The Diaries of Emilio Renzi- Formative Years

by Ricardo Piglia

  Tuesday, March 7, 1962

  There were, as it happened, several times over the years when I would spend entire days reading my grandfather’s letters and postcards and notes, and I would even listen to recordings of Nono’s voice, sharing his version of events.

  I did not write here, in this notebook, Renzi now explains, my files and working notes about the war archive; I wrote them down separately, as I did back then with the stories that I imagined could help me to write something in the future. I didn’t write down everything in my diary; I wasn’t crazy. I never thought that everything I experienced had to be recorded; instead I let myself be guided by intuition and wrote what I suspected I would not remember—superfluous details (at first glance), imprecise facts of my life. For example, he said, this moment here, during my second year at the University, in 1961, when I started writing my stories; it was the description of my history with Lucía, which, to tell the truth, was the first story in my life, and which I never published, but have now decided, he said, to include unedited in the version of my diary I intend to publish.

  During that year, for “security” reasons, as they say, I recorded almost nothing of my political evolution, as we might call it; I had moved on from the tenuous anarchism of my youth to Marxism, aided by my studies in history and particularly by a modern-history course that I had taken with Nicolás Sánchez-Albornoz, a Spaniard closely affiliated with the Communist Party who had escaped from a Francoist prison along with other activists, among them a woman, Barbara Johnson, an American who had allowed herself to be arrested in order to organize the escape from inside the prison. And Sánchez-Albornoz had ended up in Buenos Aires, where his father, the prominent Hispanicist Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz was, if I am not mistaken, the president or prime minister or chancellor of the Spanish Republican government-in-exile, an imaginary position given that Franco’s power was well established and he ruled the country with an iron fist, aided by the Americans. And so, Don Claudio did nothing but get together with the melancholy exiled Spaniards in the bars on Avenida de Mayo, in Buenos Aires, while his son traveled to La Plata every week to teach us modern history in the College of Humanities. He would arrive on Tuesday mornings, give his class in the history department for three or four students, myself among them, and then return to the capital by train in the afternoon. His classes left a permanent mark on me because he decided, in 1962, to concentrate his course on the passage—or the transition—from feudalism to capitalism and made us read, along with the rest of the syllabus, the extraordinary chapter in Marx’s Capital on primitive stockpiling, that is to say, on the origins of capitalism. A history of epic, legendary proportions, because the peasants and their feudal counterparts in the countryside began to be leveled by commercial capital, that is to say, by money, which was eliminating the power of the rural nobility and causing an ever-growing mass of the peasant population to lose everything and have nothing to sell other than their labor. Foucault, Emilio said, Michel Foucault has said that historians are led unavoidably to utilize the Marxist categories in their analysis. “To say ‘Marxist historian,’” said Foucault, “is a pleonasm, like saying ‘American cinema.’” And so, in that course, while taking notes frantically and reading Marx and the great English Marxist historians until late at night, I was forgetting my father’s Peronism and the vague family anarchism of my girlfriend Elena (without an H). University politics also influenced my decision, and my friendship with Luis Alonso, a provincial who had come to the University being—or claiming to be—a revolutionary, was another influence, just as I, like all of my contemporaries, was influenced by the Cuban Revolution and the figure of Che Guevara, who had given a stunning performance to the OAS, near us, at the meeting at Punta del Este, dressed in his olive-green suit, with his thin beard and the five-pointed star on his beret, which looked like a third eye on his face, so Argentine. But, as has been the case throughout my life, books were what really convinced me. One time, not long ago, some friends invited me to go fishing at El Tigre, and so, to prepare for the occasion, I, who had never fished or been interested in that private activity of standing still and silent and waiting, rod in hand, for a fish to bite, I bought myself a couple of fishing guides (How to Fish for River Fish was one), and the next day, on the island El Tigre, I caught more fish than any of my friends, who had all practiced the art of fishing since childhood. I was the absolute champion in that friendly fishing tournament in the Paraná River. In this same way, I became a Marxist: because of reading some books in Sánchez-Albornoz’s course on the origins of capitalism in England.

  We took a break for coffee in the study’s kitchen and then returned to the worktable, and Renzi went on recounting the adventures of his second year as a student in the city of La Plata.

  He was active in the student union, and his perception of politics soon made him decide, as a Marxist, to oppose the Argentine Communist Party’s positions in particular and the politics of the USSR in general. In this way he was naturally getting closer, along with his friend Luis Alonso, to the positions, we might say, of Trotskyism. First, because the Trotskyists categorically opposed the Communist Party, and second because they are very theoretical, ultra-intellectual, and not very practical. So they suited me perfectly, as someone who above all was, and continues to be, an abstract intellectual. The funniest thing is that I came closer to Silvio Frondizi’s group, a small Trotskyist sect, very Anti-Peronist and not very practical. For example, the person who “enrolled” me in the movement of the revolutionary left, Praxis, which was the name of the small circle of militants, was Tito Guerra, a perpetual student, very entertaining, who convinced me to join that clandestine and minuscule organization. I can remember our final conversation in the woods at La Plata, in front of the lake, and there, one autumn afternoon, I decided to commit myself to politics and become part of the group. The funny thing was that the day after he convinced me, Tito Guerra renounced his position in the organization and abandoned politics.

  Thus began my political experience, organically; my life didn’t change too much, I went to some meetings, stayed active in the College, was a candidate for president of the center but, luckily for me, I lost the election by three votes (it would have been by two, if I had voted for myself, something I did not do, of course). Meanwhile, I had started writing the stories for La invasión, and with one of the first, “Mi amigo,” which was actually the second I had ever written, I won a short-story competition organized by a magazine that carried a fair amount of weight among young writers in those days. The funniest thing is that I discovered I was the winner during a lecture one afternoon by the writer Beatriz Guido, who had come to La Plata to give a talk on Salinger at the College; in the middle of the lecture, she said she had just read a very good story because she a was a judge in the magazine’s short-story competition, and she started to talk about a literary epiphany and named me, as I sat in the audience that afternoon in the Great Hall, and praised my story “Mi amigo,” and I realized, surprised, that she meant me and felt a contradictory emotion, which has always accompanied me through good and bad: it was not I, sitting there among my companions, who had written that story, it was someone else, different from me, more introverted and more valiant, whereas I was fairly lost in those days, emotionally distanced from everything. I could not bring myself to talk to her; it seemed impossible to me to stand up and tell her, “I am the young writer of that story.” A true horror, too real. Literature is much more mysterious and strange than the simple physical presence of the so-called author, and so I stayed in my seat, in the tenth row, I think, which is to say that I was close enough for her to see me but she did not know me, and I preferred to remain sitting, anonymous, though I would later become friends with Beatriz Guido and she was always generous, enthusiastic about me and whatever I was writing. I kept still, and she went on talking, and the people who knew me must have thought that I was not there or else did not realize she was talking about me. The fact is that, with such an acclaimed writer n
aming me as one of the most serious and promising of young Argentine writers, my stock had quickly risen to a new level. The girls immediately started becoming interested in me—me, who tried to stand at the peak of my brief and stunning fame.

  Perhaps as a result, the directors of the Trotskyist group proposed that I act as the editorial secretary for the magazine they were planning to publish. And so, for a couple of years, I was in charge of the magazine Liberación, a legal publication, at least on the surface, as they would say in the conspiratorial jargon of the time. The director was a Trotskyist laborer, José Speroni, a union leader of great import who belonged to the revolutionary militant group that had followed the instruction of Nahuel Moreno, who, in secret, while a member of the Fourth International, had defined the tactics of “enterism,” meaning a militant Trotskyist infiltration of Peronism, undercover agents of the worldwide revolution working inside the unions but never revealing their true political position. The tactic was so effective that ten years later, when he was still close to returning to power, General Perón condemned and denounced the Trotskyists in the Fourth International, those he labeled responsible for controlling the left wing of the Justicialist movement, as Perón called his political force. Speroni had been a “mole” in the Peronist union movement and had reached the level of secretary-general in the textile guild. But he was discovered to be an undercover agent and had to resign from his position and act openly as a militant Trotskyist. He was very intelligent. Very bright, had a great deal of experience, and was a figurehead as director of the magazine. The other editorial member was the great philosopher Carlos Astrada, who had studied with Heidegger in Germany and was one of the favorite disciples of the author of Being and Time, but who, being more or less close spiritually, as we might say, to Peronism in his interpretation of the national identity’s phenomenological essence, had veered toward Marxism. He wrote a memorable article during that time, explaining how Lukács’s book History and Class Consciousness, and in particular his chapter on the fetishism of commodities, had a direct influence on the delicate Black Forest philosopher. The magazine was designed by Eduardo Rotllie, a sculptural artist from La Plata who was very interested in the Russian avant-garde of the twenties. In this way, the magazine where I published articles, interviews, and notes really was a school for me and an unforgettable experience. My political activity during those years was limited to the magazine meetings. Meanwhile, the group’s activists would go through the working neighborhoods of Berisso and Ensenada, bringing Trotsky’s words from house to house, using a system they learned from Evangelist pastors: they rang the bells or knocked on doors (if there was no doorbell) and handed to the surprised refrigeration workers or their wives or their children copies of the group’s newspaper, which was called, believe it or not, The Militant. The neighborhood people thought it was an army publication because, of course, they confused the word “militant,” which they did not know, with “military.” They thought “militant” was just another way of saying “military.” All except for the Peronist sympathizers, who understood immediately that it signified a Trotskyist daily. In response, following Perón’s directive, they insulted them and called them nasty epithets while slamming the door in their faces. I never participated in any evangelical work, and that seemed to create a certain hostile climate toward me in the organization. In fact, one afternoon, during a meeting of “the cell,” as they called it, in which my friend Luis Alonso participated, along with his girlfriend Margarita and a Peruvian student who slept in my room at the boardinghouse during the discussions, I remember as if it were today, my friend and comrade Luis Alonso asked to speak and, as though History were speaking through his mouth, contended that the organization should sanction me and sever me from my responsibilities as the magazine’s editorial secretary because I did not demonstrate the “mettle” (that was the word he used) of a revolutionary. In short, he wanted to occupy my position at the magazine himself, but he would not say it in that way; rather, he set to describing the differences between a revolutionary intellectual (for example, him) and a petit-bourgeois intellectual (for example, me, who, to my perfect horror, he called “pequebú”), so that I saw myself transformed into a sort of animal species, the pequebús, as it were a peccary. Then I asked for it to be put to a vote: Luis and his girlfriend voted against me, the Peruvian either abstained or voted against, and I don’t remember if I voted in my favor or abstained. He brought the decision from the tribunal—that’s to say, from the cell—to the higher proceedings of the organization, as he called them. They didn’t pay him the slightest attention and I stayed in charge of the magazine, but, from that moment onward, I never spoke to him again, treating him as though he were invisible. The case is a minor one, but I realized then that if my comrade Luis had held the power he would have condemned me to the gulag in the name of the interests of the global proletariat. He spoke and was convinced he spoke in the name of truth, the truth of History and socialism as well. That ridiculous situation seemed to me an experience that was replicated elsewhere in the revolutionary groups and in socialist states: someone is accused of failing to obey the laws of History and is condemned to exile or to prison. It was a revealing experience for me and also a way to perceive the stores of depth and anger hiding inside our so-called “Argentine friendships.”

  Already, in that far-off time, I was living a double life and displaying the schizophrenia that has defined my behavior in the face of reality. On one hand, I engaged in political practice, very theoretical, with a group of advanced intellectuals on the left, and, on the other hand, I traveled every week to Buenos Aires, where I would spend two or three days frequenting the small literary world, a certain juvenilist bohemia, and would meet young writers at the Tortoni bar every Friday; there, on those nights, I became very close friends with Miguel Briante, who, along with me, had won the short-story competition of the most well-known literary magazine in Buenos Aires at the time.

  Concurrently, I was tangled up in a typical—for me—triangular relationship with a woman married to a dear friend, who, on top of it all, was a distant uncle. Politics, literature, and toxic love affairs with other men’s wives have been the only truly persistent thing in my life. Why, I do not know; many years later, I spent several sessions in analysis with a Lacanian doctor, and the issue of my Oedipal love was so obvious and I was so hooked on that murky cocktail that my analyst said to me, in a somber voice, “Look, Renzi, we’ll set this issue aside because it’s too obvious not to be hiding or displacing or concealing something else.” He spoke with a gesture to underline the end of his, shall we say, interpretation. What exactly was that something else? I never found out. I liked redheaded women and I also liked married women and I would fall in love alternately with a redhead and then a married woman, such has been my emotional life. In the case of the affair that occupied several pages of my diaries in 1962, I must say that it was actually one of the typical stories of my family: a young man who went wild over a call girl and married her and imposed her on the family. But, in that case, my uncle Toño was expelled, so to speak, from the tribe and, aided by my parents, moved to Mar del Plata, alone and either pursued or disregarded by the tough core of the Maggi family.

  And then Renzi opened a notebook and read out some entries in order to show that the story of adultery concealed the germ of one of his most well-known stories, “El joyero,” as his uncle was a great goldsmith and Emilio, when he stayed in Mar del Plata, spent the nights talking with him while watching, amazed, as he engraved the extraordinary and very valuable jewelry that he crafted, with great skill, for months in the workshop he had set up on the terrace of his apartment.

  February 12

  Pained by the disastrous, unforgettable experience with Lucía, I returned to the fold. I am thinking of spending some time in Mar del Plata. I tossed the Greek coin up into the air. Heads or tails. And now here I am, because no one escapes fate. And I have entered a symmetrical position. Repetition is my most faithful muse. />
  Tuesday

  Yesterday at Antonio’s house. I spent the afternoon with him in the workshop on the rooftop where he works as an artist, producing his jewelry, watching the vague figures drawn with a compass on Canson paper. He polishes the gold and laminates the diamond, faceting it like a miner in a tiny passage, which he illuminates with a tiny spotlight. We spoke calmly, and I spent the time thinking about her, downstairs. Finally, we went down to the rooms and she came out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped up in a red towel and her naked body barely covered by a fluffy cloth robe. She was barefoot and, as always, wore a bracelet around her ankle. Then we went to the room that opens onto the garden; I sat in the armchair (individual) and they on the spacious divan with the white pillows. Alcira withdrew (visibly) when he touched her, sometimes only by chance. When I was leaving with Antonio, who wanted to introduce me to the Colombian who had guaranteed him work in New York, she asked me to stay, using a pretense that no one heard. Toño went on alone and, as soon as he closed the door, she burst into tears. “All I want is to be with you,” she told me before insisting that we must not hurt Toño. I could not stay, and we said goodbye, promising to go to Buenos Aires together when I returned to La Plata.