by Cesar Aira
Not to be outdone, the women told ghost stories too. Inés Viñas told the story of a portraitist who abandoned his art as a result of specializing in ghost portraits. The ghosts materialized only to pose and then disappeared again. It was frustrating for the artist not to have any enduring reality with which to compare his work. But that was not the worst thing. The worst thing was that the ghosts rationed their visibility in a rather drastic manner, and didn’t even materialize in their entirety; only the feature that the artist was copying at a particular moment appeared, and not even that: just the line, the mere brush-stroke.... They duplicated his work so perfectly that the exasperated painter broke his brushes, stamped on his palette, kicked the easel over, and bought himself a Leica. Which only made things worse, much worse.
As for Carmen Larraín, she told them about Japanese ghosts. In the Celestial Empire, when an elder died, there was a general reckoning of where he had left the bones on the plate every time he ate fish. If the positions formed a satisfactory circle, he went to Paradise. If not, he became a ghost whose task was to teach the children good table manners. And those who did not succeed in that mission, she concluded, became ikebana instructors.
Finally, instead of telling a story, Roberto made an observation: ghosts, he said, are like dwarves. Thinking about them in abstract terms, you could come to the conclusion that they don’t exist, and depending on the kind of life you lead, you can go for months or years without seeing one, but sooner or later, when you least expect it, there they are. That’s just a result of life’s general conditions, the chances and coincidences that make up existence; for example, it can happen that in a single day, you see two dwarves, or two dozen, and then you don’t see any more for the rest of the year. Now looking at it from the other side, from the dwarf’s point of view, the situation’s very different, because the dwarf is always present to himself, as he is: 44 inches tall, with his big head, and his short, bandy legs. He is the occasion that prompts casual passersby to say, that night: “Today I saw a dwarf.” But for him, dwarfhood is constant, continual, and merits no special remark. It’s perpetual appearing, occasion transformed into life and destiny.
Isn’t Patricita going to tell us a story? they asked, looking at her; it was true that she hadn’t said a word. The children had approached the table and were listening to the stories with gaping mouths. Patri thought for a moment before speaking: I remember a story by Oscar Wilde, about a princess who was bored in her palace, bored with her parents, the king and queen, bored with the ministers, the generals, the chamberlains, and the jesters, whose jokes she knew by heart. One day a delegation of ghosts appeared to invite her to a party they were giving on New Year’s Eve, and their descriptions of this party, which included the disguises they would wear and the music to be played by the ghost orchestra, were so seductive, and she was so bored, that without a second thought that night she threw herself from the castle’s highest tower, so that she could die and go to the party. The others pondered the moral. So the story doesn’t say what happened at the party? asked Carmen Larraín. No. That’s where it stops. Must have been a bit of a surprise for the girl! said Elisa, giggling. Why? Because ghosts are gay, of course! Raucous guffaws. That Oscar Wilde, he’s priceless! said Roberto, choking with laughter. They all thought Elisa Vicuña’s reply was a great joke, in the surrealist mode. An inspired one-liner. Patri, however, only laughed so that they wouldn’t think she was upset; the idea had shocked and distressed her. At that moment, the children were pointing at the moon, which had been rising in the sky, partly hidden by the neighboring buildings, partly eclipsed by the absorbing conversation. They all looked up. It reminded them that they were dining outdoors. It was a very white full moon, without haloes, the kind of moon you could spend your life watching, except that in life the moon is always changing.
When Elisa got up to prepare the coffee, Patri was quick to follow her into the kitchen, saying “I’ll give you a hand.” The rest of them went on talking and drinking wine. Raúl Viñas drank four glasses in the time it took the others to finish one. The result was an exquisite inebriation that went unnoticed in social situations, but sent his whole body into orbit, endowing it with a peculiar movement, shifting it to places where no one thought it was. Once they were alone, Patri asked what Elisa had meant by the quip that had gone down so well. But, my girl.... her mother began, and here the expression “my girl,” so common in the familiar speech of Chileans, so normal that even daughters sometimes use it without thinking when addressing their mothers, also took on a broader sense, which neutralized the typically Chilean connotations. The language shifted to its most abstract level, almost as if Elisa were speaking on television: But my girl, we never know what we mean, and even if we did, it wouldn’t matter. You’re always saying things don’t matter, said Patri, in a slightly reproachful tone, which, as always in their conversations, was tempered with affection. But as Elisa put the water on to boil, spooned the coffee into the pot, passed the cups to her daughter so that she could check they were clean and put them on the tray with the saucers and the little spoons, she became very serious. There were things she needed to say to her daughter, things that really did matter. They had spoken so much, half-jokingly, about the “real men” who were destined to make them happy, and they had made light of them so often, that in their respective imaginations, the subject had lost its gravity. She had to restore it, by reasoning if need be, and there was no time like the present, now, before the end of the year. How can I tell you, she said to her daughter, then stopped and thought. Patricita, I’m afraid you’re not the most observant member of the family. Come on, tell me, tell me, said her daughter, without a trace of self-pity, maintaining her characteristic reserve.
Listen, said Elisa Vicuña: Chilean men, all Chilean men, speak softly, with a slightly feminine tone of voice, don’t they? Whereas Argentinean men are always shouting out loud. I don’t know what they’ve got in their throats, but they’re like megaphones. Well, at first you can get the impression that all Argentinean men are super-virile, I mean, we can get that impression. But more careful and detailed observation reveals something else, almost the opposite, in fact. Haven’t you noticed? Patri shrugged her shoulders. Her mother went on: Think of the architect who designed this building, and the decorators who come with the owners, all the men who came this morning, for example.... Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, Patricita: those pink silk cravats, the aftershave, those tank tops, the oohs! and ahs! In spite of everything that was on her mind, Patri couldn’t help smiling at her mother’s mimicry. Elisa went on:
Now there’s another question, and it’s closely related: the question of money. Having money is a kind of virility, the only kind that counts in Argentina. That’s why this country we have come to is so unique and strange. That’s why it has cut us off from the rest of the world, to which we belong by right as foreigners, and held us like hostages. It’s true that there is, or at least should be, another form of virility, which doesn’t depend on money. But where we are now, it’s hard to imagine; as if, to understand it, we’d have to go back in time and space, back to Chile and even further, to something before that. What is that other form of virility? Popular virility? No, because the popular is subordinate; it’s an eminently subordinate form in the hierarchy of virilities. It’s the primitive form; that is, virility independent of the state. Although in principle it might seem preferable to the popular form, the primitive form can be dangerous for us too. It could imply that women are condemned to t
he primitive, to savagery. And wouldn’t that be dangerous? Isn’t the state, after all, a safeguard, a kind of guarantee, which stops us disappearing altogether, even if it relegates us to the bottom of the ladder? Women, said Patri, will never disappear. That, my girl, replied her mother vigorously, is precisely what’s in doubt.
But what has all this got to do with ghosts? Patri asked her again.
Ah, ghosts.... Well, what is a ghost? I’ve been talking about Argentinean men and Chilean men, but that was just to make it clearer, the way animals are used in fables. Well, so far it’s not all that clear, said Patri. Come on, a smart girl like you.... You see, for us there are always ghosts. Subtract a Chilean man from an Argentinean, or vice versa. Or add them up. You can actually do whatever you like. The result will always be the same: a ghost.
OK, but why do they have to be gay?
Even at that critical moment, when, as she was intuitively aware, her beloved daughter’s life hung in the balance, Elisa Vicuña could not bring herself to answer with anything more than a mysterious smile, the “serious smile.”
Since the coffee was ready, and a fragrant plume of steam was rising from the spout of the pot, they went back out. Patri put the tray on the table, and Inés Viñas took charge of filling each cup. The coffee was so well brewed, so aromatic, that hardly anyone felt the need to sweeten it. Patri took a sip, and waited for it to cool. She was thinking about the conversation with her mother just before: they hadn’t come to any kind of conclusion; in fact, her doubts had multiplied. And yet the conversation had produced effects, and that was what she was thinking about as she drank her coffee. The danger, she thought, was not so much that the ghosts who were waiting for her would turn out to be a complete flop as far their virility was concerned, but that none of them would deign to talk to her, and give her the explanations she needed so badly. On second thought, however, the conversation had produced the opposite effect, since it was all about entering a state where she would no longer need anyone to look after her, or provide explanations, or even give her what her mom gave as abundantly as anyone could: love. And as she proceeded from this conclusion to a third stage in her reflections, the question of the ghosts’ real virility recovered its importance. It might seem odd that this relatively uneducated young woman, who hadn’t even finished secondary school, should entertain such elaborate thoughts. But it’s not as strange as it seems. A person might never have thought at all, might have lived as a quivering bundle of futile, momentary passions, and yet at any moment, just like that, ideas as subtle as any that have ever occurred to the greatest philosophers might dawn on him or her. This seems utterly paradoxical, but in fact it happens every day. Thought is absorbed from others, who don’t think either, but find their thoughts ready-made, and so on. This might seem to be a system spinning in a void, but not entirely; it is grounded, although it’s hard to say just how. An example might clarify the point, though only in an analogical mode: imagine one of those people who don’t think, a man whose only activity is reading novels, which for him is a purely pleasurable activity, and requires not the slightest intellectual effort; it’s simply a matter of letting the pleasure of reading carry him along. Suddenly, some gesture or sentence, not to speak of a “thought,” reveals that he is a philosopher in spite of himself. Where did he get that knowledge? From pleasure? From novels? An absurd supposition, given his reading material (if he read Thomas Mann, at least, it might be a different story). Knowledge comes through the novels, of course, but not really from them. They are not the ground; you couldn’t expect them to be. They’re suspended in the void, like everything else. But there they are, they exist: you can’t say that it’s a complete void. (With television, the argument would be harder to sustain.)
The guests were cracking jokes and laughing heartily as they drank their coffee and smoked cigarettes. They all gulped their cups down and asked if there was more. If I’d known you were going to like it so much I would have made a bigger pot, said Elisa Vicuña. Still, there was enough left to give a few people a smaller second cup. The children had started to agitate about the rockets, and since Javier, who was in charge of all the pyrotechnical gear, had told them to wait for the grown-ups, not even letting them have the lighter, they kept begging the adults to finish their coffee and come and help. All right, all right. The moon bathed them all in a marvelous whiteness, which even crept into the light globe’s yellow glow. An atmosphere of carefree triviality reigned: keeping an eye on the time to see how many minutes were left, that sort of thing. The “real men” thought Patri, in her philosophical reverie, were none other than the men she could see before her now. And that was how it had to be, given everything her mother had been telling her for years. Elisa Vicuña’s thoughts had not come out of nowhere, arbitrarily. They had come out of men, and gone in a circle, from men back to men, and that route made them “real” whether or not they really were. It was almost like getting used to something, anything, even this after-dinner banality. She started to think more carefully about the problem or the choice she was facing; she tried to put her thoughts in order.
Finally the parents agreed to oversee the lighting of the fireworks. Although it would have seemed impossible only a minute before, the level of excitement among the children rose abruptly. Roberto, who according to his girlfriend was a child at heart, was the keenest to join in, and to the amusement of all present, he even reached into his pocket and produced a sizeable supply of rockets, which he had brought “just in case.” So they started with rockets, as well as jumping jacks and firecrackers. The explosions were lots of fun. They tried throwing a cracker into the pool, and the explosion resonated like a building collapsing. More! Come on! They wanted to make a much bigger din. But Javier suggested they fire off some tubes. They used an empty bottle as a launcher. Instead of choosing a distant constellation, they aimed straight at the moon. I think it’ll make it, said Ernesto. Roberto had an excellent silver lighter, which allowed him to adjust the flame’s intensity as well as its length. Raúl Viñas called it a blowtorch. They lit the first tube’s fuse and waited. Miraculously, or because it was well made (a rarity in recent times), it shot straight up into the sky leaving a golden wake. This time they all looked. It exploded way up high in a burst of very white phosphorescence. The same thing happened with the second tube, except that the explosion was red, a dark, metallic red. They had some very big, powerful fireworks, but they were keeping them for later. The smaller children, Ernesto and Jacqueline, were twirling sparklers.
The only one who wasn’t taking part in the fun, or not directly, was Patri, because she was busy thinking. It had occurred to her that she didn’t really have to wait to find out, she could make a deductive leap: by deducing correctly it was possible to tell what would happen. She couldn’t base her deductions on the ghosts, because she didn’t know anything about them. But she could use facial expressions instead. She did her very best, calling on her imagination, her unschooled—some might say naïve—creative gifts, but she kept coming to the same conclusion: the mysterious smile on the lips of the ghosts. It was inevitable, given her skeptical nature: ending with a mysterious smile, like an impenetrable barrier.
And what was the meaning of the mysterious smile? She could deduce that too, but in reverse, since any of the people here, the women sitting, the men crouching with the children and playing with the rockets, any of the things they might say or do, could provoke the mysterious smile. It was within everyone’s reach. So life in its entirety, with its infin
ite conclusions, was, it turned out, the deduction, the genealogy, of the mysterious smile.
While Raúl Viñas had gone off to refill his glass and drink it (which meant he would have to fill it again, but that was his business), Roberto and Javier put one of the really big rockets in a bottle to fire it off, and decided that in spite of the sparks, they would have to hold the bottle, using a napkin if need be to protect against burns, because it was so big and top-heavy it might fall over before take-off. So that was what they did; they brought Roberto’s aerodynamic lighter up to the fuse, and shouted to get everyone’s attention. Magnificently, triumphantly, trailing a dense wake or jet of sparks, the rocket shot up into the starry sky, crowded now with fireworks from every quarter of the city. As it went past the big parabolic dish, the glow lit up two ghosts floating in the night air, one perfectly vertical, the other at a slight angle, his head behind the head of his companion. That was the time: five to midnight, more or less. At midnight, they would be lined up perfectly, one behind the other, stuck together. Javier and Roberto smiled and whispered obscene remarks about that position; then almost immediately, prompted by the same association of ideas, they both looked at Patri, who was sitting very stiffly, staring into space, white as a sheet, cadaverous, so thin and haggard she could have been mistaken for a lifelike tailor’s dummy.
