TAPA patagonia inglĂŠs.pdf
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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 Silvia Contín Contact: planlectura@me.gov.ar plecturamarga@gmail.com
Spanish to English translation by Luciana Bonardi: She has studied the Translator career. She has lived and studied in Canada and USA. She has translated works of well-know Patagonian writers. She works as a teacher and giving special courses, as well. Cecilia Nazar: Translator. She has translated haiku poems, and material for groups of dance and plastic arts. She has also translated short stories and essays for the magazines Proa and Letras de Buenos Aires, among other texts . She was in the performance group Fosa. She writes and teaches, as well.
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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
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CONTENTS
LA PAMPA
NEUQUÉN
RÍO NEGRO
Exercise in free love
The Enchantment of the Tayil
Arrowheads
Eduardo Senac
Juan Benigar
Pág. 32
Pág. 7
Pág. 21
The night upside down
Microfictions
Stories
María Cristina Ramos
Elías Chucair
Diana Irene Blanco
Pág. 28
Pág. 38
Pág. 15
Bad Company Diana Irene Blanco
Pág. 17
Luisa Peluffo
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CHUBUT
Messages to the Rural Dweller HUMAN POEMS Jorge Spíndola
Pág. 47
Live and Let Die Bruno Di Benedetto
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SANTA CRUZ
What Gaspar Quesada saw, after his death Claudia Elisabet Sastre
Pág. 63
TIERRA DEL FUEGO
Stories Julio José Leite
Pág. 76
The redhead
Tombs in the desert
Nicolás Romano
Claudia Elisabet Sastre
A TINY SUN
Pág. 65
Pág. 84
Nicolás Romano
Never Saturday, much less Sunday
STAMP
Claudia Elisabet Sastre
Nicolás Romano
Pág. 67
Pág. 87
Stories Elpidio Isla
Pág. 70
Pág. 86
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PA LA PAM
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Exercise in free love Eduardo Senac “The book closes with that narration, that exercise on free love made poetic prose; that quiet desperation made whisper, that impossibility which can only be uttered by all the possibilities of language.” I. Wielikosielek
O
ne fortuity only would break the universe.
She would tell me that circumstances have immune structures and that in case she loved me it would be in order to better comply with regulations written in the air and because that is the sum of our existence. That is, our fair share. I knew I didn’t feel like swearing against chance; a useless task, anyway. Besides, I cannot proceed against the world since all the world is within her. But not too much. Let’s say that window over there is all the piece of reality she gets. There is an icy cold wind blowing outside, running wildly among frosty night branches, sweeping the ground and then climbing up again onto the dark air until it gets smashed against the window panes. But presently, another blizzard comes, the wind will not stop coming; that's its life. It makes noises, it murmurs as if whispering a great secret and nobody hears it, that is why it swirls around and moves on. It has come to tell us something but we don’t have that kind of ears, particularly me. From the window towards this side, I am not on the outside, I am inside of a drop of heat with yellow walls, with isolate skin between one world and another. But such window is pleasant, especially when the day falls or during long hours if we are in Autumn, even though the light is dimmer. From there, mainly a garden can be seen. However, I don’t know the name of the flowers which live in the inner yard and which breathe in silently and their backs turned around, if that was allowed to them, with their back
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to the walls which hug them. I guess –although I was never there-, that the sky must look square from their miserable flower height. Probably, the sky’s perspective is reciprocal. Uninteresting matters, though. In any case, my usual habit is She, and then walking around this town which has turned so noisy lately. To the rage of my friends, since, according to them, it’s because there is nobody to love. Every time I stop at a corner, any corner, it is in order to brood over that opinion, even though my neighbours behind their shutters think that I possess a long-standing peculiarity which leads me to ridiculousness. Perhaps these wide roads somehow confirm such desolation: nobody to love. In which case, inhabiting the hours can mean a tragic chess game of attempts and distractions, too evident from behind their shutters. Nevertheless, in me does She live, and by the way, her windows are quite different from mine.
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In the room, apart from the window and the glare of the garden coming through, there is a bookcase which does not last long, although she keeps looking for herself in one of its pages, where I think I have found her. I know it is better to shut up so as not to mark neither the book nor the page and let her think in the meantime that the multiplied author is endless and that it is not Borges, or rather that Borges is as valid as any other. So when her fragility walks around the town next to me, and notices the inconveniences of reality, I have to hug her without her noticing it, so that the many veils of this mirage do not advance over her. Yesterday afternoon we walked around. Just move away from the cities jutting out on the plain and you will be able to see the pastel coloured fields spreading out like a bed sheet barely creased by wire fences. Here the sunset is not like the one in the mountains. It is rather the messenger of a silent universe and it tells us about everything that is absent but has a presence. It opens up from one side to the other of the horizon, and at first, we feel that it can elapse anywhere, or that it may remain bleeding the sky dry until the end of times. There is an orange light which flings into the trees, and those trees seen from here have almost no life. Their branches let through certain translucent fine rays, which reach the ground feebly, colourless, dirty, after their way down the branches which stretch out into the empty air. Those trees are statues which wait for our backs in order to move a little, in order to have a minimal wink in the world of the quiet plain and to mark their presence in the rhythm of our existence. Some minutes later, however, we can see the sunset collapsing like a suicide victim, like anybody who struggles to resemble a corpse. Eventually, only the skeleton of the afternoon will remain. I thought that just like a board that cannot be carved, like an extended page which, however, cannot be erased by Man’s footsteps,
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like a plain cleaned from hard shadows, a skinless land of dry veins squashed by boredom and night, thus sleeps our great plain, cradle to the sun and sea of mankind. But before leaving the town we both saw sadness following people as well as brief and violent youth wishes, we saw how all of them went into a toy maze looking for light nests which blinded them and moved around the territory of lightness, in order to come out of it with the same indifference. We saw engines yelling their spasms, tatooes, the floor of a town square covered in footsteps which leaned completely on the world, the air of that square crossed by fast types of music; we saw my friends’ despair because none of those people let silence alone; we saw minutes in which the frantic rhythms crowded on people’s faces until they lost their more remarkable features and formed an anonymous wave of undistinguishable faces. I thought that in any of those faces everybody’s history could be read and Cecilia snuggled against me with an unfathomable sadness which took over her mouth, and then she gave in to shaking as if she was on the edge of every fire. The shapeless shadow of those lives reached us and I proceeded with words, bits of phrases, I had to send her back to the room with a window. Fortunately, certain literature texts can be fragments of time which drive man away from the subject, pulling him away from things to eventually become kites which hang from the stars, which are suspended with no logic over the body of the world. There are fragments which belong to us and the fact of losing them mutilates us. There is in them a certain way of looking which has something of a solid nature, and each thing we see is dressed with the remains of the soul. Everything we cover with these fragments, each object, is also a lightly printed letter on the body of the world. She lay slowly, losing sight of the dark rope of the horizon. Then her animation started fading away while I whispered to her the first part of Exercises in free love. And although she was already sleeping, I felt the populous gravitation which kept me within the same space as hers, a place where it was easy to notice the silences which were growing on her face but not in her mouth, determined to say the words of her dream which, I, for no reason, could not hear. She slept, but even in her open hand she was looking for something among the strangeness of the air that night, and I, I could not know anything about that point, if it was something which she searched for or just a negation expressed from a very remarkable layer of her existence. I thought: let’s hope what she’s searching for is my hand. The next morning we walked again along the new access to the town. A round sun, terribly round, travelled on its single route towards the windowsill of the world, and little by little we could see the pilgrimage of trees passing along towards the route and likewise towards the limits of the town which died out, swallowed up by that
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mouth of asphalt and that same route which led somewhere else, maybe forever, and along which she would travel some day. We talked, and Cecilia turned her head non stop to look curiously at words that she liked. And I am well aware that of all the realities we go through when we are awake, this one was one that she accepted and that moved her away from sadness, even when we were talking about sadness and of the things that never happen. On our way back, two women neighbours were chatting agitatedly. That conversation brought me back to the world and I mentioned the necessary sorrows with which the Count of Lautréamont wrote his only book, The Songs of Maldoror. And those sorrows gradually got hold of him in such a way that his only literary option was a diatribe, a piece of prose excessively choleric, maybe without parallel, but one can read the anguish behind it. I mentioned that nevertheless even today people think that there was a lack of lucidity in Lautréamont’s work and that the Songs of Maldoror respond to a demential onset. This is false, I said. There is nothing more organized that the insanity of a writer.
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Then she said that perhaps his face had been grey. Then she asked me about the things I feared. I took advantage of that moment to observe her with the relish of the dream in her look, I kept on gazing and I saw the trees blowing their shadows even further, I saw the sun dispersing through the branches until it hit the ground in a much poorer way compared to the way it had hit her face. Little by little, the air thickened for the rest of the people, as if it was growing weary, it began holding every thing and carrying it towards stillness, it carried even time, tying it up to the cadence of museum pieces. In those minutes the conversation next door turned into a uniform unfathomable rumour, and in that deadly state of time and space, Cecilia’s steps which followed and the shadows of those trees were the only furniture on the world. Only inside myself another movement took place, one which joined in my temples like a tide, and I said: “To nothing”. The steppenwolves, beyond their lonely nature and their exacerbated individuality, beyond their dissenting Self and their social nausea, remain here, my dear Hermann Hesse, because the bourgeoisie is the home. Only those able to light up their own star and climb up the green moors and clean skies, those who are not steppenwolves any longer and are not even men, those who listen and fly among the rumour of the moving stars, can do without any roof and shelter under the and the silence which comes through the houseless window. Watching Cecilia from one side and despite that fact, seen against the sky, I could confirm not only her picture-like features and the rest of her incredibly beautiful nature but also the cut of a profile which travels beyond her body, fading out like a product of the imagination, like an
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orbit which softly imposes its gravity and which builds up a blurred vision which modifies the perspectives once one has been subjected to. And right then, I saw a strange fog which was squeezing my own body and which carried my motives towards hope. Such was its force, and I thought how horrifying her absence would be later, my eyes had got used to wonder. I can't tell why the image of Rodin's statue, the Thinker, crossed my mind, his stone ideas, and me repeating his position and to some extent his petrified ideas, and it would be night, with Cecilia by my side, and then the things I thought would get arranged into a sort of fabricated deduction guided by her sad gloomy eyes, but orderly for me. By the end of the day and in the room, at a certain distance from the window, between half light and other books was The Songs of Maldoror. I touched it and I tried its weight in my hands, but I didn't want to do that. I moved with an effort and I told myself that it was not necessary to let the letters see the air. I knew what was in that book. I walked also incoherently to the window and I thought: What killed you was life, Lautrémont. The killers were them, the ones who need to sleep in order to have dreams. They are all. Black crowded birds who create night in daylight, such is the darkness they illuminate. ¿But what were you, Lautréamont, if not a nothing trying on the mask of a man, a feeble region of opposing splendours? This explains your death. It is too weak he who asks god to show him a good man and cannot see him. So, it was in Maldoror where the final task of your conscience and your resentment towards syllables was written, the only air you could breathe was built up there,
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designing an empire which locked you up. But such country of pages was too fragile as well for the legions and the hordes of those who sleep without knowing. Soon they pulled down your skin: it is a murderer the beautiful woman who does not love you, and whom you did not meet, on the contrary. Among that and other sorrows, keep breathing fables, consider the seas as a huge bruise on the Earth's body. However, no one can hug the break of day and that impossibility involves all the others. Why keep reproaching God his poor imagination? It's just like men's. 12
Their breaths are shadows who argue, dark and painful lights which gobble up themselves: it's absurd to believe in this reality. For this reason one cannot live with those men. For this reason was clear that you would not stay to await death, Lautréamont. A deep sadness is brought about by freedom. Cecilia was behind me without interrupting my musing on. Shockingly she took Mercury's record to play Exercises in free love. Among others, that was the distance which separated Lautrémont from me, I could see wonder, and from there, could build up a new theory about a kind universe which approved of me. Then she went out for a moment, maybe to leave me alone, maybe because she knew the song would never end and I could see through the window a half moon turning pale incredibly close to the night sky, in silence, just like the only lighthouse that leads the souls at the hours when anybody can get lost, like an open-eyed witness before the history of mankind, and who may have seen things with greater resignation. I was observing our lives as if they were a fair, and there was I, or to put it more clearly, there on the window, was the new being
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I am now. I was clearly a warm air sunken inside a body which I almost did not recognize. Feeling like this, like a pariah, a stranger to myself, is the way I have always felt the best, watching things with the indifference which helps the fact of being really behind, in a territory which is unattainable for most people but not for her and which lets itself get carried away indifferently by the feet. I ignore each part of the skin I inhabit, and when others talk to me, I can only see their faces and their movements and I think: Who can they be talking to? I travel among people out of inertia, among motionless thoughts which, from a certain point in time until now, have stopped on Cecilia. I am just someone who looks on, a suspended eye with no reason, someone who is happy with watching the world's stage show without taking part. The rest is for others. I do not want it. And in those quiet hours in which the rain started to get worse without forcing me to close the old splintered wooden shutters, my memory gradually transformed its pieces, putting together the final image which connected its dots one by one and which moved forward as from a background until it reached the highest definition: Cecilia's face stirred like a temperament in the darkness of my eyelids and it would be so until the future, dwelling in my subsequent dream dynasties. I only had to follow that face and let those dreams and days unite. To the east, a forlorn half moon for the first time was representing a comfortable order which harmonized with life. And beyond, way beyond, I imagined the feelings which would make Swedenborg's angels shine. I remembered a passage: “I have seen palaces in heaven of such magnificence as cannot be described. Above they glittered as if made of pure gold, and below as if made of precious stones, some more splendid than others. It was the same within. Both words and knowledge are inadequate to describe the decorations that adorned the rooms. On the side looking to the south there were parks, where, too, everything shone, in some places the leaves glistening as if made of silver, and fruit as if made of gold; while the flowers in their beds formed rainbows with their colours. Beyond the borders, where the view terminated, were seen other palaces. Such is the architecture of heaven that you would say that art there is in its art; and no wonder, because the art itself is from heaven.� Then I thought particularly of that garden where I myself was going to predispose to fall half asleep, maybe gently and with the patience which tiredness brings about, but to lie down drowsily and feel the relish of my own absence, free from all rehearsal, taking the universe weight off me once and for all. Yes, and by that time I would be something invisible and forsaken, slightly swayed by the tidal wind over the garden, a wave of flowers intertwining and whistling over my dream but not to me, rather to the softness with which the sunset entered, and its Autumn alleys which
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would gradually take every thing until it would give sunset to each corner. During some hours, during some moments, everything would remain within a thick darkness poured onto that garden which would also prevent the omens from trespassing, a sort of truce, a load of stars, until a new dawn clears them and I get up and walk indifferently, weightless, as I said, watching the streets and what is in them, the literature, the inner yards, Cecilia's face which is many times on my mind.
EDUARDO SENAC Was born in Córdoba in 1973. Lives in General Pico (La Pampa, Argentina). Journalist and writer. For four years he directed the literary review Sueños. At present he is the head of “La Galera”, a weekly cultural suppplement issued by La Reforma newspaper. He is a regular contributor to Nativa, a cultural magazine from Villa María (Córdoba province). He has published the following books: Instrucciones para ser un Quijote, El vals del duende, La precisión de la fiebre, Satori.
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The night upside down Diana Irene Blanco Colonia Castex, Pampa Central district, 1928
T
he first whistle scratches the face of the night. When the second whistle is heard, Félix puts his hand under his pillow and brushes with his fingertips the butt of his Winchester 44. His wife, Victoria, sits up on their bed at once.
–They are coming for the horses– both say in a whisper, mouthing their powerlessness in each syllable. The short whistles cross each other in the air like unpunished insects. Sharpened with insolent malice, they start the sleazy ritual of stealing animals from defenseless fields. The winter night helps. Thick and dense, it breathes pending, reluctant as an unwitting accomplice. Not a star. Nor the peep of a night bird on the gate. Félix is standing up, with his thin body close to the window at a short distance from a land which forecasts turbulence. Diagonally crossed over his chest, his tense rifle awaits. The man memorizes the plundering which, out of grief, brings forward the thickness of sleeplessness. Are they five? Three? How many? He looks towards the windmill, which through its big motionless tin eye seems to watch the presence of strange people veiled by the fog at that late hour. Félix is unable to make out anything, but he closes his eyes and reviews the scene. Surely, the rustlers will have entered the horses stable. They must feel restrained to move about, slipping among the docile animals
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and avoiding the dung. He guesses gestures and arms setting positions, putting certain animals aside. Inside, Victoria also repeats the sequence of many other nights which were seized and marked by limited violence. If in the front yard, outside, the movements take place with the abusive exactness of a rude ceremony, inside the small adobe house, the country people follow an invisible script which despises the premiere. The woman also organizes her reduced strategy. With a quick movement she controls the weakness of the door, with a wooden lock and a thousand keys of old fear. Then, she looks inside the small room where three daughters pretend to dream. A dream which in jostling seconds will smash to pieces like a mirror. Through the salty gust of distress, when looking at her daughters, Victoria creates a prayer: Don't they dare with us... and with Duque.
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Duque is the horse which pulls the sulky when the family visits town. Its powerful legs and the deep black colour of its body show off every time it takes the daughters for a ride. He used to have an old owner who developed in him a warlike spirit: in Duque lies a brilliant racehorse. It has the champion's bearing and it has music under its metal hooves. Its walk is rhythmic, distinguished, provided that no other sulky or car pulls alongside. When this happens, and it often does, its intact racing quality is aroused. Then, Duque expands legs and body. In some remote chord for the noble animal, the race starts. Its hooves splinter the ground in a lowlevel flight in order to get to the finish line. Until the car, or whatever other carriage, drives away and vanishes in the white smoke of dust which blurs the road. Then, slowly, little by little, Duque resumes, among puffs, its modest composure and the girl-travelers sigh with relief. Not a star. Nor the peep of a night bird on the gate. FĂŠlix stands in a corner next to the bedroom window. He half opens the shutters and prepares his Winchester. He points upwards, aiming at the void. The shoots sound hollow and get lost in the empty air of the fog. They are taking his farm horses, but the man is an expert in avoiding the knife slash of contemptible revenge. He would never kill anybody. He came to America to sow life. He just wants to respond with roaring meekness to the mean violation of many nights which belong to someone else. Why him? Why his family? He wonders as he looks around his bedroom which stands as a feeble fortress: mud floor, a trunk arrived by ship, a bed made of iron. Outside, at the door, a lot of piled-up tumbletweeds and dunes, weary of rolling over the dry earth. Not even the farm is their own. FĂŠlix shoots again. A useless obstination which swallows up its own echo. In the distance, the rustlers smudge away on their new horses.
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Bad Company Diana Irene Blanco
W
here excessive wine walks … death treads. Wine runs in torrents down the men’s dark throat. And when this blunder occurs, wrath who always sides with death, raises the nail of contention and lights up the unfinished flower of hatred.
The four of them are seated at a table in La Porfiada, a local bar near a town called La Argentina. The place looks almost deserted if in one corner we do not add a local regular customer who dribbles a song or moans a feeling. They are four men, still. Mixed up in an arid and subterranean challenge while September unknits outside the last cold days on the plain. The legs of the chair stake the trunks which have been motionless for hours. Only the sharp flutter of cards are bent and dropped on the cracked wodden table. Some brief words drip over the heads. When the game started, the sun was still trembling on the much handled glasses. At that moment, Remigio Ramírez announced to Pedro Muro’s stubbornly surly face: –On a wineskin, mate! –Agreed, Ramírez! –said Muro from under his moustache which hanged like a shadow over his lips. The other two, Emilio Charo and Antonio Merlo joined the round to
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chew up the scraps which would be dropped by brown-eyed Remigio and by Pedro, his moustache like a raven’s wing, covering up a palpitating thick scar like a slimy undulating worm, according to the occasion. The conflict has the air of innocent and reasonably quarrelsome truco card game. But a mocking wind stirs up a treacherous curse which, so far, has only protruded and flashed on the big knives tucked up behind, across the waist over the kidneys. The barman, José Español, waves away the dull light on some glasses with a frenzied cloth and, dumbfounded, he scrubs the counter. From his place, among the last reflections of the bottles he does not take his eyes off the four men who, seated at a table, decide over life on a wineskin. By now, the other wine, the invader, cheap, harsh, the one like firewater must be climbing up their sanity and sharpening the big knives of imprudence. At a certain point in the game Remigio, the brown-eyed one with black teeth, shakes his head and in the blink of an eye he can see Salvadora, his wife, and his seven children pulling up her skirts sucking at a piece of stodgy bread. In the pocket of his baggy trousers the last four pesos note remains all crumpled. Ramírez gulps and throws out over the table the phrase he would never have liked to utter: 18
–My money is over, Pedro Muro! I quit. –The thing is you are drunk, Ramírez, and you are a chicken cheat! –You lie, Muro, you lie! You are a bloody bastard! Pedro Muro, the one with the moustache like a raven’s shadow, spreads out his arms over the table. He scatters the cards with a swipe and clutches onto the shirt of Remigio Ramírez who then reacts and springs up and swerves his semi-naked trunk. Swift as an adder, wellaimed Ramírez flashes out his big knife and stabs Pedro Muro in the chest, and the stab opens like a star of blood in full bloom, darkening the look and the clothes of the man with the shadow over his lips. Many hands attempt to untie the knot of the dispute. The fellow players, the barman, the local regular customer who dribbled a song and other men who had come into La Porfiada and from the start had already been recalling a fight which now made them spring from their chairs which are now spinning among a whirl of human legs. Pedro Muro has been taken away. They say the wound is not deep. He will live to bet for another wineskin. Remigio Ramírez keeps silent, speechless, sitting on a stinky entangled mass of riding gear away from the hubbub and the comments around. All of a sudden, in the semidarkness of his hands he feels the gentle touch of wrinkled fingers. And the air of long thick hair blowing on his sullen face. It is
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Salvadora and the seven children. They take him by the arm with misty care, they all leave La Porfiada and drag him somewhere. Remigio Ramírez lets himself get carried away, surrendered to darkness and to those pleasantly well-known arms. Night licks his face with its fresh tongue and to his astonishment he notices he is walking alone. Alone and towards the Police Station, where he will make a statement saying that he was drunk, that he did not mean to attack Pedro Muro and that he has a large family, lacking any kind of economic means. The chief of police will hear his defence, he will be standing up, with his back to him and his hands crossed at the back. The judge, without wasting time, will take into account the spontaneous physical presence of the accused at the police station, the drunken condition of those involved, the ephemeral monotonous quality of the wound. And Remigio Ramírez will have to serve two months in prison and bear the costs. The muffled steps of Salvadora and their seven children pulling up her skirts and sucking at a piece of stodgy bread will haunt him every night inside his prison cell. The thing is that wine bears a man’s name but it seduces like a woman. And where wine walks in excess, death sows a whirlwind and shakes misfortunes. Some people are weak, they are light. Just like the wings of a “curious firefly”.1 1 Reference to end line of tango song “El día que me quieras” by Carlos GardelAlfredo Le Pera. (...“luciérnaga curiosa que verás que eres mi consuelo”.)
DIANA IRENE BLANCO Was born in Eduardo Castex, La Pampa, Argentina. She is a teacher of Language and Literature from La Pampa university. She has nine publications in poetry, short story and essay and her works have been acknowledged by national and international contests
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The Enchantment of the Tayil Juan Benigar
W
ell, let us go back to the spell of the tayil. It is extremely enchanting, in fact.
Tayil is not a common song, otherwise it would be called Ăźl, a name also given to the sung prayers. Consequently, Tayil is not a prayer. It is a chant used for enchanting effects. This explains its tune with little variation, blurred in its sweet and vague consonance due to the manner in which it is sung. So, it is also used by clairvoyants to go into astral trance. It is sung like this: the woman who leads the chant starts the tune. As she starts the second rhythm of the Tayil, another woman joins in; or two, or three, there are no strict rules. When these women, in turn, go into the second rhythm, another woman or group joins in. This goes on as long as there are women to join in, always keeping the rhythm. The resulting chant shows no dissonance, as its simple indigenous music of five tones has been unconsciously arranged to avoid it. If we pay attention to the frogs singing we will have a clear idea of the effect, their chant is a real Tayil, just one, though. The aboriginal women string one after the other. If there are few women and among them a shrill or unpleasant voice, the final effect is not as good. However, when there are a lot of women, the shrill voices go unnoticed and the result has a more pleasant consonance with no clear definition, and it seems, or actually comes from hidden, subtle and trerrible worlds.
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Perhaps, in order to get its beauty some special sensitivity is necessary. I do not know. However, I recommend that those listening to a Tayil should listen to it from a distance in which the disturbing aspect of this chant disappears. I have no doubts, in this way, they will get familiar with the strange beauty in it. The particular way of singing the tayiles, responds unquestionably to the indigenous idea of a choral chant. And it is certainly not purely araucano1, but it widely spreads in the American continent, and even further. Let us remember what Darwin said about the way in which the natives from Tierra del Fuego helped them sing the English national anthem. It is the same thing explained here. This way of singing the tayiles, makes their learning easier. The chant leader is a woman expert. The others just follow her faithfully, including the novices, I have heard many times, women who, without hearing the chant before, sing for the first time tayiles unknown to their group.
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Here is another excellence of the powerful indigenous soul. To sing like this, and correctly, for the very first time, chants unknown to them, it requires a considerable effort I would not be able to do; furthermore, unquestionably, not many white people would. It is necessary to have a good ear, an ear able to get the chant sharply just from hearing the other women. Moreover, it is necessary to pay attention, not only to one´s own chant, but also to the other women´s chant, in order not to go out of tune or rhythm. I am glad to have such a good and wise witness as Darwin, to confirm what I have just said, otherwise, nobody would believe my humble words, extraordinary as the case is. From what I have already said, the tayiles are sung by women. However, there are men who sing as well, especially the clairvoyants. Transcendental as they are, the tayiles are not necessarily ancient. From time to time -as I have learnt from personal experience- a new tayil appears, a clairvoyant leader has received it while dreaming from his guardian genius. Then he teaches it to his people. I also have knowledge of some, entirely personal tayil, received in the same manner by people with no prominent clairvoyance. Why should not I tell it? I have written down two on my own, which I got while dreaming. I do not use them, I keep their power for the time when our indigenous martyr needs them. So, the tradition of the tayil is the result of many regional variations. The experts say that the tayiles of our Araucanos Pampas are from Tehuelche2 origin. There could be differences, however, the essence of this statement is certain. The Araucanos absorbed into them the
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ancient Pampas population with Patagon3 relationship. They have the same religion but different ceremonies. At the beginning they arrived in the Pampas in small groups, and in need for socializing, they assimilated almost all the ancient traditions and ceremonials from our homeland. Like me, who surrounded by this world, I have adopted native ways and I hardly keep anything Yugoslavian. Together with the ceremonial, they adopted the particular dance of the land, called Puel Purún, also the loncomeo “with the head,” as they move it to the rhythm of the drums, to the sound of the trutruca horn, or some other instrument, and the singing of the tayiles. And here, its lineage seal is most evident. Totemic, some others would say. This dance is performed in the rogativas (rogation ceremony), not always, though; and never in Chile. It was frecuently used in the huecunruca celebration (outside the house), known as the Patagon celebration “beautiful house,” referred to by Musters. However, I think that basically, there is a mistake in this name. In the first place, because I think that the Araucanian translation of the Patagon name must be more accurate than Musters´, who hardly spoke this difficult language. Then, in Araucano language “good, nice, beautiful, pretty”, are all translated as cüme, a word that basically has nothing to do with those qualities, as it means “go past,” as if we would say “passable” instead of “good.” It is assumed from the connection among the meanings that in the Patagonian languages those qualities have something to do with the idea of movement, which could match the Araucano huecún, “out.” Hue: new; Cun: nice; Ruca: house. Nice new house. Therefore, speculation. I released it just to focus the attention on this matter until somebody thinks of it. Because, custom has it, all the sheep follow the first one to get out the farmyard or to cross the bridge. There are women who sing the tayiles frequently. Others just in public ceremonies and family rogativas. Also, in other important situations of life, like a good luck spell. So, when a man goes travelling, the women say goodbye to him with tayiles, singing firstly the one of his lineage. The tayiles sound playfully, in choirs that accompany the dances. They are sweet wishes of yearning for the traveller when he is out of sight. Or sombre with desperation when they go with the deceased toward his grave for the last time. I have heard them in all those occasions and I was always moved by them, whether with playful joy or with resigned sadness. I still remember vividly when I heard the tayiles for the first time, twentyseven years ago, in the bank up the river Colorado. I was just married. I went with my father-in-law to visit an indigenous family friend of his, living
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down the river. There it was, a decent mud hut with some sturdy willow trees giving their shade over the extremely clean yard. Before going to bed we indulged ourselves with ostrich wings and guanaco cured meat soaked in horse fat. We got up very early at the very break of the day. We, the men, had already had some mates when the first light came up announcing the day. The morning star low in the horizon yet,“noisily,” among the other stars. I just noticed the leisurely conversation of the old men, which I did not understand, and the sips of mate. Suddenly, I went still in amazement and questioned the old men with wide open eyes. A chant... I thought of the fairies of the willow trees. The old men explained it to me. They were the women singing their tayiles. We went out. Under the tallest willow were standing four women, young and old, facing the East. They were singing and singing, a beautiful song. Would the Roman vestal virgins have sung like this? Would the Patagonian fairies sing like this? They do, the Patagonian and Pampean fairies, mimicking the chant of their gods. Sweet shivers shook my soul.... Oh! How far away is that blessed time! Why would not I remain with my woman? I would not be crying now... 24
Well, we have seen so far the relationship between the tayil and the lineage of our indigenous people reflected in the names of their families. The tayiles which hold this connection are also called kümpém tayil or just kilmpem, which means the lineage or, let us say, the surname, as we Euroamericans have it. Most of these kümpem are names of animals or reducible to them based on reliable data, not to be explained here. Therefore, they would be referred to as totemic names by the scholars. It is hard to define this conception of the names as the scholars who use this word do not agree on its content. However, above all the differences, and even if I could not clarify it with the Araucanos nowadays, we can say that its essence consists of totemic names reflecting the animals the lineage descends from. A partial note from Havestadt, very clear in fact, would confirm, in part, this conception about the Araucanos. Recently asked about his lineage, Pablo Paillalef, told me it was the manque (condor), chosen by his ancestors just out of admiration for this bird. Let us suppose it is so. I wonder: how can we understand that descent in the Darwinian sense, or in any other sense? Allow me, just for the sake of a change in the reading, to insert here a rather bold conjecture: to counterbalance the totemic speculations,
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by far boring, and the no less bold Darwinian conjecture (without taking into account his imitators, who want to show as real what the master established as speculation). The Darwinian themselves would oppose to the idea that humans descent at the same time from tigers, hawks, whales, and a number of other vermin. I do not oppose, though. To justify my approach, I will distinguish among the physical and the astral human, and lastly the spiritual one. Each of them followed their own evolution path. Before the appearance of the material human on Earth, his astral counterpart had already gone through endless incarnations. I will not say he had progressed by going through innumerable bodies, because I would not explain anything with it, since progressing from some point of view, is inevitably going backwards from another. The astral being, that is, the soul, in each incarnation accumulates a certain amount of experiences which improve its skills differentiating them from one another . In order to take advantage of them, the soul searches through incarnation for bodies with better instruments each time, which in turn differentiate from each other as well. 25
So, the soul after millons and millons of unknown bodies got to need the body of the highly gifted human who, however, was not the material man of these days. Today´s material man is the expression of another sum of skills acquired through the continuous evolution. The last incarnation in the animal body, responds to the kümpem or surname of each lineage. All the animals, like material beings, with a potentially human soul, and the material man himself, had changed little by little from their primitive form. According to the soul´s needs, the different species appeared during this material evolution. Some species became extinct, and others, more or less transformed, continue to these days. So is it proved by the study of the fossils. By the discovery of remains from ancient lives, we know now, that one species can form from another. However, there are some orders, families and even entire genera which stubbornly resist to any correlation. The reason is simple. They belong to different creations done either with the help of superior beings, or by the single ability to become reality of the astral beings. One of the genera opposed to any attempt to transformation is the material man, who appeared on Earth during the so called Secondary era. Only the gods know by now, how many million years ago. So, the
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one person who knows that for certain is already a god. Why is it unyielding? Because it is the result of a special creation which did not need, as the soul did, to go through all the forms: mineral, vegetable and animal. It is in vain to strive, blind to the evidence, deaf to the reasons: humans do not come from simian species. On the contrary, some of them which do not come from a particular creation, would probably come from men. This is a conjecture supported at least by reasons equivalent to those which support the Darwinian theory. One has as much of a dream or a vision as the other. Besides, a scientist cannot call himself so, not least wise man, if he does not consider both conjectures in the interpretation of discoveries. Moreover, numerous as the discoveries are, they will need a specialization by genus. Since it is not the variety of partial knowledge that which leads to wisdom, but the ability to find unity in the variety. It is not my wisdom I state here; I have learnt it from other wiser men and adjusted it to my thinking. 26
I do not have to argue about that. It is no time for that yet. For the conjecture is half century ahead of time, or a century, to the intellectual state of today´s Euroamericans. The reason I am writing these things so distant from the main thread, is to show the important projections of a conscientious study on the native Americans. Going back to the Araucanian beliefs, there are noticeable coincidences with the beliefs of other people from far off places in the world. Even with Christianity itself. These coincidences together with the extreme religious tolerance of the Araucanian people, make it easier to accept Christianity, although it is generally reduced to baptism or some other formula learnt by heart and uttered without meaning. The minor coincidences among religions can be due to the single observation of each people, and do not exclude the mutual influence among them. The superior coincidences, even high above today´s Christian doctrine, come from a powerful ancient wisdom. Either revealed or got, not without effort, from the times of the “Lemuria”, which is now mainly under water in the Pacific ocean but for some tiny territories around the edge. Therefore, linked in some way to the Argentinean people. According to the situation of the modern knowledge, these statements are not unjust but inevitable postulates of unbiased reason.
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Besides, it is the reason, the only one that deserves the name of science, even if it can not measure anything. Thus, opposing a requirement of the official science which is, in fact, a breeding ground for ignorance, foolishness, pedantry, absurdity, nonsense, irrationality and stupidity. Yet, I think my linguistic palette lacks many colours to complete the painting of this realistic picture of the current situation of the Euroamerican intelligentsia. To sum up, I will say that, as far as I know about the beliefs of other American native people, all of them seem to come from the same mould. To know one of them in depth is to know them all. 1 “Araucano” is the name imposed by the Spanish conquistador. Nowadays, it is used “Mapuche”,as these people called themselves: “people from the land”. 2 “Tehuelche”: “People from the south”. Name given to the aoni kenk by the mapuche. 3 Patagones” name imposed to the aoni kenk or tehuelche by Magellan´s expedition. 27
JUAN BENIGAR (1883-1950) He was born in Zagrev, capital of Croatia. In 1908 he moved to Argentina where he lived for many years among the Mapuche indigenous people of Neuquén. He had a deep knowledge of the Mapuche soul from this part of the continent. He contributed with his work to enrich the amount of human knowledge and to organize the science of Argentinean culture in general, and Patagonian culture in particular. He lived his last twentyfive years in the river Poí Puicón valley, next to Aluminé. He died on January 14th 1950.
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Minifictions MarĂa Cristina Ramos
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THE CALL
W
hen the telephone rang stridently, he slided down the lamp along the air balustrade to answer the call. But it was always for someone else and the edge of the half-conversation broke his hope. At other times, nobody could beat him to the telephone, but when he held out his hand, the telephone stopped ringing. So in order to fight his anxiety, he decided to get himself busy. He brought fish from the river and bred them in the gutters on the roof. Years flew gently by. He only entered the house when there was no one there. In case the telephone rang. In case the call was for him. HABITS
H
e was not satisfied. The wooden floorboards creaked, the doors came off at the slightest touch, the mirror fell down and multiplied in a thousand eyes. For that reason, he went out and decided to hibernate again in his old cave, as he did every year. OPUS
T
he spider that nested in one corner of the ceiling had a huge ball in store. It was the result of seven hard-working years in which he had only stopped spinning in order to eat frugally, or to gaze at the moonbeam which visited him once a year. When he knitted the final yon, he waved good-bye to his neighbours and flung himself into the freedom of the air, towards the enormous whitish bubble.
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Hi!
O
ne day, as nobody called him, he decided to make the call himself. He dialed any number and when they answered, he did not know what to say. He dialed another number and forced himself to speak. But he only managed to utter words which are typical of his species: breeze, kiss, whistle, silence. Hissing words of a ghost. Taken unawares, his interlocutor had a feeling of emptiness in his chest, as when he used to see his grandfather smoke and gaze at a certain point in the void. But he pulled himself together, hung up, and kept on listening to the life insurance salesman. GENEALOGY
B
irches are grown from poplar seeds which have drunk fallen water during a moon eclipse. Dissolved in water, the moon pieces come back as foliage, boosted by the wish to float again in the blue arms of the air.
ONE SO BLIND
H
e hid in the basement and waited for the ghost. He lied down along the line where the wall kissed the floor, and lay his white head on a round pool of shade.
He says that he fell asleep and in his dream a light blue figure went up and down the stairs, and when it went up it was a woman but came down as a man, and in the end it turned into radiant dust, coiling with avarice up the beam of light which filtered through the keyhole. And he says it was a pity he could not discover the ghost. A LOOK omeone. A look, a someone with whom, before dying. Galileo, because he understood, he could also understand the stubborn ignorance of the Inquisition. It was not so difficult to abjure the knowledge before a string of imbeciles and ill-intentioned people. But eventually, in his last moments, in the private peace of set off, he searched. He still searched for a look, one at least, which could accompany him to be sure of what -despite everything- moves.
S
TO BEG
T
he man, withered out of aging, had walked meadows and towns begging. He had been given clothes, fruit, indifference; but he only begged for a glass of water. When he managed to make himself heard, he drank slowly, felt his back and began
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straightening up to the height he used to have. Then he thanked and flew off to catch up with the flock. WAITING
H
e had the still face of waiting. He was surrounded by those who loved him most, but no one replied him.
–What are they like? –the blind child repeated–. What are fireflies like?
DISAPPOINTMENT
–G
hosts do not procreate –her eldest sister said–. Don't they? –she replied, and tilted her head like a sad flower and she kept floating in the silence of a shroud cloud. And she kept doing the air the drawings from the short story book that her hands would have drawn for her little one. Then she searched in the world’s corners for the loose threads people forget. And she began knitting in chain-stitch a very long table runner. In case someone sometime wanted to lean their foot or a wing, so as to rest from the lightness of being air in the air.
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SAMPLE CUTS he man cuts a sample of a watermelon and from the red colour near the heart, a child emerges. The child grows up, firmly puts on a beret cut out for him, starts working in a factory, organizes a strike together with the other workers to claim for their rights. The strike makes a clear-cut impression on people’s soul, who overthrow the dictator and go for a fairer government, so that everyone gets enough to make a living and, when necessary, they can sample cut a watermelon.
T
Micro fictions from The secret syllable of a kiss 2nd extended edition Published by Editorial Ruedamares 2009
MARÍA CRISTINA RAMOS She was born in Mendoza in 1952 and lives in Neuquén since 1978. She teaches in Public Institutions and organizes writing workshops. She has published many books, among them, Un sol para tu sombrero, De barrio somos (novel), Del amor nacen los rios. These Minificcions are from the book La secreta sílaba del beso (2009).
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RO Rร O NEG
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Arrowheads Luisa Peluffo ¨Reality favors symmetries and slight anachronisms” Jorge Luis Borges – The South
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A
t twenty she traveled to Europe and there, she discovered the past. In each and every city where she traveled there were traces and imprints of primitive settlements. In Rome, as she walked by the Forum, she would brush her fingers across the ancient stones. In Sevilla, she saw the foundation of Greek temples under Mudejar walls, in Barcelona the Gothic Quarter and in Paris, the Roman ruins at Arènes de Lutèce. When she returned to Buenos Aires, her desire to explore the past did not wane but everything just seemed too recent. “There’s no past here,” she’d say. One day she read a tourist brochure advertising weekend trips. One of them suggested: Visit the land of the Coliqueo, Los Toldos, and the Salamanca Lagoon. “Come on, let’s go,” she said to her boyfriend. “It says here Los Toldos is so named because of the Indian huts.” “There aren’t any Indians, they all died back at the end of the nineteenth century, in the Conquest of the Desert.” “Why did they have to be killed…? Couldn’t they have been civilized? “ “In the United States they did the exact same thing.”
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“Wow, just look at the example you gave me…. ”I still want to go; I’m interested; one of Coliqueo’s descendants might still be alive. Her boyfriend liked the idea of a weekend in Los Toldos, but couldn’t have cared less about the Indians. “The Coliqueo were Mapuche, which means ´Earth People,´ did you know that?” –she remarked after looking it up in the encyclopedia. “No.” “Mapu is earth and che is people, and do you know what Coliqueo means?” “I haven’t a clue.” “Dark Flint.” “Really? You don’t say!” “ ’ … I g n a c i o C o l i q u e o , ” s h e c o n t i n u e d re a d i n g f ro m t h e encyclopedia, “born in Boroa (Chile), died in 1871 in the Province of Buenos Aires, was a famous chief and colonel in the Argentine Army who enlisted, along with his tribe, in the army of General Urquiza. After lending a helping hand to overthrow Rosas, the Coliqueo established a town, which was later destroyed by other tribes like them but followers of Rosas, on the site that thereafter would be called Los Toldos.’ ”Isn’t that incredible?” “Uh-huh.” And, so they took off in their recently purchased second-hand Citroën. ”I’m taking this little suitcase,” she announced pulling a suitcase of the type you would take on an expedition to the Ranquel Indians. If I don’t take a suitcase, it’s like I’m not traveling,” she added while shoving it into the back seat. But in Los Toldos there wasn’t a single indication that the Coliqueo had ever set foot there. There wasn’t even a hotel, only a brick house on a corner, indicating “Lodging.” So, they continued on to Junín. Similarly there were no vestiges of huts or Indian villages. At last, they found a boarding house. The double bed, covered with a red sateen bedspread, almost completely filled the room and all they could see of the carpet was some brown with ornate yellow designs. But she was able to open and close her suitcase and slept hoping that nearby, somewhere, there would be a trace of the Coliqueo. They returned the next day to Los Toldos, stopping first at a gas station. A large burly dark-skinned man, stood next to the pump.
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“Ask him,” she said. He got out of the car, said fill-it-up, and checked the tires but never did ask anything. While the man filled the tank, she pushed opened the wing window and asked: “Do you know where the land of the Coliqueo is?” “What?” “The land of the Coliqueo,” she repeated and showed him the brochure. “I’m Coliqueo,” he answered unexpectedly, touching his chest. “Dark Flint,” she muttered. “Come again?” he asked.
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“No, nothing,” she responded. And tried to imagine him on a horse with a spear but couldn’t. Instead, she remembered the time when she’d gone to a restaurant in the Abasto, a shopping mall that was once the central wholesale fruit and vegetable market of the city. Several folkloric groups were performing that day. Standing guard on either side of a platform –where some alleged gauchos tapped out a malambo with their boots– were two men just like this one. They were bare-chested with long dark shoulder-length hair held back in a hair band and they stood looking savagely straight ahead. Each man grasped a spear with a stone arrowhead tied to its tip. She also recalled that to get to the bathroom, she had to skirt around the platform forcing her to pass right by one of them, close enough to notice a flesh colored band-aid on his muscular arm. “The one that made this place famous was Evita. Did you know she was born here?” said the Coliqueo, interrupting her memory. The noise of the gas pump stopped. “Yeah?” “Yeah, in La Unión, don Duarte’s ranch,” he squatted to tighten the gas tank cap. “My family used to work that land.” “Oh” “There’s a lot of Coliqueo around here,” he informed her, wiping his hands on a dirty rag –“want me to clean the windshield?” Afterwards, she and her boyfriend continued on to the Salamanca Lagoon, which was no different than any other lagoon in Buenos Aires province. They spent the afternoon at a convent of Benedictine monks where they bought freshly made cheese and homemade jam and visited a small chapel, the oldest thing they found.
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Within the year they got married and spent their honeymoon in the south. They camped out in a place called Valle Encantado, on the banks of the Limay River, and when she went to drive in one of the tent stakes, she found an arrowhead. There was the past. She decided to keep it as a good luck charm. That first night, the murmur of the sparkling waters in the darkness made them feel as if they were part of the great mystery. They didn’t sleep, they couldn’t. At dawn, they remained in rapture, as a surreal mist slowly hovered over the water. Legend asserts, he said the day before they broke camp, if you bathe in the Limay you will return here. Then, guarded by the windsculpted figures on the massive rock walls, they sat on the bank, took off their shoes and dipped their feet into the transparent water. Reluctantly they returned to Buenos Aries and shortly thereafter they had a son: Nahuel. After that they returned to the south, this time to live. He built a cabin on Lake Gutierrez and she wrote a book and planted two birch trees. And they had another son: Pehuén. Each year in mid-December they drove across the deserted plains to spend the holidays with the rest of their family. On one of these return trips in the sweltering heat without air conditioning they stopped near Piedra del Aguila, a small village. They parked their car under some trees next to a pasture where several horses calmly grazed. They wanted to rest awhile, eat something and, above all else, let the kids out after being cooped-up so long in the car Nahuel, drowsy from the heat and the long hours of traveling, asked if they were far from Bariloche. Pehuén woke up and began to cry. She searched for her bag in the back seat, hauled it out, opened it and pulled out the baby bottle with water. Besides water, she carried a little bit of everything in that bag: sandwiches, crackers, a towel, cologne, toilet paper and even her jewelry box, just in case thieves broke into the cabin while they were away. They stretched their legs, ate, and when they were putting their belongings back into the car, they saw Pehuén running excitedly towards the horses. They both took off running after him, and caught him just as he was about to run headlong into a dappled gray horse. They returned to the car and continued on their journey. When they arrived at Valle Encantado, the halfway point between Piedra del Aguila and Bariloche, she looked for her bag in the backseat. It wasn’t there. There wasn’t any bag there. Even today when she thinks about it, she still has a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She shouted, “It’s not here!” Her husband told her to look in the trunk, stopping
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the car on the shoulder. “I didn’t put it in the trunk,” she answered. And, there was another stab to her heart. “I didn’t put it anywhere,” she repeated, “it’s back in Piedra del Aguila.” Just the same she ran to look in the trunk. “No, it’s not there. We must have left it next to the car when we went running after Pehuén. Let’s go back.” He puts the car in gear and turns back towards Piedra del Aguila. Nahuel asks: “Are we there yet?” Pehuén, his damp cheek against her chest, remained asleep. Although she is hopeful, she doesn’t want to think about it. But she recalls: her watch, her Aunt Emma’s pearl necklace, her grandmother’s choker, the medal from her first communion, her mother’s brooch and her gold ring. Also, the arrowhead she’d found during their first trip, along the banks of the Limay. They arrive back at the spot, their tire tracks still visible, but not a hint of the bag. There are a few ranches nearby. They walk towards them, clap their hands, and the dogs bark. Some boys peer out, their faces all wind-burned and streaked with dirt and snot. Children who are brought up in the Patagonia always have dirt and snot on their faces, she thinks, her’s too. They ask. Nobody knows anything. 36
It’s almost dark when they get back on the road. Now the Patagonia looks gray and hostile. Her husband asks what was in the bag. She still hadn’t told him about the jewelry box. So she does and he asks what was in the box. As they leave the Valle Encantado behind, she weeps in silence. Back in Bariloche her uneasiness grows, as if the cord that tied h e r t o h e r s m a l l fa m i l i a r wo r l d h a d a b r u p t l y b e e n seve re d . Sometimes, still, the sorrow returns. He doesn’t understand. They’re just things, he’d say, trying to console her, nothing more than things. . . And she knows then that she’s lost him. He doesn’t stay in the south. She does. And there she raises her sons, and teaches classes, and stacks wood, and stands in line in the snow to get kerosene, and curses the cold, the rain, the ice and the damn car that won’t start. Years later -her sons now grown men- on one of her endless trips across the Patagonian desert heading towards Madryn, she sees a sign along the side of the road: TOMB OF CHIEF INACAYAL
She backs up and guides the car over a trail that leads to the base of a small hill. There, in the middle of the earthy vastness, was the monument. She gets out of the car and climbs up the slope. At
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the top, she finds a precarious structure in extremely poor condition, abandoned, and in ruins. She gets back on the road. Inacayal…. She doesn’t know what the chief’s name means and while traveling along she remembers Dark Flint and when she’d gone in search of the land of the Coliqueo. At Paso de Indios, she stops to get gas. Like Piedra del Aguila and the majority of small Patagonian villages, Paso de Indios is divided by the highway with a few humble houses grouped together on either side. There at the service station, next to the pumps, an old woman and boy offer up something in a box, something to sell the tourists. She goes over to them. The old woman –motionless and indifferent– holds a sign saying: Mapuche Arrowheads. 4 pesos. “Grandma makes’em to use as pendants,” says the boy and he shakes the pile of arrowheads that are in the box until he picks one out. “For you,” he says, with a smile. Argentina: A Traveler’s Literary Companions. Edited by Jill Gibian. Translated by Beth Pollack U.S.A. 2010.
LUISA PELUFFO Was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She studied in the National Fine Arts School. She moved to San Carlos de Bariloche, Patagonia, in 1977. Publised Works: 2009: Nadie baila el tango (novel) Bs. As. 2005: Me voy a vivir al sur (instructions handbook), Bs. As. 2001: Un color inexistente (poems), Madrid. 1993: La doble vida (novel), Bs. As. 1991: La otra orilla (poems), Bs. As. 1989: Todo eso oyes (novel), Bs. As. 1989: Conspiraciones (short stories), Viedma, Río Negro. 1983: Materia de revelaciones (poems), Bs. As. 1976: Materia Viva (poems), Bs. As.
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Stories Elías Chucair
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THE COLLI MACUÑ
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hat March morning, I went to take a look around the farm, I used to do it twice or three times a week, because it is necessary, as well.
While I rode my horse northwards, my wife was at home preparing the dough for the buns and the boys were still sleeping... “they will have time ahead in life to get up early and carry out their tasks. Now there's nothing to worry about! Besides, what can you expect from seven and eight years old boys …! They are very helpful, though; and they never duck out when they have to get down to some work”. The sun was revealing itself slowly behind the hills running along the east. As some birds still numb, shook their wings while preparing their beaks to greet it. Both of my dogs were sniffing under the bushes along the narrow path of my horse... each one poking its muzzle to one side of the track, as if of their own accord: things you learn through the careful observation of the surroundings.
A ñanco bird was resting on a tall bush oblivious to us. Its breast pointing at me: legend has it, it means good luck, which for us it would be a good rain. The countryside was a calamity due to the drought and it was more than sad to see the animals like this. It hasn´t rained since
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last winter and during the spring and summer the wind and heat have dried everything up. We didn´t even have any offsprings... parched as they were, the goats and sheep. Hardly an hour went by when I saw some long-haired goats got caught in some thorny bushes. The poor animals were so weak, they couldn´t free themselves. At that moment I missed my knife. It has never happened to me before. Going out into the bush without my knife, such a necessary tool! It shouldn´t have happened to me! As if I were a rookie! So, I went back home at once... those poor bony goats. Caught there, lacking in strength to free themselves. Some years ago, my neighbour Huenchumán, was fooling around in towm from bar to bar after a big race. When he got home and went round the farm he found ten goats dead, their long hair tangled in the thorns. Those bushes are very treacherous... the animals start poking into them for food and then get caught. Not to lose it all, Huenchumán sheared the goats right there... “their hair was long enough... it was a pity to waste it!” As I got home, they looked at me puzzled that I came back so soon... “Because I´m a fool”. I answered before they opened their mouth. I just left the horse next to the trough and loosened the girth to rush back again. After indulging myself with some hot buns and drinking half a dozen mates, I fitted my knife to my waist and took a pair of shears and a bag to keep the goats´ hair. It was almost midday when at the steady pace of my horse, I was on my way again. It was a mild day, the sun was hardly warm, it was a typical early autumn day. This year the weather was very changeable, but above all, dry... so are the land and the poor animals. They can not go through the winter like this, unless we have a good rain these days and some green shows up. My thoughts ran wild, and almost without noticing it, I got to the spot where the goats were... yet, for a while, I thought I was hallucinating. I couldn´t believe my eyes, the goats once trapped in the bushes were now walking around, and curious enough, as if it was the result of some kind of spell, under the bushes lay the patches of the goats´ hair. From my horse I looked around. Yet, there was neither movement in the surroundings. Nor anyone to be seen. And nothing startled my dogs. It was hard to believe, how could all that have happened? And, moreover, who did it in just a couple of hours? I got off my horse and began gathering the bunches of hair among the bushes. And there, not without astonishment, I found on the sand
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tiny footprints, not bigger than a quarter of my hand. I stared at the tracks which were all around the bushes where the goats were caught, and finally, they headed to a steep slope plenty of natural lairs. Whitout getting over my amazement, I tied the bag with the hair to my saddle, I fastened the girth and went on my way. As my horse followed the narrow path between the bushes by heart, and the dogs amused themselves running after hare cubs, my thoughts went back years ago, and I remembered when the old men told us stories... such as the story of the “Colli Macuñ”: a little man always in a red poncho, living in hiding behind the slopes and taking care of the animals of good, hardworking people... SPOT
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our days after his death, there they were, the water and food bowls, still full, as if waiting for Spot to poke his muzzle into them.
The day before his last, I found him lying on the pavement in front of the main door. He was immersed in sleeping, not willing to wake up. He could not even ward off the flies crawling laboriously on his body. He seemed he was going to die together with the evening. The sun almost went down behind the Anecón, imposing in the distance. Waving the newspaper I freed him from the revolting torment of the flies. Yet, he did not care about a thing. Uselessly, I tried to help him stand up but his legs could no longer support the weight of his body. However, half an hour later, as the shadows were coming, and I thought of a way of moving him into the yard, I saw him getting his strength back, and going there by himself. To his redoubt, to spend there his last night guard. I did not hear him moving during that night... Spot was hardly alive... His fifteen years of rebellious, and sometimes aggressive dog were fading away. Nevertheless, next day, not without difficulty, he moved round the yard and he even crossed the street to the opposite pavement. Perhaps, in a last effort to please the slacker spirit inside all dogs... And there he lay under a tree. It was a hot afternoon, and I wrongly thought, he was getting over that bad time. But he was not. An hour later, our neighbour Berta came, eyes bright with tears and faltering voice: Spot was dying. His body was shivering, despite the blazing heat.
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We took him to its redoubt in the yard, from where he used to rule, ruffianly at times. Then he closed his eyes, one dark and the other light, for ever. Afterwards, Darío and Herminio made the earth embrace him. Maybe, some day, from it would grow a wild bush or a weed, its sap fed by Spot. And there he remained, for ever, under the skin of the earth, by the elm tree which in the afternoons gives him its shade. Neither Elsa, who was in charge of feeding and taking care of him, nor Claudia, the owner, were there. She was as old as him. When she was little I brought him from the countryside and gave it to her. He had different-coloured spots on his coat, like a painter´s palette. Mister Juan Quinchahuala had given him to me. He was a solitary old man who lived alone with his dogs. That puppy was very different from the other four that remained there, in Cabestro Quemado. He had those distinguishing colours, and also, that light blue eye. When that man gave him to me, I felt he was giving up his own son. I will never forget the brightness in the eyes of my good neighbour Berta, nor her faltering voice, as she gave me the news... Spot was a zealous guardian of her house, as well. And, he would also get from her food and affection in exchange for that incorruptible loyalty dogs give back. For many years now, that section of the street was his. Our gate, together with Berta´s, were defended with zeal and bravery. He would bare his teeth and fight alone fiercely with those suspicious people. Although, his sharp dog intuition failed sometimes, and so an innocent person would have an awful fright... A trial judge can be mistaken too, so, how could not it happen to Spot. This last month he seemed to give up life, and his condition of devoted guardian... and he has lowered his guard... Time and the consequences of fighting other dogs, had run out his life... the hardness of basalt suffers from the effects of time, as well. Four days after his death, there they were, the water and food bowls, still full, as if waiting for Spot to poke his muzzle into them.
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THE CATRILEO WARLOCKS
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egundo Calfín, who had always bragged about facing evil spirits and warlocks, refused to work in the Catrileo´s farm any longer.
Many times, since he was a little boy, he had heard that those people were warlocks and had a huitranalhue ; but around here they sometimes talk about things which are not true; so, in general, he was not influenced by rumors. The two brothers Catrileo were already old people. Each of them had his own family and they worked together in their farm in El Montal; there, where the Patagonian flat gives way to the mountains. They had never socialized with anybody around, or better to say, nobody socialized with them, as rumors had it, they were warlocks and had some evil spell to keep the huitranalhue with them. Many people were suspicious and wondered how in years of heavy snowfall or hard drought, the brothers Catrileo never lost a single animal. 42
Anyway, that afternoon in the bar and post office Las Bayas, one of the brothers, Severo Catrileo, bumped into Calfín and offered him a temporary job to repair some wire fences in their farm. The summer tasks were already done, so Cailfín took the job. A week later, he arrived with his stuff and unsaddled his horse under the tall willow trees in the Catrileo´s yard. There were two neat adobe houses where the families lived and a little farther, a room with a kitchen that was given to Cailfín. Yet, he could also share the meals with the families, if he liked. Even if he was a little wary because of everything he had heard, Cailfín joined the families for barbecues and dinners, and he never saw anything strange around those people. The newcomer started working as it was agreed. And everything went smoothly. Recently, a violent storm had caused serious damage to the wire fences running alongside Cerro Moro, property of a Moor who had adopted native ways. However, one afternoon, as they slaughtered a sheep a curious event struck him: one of the boys ran to a small adobe building next to one of the houses, and from the inside he brought a bowl he would then fill up with the lamb´s blood. Next, he put the bowl back again in the room, and closed the small door. It went on as an usual habit without further order or indication from an adult.
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From then on, Cailfín burnt with curiosity. Who was that blood bowl for? He wondered. It was exacly the same, four days later, while they slaughtered a lamb... And it deepened his already sharp curiosity. Next day, on Sunday, after washing some clothes and hanging them under the shy autumn sun, Cailfín busied himself with greasing his horse riding gear. Unexpectedly, while playing with a collie puppy, the boy that the day before was with the blood bowl, got close to him. A little surprised, he thought of something to keep him around, but the boy himself came closer, curious about his stirrups. Cailfín could not take his curiosity any longer, and asked him about the whole blood issue. The boy answered: it was for the huitranalhue who came at night to drink it. And having said that, he ran into his house. The man now realised that there was something strange there, and that the stories about the brothers Catrileo could be true... For some reason people started talking, maybe it is not just a made up story. He concluded. The moment he learnt that, he decided to stay awake the whole night, in spite of being useless the following day. Anyway, he could fake a flu or so. He had dinner with the family, as he used to, and then, he went to bed early instead of playing cards, saying he would have a tough day ahead. Yet, he was absolutely determined to stay awake. He was stabbed by the sharp knife of curiosity. From the kitchen window of his dwelling, he could see the mysterious adobe building clearly. It was a very small building: two metres long, one metre tall and one wide. Half an hour or so later, he blew out the candle. And sat by the window. It was a clear night. The full moon was so bright that the shadows were hardly bluish and the surroundings could be sharply outlined. The man stood there, motionless, his eyes staring expectantly. He would miss no detail of what could happen around. The dogs, half a dozen or so, got agitated from time to time, pricking up their ears as to get those puzzling nocturnal noises. The cats, growling in anger while scratching the ground, were looking for a fight. They climbed readily the walls up to the roof. Suddenly, Calfín eyes were wide opened as he stared at a dark silhouette. It was like a man holding a walking stick, it moved along the houses towards the small adobe building.
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Th e d o g s a n d c a t s w h i c h we re m ov i n g a ro u n d , l ay d ow n immediately, motionless, as if they were hypnotized. The dark silhouette, excessively tall and thin for a man, crouched down and went inside through the small door. After a short while, it came out and went back his way. Cailfín was as paralysed as the dogs and the cats. The man who, rumors had it, had faced evil spirits and warlocks, was now trembling with fear and a cold sweat ran through his body Then, after that sinister episode, everything went back to normal. The dogs were moving around again, and the cats went back to running and climbing up the roof. Twice or three times he thought of running to check the blood bowl, yet something incomprehensible stopped him from doing it. Besides, he would cause trouble among the dogs in the yard, waking up the family. So, under no circumstances was he to go out and check what had happened... And, moreover, what would the brothers Catrileo say about it. 44
With the first light of the day, Cailfín was still walking nervously to and from the kitchen. It was impossible for him to lie down and rest, even if he needed it badly. Meanwhile, the brothers were in the yard, tying the mules to the cart and loading some tools. Cailfín got closer and asked them for his payment. An hour later, the man with a reputation for being brave, was riding his dark horse, carrying his stuff, on his way back home. Some time afterwards, in the bar Las Bayas, they could hear him saying that he would never work for the brothers Catrileo again. 1 Huitranalhue: supernatural creature which at night goes around the countryside dressed in black. It protects children and shepherd dogs.
ELÍAS CHUCAIR Was born in Río Negro province (1926), in Ingeniero Jacobacci where he lives now. He is a self-taught writer as he has only primary education. He was correspondent of the newspaper Diario Esquel del Chubut between 1949 and 1958. He has also worked in the newspapers Hora 6 and Argentina Austral
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among others. In 1953 he was awarded "Juegos Florales del Chubut" and in 1960 "Jornadas Culturales" of Río Negro. He was director of the Museum of Natural Science and History "Jorge H.Gerhold" in Ingeniero Jacobacci (Adhonorem) from 1969 to 1990. He is one of the founders of "Fundación Ameghino" of Río Negro. He was also Diputado Provincial (member of the parliament) and Intendente (mayor) of Ingeniero Jacobacci 1970 to 1973. He made up the “Federación Rionegrina de Escritores” (writer´s group). Published works: 1969: Bajo Cielo Sur - 1970: Sur Adentro - 1974: Desde Huillimapú - 1977: Con Viento Patagónico - 1979: Con Grillos y Silencios - 1980: Tiempo y Distancia - 1984: La Inglesa Bandolera y otros relatos (2nd edition 1996, 3rd 2003) and Ayer Aquí, since 1984, 32 publications up to now. - 1985: El Maruchito hacedor de milagros (2nd edition 1997) - 1986: Cuentos y Relatos 1989: Hombre y Paisaje - 1991: Partidas sin Regreso de Arabes en la Patagonia (2nd edition 1993, 3rd 2000) - 1994: De Umbral Adentro - 1998: El Collar del Chenque - 1999: Acercando Ayeres - 2001: Dejaron Improntas - 2003: Rastreando Bandoleros - 2004: Anécdotas de un Rincón Patagónico. In 1984 and 1985 he got the 1st and 3rd prize "Premio de la Canción Patagónica" in Comodoro Rivadavia, Chubut. He was nominated among the important figures of 2000 in the biography book of Neuquén and Rio Negro. 45
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Messages to the Rural Dweller HUMAN POEMS
Jorge Spíndola * To Néstor and Teófilo in the Lobos area, Andrés informs them he will arrive at the gate before dusk.
M radios from Patagonia have included them in their programming for more than forty years. The constant and punctual broadcast of the The Messenger to the Rural Dweller is one of the necessary supports for family and social ties for many settlers of the vast Patagonian territory. Mainly, for those people living in the midland plateau.
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Its familiar language, codes and topics are an “oraliterature” (as the poet Elicura Chihuailaf has it) which is part of the rural/urban identity of the area. The following work suggests an approach to the “messenger” from its own language: a poetic framework of voices and cultures which questions the topics dominating over the silence and emptiness of Patagonia. RADIO LETTERS
Over all these years, “The messenger” has been there, at the exact time and place. As those buses coming and going every week through the dusty plateau roads: always arriving, without stridency, with their endless human load. The messenger to the Rural Dweller has been broadcasted by AM radios of the area, be it LU20, LU17, LU4, LRA9, Radio Nacional Esquel
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among others; six times a day, for more than forty years. And it is the main, and in some cases the only, link of communication between the rural dwellers and the cities, or among themselves. The long lasting continuity on the air has not fossilized its discourse, on the contrary, it has been changing, modifying its reception and range of interests. It has developed a framework of voices, sometimes poetic; with a language and register on its own. For the regular users it is normal to talk about “the agreed upon”, set expression necessary to keep some privacy from the radio public and mass exposure: * To Juan Sepúlveda in the settlement La Aguada his brother informs him that on Tuesday he will go for the agreed, please make it four. * To Emilio Williams in the area of the Miras: what was talked about will not come into effect. Signs Ceferonio López. * One of the characteristics of The messenger is, in fact, the flexibility of the register, which allows it to be the frame to true “radio letters” ranging from people’s private and family life to formal institutional, social and work links: 48
* To the dwellers in the area of Pajarito: the meeting will be on Wednesday at 11 in the settlement los Tamariscos. * To Carlos Tramaleo in Meseta Somuncurá, his sister Elva informs him that she is in Traguaniyeo, and on Tuesday she will go to Comicó. Here, everybody is fine. THE CITY AND THE COUNTRYSIDE
The familiar language crossed with the public/institutional discourse has been a common characteristic; at the beginning, public institutions like Vialidad Nacional (national road administration) gave its reports about the roads conditions, manily during the high winter. But also, schools and rural hospitals, mobile registry offices and even parish churches: * The rural commune of Lagunita Salada informs its residents that on Friday will be a mobile unit of the registry office to start all kind of documents. There will be also a photographer to take pictures for the IDs. Signs Omar Ancamil, village president. * The director of Gan Gan regional Hospital informs the dwellers of Chacay Oeste and surrounding areas that on Wednesday there will be staff in the healthcare unit.
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* Gastre Christian community invites residents to take part in the mate drinking meeting on Wednesday at 17 to celebrate friends´day. * To the villager of Fofo Cahuel: next Sunday there will be a liturgical celebration at 11. To these messages, typical of the rural area and its administrative centres located in coastal cities and Esquel, it has been added, little by little, during the last years “letters” from institutions and businesses from the cities. Their recipients, the city dwellers themselves. A kind of “interference” in the codes and distances. So, for example, “The Rural Messenger” is used by school cooperatives announcing clothes fairs, neighbour associations and other ONGs ( non governmental organizations): * To the parents of the kids in the children´s orchestra of INTA neighbourhood, it is informed that at 3 pm the bus will be in the school. * The headship of the school 733 from Bryn Gwyn wants to see on Monday, the parents or guardians of students receiving a grant. * Dolavon´s town council inforns its neighbours that from Thursday on the refuse collection will be after 7 pm. * It is also used frequently to offer services and recruit workers, for police summons, to inform people about burials and lost and found animals and objects, as well: * Interpesca informs its staff: be in the plant the 20th at 6 in the morning. Filleters bring along the knife. * It was found a bumper with license plate of a car VW Senda in Irigoyen and Cangallo streets. Contact this radio. * It was lost in Trelew a passport, an American visa and a migration card which belong to John Petersen. Their return will be rewarded. THE PERSISTENT RURAL ISSUES Noticeable as it is the “interference” of the intitutional, urban and even political discourses on this media; its identity seal is still the register, the spoken language of the countryside dwellers. Specially, the link among the people living in the midland plateau, this vast territory (miscalled desert) where, isolated and stoically, thousand of families and communities live. Rural tasks, such as shearing, the communication with and from institutions like INTA (National Institute of Agricultural Technology), the
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condition of boundaries and wire fences, the animals lost and found, the solidarity, etc., are reasons for many oral letters: * To Arroyo Verde´s villagers, Feliciano informs them that he has lost forty goats, including a billy goat with bell and a brown dappled one. He will be very grateful for any information. * To Fernando, Elvio tells him to go to Cona Niyeo to pick up the horse. * To Julio Painepil, wherever he is, Nicolás informs him that his horse is already in the farm. * To Irineo Currumil who is working with Roberto Santos´ machine, his wife informs him that she has received the goods he has sent through mister Hugo Ñanco. Here, everybody is fine (Gastre booth) * Young man offered to do any rural work, with experience and horse riding gear. Please, contact this radio. * To mister Tramaleo in Sierra Apa, González informs him that on Tuesday or Wednesday he will be there to load the amimals. 50
* Chapingo informs its neighbours that on August 22nd and 23rd he will start working with the livestock and setting animals apart. THE REASONS FOR THE TRIP To the rural dwellers, the trip is an obligatory cause of communication. Departures and arrivals sometimes take more than a single bus. Miles and miles, leguas, covered on foot, on horse back, by roadwork machines; So, it is necessary the communication to go to pick up the travellers in country lanes, gates, far-off spots. And it is like a ritual for those leaving to inform, by any mean, how and when they have arrived to their destination: * To Nicolás Antenao in el Calafate. Patricia informs him that she did not go to pick him up due to the snow on the road. Please, turn on the radio. This oral chronicle of a kind, is soaked with stories of people who live and interact in a territory of thousands of square miles. Despite the contact with other discurses and the complex pollution of voices which is the social communication, the messenger keeps on expressing its language made of solitude and remoteness. As Benedetti has it “behind it are the people”, as behind each message there are people, families, entire villages, which would
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punctually turn on the radio, the dial fixed, at least to listen and know about their own world. A world of people sometimes only visible through these human poems: * To Juan Carlos Migoren, in the settlement La Paloma, today his boss Aurelia Peña is arriving. She will get by roadwork machine up to the steep slope, she carries fuel and battery. She sets off today at 7 in the mornig. Please wait for her. * To Norma Figueroa, her sister informs her they have arrived well at Praguaniyeo and the baby was born. * To Elena Huala in Laguna, her mother is in hospital in Gan Gan. Please go. * To Elba in Lagunita Salada her brother Germán informs her he will go by the bus El Ñandú. Please, wait for him. * To Néstor and Teófilo in Lobos´ area. Andrés informs them he will arrive at the gate before dusk. * To Lino Díaz in Maquinchao, Elida and Andrea let him know they have arrived well at Cona Niyeo.Their grandmother is fine as well. * To Ángel Huenchuleo, in Taquetrén, his son lets him know his father is in hospital in Esquel. He is well, he is together with his wife. Signs: Joaquín Huenchuleo. A DISCOURSE STRANGE, POETIC AND ALIEN The Rural dweller´s messenger has developed into a discourse strange, poetic and different from the common language of the AM radio programmes. Even more alien to the registers of the FM ones. Perhaps, the names of people in these section, mainly from the native indians Mapuches and Tehuelches. Or even the places which reflect a toponymy alien to the urban framework (such as Meseta Somuncurá, Bajo El Caín, Yala Lauabat, Fofo Cahuel, Colaniyeo and many others from ancient oral ways of naming the land), are some of the clues to get closer and understand this language from other environment, alien to the hiper-codified discourses of the mass media. As the Mapuche poet Elicura Chihualiaf would say in his Confidential Message to the Chilean people (Recado confidencial a los chilenos), there is an oraliterature which questions our fetishism for writing. There is an ancient oral tradition which still is cultural frame, link of dialogue, mixed of voices. There is a mix of language and time in it.
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Chihualiaf´s concept of oraliterature describes the process in which the extraordinary Mapuche´s poetry develops currently. It is useful to broaden our understanding of this world/ language born from oral tradition. It is a texture that does not forget its voice, its poetry in the speech and communication acts. The idea of desert has an ancient colonial tradition. It is part of the domination speech dating from the old matrix of Spanish and then English travellers, to explorers and cartographers from the National State itself. All of whom have tried to silence the native voices, their language, their people. There is a true literary tradition born from the romanticism that cloys itself with the emptiness, the strangeness, the barbarian of these pampas. Beautiful literature of strangeness which empties, silences, bares and does not listen, does not see the other, except for imposing the colonial fiction. Meanwhile, from the messenger, many voices and whisperings, words from the land mixed with others, withstand and unfold their human poems six times a day, every day. 52
* To Jerónimo Colemil in Bajo El Caín, his mother informs him that tomorrow Tuesday she will go by roadwork vehicle to the truck spot. Please wait for her, take a backpack. * To Ricardo Fritz, in Laguna Fría, Jorge asks him to go to his house and feed the dogs and the hens. The key and the meat are in the bedroom. (Gan Gan booth). * To Eloy Singler, his wife asks him to go to Yala Laubat. She has no firewood. * To Jorge Calvo in La Bombilla. Oscar lets him know that Beto is in los Chapengo. Everything is fine, he did not pay a visit as he had no time. * To Camarones´ area, farm La Ernesta, please, turn on the telephone at 13 hours.
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JORGE SPÍNDOLA - All the messages quoted here are real and belong to the Messages to the Rural Dweller File (Archivo del Mensajero al Poblador Rural) from LU 20 Radio Chubut, which kindly let me use it for this work. - Elicura Chihulaf. 1999. “ The bridge broad and blue of oraliterature” (“El puente ancho y azul de la oralitura”) . In confidencial message to the Chilean people. Santiago: Lom, 1999. The Messenger in the arts and other mediums: The contact with the universe of language of the messenger to the rural dweller, has always attracted the arts; there are singers such as Saúl Huenchul, among others, who have included it in their songs; even in the local pop rock. Argentinean film world has also included it in some scenes of its movies, such as “Wild Horses” (Caballos Salvajes), “Minor Stories” (Historias mínimas) or “ The Patagonian Teacher” (El profesor patagónico) starring the well know actor Luis Sandrini. The poet Silvana Franzzetti confidentially talks with fragments of the messenger as a background in one of her books. In the written press, as well, it is becoming more visible through texts like those of Mercedes Constanza Soler, published by the newspaper "La Nación", in the “Gaucho´s Corner” section.
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Live and Let Die Bruno Di Benedetto When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say: "live and let live” (you know: you did) But if this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give and cry, say: live and let die, live and let die! Paul McCartney Sound track of the film "Live and let Die" (1974)
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he coach Don Otto is a noisy and uncomfortable piece of junk, but it will be my world during the next 24 hours. Between my legs is a small hand bag: a book I will never read, a tooth brush, a crumpled hand towel, a green waterproof light jacket. That is it, and a suitcase getting dusty underneath: a couple of change of clothing, more books, some records, documents and some photos my friends gave me at the bus station so I don’t forget them. All my belongings. And the memory. A thick mass of memories set on my brain but weighting on my chest. It is morning, January 26th, 1979. I have not taken my eyes away from the endless green prairie for four hours. Wheat, Sunflower, alfalfa, for others. Desert for me. The creeping plain, sharp as a sickle. Perhaps if I stare at it intensely enough, it would come to me with a merciful dead blow and would clear away the lid of my brain, and then the memories and thoughts would not longer be those beasts with fangs and hooves dwelling in the fold of my head. They would fly away. I would like to have my head full of birds. But then, it would be a cage. So, better nothing. Better the emptiness. Be born again, clean. The Don Otto’s drivers wear light blue shirts, the armpits evident with sweat. One is very fat the other very thin. One’s hair is cut very short, the other’s hair is long and silky and done in complicated greyish curls. The thin man is very talkative and laughs heartily showing his golden
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tooth. He does not laugh, I think, he shows the tooth. He lives for that. To show his tooth. Look. I have a tooth. A golden one. The fat man is bad tempered. Always. He growls at the thin man. He bites the world going past at each side of route 3. I can imagine him bitting the Hereford and Aberdeen Angus cows, our prairie queens. The fat man bites them on the back of the neck, raises them in the air, shakes them and with a powerful twist of his hippopotamus neck, throws them over the grass field. Cow to the moon. Cow crashing on the Sea of Tranquility. Cow splashing blood all over the nearby craters. Gaucho looking up the sky, and going: red moon, it’s gonna rain. The back seat, the quintuple, is occupied by three Bolivian women with babies. I do not know if the babies are Bolivian, they could be Argentinean, as well. They look like Bolivian, though. And they shit, as all Bolivian and Argentinean babies do. French babies shit too, I realize joyful. And Polish. And Thai babies. The world is one. My brotherly thoughts are not enough to dispel the terrible smell. The women are changing their babies´ nappies right there. And they are travelling up to Comodoro Rivadavia, as I have picked up from Quechua phrases, or Aymara, who knows. Desperately, I try to calculate how many times they would change their babies´ nappies during the one thousand and two hundred kilometres left to Puerto Madryn. I ponder the possibility of changing my destination. Of getting off the bus right there. I have no reason to go to Puerto Madryn. Nobody is waiting for me. I know no one. On the other hand, my nose has powerful reasons to make me get off the Don Otto right now, among the Aberdeen and the Hereford cows, their dung smell if not more bearable, at least more poetic. I have browsed through Ode to Cattle and Harvest. Somehow, I remain on the bus. In the seat next to mine go on changing the occasional travel-mates. An old man, frail due to the tobacco, on his way to meet his first grandson. He gets off in one of those towns with English name of Buenos Aires province. I wish him good luck aloud and in low voice not to die before he arrives. I hope he enjoys his grandson before the heart stroke or lung cancer. My shirt pocket bulges with two packets of cigarettes with which I make more agreeable the journey. Then, up to Bahia Blanca, a fat man, junior officer in the army. Perfectly trimmed black moustache, little piggy eyes buried in the fat of his cheeks. He smells like Old Spice and whisky. He scratches his crotch while talking politics and tells me when he was in Tucumán´s forest killing leftist. One of his piggy eyes peeps my reaction. The buzzing is as subtle as a cudgel. I tell him about my military service. And the way in which I became a man by dint of senior officer strokes. “Piggy eyes” smiles pleased, but I know he suspects. He sniffs at me
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from the distance. He is well trained. Like one of those pigs searching for truffles underground. If the fat driver would not be so bad humored, I would ask him to bite the Pig. Bite him in the back of the neck, and shake him and throw him over the sunflowers. Pig to the moon. Pig crashing into a million pieces and splashing pig shit over the Sea of Storms. Gaucho looking up the moon and running for an umbrella. The Pig gets off yet his smell lingers mingling with that of the babies and the rank tobacco of the old man. I start to suspect I have died and was condemned to a wheeled olfactory hell of a sort.
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Bahia Blanca, we stop for forty five minutes. In the bus station we are fed on oily spaghetti. I ask for a bottle of wine. I know being drunk is the only way to get sane to my destination. In the table next to mine is the Front-Seat family. The kids blond and cute. The mother young, plump, neat. The father clean shaven, creaseless light green shirt. Always smiling. They are not going. They are coming back. They are from Puerto Madryn, I overheard. The father waves at me friendly. He smiles. They are nice people. I wave back at him with my right hand. Va´fan´gulo, I mutter still smiling. This is what my father does when nice people wave at him from a distance. He waves back and says: va´fan´gulo. He smiles at them warmly and in low voice says: fuck you. It is his favourite Sicilian joke. Mine too, it seems. Oh, father, why you have not left me. The wine gives me a pleasant drowsiness. I sit on a bench in the platform. Don Otto is there, now silent, giving off gas oil waste steam. A big sleeping whale in the flat Pampas´ night. When the whale wakes up, will swallow us again, and there we will go into her belly, wading through green grass oceans. I am like Jonah, thinks my solemn and biblical side, another gift from my father. Or like Gepetto. Or Pinocchio, says the little voice always making fun of me. The fat and the thin men wake up Moby Dick. When I was in the military service, the most hated guard was that at the entrance of the Libertad building. In white leggings and helmet, we must remain motionless for six hours, in the miserable territory delimited by the edges of a single floor tile. Look ahead. Rounded chest, hands in the back. Body weight desperately shifting from one leg to the other, feet bursting with pain. Standing. Six hours, like a garden statue. Watching the officers past by in their white and golden uniform, ignoring the mandatory salute, mad as they were about the female civilians who worked there, exuberant women that dragged from our eyes like the good Percheron mares they were. So you have to try hard not to look at them under penalty of falling into disgrace with the official
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on duty. Fernández: looked at a pair of tits. Two days of arrest. Di Benedetto: three arses. Two mouths. Five pairs of tits. One week of arrest. And wash the toilets, Di Benedetto. So, during these six hours of stillness and visual self-denial I came up with my record pastime. It consisted of singing to myself one by one, in order, with all the arrangements, every single song of every single album I knew by heart. They were ten or twelve records every guard. La Biblia, by Vox Dei. Artaud, by Pescado Rabioso. Desatormentándonos. The Dark Side of the Moon. A cassette I borrowed with songs from the Spanish Civil War. The Beatles, of course. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Bob Dylan and many more. So, now, again into Moby Dick´s belly, I lay hands on my military training and attack with Simon & Garfunkel. Wonder of wonders, the beginning of Bridge over turbulent waters coincides with the crossing of a river I fleetingly see shining under the stars. God, sometimes, not only exists but also has fun. Between song and song a melody slips in, I could not identify it at the beginning. It insists, and gets in asking to be included in the repertoire. Eventually I yield. McCartney´s voice brings it to me. First in parts, then the whole song. It is Live and Let Die, composed especially for Bond, James Bond, for the film. Roger Moore, good Percheron mares, British action. Music of famous names. Live and let die. With the typical McCartney orchestration, powerful chords, perfect tune, sensuality and sweet sorrow dipped into good brandy by the fireplace, back there in Cheshire. Feline smile hovering in the emptiness: live and let die. We arrive to Viedma. Ten minutes. I smoke three cigarettes. Drink some beer. Live and let die. Back into Moby. First the passengers already travelling, orders one of the drivers. A nun gets in. She threatens to sit next to me. Then, does not. Two soldiers. An old man with a funny white beard. Neither does him. A mother with two babies. I beg she doesn´t. Bolivian people don´t, please, babies don´t. They pass by. A short dark haired young woman. She sits by me. Hurrah. Flesh. Live and let die. It takes me a few minutes to start a conversation. She says she is Ana, she lives in Comodoro, has no boyfriend, she gave up studying, comes back from visiting an aunt, is twenty two, works. She is not beautiful. Does not look clever. Does not know Bob Dylan, but from her breast comes up a scent of wheat and honey, from her plumpish body arises a slow warmth and, occasionally, her hand touches slightly mine. I play I fall in love a little bit and my mind starts to devise all
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kind of erotic bonds plausible to be carry out unnoticed in the belly of the cetacean, which buzzes as it goes into the Patagonic desert. Ana closes her eyes. She sleeps or fakes sleeping. Cautiously, I put my arm around her shoulders and draw her closer. She resists a little. I kiss her hair. We fall asleep silently. When I wake up she is sat upright, eyes open, looking into the night, the nothingness. I take her hand. She leans against my shoulder. With the other hand I caress her breasts, she slaps slightly at my hand. No, she says. I don´t. But she does. You are sweet, she says. And I feel a flow of lava going down my spine and making me grasp for breath.
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Things do not go farther than these innocent games and I go back to sleep. I wake up, Ana is pushing my arm with the tip of her fingers: there you are, Puerto Madryn. The morning sun is high in the sky over a sea painful of so blue and so close. Moby Dick buzzes, roars and gasps going down the plateau. Down there everything seems tiny, meticulous, clean. There are ships grazing on the blue prairie. Hanging at the side of a cliff, wakes up my white town. The streets glitter, Bahía Nueva glitters. I am falling in love with this handful of houses scattered in a small bowl of wind and chalky soil. Give me your address. Next week I´m going to Comodoro to visit a friend who is in the military service. Ana scribbles some words on my notebook. Her handwriting is big and childish. It has spelling mistakes. Your home, I ask. No, my workplace. A boutique. See you. See you. Kiss on the cheek. I look for her mouth and she gives me a soft kiss that turns me on clearly. Ana looks at my crotch, then fixes her eyes on the building of the bus station. Bye, good luck. Live and let die. The old building of the bus station stinks as badly as Moby Dick. I go out into the fresh air and walk to the sea. My luggage hardly weights so I go on a few blocks to the south. Gales Avenue, España street, Albarracín, Estivariz, Moreno. Then the sand-dunes and far beyond, the desert. The town frays rapidly to the south, only some isolated houses can be seen. The blue colour of the sea seems to have life on its own, to exist without the need of the water, intense as it was. You feel you can smell it, touch it, taste it. I turn round called by the West. The desert stretches out to some distant cliffs surrounding the town in a crescent. Out there the desert is a sickle of sharp morning light. Wednesday, January 31st. I go on falling down the map on board another whale. Different drivers. Both very thin. Very talkative. They laugh heartily. With restlessness I discover at least one of them has a golden tooth. The whale´s belly is almost empty. A few Mapuche women. Two Israeli back-packers. Some sailors who have just come ashore, their pockets full of money. I lingered in Puerto Madryn for a few days in a
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hotel on the verge of falling apart. I walked up and down the amazingly wide beach. Bathed in that absolutely clear, absolutely cold water regardless the thirty two degrees weighting right on its surface. Then, I bought a ticket to Comodoro with the blur mission of visiting a friend´s brother in the military service. In my notebook, Ana´s workplace address, she who I hardly remember her face. Comodoro Rivadavia sleeps coiled upon the nest of a hundred roads the oil has taken there. It is big, dirty, badly steep to the sea. The w i n d d ra g s a l o n g s m a l l p e b b l es a n d i t c a n p u s h yo u d o w n unexpectedly at any corner. It is cold, so I have my green jacket on. I walk the city center for a while. Have a coffee and decide to put off the military visit for the afternoon. Without giving it a second thought, I ask for the street the name of which is scribbled in my notebook. I set off, walking up the side of a hill, I am told it to be a Tehuelche Indians graveyard. The steep street grows greyish and dusty as I walk up. In Comodoro, the poor enjoy better view than the rich. But that is it. It is no place for a boutique. However, there it is: Analia´s fashion shop and below: sewing and tailoring of all kinds, and even below, in a notebook sheet stuck with tape: crossbred Siamese kittens are given. Two fat women are chatting one at each side of the counter. One of them looking at a bra the cups of which could be used without discredit for carrying watermelons. I ask for Ana. Something tells me the answer will be: Who? And so is it. A girl like this and that. Look. She wrote this address herself. The fat woman, Analía, I guess, tries to make out the round childish handwriting. Then looks at me with some pity and says: some boldfaced who pulled you leg, sir. But she must be from the neighbourhood, admits nobly. As I go down the Chenke hill, I imagine Ana peeping at me from one of the greyish houses. May be she is laughing. May be not. I feel like a jerk. Live and let die, Ana or whoever you are. I feel like a jerk now. But I will always remember the scent of honey and wheat and cinnamon, coming up her breasts. Down here it is getting worse. It is hot and some harsh dust is the restless rider of the west wind. In a café, over a cup of coffee and some croissants, I start feeling a stab of distance. But, from where. Distant from where am I. I spend the early afternoon walking and trying to write a poem which never comes. Sitting on a fence I take off my jacket while watching the cars go by. The buses bear labels with odd names such as “Astra” or “Kilometre Six”. I stand up and walk a few blocks with the crowd growing with the afternoon. Time to visit my friend, I say to myself. I looked for the address which is in my notebook, which is in the inner
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pocket of my jacket which is on the fence three hundred metres up there. When I reach the spot, gasping for breath, I realize that apart from the notebook I have lost the warm and dinner, as well. In the other pocket was my only big bank note. In my trousers´ pocket just some change and papers. And worse, no idea of where to find my friend. I try to remember. With resigned practicality, I spend a few coins phoning every military office in Comodoro Rivadavia. At the fourth or fifth attempt they put me through private Pérez. The meeting takes place opposite the fence which was the perdition of my jacket. With the little money I have left, I buy some bread, some cold meat and half a litre of gin. We eat in the square and talk until late at night. I h ave n ow h e re t o g o . M y f r i e n d t a kes m e t o a d u s t y c ove re d passageway connecting two streets. We curl up in a nook under the staircase. There we spend darkness, dozing off, warmed up by long gulps of gin, laughing out, aware of being lost in the endless night. Next morning with the first sun beams, we walk to route 3. Madryn is that way, says my friend. That other way, he says pointing south, is Caleta Olivia. And that way is the junction with the route to the mountains. I got to go, I can´t be late. Bye, bye. A hug. 60
Standing right there in that road knot, I think that any of them is all the same to me. This trip has started to cleanse me up in some way. Something big, something useless has started to die inside me. I have enough for a meal. And two gulps of gin. That is it. Nothing else. No one else. I am nobody now. I am anybody. I am everybody. So, it is just a matter of living. Live and let die. A truck comes from one of the routes. I am not sure from which one or where to. I run. Wave it unwillingly, like a castaway far too used to solitude. The truck halts fifty metres ahead. –Where to, buddy? –Where are you going, sir? –To Viedma –To Puerto Madryn, then. Puerto Madryn, do you know it? –Got family there? –No, nobody. Well, I got myself. I left a suitcase there. Some photos, records. And some clothes. I explain aware of my shabby look. –So, prepare some mate1, you, reddish. –Sweet or bitter? –Sweet, buddy, sweet. Bitter is life already.
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To Javier Villafañe who a last evening, in Puerto Madryn told me a truth I did not want or could not understand. And now I do not remember.
BRUNO DI BENEDETTO Was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1955. Since 1979 he lives in Puerto Madryn, Chubut, Patagonia. He has coordinated writing workshops for writers and teachers in several cities around the country. He worked encouraging reading through radio and tv. programmes and published several newspaper articles, as well. He was co-editor of the street magazine Darse vuelta, award "Hacelo vos" 2007 (do it yourself) Ministerio de Desarrollo Social de la Nación. From 2005 he is trainer in the National Reading Plan in Chubut province. He coordinated the publication of Palabras que trae el viento 1 and 2, (Words Brought by the Wind) selection of authors from Chubut, for the local Reading Plan and the National Reading Programme. He organized the conferences: "Los maestros de la Rosa Blindada" (2001); "Los maestros del Escarabajo de Oro" (2002); and XXIII, XXV and XXVI Encuentro de Escritores Patagónicos (Patagonian writers´meeting). He has published poem books: Palabra irregular (Award Convocatoria Escritores Inéditos, Chubut, 1987), Complicidad de los náufragos, Dormir es un oficio inseguro (Award Fondo Editorial Chubut, 2003), Vengan juntos (short stories) and Country (Ed. El surí porfiado, 2009) Unpublished books : Crónicas de muertes dudosas (2008, Poetry Award, Casa de las Américas 2010) and Nada (2009)
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RUZ SANTA C
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What Gaspar Quesada saw, after his death Claudia Elisabet Sastre
here I see him, poor Juan, together with the little priest, crying their eyes out, their dry eyes, because the lack of water causes great damage in their tongues. They have even drunk from the pool of my blood that Luis left when he cut my throat with his own hands ... Here and there are scattered parts of my body. So I will not come back to life the day the righteous are called (I was almost certain I would not be called, however, it hurts being so unloved!!) and by my servant´s very own hands. Here and there are the pieces of Mendoza´s body. Just this scaffold marked we are around here, together with the bloodcurdling scream of the seagulls and petrels... Poor devils, Juan and Sánchez de la Reina, follow them and seem to play with them holding hands in a tragic circle. The miserable wretches, their faces grey, their bodies racked with desperation. I prefer my fate, though. Visited by woodworms, I will watch from here how little by little their hopes die. Hope I no longer have...
T
The indians grimacing at us from the other shore. Wailing, the ignorant fools. I think they want us (in their strange language) to account for the indians kidnapped on the vessel... It is not clear, though, whether they want to help the prisoners or kill them. Probably, the poor things would prefer the latter... A few metres south is Mendoza´s head... the sea worms have told me, and at full moon nights I saw the luminescence of parasites that
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showed it to me... I sharpened my ears, blocked up by seashells, to hear its murmur. Invectives and swear words muttered to Hernando: “ if they had done this, if that cowards had turned themselves in, if we had made it to the open sea on the Santiago and the Concepcion.” I admit I have egged him on. I have talked him into this, poisoned him just for fun: “Elcano said that you... and Coca... ” and he would snort helpless with rage, poor little thing. He snorted and from his toothless mouth came out a yellow foam, mixed with gravel and sea weeds. He became quieter and quieter, his tongue hardened, just the light from his furious eyes was visible at night, and now not even that. From where my head was, still and captive, I saw the tearful movements of Sánchez de la Reina and Juan de Cartagena, shaking their arms desperately, scrabbling around in the mud of the Island, maybe searching for something to eat... but there is not fire, neither something to light it. The ground wet by tides and ebbs has torn their shoes and the skin of their feet to shreds. There is nothing to eat nor drink, and the poor devil´s hallucinations make them talk about exquisite delicacies in far away courts, about abundance and wealth, glasses served by golden hurís, half naked... the priest forgot hastly enough his vows and faith in this godless land. 64
Time after -who knows how long- just moans came out from the scalded and scabby bodies of the poor shipwrecked sailors. And as the moans were more infrequent and I heard no longer the chatter of their few remaining teeth, I knew they were dead. They died without fury. Without sense of self. They just faded away. They were not even good listeners to me, after Mendoza went silent just the gulls kept me company. I have always known it. Now, I have proved it true. There is no God here, at least not as we know it. After the appalling silence came their gods, to light bonfires on the shore, to hover over my head, loose as light, swirls of beautiful tinkling lights. I just did not understand whether these visits were a punishment or a sentence. Seasons went by and the indians came back, but they seemed to ignore the presence of their gods. So I ,already a skull, felt I was the one... something had happened because I could not die out completely. Then came other vessels, through my empty eye sockets I made them out, their sails, their blue outline against the horizon. White people landed on my land, they would look at the scaffold and step on our bones (there were no longer difference among us).Then they raised a
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town in the far southwest end of the bay... I spent years watching its hustle and bustle from my silence of centuries... Our bones: already turned into dust; my head: already gone; but my presence ( I would not call it a ghost): remains here, tied to this island, this wind, these seagulls. Watching vessels and icebergs, listening to the song of the dolphins; being trampled on by tourist coming by boat in summer... I dream about going into town at high tide to listen to other voices, but it is impossible. The ghosts from the old cemetery in Punta Caldera greet me, but they can not come either, they are tied by invisible chains, and beyond people´s fantasy, I remain here. Claudia Elisabet Sastre Puerto San Julian Bay – April 2010-
Tombs in the desert
H
e did not know in which moment he surprised himself at being lost. Completely lost. He did not even realise for how long he had been walking in that new world, after two months of sea and more sea. Perhaps, he went down the sand dune on the wrong side, or he was misled by that erratic dry gully... splitting into endless narrower tracks. Or he became intoxicated with the song of birds or the underground tapping of the tucu-tucus –unknown to him- However, when he realised he was lost he went on walking, whistling a traditional melody, his hand in his pockets. He had so much faith in God, he thought He would lead him into the right way back.
It was useless to scan the sky, of an unknown blue. The sun leant into the last hours of that winter afternoon in July 1865. He was no sailor, though. He could not guide himself by the stars of that sky, so different from his sky back in Europe. The little sky of Wales, what little was left to them by the English; and that they dreamt for themselves here in South America. Soon, the sun turned an orange-pinkish hue- it would be windy next day, that was the signal. But David Williams would never see it.
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As he walked looking for the camp he thought how beautiful this land was. Beautiful, like an unknown woman. Beautiful and fierce. With his hands in his pockets he stroked his tailor´s scissors made of pure silver, his name engraved on them; and his verses, the verses he would write to his dreamt Patagonia. Was it similar that ideal to this landscape which had now caught him? Was it Patagonia that jealous lover, in love with the poet who wrote poems to her, and now, she wanted him for herself? To sleep for ever on her lap? The countless feet of the sand dune moved him further away from the delegation, already far away. And his leaps caused innumerable slides on the cold sand. The light blue eyes of the Welsh had caught that wild land, and Patagonia, female as she was, had seduced him with her mermaid´s songs, with her chimerical whistles and her smell of herbs and wild thyme. Which other female can boast about being beautiful without make-up? Just with what she has, needless to say, the colours of her face... The land had loved him in each one of his uncertain and doubtful steps. Until tiredness beat him and the cold sand welcomed his body, lying exhausted, finally, in her arms. She took him into her bosom, like a child of her own blood. 66
In the pockets of the Welsh were the poems to his beloved Patagonia, and the scissors. The eyes coloured like the sky shut at times, and his lover started covering his sockets and the subtle dips in his body with the sand from the beach... the gusts of wind brought him the roar of the sea which could be far away, or near; with the Patagonian wind, you never know. The thirst and the cold would beat his will and his faith, sooner or later, and he would sleep an eternal dream in the arms of his lover... Years went by until they finally found his body, in the low-lying ground they would then name The Bones. Another tomb in the desert. Then, he was recognised by the silver scissors in his pocket, and he was carried to a tomb with his name engraved on the stone, a little bit southwards, in Chubut´s Valley. Claudia Elisabet Sastre Bahía de Puerto San Julián - May 2010-
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Never Saturday, much less Sunday
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t was Saturday, said the calendar, but it could be any day: Thursday, Tuesday, even Monday; never Saturday and much less Sunday.
In the same way, she knew somebody had been tinkering with the calendar: –Because time is never wrong. –Neither right. She was there, as if it were Saturday, but it was not. The man came in the bakery, through the curtains made of colourful little metal chains, curtains against the flies which never realise its presence. The man came through it silently and he attracted nobody´s attention; but hers. He stood in front of the sweets counter. He looked at Mister Juan smiling. He looked at him with the eyes, which were on the face, and on the face there was also a nose, and a mouth, which smiled, only with the mouth- not with the eyes, with the eyes, he looked at Mister Juan-, but then he looked at the pastries; with the mouth, he asked: –A dozen of those. –Assorted, right? –With dulce de leche, yes. –No cream. –And a kilo of bread, too. He went to the cashier, he didn´t see her, she thought he was pretending, but he didn´t. He didn´t see her: –If it were Saturday he would see me.
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–But it isn´t. The calendar with the drawing of a coutryman on a horse by the painter Molina Campos, insisted from its torn pages: Saturday 6th, February, and bigger above the date 1979, though. –Time flies. –Always the same, day after day. The hot wind shook the curtains, at times, and played music for the shadows inside. –If it were Saturday, he would see me. –But he didn´t, because it is not Saturday, so I am not here. –I must be somewhere else. –I must be at home, preparing the stew in the iron pot, stirring, stirring, so it doesn´t stick to the bottom, fucking stew. –But I am not there, if not, for sure, the stew would have been stuck, fucking stew. 68
–When I stir the stew, I don´t know why, I feel like going to the field, to pick up flowers, but I don´t go, I stay, because it is not Sunday. –On Sundays I go to the field, sometimes, if it doesn´t rain, to the field nearby, to pick up flowers. –On Saturdays to the bakery, with Mister Juan; on Sundays to the field; whether Saturday or Sunday, or Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, stew. Fucking stew. –And Mister Juan doesn´t see me either, he whistles, whistles a tango, he whistles badly, you can hardly understand what he whistles, he whistles for himself, just for himself. –Otherwise, he sings, he sings songs from his land, sad songs, and he cries. He weeps, so that nobody sees him, or to be seen. –Because now he doesn´t cry nor sees me. –And he doesn´t see me because it is not Saturday. –Otherwise he would have said “hello” or something, or “let´s prepare some mates”,and I would have told him “ I can´t Mister Juan, I´m preparing a stew”. Not any stew; the stew, the fucking stew. She got bored with talking to herself, stood up, went to the counter, the pastries counter, wooden, with a glass top. She picked up the more tempting one, with quince jelly and apple. It was dry, so she threw it through the air like a boomerang. It ended up hitting Mister Juan´s bald
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head, and he didn´t mind at all. He went on whistling a tango, whistling badly, needless to say. She violently went past the muddled up calendar on which the countryman went on riding a big headed horse with amazed eyes. She swiped it and said: –Like this, you will never get anywhere. The pages scattered all around and the hot wind from outside, swallowed them for ever,in a swirl. She went home, to prepare stew, because today could be any day, any day, never Saturday, much less Sunday.
CLAUDIA ELISABET SASTRE: Was born in La Plata, province of Buenos Aires on December 27th 1965. I grew up in Patagonia. I made up the literary group “Verbo Copihue” from the very beginning, carrying out different tasks as cultural diffusion and organization of events and book presentations in Puerto Madryn from 1998 to its dissolution. I was editor of the website: Verbo Copihue-Letras Patagónicas, a web page on literary criticism in Patagonia and diffusion of work by local writers. Nowadays, I live in Puerto San Julián (Santa Cruz) and I have devoted myself to history and literary research as well as teaching. I coordinate writing workshops in Puerto San Julián. Fáunicas: (1999) author´s edition. Duchamp: travel poems. (2002) Terraza Libros. Imperio: (2008) author´s edition. Casaquemada (2009) author´s edition. Fáunicas (2009) reedition.
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Stories Elpidio Isla
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he old man was lying on my bed, around him three kids no older than twelve looked at me with big eyes of Japanese animé. The man puffed gently, eyes closed, but under the eyelids you could guess the same bulging eyeballs. A woman probably their mother, said: –Let´s go to the kitchen. In case we wake him up.– Under the window, the back light of the morning sun darkened their faces. –You may ask what right we have to occupy your house; we thought we wouldn´t find anybody here. He´s my father, he has lived many years in this house. As the end was close, we thought it was the best place for him. What are you doing here? –I live here –I told her– but she looked as though she hadn´t heard me. –That´s a problem. The boys wanted to know the house where their grandad had lived. We came in through the back door, we knew it would be unlocked. The old man coughed again and all of us looked to the door. Without blinking a single time, the youngest of the children went to the fridge, took out a milk bottle and poured some milk in a yellow china jug. –Where´s the honey? –She asked as she lit the cooker.
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–Honey? –I asked –There is no honey around here. –I told her. In the back room the man coughed again. –You had no right to come in and occupy my bedroom, –I insisted. –The bed was empty. Anyway, he has also lived here. You are the one who doesn´t have to be here today. –It doesn´t matter. That is my bed, I want you to go. –I don´t think it´s possible now. Grandad will stay to the end. You have nothing to do here. –The end? The woman searched in a plastic handbag and handed in some money to the boy who was waiting. –If there is no honey buy some eucalyptus candies. –The children went out. –The end –she said. The old man coughed again. Now it was an asthmatic groan. –I think we have to go on –said the woman. –Yo u should come along. –But that man can not move. We have to call an ambulance. –There is no need of ambulance. He will get better when the time comes. The kids showed up with a paper bag full of sweets. The woman gave them out and said to the oldest: –give this to grandpa to relieve his cough. Put some under the pillow too. Grandpa has always lived here –told me the woman. –Always? –I asked. She was shorter than I thought; hardly a few centimetres taller than her son. –There is no way of changing fate, –she went on as if talking to herself. –I don´t believe in fate –I said annoyed. –I just want you to leave and take the old man with you. –Mum… –called the child from the bedroom. She made the others go in and closed the door. Fourty minutes later they came out. –Come with us –the woman ordered. –And my stuff, and my house ? –I asked her. The woman took out an eucalyptus sweet from her pocket –They are no longer yours –she said. We went down the gentle slope of the street and followed the traces the water leaves on rainny days.
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A STORY JUST LIKE THAT
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hen the man arrived to malaspina he brought a woman. The dog, lying down in the shade of a newsstand, pricked up its ears as though it had been waiting for him.
As it was payment time, there was heavy gambling in the camps. The plane had already arrived with the salaries. In those times the salaries were good, so everyone got what they were looking for: the workers their wages, the storekeepers their payments up to date, the hookers their shares and all of them a few days less in the wait for going back somewhere else. The man had got off the bus wearing a black leather jacket, gabardine trousers, an expensive shirt and smart shoes. However, that clothing on his body caused a feeling of uneasiness. The clothes didn´t belong to that body, and you could think he was badly dressed. The following day, he had lost everything. Sat under a lamp with somber eyes, his head was so long the chin almost touched the table. 72
Beto Moscardi had arrived two days before. He had the pale complexion of day-sleepers. His hands ended in thin soft fingers. He drove a Ford Victoria model 55 he had won playing dice in Comodoro. And whenever he saw the plane of the salaries flying southwards, he knew he would have work. He worked one week a month. Then he went around every single bar trying not to lose the feeling of his fingers for when the ocassion arose he would have to play seriously. That night in the bar “California” he got the chance. The guy was loaded. They had some drinks and the guy told him he had sold the wool and was on his way home. It was a small farm, so he had no car. Moscardi offered him the Victoria but the guy didn´t want a car. He was looking for a truck. There was no deal until he invited him to gamble. –Perhaps you get the car for free– he said They got in the Victoria. The man in the front seat. The woman at the back. The dog followed the car until they got to the California. They went in and walked straight to the back. At the front tables some guys were gambling lightly, as to pass time without having a fright. They had a seat and asked for cards and drinks. Against the wall, far from the gambler, was the woman with the dog. Her hair, badly dyed blonde, hung down in waves on her aged face. She smoothed out her dress and clung to her brown handbag. The
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others played the whole night and the guy lost: there was heavy gambling in the California. –I have nothing left –he said– otherwise, I would get even with you. –The dog looks good to me–he heard –No, the dog is not mine, I can not bet it. –Think about it. I can take the dog. The woman no way! Moscardi knew that night he could win everything he wanted. He could even have the satisfaction of playing for a dog he could pick up from the street and a woman he wouldn´t take. –Ok, I take it. But, look at that! If you had bought the car you would have something now. I got your money. I have my money, my car, your woman and your dog. Choose whatever you want, I´m generous today– he said looking down on him. –One hand. –Cards or dice? –Cards. –Monte or Blackjack. –Blackjack. –Everything on one throw. –The dog and the woman. –Just the dog. Keep the woman. –The dog and the woman or nothing. –For five hundred pesos. –Seven hundred and fifty, woman and all. –Cut. –A three. Give me another, face down. An ace. Another face down. I stick. –Well, let´s see, black of my life, another black, an ace, a three, a two and blackjack. – Why did you take it from the bottom? – Do you think I am a cheat? – In fact, Beto Moscardi didn´t cheat anyone that night. The guy seemed to play against himself. –Take it as you want, I won´t give you the dog. Take the woman if you want.
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–I don´t need to cheat guys like you. I don´t give a shit for you–Moscardi grabbed his gun. The other didn´t move. He aimed at him between the eyes. The loser raised his hands. –For fuck´s sake– he said– and with such a speed no one expected he dodged the bullit as the other pulled the trigger. The blast bewildered everyone around. When the confusion dispelled, Beto Moscardi had run away in the Victoria. The woman still clinging to the brown handbag had a hole in her chest. –They killed me for the sake of it.
ELPIDIO ISLA He was born in Santa Cruz in 1948. He was a journalist and director of the literature magazine La loca poesía and Recien venido which was prohibited by the military dictatorship in 1978. He published the short story Mogambo (1988) and the novel La ciudad de los Sueños Tristes (1995).
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These short stories are from the unpublished work Esas mujeres de las que hablo.
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UEGO F L E D TIERRA
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Stories Julio José Leite
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Trying to save the sk y “Today childhood, I can no longer run as I used to The man is so heavy I can not run” (Manuel de Cabral)
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hen I was a child I thought the night was made of glass, and the stars were holes left by the space ships in the sky. I was afraid some day, out of imprudence, the men who were sending rockets to the moon would finally break it into pieces causing all that night glass fall over our heads. Then, I thought of a brillant idea to avoid that disaster. In the late afternoon , I got on my horse, “Tan” and rode towards the horizon. There, where the glass of the night meets the ground. “If I can get there, I´ll smash it with a stone and get through, so I´ll climb up to the glass ceiling and patiently I´ll try to fill in every hole”. I was thinking about that when I came across a rabbit, a plump wily rabbit, who asked me where I was going: –I´m going to repair the holes left by the space ships in the glass of the sky– I answered.
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The rabbit laughed and said: –You are so silly! Don´t you know the sky is not made of glass? It is made of Indian ink. I know it because I´m a very wise rabbit, and above all very humble. And besides, you will never get there: the night walks, as you get closer it moves further. Don´t forget it´s ink. I didn´t believe that braggart rabbit and went on my way. I rode and rode and rode. “Tan” neighed, already tired, and said: –Let´s go home, your parents must be worried. But I thought it was very important to save the night. The night is for dreaming, and if you save the night, you save dreams. I was cold and it was already very dark, I could hardly see my horse´s furry ears. Then, I heard a sweet voice: –Where are you going? –Who´s that? I answered surprised. –It´s me, your playmate, the chulengo “Grassie”. –“Grassie” you scared me! I´m heading for the horizon, I have to prevent the night from being shattered into pieces. –My friend, you have to go back home soon. Your parents are desperate, they are going through the saddest night of their lives. Go back now, and never go away again without telling them. And besides, don´t worry about the sky, the sky is held by the birds and children. So, I realised how mistaken I was. The night is not made of glass, as I thought, nor of Indian ink, as the plump wily rabbit stated. The night, the night is made of absence. Now, as a grown-up, when I´m alone and sad, I look at the stars and remember my childhood. I close my eyes and see myself as a child laughing, a child playing, a child holding the whole sky with his innocence.
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DINKO, THE LITTLE GIGANT OF THE LAKE To my brother by choice of life, Dinko Pavlov Miranda “He makes the flowers, takes care of them, he makes the landscape you see … …” (My friend the dwarf of Nelson Ávalos)
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t would be around eight in the morning, it was still dark. Roberto, Canela and Daniel were crossing a frost-covered field wrapped up in coloured scarves and hats. Tie, the old shepherd dog, tongue hanging, followed them. They walked almost a legua (five kilometres) every morning through the old path to the lake Khami, to go to school in Tolhuin. On the way, they were talking about the homework for that day: they were studying the natives “Selknam”. 78
–How weird! said Roberto, –I´ve always known them as Onas. –You are right! said Canela, –what´s more, in magazines and newspapers crosswords, whenever they refer to the native people from Tierra del Fuego they mean the “Onas.” Daniel, a little bit older and lively, said: –It is because the Yaganes called them “Onas”, but they called themselves “Selknam.” Besides, in Tierra del Fuego, there were four other groups of people: the Selknam, and the Yaganes, we have been talking about, and also the Haush and the Kawuescar. –And, did they have children? –asked Canela, with early motherly instinct. Roberto answered immediately: –No! I saw them in some poster the teacher showed us, they were almost naked, they covered themselves with guanaco´s skin. I´m sure they all died from cold, that´s why there aren´t any left. –Don´t be silly! Daniel answered, laughing, –they were used to this weather. The thing is that, when the white men came, they brought with them illnesses for which their bodies didn´t have defence. Besides, there were also bad people who only wanted their land; they laid wire fences and brought sheep, seizing their very own land. So, the natives started hunting the sheep as they thought they had no owner, like the guanacos; and to avoid that, the farm owners paid some adventurous men to kill them. Or, in some other cases, they were taken to religious
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missions, the women with nuns and the men with priests. Then, the progress crushed them and extinguished them. Now, there were just a few Selknam and Haush left. Such as the descendants of india Varela, still living by the lake next to the old police station. –Poor ignorant people! Sure, they didn´t have schools– said Canela. –No, they weren´t ignorant! said Daniel hurriedly, –they were very respectful of nature, they believed they would become trees after death, so they look after every single lenga, ñire, cohihue. They killed guanacos just for food and clothing, and they never hunted the young chulengos. They had no chief and lived in families. Each one had a duty, they had nice ceremonies in which youngsters were accepted as adults, they painted themselves and called some spirits. The dogs were valuable for them as they helped them hunt and kept them warm. They were nice people. –How do you know all this?– asked Roberto astonished. Daniel went silent; in the woods the first sun rays coloured the trees: red, orange, golden, bright green, velvety green, and other shyer ones. The grass was white with the frozen dew and some water eyes gave out a crispy frost. He stood next to an old tree. 79
–I´ll tell you a secret– he said, almost whispering, –about a year ago, in spring, I was hunting birds with a catapult next to the hostel Kaikén, by the lake. It is very steep there, and I stepped on an edge and fell; I thought I was helpless, but a strong hand took me from my coat and picked me up like a feather, and laid me down on the ground. My eyes were shut as I trembled with fear. Then, I opened my eyes and saw a dwarf with a yellow beard and a big red nose, like a red pepper. He was wearing a woolen hat and clothes of coordinated colours. –Helloooooo naughtyyyyyy boyyyyyy!– he greeted me with a thunder-like voice that didn´t fit his height, he was no taller than a woodpecker. Suddenly, he jumped and from a cloud of dust he showed up, now like a gigant and with shrill voice he went on: –What are you doing with that catapult? –Hunting birds– I answered fearful. –Aha! Bad boy! I´ll turn you into a sparrow, should I? –No, please, don´t do it!– I begged him. –All right, all right, don´t be scared– he calmed me down. –It is very bad of you to have fun with those helpless birds. So, he told me everything about the people who had lived here, how respectful they were of animals and plants, of old people and children.
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–I have lived by the lake Khami for a long time– he went on, –I have the power of becoming very tiny or huge like a mountain. I can not control my voice, though. I was a child once and then a man. I was born in another island far from here. My name is Dinko, Sunday in your language. As an adult I lived carefree about material possessions, I have always shared everything and never lost my innocence. I lived singing and celebrating life and friendship; I was concerned about poor people and fought against injustice, and consequently, I was deceived and punished many times. As my death came, I asked, with the power of a child, to live like a dwarf in some place inhabited by innocent people. So, by some magic, I turned into this gigant dwarf and came long ago to this island inhabited by simple people content with their achievements. Here I lived happily for a long time, but now everything has changed, men eat at each other. And saying that he burst into tears. As I could, I embraced his ancle and he, in turn, took me in his hand and told me with a shrill voice: –I appoint you to be the guardian of the memory, keeper of the birds, lover of moons and dawns, embracer of trees and lord of tenderness. 80
Then, with two big leaps he crossed the lake and I have never met him again, however, I see him in the eyes of some children, in the wrinkled hands of an old person, and the wind brings me his thundering shrill voice. But... –Hurry up! We will be late for school. ABOUT THE MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE AND CONSTANT PRESENC E OF THE WOODCUTTER LOVE MORILLO, MAKER OF SP OONS, ANIMALS AND C RUC IFIXES, DWELLER OF “LA BAJADA DE LOS BRUJOS”
is name was Love Morillo, he lived in a hut near the “bajada de los brujos” (wizards´s slope), he was a woodcutter, his skin olive coloured, big eloquent black eyes, grey bearded, stocky built. He had got perfect teeth, white like the cóndor´s neck, like the foam of the streams, like a lamb, pure white. His age was hard to tell. He would prefer to be alone in the woods most of the year. In spite of being a hard-working good-natured person, he was upset by the injustices he saw every day in the sawmill. Furthermore, he was indignant at people who forgot their humble origins and took advantage of their fellows.
H
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In summer, as days are longer, when he had time he enjoyed fishing. In winter, when nights are endless and even memories are frozen in the cold, he devoted himself to carving lenga wood. Sat by the fire in his humble hut. From his hardened skillful hands came out spoons with faces carved in the handle, tears running through their necks. Or even, chubby cheeked beavers or castores with big teeth, willowy guanacos, and birds: kaikenes and inquisitive bandurrias. Love was silent in silence; when he went down into town on public holidays, he talked with no one, he just smiled in lively evenings, and then, the moon blushed and hid behind grey cotton balls. Afterwards, he came back to the woods, to his work of mystery and wood. Love lived this simple life year after year. Nobody knew where he came from. Some of his neighbours said he came from Neuquén, others from Temuco, but nobody knew for certain. One October afternoon, the hawker Faustino Sosa, a well-known seller in the area, went up to Love´s hut by his muddy clapped-out truck. He went there to deliver yerba and other supplies he exchanged with the woodcutter for some wood handicrafts. As soon as he stopped the truck, he saw through the muddy windshield that there was no movement in the hut. Nor came “Champita” barking. There was no smoke coming out of the chimney and there were no birds around. He ran to the door, unlocked it, and through the darkness of the hut he could make out a big crucifix on the bed. He went closer curious and a little frightened. And, already by the bed, he was astonished to discover that it was made of lenga and had a Christ with grey beard in woodcutter´s clothes carved in it. By the beam of light coming from the half open door, he saw on the plain table a sheet of paper in which Love had scribbled: “If the lenga undressed itself in hidden forms at my insistence on looking for them winter after winter in a monologue of chisels. If these centuries of loneliness and axe I carry on my soul, if this obscurity are not enough to save them nor save me, I leave for ever and go back to my father´s life. I have preached humbly and patiently: I am “Love” and nobody has ever understood. Do not look for me, and if you find me by chance, bury me under my only land: the sky. I promise to be back when you are sad, with my bright smile so white it would embarrass the moon, with my night of eyes, with my silence of memory.” They have never found him, nor his dog. However, local people say that when they are sad (usually at dusk), they look up to the moon, and if it turns reddish they swear to see Love´s smile. So, they wait for the night to see in the dark the nostalgic woodcutter´s eyes. Some more
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sensitive people, say that in the woods, there in “la bajada de los brujos”, the lenga´s trunks make up strange figures, and people working in the kitchens of some farms, those laying wire fences in the countryside, and local shepherds say they have found in the morning those wooden spoons with tears carved on it. In those cases they just murmur: –It is Love who is looking at us, for sure some of us is being obsequious with the foreman or is ashamed of his roots– So, silently, they take two branches of lenga and make a cross on that person´s bed to make him reconsider his attitude. Well, just legends told by countrymen around bonfires. Legends of this island.
JULIO JOSÉ LEITE Born in Ushuaia, September 1st, 1957, he lives in Patagonia. Published works: 82
1986: Cruda poesía fueguina poetry. Author´s edition. 1988: “Primeros fuegos” together with the poet Oscar Barrionuevo. Published by the city of Río Grande (Tierra del Fuego) 1990: “Edad sol” Author´s edition. 1994: “Bichitos de luz” Author´s edition. 1996: “De limites y militancias” Published by Atelí (Punta Arenas – Chile) 1997: “Aceite humano” Published by Parque Chas, Collection El Rey tuerto (Bs. As.) 1998: “Julio Leite poemas – Tomo 1” Audio cassette. 2003: “Piedrapalabra” Published by Parque Chas, Collection El Rey tuerto (Bs. As.) 2009: “Breve tratado sobre la lágrima” Published by “El Suri Porfiado” (Bs. As.) Other works: 1987: “II antología fueguina” Anthology. Published by “Gente de Letras” 1998: “Literatura fueguina 1975/1995- Panorama” work done by Prof. Roberto Santana. 2001: “Cantando en la casa del viento” Anthology from Tierra del Fuego by Niní Bernardello. Published by Universidad Nacional de La Patagonia.
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Comodoro Rivadavia (Chubut) 2008: “La ruta de la poesía” mural book in the shore of Magallanes´ Strait in Punta Arenas. Together with other Latin American authors such as: Ernesto Cardenal, Gabriela Mistral, Juan Gelman, among others.
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The Redhead Nicolรกs Romano
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leepy in that cold early morning, perhaps she was dreaming of the sun, Ushuaia. The high tide, coming in gently, pulled up her skirt made of seaweed to lap against her sex salty with sand and ancient stones.
The spot growing at east straightaway, gathered the parishioners. Any vessel always meant news, but also bulk flour, potatoes, charcoal, vegetable and fruit boxes, meat, tobacco, candles. Everything was scarce and restocked throught the ocean. The whole village crowded into the pier, and it finally found itself nose to nose, or better to say, against the nose of a German ship. For a while, both remained still, like looking at each other. The ruddy cheeked man among the crew stopped for a while as he got off, looked around, and then he gained a slope and headed his big shoes for the mountain. Nobody could suspect then that that broad-shouldered guy with an energic walk, who had arrived incidentally or eventually, would give name, over the years, to a nearby hill. Nor would they remember after a while, how and when that man, whose steps fueled the legend , had arrived. There is no threshold to be crossed to go into the woods, just the whole blue of the sea turns green. So, already swallowed by the beech, the German was struck by something against the dark green of the
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cohiue trees. It made him raise his eyes and left him stood still like another tree in that path wet with mud and humus. Hanging from a branch by a thick leather thong hung, like a rag, a dog. It was at the exact height it could be reached with a jump to bite a piece of fatty mutton. The hook hidden in the meat was not aimed at a wild dog, as it happened, but at a red fox which would end up dead by a single blow on the neck, to leave the fur untouched. The animal was motionless, just swinging in the breeze. But it did not give in its life. Having exhausted all its strength, an inner strain, an instinct, some atavistic hidden feeling made it withstand. It had retreated into itself, and from there it resisted, dully, its jaws crossed holding the full weight of the body on the hook. The man lifted that motionless body as he cut the leather thong, lying it on his lap. He thought of taking off the bait. For a moment he pondered it, thinking about the risk. Then, he took a hand to the dog´s palate and started working gently in that badly wounded mouth blocked up with the bait. Then, the animal moved its bristly eyelids, the eyes bloodshot. For a moment they looked at each other. As soon as the hook was out, perhaps in a final attempt to cling to life, its fangs closed on his hand. Then, it fainted. He did not mix with anybody, the German, in that small village which was Ushuaia. He just walked to the woods, and from there to the ship every time during the four days it took to restock the vessel. People would see him going uphill deep into the green. It was in the space of time in which one took care and the other healed, that both of them would end up tied beyond that moment. The German ship was already leaving, a cloud of smoke and the thunder of the siren cut the cold air of the bay just inhabited by a couple of schooners and some cutter. There were handkerchiefs and hands raised, the prison band with their striped uniforms filled up everything with clarinets and trombone´s blasts. In the middle of that loud noise, the silence sank just in a ruddy well-built man leant against the ship's rail with the rest of the crew. He did not take his eyes off the shore. As the ship was moving away from the pier, and the blue between them was growing bigger, the big black dog showed up, and, standing on the tide line, it stared at the vessel while sniffing at the greasy stink of tar and salt. With the ship still close, four hundred meters or so from the shore, and the parishioners already turning their backs to the sea, Krund, that was the redhead´s name, jumped into the water. With heavy strokes he shortened the distance reaching the spot on the shore where the
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animal was waiting for him, and both headed for the mountain. That floating world would never come back again and Ernest Krund would remain for ever in El Onaisín, or as they called it “Tierra del Fuego”, land of fire.
A TINY SUN
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old early morning in May, swirl of snow and the seagulls. Some men were arriving already riding their breath of wine and gin, and the pier, asleep, laid for ever in that eternal intercourse with the bay, welcomed them.
The ship brought the flour for the bread of the whole village. As there were always torn bags, it was then a feast for the houses the harvest which everyone took home; it would mean fritters and buns. “The hand” was assembled reaching everyone: a few “on land” and the team to “the hole”. As soon as the winch drew the lid aside, the first rope cut the air and disappeared swinging in that open mouth. Everything started alwalys like that, still dark, before the dawn white with snow, the sleep cut out by the wind, and the heart fraying ceaselessly. Flour and sweat made up a paste time kneaded in shifts of carrying the load of life. Menduco thought about his Eduvina. In the synchronized movement of docking, he almost stroked the bags which were up and down in the air like sheets laid in the dream of his wishes. From that hold, every pier was thought of, between Eduvina bay´s legs, heating his winter of lean wages,the thaw of rage, a balm for fatigue. From a heap they picked up a plank to dowload the goods. And on that slope started to parade the team, their bags on their shoulders. A short Chilean provoked a sturdy man into fighting. Soon, the manliness put to the test of who carried more bags on his shoulders. They started placing bets, even risking a whole shift. The Chilean started with two bags on his arms, the sturdy man from Tucuman did so without effort. From then on it would get worse. But,
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Menduco together with some fellow workers had fixed some bags up, had emptied them and blown them up. The Chilean, who had a reputation for being gutsy, put on his shoulders a third bag, and went down like a Samson, swollen the veins of his neck, wild the eyes. The big sturdy man was almost two meters tall. Now it was his turn. He moved himself staggering like a drunk, his eyes the eyes of a fish just out of the water. Suddenly, he stopped, his legs trembling and they had to hold him to prevent him from being crushed under his load. They burst into laughter and the big man, having noticed the trick started throwing punches. The fight was at its height, when the sturdy man shouted: –Stop it!, I have dropped the gold tooth! On land, the foreman, became impatient as the winch was not coming back and there were still a couple of tonnes left. So, he went on board. From the hold, a white cloud of flour went up high into the sky. Leant down to the bottom, he saw the tireless search everyone carried out, burying their fingers in the powder, scratching and rummaging around every hole on the planks. Like a valuable piece of jewellery, the tooth, could end up the fight. However, it was never found. So, banished the storm of moods, the day took away the load together with the light, right to the end. With his sack full, among other white faces with bleary eyes, Menduco headed home. In the warp of cold and the odd job had nested his nostalgia, kneaded with flour and snow like cold bread; however, baked in the heart of the docker it was hot homemade bread. And he got home. He knocked at the door, thinking that a tiny sun would shine in such a huge love. He opened his mouth giving out a broad smile, and in that dark hole, in that waste land, the glitter of a golden tooth lit for ever, like a tiny sun, the huge love he felt for his Eduvina bay.
STAMP
S
tamp or cricket´s leg as he was nicknamed because of his huge feet or perhaps that particular way he had of stamping life or taking it, grabbing it, wholeheartedly, everything in one throw.
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The embers were asleep in the opened metal container. San Juan, the oldest docker, frayed the story of when he fought alone, just with other three old men in the cove of Ensenada, so there he was, fighting ceaselessly, until he fell asleep and lost, he said. Stamp smiled as he had heard the story again and again; he sat on a mooring ring of the snow-covered pier. Meanwhile, he stirred with a wooden stick the glowing embers he was using together with sugar and gin to seal the wet sides of a gourd. That new gourd to drink mate would keep him company that night. He had been assigned “land” that night, with the Indian, San juan, the Cock and Punta Arenas. As one of her holds was getting rid of the containers and the other gave birth to potatoes and flour in bags of fifty, the “Bahia San Blas” raised her big nose getting up like a huge monster out of the blackness of the water. Now Punta Arenas remembered when he was a “zeppeliner” in the farms; going from one settlement to another on horse back pulling from two others horses, carrying liquor and other stuff, moving quietly like a “zeppelin” in the middle of the night to sell it to the sheep-shearers double working during the season between Río Grande and Ushuaia. 88
–...“So the police … and I lost a horse,... and then... just in time...”; but Stamp was no longer listening, looking around for a bag to take home some stuff when his shift would be finished. The jib of the winch went fishing in the hold, like an arm in a cassock christening with a container in each round of that mechanical gesture repeated at so many ports. The trade union controlled the production, the load arrived at long intervals, giving a break, it was no time for the foreman. The mate, like a poet, is always spying our souls, from its green eye always blinking. Now, just prepared, was like a chick flying for the first time, nesting in our hands. Every story turns green and foam in it, and it keeps something from each of them. There is a deaf-mute dialogue with each one who keeps it in his hand. The man who turns deep into himself and the mate which turns wiser. Stamp sipped while he heated his hands round the gourd. Like so many dockers, Olympic champions of survival, fathers and carriers of a real culture of resistance. With or without reasons he thought, ...“that white flour and that potato are ours, just like this, because we unloaded them, or just because it is cold, dammit, they are ours and let´s take them, buddy, nice potato, good potato, because it is freezing cold and we finish with this ship and she will be back in a month...”, thoughts that would remain in the gourd, not filtered by the dried yerba leaves nor washed away by the water.
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The dock, that little peninsula, is a finger pointing to the east in Ushuaia bay; it seems to stretch itself to touch the soft gleam that, behind Navarino island, is coming up. The Onachaga channel is a single blue freezing tongue stretching itself between to throats. Pacific and Atlantic hug and kiss each other through this tongue. Dawn at Beagle channel, as it is now called. Shift change, change of teams on land and on deck. Hold number three still closed, opened the morning. The heavy lid of the hold was drawn aside, and when they found him they rushed and shouted; on the bottom was Stamp, as if he were embracing the flour, the potatoes. With violent tenderness his fellows picked him up. The death always stalking them, this time cheated him, sending him straight to the hole, where it was waiting for him. –“He walked on the bulkhead in the dark”. –“but the gap between the decks was left opened”. Stamp gave his last stamp. It was a white death, like the white flour, like the frost in those long nights. Because the dock is white with snow. Ushuaia is white. 89
Fate with its alchemy, kneaded a strange death, plain flour with docker´s blood, pure wholehearted blood, everything in one throw.
NICOLÁS ROMANO He was born in 1951, and lives in Tierra del Fuego. Currently, he works in the Centro Polivalente de Arte (Art center). His poetic prose reflects his life experiences as a docker, sailor or seller going around the southern end of the country; as well as the landscape he travelled as a guide in “the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego”. He was awarded the first prize in the contest "Alas y Letras"organized by Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia, San Juan Bosco, published in Ballena Varada by the Biblioteca Nacional (national library). The first prize of the Patagonia and a national award in the contest: Concurso Nacional Docente, organized by Carpa Blanca. He has also represented his province in an anthology published by Conadepa (Consejo Nacional de Desarrollo de la Patagonia). Some of his short stories were published by Locas de la Plaza, (Madres de Plaza de Mayo) and the Biblioteca Popular Oesterheld.
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His story Stamp was also published in Chile by the magazine Impactos from Punta Arenas. Many other short stories were published by local magazines and newspapers as well.
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This book was printed on September, 2010 in Cooperativa Grรกfica el Sol Limitada 2190, Av. Amancio Alcorta Parque Patricios, City of Buenos Aires.
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