Springtime in a Broken Mirror

by Mario Benedetti

  She would talk and talk, examining the situation from every angle. She even said that she had never enjoyed her own body as much as she did now, she had never derived so much pleasure, both physically and spiritually, from an act that, after all, did not have that many variations (Rolando does not completely agree with this, but does no more than smile) and yet this sense of fullness did not lead her to make comparisons, because she didn’t want to insult the memory of Santiago or even the memory of his body (at this point Rolando stops smiling), she had no wish to tarnish his image in any way, and besides she had no right to do so, because she couldn’t forget that when Santiago and she did it, they were younger, more passionate, perhaps more alive (at this point Rolando frowns), but also less experienced, and in addition all their own and other people’s suffering in recent years had made them tougher and yet at the same time more tender, made them more real and yet more unreal; as men and women, more definite and, yet also more responsive to their imagination, and all this, all this collapse of rituals and norms, this contradiction between past and present, present and future, all this brand-new objectivity, free from superstition (a smile from Rolando, then a heavy sigh) and melancholy, suddenly became the only rays of light in a sad story: to be less deceitful and less unjust in their dealings with one another, to be better kinds of third-class human beings – because the first- and second-class ones were no longer there, or had perhaps only ever belonged to the realms of fiction and pretence.

  Until one afternoon, when they were making love again and she once more began her post-aphrodisiacal litany, Rolando stubbed out his cigarette, took hers away and put it out as well, gently gripped a loose strand of her hair, laid her down gently and climbed without rushing on top of her astonished, quivering body, and after kissing her close to her ear, said simply: Graciela, don’t start all that again, we both know the whole story backwards, so who are you telling it to? He’s your husband and I’m his friend, and besides he’s a great guy, but we can’t go on playing ping-pong with our consciences, can we? We have to choose and it looks as if we have already chosen. We’ve found something that’s very important to us, and so we’re going to stick together, despite all the problems and upsets that it implies. The next chapters will be hard, but we’re going to stick together. You know it, and I know it. So, let’s leave the Santiago question for the day when he’s in a fit state to know about it, to adapt to the new reality. You and Don Rafael decided not to say anything to him while he’s in prison. I’m not so sure that’s the right course of action; don’t forget I’ve been in prison, too and I think I know how people inside view these things, and yet I’ve accepted your choice, and also my own responsibility within that choice. If, in spite of everything, you still respect Santiago, and so do I, we can’t go on talking obsessively about him every time we make love. Obviously, you’ll go on thinking about it, and so will I, each of us, on our own account. He paused, kissed her again, and when he, Rolando Asuero, was good and ready, explained it as best he could: the mere fact of not going over and over the matter with words that became worn out and wore them out, that simple silence would be of help to them, would help them love each other as they really were, and not as they felt they had this overly scrupulous obligation to be.

  Exiles

  (Goodbye and welcome)

  Holweide is a district of Cologne, in West Germany. Better call it Köln, so as not to confuse it with the Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay. It was in Holweide that a Uruguayan family settled (in a temporary fashion that’s already lasted seven years). They are Olga and her three children, who in 1974 were only little and now are adolescents. An incomplete family, because their father, David Cámpora, has been in prison in Uruguay since 1971. The school where his three children – Ariel, Silvia and Pablo – are still studying played a decisive role in his release in 1980.

  According to the Cámporas: ‘Holweide is a working-class district, a slice of German life. There are all sorts: working people and those on the margins of society, sports arenas, small businesses, kindly old ladies and gossipy old ladies, several churches, a couple of banks, a pilot school that is very progressive: in other words, ordinary people.’

  ‘The school was opened,’ Olga tells me, ‘just when my kids started to attend. It now has twelve hundred pupils. Everyone took part in the efforts made to secure David’s release: parents, teachers, pupils, the headmistress and even the Ministry of Education, which recognized that for this school human rights were more than just a theory class. A Cámpora committee was set up. We met once a fortnight to brainstorm what new efforts we could make. Sometimes we thought there was nothing more we could do; but then a new idea always arose.’

  Several meetings for Uruguay were held. For the first, the school called together parents to inform them about David’s situation and to consult them about what could be done. ‘We were expecting around thirty people to come,’ says Olga, ‘but to our surprise, some five hundred turned up. At the meeting, it was decided to hold a demonstration outside the Uruguayan Embassy. Buses were hired, funds collected; we even had to pay insurance for the children, because holding the demonstration meant taking them from Köln to Bonn. Some children contributed by giving us part of their monthly allowance. The total cost was 4,000 marks, and more than 800 people took part. That’s a lot here, especially considering the youngest children had to be accompanied by their parents or bring written permission. That was the start of a busy series of activities. Twenty thousand letters, and as many signatures, were sent to the Uruguayan government. Thirteen schools in the city joined in. Articles were published in the press, and the Cámpora case became widely known and taken up as a personal matter. Respectable housewives, who had never handed out leaflets before, began to collect signatures and explain what was going on in Uruguay. A few people said, “If he’s in jail, there must be a reason,” but they were pretty much the exception.’

  That supportive community lived with all the family’s own ups and downs, their hopes of release, and their disappointments at the abrupt refusals made by the dictatorship. ‘At last, and before David did himself, we learned that his freedom was imminent, and the headmistress asked us what we could do for his arrival, to welcome him, because so many parents wanted to go and greet him at the airport. It was clear to us that those who had done so much to secure his freedom had every right to share our joy. I went ahead to Frankfurt to warn David, because, for obvious reasons, he was unaware of all that had been done on his behalf. Then, at Köln Airport, three hundred people were waiting for him; children with drawings, and flowers, and apples, as gifts. There were many tears as well.

  ‘It was decided that a big party would be held at the school, so that everyone could see and touch David; he was their achievement, their conquest, the result of all of their efforts made in solidarity. Of course, first of all we had to bring him up to speed.’

  There were speeches at the party. Doctor Focke spoke. Aged sixty-five, she was one of the old guard of the Social Democrats; to some extent, she is David’s moral guarantor in Germany. ‘In fact,’ says Olga, ‘she is our fairy godmother.’ Other speeches came from the school’s headmistress, then from a representative of the parents (a construction worker who is one of our best friends here), a pupil (‘who has become a brilliant politician’), and a teacher’s spokeswoman. Then David had a brief five minutes to express his thanks, although, including the translation (by his daughter Silvia), he took eight. And, finally, a member of parliament spoke, the city mayor and (since different groups working for Latin America had also been invited) a woman representing the FDR from El Salvador. ‘And then the dancing started, with music by an orchestra made up of Italian workmen. So there was a great knees-up, with food, drink, tears and all the rest.’

  These are the words spoken by David Cámpora on that evening of 20th March 1981: ‘Tonight has a special meaning. In some delightful and strange way, we have come to say goodbye, and also to welcome one another. We are saying goodbye, without sadness
, to a man who was in prison for nine years. Who was a prisoner because he refused to fold his arms when the people of his country were experiencing hunger, pain and injustice. We are saying goodbye, without forgetting, to a harsh, drawn-out, but tremendously valuable experience. Every political prisoner ought to thank his jailers for confirming, in his deeds and in his person, the validity of his convictions, of his actions. A man is never surer of what he is doing than when he remains undiscouraged, undefeated, after prolonged suffering. We are saying goodbye to a situation, but our memory of it will remain. And we are also welcoming a father to this school. Three children and a wife have led me here by the hand; they want to show me the excellence that nests within human beings. Men and women of the people, who are capable of giving, and giving of themselves. It is an emotional father, who already feels at home here, who today can say “Hello” to you and ask where we are heading together. I feel within me that this celebration is something special, quite unlike anything else; it is new and important. So incredibly important I cannot find the exact words I need to describe it. So incredibly new, as such warmth always is, the warmth of people who have chosen to love others. There is also greatness here tonight. There is the great imperative to carry on doing, to carry on being able to. An imperative that springs from what has already been achieved. Because you were able to. You were able to overcome the brutality of a dictatorship, the jailers’ insistent hatred, the laziness and comfort of life lived only for oneself. You were able to do that, and I am here as a proof of your power. As proof, but not the measure. Because there is no limit to what’s possible for those who have learned they can succeed. I dare to speak on behalf of all my many imprisoned brothers, to represent them fully, and to say to you: many thanks for not abandoning us, many thanks for loving us so much. To ask you to persist in your solidarity with Latin America, a continent that is buying the right to be free with its own blood. Tonight, we can talk of prison and death without compromising our joy. Because the joy is that of militant victory, because this party is a celebration of the effort we devoted to the cause. We are happy because we are able to feel the pain of our fellow men. There is no adequate way to thank you for what you have given me. To you I owe the free air, and light, streets and voices, dreams and books. You have given me back my children and my wife: my place of affection, my tenderness. I feel ashamed to be talking to you, saying things. All I want to transmit to you is my faith in mankind and the opaque wisdom of the prisoner. Precisely to you, good, determined people, who have just achieved the impossible. You who know and who can. Tonight is for you, it is you we are honouring. And I am the one who applauds and embraces you.’

  The Germans wept; the Latin Americans – well, you can imagine. With good reason. According to Olga (because David is very discreet) ‘a girl kissed him and stroked his back for a long while, thanking him for all he had given her’. In the end, the girl was right. Without knowing or intending to, David had given that community the rare opportunity to realize the best of itself.

  Don Rafael

  (A country called Lydia)

  Am I a foreigner? There are days when I’m sure I am; others when I don’t attach any importance to that at all, and others still when I in no way admit my foreignness to myself. Can it be that the condition of being foreign is a state of mind? Probably if I was in Finland or the Cape Verde islands or the Vatican or in Dallas I’d feel inescapably foreign, but even then, who knows? And on that note, why do we always start any list of far-off countries, of distances, of foreign affairs, with Finland? Who can have put that prejudice into our noggins? For us, speaking of someone who is in Finland has always been the equivalent of saying they’re in the depths of hell. And if we don’t always associate the two, it’s because we’ve never seen depths of hell with so much ice and snow. After all, what do we know of the Finns or the Finlanders, apart from the Kalevala and the Nobel Prize for Sillampää, the one with those four little dots on its two ‘a’s? Up until the 1952 Olympics, newspapers in the far south used to write its capital city as ‘Helsinski’, with an ‘s’ before the ‘k’, and then shortly afterwards they started writing ‘Helsinki’. What can have happened during the Olympic Games for Helsinki to lose its second ‘s’?

  But I’m not in Finland. I’m here. And here, am I a foreigner? Not long ago I read in a good book by a German author about these ambivalent times: ‘It’s curious that foreigners first learn insults, bad language and the current slang of the country they are living in (a girl who has only lived for a few months in P. already gives cries of pain in French. She says “Aïe!” instead of “Ow!”)’ According to this definition, I’m not a foreigner because I carry on cursing exactly as I used to in my own ‘purple’ land. And when I’m feeling intense pain I don’t shout out any interjection, imported or home-grown, I merely let out a strange sound that could be defined as onomatopoeic, even though the dictionary offers only three examples of onomatopoeia (meow, glug-glug, ker-pow!) that of course, fortunately, have nothing to do with the grunts or snorts or growls I usually produce on such painful occasions.

  What would I have thought of myself last month, for instance, on Wednesday the 9th to be exact, if I had shouted glug-glug or ker-pow! when Professor Ordóñez trapped my finger in the very solid door of his Volkswagen? Instead, my modest, guttural groan, together with a withering look (‘withering’ not in the sense of ‘dying’ but ‘cutting’), must have left poor Ordóñez without the slightest doubt as to my instantaneous hatred of him – a hatred as unjust as it was instantaneous, because he had squashed my first finger only due to a moment of unforgivable distraction and not out of any aggressive xenophobia. I must confess, however, that at the time the certainty that this idiot would be capable, with as much equanimity and equal clumsiness, of butchering the finger of any of his own beloved countrymen did little to make me feel better. It might sound like a lie, but that unfortunate incident seemed fortunate to me, because for a good few minutes we must have been like two ‘pale faces’ together (luckily no Sioux appeared on the horizon): me, because I was about to pass out in the middle of one of my guttural groans, and Ordóñez for much the same reason: the only difference being that it was my finger which was injured. Now, would I have felt the same degree of instantaneous hatred (which I admit was unjust) towards my colleague even when I was on the point of passing out, if the owner of the Volkswagen had been a Uruguayan from Paso Molino, Tambores or Palmitas? I have my doubts, but since the only way to resolve them would be for a compatriot from Paso Molino, Tambores or Palmitas to crush my finger in the door of his Volkswagen (bah, it could be another model), I’m more than happy to remain in the precarious but decidedly more comfortable territory of philosophical doubt. And anyway, even if my instantaneous hatred of the tiresome Ordóñez had international connotations, or, at least, inter-Latin American ones, my case would not be one of xenophobia, but quite the opposite.

  A forced transplantation is difficult at any age. I’ve experienced that for myself. But possibly it’s young people who feel most punished. And I’m not saying this because of Graciela, or Rolando, or even for Santiago, when, eventually, he’s set free. I’m thinking more of the youngsters who were still little kids when all the trouble kicked off. It must be almost impossible for them to see this stage in their lives as something that isn’t transitory, but a long-term frustration. And the danger is that this feeling could turn them into the victims of an irreversible erosion.

  How many of those we saw being such gutsy militants in La Teja or Malvín or Industrias and now see in Paris near the Sacré-Coeur, or the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, or Madrid’s Rastro, stretched out beside handicrafts they themselves have made or woven, how many of those young men and women with their vague smiles and distant gazes, have not seen, months or years earlier, how their most beloved comrades fell? Or have heard terrifying shouts from the stinking next-door cell? How can one fairly judge these neo-pessimists, these premature sceptics, if we don’t start by understanding that their hopes h
ave been abruptly mutilated? How can we forget that these young people, separated from their surroundings, families, friends, their classrooms, have been denied their basic human right, to rebel as youngsters, to fight as youngsters? The only right they’ve been left with is to die as youngsters.

  Sometimes these young people demonstrate bullet-proof courage, and yet their minds are not disappointment-proof. If only I and other veterans could convince them that their duty is to stay young. Not to grow old out of nostalgia, boredom or rancour, but to stay young, so that when the time comes to go back they do so as young people and not as the relics of past rebelliousness. As youngsters – that is – as life.

  After that outburst I think I’ve earned the right to a deep breath. There’s no doubt that when I am serious I’m unbearable. But it may also be that this is the real Rafael Aguirre: the unbearable, annoying, rhetorical one, and that the other Rafael Aguirre, the one who enjoys making plays on words, who mocks others a little and himself a lot, is in reality a mask for this one.

  Perhaps that’s a roundabout way of replying to my own question: am I a foreigner? And I answer myself this way, with one hand, the right one, in the shroud, and the other, the left, drawing a sun that I wish was as spontaneous and luminous as the one my granddaughter draws, with her startling and insolent colours. Except that I can’t draw a green sun and pink clouds like she does, without the slightest sky rhetoric. In the end, I think that in me the sun is more powerful (even though it is an orthodox yellow and orange) than the shroud.