roberto was thinking, and whether he’d be asking himself anything about Mom or even about me. I guessed that if he had actually gone for his walk he would have had to seek shelter from the rain. I imagined that he sat at a table by the window of some café, that he ordered a drink, that the rain on the window brought memories of his years in Europe. Rome –I’ve always wanted to go to Rome–, a Roman girlfriend, a small room with a view of sun-faded buildings –I had seen pictures like that once, the hideous light on the walls–, his exiled friends and, little by little, the feeling of coming out of a nightmare at the moment when waking up only adds pain upon pain, terror upon boundless terror.

I also remembered my own nightmares. I should say, the one recurring nightmare that had repeated itself over the years. In it there was always someone, or something –something that may have been nothing but the feeling of being followed–, that stalked me from an invisible place. Familiar streets turned into narrow alleys where the hollow buildings were lit by an invisible light source. I ran amid that deformed glare –my steps made no sound– and never turned around to see if my chaser was near or far. And, strange as it seems, the most terrifying alternative was not nearness but distance. And then, right before being caught, and right before I could escape, I would wake up and lay still in bed for a few seconds before I got up to go to my grandmother’s room. Everything that happened between my bed and hers –my steps on the carpet, my finger on the light switch, my hand opening my bedroom’s door and opening the door to her room– made the same silence as my steps in the dream.

I don’t know how long I thought about my nightmares, but when

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 81

Cecilia rang the door I was still trying to remember the words my grandmother said every time she put me back to sleep; and maybe that was why, somehow, I thought it wasn’t Cecilia coming home but my grandmother, or Mom, or both coming together after having shopped for dinner.

The door rang twice more and only then did I feel around the table looking for the studs. When I found them I went to the door, I was planning to give them to Cecilia and say goodbye with some cordial phrase and the promise to talk to Roberto again about the photos. But after opening the door and seeing her outside, dripping wet, I thought it was best to ask her in.

As we came in I turned on several lights and she explained she had wanted to walk because my place was not far, but she hadn’t thought it would rain so much and in the last block, with all those one-story houses with no balconies, she had soaked through. I offered her a towel and asked if she wanted something warm to drink. She accepted.

All I could find in the bathroom was the towel I dry myself with after showers; it wasn’t wet, so I gave it to her. And as she started drying off I noticed the change: the person there with me was not Cecilia, or it was Cecilia many years ago. Everything, even being in a house where three young people lived, rejuvenated her: the shoes dotted with dirt from the street, the tights wrinkled over her knees, her perfume blended with the smell of water, her face a little reddened from walking fast; all of that plus her hair, puffed by the humidity and covered by a sort of crown of droplets that sparkled under the dining room lamp.

As I prepared the coffee, Cecilia asked me if she could phone Roberto to let her know she was running late, but the line had no dial tone because of the rain. I told her he may not have come back home and she, as I had done before, assumed he had sought shelter in a bar until the storm finished.

When the coffee was ready she drank it in small sips and I thought of one of the boys I rented the house with, who had travelled to Paris, worked on a café and brought every kind of coffee you can imagine from there. Now he is a fanatic, he collects jars of the most unusual varieties and kept them as if each of them contained some big secret.

So, watching Cecilia sitting at the table, in silence, the coffee steaming in the cup she brought to her lips, made me think that she too was keeping a secret, and that if I let her talk she might just tell it to me.

And she talked, but not about Mom or Roberto or any of the things I was expecting. For a moment I had got to think that she could reveal something shocking, something like Roberto being my father or that he had had something to do with my mom’s death. Every time a stranger

81

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 82

talks to me about Mom I expect that kind of stories. A while ago they told me one where two police officers, over a chance report, got to the house where Mom and other members of her group were hiding out.

Fear, nerves, sheer stupidity made someone inside machine-gun the officer who had rung the door; the other, who managed to dodge the bullets, called for backup and then an assault truck, a truck full of soldiers and a helicopter came. The task was simple: as a squad opened fire on the house, two or three soldiers got a little closer and tossed several grenades which, once detonated, created a cloud of dust and black smoke, a mountain of debris and, under the rubble, the unfortunate bodies of my mom and her friends.

Instead of giving me something like that, Cecilia said the coffee was delicious and wanted to know how it had been prepared. I said it was nothing special, that perhaps the special thing was the kind, and that when you come in, all wet after having a rough time under the rain, any coffee can be delicious.

82

She may have been feeling a bit uncomfortable, and changed the subject: she started talking about her son’s boots. I had never thought a woman could be interested in something like that. She knew so much about boots I was about to ask her whether she worked at a sports store. Then she said she was happy she could keep her promise of buying them, and talked about her separation, how much it had meant for her son, she talked about school problems and the boy’s not-sogood relationship with Roberto. I imagine she can go on about that for a long time. Actually, I don’t know how much she did, but I do know that at one point I preferred to get back to the subject of coffee, and when the rain eased down I went out with her to look for a taxi.

We walked to the avenue seeking shelter under the tops of the trees, but sometimes, with the wind, that was worse. In the dark streets the rain was an invisible, unreal attack there was no way to defend from. When we found cover under an awning I was about tell that to Cecilia, but I said instead that it would rain the rest of the night. She hoped it didn’t, and said she doesn’t like it when her son plays in a pitch full of puddles and mud.

We had a long wait under that awning. We talked about how unstable the weather was that time of year and how hard it was to find a vacant taxi on a rainy day. When one finally pulled over, we said goodbye and everything happened so fast I forgot to ask her to remind Roberto of the photos. The taxi driver did a U-turn across the avenue and I thought it’s easier to break traffic laws when it’s raining. Then the taxi sped away and I lost sight of it before it got to the park.

It must have been about nine and the rain was getting harder.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 83

Across the street, like half a block away, the lights of the Chinese supermarket made me assume the place was still open. At that time the owner is at the cash register, a rather fat Chinese man who eyed me distrustfully as I picked the two wines I now did feel like drinking.

Then, when I was about to pay, he said something incomprehensible, perhaps the price, and I saw the storm was getting worse outside so I figured drinking some wine would make the way home easier. I asked the Chinese guy if he had something I could use to open one of the bottles and he stuck his hand in a drawer full of bits of paper, bottle caps and corks. For a moment there I thought he hadn’t understood what I’d said, but then he produced a rag, wrapped it at the bottom of the bottle and, after pulling out the aluminum capsule, started hammering it against a column. It didn’t take long for the cork to stick out, and when it was halfway out he pulled the rest of it away with his fingers. I smiled. He smiled back, I offered him a drink and he drank.

Then he drank some more and smiled again. He said some more incomprehensible words and passed me the bottle. I took a swig; he looked at me as if seeking approval. I nodded, took several back-toback swigs and he clapped. Then he pointed at the street, I guess he meant to tell me to stay inside until the storm passed. Then he walked to the back of the supermarket and returned with a chair. I sat, he dropped the steel curtain and sat down too, and pretty soon we drank the rest of the bottle off. Then we drank the other and when we finished he, still smiling, brought four or five more. I guess I fell asleep at one moment, that I threw up, that I felt good and that I felt bad, very bad, that I cried, and I think that by the time I left –it was breaking dawn and all that was left of the storm was a light drizzle– the Chinese guy, sitting on the floor, leaning on one of the shelves, was still smiling.

FÉLIX BRUZZONE Was born in 1976 in Buenos Aires City. He studied Literature and is a primary school teacher. He published short stories in anthologies such as Uno a uno, Buenos Aires / Escala 1:1, En celo (Argentina); Hablar de mí (Spain); Asado verbal (Germany). Also in magazines such as Mu and La mujer de mi vida, and websites such as No retornable and El interpretador. In 2008 he published 76 (short stories), which will be published in Germany in 2010, and Los topos (novel), which will be published in France in 2010.

He is also a co-editor of the indie publishing house Editorial Tamarisco (www.hojasdetamarisco.blogspot.com)

83

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 84

Song of grandparents Vicente Battista

84

e lived with our grandparents, in the old house they had inaugurated. It was narrow and long, with a solid iron door in the entrance and a garden with a fig tree, camellias and a lemon tree at the back. There were two patios, two bathrooms and a large kitchen which looked onto the second patio and the garden; there were seven bedrooms, one next to the other. Our grandparents’ bedroom was the one that impressed us the most, perhaps because of its vast brass bed, chastely covered by an embroidered blanket; perhaps because my mother, my aunts and my uncles had been conceived on that bed.

There were no records of that: the mattress sagged in two places, one on grandpa’s side, the other on grandma’s. There was a 30-centimeter wide frontier between them. If they had ever cuddled to sleep, there was no memory of that in the old mattress. Nor in the house: my grandparents were not prodigal either in kind words or in caresses. We were used to that. They had taught us that a couple was a respectful union, consolidated by good cooking, good washing and good ironing.

The rest belonged to the realm of fantasy and, as in the movies from those days, inevitably faded to black.

W

The Sunday of the scandal started just like all the others. They woke us up when breakfast was ready, checked that we had brushed our teeth, and by quarter to nine we were in the first patio, all dressed up spick and span, ready to be on time for nine o’clock mass. We returned after ten, like every Sunday. There was plenty of time for Mom to swap

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 85

her dress for a dressing gown, for Dad to hang his suit until the next mass and for us to change into our everyday clothes. At half past eleven we were ready to receive the rest of the family. They started arriving at ten past twelve, at the usual time and in the usual order.

There was a prologue of kisses, gossip and laughter and then the women laid the table for the appetizer: they cut slices of salami and cheese, set plates with green and black olives, lined up siphons and bottles of Amaro Pagliotti, Fernet and Cinzano. Each man prepared it to his own taste, identical to the previous Sundays and we, once again, approached coyly for the privilege of a glass of soda water with a slice of lemon, which we drank slowly imagining the taste of the Amaro Pagliotti and the Cinzano (we knew Fernet was bitter) along with the real taste of the salami, the cheese and the olives. Grandma said the food would be ready soon and each of us sat at their designated spot: grandpa at the head of the table and grandma at the opposite end. The grownups on grandpa’s side, distributed by age and marriage, and finally us, at grandma’s left and right. We asked the Lord to bless our food, thanked Him for this new communion and started eating. There was criticism because some of us chewed with their mouths open and praise for that special flavor in the sauce my mother prepared, the story hadn’t changed one bit. I thought later we would play in the patios. I thought tea time would come, and then goodbyes until the following Sunday. But no: halfway through the meal my grandfather’s voice rang vividly, addressing Grandma. He said: “Do you remember Raquel?”

And that was the beginning of the scandal.

Grandma asked what Raquel and grandpa said your friend, in Mar del Plata, that summer, when they had just inaugurated the cement promenade. You must surely remember her. Grandma said no, she didn’t remember, and grandpa was surprised that she had forgotten about Raquel, they had been so close that summer. You must surely remember. Grandma repeated that she did not and grandpa insisted.

Their words flew from one end of the table to the other and nobody thought of stopping them: they still carried no danger.

But grandma said no for the third time and grandpa said: “Her lips dropped as the honeycomb: honey and milk were under her tongue.”

Then grandma said yes, why didn’t you say that before, of course I remember Raquel. She made a knowing, praising wink. Grandpa beamed at her gesture and a pipe materialized in his hands. He started loading it, gently, shredding the tobacco leaves. He had been forbidden to smoke long before we were born and until that Sunday his pipes had

85

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 86

been the joyful memory of a young grandpa. Each of them had a story, but they were all doomed to decorate a rigid pipe holder: hung forever.

Grandpa had chosen the black one, the one he loved best, and was bringing it back to life. He put it between his lips, struck a match and let the smoke rise slowly. After the smoke came his words. He said: “Her two breasts were like two young roes that are twins, her fruit was sweet to my taste.”

There was fright on the faces of the grownups. I felt like laughing, but my mother’s stern stare prevented me. I lowered my head, just like when Father Samperio reprimanded me. My grandmother’s words made me raise my gaze.

“Do you remember Rubén?,” she said, and that innocent question suddenly took an apocalyptic edge.

Grandfather said no, he did not remember. Grandma was surprised and insisted that he must surely remember; from the times of the Civic Union, she said, more of an adventurer than an activist. How could he forget the long arguments until late into the night?

Grandpa said no for a third time. Grandma said: 86

“He was white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand.”

“Of course I do!,” said grandpa as he raised his glass of wine.

Then grandma, who always told us of the dangers of alcohol, the unwavering devote of Villavicencio mineral water, flat, grandma of horchata and Pomona cola, filled her glass with wine, brought it to her nose, tasted it, approved it with a knowing wink and downed it in one gulp.

“His mouth was most sweet,” she said, “like the best wine.”

We stared at our grandparents, but were prohibited from altering their gestures or words. It was a crazy dream. Only in a dream could my grandfather talk of his loves. Talk of Noemí, of Noemí’s lips which dropped like honeycombs; or talk of Ana, the smell of her ointments, much better than all spices; or talk of Esther, her stature like to a palm tree and her breasts to clusters of grapes. Only in a dream could grandma talk of her loves. Talk of Saúl, his locks bushy and black as a raven; or talk of Daniel, his legs as pillars of marble; or talk of Benjamín, terrible as an army with banners. Only in a wondrous dream could they talk of Ruth, of Ezequiel, of Sara and Ismael; talk of Elizabeth and of David, because there had been threescore queens, and fourscore concubines, and virgins without number. But it was not a dream: they traded lovers and loves like two playful kids swapping collectible cards and pranks. They looked happy.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 87

“Rise up, my love,” said grandpa, “the time of the singing of birds is come.”

They stood up and walked with slow, harmonious steps. Like a young hart, I would read years later. They met in the middle of the patio.

“The mandrakes give a smell,” said grandma as she squeezed grandpa’s hands. “Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.”

She leant upon his shoulder and let him take her by the waist. They walked to their bedroom. In that instant it was as if we had woken up: we recovered speech.

“What beautiful things do grandpa and grandma say!,” marveled the youngest of the cousins.

“Shut your mouth!,” admonished the oldest of the uncles.

And one by one, without breaking in on each other, the grownups composed the phrase that would justify the outrage. They talked of senile madness, they advised us not to pay any attention, they diagnosed arteriosclerosis, blamed it on age or wine. Just as our grandparents had traded loves a while ago, they now traded phrases; but, unlike our grandparents, they did not seem happy. We let our parents, our uncles and aunts keep the words, and walked towards the chamber where they had been conceived.

Our grandparents were lying on the old brass bed. They looked intoxicated, fair as the moon, clear as the sun. She was disheveled, her head filled with dew. He was smiling, his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh. They had hugged tightly, sweet and tender both. We divined the perfume of spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon.

We knew they had recovered their pleasure, and we knew that was the end of the party.

VICENTE BATTISTA Was born in Buenos Aires in 1940. He was part of the editorial staff of literary magazine El escarabajo de oro and he founded and directed –together with Mario Goloboff– the fiction and critical thinking magazine Nuevos Aires.

Between 1973 and 1984 he lived in Barcelona and the Canary Islands. He published 6 short story collections and 5 novels. He was awarded the Premio Municipal de Literatura for El final de la calle (1990) and Argentina’s Planeta award for Sucesos Argentinos (1995), published under the title Le tango de

87

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 88

l’homme de paille in the Série Noire collection of Éditions Gallimard (Paris, 2000). His novel Siroco was released by Éditions Le Mascaret (Lyon, 1993).

His detective stories collection La huella del crimen (2007) was purchased by national public library office CONABIP for distribution in public libraries, and Cologne’s Edition Köln is translating it into German with the title Sie Werden Kommenn, Kriminalerzählungen aud Argentinien (They Shall Come: Argentine noir stories). He has taught fiction writing workshops at Buenos Aires’ National Library.

88

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 89

Another baby Soledad Barruti

T

he storm is over and the midday light breaks up through the shutters in golden threads of shining dust. It is summer and it is hot, but Julia woke up startled as if she had opened her eyes in the middle of an icy night. She clenched her teeth, held on to the sheets and turned her face left and right again and again without pausing her gaze, without laying it on anything.

Like a lost animal, she searched without searching until a warm breeze wrapped around her cheeks making her breathe in her own fear. She stopped. She breathed. She surreptitiously turned her eyes that way: towards the cradle. The basket, made of wicker, cotton and white lace, seemed to float on her side.

Empty. The cradle was empty, she said to herself. The baby was gone. He’s not there, he disappeared, she said to herself. But how, how did it happen.

He’s gone, Julia heard someone say in her own voice from inside her. And, without thinking, she stood up. Without thinking, for had she thought about it she would have anticipated the pain in her body.

Lacerating pain, as if her body had been stabbed through by hundreds of blades. But she didn’t lie down again. She stood still, very still, trapped between her bed and the wall. One hand on her womb, the other supporting her weight so she didn’t fall.

How could they leave me alone, she asks herself in baited breath, her heart scared, her fingers tight within her fists which are too brief to hold

89

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 90

back the intensity of her impetuous anguish. Her body quivering, exhausted, defeated. They should have stayed, she moans in whispering as if she was trying to console herself, even though she knows it is too late.

I shouldn’t have come back, she says to herself.

You cannot stay in the clinic for more than two days, you have to return home, her mother had said, and also added you’re pale when she finished setting her up in the room she had prepared for her and the baby. Are you alright? You look pale. Her mother repeated the word “pale” and turned around to clothe the baby lying in the cradle and Julia rubbed her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, and drawing strength from her innermost strength she said, see? I’m not pale anymore and I want to be alone. Julia, you don’t even know how to breastfeed, she told her.

90

Finally, it was her father that pulled her mother away by the arm. We talked about this, Susana, she’s eighteen, she’s not a child, he explained in that deeper, fuller voice he used when he held on to his patience by chewing the words. Let’s go, she wants to be alone with her baby, he added winking an eye at her. But Julia hadn’t asked for that. Julia wanted to be alone. She had said it so clearly she doesn’t understand why her father rushed his steps and left the room talking, as he always did, in that tone which covered all other voices.

Her father seemed to go mute only when he got the news of her pregnancy. He didn’t even ask whose baby it was. He just said: I imagined as much. Not angry, but as if he had actually been expecting it; you could even sense a faint glimmer of excitement in his look. That afternoon, instead, it was her mother who did all the talking. Because she must surely have wanted to think of the sadness, the shame, the fear that her pregnant, lonely daughter could be feeling, but she could not hide her joy.

We have wanted to have another baby for so long, she told her.

It was true that she didn’t know how, she says and realizes that her mother must be about to come in to help her breastfeed. Because her breasts are huge, stiff; merciless, they don’t stop that burning drip which has soaked through her bra, her T-shirt; they spill milk on the floor and hurt; they hurt even though she pushes but with the tip of a finger to get the liquid to drop. It’s like someone’s put stones inside of her. They hurt more than the belly wrap that keeps the C-section wound from opening.

Please don’t let her come, prays Julia then thinking of her mother.

Because if she came in, what would she tell her? It’s gone? The baby’s gone and I have nothing to do with that? She wouldn’t believe her. And her father, even less. Ever since she got pregnant, all he did was agree with everything she said the way you always concede to a madman.

Julia is at the corner where the light from the window hits but she is

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 91

staring at the wall, covering her ears with the palms of her open hands.

The silence outside of herself, all around her, is frightening. As if someone had fired a single shot at the sky.

She would like to undo everything and start over without turning back the clock. It’s not magic she’s wishing for: it’s the power that, she is sure of that, despair ought to have when there is no peace anywhere.

But it doesn’t happen, and Julia still smells the fresh paint, white paint, pristine, like all the furniture her parents bought. White because we don’t know what sex the baby’s gonna be, they said the afternoon they picked them. It closes its little legs and reveals nothing, the ultrasound technician had said with a smile, and her mother, moved, held her father’s hand tight as Julia bit her nails. All white, then. The clothes too.

Drawers full of white cloth made of pure cotton forming tiny robes, rompers, bibs, socks and handkerchiefs.

Her white room blinds her. Her small, white room with her bed, her chest of drawers and her mirror at one side; her world: so narrow and yet fierce like an open mouth shouting straight into her ear inflicting the worst possible pain: piercing, abrasive, brutal, the pain of her own confinement.

Julia discovers her confinement and feels overwhelmed and would like to run away and then she tugs at the ends of her black hair which drops, thin, over her frail shoulders like chicken wings. Her eyelids tremble shut because if she opened them she could burst into tears through her green gaze, her throat, her mouth that swells in gushes. Until all of a sudden, in an impulse against herself, she says: I can’t take it anymore. And she turns around, and the white wooden paneling shouts at her, the cotton padding shouts at her, the wicker shouts at her; the empty cradle stuns her reminding her that she had a baby that is gone, that disappeared.

Julia birthed in her blue gown lying down, under anesthesia from the neck to the tip of her toes; her dead body: she shouldn’t have felt a thing. But the pain was there, like a premonition, and the delivery room had the fury of a hammer or of thunder bursting on her temples. Until she heard the first cry. Compact, as if from under water, it generated an echo that bounced around her. And the midwife cried: it’s over.

Everything went well. Then, perhaps there was the briefest exchange of glances between her and the baby. But that she can only suspect.

What she does remember is that they took it from her straight away to receive the warmth of the incubator, and that for the next two days she heard almost no mention of it.

They returned home a few hours ago. It was morning but the leaden sky bore an intuition of the night. It was raining. Her parents helped her lie down in bed and immediately brought the baby, who filled the rest of the room with its smell; a smell that was sweet and vaporous, like milk.

91

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 92

What else, she asks herself all tangled up inside yet determined to understand, to know what happened. Just a few hours ago her parents were passing each other the baby exultantly.

What happened, Julia asks herself confronted by the howling room.

I want to be alone, she had said unexpectedly. Alone. And her parents agreed to leave. But that other breathing persisted by her side, that other heartbeat which also beat in her own heart, inside her head. The baby’s body made the wicker creak, and it didn’t get to sleep, it didn’t get to sleep. It looked all around as if trying to discover everything that surrounded it at that precise moment. It had deep black eyes, stalking and shiny, like the eyes of a cat at night. It shook its feet and hands, gesturing. Everything about it was incomprehensible. It glanced sideways at Julia trying to stare her into sleep. Until the baby shaped something in its pink lips, something that looked like kisses but immediately turned into words, It’s over, said the baby moving its lips. It’s over. You’ll be here forever.

There is no way out, said the baby again and again nonstop, as if casting a curse on her. Then, Julia tried to get up but couldn’t: the stitches from her wound sent her back to bed time after time. Sewn to the mattress. It’s over, insisted the baby.

92

With nothing else to do, she did as she had been taught: put her hand on the baby’s belly and moved it sideways to rock it to sleep and sang a song with shut and tense lips. A song that also sounded like a moan.

It is the same song she is singing now, because music and smells bring memories. But instead of thinking about the baby, she accidentally thinks of Lucas. Like every other time she remembers him: he never called her again after he found out she was pregnant; like she had ceased to exist. And she feels she’s crying, her eyes begin to cry, her fat tears fall on her toes and she could melt into those tears right now. Crying solves nothing, she says to herself. A whole year of love, Julia remembers, and fans her eyes bringing back the memory of the year when Lucas was her boyfriend even though nobody else knew.

So, now it’s all a matter of time, she says to herself, and deep inside her hope starts to blow up again like a balloon that overflows her heart and fills her body with bubbles. She feels her soul returning to her body, and in those seconds of stillness she breathes and thanks for the secret hope that fills her, that floods within her to the point of making her cry, not out of sadness but tears of joy.

Thus, embracing her own faith like a treasure, with her soft weeping and her placid smile, she lets her feet guide her into that empty space: a circle of light where the floor is warm and she can surrender, let herself fall.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 93

Julia doesn’t see the opening door, she barely hears their voices.

Both their voices, but especially her mother’s calling her. And as she tries to stand she puts her hand on the floor soaked by her own milk that continued flowing. But she fails and both rush to the spot where she lies. What happened? What are you doing lying there?, they ask, trying to get her to rise, each of them pulling at one of her arms. You’re burning with fever, Julia, shouts her father. But Julia cannot talk, or defend herself. The baby, that is all she manages to say, the baby’s gone. What are you talking about? I can see him from here, replies her father. It’s sleeping like an angel, he says pointing at the cradle, and lets go of her to walk there. No, don’t come any closer, she would like to implore, but it’s too late. She feels her father’s roar, the fury, the impotence. What have you done?, he asks without looking at her, raising the baby. Her mother also comes to his side, to the cradle.

It’s true, it seems as if it was there, she says to herself. But it isn’t.

Her father doesn’t realize he’s hugging and holding another baby. One with an open mouth, its eyes wet and reddened, huge; liquid mucus running down its lips, down its still, dark body. What have you done, cries her father, then her mother. Both at once: What have you done, they shout at her and run off with the other baby wrapped in the sheets.

And Julia’s left alone.

Lying face up she thanks for the silence, breathes in the empty air that comes from the broken space and keeps remembering. She remembers her hand on the soft belly of the baby that couldn’t get to sleep. It’s over, she says. It’s over. You have nowhere to run now. That was why her hand got more and more tense until it rose rigid as a claw from the soft, round belly of her baby up to its face. Julia put the palm of her hand on it with all the softness she could muster and tried to close its eyes. But she couldn’t because the baby started crying. Then she covered its mouth firmly and continued singing her lullaby. Until it got still. Until it fell asleep and said no more.

That was the moment it sneaked away. Unseen, among the threads of light, like the shining dust that comes in through the shutters.

Only then did she stop singing.

SOLEDAD BARRUTI Was born in Buenos Aires in 1981. She is a journalist, and a regular contributor for the Radar cultural supplement of Página/12 newspaper, as well as other printed media. She attended the fiction workshops of Sandra Russo and Guillermo Saccomano. She has finished writing her first novel, El sabor de Dios.

93

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 94

Hundreds of emails Ariel Bermani

94

T

he first image that comes to mind when I think of her is, why deny it, her ass. It was also the first thing I saw when I walked into the classroom, accompanied by the woman who was going to introduce me. Her back, Valeria’s, was turned to me, she was surely looking for something she had dropped, her ass perked up, shuffling her hands around the floor. She stood up straight away and looked me in the eye –she had green eyes– and I knew, I must be honest, that I would do absolutely anything to have that ass at my disposal. Round, perky, meaty. Hard. That’s how I imagined it. The jeans compressed it. You could see clearly that her panty lines had dug into her flesh. I tried really hard to think of something else.

The woman who took me there left me in charge of the course. I had been watching them while she talked. There were about twenty of them, mostly women, old –fifty plus–, only about three of them, I think, were young. Two boys who sounded like they were just coming out of high school and Valeria. I learned her name right away. I had them introduce themselves and I erased everything they said from my memory until she spoke. “I’m Valeria,” she said. “I have a Literature degree, from Lomas, I come to this workshop because I want to discover new writers.” When I heard her I had to cross my legs –squeeze my legs real tight– to hide a massive erection. I said nothing for a few seconds. I didn’t know how to start, or where. They had been

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 95

reading García Lorca and I had brought them, as an icebreaker –as they usually say– poems by Gambarotta. I read them two. They gaped at me, mouths open. Even her, Valeria, who, it was clear, was there out of boredom, because she couldn’t face coming home early. She didn’t beling in that course, starting with her looks.

Gambarotta disconcerted them. They couldn’t wrap their heads around poetry with those colours, those shades, that language. When I read them the poem for Kojak –“there isn’t, there won’t be, there never will be a better series than Kojak”– they gave me an almost pitiful look.

But I could see that a tiny, 25-watt light had just lit. Valeria smiled. She heard the poem and smiled. She ran her hands through her hair. I looked at her, grateful.

That was the last class before the two-week winter break. We passed around email addresses. I told them to find Samanta Schweblin’s book of short stories.

A few days later I got the first of her emails. I say the first email because they were, all in all, over the course of three or four months, about five hundred. Four months, between August and November. In her email she wrote: “Good morning, Ariel. I’m writing to ask you about Schweblin’s book. Where can I find it? Regards, Valeria (the girl who had lost her pen when you arrived)”. That brief text had a devastating effect on me. I read it over and over for several minutes, I couldn’t stop reading it. I tried to find a hidden message, to know what she was telling me, what she was insinuating. I tried to decode word by word, even letter by letter. That “Good morning,” what did it mean? When she referred to the pen, was she letting on that she realized I had stared at her ass the second I walked into the classroom? I spent almost forty minutes writing my answer. Now that I stop to think about it I realize I got carried away by passion. I suggested possible places to find the book, downtown bookstores, and I told her that, as she was going downtown, she could visit me at the library I was working on back then.

I gave her the address and my working hours. She replied on the same day. It was a short email. She said that she had no time to visit anybody and that she never went downtown. That was it. But her greeting filled me with hope. She didn’t write “Regards, Valeria”: she wrote “Kisses, Valeria”. That was a change. And that small gesture, sending me kisses, kept me happy for several hours. But then I realized I had to write something back. Something that granted me a few inches forward. I offered to lend her my copy of Schweblin’s book. Meet her in Adrogué and give her the copy, so she didn’t have to travel downtown. And I closed my email in a very risky way, like this: “lots of kisses, Ariel.” We had gone from Regards to greetings to “lots of kisses.” But she didn’t reply, at least for four days. Her reply came when I had lost all hope.

95

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 96

She wrote: “thanks for offering the book, you’re a dear, but my husband went downtown and bought it for me. See you after the break. Kisses, Vale.” Everything had changed now. She had a husband. First point lost.

But she sent me “kisses” and wrote that I was a dear. Two points for me. The fact that she was married did not complicate things, after all I was married too, or practically married, I was living with a woman.

The same day she told me she already had the book she sent me two more emails. In one of them she commented on the book and also told me she had liked a lot what I had read by Gambarotta. In the other she told me that her eldest daughter had a fever and that this had her worried and that she had missed school –“I teach at several schools”, she wrote– so she couldn’t make much progress with her reading.

We met the following Tuesday. It wasn’t just her I met, actually, everybody was there, but I had problems registering them. I talked a lot, almost without pausing to breathe and without giving anyone room for comments. She stared at me and that kept me going. I tried to be funny, yet serious at the same time, poignant, warm. There was a lot at stake. I had two hours to impress her.

96

At the end of the class she was the first to leave, but she emailed me that same night. A long email. She told me about her life at the schools, how hard it was to get kids to read. She wrote, too, that she had loved the class. And she repeated that thing about me being a dear. The communication channel was open. During that week we sent each other four or five emails a day. Each email closed with the phrase “lots of kisses,” “thousands of kisses” or –her find– “industrial amounts of kisses.” We went from complaining about how little people read to how hard it is to live with someone, to how hard it is to raise children and –that was me– to how nice it would be, some time, to have a beer together. A really cold beer. With peanuts and chips. In a bar far away from the centre of Adrogué. She suggested the bar herself.

In Lomas, one Saturday afternoon, that was when we met. At the station. And we walked quickly to the bar, ordered the first beer and I sat really close to her, out chairs right up against each other. As we drank I started touching her face, let my fingers drift around her face and saw how her eyes closed. I leaned closer, I wanted to kiss her but she didn’t let me. “Please,” she said. “What?” I asked. “Please,” she said once again.

Over the following days the emails multiplied, got out of control. We wrote each other all the time. I wrote to her from work, from home, from Internet cafés –sometimes I would leave one and walk right into another, eager to see if she had replied in the five minutes that had elapsed. All of my emails were aimed at a single objective: seeing each

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 97

other again, alone. She replied that she dreamed about me, about my body, that she had trouble concentrating when I was talking, in the workshop, because she pictured me naked. I confessed to her the first thing that I had noticed when I walked into the classroom the first time.

She put lots of exclamation marks when she replied that email. “Get out of here!!!!!!,” that’s how she wrote it. But despite all the kisses we kept sending each other the real kisses never came. We continued meeting on Tuesdays and, during the lesson, she acted like the perfect student, cold, smart, without making a single gesture that gave away that we were close. Once the class finished she disappeared without my noticing. I remember that once I tried not to lose her from my sight, I saw her leave, dashed after her, tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around to look at me with panic in her face. “Don’t let them see us, please,” she said and I let her go. That episode was commented on at length on subsequent emails.

After almost two months of confessions and promises that never materialized, she stopped coming to the workshop. She missed three classes in a row. And she didn’t reply any of the tens of emails I sent her in those days. I had already given up on her, but one Tuesday she came back, in tight jeans –I think they were the same jeans from the first day–, a T-shirt with a stimulating neckline, her hair loose. She locked her eyes on me the whole time, and didn’t run away once the class finished. She lingered in the classroom making time, waiting for the others to leave. I also made time as I watched her without any attempts at concealing it. We left together and she offered me a ride in her car to Burzaco station. I could take the train there and it was close to her house. We drove in silence down Espora avenue until I mustered courage and started touching her legs. She pulled out of the avenue, turned into a dark street and parked. I tried to kiss her and, for the first time, she replied “please.” “I don’t want to,” she said later. “Not here, I’m embarrassed.” “Where, then?” I asked. “Somewhere else.” She took me to the station and kissed me farewell at the corner of my lips. “We’ll email,” she said, and I got out of the car.

We emailed. A lot. More than before. I think we reached twenty-five emails per day. We planned the encounter. On a Saturday, downtown.

In a place chosen by me. We were going to meet in Constitución, at half past two in the afternoon. When that Saturday came, her youngest daughter got sick. The following Saturday she got pimples on her face and didn’t want to see me like that. “With these awful pimples I look like a corn cob,” she wrote. Another Saturday, her husband was down with something. A week later, on the very morning of the day we were finally supposed to meet, she got her period.

On the last Tuesday in November, we saw each other for the last

97

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 98

time. When the class finished we all went for a pizza but she said she couldn’t stay, she had to get back home early. She sent me a bunch of emails, on Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday, but I didn’t reply any of them. I had a folder in my email box where I saved every email I sent her and every email I got from her. The folder was called “Vale” and it was divided like this: “Vale sent”, “Vale received”. I erased everything, it was easy. I ticked the emails, one by one, and hit the “delete” key.

I got two more emails from her, weeks later. But I didn’t reply those either. I didn’t even read them. One had the subject line “I want to see you Saturday,” the other, “I can’t make it on Saturday.”

ARIEL BERMANI

98

Writes fiction and poetry. He was born in Buenos Aires, in 1967. He teaches reading and writing courses and workshops. He has published short stories, articles and poems in several magazines and his work has been included in the short story anthologies Buenos Aires no duerme, in 1997, La selección argentina, in 2000, and Antología de narrativa argentina siglo XXI, in 2006. He has published the novels Leer y escribir (second mention at Premio Clarín de Novela 2003), Buenos Aires, Interzona, 2006; Veneno (Premio Emecé) 2006 and El amor es la más barata de las religiones,” 2009.

His novel Furgón, his poetry collection Poesía casi completa (1989-2009) and his nonfiction book Inochi wa takara. Quinteros japoneses en Florencio Varela will be published in 2010.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 99

Two pesos store Pablo Toledo

T

he day that, after 25 years, I was fired from the company, Susy said it was a sign of destiny. “You have to think like the Chinese, who write ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ the same way: this is the perfect time to go independent, look at how Marita and Néstor are doing.” At dinner we told the kids we were going to begin something new, and that for a few months we would have to cut back on expenses. By the time we went to bed we had already chosen the location, and Susy was thinking of how to decorate the shop. We went to Colonia for a few days to rest a bit and try our luck at the casino, and when we were back we got to work.

With the severance money we made a down payment on an SUV and started filling the trunk with boxes of merchandise that we then stored at the garage. At first we kept inventory in a notebook, but then I asked a friend to get me a PDA from Miami, like the ones the company’s sales staff had.

Susy had it all figured out: there were similar shops in every corner, but they were junk depots with half-opened cardboard boxes, badly lit and dreadfully decorated, without a proper sales crew. “We need to have a classy place, with more distinguished products, attentive staff, somewhere that makes you want to walk in and stay in.” She and two friends from the club plus the architect, who was also a member of the club, went out every afternoon to “study the competition,” and they used to return with shopping bags full of “ideas.”

99

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 100

In the meantime, I crunched numbers at home on the portable computer I had bought from the same friend who had brought me the PDA. At the tennis club or after a night out at the movies I would boast about our projected earnings, and our friends told us they envied our courage, that if it wasn’t for their children, mortgages and car payments they would be doing the same.

Once we rented the premises and the architect started decorating it with Lucy, I devoted myself to selecting the personnel. We were looking for college students, with good looks and willing to learn. I adapted some tests from a human resources manual, did a series of interviews and, once I had crafted the team, we conducted some training sessions to teach them the philosophy of the store, how to treat customers and some sales tips.

We ended by the time the renovations were supposed to be ready, but two days before the inauguration Susy quarreled with the architect and we had to take an extra week to redistribute the sections. For the opening party we hired a magician who pulled plastic flowers out of his hat and acrobats who juggled with the products. Our friends were clapping like mad.

100

We started off on the right foot: me at the cash register, Susy’s welcoming smile beaming at the gates and the sales staff following our teachings to the letter. The people who walked around the aisles seemed happy and everybody bought something. Each night we would rotate products and change the signs on the walls. Customers bought the battery radios and wristwatches, which we sold at cost, by the dozen, and always took home some of the cheaper products that left us a wider profit margin as well.

Despite this, the figures for the first week were not even close to my spreadsheet’s projections. At the sales meeting we did some motivation exercises and set performance rewards. A friend of Susy’s, who coordinates a team of cosmetics sales, dropped by to give us a hand.

The following week was even worse: it was time to pay the first commissions and everybody was unhappy with how much they had made. They knew what the deal was from the beginning and they had agreed to it, but, as always, when push comes to shove no one remembers that everything had been clearly laid out from the get go, and that commissions depended on nobody but them. There was no money to distribute because they hadn’t sold enough, but having them accept that was too much to ask. We set a weekly minimum wage anyway, because if there was one thing I had learned at the company it was that in those arguments there is always a smart-ass who starts talking unions, and that would really screw us over.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 101

I adjusted the earnings forecast, Susy kept a closer lookout for shoplifters, we substituted more experienced people for some of the sales staff and renewed the inventory. We didn’t yet match my salary at the company but we still had part of the severance package until things took off. Susy couldn’t get used to the cutbacks: each change started a fight where she called me a cheap shopkeeper with no vision and I told her that with her dreams we wouldn’t make it to the end of the month.

Three months after we opened the store, our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary came, and we treated ourselves to a week in Miami. In the low season it cost almost the same we would have spent in Punta del Este, and we splurged: discmans for the kids, a stereo for our bedroom, clothes for everybody, shoes and accessories for Susy and an Armani jacket on sale for me. The malls were Susy's dream come true, sophisticated people ready to spend their money on affordable products. She wandered around the stores in ecstasy, but to me each step was a blow on the nails of our coffin. I smiled, shopped, burnt dollars on a trip that finally convinced me that there was no way we could recreate any of that in Buenos Aires.

We came back home only to face the same problems, month after month. The new grill in the back yard was put off until things got better, and so was waterproofing the roof. Then we stopped the insurance payments, fell behind on our club dues and the fees for the kids' school, told the maid to come only on Thursdays. We went out with our friends, because a life without small pleasures is not worth living, but luckily they also started suggesting cheaper restaurants, less nights at the movie theater, meeting at somebody's home to watch something on video and then a cup of coffee.

We reduced the staff until it was just Susy at the door, me at the cash register and a new girl working the aisles, hired strictly off the books on a fixed salary. After the first bounced check, our suppliers started demanding cash. We fired the sales girl, who got herself a lawyer and threatened to sue: we paid for the settlement out of our savings. Since the day her credit card got declined at a store, Susy avoided going shopping with her friends.

The company fired more people and Mario, one of the accountants, offered to invest part of his severance money in our business. By then we owed two months' rent, five months worth of school fees, too many payments on the SUV and more taxes than we could count; there was no maid anymore and we had canceled the insurance and our holiday reservations. On weekends, Susy took stuff we didn't need around the house to garage sales to barter for things we could pass off as “vintage” presents for our friends' birthdays. We invited Mario and his wife for dinner, and we stayed up until three in the morning making

101

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 102

plans for a new phase in our business, way beyond our original dream.

But on the next day Mario, who was enthusiastic but not stupid, insisted on having a look at the books. I lied on two fronts: I told Susy we couldn't have a partner who didn't trust us from day one; I told Mario that we had thought it over and that, for Susy, the project was so special she just found it impossible to share with a partner.

If there's any use for cliches, I should say here that you can only cover the sun with one finger for so long. Susy put up manufactured smiles to receive customers, did her best to lay out cheap-looking trinkets in a dignified fashion, rationed the last boxes of better-quality products, painted lies of a thousand marvelous shades for her friends and even for me – but when we got off the bus home (the dealership had repossessed the SUV) and found that the school's treasurer had called the kids to his office again, or that the damp spot on the ceiling had grown into a leak that we couldn't afford to fix, when we locked ourselves in our room and let the answering machine screen all calls, hiding from everything and everyone with nowhere to hide from ourselves, in those moments we had nothing left, not even silence .

102

Among the messages in the answering machine, one day we found an invitation from Marita and Néstor – actually, one message in the morning, another in the afternoon and an invitation on the following day.

For everyone at the club, Marita and Néstor were the image of success: in '92 they had quit their jobs to set up a business nobody really understood very well but which allowed them to travel all the time, stay on top of the best investment opportunities and offer space in their suitcases for whoever needed to buy stuff in the States. Their cell phones would ring all the time and then we'd hear them speak in English with “partners from abroad.” It was them who wanted to see us, them of all people, and just at that state of affairs. That night, for the first time since we had returned from Miami, Susy and I chatted, laughed, made love.

On the next morning I returned the call. Néstor picked up on the fourth ring and greeted me by my name before I could say a word.

Somebody had mentioned us and he and Marita had realized how long it had been since we had last got together: we arranged a barbecue at their place that Friday night.

That day, we closed the store early so Susy could touch up her dye job and take her time with the makeup. I grabbed one of the bottles of good wine left over from the days of corporate gifts and put on a shortsleeved shirt and a pair of light-colored chinos I had bought in Miami.

We called a taxi just in time to arrive fifteen minutes late than the time we had set.

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 103

Marita opened the door. As she and Susy caught up on the latest gossip and dressed the salads, I went to the back to help Néstor at the grill. He asked about the store and I said we couldn't complain, that it was just as he and Marita had always said: taking the leap to become independent was the best thing that could have happened to us.

Néstor said he was happy for us and, as he turned over the meat, said they were about to take a shot at a new business. If this works it's gonna be big, huge. Then his voice was drowned by the sizzling of the offal in the grill and we set the food on the tray to take to the table. We had to struggle a bit to open the door into the house, which they should have had fixed a couple of months ago but never found the right moment to call in the workmen, and you know how they are, they say two days and then it takes two weeks.

Over dinner we returned to our old selves: we talked about holidays, new cell phone models, Luciana Gentile's fifteenth birthday party and the Goldman boy's bar mitzvah, the upcoming elections for the board of the club. Then the phone rang and startled our hosts. Néstor checked the number on the caller ID and turned down the volume on the answering machine as he apologized for not having disconnected the phone during dinner, while Marita explained that if there was one thing she detested that was interruptions at dinner time, especially when they had guests.

When Marita and Susy went to the kitchen for coffee and the pastries we had brought, Néstor mentioned the business offer again. His eyes set on his half-empty glass of wine, he started describing financial gambits with interest rates, import costs, government subsidies, some customs wizardry, Miami mortgages backed by Buenos Aires fixed deposits that wound up yielding in Uruguayan bank accounts – they had worked out everything, but were having some cash flow problems to get the deal started. We could hear the women laughing in the kitchen: Marita was showing Susy photos from that time they had taken a Caribbean cruise.

Marita's laughter echoed like guffaws; as I turned around I saw Néstor bite his lips, take a deep breath and lift his eyes towards me for a moment before turning his concentration back on the wine glass. And that was when I knew they would never get that door fixed, that there wouldn't be another cruise, that the other day, before taking my call, Néstor had also screened the number.

I had heard the tone he was using on me a thousand times from the debtors who came to my office. At the company we called it “the chess game,” that moment when we could see the next five moves and yet had no choice but to wait until they said what they had come to say so we could answer the only thing we could answer them. Néstor made his request and I made up an excuse that was, we both knew it, as

103

4 Frankfurt-ingles CABA-BSAS

1/9/10

19:43

Página 104

implausible as the fantastic deal he was pitching. Marita and Susy walked in with the coffee and we changed the subject. As soon as I finished my cup I pretended to be tired and, against Susy's protests that I was turning into an aging bore, announced that we were leaving.

We kissed goodbye on the sidewalk; I said our SUV was parked just around the corner. Before closing the door Néstor told me to sleep on it, that there was still time to join in if I changed my mind, and I said that I would call him if I did. At the corner Susy asked me what we had been talking about and I said something about a tennis tournament. As we walked towards the avenue to find a taxi she described the photos from the cruise, which were already three years old, and told me they had taken long because the espresso machine had broken down the night before and they had had to prepare instant coffee.

104

We had driven around that neighborhood before, but on foot it was a different, unknown place. It was beginning to get cold, and we crossed empty street after empty street with no signs of the avenue.

There were lights on the windows but nobody outside, no open stores to ask for directions or police officers to bother for assistance. Susy, who hadn't said a word for several blocks, stopped the clicking of her heels and looked me straight in the eye, like she did when we were still engaged, like the day we found out about the first pregnancy, like the day I told her I had got fired. “We're lost, aren't we?”

PABLO TOLEDO Was born in 1975. He won the Premio Clarín de Novela in 2000 for his first novel, Se esconde tras los ojos (2000), awarded by a jury made up of Vlady Kociancich, Augusto Roa Bastos and Andrés Rivera. He published the novel Tangos chilangos in digital serialized form in 2009 (www.tangoschilangos.wordpress.com), and on the same year Editorial El fin de la noche published his third novel, Los destierrados. His short stories have been included in anthologies such as La joven guardia (2005 in Argentina and 2009 in Spain), In fraganti (2007), Uno a uno (2008). He also writes the blog www.lopario.blogspot.com.

This book was printed on September, 2010 in Cooperativa Gráfica el Sol Limitada 2190, Av. Amancio Alcorta Parque Patricios, City of Buenos Aires.

3 Frankfurt- ingles CUYO

1/9/10

20:04

Pรกgina 6

TAPA bs as caba inglés FINAL.pdf

C

M

Y

CM

MY

CY

CMY

K

2/9/10

16:03:51