STORIES TO THE SOUTH OF THE WORLD 4

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Minister for Education

Prof. Alberto Sileoni

Consultants´ Chief of Staff

Mr. Jaime Perczyk

Secretary of State for Education

Prof. María Inés Abrile de Vollmer

Secretary for the Federal Council

for Education

Prof. Domingo De Cara

Director for the National

Reading Program

Margarita Eggers Lan

Selection, editing and design

National Reading Program

Selection

Graciela Bialet, Ángela Pradelli,

Silvia Contín and Margarita Eggers Lan

Foreign Office, Trade and Cult

Foreign Secretary

Héctor Marcos Timerman

Chief of Staff

Ambassador Antonio Gustavo Trombetta

Frankfurt 2010 Organizing Commitee

President

Ambassador Magdalena Faillace

Graphic Design

Juan Salvador de Tullio

Mariana Monteserin

Elizabeth Sánchez

Natalia Volpe

Ramiro Reyes

Paula Salvatierra

Head of State

Dr. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

The texts included in this book have been selected by the corresponding Region coordinator Angela PradelliContact: [email protected]

[email protected]

Spanish to English translation by Daniela Gutierrez. She is a graduate in Literature andEducation, an essayist and, above all things, a serial reader. Academically, she works asa researcher and professor at FLACSO and UNIPE, but for over twenty years she hasmanaged to merge her academic activity with the edition and translation of academicand fiction books.

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


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 diversecultural identities -as diverse as each region and province containingthem- this small selection aims to offer a sample of the valuableproductions comprising Argentina’s Cardinal Narrative.

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

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

National Reading ProgramMinistry of Education of Argentina


CONTENTS

Chapter OneMiguel Briante

Mousy Benítez sangbolerosRicardo Piglia

The FatherAntonio Dal Masetto

The skin of the water Ema Wolf

IslandsEma Wolf

Pág. 8

The stolen dayEma Wolf

The art of show businessJorge Di Paola

SandGuillermo Saccomanno

EucalyptusÁngela Pradelli

TimoteÁngela Pradelli

The Passion according Saint MartinMario Goloboff

Two pants suitHebe Uhart

Night swimmingJuan Forn

Pág. 12

Pág. 21

Pág. 26

Pág. 29

Pág. 33

Pág. 41

Pág. 45

Pág. 46

Pág. 28

Pág. 49

Pág. 55

Pág. 58

PROVINCIA DEBUENOS AIRES


Those who came backEsther Cross

When we talked to the deadMariana Enriquez

Other pictures of MomFélix Bruzzone

Song of grandparentsVicente Battista

Another babySoledad Barruti

Hundreds of emailsAriel Bermani

Two pesos storePablo Toledo

Pág. 65

Pág. 70

Pág. 78

Pág. 84

Pág. 89

Pág. 94

Pág. 99

CABA Ciudad de Buenos Aires



PROVINCIA DE

BUENOS AIRES


08 here was no hope: my grandmother said, as we ate. Myuncle just shook his head in an ambiguous, almost clumsy,gesture. The effect of those words would rise just a littlewhile, with my aunt’s sob. She tried to conceal it with asimilar sound coming out of her nose; she even used a

handkerchief. But it was useless: I noticed that she fought against theneed of taking it to her eyes. At that time I would have needed to knowwhat they thought. In the courtyard, suddenly, the scenes again, one byone, while my uncle passed. He caressed me. I’ve tried to dispel thoseimages, pulled them back to where my rage was heaped. Above all,what got me furious was the fact that they would not dare tell me, butkept saying rare words or making estrange gestures, as when playingcards. Your dad –grandmother said– is not very well. But nothing more.Nobody told me why I was spending all the time with them now. Orwhy, every now and then, the scenes returned: Dad arriving late; Momsaying: Let´s find your father.

But no, it was not like that now. She said: Go and fetch your father.It was one o’clock of a summer afternoon. There was nobody on thestreets. The town, by noon, was always quiet: until four. Before thenthere was this little world of siesta: playing Jacks at the shop’sthreshold, riding Don Juan’s cart, or chatting in a train’s coach on asiding. I walked two blocks: in the bar behind the window, I saw mydad, lying on a table. I entered the bar. Come on Dad, I said, let’s go. Itouched his shoulder. Beyond that table, there was nobody. The owner

Chapter OneMiguel Briante

TT

To Jorge Cedrón


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

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

–What is it? –They’ve asked me– boy, what wrong with you? I hadre-entered the kitchen: they were washing dishes. I felt like telling themeverything: suddenly I’ve flushed and was about to cry. I went outside:walked towards the house while remembering how, after having shakenDad once again, he had asked me -once more- me to leave him alone.Don Pedro coming from behind the counter said: Fine, Vicente. Is timefor lunch, do what your boy says and go with him. This also made mefurious: that man telling him once again to leave, grabbing him by hisshoulders and dragging him towards the door. I felt rage. My Dad couldnot stand on his feet by himself and said that he would leave justbecause he wanted to do so, that there was no need to drag him. Buthe only murmured some words that were impossible to understand.Then Dad, slid to the floor, pressing his back against the wall. I felt astrange pain somewhere in my body.

But pain is not always the same, not the kind of shame I felt everyday, when helping Dad to return home. Everything else -the town, thepeople in their windows- did not exist, would be fading until there wasnothing but me, there, over my father, who was lying shabbily on thefloor. I was afraid and needed, without knowing why, to see his eyes.

And now, to top it all this: three days at Grandma's house withoutseeing Dad. Mom had come only once. In addition, at the table,everyone was serious: when talking, it was to say things that I neverunderstood at all. And they looked at me; they stared at me all the time.

Later, my grandmother and my uncle spoke to me softly saying:Tomorrow you will go home. They said: Go outside and play. Nothingwas said about Dad. As if he did not exist, as I would not rememberthat three days before I was repeating: Come on, Dad. And heanswered: No, Pablo, you go home, leave me alone. Go home, to mom.And I said: You too, you have to come home as well, dinner is readyand Mom is waiting. I cried. As I wept, too, when returning alone, andthen when we were with mom and we saw him from afar, approachingus, staggering, leaning on the walls and making hand signals: agrotesque gesture to tell us to wait for him.

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

09


crumble in the middle of the street when crossing. When we helpedhim get up, he had blood on his hands. I wanted to say something,Mom had the same lifeless face she always has, but now her lips hada tremor and her eyes were wide open, as if she was scared. I did nottalk. At the house front door, Dad had fallen again. He stayed there:talking. Lowering my eyes, I found Mom’s: further down I saw their twofaces together, with a similar, almost identical face. The same gesture: Ifelt frighten again and that unexplained pain somewhere in my body.Dad's eyes were had the same look I´ve seen before at the bar. Andthere it was, again, that strange feeling. I walked around the garden. Iwanted to tell everything to someone, in a loud voice. I wanted to saythat Mom told me to go to eat: the table was behind the counter,hidden by a partition. The food was already cold and I could hear thatthe noise of cutlery, getting slower, subdued by my own grief, hadsomething sad as when the bells from the church sounded during thenight. Slowly, everything went flat, reducing to silence. Things haddecided to invent a new calm. I was floating, wrapped in a transparentlayer that -as in dreams- did not let any noise in. And then thishappened: Mom said -with a sudden voice like a whip only attenuatedby distance-, Vicente, why do you drink?. And then, as i f sheunderstood that she was being too hard on him, she added some otherwords with a sweeter tone. But it was already done: Dad had burst andI could guess he was trying to stand up. Meanwhile, he screamed thatwanted to be left alone and I felt, behind the partition, how she tried tocalm him down; I could imagine the fight they were having at theshop’s door. The screaming grew, the sore insults, the voices I wouldnot have wanted to hear.

I kept pressing my ears with my fingers, until I heard a louder noise.When I showed up, Dad was on the ground: in the first half of the doorwith a hole and blood running through the splintered glass over hishead. Mom was holding his arm: he had blood coming down from hisclenched fist. He was asking her to be forgiven. She said yes, fine,Vicente, let´s go now, you need some sleep. And he said this:

–Forgive me

Sitting on the grass I could see the cane moving slowly, flutteringthe silent siesta wind. Suddenly, a former calm had gone around me. Ifelt like crying and did so quietly, burying my face in my hands, waitingfor someone to come and find me mourning. But nothing happened: Icould no longer wait for anyone’s explanation. They did not see mecrossing the yard, opening the screen door. As I passed by a window, Iheard my uncle talking. I stood still, at the risk of being locked up again.Yes, he said, he is worse than other times. And he repeated that therewas no hope. Then, the voices went away, into the house. I kept

10


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

It returned. Grandmother, my uncles, everything was behind: I wasalmost there and no one had stopped me. When arriving to my house’sblock I saw Don Juan’s cart, moving dully, as if it came towards me.After that I saw a group of people surrounding something, in front of myhouse. The minute I had started running I could hear the sound of theengine getting started. I suddenly remembered, my uncle’s words, myDad's eyes. I kept running and went among the people. A long whitecar, perhaps the same one I saw many times in front of the hospital,had reached the corner and turned, getting out of my sight. Then I sawMom: she was in the middle of the street, with her arms tight to thebody. She walked toward me and put her hand on my shoulder. Abovethe noise of the engine getting lost, the giddy sound of the siren beganto grow in the distance.

MIGUEL BRIANTE

Was born on May 19, 1944 in General Belgrano, Buenos Aires, Argentina.Writer, journalist and screenplay writer he died on January 25th of 1995.Among his books, Las hamacas voladoras (1964), Hombre en la orilla (1968),Ley de juego (1983) and Kincón (novel), originally published in 1975 andreprinted with some corrections in 1995. Since 1987 until his death, he wascritic and editor of the arts section of Página/12 newspaper.

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12 shall never know for sure whether the Viking was trying to tell mewhat really took place in the Club Atenas that dawn, or if hewanted to get rid of his guilt, or if he was crazy. The story, in anycase, was confusing, disconnected: pieces of his l ife, thedisheartened Scandinavian war cry, and a crumpled cutout from El

Gráfico rolled up in rags, with the Viking´s very fine and luminous facelooking straight at the camera.

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

Mousy Ramirezsang bolerosRicardo Piglia

II1


digging out a bunch of rags which he started to open up nearly until hefound the withered cutout from El Gráfico, where one could see hisface, young and blurry, next to the face of Archie Moore. He stretchedthe paper out toward me, breathing with his mouth open, speaking withdifficulty, with a guttural incomprehensible voice, piling up wordswithout any order until, by chance, he became silent: he looked at me,as if waiting for an answer, before beginning a new, returning everysingle time to that dawn in the Club Atenas in La Plata, to thedestroyed, little body of mousy Benitez flung on the floor, face up, as ifhe were floating in the quivering light of daybreak.

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

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

Introverted and delicate, he was agile, quick, and too elegant to beefficient. He moved with the looseness of a lightweight and everyonepraised the purity of his style, but it was impossible to win with thosepunches that resembled caresses. Deep down, he had not been bornto be a boxer, and even less a heavyweight, with his sweet face like agallant from the silent movies, with his svelte and romantic figure hewould have played a better role anywhere else; but he was a boxerwithout having chosen to be so, fatality of being born with that splendidbody, and so close to the Club Atenas. It was sad to see him resist,intrepidly and without a shadow of a doubt, the assaults of the brutalmastodons of the category He was rather a man to be boxing amonglightweights, at the most in some welterweight; in any case inexplicablyand in a kind of betrayal that carried him toward disaster, his body, asstrict as a cane, always surpassed the ninety .kilogram mark even if hestarved himself. He never got anywhere and he never had another

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

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

He was alone for a long time, sitting in a corner near the showers,waiting. He watched the only light that felt from the bulbs in their wirecaging, mixing with the clarity of the afternoon, without thinking anything,trying to forget that Moore was, at that time, one of the three or fourgreatest boxers in the history of boxing. At one point he thought he wasfalling asleep, cradled by the confusing sounds of the men who movedtoward the back, but suddenly the photographers arrived like a whirlwindand he found himself in the ring with Archie Moore in front of him. Theystarted lightly, exchanging leads and working the ropes. Moore wasshorter, wore red gloves and little velvet boots. The Viking felt very stiff, tiedup, too attentive to what was happening outside the ring, to the powderflashes that went off unexpectedly each time Moore moved. Besides, hefelt curiosity rather than fear. Wanted to know how much the punches froma world champion were going to hurt. Shortly Moore had cornered himtwice, but both times he managed to slip away by faking with his hips. Thechampion stood out of place, facing an empty space, and stoppedsmiling. The Viking started going around in circles, always out off reach:jabbed with his left, stationary, swaying, and all of a sudden he would driveat him with fulminating speed. The Viking did nothing but look at Moore’shands, trying to anticipate, with the dark feeling that the other could guesswhat he was going to do. One of those times he moved a little slower andMoore hit him with two right crosses and a left to the body: it seemed tothe Viking that something was breaking inside. Moore touched him softlywith the left, as if taking distance, faked taking a step to the side looking toset up the right, and when the Viking moved to cover himself, Moore’s leftslashed down like a whip and found him midway. The Viking’s eyesclouded over; he raised his face looking for air but saw only thegymnasium’s globes of light, spinning. Moore leaned away, withouttouching him, waiting for him to collapse. The Viking felt himself become

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

From then on Moore started to go after him seriously, to knock himout. When they where in the middle of the ring and there was room, theViking got by with his leg work, but each time Moore cornered himagainst the ropes he felt like lifting his arms and starting to cry. Soon hewas navigating in an opaque fog, without being able to understand howthey could hit him so hard, all of his energy concentrated in notremoving his feet from the earth: the only proof that he was still alive.He tried to stay loyal to his style and come out boxing, but Moore wastoo quick and always got there first. Toward the end he had losteverything, except for that fatal instinct that made him look for the mostclassic way out, to maintain certain elegance in spite of being half-blind, undone by the crossing punches and the jab combinations andthe uppercuts which stopped him as if he were continuously runninginto a Wall. At that point Moore himself looked like a merciful man,forced to hit because that was his job, with a gentle lightning bolt ofrespect and consideration illuminating his slightly crossed eyes, a kindof supplication, as if he were telling him to let himself fall so that hewould not have keep hitting him.

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

2

In the five years that followed there was nothing other than a longsuccession of heroic massacres, in which he could only offer the strangebeauty of his face -which often filled the ringside ladies with uneasiness-and a grim haughtiness, a perfectionist’s mania that was imperceptible toanyone not with him between the ropes. Of course the feelings of the

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

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

He never decided to stop boxing, because to do so he would have hadto doubt himself and it was useless to assume that he would do this; theysimply stopped offering him fights, they watched him circling around theoffices for the promoters, they saw him arrive at the gymnasium everymorning with his handbag and start to train, reticent, inexhaustible,inspiring that irritated pity that tends to be caused by an overvaluation andan excess in confidence. Self-assured and ruined, he never asked foranything other than a chance to fight again to show what he was worth.Finally, when he was about to starve to death, someone shook him out ofhis lethargy and hooked him up as a professional fighter with a wrestlingtroupe. Thee, at least, his grayish eyes, his delicate, aristocratic face wereworth something; he would get into the ring with a red beard thatembarrassed him and with a kind of horned helmet to justify his fightingname. He had to spread his arms wide and invent a spectacular rite that,according to the promoter, was the Viking greeting. He did it poorly,awkwardly, and without realizing it he tried always to face away from theaudience, as if he did not want them to recognize him.

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

16


square elevated in the middle of the plaza.

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

He was in this for more than two years during which he barely spokewith the others, was always distant and alone, and trapped by thevertiginous and monotonous succession of little towns, of brutal facesand Viking greetings. No one was surprised when he disappearedunexpectedly one afternoon. The troupe had landed in La Plata and heleft without telling anyone, suddenly, as if he were obeying a calling,without taking anything other than an old cardboard suitcase, thepseudonym which he was to keep until his death, and the beardbrightening his face. He walked through the deserted streets in theburning heat of siesta-time in February, covered up in a black tricotturtleneck, attracting attention with such a tall body, with his outlandishfigure, without looking at the people who turned around to watch thatblond giant pass by; he traversed the thick, sweet aroma of thebasswood and sought out the Club Atenas like someone returninghome after a storm. He had nothing to offer than the same obstinacy,but he stayed until he brought about the tragedy.

It was there, after crossing the Atenas´s dilapidated lobby andducking down through the small door that led to the gymnasium, thathe saw for the first time the diminutive body of Mousy Benítez. The kid,a seventeen-year-old featherweight with a lot of promise, but who couldnot decide between his innate talent for boxing and his desire to be asinger of boleros, was toward the rear, lost between the ropes and thesmell of resin. And it is said that he barely made a gesture, a slightswaying, and that this was his way of saying that he had always beenwaiting for him. The two looked at each other, nearly motionless, andafter an instant Mousy kept hitting the punching bag, which was tallerthan him, with his small, delicate hands, his whole face concentrated inan effort to look fierce. The Viking continued to walk toward the middle,as if he were looking for him, while Mousy hugged the punching bagand saw him approach, already fascinated by that figure, framed in aphantasmal air by the siesta sun coming in through the cloudedwindows. He stood watching him, a slight smile soothed upon hiswomanly little mouth, as if he caught a glimpse of the Viking´shaughtiness and secret rage, or better yet, as if he could guess that thathaughtiness and the rage were dedicated to him.

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Perhaps due to this, from then on Mousy was the only one whoseemed to pay attention to the Vikings ´s existence. Captivated,attentive to his slightest gestures, he watched over him, imitatingstrange signs, facial expressions, murmurings, well-balancedrepresentations in which his body acquired the harmony and splendorof a small statue. These celebrations culminated when the Viking wasnearby: then Mousy would drop what he was doing, bend his neckback, fix his eyes on the Vikings desolate face, and with his high-pitched voice, very sad and almost like a woman’s , he would sing abolero from the golden era, in the style of Julio Jaramillo.

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

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

Mousy was the only one who seemed impressed, the only one wholooked at the picture from the cutout, at the Viking’s face, a littlebattered, that could be deciphered in the piece of paper. The othersmade jokes, laughed, while Mousy moved away, seemed to hide, takingrefuge in a corner; from there he would watch over everyone whocrowded around the Viking’s swaying body. Afraid, without finding thecourage to intervene, he watched with pain as the Viking tried to tellabout that fight in any way possible, about Moore’s fulminating speedand his little velvet boots.

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

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

From that day on they were always together, separate from the rest.They would withdraw to a corner toward the back of the gymnasium,still, silent and all of a sudden Mousy would start to sing boleros, veryquietly, just for the Viking, letting himself go with the high notes as if hewere going to fall apart.

It is said that in those times the Viking seemed to have been reborn.He started to enter the ring with Mousy and act as his sparring partner.Some attribute the cause of everything to this; they speak of a accident,of an out-of-control hand. In any case, it was comical to see themexchange punches: Mousy minute, nearly a child, jumping nimbly, withhis face like a titi monkeys, next to the large, curved mass of the Viking,moving heavily. Just one of the Vikings punches would have sufficed tobreak Mousy in two: Mousy, however, entered the ring self-assured andstrutting about, like a trainer in a bear cage. They would put their guardup and begin a simulacrum of a fight, the Viking standing pat in themiddle, Mousy dancing constantly around him, and put his face outwith impunity, proud of having recovered his fabulous resistance topunishment. Finally Mousy would get tired of hitting and woulddedicate himself to jumping rope. The Viking would sit to a side, hiseyes fixed on the other’s face, tense with the effort, his whole bodyshining with sweat.

When afternoon fell, the two would get into the showers together.Mousy´s shrieks could be heard from outside; spending hours underthe water, he would sing with his eyes closed hile the Viking gotdressed and waited for him, stretched out on one of the woodenbenches without a back, his hands behind his head, dozing off untilMousy appeared, his skin bluish, smelling like coconut soap; and thenMousy would start getting dressed, elegant and theatrical, making facialexpressions in front of the fogged mirror. The two would go out to walkthrough the city in the late afternoon and the people would stop towatch them as if they had come from another world, Mousy looking likea jockey but dressed like a dandy, walking next to that melancholicgiant with the reddish mane.

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

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

That is how they spent what was left of the summer: more and moreisolated, perfecting between the two of them the final secret of thestory. Everyone thought that during that time Mousey spent the nightsin the Atenas. They were even seen, one morning, sleeping together.Mousy´s head resting on the Viking’s chest: it looked like he wascradling a doll. In any case, no one predicted or could have known whatwas to happen that night; the light from the Club was seen until dawnand someone heard Mousy´s high-pitched, smooth, and out-of-tunevoice singing “El relicario”. A dense wind blew all night, dragging thesmell of burnt wood from the river. It seemed strange that no one cameout to open up; the door was broken, as if the wind had taken it apart,and on the other side, in the quivering light of dawn filtering in throughthe windows, they found Mousy, dying, shattered by blows, and theViking on the floor, crying and petting the head, which was dirty withblood and dust. The whole gymnasium empty, the soft murmuring ofthe wind between the sheet metal, and toward the back the curvedfigure of the Viking hugging Mousy´s body, whose face was destroyedand whose womanly little mouth had a smile upon it, like a dark sign oflove, of indolence, or of gratitude.

RICARDO PIGLIA

He was born in 1940 in Adrogué, Buenos Aires province. He lived in Mardel Plata. He published his first collection of short stories, Jaulario, in LaHabana, where it received a mention at the Premio Casa de las Américas. Thebook was then published in Buenos Aires with the title La invasión. He lives inthe United States, where he is a professor at Princeton University. He has alsoworked extensively as a critic and essay writer. Some of his works are: Nombrefalso, Respiración artificial, La ciudad ausente, Plata quemada, El último lector.Gerardo Gandini composed the opera La ciudad ausente, premiered at theColón theatre in 1995, based on his novel of the same name.

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21hen I think of my father I recall going back home atthe end of our workday. We returned at night, he rodea bike and I trotted. I run beside him, sometimes Iwas a bit behind but could always catch up. He rodea lady’s bike, the seat was too low and my father, a

little thrown back, pedaled slowly along a dirt road. I'm sure we did notspeak. Actually I have the impression that we never talked. It isimpossible for me to recover any dialogue of us. Just isolatedsentences. This event of returning home happened in Salto, the town inthe Province of Buenos Aires where he went to live when we emigratefrom Italy. One of my father´s brothers was already in Argentina beforethe war and he offered him to share the butcher’s shop. I was twelveyears old.

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

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

The FatherAntonio Dal Masetto

WW


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

My father cleaning the latrine and carrying out two buckets hangingfrom the ends of a long wooden pole he passed on his shoulders. Myfather fertilized the farm furrows with the contents of those buckets. Theimage of my father chopping logs with his teeth gritted and releasing agrunt on every shot. I remember him, coming home late at night beforeChristmas with a pine that he probably torn from a forbidden place. Hepatched up the inner tube of a bicycle. My father, his torso naked,shaving in the courtyard with a mirror hanging on a nail, and explainingto me why there were two areas of the face that needed to be latheredmore than the rest. I can picture the image of my father making a flutefor me. I can remember him washing a sheep in the river and shearingit afterwards. My father did masonry work, carpentry. He did somefarming, harvesting, picked grapes for wine making, grafted fruit trees.We had a plum tree that bore yellows fruits y one branch and reds onin another. We had a pear tree that gave pears in different seasons. Iwas amazed with all those skills my father had. That man could doeverything. Nothing seemed to have secrets from him.

My father was a quiet and timid mountain man. But he could beeasily irritated. Once I saw him chasing a guy down the street until thatman jumped over a fence overlooking a ravine and escaped. It was adispute between neighbors. I do not remember the reason or maybe Inever knew. I have a very clear picture of that violent act on the street. Ican still hear the panting of the two men running. I wonder what wouldhave happened if my father could get his hands on him.

But he never got angry with us. He loved and respected us. I did nothave many opportunities to use de word respect in such a proper way.Is him, no doubt, who I have inheri ted unconsciousness andstubbornness. I'm thinking of my father's attitude during the war. Heworked at a gas plant and sometimes his shift ended in the middle ofthe night. My mother´s prayers and the advice of his peers wereuseless. He did not wait for daylight to return home, defying the curfewand the bullets, because he wanted to sleep in his bed; he had theright to do so and there were no Hitler or Mussolini or war that couldprevented so. He left for America in 1948.The day he was leaving helaughed and made jokes, but I thought he was doing so to cheerhimself up and try to cover up his uncertainties. I remember the reunionwith his brother at the Buenos Aires port, after two years of separation,

22


his awkward and silent embrace. During our train journey towards thetown, crossing the winter plain, he did not speak much. He sat besideme and kept his arm around my shoulders all the time. Every now andthen his fingers were compressed my shoulder with a tender squeeze.Then I can remember working together at the butcher shop, where Ilearned the faces of the customers before knowing by heart half dozenof Spanish words. During the morning shift I did the delivery and in theafternoons I helped at the shop. There was always something to do.Clean the meat grinder, the power saw, cleaning the floor, peelinggarlic for making sausages and give water to the animals.

I started playing football in the sixth division of Compañía GeneralClub. I was happy with the football shoes, the pants and the t-shirt thathad been given to me and that I could also take home. We played onSaturdays after noon so sometimes I arrived a bit late because of thejob, so I spent all afternoon in a silent accusations atmosphere. Myuncle and my two cousins were silently accusing me, but my father didnot say anything. At most the murmured some words when seeing mereturning at full speed. He felt an obligation to his older brother whohad brought him to America, and that debt included me. I am sure thisdependency bitters him. But there was nothing he could do. Heremained silenced. Us two were also foreigners in the small territory ofthe shop and we had to win our space and bear with the humiliationwhen it happened. I sensed that my father would have liked a differentdestiny for me. One night, five years after arriving to town I took anotherjourney. I left to discover the city. At this point my father had separatedfrom my uncle and had set up his own butcher shop. He was not doingwell. My father was not who he used to be. America had beaten himup. I was not with him at the new shop. The latest years I had worked ata pharmacy store. I left town without letting him know. My mother andmy sister saw me leave the house because they awoke while Iprepared the suitcase. They could not make me stay and they did notdared call my father. I ignore how much she suffered my run away. Shenever said anything. Then, whenever returning home I discover changesall over the place. There were some new amenities in the bathroom orthe kitchen. Once I heard that when buying a water heater, my fathersaid: “For whenever Antonio comes” So I think he thought of me withevery improvement.

I was far away when he died. A nurse went to see him every twodays and gave him the shots. The last time she saw him was onSaturday. She said goodbye and left until next Monday. My Dad said:“let’s see if I can make it until Monday”. He couldn’t. At the end heasked for me. I got home the day after his funeral, coming from Brazilby train and bus. At the door my sister’s husband told me “Dad died”.Many years after his death, as we looked at some pictures, I heard my

23


sister whisper: "How beautiful our Dad was" I never thought of that.Those were pictures of him when he was twenty-seven, he was holdinga baby boy in his arms, he had a tan and I could see his muscles underthe clear t-shirt. He looked happy. I was that boy.

From those things related to my father I can especially rememberthose moments when we returned home after work. These were alwaysbig nights, full of stars and silence. So I see them now. We walkedthrough a setting of silent houses and ghostly lights in the windows andpatios. I felt lost in the darkness and didn’t like that feeling. I wanted toget home quickly, I wanted the night to end and then the day thenanother night, another day, until the siege of the nights and days wouldbreak. My father? What was he thinking? What did the transit from thebustle of the day to the promise of rest meant to him? Was mypresence any company, incentive, of relief to him? Would he look at methe same way I look at me now in the memory? What I see is an eagerpuppy, squatting at the bottom of himself, waiting for his chance tojump. My father pedaled and I trotted by his side. We did not have otherreference that the bicycle light on a oval piece of dirt, hypnotic andemerged as if from a dream, renewed on a street that may not have anend. That minimum light pointed the way and eventually took us out ofthe darkness. The light drove us to the family table set already fordinner; it guided us to the rumors of the chairs on the brick floor andsilverware on plates.

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

ANTONIO DAL MASETTO

Was born in Intra, Italy, in 1938, of peasant parents, Narciso and Mary. AfterWorld War II, in 1950, he immigrated to Argentina. The family settled in Salto,Buenos Aires. Dal Masetto learned Spanish reading books he selected atrandom from the town´s public library. "I suffered immigration very much. I felta Martian on earth" says Dal Masetto from his first arriving to the new country.The immigration issue is present in his books, as in his novels Oscuramentefuerte es la vida y La tierra incomparable. At 18 he arrived in Buenos Aires werehe worked as a construction man, a painter, at an ice-cream shop and ahousehold street seller. Then he became a state employee, a journalist andsince he was 43 years old, a writer. In 1964 he published his first book thatwas honored with a mention in the Premio Casa de las Americas. He received

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twice the Second Prize for the local Government award with -Fuego adiscreción and Ni perros ni gatos-. His novel Siempre es difícil volver a casawas translated to English language and also turned into a screen scriptdirected by by Jorge Polaco. La tierra incomparable, received the 1994 PlanetaBiblioteca del Sur Award. He is a regular contributor to Pagina/12 –a BuenosAires Newspaper.

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26

The skin of the waterEma Wolf

eeing that his disciples had trouble controlling the boatbecause of the strong wind against them, the Carpenter'sSon took off his sandals, picked up the edge of the robeand began to walk on the waves in their direction.

The disciples were terrified because they thought it was aphantom, but he told them not to be afraid, it was him going in their aid.Indeed, as soon as he reached them and jumped into the boat, thewind calmed down and they were able to reach the coast smoothly.

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

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

Leonardo is beside him, he is a genius, who left the brushes for awhile and is preparing to test one of his theories. Leonardo takes twolarge bags made of pig’s skin and inflates them with air from his lungs.Then he ties the bags tied to the soles of his feet. Wearing suchdevices as shoes -so to speak-, he starts walking on water. To avoidlosing his balance, he helps himself with two long poles that he stickson the soil, alternatively in every step.

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

SS


hundred times, but hey, we have to admit the obvious: he is walking.Leonardo has just dug up Archimedes discovery; the one the old manmade the day his bathtub overflowed. Leonardo is ready to improve itwith a touch of Florentine inventive. Currently teaches the world that aman can hold standing over the water as long as he respects theprinciple that says that his weight should not exceed the weight of thewater he displaces. That is way he docked at the foot the two inflatedbladders: when increasing the volume of displaced liquid, he alsoincreased the thrust of water from the bottom up, therefore there wasnot danger of sinking. With the bladders, then, and a pair of resistantpoles to prevent the subject from collapsing to one side, walking onwater is very possible.

Leonardo sits down to recover from the stress of his demonstration.Humanity will applaud him, among many other things, by the latter.

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

It runs along the surface at high speed, with long and gracefulstrides, standing on its sturdy hind legs, with membranes at the fingersedge. While it goes back and forth through the water, it hunts flies. It isnot trying to prove anything; walking on water is in their nature.

–Are you watching, Leonardo?

–Yeah.

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

–Every day, so its said

–Oh

They can take their eyes of the basilisk. Its walk has them impressedand confused too. The Carpenter's Son sees it walking and thinks ofthe admirable anatomy of the animal, with legs designed to takeadvantage of surface tension, there, where the molecules narrow andthe water is transformed into an elastic. Its sharp tail functions ascounterbalance and rudder. He thinks of the accurate calculation ofspeed that allows it to propel, in the insuperable machine its body isdescribing the acceleration reaction principle: he is in front of a perfecthydrodynamic model.

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

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

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

–Do not worry, it is a poetic comment. Take it like that, nothing more,as a poetic comment. It's something that I pop up with sometimes. Itcomes to me, I swear, it comes to me just like that, all of a sudden, Ican not suppress i t . I must keep some chi ld ish capabi l i ty ofamazement. It is said that poets are men who kept their child soul. Doyou never get poetic? Confess...

–Well, yes, sometimes. Not many

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

–Think of Neruda's postman. You remember that movie? So cute!With this raw boy, without having gone to school he was able tounderstand the beauty that emanated from those verses. Put someimagination, then, and you will see the islands as I see them, asfantastic tortoises! It is very sad that you live here, because as you livehere since you were born, facing the sea, and not be able to observethe tortoises in a more ... How could I say...? Do you know what I mean?

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

–Okay, okay, let’s leave it there, I will not insist on the topic. I realizethat sometimes you must have a foreigner’s eye to discover things. Forthose who see them every day, they are the most common, there isnothing wonderful in those things. Do you know the Chinese proverb?"Whoever looks at the sky in the water sees fish in the trees." I thinkthat there is something related to what I`m saying. It's like magic, doyou understand? Magic is not something that is in things, butsomething that one brings inside oneself and sometimes…..sometimesit wanders off.

–Of course.

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

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HH––


they are waiting for us. Besides, it’s getting cold and I’m hungry already.I guess I got you to think, or am I wrong?

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

She fits the pieces of her skeleton and completes the difficultprocess of staying upright. He assists her maneuvering, delicately. Aftertaking her arm he guides her by the beach’s steep road to the buildingwith the red roof.

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

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

The stolen dayepa, what day is today?

–It's Monday, Juan Sebastian.

–Isn’t it Sunday?

–No, it's Monday.

–Are you sure?

–told you seven times already

Elcano looks at the Guadalquivir River really absorbed while restingin the arms of Pepa. He deserves the rest: he just arrived from a journeyaround the world.

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

29

PP––


mainmast.

From those five ships and two hundred and seventy crew membersthat were the expedition, only Victoria has returned to Spain with ahandful of unfortunate men on board

. Eighteen unhappy men in total: seventeen sailors and him, Elcano.When departing from Sanlucar they were fat and healthy, their soulsclean by confession, with all their hair on their heads, with almost alltheir teeth. They returned bent by the guilt, dirty with crusts, withoutflesh, so consumed or damaged that it seems they have aged twentyyears.

During this incredible journey he ate cookie that were wetted by ratsurine and soaked leather of rigging. He saw the Captain General dieand almost all the other men. Dead by arrows, rough seas, of betrayal,cold, sickness in the gut, hunger; eaten ... Other chiefs were ineffectiveor dropped. He never imagined it would come to him, a man pulled outof jail to be sent on board without no further rank than that ofboatswain, command the only boat that would complete the feat.Because when it happened, when he had the chance to command hehad no other idea than going forward. For something he is Basque.

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

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

Something strange is happening. The numbers do not close forElcano. Each day of the trip here was recorded. Every day, withoutmissing one, a notch was made with a knife on a wooden board. TheItalian chronicler, -although young, very faithful-, did not left a singlehole in his diary, he skipped no date from the calendar. Neither Alvaro,the pilot, was distracted, who scrupulously record his logbook.

But now they count again and again and discover that Victoria cameto Seville with a day less. On land it's Monday and on board is Sunday.A true mystery. Never before anything like had occur. Elcano thinkswhere he might have lost that day. Or, rather, when.

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

30


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

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

La Pepa is wise. In a very short time she made him recover thememory of tastes he had forgotten. Apparently it is also wiser than skyscientists, because she says:

–The earth is not only round, as you may have noticed, but alsospinning. It turns on itself from west to east like a top, without stopping,because nothing or no one stops it. That job lasts almost twenty-fourhours.

–Is not the sun spinning?

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

–Is that so, Pepa?

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

–I’m confused.

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

–Why nobody told me that before?

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

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

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

Elcano does not resign himself. He thinks the world owes himsomething.

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EMA WOLF

Was born in Carapachay, Buenos Aires, in 1948. She is a writer. Shegraduated in Arts, worked in journalism, and devoted herself to children’sliterature. In 1984 he published his first book, Barbanegra y los buñuelos.Since then she alternated fiction texts with articles, meetings with readersand conferences in Argentina and abroad. Some titles that stand out for theirhumor: Qué animales!, Libro de los prodigios, Pollos de campo, Losimposibles. Among other awards, she won the National Children's LiteraturePrize, Alfaguara de Novela (in collaboration with Graciela Montes) and aMention in the Iberoamerican SM Prize 2008. Her books can be found onIBBY´s Honor list, White Raven and Banco del Libro of Venezuela. Between2002 and 2006 she was nominated by Argentina to the Hans ChristianAndersen Prize. Some of her titles had been translated into severallanguages. These three stories belong to the Libro de los Prodigios, Ed.Norma, Colombia, 2003.

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33hen I got off the bus, thirsty, the poster did not catchmy attention. I just glanced at it, but did not see it. Asthey say in my hometown, the peasant has twomoments.

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

This might be local stuff, I thought. Nobody pays too much attention,so is the south. But I asked, anyway. The boy, smiling with somesarcasm, told me:

–These are Pardal´s issues.

–What Pardal? I asked.

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

–What tent?

–Pardal´s tent,– he said and went to serve another table

I had to keep asking because the company sent me with to openthe market. I`m a gear sales representative for Pierre Dupie,, T-shirtswith the Cross of Lorraine on, though manufacturers are Korean.

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

The art of show businessJorge Di Paola

WWToday Gardel - Razzano Today Duo

34 Australes Do not bring nylon clothes


first shop you see and open the suitcase, show.

Finally the waiter came back and told me, there was no need todrag information from him:

–Go to Pituco´s and ask for Churri Molinaro on my behalf now, he ismanufacturing double-breasted and stripes suits...

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

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

–What for?

The waiter left out of the blue without answering me.

–Hey!– I shouted –Where is that?

–What is that?

–The Molinaro´s factory

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

I went out walking. I have very little expenses. Luckily the suitcaseweights almost nothing.. There were posters everywhere, I mean thosesaying Gardel Razzano, half displayed and also others announcingJuan Moreira.

I was already asking myself if that town was really going backwardswhen…

... In the office of Molinaro, quiet and very nice guy, like a duke, outof place in this world, the busnissman began to speak:

–going backwards? Not at all, we are evolving back to before, that isnot the same. We increased our production by 89 percent. And that weowe to Gómez Pardal…

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

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

–a medicine– I say just to say something

–Bullshit,– he said. How about lunch? O would you like an aperitifbefore? Let go to the best place in town, come on.

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

34


... When we found a table in "Hugo` s food "and the maitre helpedus with the chairs and he almost brushes us, the busnissman stared atme for a while and began to talk. "He is into something”, I thought

.Do not worry. Chirom is that your name, isn´t it? Do not worry,Chirom. No more t-shirts are sold in the area, so you are not wastingtime having cocktails ... Here we will not lose you –he said, and laugheda little. Not at all. I'm in need of an experienced seller, one that knowsthe Capital. Before working for Pierre Duppy, who did you work for? Ah,are you an engineer? Now I understand your curiosity about Pardal´smachine ...he should be arriving any minute now. No, no. GardelRazzano is not impersonators, no, –he said a l itt le offended–.Everything is authentic. Today is the first show of the tour that the 28thwill be at the Cervantes. A good cold chablis?

–Great wine!– I said, savoring.

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

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

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

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

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

"It must be Cinderella”, I thought and I looked at Margot’s shoes.They were patent leather, very shabby as if trampled in the subway. Shewas very pretty, dark.

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

I had another drink and thought: “Maybe this town is weirdo for mebecause I lived for so many years in the Capital City. I am originally fromRamallo, and many times I dream with the river and the bird´s tweets atdawn. In my nightmares I hear the noise of the parrots. As a kid I knewhow to hunt them, with glue”

–Pardal is such a nervous guy!– I told Molinaro

Very calm, the busnissman went on the booze and then, out of the

35


blue, he asked me:

–Do you know he is 35 years old?

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

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

Making the calculations I had been taught, I commented:

–It doesn´t seem possible…

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

–I got a job at the energy company, to start with.

He looked at me upside down and said nothing. At the time heraised the issue:

–Look, Chirom, let´s put funyi into fashion

–And the shows, what will you do ?

–Oh! No! We´ll leave them for Pardal. It was his idea when he wasdesperate

–Desperate for what?

–He was under pressure by a money issue, you know. He was doingthe machine with some guys at the workshop, gathering valves andcapacitors. Electronic waste. But in the end had to ask for a loan to buyan oscilloscope, if not, he would have been technologically outdated.Twelve thousand dollars that eventually became ninety thousand. Andwhere would he get the money? – He stood silent for a while andstared at me. Then he added:

–Yoa see this all very calm, don’t you? Nice people. But when itcomes to loot, the Montejo brothers start to play. They are from a verycollecting family.

–What happened?

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

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

36


money you get rid of the Montejo. I have no cash, but for a few days Ican stop them with checks. Leave them to me, but you only have oneweek. "

–But what was he going to do with the machine? – I said. Molinarointerrupted me:

–No doubt he is very intelligent. Smart enough to do it, but a salamito use it, to get profit from it...,

–Did not occur to him buying some dollars? ...

–Yes, it´s good business to by dollars and then sell them again thesame day but for more money and return and buy more. And that´s it,coming and going …buying when money is cheaper and selling whenits expensive…again and again. Look, it is possible to rule the worldwith that machine

–Fantastic! Minkowski's bicycle!

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

–And you, why is that you would not come and go twice or more?That way they might not be dangerous ...

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

–Speak English, man!

–…must be the cold

–What cold?

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

37


–For me this is Chinese.

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

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

–Then Pardal sat down and thought. Then he said:

–Big problem if A and not B!

–Tel l me, – I sa id . How many t imes d id you go, aren’ t youexaggerating?

–I went many times

–You’ve got a black eye, man…The other one is fine

–If it only was that…–he told me–. The guy looked terrible…

I could not think about the topic because Pardal´s theoriesexceeded everything I knew. But somehow, Molinaro, with his heartyway, had understood that if his friend had abused he was in danger, amysterious danger.

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

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

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

We stood shivering at the theater´s door. We were the first to enterbecause we were introduced by Gómez Pardal, which seemed toprevail in that environment. That means having relations. Over ahundred could not enter and waited outside. There, in the dressingrooms, all greeted the inventor as if he was the host. Carlitos in personpatted his shoulder. I shook hands with the singer but he startledbecause it was frozen. The voices echoed a bit, as if the speakers werepoorly regulated.

38

Today Gardel - Razzano Today Duo34 Australes

Do not bring nylon clothes


Gardel, who was fat, was swishing and then he spitted into a basin.Although I am not a tango man it was exciting to be near him. I wasstruck with the fact of seeing Pardal tuning a guitar. Do you rememberthe two guitarists, those that sound without purpose in old long playrecords? Well, there were three. Pardal in person completed the trio.

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

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

The inventor, who had turned gray and zarco, was weird on stage.He did not seem to belong to the present time, neither did he appearon the photographs, as seen later.

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

He was distracted and because of looking at her so much his voicewent out of tune

–What do you think of this affair?– . I said softly to Molinaro.

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

Then, during the interval, he answered me:

–What do I think? That Pardal never changes, not even scattering hiscooperative particles in space-time. But look at all the people hangingfrom the boxes. He should have already gathered all the loot forMontejo.

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

After the encore and the applause, the show ended. Pardalapproached and invited us to dinner, with Champagne Pommery. Hespoiled his minusha4. He did not spend the mony but threw it to the air.I believe she uses him.

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

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

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

Molinaro run back. He pushed me towards the entrance and said:

–The idiot did not pay!

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–We must tell him! –I shouted at him.

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

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

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

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

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

We remained thoughtful for a while, smelling like ashes.

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

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

1 Argentinean currency during the `80s

2 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “hat”

3 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “clothes”

4 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “babe”

5 Porteño slang (so called lunfardo) for “gun”

6 Gardel´s nick name, The Mute

JORGE DI PAOLA

Was born in Tandil, Buenos Aires (1940-2007). He published the shortstories book La virginidad es un tigre de papel (1974). He worked forPanorama, Confirmado and La Opinión as a writer, and was one of thefounders of El Porteño magazine. He published Hernán (1963), the novelMinga! (1987). He wrote, in collaboration with Roberto Jacoby, the spy novelMoncada. El arte del espectáculo (2001) is a book of stories.

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41ot long ago the raining stopped and it dawned on the field.The truck jolted along the path and gets buried in the mud.The speed is getting slower. The engine drowns. Mygrandmother, my mother, my sister and I are travelling atthe back of the truck. We travel holding each other, back

there, in the middle of our suitcases, bags and packages, protected bya cloth. It's January and we're going on vacation. Grandmother'srelatives have a home in Santa Teresita. And we were invited to spenda few days.

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

Grandmother was silent. Her eyes sparkle with mischief. It is truethat grandmother admires those relatives of hers. But looking at thesituation from another perspective, when grandmother says that herrelatives invited us to their house on the beach, this admiration is, asever, another way of lowering my father. By becoming the uniondelegate in each tailor´s shop my father works, he is fired soonbecause of confronting the employers, and has to seek other job.

I f ind i t hard to understand why i f my father despises my

SandGuillermo Saccomanno

NN


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

The house of our relatives is a cottage standing on a field, a few blocksfrom the sea. This beach house is another thing our relatives have over myfather. Grandmother takes it as its own. Days get long, endless, likewalking with my mother along the beach. To find a store will also have towalk a lot. Santa Teresita is an emerging town in the middle of sunburnedthistles, huge extensions delimitated for a few fences. The rough and hotwind raises dust and sand. At night the wind brings the sound of the sea.It is good to fall asleep listening to the waves, like a whisper. I fall asleepimagining how it will be going to sea with my father, whenever he comes.But days pass and he is not coming.

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

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

Down below, my father runs along the beach towards the sea. Hetakes off his jacket, then his shirt. Without losing any speed he takes offhis shoes, socks, pants and shorts until he only keeps his underwear on.He runs nonstop until the first waves. He dives. Again and again heappears in the foam and jumps into the waves again. My father is not anexperienced swimmer. His style is chaotic, with lots of improvisation. In hisstrokes the effort is more noticeable than the skill. His silhouette is visibleonly from afar. Soon he is devoured by the highest and violent waves

I hurry behind him, collecting the cloths he left lying on the sand. Istop before reaching the water. With horror I realize that his body, a

42


silhouette of a moment ago, has disappeared after a giant wave. Nowmy mother and my sister are by my side. Scared, my mother calls him.Screams out his name. She yells his name several times, almost crying.I sum my voice to hers. My sister thinks we are playing. And she laughsimitating us. Despair gets hold of us. We shout at the sea.

It takes time until my father appears into the distance. The waveskeep hiding him. He is trying to get back. The tide pulls him inside, butwith his stubbornness and his being obstinate he manages to swimback to the beach. When he emerges from the waves, now on his feet,raises his arms with joy as a kid, like inviting us to a dive. When hecomes close, when it is already with us, he notices the anguishedexpression of my mother face. She is crying. My mother´s shock makeshim laugh

In French the sea is a woman, he says. Your mother was jealous.

My father is excited by the sea.

And he tells me this story. On the third day of creation the earth wasflat and the water covered it. Fulfilling an order from God, the waterswere distributed crossing valleys and mountains. But the waters werearrogant. And the water rose threatening to drown all. God told them offand put one foot in front of them setting the limit of the sea. When thewaters saw the sand they made fun of God. Sand grains wereinsignificant. "We do not fear them," said a wave. And another: Any ofus, even the smallest, can destroy them." The sand grains werepanicked. But one said: "It is true that we are insignificant when we'reapart and even a gentle breeze can dissolve us. But it is also true that ifwe unite we can withstand the onslaught of arrogant waters. "

I asked my father if he believes in God.

I believe in the grains of sand, he says.

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

GUILLERMO SACCOMANNO

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

43


buen dolor and La lengua del malón. Saccomanno won several prizes: forShort Story Premio Municipal, Latinoamerican Fiction Prize Crisis, Premio Clubde los XII, National Novel Prize and Best Novel Award by Seix Barral.

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45rom here, from the top floor, is possible to see in its scope,the little woods in the lot in front. Every day I open thebedroom window to let in the early hours breeze and coolthe still air that got loaded during the night with heavybreathing of dreams. Eucalyptus imposes over the other

trees: pines, limes and some small paradise that never finish growingproperly because there is too much shade in such denseness. Up here,viewed in perspective, the top frame of the window, from far away,coincides with the top line of the leaves. Eucalyptus tree is the tallest ofthem all and perhaps its crown is also wider. There are days when thebranches swing lethargically. Others, the branches are so quiet thatseem to be dead. In winter storms winds cross as whips and make thethicker branches crazy until leaving them nude at the top.

Sometimes there is an idea I hate spinning in my head. Somemornings when I open the window I think that from this height, the onlyway to see the sky more full –that is, without the silhouette of theeucalyptus top-, would be tearing down that tree. That’s a truth I detest.Perhaps because the fallen tree would became over the time in a bedof splinters on the ground. The powdered trunk, roots, branches andleaves already destroyed would be a fertilizer for the other trees to growless fragile or higher. And then, once again the sky will be cut off andover again.

But I recognize that is not always the case that sometimes

EucalyptusÁngela Pradelli

FF


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

Timoten 1970 I was eleven years old, my parents had just separated andat home we were living the tremor that usually come with thebreaking ups. That year, when there were only to days to go for thewinter holidays, Teresa, a red-haired woman who came home twicea week to clean and iron some clothes, asked me if I wanted to go

with her to spend some days in her relative’s house in a small town.Where do they live? I asked her. In Timote, she said. During theprevious month and overnight, Timote had risen from obscurity to famewhen newspapers, television and radio gave the news that GeneralPedro Eugenio Aramburu had been shot by Montoneros a guerrillagroup at that location. It is true that the first days of June when thenews was known nobody had any idea where Timote was, but in a fewhours, its name transcended not only in social discourse but also inalmost all family conversations.

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

"I’m sure they are heading towards the house where Aramburu waskilled," Teresa said. The building was actually a ranch that was oppositethe house where Teresa's relatives lived, a low-roofed house, which hadno electricity or gas.

During the days we were in Timote, at all times, we saw carsparading in front of the house. They came from the towns near by but itis also true that many of them traveled specifically from Buenos Aires.Everyone wanted to get closer to the murder scene.

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

46

I


stayed there for ten or fifteen minutes. From across we saw themcoming and going the width of the land where the house was built.Only a few dared to jump the fence and get to the other side. But oneway or the other, inside or outside, all conjecture and drew conclusions.That this would be the gate through which the Montoneros enter thecar and Aramburu. That the trial would have taken place in the roomoverlooking the front, which would probably be the main room. ThatAramburu would have been killed here, said a man pointing out awindow facing west. No, someone answered from the other side, it willhave been here. They also argued that the basement where they hadfound him would occupy pretty much of the construction and likelyMontoneros would have bought in the town the bags of lime underwhich later the body of General Aramburu was found. No, said otherman, the bags would be in the house, perhaps they were left over froma construction work. Most of them assured that the guerrilleros hadbought the lime at Carlos Tejedor, a town near by where there was alarge shop for construction materials.

After they had run out of speculations about how the events hadoccurred many of them crossed the dirt road to ask Teresa's relatives ifthey had heard the firing. Some also asked whether they had seen theMontoneros entering and leaving the house during the days of thekidnapping or buying groceries at the shops near the station. Theywanted to know if the rebels waved to neighbors and even if any musicwas heard in the house. The most suspicious wondered if from acrossthe road they had never noticed any suspicious movement and howwas it possible that the shooting had not been heard by those living soclose.

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

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ÁNGELA PRADELLI

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

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49

The PassionAccording to St. MartinMario Goloboff

To Oscar Terán

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols."

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

he copybook had his name, and boxes of pencils, pens,erasers, uniforms. And on top of it he was all morning infront of us, above, at the core of the main wall of a hugeclassroom with three high windows to the street fromwhere the rumors of the day rose, the voices of the fruit

sellers and the people walking.

My sheets were messy, every homework full of stains that wereimpossible to remove. At first, I intended to preserve the paper almostintact, but as the week progressed I saw how they were wasted withstains, deletions, ruined corrections, injured up and down with thoseears that twisted their angles and saddened the page. I also was a sadboy, and maybe that was the reason why I could not avoid the slowcorruption of my promising white sheets of paper.

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

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

TT


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

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

Finally, however, I finished. I would be liberated by the bell calling forbreak time, the end of the school day or face of the teacher who, whenapproaching my desk will shout "please finish that at one, you are notgoing to spend the whole week doing such a mess." And indeed, whenI opened the copybook at home, I looked sadly at my work because thepicture was a caricature, so far from the image we had in the front ofour class as of any human figure.

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

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

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She was among the best students in our class, only and adoptedchild (it was an open secret) by the school´s caretaker; she keptdecently her humble condition, preferring to be loved for her behaviorand partnership. "Behavior" was much more important than any otheracademic aptitude, and although she did not lack them, her power inthe class came from the few and appropriate occasions she spoke. Shedid so very gently, to be heard, creating an oasis in the midst of ourendless hustle and our mess. Naturally sparing with words, naturally fairand, of course, Catholic in a town where the exceptions were few, thesober defense that she made of me that closed forever the insidiousquestion launched by Mrs. Bileto. And at the same time opened a roadbetween us we'd never explored: that of my gratitude, a mutualsolidarity that would break neither age nor time nor the hard woundsthat happen over time.

I wrote that it was a difficult time, its vicissitudes were not ableenough to dent our growing fraternity. I must qualify it like that as I cannot argue that we have been friends: sex differences at that time hadmuch more importance, and we could not think of seeing each other.We neither knew the possibilities of love, perhaps our dreams have evertouched, but I fear mine were only those who sought it, and if so itseems to me that giving account for them is not fair with her memories.I am not writing to talk about me or my nights, I do it to draw a dreamthat is not mine, one uncatchable breath, that girl's face against thetempest. No, we did not love, we did not have each other or we did notlose each other: the idols did all that for us. The idols and myincapability to adore them.

After the sixth grade, I´ve started secondary school with a Literatureorientation and she one with economic orientation, I increasinglypreferred the company of lazy and street friends, I think I´ve desired andobtained some success among girls. Fortunately, Ana Maria had alwaysremained far away from my relationships and of those cumbersomecontacts. Sometimes we crossed each other in one of these limitedcorners, we maintained an innocent dialogue on our respective peersand studies, we follow our way knowing that we lived there, everyday,present in a still visible universe.

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

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night I´ll irretrievably lose the films at the Rex: Sterling Hayden and JeanHagen would be forever behind the screen without showing me whathappens when "The City Sleeps," because this, my own, will neversleep: it was living a nightmare that just begun, and did so with all theachievable pomp. That spectacle seemed grotesque to me: shelteredbehind the living room window, I smiled. When I saw Ana Maria again,this time with her mother, her pain and my having smiled hurt me. I wasunaware of the limitless evil of which human beings are capable, andplayed with the grief of others as an evil god.

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

Only September brought the long-awaited freedom. What weaccused of tyranny, fell, and with it their names and statues. Thebiggest and most ridiculous statue, which ruined the beauty of our MainPlaza, was pull down by us, the students in 5th year. At that time I hadbegun to write and discovered (or others made me discover) an innateoratory facility. Impelled by these adolescents’ blunders, I said fieryspeeches of victory, and also opened the prom party of our school withtwo or three sentences that the tempting spreaders of my own wordshad allowed. Ana Maria was there, representing her School, and heard,of course, all my nonsense. At that moment I did not care, or evenapproached her, perhaps I even had uploaded my patriotic indignationand my flushing to point tacitly some distances.

Afterwards we began to dance with two orchestras. I who had nevergone any further that some timid waltzes, jumped wildly from rancherasto rock and roll. At one point, out of that obscene shaking (which hadbeen helped by more than a few drops of alcohol), noticed her. Ithought she looked at me, along with two other friends, withoutdancing. Defiant, crossed the room, but when I was so close to herhand, ostentatious, unfaithful, unable to retreat, I felt the fear ofrejection. She greeted me warmly, introduced me to her friends, andinvited me to share her table. I told her that I preferred to dance, andshe nodded. I understood she did not need man's testimony becauseshe knew what men kept.

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

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

The memories that come after this are those of the unlikelyawakening to maturity. I left my hometown, and went down in a coldcity where the diagonals deepened the confusion: they simulated thedreams of a strange and hermetic despot who had wanted to causecontinuous and false deciphering. I walked anxiously those diagonalsseeking the contact of ancient walls with my child hand, but neither thehouses nor my hands were the same and I learned to recognize myselfas a changing person in a changing world.

Occasionally I returned to my home town to see my parents, thosemoments were hard and even aggressive. I was doing the self-examination all our generation had started then, and reviewing the gapwhich separated us from what we pompously called "the masses."Intellectuals adrift, we tried to reincarnate historically, and to do so wehad to see the past with their eyes and heart. My father concluded ourdiscussions by saying that it was the University to blame for my whims,"and who knows what other companies."

On those trips I looked for her intimatly. I was chasing somethingmore than just a reunion and a return to our lost dialogue, somethingmore than the recovery of her eyes and her face which I could neverremember, something more than the realization of an impossible lovefantasy. Facing my changes, my new ways of seeing the country and itsrestless destiny, needed her agreement, possible now, and herimmeasurable forgiveness.

I could not see her. Also she and her mother had left town, andnobody knew (or wanted) to give me clear information about wherethey were living now. Someone told me that the mother had died inBuenos Aires, someone slipped hints about Ana Maria´s "dangerous"activities of in northern province. But nothing else. The years have

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

Lunel, Languedoc, 1978-1979.

MARIO GOLOBOFF

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

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55ong ago I lived in an apartment Atilio my mom bought mebecause he said the previous depressed him and thereforecould not work. It was for less: In the previous departmenthad an elevator would stop since about seventy, wedropped a glass and put a board and prepared to lead a

new life in a newer, smaller. I fantasized fix my taste, a little taste I havehad, but did not know how people brought home all those nice thingswere there. I was very careful with the decorations because Atilioinsults, broken or encountered. Yes, we in the former department's bedwhere we slept, it was a single seat, but I saw this discomfort as if fatehad in store to me. At night, he came late to walk around, with arecurring story: That he had run down the street with a big military, filledwith epaulets and he had won. I told her "slumber" with some cautionbecause I knew the speech was coming next: I was referring to poorpeople who do not understand the meaning of a heroic deed. When Iwent to work leaving him asleep and wrapped in a fog of alcohol. Oneday I was very diligent and said, "I'll help make up for that." We went tosee a doctor, who prescribed vitamins, but even the vitamins that wereprescribed to him than those of the human race: he prescribed somebrown balls, like small meatballs grainy. I also took to the psychiatrist"The doctor told Doormat. And the interview was also different fromwhat they usually are. Atilio came talking loudly and thickly and Dr.Doormat said

Two pants suitHebe Uhart

LL


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

He obeyed, because he was afraid of the police, military, doctors,mothers of brides, dogs and travel. He told me to work I needed a newsuit and it was nothing to miss the occasion: my mom gave me moneyto buy a suit at home Muñoz, where weight is worth two, who camewith two pairs of trousers. He was always in a suit, shirt and tie, neverwore a jacket or jeans, because basically he wanted to be very good,but everything he played against. Once worked for a few months in aninsurance company, and some criteria unknown to me, he was namedsecretary of the trade and to do the minutes of meetings. But such wasthe anxiety that caused him to write down everything he said becausehe did not remember after the middle of things, "he told me that hethrew the book of Acts in the creek. And then I had the anxiety ofpossible punishment and humiliation of having to lie, because he toldhis colleagues that he lost.

Now, I went home Muñoz, with the assurance of which plays animportant role and he waited at the bar around the corner "I alwayswaited at the corner bar-efficient as I fulfilled my duties. I had an inch,so I took a string to measure the length of the pants, with a life so busyand eventful one centimeter is an irrelevant detail. We entered thisbeautiful shop with vendors so elegant, I realized that I was doingsomething wrong, but I was not deter me and put the thread on thecounter. The seller said:

–But this ...I can not handle this. Bring the subject.

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

–Bring it.

As if it were easy, I had to convince him terrified and followed me tothe store. At the door were two top sellers, very well dressed, arrogantpoise. Atilio was very thin, his clothes were soiled and the store lookedlike giants who can not believe what he sees. We took two of thosemeasures huge and prestigious vendors in the corner, and when weleft, one of the giants, it was like a guardian of the door, he said:

–You have to eat more, boy, is very thin

I had to return home again Muñoz because once the two wereruined pants. The first pair I do not know where he disappeared and thesecond had crossed a thousand wars, had some strange things stuck,sticky, appeared chewed and was broken. I thought, "I must take tohave it repaired." The vendor looked at him and said, hesitantly andshocked, trying not to touch:

But this! How could he have broken it?

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

–No, no remedy –said.

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

HEBE UHART

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

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

I had insomnia, was wearing shorts, sitting in front of the openwindow overlooking the terrace and garden. The only lights on were thelights inside the pool, but it was waved by the water and it could notcompletely kill that feeling of being in a strange house, that indefinablemalaise aroused by the mock holidays.

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

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

Night SwimmingJuan Forn

II


Meanwhile, maybe Felix and Ruth decided to extend their tripanother month, or had an accident or they would fall in love with thesame young androgynous and illiterate EFEBO in Alexandria. Onemonth could be much longer in some places; one month could bealmost a life, as for his daughter. He had to start living at her rhythm, ashe had told his wife. Day after day, hour after hour, slowly. Once for allhe had to assume fatherhood, as Felix and Ruth would say, in case theyhave not said so yet.

Then he heard the door. Not the bell but a smooth, polite, knocking.As if who knocked was aware of the time it was. Each house has itsown logic and its laws are more eloquent at night when things happenwithout any mitigating sound. He did not look at the clock, nor feltsurprised, nor did he think the beating was his own imagination. He justgot up, without turning on any light as he passed and when he openedthe door he found his father standing before him. He had not seen himsince he died. And then, he incongruously knew that he already hadthe idea of not seeing him anymore.

His father was wearing a buttoned raincoat, his abundant hair wellgroomed, as usual, but completely white. They had never been veryexpressive with each other. He said: "Dad, what a surprise", but did notmove until his father asked him with a smile:

–May I come in?

–Yes, of course. Sure

The father crossed the dark living room, the open window and sat inone of the chairs on the terrace. Being there he looked inside, he calledwith his hand while touching the empty deck chair beside him. He wentobediently to the terrace. He said:

–Do you want to give me your raincoat? Something to drink?

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

–Is going to start raining any minute now– he said–. How wonderful.Is it like this during the day too?

–Better. Specially for Marisa and the baby

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

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

–Yes, sure– he said. I guess so.

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–Of course, I do not mean you should put me up with the news.Let’s forget about politics, work, and the world in general, if possible. I’minterested in the domestic things. Your sisters, you, Marisa, the baby.Those things.

He was surprised that he mentioned the word domestic. And evenmore that he had appointed all but his mother, but did not know whatto say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

–If you knew how much stuff I did in these years because of you,thinking you were watching me.– And he laughed a little, without joy,but without bitterness, just to get his lungs empty. – So, you do notknow nothing about these four years. That’s incredible.

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

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

He looked at him blankly.

–There was a transfer. From now on I'll be elsewhere. Not only me,many more. The things there are not as order ly as assumed.Sometimes there are contingencies. I mean, being here with you now.

–Why me? Why you did not see Mom?

For a while the father looked at the undulating light from the pool.His face changed slightly; there was a gesture of sadness.

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

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

He paused.

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

He paused again.

–I also thought you would handle in a better way the feelingsaroused by this visit. After all, I've never been so important to you, isnot it?

He felt something he had not felt for a long time: A kind ofSUMISIÓN and the need to oppose to it. Suddenly he knew that in thelast four years he had not be what he was now, again: his father's son.He went to the edge of the pool, took off his moccasins and sat withhis legs in the water.

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

–No

He remained perplexed. The answer was so fast and brutal thatsounded sincere. And because of that it seemed so unlikely. Coward.Almost unfair.

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

–Nothing– the father replied.

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

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

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

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–True,– he said–. Sorry.

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

The father giggled.

–I thought so.

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

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

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

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

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

–can I ask you something before?

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

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

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

–That's something I could have answered since I was twenty yearsold or less. I always suspected that it mattered more during our life thanlater. Regarding the other question, it is not exactly a place where theygo. But yes: all go to the same place, to the extent that we are allrelatively equal. Your neighbor’s lifestyle of and yours, for example, differas much as your height and his. They are just shades, and shades donot count. Let's say there are basically only two states: yours and mine.It is rather more complex, but you would not understand now.

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

The father did not answer.

–Does it matter being there together?

The father did not answer.

–And how is it? He said.

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

62


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

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

–Anything else?– said the father.

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

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

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

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

JUAN FORN

He was born in 1959 and joined Emecé publishing house at the age of 20(where he worked as a phone operator, proofreader, translator and Argentinefiction editor). He lives in Villa Gesell, Buenos aires province, from where hewrites the back-page features of Página/12 newspaper. Some of his books are:Corazones cautivos más arriba, Nadar de noche, Frivolidad, Puras mentiras. Hecreated the collections Biblioteca del Sur (fiction) and Espejo de la Argentina(non fiction) for Editorial Planeta, and in 1996 created the culture supplementRadar for Página/12. In recent years he has translated the books SnowCountry, by Yasunari Kawabata; Bullet Park, by John Cheever; and Mescalito,by Hunter Thompson. His best journalistic writing has been compiled in thebook La tierra elegida. He was awarded the Premio Konex de Platino for thebest literary journalist of the 1996-2006 decade. In March 2010 he publisheda new book of non-fiction, Ningún hombre es una isla.

63


CABACiudad

de Buenos Aires


65our left and three came back. Then the house, and everythingaround it, came to life. My father and the boy’s father, thebutler, the foreman, the journeymen, even a hobo who hadarrived the day before crossed the gate that led onto thewoodland with bright eyes and lowered heads. Latour, the

boy’s father, seemed to be in less of a hurry. As if my father was surethat something very bad had happened and the boy’s father was not.Or as if my father thought they were still in time and the boy’s fatherknew instead that it was too late.

My brothers and Latour’s older brother had run their way back. Theywalked into the house together, as one, and they jammed at the door.Then my mother asked about the boy: Where’s Martín? All three ofthem looked down. My father shook my elder brother by the shoulders.My youngest brother stepped aside, with his hands in his pockets.Martín Latour’s brother closed his mouth as if his life depended on it.But he could not hold back a tear. My father whispered something tomy mother; then he knelt by the older of the Latours and put his handson the boy’s shoulder. He talked to him, trying to get the boy to look inhis eyes. My mother hurried to the phone and called the father of theLatour brothers. When Latour arrived, my father was almost done withthe butler’s instructions.

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

Those who camebackEsther Cross

F


the families kept running into one another –on the road, in town, at the LaRodada restaurant on Sunday nights– until one day they started meetingmore often. That’s why my parents took us to the Latour’s to play someafternoons, and they brought their children over for a few hours.Sometimes, Latour would swing by – that’s the way he put it, swing by– tosay hello. He came in his pickup truck, after his ride around the estate,with his two children and the dog in the back. He had a gentleman’s faceand hardened hands. That was the combination.

The Latour boys and my brothers looked alike, like the sons ofmothers who buy the same kind of clothes. My mother used to dressmy brothers up in clothes that copied those of English boys. Themother of the Latours went into town and bought clothes that copiedthe clothes my mother bought for my brothers – the Latours hardly evertravelled to Buenos Aires. The boys got along rather well. They had asimilar gait, with moves that walking around the countryside –jumpingacross fences, stepping hard and cautiously, stopping to listen– hadstamped on their heads. But there were differences. The biggest onewas that the Latours lived on the countryside and my brothers didn’t.My brothers knew about jets, building blocks and collectible picturecards. But whenever they wanted to find out what armadillo meat tastedlike, why owls sometime appeared hanging from the mill’s weathervane, where trash got burnt, what the sex life of sheep was like andthings like that they consulted the Latour living encyclopedia. The otherdifference was that they did not have a sister. I had no double in thatmirror. There was only time between the older of the Latours andMartín. That afternoon, when they found the body of Martín Latour in thewoodland, all resemblances were lost.

They found him lying under a tree. He was so young he couldn’teven read. Blood was trickling down his nose. He was face up. Hiswhite skin was soiled with dirt. His head was tilted to one side. Heseemed asleep. But there was something strange. As if he wassleeping in a sleep of subtle alteration. An impossible sleep, fromanother planet. Perhaps from a planet where nobody was ever awake.He had snapped his neck. And his mouth was open, as if he had notfinished what he was about to say, or as if surprise had been the lastword he spoke in his life.

I stayed at the house with my mother, my brothers and Martín’soldest brother. Since we were all quiet, every movement seemed slowerand the noises from the kitchen were too clear. Nobody explainedanything to me but I understood all too well what was going on (tragicevents are clear and exact). The three boys behaved as if they didn’tknow each other, each was locked in a world of their own. But whensomebody talked to any of them –the maid asked them whether they

66


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

That afternoon, grown-ups seemed bigger and their voices boomedwith excessive might. The voices of the men carried from the woodlandto the house. We could hear the name of the boy. Martin. They werecrying out his name, surely funneling their hands. The louder they saidit, the further Martín seemed to get from us. Then the worst happened.The mother of the boy had not obeyed her husband. Rather thanstaying at home, waiting for news as it got darker and the rooms grewlarger like shadows, she had come. We heard the sound of wheels onthe path, preceded by a dog. Mrs. Latour got out of a jeep. The foremanof her ranch had driven her over.

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

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

He showed up running through the sheds, with his tack loose and afrenzied face. Campello, the horsebreaker, who had stayed just in case,grabbed him by the reins. Then he unsaddled him, hosed him downand let him go. Campello was sure he had been whipped or scared off.He was so tame it was impossible to imagine him running away. Kids’stuff, said Campello some days later. But on that day I discovered thateven the calmest creature can go crazy. It may run to make an escapewithout realizing it’s leaving a victim behind. That was what hadhappened. I couldn’t make sense of it any other way. That horse didn’thave a mean streak. And he was quite a sight. He tossed his head. Hekicked at the floor. He pulled his head back as if someone was trying tokill him.

But the water and finding himself in a familiar place calmed him down.Or perhaps it was not that. Perhaps horses have no memory. Whathappened a while ago is one thing and what is happening now issomething else. When Campello let him go, the horse rolled in the dirt, ashe always does, to dry himself and then ran off. A short dash and then a

67


halt. Again and again. Nothing out of the ordinary. That was his afternoonroutine, when he was let loose. But that was not a regular afternoon. Thekid who had ridden him was dead, lying in the woodland. Mute forever.Like the horse, my brothers and his brother. Mute.

The reconstruction of that near, irreparable past which we didn’t see:the horse bolted, dashed even though Martín Latour was pulling backon the reins, then stopped suddenly to dodge something and MartínLatour was hurled over the horse’s neck, slammed the log, lost his life.That was it. He had lost his life. But we still didn’t know why the horsehad bolted. On one hand we had the body of the youngest of theLatours, and on the other hand we had the graveyard silence of hisbrother and my brothers.

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

That afternoon, my mother had told me to let the boys go play alone.I had to understand. Sometimes the boys wanted to play on their own. Itook offense. At the countryside it didn’t matter that I was a girl, I onemore kid. I also realized that they were right. So I said nothing, althoughI didn’t agree with them either. We had tea together. Then I saw themmove, in haste, around the house, like boys do when they are about togo somewhere together. They were organizing themselves, as if theywere a body. When they closed the mosquito net, it was a little less hotalready.

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

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

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cared for the mother. We saw them walking her to the jeep. Herhusband was holding her by the waist. He set her on the front seat andwalked inside again, looking for his eldest son. He was going to takecare of the paperwork with my father, and the Latour boy had to returnhome with his mother.

He told him as if it were an order, but we also understood that if hewent he ould be doing his father a favor, andbesides he was going totake care of his mother for the first time in his life. The boy was wearing ablue T-shirt. His face was soiled with dirt, with the dried tracks of his tears.His father grabbed him by the shoulders to take him outside. My brotherand the boy looked at each other. Had they meant to play a joke onMartín and therefore had scared his horse? Had the horse freaked out atsomething they did unintentionally? Maybe they had stepped on a driedbranch and that had scared the animal. Or had they fought and hit thehorse with their riding whip? Or could it be that Martín had galloped toohard to get away from them, because they were chasing him during play?And what if the boy had run away like that because he had donesomething to them? On that day, the resemblance between my brothersand the Latour boys broke like a spell but something stronger than thespell bound them, even though they never played together again. I wasfortunate to realize it was best not to ask my brothers any questions. Iwould have hit the silence of truth.

ESTHER CROSS

(Buenos Aires, 1961) has published Bioy Casares a la hora de escribir andConversaciones con Borges en el taller literario, books of interviews withArgentien writers written in collaboration with Félix della Paolera; the novelsCrónica de alados y aprendices, La inundación, El banquete de la araña andRadiana, and the short story collections La divina proporción and Kavanagh.She translated Richard Yates’ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness into Spanish. In 1998she was awarded the Fulbright-Fondo Nacional de las Artes scholarship. In2004 she was awarded the Civitella Ranieri scholarship. She also translated Lamisma sangre y otros cuentos and Ángeles y hombres, by William Goyen. Sheteaches writing workshops. She collaborates with several literary publications.In February 2009, her novel La señorita Porcel wone the Primer Premio deNovela Siglo XXI in Mexico. The novel was published in Mexico and Argentina.That same year, together with Ángela Pradelli, she edited and wrote theprologue for La Biblia según veinticinco escritores argentinos.


70 t that age there’s music playing in your head, all the time,as if you had a radio broadcasting at the back of yourneck, right under your skull. That music starts turningdown one day or it just stops. When that happens, youstop being a teenager. But that wasn’t the case, not even

close, in the days when we talked to the dead. Then the music wasplaying at full blast and it sounded like Slayer, Reign in Blood.

We started with the Ouija board at Poland’s, locked in her bedroom.We had to do it in secret because Mara, Poland’s sister, was scared ofghosts and spirits, bah, she was scared of everything, she was a stupidlittle bitch. And we had to do it in the daytime, because of said sisterand because Poland had a large family, they all went to bed early, andnone of them approved of the Ouija because they were super Catholic,the church-going rosary-praying kind. Poland was the only cool personin that family, and she had got hold of a great Ouija board that came ina special offer with some magazines on magic, witchcraft andinexplicable facts called The World of the Occult, which were sold atmagazine stands and which you could bind into a collectible volume.They had given away the Ouija board with the magazine several times,but they always sold out before any of us could gather enough moneyto buy it. Until Poland took it seriously, saved up, and there we werewith our beautiful board, which had the letters and numbers in grey, ared background and these very satanic, mystical drawings all aroundthe middle circle. It was always five of us: me, Julita, Pinocchia (we

When we talkedto the deadMariana Enríquez

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

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

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


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

So Pinocchia’s was the only place left. The only problem was thather house was very far away, we had to take two buses and talk ourparents into letting us go there, to the back of beyond. But we did.Pinocchia’s parents didn’t pay us any mind, so at her place there wasno risk of getting kicked out with all the God talk. And Pinocchia hadher own bedroom, because her brothers had already left home.

Finally, one summer night the four of us got permission and went toPinocchia’s. It was really far, her street wasn’t even paved and there wasa gutter next to the sidewalk. It took us two hours to get there. But whenwe did, we realized right away that going all the way there had been thebest idea ever. Pinocchia’s bedroom was very big, there was a doublebed and bunk beds: more than enough room for the five of us to sleep.It was an ugly house because it was unfinished, with the plaster on butno paint, naked light bulbs dangling from ugly black wires, no lamps,the floor was bare cement, without tiles or wood or anything. But it wasbig, it had a terrace and a yard with a barbecue grill, and it was muchbetter than any of our houses. Living that far was not good, but it wasworth it for having a place like that, even if it was unfinished. Out there,away from the city, the night sky looked navy blue, there were firefliesand the air smelled different, a mixture of burnt grass and river.Pinocchia’s house had grates all around, and it was guarded by a bigblack dog, I think it was a Rottweiler, you couldn’t play with it becauseit was fierce. Living far away seemed a bit dangerous, but Pinocchianever complained.

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

Julita wanted to talk to her mum and her dad.

* * *

It was great that Julita finally talked about her parents, because wedidn’t dare ask her. There was a lot of talk about it at the school, butnobody had ever said anything to her face, and we always stood up forher if anyone started blabbering stupid shit. The thing is that everyoneknew Julita’s parents hadn’t died in an accident: Julita’s parents haddisappeared. They were disappeared. We didn’t quite know how to sayit right. Julita said they had been taken, because that’s how her


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

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

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

Poland said her aunt’s boyfriend was disappeared, they had takenhim during the World Cup. That came as a surprise to us all, becausePoland’s family was all squeaky-clean and square. She explained thatthey hardly ever talked about it, but that her aunt had told her one dayshe was half-drunk after a barbecue at her place, when the men werewaxing nostalgic about Kempes and the World Cup, and she blew afuse, had a glass of red wine and told Poland about her boyfriend andhow scared she had been. Nadia contributed a friend of her dad’s,when she was a child he would come for lunch often on Sundays andone day he had come no more. She hadn’t really registered that friend’sabsence, especially because he usually went to see football matcheswith her dad and they never took her along. Her brothers noticed morethat he wasn’t coming, asked their dad, and the old man didn’t have itin him to lie to them, tell them they had quarreled or something. He toldthe boys that he had been taken, the same thing Julita’s grandparentssaid. Then, her brothers told Nadia. At that moment, neither the kids norNadia had any idea where he had been taken to, or whether takingsomeone was an everyday thing, whether it was good or bad. But nowwe all knew about those things, after the film Night of the Pencils(which made us cry and wail, we rented it like once a month) andNunca Más –Pinocchia had brought it to school, because they let herread it at home– and what the magazines and TV said. I contributed my


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

Pinocchia didn’t have anyone to contribute, but we came to theconclusion that the disappeared spirits we had were enough. That nightwe played until four in the morning, by that time we started yawningand our throats were raspy from so much smoking, and the coolest partwas that Pinnochia’s parents didn’t even knock on the door to get us togo to sleep. It seems, although I’m not sure because all my attentionwas focused on the Ouija, that they were watching TV or listening tomusic until dawn came, too.

* * *

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

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


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

Then, the spirit left.

We thought about it for a while, but decided not to make much of it.In the beginning, in our first games with the Ouija board, we alwaysasked the spirits that came whether someone troubled them. But thenwe stopped doing it because the spirits loved to fool around with thatand they jerked us around, first they said Nadia, then they said no,everything’s cool with Nadia, Julita is the problem, and they had ustaking our fingers on and off the cup all night, even leaving the room,because there was no limit to what those bastards demanded.

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

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

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

–It’s Leo, can I come in?

–Come on in, you jerk!

Pinnochia leaped to her feet and opened the door. Leo was herolder brother, who lived downtown and visited his parents just onweekends because he worked every weekday. And he didn’t come inall weekends either, because sometimes he was too tired. We knewhim because when we were younger, in first and second year, he wouldsometimes pick Pinnochia up at school, when her folks couldn’t come.Then we started riding the bus on our own, when we were old enough.That was a shame, because we stopped seeing Leo, who wasgorgeous, with green eyes on dark hair and a killer face, something todie for. That night, at Pinnochia’s, he was as beautiful as ever. We allsighed a little and tried to hide the board, just so he wouldn’t think wewere weird. But he didn’t care.

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

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

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

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

Pinnochia agreed unwillingly, and asked us to wait. We sat on thefloor around the board, whispering about how cute Leo was, who waslike 23 then, much older than us. It was a while and Pinnochia didn’tcome back, which was weird. Like half an hour later, Julita suggestedwe go and check out what was going on.

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

Pinocchia had followed her brother around the corner from thehouse. She couldn’t understand why he had left his truck there, whenthere was room all around, but he didn’t reply. He had changed whenthey left the house, he had got more distant, didn’t talk to her. Whenthey got to the corner, he told her to wait and, according to Pinnochia,disappeared. It was dark, so he may have walked away a few steps outof her sight, but according to her he had disappeared. She waited awhile to see if he got back, but the truck wasn’t there either and shegot scared. She returned to the house and found her folks awake inbed. She told them Leo had come, that he was acting very strange, thathe had asked her for help getting some stuff off of his truck. Her folksgaped at her like she was crazy. “Leo was never here, girl, what are youtalking about? He starts work early tomorrow.” Pinocchia startedtrembling with fear and saying “it was Leo, it was Leo,” and then herdad got mad and yelled at her asking if she was stoned or something.Her mother, who was calmer, told her “Let’s do this: we can call Leo’shome. He must be sleeping there.” She was in doubt by then, becauseshe could see Pinnochia was very confident and very upset. She called,and a quite a few rings later Leo picked up the phone, cursing becausehe was fast asleep. His mother said “I’ll explain later” or something, andstarted calming Pinnochia down, because she had a hell of a nervousbreakdown.

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

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

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

MARIANA ENRIQUEZ

Was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. She has a degree in Journalism andSocial Communication from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and works inRadar, the arts and culture supplement of Página/12 newspaper. She haspublished two novels, Bajar es lo peor (1995) and Cómo desaparecercompletamente (2004), and a book of short stories, Los peligros de fumar enla cama (2009). Several of her short stories have been included in Argentineand Latin American fiction anthologies.

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78 esterday, on Saturday, I met Roberto, one of mom’s ex-boyfriends who was a member of the Communist Partyand who could flee the country before she disappeared.I had made contact through an uncle of mine who wentto high school with him, so I called him last week and he

invited me to his home, where he received me, visibly moved.

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

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

Other pictures of MomFélix Bruzzone

Y


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

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

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

As Cecilia also had to go, I offered to give her a ride. She had apainting class and the place was on my way. On the road we madesmall talk. She had met Roberto at a carnival parade and they hadbeen living together for two years. She had two children from her firsthusband, one who was my age and a younger one who still lived withher. None of the things she said actually mattered much to me, and Iwas feeling a bit restless. I wondered how old Cecilia might be, but Iwas more concerned with learning more details of the morning Robertohad seen Mom for the last time. Where had it been? How long beforethe disappearance? Would that be the last news I would get from heror would I ever find out anything else? Besides, I had a feeling that themeeting with Roberto had stirred more things up in him than in me.Before talking about the coming storm, he had said he wanted to go fora walk, and I guess that he did want to, but I am also sure that walking,for him, was a kind of need, a warm urgency before going back homeand setting something up for that evening.

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

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

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

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

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

I also remembered my own nightmares. I should say, the onerecurring nightmare that had repeated itself over the years. In it therewas always someone, or something –something that may have beennothing but the feeling of being followed–, that stalked me from aninvisible place. Familiar streets turned into narrow alleys where thehollow buildings were lit by an invisible light source. I ran amid thatdeformed glare –my steps made no sound– and never turned aroundto see if my chaser was near or far. And, strange as it seems, the mostterrifying alternative was not nearness but distance. And then, rightbefore being caught, and right before I could escape, I would wake upand lay still in bed for a few seconds before I got up to go to mygrandmother’s room. Everything that happened between my bed andhers –my steps on the carpet, my finger on the light switch, my handopening my bedroom’s door and opening the door to her room– madethe same silence as my steps in the dream.

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


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

The door rang twice more and only then did I feel around the tablelooking for the studs. When I found them I went to the door, I wasplanning to give them to Cecilia and say goodbye with some cordialphrase and the promise to talk to Roberto again about the photos. Butafter opening the door and seeing her outside, dripping wet, I thoughtit was best to ask her in.

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

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

As I prepared the coffee, Cecilia asked me if she could phoneRoberto to let her know she was running late, but the line had no dialtone because of the rain. I told her he may not have come back homeand she, as I had done before, assumed he had sought shelter in a baruntil the storm finished.

When the coffee was ready she drank it in small sips and I thoughtof one of the boys I rented the house with, who had travelled to Paris,worked on a café and brought every kind of coffee you can imaginefrom there. Now he is a fanatic, he collects jars of the most unusualvarieties and kept them as if each of them contained some big secret.So, watching Cecilia sitting at the table, in silence, the coffee steamingin the cup she brought to her lips, made me think that she too waskeeping a secret, and that if I let her talk she might just tell it to me.

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

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talks to me about Mom I expect that kind of stories. A while ago theytold me one where two police officers, over a chance report, got to thehouse where Mom and other members of her group were hiding out.Fear, nerves, sheer stupidity made someone inside machine-gun theofficer who had rung the door; the other, who managed to dodge thebullets, called for backup and then an assault truck, a truck full ofsoldiers and a helicopter came. The task was simple: as a squadopened fire on the house, two or three soldiers got a little closer andtossed several grenades which, once detonated, created a cloud ofdust and black smoke, a mountain of debris and, under the rubble, theunfortunate bodies of my mom and her friends.

Instead of giving me something like that, Cecilia said the coffee wasdelicious and wanted to know how it had been prepared. I said it wasnothing special, that perhaps the special thing was the kind, and thatwhen you come in, all wet after having a rough time under the rain, anycoffee can be delicious.

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

We walked to the avenue seeking shelter under the tops of thetrees, but sometimes, with the wind, that was worse. In the dark streetsthe rain was an invisible, unreal attack there was no way to defendfrom. When we found cover under an awning I was about tell that toCecilia, but I said instead that it would rain the rest of the night. Shehoped it didn’t, and said she doesn’t like it when her son plays in apitch full of puddles and mud.

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

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


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Across the street, like half a block away, the lights of the Chinesesupermarket made me assume the place was still open. At that timethe owner is at the cash register, a rather fat Chinese man who eyedme distrustfully as I picked the two wines I now did feel like drinking.Then, when I was about to pay, he said something incomprehensible,perhaps the price, and I saw the storm was getting worse outside so Ifigured drinking some wine would make the way home easier. I askedthe Chinese guy if he had something I could use to open one of thebottles and he stuck his hand in a drawer full of bits of paper, bottlecaps and corks. For a moment there I thought he hadn’t understoodwhat I’d said, but then he produced a rag, wrapped it at the bottom ofthe bottle and, after pulling out the aluminum capsule, startedhammering it against a column. It didn’t take long for the cork to stickout, and when it was halfway out he pulled the rest of it away with hisfingers. I smiled. He smiled back, I offered him a drink and he drank.Then he drank some more and smiled again. He said some moreincomprehensible words and passed me the bottle. I took a swig; helooked at me as if seeking approval. I nodded, took several back-to-back swigs and he clapped. Then he pointed at the street, I guess hemeant to tell me to stay inside until the storm passed. Then he walkedto the back of the supermarket and returned with a chair. I sat, hedropped the steel curtain and sat down too, and pretty soon we drankthe rest of the bottle off. Then we drank the other and when wefinished he, still smiling, brought four or five more. I guess I fell asleepat one moment, that I threw up, that I felt good and that I felt bad, verybad, that I cried, and I think that by the time I left –it was breaking dawnand all that was left of the storm was a light drizzle– the Chinese guy,sitting on the floor, leaning on one of the shelves, was still smiling.

FÉLIX BRUZZONE

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

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


84 e lived with our grandparents, in the old house theyhad inaugurated. It was narrow and long, with a solidiron door in the entrance and a garden with a fig tree,camellias and a lemon tree at the back. There weretwo patios, two bathrooms and a large kitchen which

looked onto the second patio and the garden; there were sevenbedrooms, one next to the other. Our grandparents’ bedroom was theone that impressed us the most, perhaps because of its vast brass bed,chastely covered by an embroidered blanket; perhaps because mymother, my aunts and my uncles had been conceived on that bed.There were no records of that: the mattress sagged in two places, oneon grandpa’s side, the other on grandma’s. There was a 30-centimeterwide frontier between them. If they had ever cuddled to sleep, therewas no memory of that in the old mattress. Nor in the house: mygrandparents were not prodigal either in kind words or in caresses. Wewere used to that. They had taught us that a couple was a respectfulunion, consolidated by good cooking, good washing and good ironing.The rest belonged to the realm of fantasy and, as in the movies fromthose days, inevitably faded to black.

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

Song of grandparentsVicente Battista

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her dress for a dressing gown, for Dad to hang his suit until the nextmass and for us to change into our everyday clothes. At half pasteleven we were ready to receive the rest of the family. They startedarriving at ten past twelve, at the usual time and in the usual order.There was a prologue of kisses, gossip and laughter and then thewomen laid the table for the appetizer: they cut slices of salami andcheese, set plates with green and black olives, lined up siphons andbottles of Amaro Pagliotti, Fernet and Cinzano. Each man prepared it tohis own taste, identical to the previous Sundays and we, once again,approached coyly for the privilege of a glass of soda water with a sliceof lemon, which we drank slowly imagining the taste of the AmaroPagliotti and the Cinzano (we knew Fernet was bitter) along with thereal taste of the salami, the cheese and the olives. Grandma said thefood would be ready soon and each of us sat at their designated spot:grandpa at the head of the table and grandma at the opposite end. Thegrownups on grandpa’s side, distributed by age and marriage, andfinally us, at grandma’s left and right. We asked the Lord to bless ourfood, thanked Him for this new communion and started eating. Therewas criticism because some of us chewed with their mouths open andpraise for that special flavor in the sauce my mother prepared, the storyhadn’t changed one bit. I thought later we would play in the patios. Ithought tea time would come, and then goodbyes until the followingSunday. But no: halfway through the meal my grandfather’s voice rangvividly, addressing Grandma. He said:

“Do you remember Raquel?”

And that was the beginning of the scandal.

Grandma asked what Raquel and grandpa said your friend, in Mardel Plata, that summer, when they had just inaugurated the cementpromenade. You must surely remember her. Grandma said no, shedidn’t remember, and grandpa was surprised that she had forgottenabout Raquel, they had been so close that summer. You must surelyremember. Grandma repeated that she did not and grandpa insisted.Their words flew from one end of the table to the other and nobodythought of stopping them: they still carried no danger.

But grandma said no for the third time and grandpa said:

“Her lips dropped as the honeycomb: honey and milk were underher tongue.”

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

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been the joyful memory of a young grandpa. Each of them had a story,but they were all doomed to decorate a rigid pipe holder: hung forever.Grandpa had chosen the black one, the one he loved best, and wasbringing it back to life. He put it between his lips, struck a match and letthe smoke rise slowly. After the smoke came his words. He said:

“Her two breasts were like two young roes that are twins, her fruitwas sweet to my taste.”

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

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

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

Grandpa said no for a third time. Grandma said:

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

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

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

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

We stared at our grandparents, but were prohibited from alteringtheir gestures or words. It was a crazy dream. Only in a dream could mygrandfather talk of his loves. Talk of Noemí, of Noemí’s lips whichdropped like honeycombs; or talk of Ana, the smell of her ointments,much better than all spices; or talk of Esther, her stature like to a palmtree and her breasts to clusters of grapes. Only in a dream couldgrandma talk of her loves. Talk of Saúl, his locks bushy and black as araven; or talk of Daniel, his legs as pillars of marble; or talk of Benjamín,terrible as an army with banners. Only in a wondrous dream could theytalk of Ruth, of Ezequiel, of Sara and Ismael; talk of Elizabeth and ofDavid, because there had been threescore queens, and fourscoreconcubines, and virgins without number. But it was not a dream: theytraded lovers and loves like two playful kids swapping collectible cardsand pranks. They looked happy.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our grandparents were lying on the old brass bed. They lookedintoxicated, fair as the moon, clear as the sun. She was disheveled, herhead filled with dew. He was smiling, his lips like lilies, dropping sweetsmelling myrrh. They had hugged tightly, sweet and tender both. Wedivined the perfume of spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon.We knew they had recovered their pleasure, and we knew that was theend of the party.

VICENTE BATTISTA

Was born in Buenos Aires in 1940. He was part of the editorial staff ofliterary magazine El escarabajo de oro and he founded and directed –togetherwith Mario Goloboff– the fiction and critical thinking magazine Nuevos Aires.Between 1973 and 1984 he lived in Barcelona and the Canary Islands. Hepublished 6 short story collections and 5 novels. He was awarded the PremioMunicipal de Literatura for El final de la calle (1990) and Argentina’s Planetaaward for Sucesos Argentinos (1995), published under the title Le tango de

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l’homme de paille in the Série Noire collection of Éditions Gallimard (Paris,2000). His novel Siroco was released by Éditions Le Mascaret (Lyon, 1993).His detective stories collection La huella del crimen (2007) was purchased bynational public library office CONABIP for distribution in public libraries, andCologne’s Edition Köln is translating it into German with the title Sie WerdenKommenn, Kriminalerzählungen aud Argentinien (They Shall Come: Argentinenoir stories). He has taught fiction writing workshops at Buenos Aires’ NationalLibrary.


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Another babySoledad Barruti

he storm is over and the midday light breaks up through theshutters in golden threads of shining dust. It is summer andit is hot, but Julia woke up startled as if she had opened hereyes in the middle of an icy night. She clenched her teeth,held on to the sheets and turned her face left and right

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

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

He’s gone, Julia heard someone say in her own voice from insideher. And, without thinking, she stood up. Without thinking, for had shethought about it she would have anticipated the pain in her body.Lacerating pain, as if her body had been stabbed through by hundredsof blades. But she didn’t lie down again. She stood still, very still,trapped between her bed and the wall. One hand on her womb, theother supporting her weight so she didn’t fall.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please don’t let her come, prays Julia then thinking of her mother.Because if she came in, what would she tell her? It’s gone? The baby’sgone and I have nothing to do with that? She wouldn’t believe her. Andher father, even less. Ever since she got pregnant, all he did was agreewith everything she said the way you always concede to a madman.

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

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staring at the wall, covering her ears with the palms of her open hands.The silence outside of herself, all around her, is frightening. As ifsomeone had fired a single shot at the sky.

She would like to undo everything and start over without turningback the clock. It’s not magic she’s wishing for: it’s the power that, sheis sure of that, despair ought to have when there is no peace anywhere.But it doesn’t happen, and Julia still smells the fresh paint, white paint,pristine, like all the furniture her parents bought. White because wedon’t know what sex the baby’s gonna be, they said the afternoon theypicked them. It closes its little legs and reveals nothing, the ultrasoundtechnician had said with a smile, and her mother, moved, held herfather’s hand tight as Julia bit her nails. All white, then. The clothes too.Drawers full of white cloth made of pure cotton forming tiny robes,rompers, bibs, socks and handkerchiefs.

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

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

Julia birthed in her blue gown lying down, under anesthesia from theneck to the tip of her toes; her dead body: she shouldn’t have felt athing. But the pain was there, like a premonition, and the delivery roomhad the fury of a hammer or of thunder bursting on her temples. Untilshe heard the first cry. Compact, as if from under water, it generatedan echo that bounced around her. And the midwife cried: it’s over.Everything went well. Then, perhaps there was the briefest exchange ofglances between her and the baby. But that she can only suspect.What she does remember is that they took it from her straight away toreceive the warmth of the incubator, and that for the next two days sheheard almost no mention of it.

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

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

What happened, Julia asks herself confronted by the howling room.I want to be alone, she had said unexpectedly. Alone. And her parentsagreed to leave. But that other breathing persisted by her side, thatother heartbeat which also beat in her own heart, inside her head. Thebaby’s body made the wicker creak, and it didn’t get to sleep, it didn’tget to sleep. It looked all around as if trying to discover everything thatsurrounded it at that precise moment. It had deep black eyes, stalkingand shiny, like the eyes of a cat at night. It shook its feet and hands,gesturing. Everything about it was incomprehensible. It glancedsideways at Julia trying to stare her into sleep. Until the baby shapedsomething in its pink lips, something that looked like kisses butimmediately turned into words,

It’s over, said the baby moving its lips. It’s over. You’ll be here forever.There is no way out, said the baby again and again nonstop, as ifcasting a curse on her. Then, Julia tried to get up but couldn’t: thestitches from her wound sent her back to bed time after time. Sewn tothe mattress. It’s over, insisted the baby.

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

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

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

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

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

It’s true, it seems as if it was there, she says to herself. But it isn’t.Her father doesn’t realize he’s hugging and holding another baby. Onewith an open mouth, its eyes wet and reddened, huge; liquid mucusrunning down its lips, down its still, dark body. What have you done,cries her father, then her mother. Both at once: What have you done,they shout at her and run off with the other baby wrapped in the sheets.

And Julia’s left alone.

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

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

Only then did she stop singing.

SOLEDAD BARRUTI

Was born in Buenos Aires in 1981. She is a journalist, and a regular contributorfor the Radar cultural supplement of Página/12 newspaper, as well as other printedmedia. She attended the fiction workshops of Sandra Russo and GuillermoSaccomano. She has finished writing her first novel, El sabor de Dios.

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Hundreds of emailsAriel Bermani

he first image that comes to mind when I think of her is, whydeny it, her ass. It was also the first thing I saw when Iwalked into the classroom, accompanied by the womanwho was going to introduce me. Her back, Valeria’s, wasturned to me, she was surely looking for something she had

dropped, her ass perked up, shuffling her hands around the floor. Shestood up straight away and looked me in the eye –she had green eyes–and I knew, I must be honest, that I would do absolutely anything tohave that ass at my disposal. Round, perky, meaty. Hard. That’s how Iimagined it. The jeans compressed it. You could see clearly that herpanty lines had dug into her flesh. I tried really hard to think ofsomething else.

The woman who took me there left me in charge of the course. Ihad been watching them while she talked. There were about twenty ofthem, mostly women, old –fifty plus–, only about three of them, I think,were young. Two boys who sounded like they were just coming out ofhigh school and Valeria. I learned her name right away. I had themintroduce themselves and I erased everything they said from mymemory until she spoke. “I’m Valeria,” she said. “I have a Literaturedegree, from Lomas, I come to this workshop because I want todiscover new writers.” When I heard her I had to cross my legs–squeeze my legs real tight– to hide a massive erection. I said nothingfor a few seconds. I didn’t know how to start, or where. They had been

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

Gambarotta disconcerted them. They couldn’t wrap their headsaround poetry with those colours, those shades, that language. When Iread them the poem for Kojak –“there isn’t, there won’t be, there neverwill be a better series than Kojak”– they gave me an almost pitiful look.But I could see that a tiny, 25-watt light had just lit. Valeria smiled. Sheheard the poem and smiled. She ran her hands through her hair. Ilooked at her, grateful.

That was the last class before the two-week winter break. Wepassed around email addresses. I told them to f ind SamantaSchweblin’s book of short stories.

A few days later I got the first of her emails. I say the first emailbecause they were, all in all, over the course of three or four months,about five hundred. Four months, between August and November. Inher email she wrote: “Good morning, Ariel. I’m writing to ask you aboutSchweblin’s book. Where can I find it? Regards, Valeria (the girl whohad lost her pen when you arrived)”. That brief text had a devastatingeffect on me. I read it over and over for several minutes, I couldn’t stopreading it. I tried to find a hidden message, to know what she wastelling me, what she was insinuating. I tried to decode word by word,even letter by letter. That “Good morning,” what did it mean? When shereferred to the pen, was she letting on that she realized I had stared ather ass the second I walked into the classroom? I spent almost fortyminutes writing my answer. Now that I stop to think about it I realize Igot carried away by passion. I suggested possible places to find thebook, downtown bookstores, and I told her that, as she was goingdowntown, she could visit me at the library I was working on back then.I gave her the address and my working hours. She replied on the sameday. It was a short email. She said that she had no time to visit anybodyand that she never went downtown. That was it. But her greeting filledme with hope. She didn’t write “Regards, Valeria”: she wrote “Kisses,Valeria”. That was a change. And that small gesture, sending me kisses,kept me happy for several hours. But then I realized I had to writesomething back. Something that granted me a few inches forward. Ioffered to lend her my copy of Schweblin’s book. Meet her in Adroguéand give her the copy, so she didn’t have to travel downtown. And Iclosed my email in a very risky way, like this: “lots of kisses, Ariel.” Wehad gone from Regards to greetings to “lots of kisses.” But she didn’treply, at least for four days. Her reply came when I had lost all hope.


She wrote: “thanks for offering the book, you’re a dear, but my husbandwent downtown and bought it for me. See you after the break. Kisses,Vale.” Everything had changed now. She had a husband. First point lost.But she sent me “kisses” and wrote that I was a dear. Two points forme. The fact that she was married did not complicate things, after all Iwas married too, or practically married, I was living with a woman.

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

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

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

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

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

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other again, alone. She replied that she dreamed about me, about mybody, that she had trouble concentrating when I was talking, in theworkshop, because she pictured me naked. I confessed to her the firstthing that I had noticed when I walked into the classroom the first time.She put lots of exclamation marks when she replied that email. “Get outof here!!!!!!,” that’s how she wrote it. But despite all the kisses we keptsending each other the real kisses never came. We continued meetingon Tuesdays and, during the lesson, she acted like the perfect student,cold, smart, without making a single gesture that gave away that wewere close. Once the class finished she disappeared without mynoticing. I remember that once I tried not to lose her from my sight, Isaw her leave, dashed after her, tapped her on the shoulder and sheturned around to look at me with panic in her face. “Don’t let them seeus, please,” she said and I let her go. That episode was commented onat length on subsequent emails.

After almost two months of confessions and promises that nevermaterialized, she stopped coming to the workshop. She missed threeclasses in a row. And she didn’t reply any of the tens of emails I senther in those days. I had already given up on her, but one Tuesday shecame back, in tight jeans –I think they were the same jeans from thefirst day–, a T-shirt with a stimulating neckline, her hair loose. Shelocked her eyes on me the whole time, and didn’t run away once theclass finished. She lingered in the classroom making time, waiting forthe others to leave. I also made time as I watched her without anyattempts at concealing it. We left together and she offered me a ride inher car to Burzaco station. I could take the train there and it was closeto her house. We drove in silence down Espora avenue until I musteredcourage and started touching her legs. She pulled out of the avenue,turned into a dark street and parked. I tried to kiss her and, for the firsttime, she replied “please.” “I don’t want to,” she said later. “Not here, I’membarrassed.” “Where, then?” I asked. “Somewhere else.” She took meto the station and kissed me farewell at the corner of my lips. “We’llemail,” she said, and I got out of the car.

We emailed. A lot. More than before. I think we reached twenty-fiveemails per day. We planned the encounter. On a Saturday, downtown.In a place chosen by me. We were going to meet in Constitución, athalf past two in the afternoon. When that Saturday came, her youngestdaughter got sick. The following Saturday she got pimples on her faceand didn’t want to see me like that. “With these awful pimples I look likea corn cob,” she wrote. Another Saturday, her husband was down withsomething. A week later, on the very morning of the day we were finallysupposed to meet, she got her period.

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

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

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

ARIEL BERMANI

Writes fiction and poetry. He was born in Buenos Aires, in 1967. Heteaches reading and writing courses and workshops. He has published shortstories, articles and poems in several magazines and his work has beenincluded in the short story anthologies Buenos Aires no duerme, in 1997, Laselección argentina, in 2000, and Antología de narrativa argentina siglo XXI,in 2006. He has published the novels Leer y escribir (second mention atPremio Clarín de Novela 2003), Buenos Aires, Interzona, 2006; Veneno(Premio Emecé) 2006 and El amor es la más barata de las religiones,” 2009.His novel Furgón, his poetry collection Poesía casi completa (1989-2009)and his nonfiction book Inochi wa takara. Quinteros japoneses en FlorencioVarela will be published in 2010.

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99he day that, after 25 years, I was fired from the company,Susy said it was a sign of destiny. “You have to think like theChinese, who write ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ the same way:this is the perfect time to go independent, look at howMarita and Néstor are doing.” At dinner we told the kids we

were going to begin something new, and that for a few months wewould have to cut back on expenses. By the time we went to bed wehad already chosen the location, and Susy was thinking of how todecorate the shop. We went to Colonia for a few days to rest a bit andtry our luck at the casino, and when we were back we got to work.

With the severance money we made a down payment on an SUVand started filling the trunk with boxes of merchandise that we thenstored at the garage. At first we kept inventory in a notebook, but then Iasked a fr iend to get me a PDA from Miami, l ike the ones thecompany’s sales staff had.

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

Two pesos storePablo Toledo

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

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

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

We started off on the right foot: me at the cash register, Susy’swelcoming smile beaming at the gates and the sales staff following ourteachings to the letter. The people who walked around the aislesseemed happy and everybody bought something. Each night we wouldrotate products and change the signs on the walls. Customers boughtthe battery radios and wristwatches, which we sold at cost, by thedozen, and always took home some of the cheaper products that leftus a wider profit margin as well.

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

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


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

Three months after we opened the store, our twenty-fifth weddinganniversary came, and we treated ourselves to a week in Miami. In thelow season it cost almost the same we would have spent in Punta delEste, and we splurged: discmans for the kids, a stereo for our bedroom,clothes for everybody, shoes and accessories for Susy and an Armanijacket on sale for me. The malls were Susy's dream come true,sophisticated people ready to spend their money on affordableproducts. She wandered around the stores in ecstasy, but to me eachstep was a blow on the nails of our coffin. I smiled, shopped, burntdollars on a trip that finally convinced me that there was no way wecould recreate any of that in Buenos Aires.

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

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

The company fired more people and Mario, one of the accountants,offered to invest part of his severance money in our business. By thenwe owed two months' rent, five months worth of school fees, too manypayments on the SUV and more taxes than we could count; there wasno maid anymore and we had canceled the insurance and our holidayreservations. On weekends, Susy took stuff we didn't need around thehouse to garage sales to barter for things we could pass off as“vintage” presents for our friends' birthdays. We invited Mario and hiswife for dinner, and we stayed up until three in the morning making


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

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

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

Among the messages in the answering machine, one day we foundan invitation from Marita and Néstor – actually, one message in themorning, another in the afternoon and an invitation on the following day.For everyone at the club, Marita and Néstor were the image of success:in '92 they had quit their jobs to set up a business nobody reallyunderstood very well but which allowed them to travel all the time, stayon top of the best investment opportunities and offer space in theirsuitcases for whoever needed to buy stuff in the States. Their cellphones would ring all the time and then we'd hear them speak inEnglish with “partners from abroad.” It was them who wanted to see us,them of all people, and just at that state of affairs. That night, for the firsttime since we had returned from Miami, Susy and I chatted, laughed,made love.

On the next morning I returned the call. Néstor picked up on thefourth ring and greeted me by my name before I could say a word.Somebody had mentioned us and he and Marita had realized how longit had been since we had last got together: we arranged a barbecue attheir place that Friday night.

That day, we closed the store early so Susy could touch up her dyejob and take her time with the makeup. I grabbed one of the bottles ofgood wine left over from the days of corporate gifts and put on a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of light-colored chinos I had bought in Miami.We called a taxi just in time to arrive fifteen minutes late than the timewe had set.

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Marita opened the door. As she and Susy caught up on the latestgossip and dressed the salads, I went to the back to help Néstor at thegrill. He asked about the store and I said we couldn't complain, that itwas just as he and Marita had always said: taking the leap to becomeindependent was the best thing that could have happened to us.Néstor said he was happy for us and, as he turned over the meat, saidthey were about to take a shot at a new business. If this works it'sgonna be big, huge. Then his voice was drowned by the sizzling of theoffal in the grill and we set the food on the tray to take to the table. Wehad to struggle a bit to open the door into the house, which they shouldhave had fixed a couple of months ago but never found the rightmoment to call in the workmen, and you know how they are, they saytwo days and then it takes two weeks.

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

When Marita and Susy went to the kitchen for coffee and the pastrieswe had brought, Néstor mentioned the business offer again. His eyes seton his half-empty glass of wine, he started describing financial gambitswith interest rates, import costs, government subsidies, some customswizardry, Miami mortgages backed by Buenos Aires fixed deposits thatwound up yielding in Uruguayan bank accounts – they had worked outeverything, but were having some cash flow problems to get the dealstarted. We could hear the women laughing in the kitchen: Marita wasshowing Susy photos from that time they had taken a Caribbean cruise.Marita's laughter echoed like guffaws; as I turned around I saw Néstorbite his lips, take a deep breath and lift his eyes towards me for amoment before turning his concentration back on the wine glass. Andthat was when I knew they would never get that door fixed, that therewouldn't be another cruise, that the other day, before taking my call,Néstor had also screened the number.

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

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

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

We had driven around that neighborhood before, but on foot it wasa different, unknown place. It was beginning to get cold, and wecrossed empty street after empty street with no signs of the avenue.There were lights on the windows but nobody outside, no open storesto ask for directions or police officers to bother for assistance. Susy,who hadn't said a word for several blocks, stopped the clicking of herheels and looked me straight in the eye, like she did when we were stillengaged, like the day we found out about the first pregnancy, like theday I told her I had got fired. “We're lost, aren't we?”

PABLO TOLEDO

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

This book was printed on September, 2010 in Cooperativa Gráfica el Sol Limitada

2190, Av. Amancio AlcortaParque Patricios, City of Buenos Aires.


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