by Jay Cantor
“He’ll get over it,” I said. My voice sounded harsh, angry. The tone surprised me. I had meant it (I thought) as a gentle prayer.
“Are you sure you want him to?”
Her voice was calm, almost clinical. But it was a severe remark. Stupid amateur psychoanalysis, I wanted to say, but didn’t. She had hurt me. I sat sunk in my chair, not speaking. After a while I told her of my idea for a book, my existential travelogue. “I’ll make something of myself.”
“A book? You mean you’ll make a story out of yourself?” But she was smiling again.
“Yes. And I’ll dedicate the book of myself to you and Father.” She closed her eyes, putting her hands out on the glass table, palms downward. She was silent. I thought she found my offering—a dedication—a paltry thing compared with the pain I’d caused my father. But I was glad to have the chance to stare at her face, to look without being seen. Her face fascinated me, and I have never looked my fill. It was thin; and old; and lovely; and ruined; a relief map. I felt protective towards her, and tender, though there was nothing I could protect her against. Perhaps, if we had been a different sort of family, I would have touched her cheek then, run my finger in one of the hollows of her face. I wanted to, but I didn’t.
“Yes,” she intoned, from her long silence. Her voice was low, and, I thought, intentionally “mysterious.” Her eyes remained closed. “I can see it. You will have many different adventures in many different climates. And you will be like me, cynical, and too trusting.”
I laughed nervously at her theatrical self-description, her fortunetelling act, her peekaboo around the edges. The performance was unsettling, a low voice, hers and not hers, coming from that impassive old face with its large closed eyelids. And it was uncanny most of all, I think, because her hands were (as they never were) still, her long fingers not tapping on the table before her. (A song called “I’m More Alive Than This Place Will Bear!”) “You need an earring,” I said. “For one ear. Fortunes told.”
She opened her eyes, reanimated her face and hands. “No, I’m sorry for joking, darling. I really mean it. I could feel it. It was like a strong wave buoying me up, buoying you up, because I felt I was you. Some rich fate awaits you, Tete. I’m more sure of it than ever.” She rose from her chair suddenly and clapped her hands together. “It’s a wonderful idea. You should write a book. You will do what I have all these years only made notes for, only dreamed of doing.” For she too, she often said, when I saw her jotting something into one of her notebooks, was writing a book. It was to be called (self-mockingly, of course) The Complete History of the World in Its Many Disguises. (I think she did have some historical work planned, a scathing of all the criminals, pimps, whores, charlatans, and clowns of our country, our continent, our world. That is: everybody, everywhere.) An interesting reversal this evening, I thought placidly. (Her buoyancy made me calm, as if I, too, were contemplating my rich fate from afar.) I have disappointed my father, I thought, but I will complete my mother’s destiny (“I felt I was you”), fulfill her desire. (The calm lasted only a few hours. Then, again, my adolescent mood returned; I felt myself as separate as a knife.)
From a pile of papers on the table she extracted one of her black notebooks, one that didn’t have any newspaper clippings sticking out from between its pages. She leaned over as if looking in a mirror, and in spidery script inscribed a sentence on the title page: “Life is not a walk across an open field.” A cigarette clasped between her lips, her eyes sparkling, she gave me the notebook with both hands. A presentation volume.
A little puzzle solved: what I had spied at age eleven was the motto that began all her notebooks. What dangers, I wondered, did my mother fear? What reassurance had she taken from this bitter reminder of … of what? unfortunate accidents? (not me, I hoped) cunning pitfalls? malevolent enemies? (my father? myself?) Of all beings, I thought, she is the most mysterious to me. But I didn’t ask what the sentence meant to her. I wanted to, but I didn’t.
I left the notebook with Hilda in Mexico, “by accident”; and she, by accident, left it behind when she went to my parents’ house to wait for word from (or of) me. But someone in the boardinghouse (the police, perhaps) found it and sent it on to Argentina (it was my parents’ address I had written underneath my mother’s emblem on the flyleaf). Hilda brought it with her to Cuba, and handed it to me on the day I told her our marriage was over (a presentation volume). Bad penny, I’ve given up on losing it, have kept it with me since. I thought, I suppose, that I had left a necessary message in it for myself, that some quality that would make me whole would come back to me through its words. So every so often I would look into it. And shut it again quickly after reading a few pages, overcome by embarrassment. Until this morning. For then, as I looked over the entries, pages rippled from waterlogging, ink blurred, I felt myself hovering fondly, protectively, helplessly over the young man who wrote them, speeding over the continent towards his “rich fate.” (There is nothing I can protect him from. I am the fate that awaits him.) Brave lad, he does need someone’s advice. He seems to have brought a traveling pulpit with him everywhere! even on a train!
The book mine was to be modeled on, and took its title from, the book I found my task in, was Nehru’s The Discovery of India. It was there, in the year that ended with the struggle with my father—that insecure and tasteless victory—that I discovered Gandhi.
In Gandhi, in those days, I found truly radical words, an intransigent nationalism that would shear down to the core, that would die (that solemn word! I felt he knew its meaning) rather than compromise. Gandhi’s vision was far more radical than the old “nationalist” leaders and their jejune accommodations with imperialism—as if the point of revolution were not to change us deeply, but only to turn us more rapidly into North Americans, allow greater scope for our greed. And Gandhi’s broken speech was poetry compared to the desiccated slogans of the left, the remnants of the Communist parties, whose messages, distributed clandestinely or in weak radio broadcasts, intoned always that no action was possible, not yet, not here, now, where you stood.
But most of all Gandhi was chasteness, simplicity, a relief from personality; he was the spiritual value of solitude (an isolation I must not allow myself to bridge; my feelings would betray me, would make me a child again, running for his approval until I could run no more, till nausea overtook me). Gandhi was restraint. Violence, my father had taught me, was for the weak ones, the ones without character. Outside of Fernando’s cell, demanding a gun, I had forgotten that. But Gandhi’s nonviolence was not the passivity I feared there; it was a constant task. I could define myself continually by all I would not do. And not doing, if the temptation were strong enough, would let me feel my will as well as doing would.
For my anger, I thought, was a terrifying power; fierce, punishing; I wanted to kill (at the very least). When I felt my fury my mind filled with images of indifferent young recruits firing into crowds, bodies bleeding onto stones, policemen feeding electric shocks into the mouths of prisoners, miners left to be slaughtered because of “ideological differences.” The violence I had heard about or seen in my childhood issued always in defeat, in accommodation with imperialism, or in the nationalist charade of Peronism, empty spectacles of defiance to bewilder the masses. My father was right: anyone could make the human body suffer; it was work for stupid men. Though my fate would be, I thought, a rich one, on a public stage, it would not be to add to that pain. And Gandhi justified this self-dramatization. To be angry was evil; the angry man was no better than the imperialist; to conquer anger made one a noble individual. My continent required such individuals. My personal struggle against my inward violence was of historical importance. Anger sublimated, my catechism went, can conquer the world.
I poked Alvarados in the ribs to wake him. I wanted to read my paragraphs to him. Over the last months I had spoken to him ceaselessly of Gandhi; he had become my first convert. As I went deeper into the matter (or said the same thing in different words), I nee
ded to try out my ideas on him, nourish myself from the quality of his attention. During our talks he held his body still, curved almost meditatively, as if his spirit were turned wholly towards my communication. Only his face moved, displaying (or miming) the passage of thought as I spoke, a continuous response—drawing his brows together, or pushing his cheek out with his tongue—a muscular process of understanding that marked its authenticity for me. (And perhaps that was his kind intention.)
Fernando inclined his head towards me.
“I want to read you my new opening paragraphs.”
He smiled sweetly, if a little blankly, and I began.
He held up his hands to stop me.
“Bored already?”
“No. Wait. I can’t hear you.” He turned in his seat, so that he nearly faced me, his right ear very close to my mouth. I had forgotten: he was deaf on his left side from a beating the police had given him in jail. But there was, I thought, no bitterness in him about it. He had had no Gandhian philosophy that explained to him why he shouldn’t be resentful. There was nothing cloyingly brave in his smile now as he waited for me to begin. He just wasn’t bitter. Jail had made him more serious—he no longer told the plots of movies with parts misplaced; he no longer told them at all. And his face had grown thinner, almost fragile-looking since his time in jail. He had a long sharp nose, and the planes of his cheeks formed a broad triangle, the tip of it his chin. The bones stood out sharply, defining the sides of a theorem.
I read him my paragraphs.
“I don’t really understand that, Ernesto.” He looked puzzled, squinting his eyes, biting his lower lip. He made it a point of honor to find clear, easily readable gestures for his feelings. A complicated, decent person, he wanted to be plain. But his effort showed in the constant gestures, and so betrayed the difficulties in himself that he disliked, the complexities he wanted to overcome. (They leaked out anyway, in wit.)
Fernando twisted his lips into a quizzical half-smile. “ ‘The degrading lusts of our bodies?’ ”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes. Until we can speak to each other clearly, with real respect, not using each other as instruments, until then we must abstain. And we can sharpen our will by practicing restraint of our bodies.” My voice sounded too insistent. I could not truly explain to Fernando what I felt. When I thought of making love there was a ghostly urinous taste in my mouth. I felt covered in dirty sweat. Only denying myself, feeling my will, cleansed me, allowed me to feel myself as bright, pure, sharp. But I couldn’t say that, not even to Alberto.
Fernando looked at me steadily, brought his brows together to indicate “considering.” But he said nothing. I had to speak again. He had to assent to my willfulness, confirm me in it.
The task for Latin America (I read) is the making of its soul. Each of us must learn to conquer his appetites. He must, by the continual exercise of his will, free himself from lust. The independent soul is made by cutting into the body, by making it a servant of the will. We have to turn the energy of our lust and anger against ourselves, against our own bodies. One must bring the body under control. (I felt as if carried away by my speech, my prayer, my curse. A strong alien force lived in my words, a rough harsh wind that took the world away. Good; peace for myself could only come from this long strenuous denial.) The body is evil. To be free individuals, self-governing nations, we must first govern our appetites. The body turns us into slaves of the Imperialists. We fear for it, or we want something for it. The body is worse than hell!
I felt the exhilaration of the clenched fist.
When the train returned I saw that Fernando had turned his face from me. He looked at the seat in front. He had turned a deaf ear to me! I reached out, took his head between my hands, and turned him again until he faced me. His lips puckered sourly. “I couldn’t bear it.” He stopped, cast into himself. “You sounded like one of the nuns. I loathed the nuns.”
He wasn’t bitter at the police, who had broken his eardrum, but at the nuns! What could they have done to him, those equivocal enemies? He doubted me, but I had his good ear again.
Is Gandhi mad? I can hear my mother’s voice: Hand looms! Spinning the world backward, indeed! And no penicillin, I suppose? No epinephrine for your asthma! But perhaps I must accept that, Mother, perhaps I need that pain to humble my body, to make it the servant of my will. Perhaps I need that suffering to make my soul strong. Perhaps that is the price of real revolution, real inner freedom. I must bear my suffering gladly. What nonsense this must sound to you! But perhaps it is from an overdose of your very modern cynicism that I seek a purge from this religious man.
The truth is in the villages. The villagers, once they have conquered their bodies, can live in voluntary simplicity. Latin American countrypeople don’t need manufactured goods. They don’t need North American barbarism, North American industry. Latin America can regain the socialism of the Incas. Each Andean village was an organ whose veins were the Inca roads. The villages formed a single human body, incarnated and imaged in the Inca. The Latin American Revolution does not require violence, only noncooperation with the Imperialists, with their panderings to our lusts. With noncooperation the Imperialists will evaporate like specters.
“Yes!” Fernando said, once again my ally, once again in enthusiastic agreement. He took a bite of an orange, avidly. “Not violence! Not their politics! Something else! These last few months, in our talks about Gandhi, I feel that I’m seeing things for the first time. A way for each individual to regain his dignity. Simple work done a little at a time. Helping people in the villages rediscover the value of their crafts, teaching them hygiene. Not politics, not speeches, not theories!” Fernando squeezed the orange in his excitement; juice squirted over his hand. Was that what I meant? Simple work done a little at a time? Fernando’s agreement, my favorite drug, confused me. I found I wasn’t sure. Still, I was happy with his approval; his delight was my food.
I went on reading. Fernando licked his hand clean.
Where is he, our Gandhi? (My voice gained confidence and volume from Fernando’s vigorous nodding. Passengers turned to look at us. “Pianissimo,” Fernando said, pressing the air down with his palms. “We’re still in Argentina.”) Where are our leaders who might say no with the force of their souls? Where is our leader who does not grow gross on their bribes?
“That crap!” Fernando said. He spat the words out, as if they had a foul taste. Naturally fastidious, Fernando rarely cursed.
Still my demons forced me to correct him. “Don’t say ‘crap.’ ” (If only I could enter these pages, restrain that dour young man!) “Shit—feces, I mean—isn’t bad or good. It’s part of life. It’s false idealism that makes us think we’re too sublime for shit. So if we feel disillusioned or angry, we say that life is shit. But shit, I mean feces, isn’t bad. It’s useful. For fertilizer.” I was not, even then, so far gone that I didn’t feel an ass as I finished. But I was so afraid of irony, its corrosive joy, its bitter exhilaration, that I embraced instead the secure fat berth of pomposity.
Fernando said nothing. He was surprised at my lecture (as was I. Who did I think I was? Gandhi?); he was miffed at my rebuke.
There’s nothing sycophantic about Nehru’s love for Gandhi. I could see Fernando was angry. (The better part of me even sympathized. After one of my little fits I often felt as disconnected from it as any observer might. I wondered why my friend didn’t hit me.) Fernando clenched his jaws. The muscles bulged the tight skin of his cheeks. (I.e. “Restrained Fury.”) But I went on. He must hear and respond to all of it. (Respond, I’m afraid, meant agree.) Gandhi didn’t subsume or subordinate Nehru. Gandhi made him, made India, more courageous, more itself. Nehru’s love for Gandhi ennobles them both.
Where is he, our Gandhi?
“I’ve never understood that part, either, Ernesto.” Fernando scratched his head. (I.e. “Puzzlement.”) Wanting to be plain meant that his gestures often tended towards cliche. “Why do we need a leader?” Fernando asked. “We know what needs
to be done. We must make ourselves strong individuals.”
Was that right? Over the weeks Fernando had joined my conversion to Gandhi (minus some austerities that horrified him). But now, reading my thoughts to him again, watching his enthusiasm, I felt for the first time no longer sure within myself. His excitement for work done a little at a time was distant from me. Whatever he had heard me say, I felt still that my rich fate was larger than that unassuming goodness so natural to Fernando. There was something in me that craved a larger stage, and Gandhi was a way for me to find that role. I thought that the violence I felt, my unsteadying rage at imperialism, at all that thwarted our lives, would, if properly used, turned inward, do more than form my soul. It would astound others. Nonviolence was a piece of magic meant to conjure up an audience. It would make me worthy of being chosen by one who knew what direction our further actions should take, one who could unite all who could be united against the North Americans. Gandhi’s principles were a gaudy costume, all the more flamboyant in that they were a costume of homespun, of poverty. His way was a vivid speech I could give to make myself noticed, a speech to show my integrity to that unknown leader I longed for. There was that in me which wanted more from our travels than to help the lepers, more even than the formation of my soul. I wanted to know the name of the leader in whose cause I might find my work. The book that I wanted to write, the story I wanted to make of myself, was the story of that work, of my startling career.
A few moments ago I had been buoyed up by Fernando’s eager approval, the vigorous nodding of his head. But now my divided and secret intentions made me uneasy before him, daunted not by disapproval, but by agreement.
