What to Do
Page 6
50
We’re in an English university, and even though we have to give a lecture, we don’t know what to talk about, nor do we even know whether we should give the lecture or not. We ask the students what to do. There is a long silence that’s broken when we call on a student who raises his hand. The student stands up and says: What needs to be done is to put an end to the Third Period. They all start talking simultaneously and arguing over what the student just said, but no one understands what he means. We turn to him and ask him to explain it to us, but he tells us that he doesn’t know what he said, that the voice that came out of him wasn’t his, and indeed his voice now is very different from the other one. Alberto whispers in my ear: His voice is less firm and less convincing now. We all regret his lack of ability to explain himself, above all due to the suspicion that Alberto and I have that his response could have been the correct one. Another student raises his hand and, without anyone calling on him, says, in an unpleasant voice: What one must do is defend private property. We all stare at him shocked at the incredible and great stupidity of his response and shocked, above all, at the lack of connection between what was asked and what he responded. In the middle of this shock, the student who had spoken before him spits at his hair and this makes the second student leave the classroom crying; but before leaving, from the door, without ceasing to cry, he says: It wasn’t I who spoke, that wasn’t my voice. And, indeed, his voice is very different now. The astonishment lasts until Alberto raises his hand and, calling upon himself, says: I believe that what is to be done is sufficiently evident, but what should be analyzed before is whether one can decide and if one has to decide or not, because there would be at least two options: either the problem lies in the fact that one can’t decide or it lies in wanting to decide when there’s no need to decide but rather act; is this understood? I understand him easily, but the students respond that they don’t; Alberto continues: I mean to say that perhaps the problem is that one thinks that one has to decide things on occasions in which the decision to make a decision can only result in a problem, that’s to say: imagine that you’re walking peacefully when, unexpectedly, you arrive at a forking path, and instead of simply following one of the two paths, which are identical, and about which you have no information, you propose to yourself that what you have to do before continuing is make a decision: what happens? A student, who is eight feet tall, says in a very clear voice: I remain still forever. Alberto, satisfied, responds: Exactly, forever, because there’s no way of making a decision, and if you were to make one you wouldn’t be doing anything different from what you would have done had you followed the path without stopping, with the difference that you would have felt guilty for having decided incorrectly, because, indisputably, a good decision can’t be measured by its effect but rather by the decision itself, and if that decision couldn’t have been made, whatever you decide will be wrong. A student, impatient, interrupts him: Then what? Alberto responds: So then what one does, almost always, is something that happens to one, not something that one decides, except in cases in which the only possibility is to decide, because in those cases it’s possible and obligatory to do so; for example, if at the aforementioned fork, one of the paths were clearly a minefield; although, of course, the problem is knowing how to recognize minefields.
2006
PABLO KATCHADJIAN was born in Buenos Aires in 1977. He is the author of three novels—What To Do, Thanks, and Total Freedom—and a wide array of short stories, poems, and essays. His artistic collaborations include an operatic adaptation of his work alongside the composer Lucas Fagin.
PRISCILLA POSADA is a literary translator from Spanish into English. She lives in New York City.
SELECTED DALKEY ARCHIVE TITLES
MICHAL AJVAZ, The Golden Age.
The Other City.
PIERRE ALBERT-BIROT, Grabinoulor.
YUZ ALESHKOVSKY, Kangaroo.
JOE AMATO, Samuel Taylor’s Last Night.
ANTÓNIO LOBO ANTUNES, Knowledge of Hell.
The Splendor of Portugal.
ALAIN ARIAS-MISSON, Theatre of Incest.
GABRIELA AVIGUR-ROTEM, Heatwave and Crazy Birds.
MIQUEL BAUÇÀ, The Siege in the Room.
ANDREI BITOV, Pushkin House.
ANDREJ BLATNIK, You Do Understand.
Law of Desire.
LOUIS PAUL BOON, Chapel Road.
My Little War.
Summer in Termuren.
IGNÁCIO DE LOYOLA BRANDÃO, Anonymous Celebrity.
Zero.
CHRISTINE BROOKE-ROSE, Amalgamemnon.
G. CABRERA INFANTE, Infante’s Inferno.
Three Trapped Tigers.
JULIETA CAMPOS, The Fear of Losing Eurydice.
ANNE CARSON, Eros the Bittersweet.
ORLY CASTEL-BLOOM, Dolly City.
LOUIS-FERDINAND CÉLINE, North.
Conversations with Professor Y.
London Bridge.
ERIC CHEVILLARD, Demolishing Nisard.
The Author and Me
RENÉ CREVEL, Putting My Foot in It.
RALPH CUSACK, Cadenza.
NICHOLAS DELBANCO, Sherbrookes.
The Count of Concord.
NIGEL DENNIS, Cards of Identity.
JEAN ECHENOZ, Chopin’s Move.
LESLIE A. FIEDLER, Love and Death in the American Novel.
ANDY FITCH, Pop Poetics.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, Bouvard and Pécuchet.
MAX FRISCH, I’m Not Stiller.
Man in the Holocene.
CARLOS FUENTES, Christopher Unborn.
Distant Relations.
Terra Nostra.
TAKEHIKO FUKUNAGA, Flowers of Grass.
PAULO EMÍLIO SALES GOMES, P’s Three Women.
JUAN GOYTISOLO, Count Julian.
Juan the Landless.
KEIZO HINO, Isle of Dreams.
KAZUSHI HOSAKA, Plainsong.
YORAM KANIUK, Life on Sandpaper.
ZURAB KARUMIDZE, Dagny.
JOHN KELLY, From Out of the City.
GEORGE KONRÁD, The City Builder.
TADEUSZ KONWICKI, A Minor Apocalypse.
The Polish Complex.
ANNA KORDZAIA-SAMADASHVILI, Me, Margarita.
MENIS KOUMANDAREAS, Koula.
ELAINE KRAF, The Princess of 72nd Street.
JIM KRUSOE, Iceland.
AYSE KULIN, Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul.
EMILIO LASCANO TEGUI, On Elegance While Sleeping.
ERIC LAURRENT, Do Not Touch.
VIOLETTE LEDUC, La Bâtarde.
MARIO LEVI, Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale.
DEBORAH LEVY, Billy and Girl.
JOSÉ LEZAMA LIMA, Paradiso.
ROSA LIKSOM, Dark Paradise.
YURI LOTMAN, Non-Memoirs.
HISAKI MATSUURA, Triangle.
DONAL MCLAUGHLIN, beheading the virgin mary, and other stories.
ABDELWAHAB MEDDEB, Talismano.
ESHKOL NEVO, Homesick.
WILFRIDO D. NOLLEDO, But for the Lovers.
BORIS A. NOVAK, The Master of Insomnia.
CLAUDE OLLIER, The Mise-en-Scène.
Wert and the Life Without End.
FERNANDO DEL PASO, News from the Empire.
Palinuro of Mexico.
ROBERT PINGET, The Inquisitory.
Mahu or The Material.
Trio.
RAYMOND QUENEAU, The Last Days.
Odile.
Pierrot Mon Ami.
Saint Glinglin.
ANN QUIN, Berg.
Passages.
Three.
Tripticks.
JOÃO UBALDO RIBEIRO, House of the Fortunate Buddhas.
ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, Project for a Revolution in New York.
A Sentimental Novel.
ALIX CLEO ROUBAUD, Alix’s Journal.
JACQUES ROUBAUD, The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart.
The Great Fire of London.
Hortense in Exile.
> Hortense Is Abducted.
Mathematics: The Plurality of Worlds of Lewis.
TOMAŽ ŠALAMUN, Soy Realidad.
LUIS RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ, Macho Camacho’s Beat.
STIG SÆTERBAKKEN, Siamese.
Self-Control.
Through the Night.
ARNO SCHMIDT, Collected Novellas.
Collected Stories.
Nobodaddy’s Children.
Two Novels.
MARKO SOSIČ, Ballerina, Ballerina
GONÇALO M. TAVARES, A Man: Klaus Klump.
Jerusalem.
Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique.
TOR ULVEN, Replacement.
MATI UNT, Brecht at Night.
Diary of a Blood Donor.
Things in the Night.
ÁLVARO URIBE & OLIVIA SEARS, EDS., Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction.
ELOY URROZ, Friction.
The Obstacles.
DOUGLAS WOOLF, Wall to Wall.
Ya! & John-Juan.
JAY WRIGHT, Polynomials and Pollen.
The Presentable Art of Reading Absence.
PHILIP WYLIE, Generation of Vipers.
REYOUNG, Unbabbling.
VLADO ŽABOT, The Succubus.
ZORAN ŽIVKOVIĆ, Hidden Camera.
LOUIS ZUKOFSKY, Collected Fiction.
VITOMIL ZUPAN, Minuet for Guitar.
SCOTT ZWIREN, God Head.
AND MORE …