Springtime in a Broken Mirror

by Mario Benedetti

  I read that letter about ten times and it took me two days before I could begin to write back to him. My letter ended like this: ‘As pretty and smart as ever, my granddaughter, who, less importantly, is also your daughter, has begun to learn French: what do you make of that? Sometimes when she comes to see me she brings me up to date with her latest Froggie lesson. But I must be a bit hard of hearing (ah, the years don’t pass in vain) or perhaps it’s my memory, but I can barely understand her when she tells me, in her polished Alliance Française accent, one of Perrault’s fairy stories. Ciao, my son.’

  The Other

  (Flabbergasted and everything)

  It’s a new sensation for him. It’s not unpleasant, far from it. But the fact is, he’s got himself into a right mess. This has never happened to him before, with any woman. He, Rolando Asuero, was the one who took the initiative, was in charge of every relationship, whether or not it ended up in bed. And it was a matter of principle: it would always be temporary, with every fact and intention out in the open, as transparent as H2O, so that nobody could accuse him later of unfulfilled promises, holding his word against him. As Ecclesiastes neglected to say: In order not to break promises, it’s best not to make them in the first place. Fortunately, as he has to admit, he had always met understanding and willing women, who from the moment of kick-off accepted the rules of the game and who afterwards, when the final whistle blew, made themselves scarce with a friendly ‘So long, it’s been good to know you.’ Besides, he had always treated the owners or slaves (well, actually, the wives) of his closest friends as sisters, and if on occasion he had given them the odd incestuous glance, he never crossed the good-humoured, comradely boundary, even if he often aroused their innate coquettishness. Incestuous glances which, in the past, had not infrequently been directed at Graciela, when, in Solís, that rough and ready seaside resort, she had put on her flimsy blue two-piece swimsuit (not a bikini, the Apostle Santiago’s cautious liberalism having not yet extended that far), which revealed her figure, or habeas corpus, truly worthy of consideration, of fantasy, ah but he had never gone beyond the modest limit of a sigh or shameless gazes of admiration from behind his dark glasses, occasionally even encouraged by some comment or other from Santiago himself, who, seeing her skipping through the waves one afternoon like a woman in a TV advert, let’s say, would murmur to himself (but in reality for the benefit of the other three), That skinny ribs is beautiful, isn’t she?, leading to banter and macho chuckles, well, macho in a manner of speaking, from the other two husbands and the confirmed bachelor, namely he, Rolando Asuero, at your service and also at the service of your good lady wife. An infamous and in no way innocent remark he had once addressed, a decade earlier, to the general manager of a big company who had decided on the spot to demote him to an ex-cashier.

  But today’s Graciela is something else. And he, too, has changed. How could he not? First came the political phase, with those two years before the coup that were quite simply hellish. So, what happens to the erotic in such moments? A pithy question for the Sphinx, Anwar el-Sadat’s laconic great-grandmother. Ah, but how difficult it is to be erotic in a time of desperate clandestine activity. During those two ferocious years, sometimes you couldn’t even find a camp bed to sleep on, let alone have time for any other activities. And then the damned cops, with their episodes of interrogation, cattle prods, waterboarding and other delights. Of course, in those days, your noggin could never stop working overtime. You accept the limitations, of course you do, and afterwards you don’t even remember, because at night, when not even the cockroach appears to watch over you, you bury your head in that excuse for a pillow and cry your eyes out until you’re dehydrated from so many tears (TH, in other words, tango habemus: ‘Crazy in my sadness’, ah but never, ‘How weak I was, how blind’.) Yes, today’s Graciela is very different. Firstly, she has matured, become more of a woman; but secondly, she has grown less sure of herself, perhaps because of that very maturity. In body (and soul, too, let’s not be dogmatic), she has matured remarkably, spectacularly, and to watch her, for example, slowly making her way up between the flowerbeds to her apartment building (where he, so often, would be waiting in the doorway) stirs great – though not often realized – expectations. It’s true she’s unsure of herself, disconcerted, although, maybe, it would be more correct to say ‘disoriented’. And the eye of the storm: Santiago. Santiago in prison, neither able to attack nor to defend himself, all alone with his blues and his cultural heritage, what terminology, eh, but also what a situacão! Rolando has come to a preliminary diagnosis: Graciela is a girl who can’t get used to distance, and that is where, willy-nilly, poor Santiago has lost out. But he is still a long way from even beginning to imagine that he, Rolando Asuero, has a role to play in this story. He doesn’t know. Not yet. Although he’s coming to know. He likes Graciela, there’s no point underplaying or contesting that. And he admits that, on various occasions, when she talked to him about the cobwebs in her attic, or her changeable moods, her highs and lows, he had made wary advances, made suggestive hints, had offered, let’s say, fraternal support, and little by little, maybe without even intending to, had let slip veiled but unambiguous allusions to a certain fond interest in her, or rather, to the attraction he felt for her. And obviously, in her insecure state, with her constantly revising and rejecting each sensation, each emotion, Graciela soaked things up like a Grecian sponge. And she must have sensed his cautious, discreet manoeuvring. Then one day all of a sudden, in the midst of one of those ambiguous, tightrope-walking conversations, she blurted out: I don’t need Santiago any more, he abandoned me, to which he, Rolando, had replied sympathetically, No, Graciela, he didn’t abandon you, he was taken from you, and her reply, I know, that’s why I say it’s absurd, absurd, or perhaps in exile I’ve been transformed into somebody else, and so he had said, Perhaps you don’t share Santiago’s political beliefs any longer, and her, Of course I do, they’re mine as well, and so he, at last, asked the million-dollar question, Do you dream of other men, and she had said, Do you mean dream in my sleep or daydreams, and he, Both, and she, When I sleep I don’t dream of any man, and he, What about when you’re awake? And she, well, awake, yes, I do daydream and you’re going to laugh, and there she paused, not a theatrical pause, but simply a short silence to take a breath, to feel the weight of what she was about to add: I dream of you. He had been flabbergasted, had felt a sudden rushing sound in his ears, a fine Don Juan he was, actually he had bit his lip until it bled, although he didn’t realize it until hours later. And she, tense opposite him, waiting for something, not knowing exactly what, but tremendously insecure, because among other things, she was imagining he must be torturing himself at that moment over the word ‘loyalty’, loyalty to his friend all alone in his cell, which even if it was clean was still disgusting; loyalty to a heavy, well worn past and a morality never made explicit but nonetheless real, and to the endless discussions into the early hours, with Silvio (who’s no longer here), too, and Manolo, now an electronics technician in Gothenburg, and their wives, semi-marginalized by the macho-Leninism of the illustrious males, but occasionally joining in with obvious objections, but more than anything preparing salads-steaks-gnocchi-empanadas-escalopes-caramel-jam and then washing-up while the men were flat out in their siestas. He had been flabbergasted, him such a Casanova and whoremonger, his face bathed in sweat like a schoolboy seduced by a chorus girl, and with an itch in his left ankle that was probably an allergic reaction to the stormy future approaching. Flabbergasted and everything, he had managed to stammer, Gra-graciela, don’t p-play with fire, and had even tried to steer the conversation in a more light-hearted direction, with something like, The flesh is weak and thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, all to give himself the tiniest respite, ah but she kept her startlingly grave expression, Look I’m not joking, this is too serious for me, so he, I’m sorry, Graciela, it’s the shock, don’t you see, and after this sentence straight out of a Buenos Aires farce he no longer
stammered and no longer felt flabbergasted, but well and truly astounded, and yet was able to mutter, It’s a shame I can’t tell you not to talk nonsense, because I can see in your eyes that you’re talking terribly seriously, and It’s also a shame I can’t tell you, Look, I can’t do this, because I can. And as soon as he said that ‘I can’, he felt he had been sincere and fateful – sincere because that truly was the safari feeling that was starting to push its way through the tiny jungle of his astonishment, and fateful because it did not escape him that this relatively rash ‘I can’ was something like the first sign of his personal apocalypse. But now it had been said and underlined, and Graciela, who had been prettily pale, suddenly blushed and sighed like someone going into a high-class florist’s, and he thought now it was time to stretch out a hand and so he extended it over the coffee table cleverly avoiding the vase with no carnations and the ashtray full of butts and for a while, let’s say four seconds, she hesitated and then also held out her slender hand that looked like a pianist’s, but was in fact a typist’s, and this became the acid test because in the end the contact with each other’s hand was sufficiently revealing and they looked at each other as if discovering one another. After that came the lengthy analysis, once more the word ‘loyalty’ had leapt over the vase with no flowers and the ashtrays full of butts, alighting now on his rough knuckles, now on her fragrant neckline, and Graciela, for now, more tormented than happy, I know it’s unjust, but at this stage of the game I can’t lie to myself and I know only too well what I owe Santiago, but obviously that conviction does not insure us against marital estrangement and Rolando on his side, for now more disconcerted than happy, Let’s take this slowly, Let’s take it as if Santiago were here right now, listening to our conversation, because he’s an inescapable part of this situation, Let’s take it as if Santiago could really understand and above all first understanding it ourselves. And they talked and smoked like this for a couple of hours, almost without touching each other, discussing solutions and resolutions, very warily bringing up the question of Beatriz, not yet daring to scrutinize or plan the future, promising to give themselves time to get used to the idea, also promising themselves not to do anything too crazy, or anything too sensible, and Rolando feeling increasingly hypnotized by her superb green eyes and her legs and her waist, and Graciela evidently disturbed by his reaction, which nevertheless she wanted and was waiting for, and Rolando starting to fall in love with that anxiousness and Graciela suddenly sliding defenceless into a fit of sobbing that was unpremeditated and therefore all the more persuasive, and he taking her face in both hands and only then realizing, when he made gentle contact with her lips, that out of pure astonishment he had bitten his own a few hours earlier when she had said, I dream of you.

  Beatriz

  (Pollution)

  Uncle Rolando said this city is becoming godawful because of all the pollution. I didn’t say anything, so I wouldn’t seem stupid, but the only word I understood was ‘city’. I looked in the dictionary, but ‘godawful’ isn’t there. On Sunday when I went to visit Grandpa I asked him what ‘godawful’ means. He laughed and explained very politely that it meant ‘unbearable’. I understood the meaning of that because Graciela, that is my mum, occasionally says to me (or rather almost every day), Please, Beatriz, sometimes you can be really unbearable. Precisely that Sunday evening she told me so, although she repeated please please please three times, Beatriz, sometimes you are just unbearable, so I very calmly said, You probably meant to say godawful, which she thought was funny, not hilarious, but enough for her to stop my punishment (which was very important). That other word, ‘pollution’, is more difficult. That word is in the dictionary. It says: ‘pollution’: emission of semen. What can ‘emission’ and ‘semen’ mean? I looked the first one up and it says: ‘emission’: an issuing of something. I also looked for ‘semen’, and it says: seed, liquid that serves for reproduction. So what Uncle Rolando meant is: this city is becoming unbearable from so much issuing of semen. I didn’t understand that either, and so the next time I met my friend Rosita I explained the serious problem I had and what the dictionary said. She said: I get the impression that semen is a sensual word, but I don’t know what it means. She promised me she would consult her cousin Sandra, because she’s older and in her school they have sensual education classes. On Thursday Rosita came to visit me, very mysterious, I know her well, and when she’s being mysterious she wrinkles up her nose. Graciela was at home and so she waited very patiently for her to go into the kitchen to prepare the escalopes and then told me, I’ve found out, semen is something that grown-up men have, not boys, so I said, So we don’t have semen yet, and she said, Don’t be silly not now or ever, only men have semen when they’re old like my dad or your dad who’s in prison, girls don’t have semen, not even when we’re grannies, and I said, How strange, and she said, Sandra says that all boys and girls come from semen because the liquid has little creatures in it called spermatozoids and Sandra was pleased because in yesterday’s class they had learned that spermatozoid is written with a z. After Rosita went home I was left thinking, and it seemed to me Uncle Rolando perhaps meant to say that the city was unbearable because it had so many spermatozoids (with a z) in it. So I went to see Grandpa again, because he always helps me, but not too much, and when I told him what Uncle Rolando had said and asked him if it was true that the city was becoming godawful because it had so many spermatozoids in it, he laughed so much he almost choked and I had to fetch him a glass of water, and he went very red and I was scared he might have a fit with me all on my own in such an unbearable situation. Luckily, he calmed down little by little, and when he could speak again he told me, still coughing, that what Uncle Rolando had said referred to was ‘almospheric’ contamination. I felt even more of a fool, but then he explained that the almosphere was the air and because in this city there are loads of factories and automobiles, all that smoke dirties the air, that is the almosphere, and that is the rotten pollution and not semen like the dictionary says, and we shouldn’t breathe it in, but if we don’t breathe we die anyway, so there’s nothing for it but to breathe in all that mess. I told Grandpa that now I realized that my dad had at least a small advantage where he’s a prisoner, because it’s a place where there aren’t many factories or automobiles because the prisoners’ families are poor and don’t have automobiles. And Grandpa said, Yes, I was right, and that we should always look for the positive side of things. So I gave him a big kiss and his beard prickled me more than usual, and I went running to look for Rosita and as her mum was there, whose name is Asunción, just like the capital of Paraguay, the two of us waited very patiently until finally she went to water the plants and then I said, very mysterious, You can tell your cousin Sandra from me that she’s much sillier than we are, because I’ve looked into it all and we don’t come from semen, but from the almosphere.

  Exiles

  (The acoustics at Epidaurus)