Adam Buenosayres is perhaps the most ambitious novel in Argentine literature. Like all great novelists, Marechal was conscious of that challenge and worked using the material of his life. It would be difficult to find a project in contemporary literature as ambitious and as well realized as that of this novel.
Saturday, May 5, 1973
Once again a dream with the beggar and his son. Now in the stall where they sell food. The son makes theatrical gestures as though he were an actor in Japanese Noh.
Tuesday 8
At night León R. comes over and we lament our mutual misfortunes. Especially him, unable to continue relationships with women and yet not wanting to lose them. Then a fragmented reading of his project about Freud. In the middle of the conversation, we begin to hear some whispers, which quickly turn into moans and sighs and voices intoning the old songs of love, and the bed in the apartment next door creaks with metallic groans. Then León moves closer to the dividing wall and puts his ear up to it, to better hear the neighbors making love. A great Freudian scene.
Saturday
Maybe I’ll put together a book of short stories: the woman on her own in the city, the couple with the dead mother, the caretaker who kills a visitor, the forced marriage of Adriana, a soundtrack going against the lived events, the suicide of the father, the adolescent in love with someone else’s girlfriend, the redhead.
Rereading Faulkner.
I meet Rodolfo Walsh, who rationalizes his inability to finish a novel “politically” (how should he write in order to have readers?); we talk about Borges, who was attacked for his political ideas, “and whom no one considers for his literature.”
May 25
Cámpora took office. We reached the Plaza when people were starting to decentralize. They were marching down Avenida de Mayo in columns, going in the opposite direction as us. Hegemonic presence of the Juventud Peronista, armed groups jumping to the surface: posters and slogans from the FAR and the Montoneros, the walls of the city suddenly covered with guerrilla graffiti. A direct relationship is noticeable between the JP and these groups. They didn’t allow William Rogers to approach the Casa Rosada and forced him to seek refuge in the American embassy; by contrast, they opened the way for Dorticós’s car, letting him go without a guard. They obstructed the military parade and forced the marching band from the Naval School of Mechanics to flee, and some from the JP took the musical instruments and started playing in the middle of the plaza; they painted guerrilla writings on the tanks and obstructed the grenadiers from going to say goodbye to Lanusse. Alongside all this was the Peronist circus: people selling stamps with Eva Perón, some in costume, a street music atmosphere created by the bass drums. The popular tradition appears, theatrically “enacted” by the activists.
Then an unforgettable night in front of the Villa Devoto prison, the crowd managed to liberate the political prisoners. Politics determined everything there; fifty thousand demonstrators were there with torches and posters, remembering the people killed under repression, and on the other side the political prisoners spoke from the flag-lined windows of the prison (they used sheets to make their signs). The mobilization forced Cámpora to sign the pardon. A slow march of the crowd toward the door began following the news. There was talk of an attempt to take over the penitentiary to rescue the thirty prisoners who were left. Suppression, gunshots, gas; we scattered, but there were three lying dead in the street.
Friday, June 7
I’m traveling to China for five months; the return is delayed since I’m staying in Europe. Air France flight 090, leaving from Buenos Aires on Monday 25 at 3:30 p.m., arriving in Orly on Tuesday 26 at 12:45 p.m.; I receive a letter from José Sazbón offering me his house in Paris.
“For the members of the Gestapo, it was permitted to kill prisoners but not to rob them; instead, they forced the prisoners to sell their belongings and ‘present’ the money obtained to a formation of the Gestapo,” Bruno Bettelheim.
Last night Pabst’s adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Brecht. The film’s dialogue and text in German do not diminish the pleasure of a story that is always slightly excessive and frenzied.
I meet Haroldo Conti, who feels free—according to him—after his separation; he wrote a novel in seven months, which—from what he told me—runs the risk of emphasizing his populist tics.
In each of the three works in progress that people have told me about recently (Rivera, Conti, Szichman), García Márquez’s influence is visible: magical realism, narcissistic nihilism.
Saturday, June 23
I see Iris, a bit of a crush. She tells me that she consulted a fortune-teller who predicted that a recluse was coming toward her. “That’s me,” I tell her, “wait for me to go to China and come back.” Laughter and kisses. She separated from her persistent husband, got rid of the perverted Argentine professional.
Sunday, June 24
Yesterday I spent the day entombing my old manuscripts in two boxes (the novel about the gang of Argentine criminals in Montevideo, the diaries, the old short stories), which I will send to my cousin Roberto at his house in Mar del Plata.
7
Diary 1974
In Paris I get an old issue of Les Temps Modernes (1952) with an essay by Étiemble on Borges that has amusing allusions to China and Maoism. I take it to Guo Moruo, the great writer, whom I visit at the end of my trip.
He receives me at his house in Peking, dressed in an impeccable, dark charcoal Mao suit, his face soft, with deep wrinkles and very pale eyes. He is deaf and uses hearing aids, stumbling when he walks, faltering from age. We greet each other, shake hands and walk over to the armchairs together. “How is your health,” I ask him, and he smiles as he tells me his is not very well, he feels some dizziness. Then he begins to talk, and in some places he gets lost searching for the right words. He speaks of China’s enemies, who have always come from the north. “Before, we built the wall, and now we dig tunnels,” he says, laughing at his own witticisms, his hands floating in the air. “The Chinese character wen simultaneously means characteristics, the grain of stone or wood, birds’ footprints, tattoos, the designs on turtle shells, but also literature,” he says, as though awakening. Several assistants sit surrounding him, offering him the words he can’t come up with; they lean close and shout to him, and they write down everything he says along with the things I say. “They tell me you’re a writer and a scholar,” he says to me. “And you expect to get to know China only as a point of reference, because the real matter is to know your own country better.” I nod and smile, “I know a bit about Argentine literature, but I don’t know Chinese literature, though your poems have been translated in Buenos Aires.” “Oh no,” he says, “no good, no good.” He goes on talking to me about getting to know Argentina, and he doesn’t give the translator enough time when he speaks, not hearing him. Tien shouts back my words to him and he smiles and waves his hands. He shows me a quote that Mao said to the Japanese intellectuals who had visited him: “When you go back to Japan forget everything you have learned here in China.” Where it says Japan, he inserts Argentina and laughs.
This ancient man is the most famous Chinese writer after Lu Xun, but the honors and recognition began to cool down after 1966, when the most extreme sectors in the Cultural Revolution cast harsh accusations at him due to his supposed “ideological deviations.” The translator anticipates him, saying that Lin Biao was responsible for those actions. Then he tells me that, after several months of ostracism and a rather forced self-criticism, he stopped writing and has dedicated himself only to writing Mao’s poems in calligraphy ever since. “A prison sentence,” I say. “On the contrary, a gift, calligraphy is an art as valuable as poetry or painting.” He has calligraphed the poems by Mao that can be seen in the city, and they are beautiful. “I prefer to be a calligrapher,” he says. Straight away someone approaches with a blue book of Mao’s poems, beautifully calligraphed by Guo Moruo. “I will write you an inscription,” he tells me, “how does that
sound?” More mobilizations of assistants, who bring him paint brushes, Chinese ink, and a placard with my name written in Chinese. He writes shakily, apologizes, “I can’t control my hand any more, how old are you?” “Thirty,” I tell him, and he looks to the side as though surprised a person could be that age. “Oh,” he says, “you can still do many things, learn what you want, even Chinese. I’m fifty-three years older than you,” and he smiles again as he holds out the book for me. Then I give him the copy of Les Temps Modernes. “There’s a beautiful essay by Étiemble,” I tell him, “it might interest you.” He thanks me enthusiastically. “I learned French in Paris in the twenties.” Suddenly the movement of his assistants shows me that it’s time for me to say goodbye. I say a few words, he stretches out his hands to me with weak friendliness, and I rest a hand on his shoulder. “I wish you a hundred years of life,” he says, and walks a few steps with me toward the exit amid a circle of assistants, who bump into each other when I try to guess who I should pay my respects to first. A feeling that I have encountered a poet waiting for death when he quotes Mao Zedong with a certain ironic resignation.
March
Friday 15
I amuse myself by thinking about some “destiny” that I have altered for no apparent reason, or rather one sustained on old fantasies, but where do they come from? I make my living on literature, have all the cards on my side, and yet there is a dark certainty that has led me to who I am now. Just as the future dissolves, the feeling of uncertainty grows worse. It is no accident that I take refuge in nostalgia, choosing thoughtlessly at every crossroads, certain that I will achieve what I have sought. These days, the decisions seem to come from outside me. For example, I could have dedicated myself to history, pursued a university career, gone that way. Now it seems that everything is gambled on one hand. I can envision my life only six months into the future, I foresee nothing beyond that.
Outside, the city is gray, heavy, as after the rain. I am reading Carson McCullers once again, always rediscovering that reflexive writing interrupts the story and arranges the exaggerated atmosphere into a “natural” and spontaneous plot.
I went back to work on “Mousy Benítez” all day; it’s already written, and I am only trying to clean up the style, adjust the plotline to make it better. Some doubts with respect to the ending, which seems to come too quickly. I am careful, anyway, not to explain it too much.
Last night, in a bar on Corrientes, a discussion of the film script with B. and Daniel S. From my first reading of the book, I think the structure is too loose, reiterative, lacking a dramatic crescendo. I propose some modifications, narrating the preparations for the attack on the journalist, making Murena’s defeat worse so that in the end, when he must go into exile, his wife abandons him. This week I have to write six scenes about that odd separation.
Saturday 16
A strange peace, all day on Alberto’s boat, navigating the tranquil waters of the Delta, lying in the sun, swimming. A needed parenthesis or pause.
Sunday 17
I have been working on “Benítez” since noon, having trouble welding the passages together, sometimes it seems overwritten to me.
Monday 18
Julia comes to see me, startling me once again, and absurdly I repress my desire to tell her I love her, fearing that she will want to start things over again.
I am preparing the syllabus for the course with the psychoanalysts. Philosophy, but nothing by Freud; if anything, I will present some of his texts as “misread”: seeking the form and methods by which he presents the cases and, above all, seeing how he narrates dreams. In philosophy, we’ll discuss versions of analysis (B. Russell, L. Wittgenstein): what happens if one reads psychoanalysis as a linguistic game?
I leave notes, search for what can’t be found because the meeting is canceled. The dark hallway. The call that comes right afterward. And yet, as always, I cannot leave.
Tuesday 19
In the morning Andrés comes over. I am starting to distance myself from him. I read him “Mousy Benítez,” which works well read aloud.
Friday 22
I have made decisions. I have set aside the reality I have been denying, first of all because it associates me with debts, with squalor. From this side, my difficulties seem to strengthen my work. All of my expectations are concentrated.
A desire to leave the novel and write short stories. Then work on the book based on these diaries. Couldn’t I find a better way there? The point would, in a sense, be to write a portrait of the artist using the techniques of dream interpretation. I’d have to start work on that book now while writing some stories to include in the reprint of La invasión.
Short stories: The Father’s Suicide, The Man Who Met Roberto Arlt, The Accident, Sentimental Education, in addition to Mousy Benítez, The Swimmer, El Joyero, and Desagravio.
Start to put together material, maybe determine the essence before I read the notebooks. I can’t worry about the coherence of anecdotes before I have some central concept that I can develop. Working, then, with the first seeds. It would be best to finish some stories in the next two months so I can begin writing the book based on my diary in June. I don’t think I can start until April. Meanwhile, I’ll try to organize my situation a bit and get the course ready so that I can ensure the money I need.
Separations, again and again. Always final, never entirely wanted. The worst part is the emptiness. A dead man who can do nothing but think.
Saturday 23
A slow, interminable month. I have, at least, realized that there is nothing worse for me than this paralysis.
Wednesday 27
Series C. Except for some doubts that unexpectedly assault me, there is hope of finding a note or being called; I could say that I’ve managed to temper my emotional misadventures, clinging to the idea that with Iris I can find the peace I’ve lost. At the same time, tension mounts because I know the past cannot be changed; in love, the person you play games with never matters. In the meantime, I hope to write the book based on these diaries, as though I could change the present by going backward and reading what I have lived through.
Yesterday I took “Mousy Benítez” to La Opinión. A good metaphor for the position I’ve accepted, the sophistry of sending in a story I wrote in 1968.
A slight malaise, certain ideas that draw me into reconstructing reality. I’m with Iris, but I’m thinking about Julia; and when I’m with Julia, I think about Iris.
Thursday 28
Last night, in a bar on Santa Fe and before that in El Toboso, Julia carries out her rituals. I have to publish a novel, she says, so I buy a watch, since she lost hers.
Monday, April 1
I’m with Iris, and I feel good when I’m with her, but then slight storms begin. I should learn my lesson. And yet I play Julia’s card and hope for a call from Amanda.
The illusion of unconditional women. That certainty is lost, and only emptiness remains.
Tuesday 2
León comes over, I keep seeing him as a future mirror of myself. Always full of doubts, always seeking what he does not have.
I meet Julia and chaos ensues. She leaves, like so many times before, compulsive, furious. I get up and call Amanda, who isn’t at home. Then I meet Iris and we spend a beautiful night together, dedication, fantasies and long memories.
Sunday, April 7
I go to the hospital to see Melina, who is slowly getting better but still throwing up. The room at the end, her bed in a corner, a baby, the IV in her arm, her exhausted expression.
Sunday 14
I have spent several days with Iris, everything is going well. I’m falling for this tranquil, dazzling woman.
Wednesday 17
At Crisis magazine with Galeano and Aníbal Ford, many different projects.
Good economic prospects. Fifty thousand pesos for the selection of letters by Pavese. A project to write an introduction for Brecht.
Some discontinuity in my relationship with Iris. Really, I�
�m alone most of the time. There is no way to make everyday life work by being together. Some restlessness makes me get up with a start. Slightly bothered this morning, restless without precise reasons.
Friday 19
I work on the course for the psychoanalysts and on an article project for the magazine. A relatively easy income, I could potentially make two hundred thousand pesos this month.
Saturday, April 20
I go out to eat a sandwich in the Botanical Garden, among the old and dying.
Monday 22
Nostalgia for that fiction I create for myself with certain women, the myth of unconditionality, which is illusory but helps me to forget the cracks. To choose to be alone is to start to see reality without a veil.
The Diaries of Emilio Renzi Page 44
