“I’d like to listen to the Kinderszenen,” Clara was saying to the chronicler. “When I was a little girl, a friend of the family would play them at night in our dark sitting room.”
“In the sitting room, of course.”
“Of course. I grew up in a house with a sitting room, and everything possible was done so my intelligence would furnish its own sitting room in my head. Don’t laugh. My uncle Roque has a perfect little cultural sitting room. With anecdotes about General Mansilla, admiration for almanacs, and vague, perfumed soaps. I adore sitting in it and breathing its fine dust.”
“Sometimes you stay too long,” said Juan, throwing himself into his chair. “Don’t think our apartment today doesn’t have a sitting room. It’s invisible, but the threat of it is still there—in the radiotelephone, home remedies and everything colored old rose.”
“The good old days,” said the chronicler, as if he’d said “The goddamn days.” “In any case, I think your invisible sitting room is rather impoverished in terms of consoles, macramé, and shrouded harps.”
“No need to be excessively cruel with sitting rooms,” said Clara. “They were the least physiological part of life for females—the only place where trays of sweets, the filthy siesta (procreation I’m talking about, whether you wanted it or not) didn’t enter.”
“It’s hot,” said Juan drinking his beer. “It keeps getting muggier and muggier. I feel something here that’s …” Through the open windows came the cries of a black paperboy selling the latest edition. The voice came up by itself from an almost empty street where some people were rushing along. Far off (and Clara remembered Leandro Alem the previous night), an ambulance siren echoed.
“Crítica’s second special edition,” said the chronicler. “4:30. They’re punctual as Scotsmen. Meanwhile, I should be in the office of my own paper.”
“Take the subway with us, you’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Right. Well, that was quite a concert.”
“Poor Dad,” said Clara. “The one time it occurs to him to listen to music.”
“Are you kidding? I hope you don’t think he didn’t have a good time,” said Juan. “After he rests, he’s going to feel very proud of himself. You should have seen him dishing out the kicks and shoves. This was his great day—a day worthy of a souvenir anchor with fifteen real rubies.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“But he’s right,” said the chronicler defending Juan. “It’s going to be a beautiful memory. His battle of Hernani. These days we have even more need of memories. Notice how people forget?”
“You’ve got some soot on your nose,” said Clara. “And I don’t think we forget more now than before. The thing is that before, people lived with that wonderful escapist idea that ‘all past time is better,’ et cetera. Or the other way around—the religion of the future and all that. Now … well, that’s it: now. There’s no place for memories.”
“But you know that the now doesn’t really exist,” said the chronicler.
“It doesn’t?”
“What the chronicler means,” said Juan, “is that the person giving meaning to the now, I mean, the before or the afterward—that’s the most important thing.”
“I didn’t mean that in the slightest,” protested the chronicler, “but it fits nicely with the general idea. People remember less now because, in a certain sense, all their memories are accusations.”
“How right you are,” said Juan. “This thing that’s floating in the air nowadays, this awareness that we’re guilty of something, that we’ve been accused …
At times it even becomes incarnate: like William Wilson, je suis hanté, hanté, hanté, hanté, hanté! And poor Josef K… Even us, without going further …”
“But what right does the past have to accuse us of anything?” asked Clara, carefully closing a small gap in her lipstick.
“None whatsoever,” said Juan. “It isn’t the past that accuses us but we who accuse ourselves. Our evidence comes from the past: what we did, and what we didn’t do, which is even worse. It’s a break that can’t be crossed over.”
“Look, this subject is talked about too much and understood too little,” said the chronicler. “People say we’re failing for lack of style, because we’ve stepped out of the frieze, the golden mean. Do you think that’s the source of our neurosis?”
“It’s something much worse,” said Juan, drying his hands on a paper napkin that turned into a filthy little wad on the edge of his plate. “If at least we’d lost what you call style. But no, we’re like the awakened dead in the Last Judgment in Bourges cathedral.
Remember the photo, Clarucha? The figures have one foot out of the coffin and the other still in. They’re trying to get out, but they’re still trapped by the habit of death. Between two waters, like Mr. Valdemar; ‘and we shall suffer opprobrium as long as this transitory life lasts.’”
“You’re on the right track,” said Clara, sighing, “but you’re so confused.”
“What I’m trying to say is confused. Give in, chronicler. Rimbaud saw the horror of existence better than anyone: ‘Moi, esclave de mon baptême,’ he said. You grow up within the Christian structure, reduced, it’s true, to a turtle shell, where you stretch out and fit. yourself in until you fill it. But if you happen to be a rabbit and not a turtle, you’re obviously going to be uncomfortable. Turtles—like the Great God Pan—have died; and society is a blind nursemaid who insists on putting rabbits in the turtles’ corset.”
“Nice image,” said Clara, her mouth filled with charlotte russe.
“You grow up wrapped in the great fixed ideas, but one day you make your first personal discovery. It’s that those ideas aren’t applied in practice. And since you’re no jerk and you like to live, it happens you want to choose freedom of action. Bang, you smack into the ideas—into your baptism. I’m not talking about external decrees.
Listen, because this is important. Not practical compulsions, which drive half-assed rebels to despair—
in that form, believe me, you can always get around them more or less.
The thing is you realize these ideas are within yourself: your baptism, man.”
“Orestes’ furies, right?” said Clara.
“You’re a Christian!” said Juan. “From the way you cut your nails to the shape of your war flags—you’re the Christian West.
Trapped, the panting begins. Imagine an eagle brought up among sheep, and one day it feels the presence of, no, the need for, its eagle strength—
or the other way around, because no one should be smug.
Just imagine it—and there you have it.”
“Fine,” said the chronicler. “Unfortunately, there’s no way to resolve the thing.”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Clara. “What does matter is that it be that way, indubitably that way, cleanly that way. And that’s not always certain.”
“I think it is,” said Juan. “At least, I can’t help but believe it. I know that every authentic gesture is reined in, repressed by a conformism in my nature. With each minute, when I decide: Tomorrow—then my rebellion arises. What is tomorrow? And why tomorrow? Then, you see, the Swiss watch starts going—well-oiled and perfect—and the cuckoo I keep here in my head sings to me: ‘Tomorrow is a new day, at sunrise it will be cloudy, and temperatures will rise steadily, the sun will appear at 6:22, Saint Cecilia’s Day. You will get up at 8:00, you will wash—’
look at just that: you will get up,
you will wash—
that alone is your baptism, your handcuffs, your Western structure.”
“And you feel bad because of that?” asked the chronicler. “The answer is to get up at eleven and rub your face down with alcohol.”
“That’s stupid and doesn’t fool anyone. Look, if you’re born a sheep you’ve got to live a sheep, and the eagle needs room to take flight also. I can accept the form of the sardine can. I’ve been stuck in it since Jesus was forced on me as my third eye. The can
is one thing, but the sardine is something else. I think I can own up to the fact that the can is mine; it’s enough that I’ve been able to distinguish myself from it.”
“From distinguishing yourself to escaping …”
“I don’t know if it’s possible for me to escape,” said Juan. “But I know it’s my obligation, with regard to myself, to try. The results count less than the actions.”
“Your obligation with regard to yourself,” murmured Clara. “You’re going to realize yourself on your own?”
“I count only on myself, and even that to a slight degree,” said Juan. “I have to discount that part of me that is the enemy, that’s cultivated to kill my free part. The part that should be a good boy, love his daddy a lot, not stand on chairs or step on the guests’ feet. I count on so little of myself; but that little bit of myself stands guard, pays attention. Baudelaire was right, chronicler. It’s Cain—the rebel, the free man—who should care for the extremely soft, the viscous and well-mannered Abel …”
He stared fixedly at Clara.
“Apropos,” said Clara. “But go on, I’m not interrupting you.”
It isn’t viscous, she thought with an absurd tenderness.
“I’ve said all I have to say. I’m happy not having a God. No one’s going to forgive me; there’s nothing I can do to gain forgiveness. I go about my business without any advantage, without the great recourse to repentance. (It wouldn’t be worthwhile for me to repent of anything. Within myself there is no forgiveness. And it’s possible there’s no such thing as repentance either.) My fate is absolutely my own: I know, that when I break one of my own commandments, I am doing it. And I know and can guess pretty well why. And what I’ve done is unforgivable. If I were to repent, it would still be useless. I’d be falling into self-compassion or high mindedness, and I’d rather die a hundred times.”
“That’s what people call pride,” said the chronicler, adding up the three checks.
“No, that’s what’s called being your own self—going at it alone, and having faith in yourself. I think that only someone who isn’t going to screw up can foresee his risk with such clarity. And vice versa.”
“A little Sartrean Orestes,” mocked the chronicler, tenderly.
“Thank you,” said Juan. “Muito obrigado.”
At the corner of Talcahuano, they had to make a detour and follow the confused orders of a municipal foreman, who was rerouting traffic. Some barrels, lanterns, and red flags gave the street the air of a barricade—all complicated by a distracted Chevrolet that had just crossed the forbidden line and was there with one of its front wheels in the hole where the pavement collapsed. It had that grotesque air all machines have when they’re yanked out of their norm. The dialogue between the driver and the foreman was of such violence that—according to the chronicler—it was highly unlikely they’d start throwing punches. Curious, there were very few people surrounding the antagonists; and the show was lost in the foul-smelling mist hovering close to the ground in that sector of town.
“Well, we can go up Talcahuano until Lavalle and then turn to get the subway,” said the chronicler. He walked ahead, leaving Juan and Clara walking silently arm-in-arm, alone.
At the corner where the Court building was, there was a fire truck and its entire crew along with a lot of water—on the side where the court stairs led from the plaza. The chronicler was going to ask a fireman what was happening, when a huge “Keep Moving!” put him in motion once again. Two cars with official license plates were parked with their doors open at the turn into Lavalle. Like a river of ants, employees with piles of forms and portfolios went up and down. One of the cars was already almost full. Are they going, as the song says, with the music to another place?
“I don’t know if you did it on purpose,” Clara said brusquely. “When you mentioned his name you were looking at me.”
“As soon as it came out, I realized it,” said Juan. “I noticed the coincidence, so it was natural I look at you, to see if you’d noticed as well.”
“Sure, how could I not notice,” said Clara. “The chronicler told me he saw him at the fight.”
“No!” said Juan, stopping dead in his tracks.
“At the end, when the gawkers slipped in. Which is why he could get away before they arrested all of you.”
“He must be mistaken,” said Juan reluctantly. “Of course, it’s all the same.”
“Sure, but this is getting to be a bit much,” said Clara. “It’s disagreeable always having to check to see who’s behind you. In the box, I was afraid. Now I’m with you—but I might get afraid again, and I won’t like it.”
“Look at this,” shouted the chronicler from the corner of Uruguay. He was pointing to an enormous truck that had fallen over. Dozens of boxes of eggs were scattered in the direction of the fall.
“Just when they’ve gotten so expensive,” said Clara. “Pardon my reaction.”
Juan was silent, staring at the eggs and the street, breathing in the fog that suddenly made them spit out something like dust balls. Standing outside the Martona milk bar, there was an enormous black man, standing guard at the door on the Uruguay side. Clara froze in her tracks because he was whistling the themes from Petrouchka, one after another. He wrapped them up in his clear whistling and then released them into the mist.
Like bubbles with smoke, thought Clara, deeply touched. She was going to say it to Juan, but he was still walking with his eyes lowered
as if skating along with his eyes, thought Clara, extremely happy with her use of Juan’s verb. A bitter happiness, really, from the neck up. It was better to get to Juan through his arm, hold on to him and draw him closer, close to your own tranquil respiration. There’s so little time left, she involuntarily glanced at her watch. After 4:00. She thought about Andrés, who would probably be there, quiet and amiable, with a book under his arm (always the least expected one: De Quincey, Sidney Keyes, Roberto Arlt, or Carr Dickson,
or Adán Buenosayres, which he liked so much, or Tristan I’Hermite, or Colette—and so on the other side sometimes, so passed onto the shore of his authors. Andrés far-off, cinerary image—greeting of a storm, suddenly, a brutal flash, the bursting of a rage into fire, denunciation;
and how could anyone walk happily along the streets with him walking just ahead, or standing in a courtyard studying a door knocker or listening to the echo of his own footsteps—
Like Juan, who …
Yes, like a Juan without poetry, a green plant without fruit, almost without flowers. Andrés, she thought, pressing her lips closed against the fog. How I dumped you.
“Now there’s a notice I don’t like one bit,” said the chronicler as he began to cross Uruguay. “Imagine we’re left without subways.”
The notice was written in green ink and stuck to a board attached with wire to the bars of the Corrientes subway entrance:
The company assumes no responsibility for the regularity of trains.
“What company?” asked Juan in a fury. “Doesn’t all this shit belong to the State?”
“Some flunky or other wrote it.”
“And in a big hurry,” said the chronicler. “Green ink, how disgusting.”
“Let’s just go,” said Clara. “Somehow we’ll get downtown, even if they don’t assume responsibility.”
Sliding along on the slippery stairway, they reached the long tunnel that led to the first level underground. A huge number of people had congregated there in a bar; and in the dense, filthy air a smell of hot sausages was winning the day. The fog didn’t reach that far down; but the humidity was condensing on the walls, and the floor was dotted with puddles and enormous mounds of garbage.
“They haven’t cleaned up here for days,” said the chronicler. “I’d pinch my nostrils shut, the way you always see people do,
if it weren’t for the fact it would force me to open my mouth, which is much worse. I’ve always thought that smells are just deficient tastes. And if you smell something through your mou
th, you can eventually taste the smell; and you can understand that in this jelly …”
“You’re too delicate,” said Juan. “It’s obvious you were never drafted.”
“I never was, but I do go to soccer matches a lot. Look, the other kiosks down here are closed. That is news. When they close the kiosks it means that people are passing them by, or simply not passing.”
“Think so? Look at this mob stuffing their faces.”
“It’s inevitable. I’ve proved that people from Galicia breathe through language.
and if they don’t speak they die—asphyxiated by the silence.
On the other hand, people from Buenos Aires breathe through their stomachs. And how they eat, My God! Just think of those huge steaks they call ‘Baby Beef’ on menus—nowhere else do they have beef like that.”
“We’re machines for manufacturing poop,” said Juan. “Who said that about us?”
“Someone who passed by this bar. Wait a minute. I take back everything I said! Those people aren’t eating.”
From a distance, they watched as two girls helped a woman back to her feet who’d slipped. The chronicler was right. The people at the bar were wrapping packages. They were carrying on some obscure business with the fat owner, who was wearing a mangy smock.
“They’re selling all their stock,” said Clara, who felt a wave of fear,
and felt Juan’s hand squeeze her arm.
“What sons of bitches,” said the chronicler. “Where’s a telephone? This is the beginning of the black market!”
“Bah, I’ll bet they already know it down at your paper,” said Clara bitterly. “Your Editor probably has his garage filled with bags of sugar and potatoes.”
“I hope they rot,” said the chronicler. “Juan, my dear, got any change?”
“Here.”
At the bottom of the stairs, crumpled newspapers were piled high, along with a broomstick, and the cover of the magazine Cuéntame. They heard a bark that came up out of the tracks. Clara took hold of the handrail but instantly pulled her hand away in disgust: it was oozing, as if alive.
Final Exam Page 17
