it’s starting to become bumpy/ fasten seat-belt/ everyone wakes up/ the sprawling young woman unsprawls and promptly hides the fork
my stomach heaves as well but I’m happy all the same/ this is no moment or occasion to throw up/ my stomach is in my throat and the two of them greet each other how are you how are you/ their farewell is moving too
for obvious reasons I had no visits/ that’s bad but not so bad/ when you have visits you’re anxious the whole week/ you try without success not to risk the slightest sanction/ you wait for that glimpse of your family/ as if it were magic and sometimes it is/ on the other hand/ when you don’t have any visits you don’t care about any sanctions/ you feel miserably alone/ but also freer or less of a prisoner
when I was nine more or less the same age as little beatriz now there were two things that holidays were good for/ one was to sit at siesta-time on the marble steps with my bottom nice and cool and read and read/ that was how I got through all verne and salgari and even tarzan and the apes/ in fact at school our secret password was kagoda/ and the other was to go to my aunt and uncle’s smallholding on the coast/ between nine and fourteen I went there every summer/ there were no other kids around so I had to make do on my own and I would escape down to the river/ I told graciela in a letter or maybe in a planned letter or in a poor monologue with myself how I would get into the rowing boat and row to the centre of the river but on other occasions I would stay on the bank or lie under some enormous trees or at least that’s how they looked to me and everything was a discovery the mushrooms the wood lice or a pair of filthy dogs who once fornicated right in front of me although I was unaware of what their gymnastics meant/ and remained stuck there with sad resigned faces/ I felt I was at the very centre of the universe and would have liked to know the secret of every tree bark every centipede every kiskadee and I didn’t move because I knew that only by staying completely still would I have any chance of discovering the true intimacy of that mini-jungle/ and curiously it never occurred to me to shout kagoda because I knew that tarzan’s ultimatum was not worth anything there nobody would have understood or been affected by his call to surrender/ and into that reality very early one morning there appeared a certain strange being although later I discovered he had much more right to be part of the landscape than I did/ he was a young boy but he was barefoot and dressed in rags/ his face legs and arms were covered in a layer of grime that seemed to me universal/ I was a bit frightened because lost in my daydreams I hadn’t heard him approach or maybe I thought the noise among the branches was caused by the usual stray dogs and seeing I was afraid he chuckled laughing almost in spite of himself and sat down opposite me on a tree trunk/ occasionally shaking his head or swatting his hands to ward off the bluebottles/ I asked if he was from round there and he puffed out his cheeks again/ I didn’t know what to do or what initiative I could take until it occurred to me to pick up a stone and with a great effort the greatest I could muster I threw it towards the river where it fell by the shore next to the rowing boat/ then he smiled again, blew his cheeks out stood up and also picked up a stone and almost effortlessly with his arm by his side also threw it into the river and that tiny pebble not only reached an incredible distance but bounced across the water almost without any ripples I could feel my chest swelling with admiration and I told him that’s great and clapped and laughed and I don’t know what else to show how he had astonished me and in the end I said you’re a champ/ and he looked at me this time without puffing out his cheeks and spoke for the first time/ I’m not a champ because that’s the only thing I can do
thanks to this backdrop of countryside memories and remote childhood I think I’m finally drifting off/ I’m going to count goons to see if I fall asleep
there it goes again fasten seat-belt/ ok ok/ I must have slept a couple of hours/ the bad thing is I dreamt again of emilio
Beatriz
(Airports)
An airport is a place where lots of taxis arrive and sometimes it’s full of foreigners and magazines. In airports it’s always so cold they put in a pharmacy to sell medicines to people who are susceptible. I’ve been susceptible since I was a little girl. In airports people yawn almost as much as they do in schools. In airports suitcases always weight twenty kilos so they don’t really need weighing machines. In airports there are no cockroaches. There are in my house because it’s not an airport. Football players and presidents are always photographed in airports and their hair looks well groomed, but matadors are hardly ever photographed, and still less bulls. It must be because bulls like travelling by train. I like that a lot as well. The people who go to airports are very huggy. When you wash your hands in airports they come out much cleaner but all wrinkled. I’ve got a little friend who steals loo paper from airports because she says it’s softer. The customs and the luggage trolleys are the most beautiful things in an airport. At the customs you have to open your suitcase and shut your mouth. The air stewardesses walk in pairs so they don’t get lost. The stewardesses are much prettier than primary school teachers. Their husbands are called pilots. When a passenger arrives late at the airport, there’s a policeman who puts a stamp in his passport which says this child arrived late. Among the things that sometimes arrive at the airport is for example my father. The passengers who arrive always bring presents for their beloved daughters but my daddy who’s arriving tomorrow won’t bring me any present because he was a political prisoner for five years and I’m very understanding. We go to airports especially when my father is coming. When an airport is on strike it’s much easier to find a taxi for the airport. There are some airports that as well as taxis have aeroplanes. When the taxis are on strike the planes cannot land. Taxis are the most important part of an airport.
The Other
(For now, improvise)
By now, Rolando Asuero is no longer posing himself questions. He’s battled his way to a response, and for now he’s totally convinced. All he has to do is go to the airport and confront the past, present and the future all bundled up together. Probably Graciela is right and the best thing will be to improvise. To improvise on a certain theme, of course. But what is he to do when Santiago arrives and embraces her and little Beatriz as being the reason as well as the unreason that keeps him alive. What to do? Where to put his hands? Where should he look? What to do when Santiago hugs Rafael and his dad strokes the back of his neck briefly because that’s a gesture that his retreating generation make. And above all, what on earth to do when Santiago gives him a hug and says, How great you’re here, Duke, I was thinking of you on the plane, we’ll have to start reuniting the old clan, what d’you reckon? And what will Graciela’s expression be when in the middle of the hug he peers over Santiago’s shoulder at her? Yet Rolando thinks the worst moments will come later, when Graciela finally tells Santiago and the new arrival begins to relive the scene at the airport and sees how stupid he was and despises himself and us as well because we all knew the score apart from him, and when he starts replaying the kisses he gave Graciela in front of me and the hug he gave me in front of Graciela, and it’s going to be very hard for him to get over that fleeting moment that took place only a few hours earlier. How to convince him that nobody planned it, it just happened, that the old comradeship the seven of them had developed turned out to be a breeding ground for them to grow closer and in the end to love one another. Because it is love, Santiago, it’s not just a fling, that’s what’s good and bad about it, thinks Rolando, that’s what in the end humanly justifies Graciela and me, but which also makes Santiago the definitive loser. Definitive? One logical question is whether he’ll give in or fight, if he’ll accept the most obvious facts or if, playing the intelligent card and staying calm, he’ll say to Graciela, OK, let’s not decide anything right now, remember I’ve only just got here, straight out of prison and I’ve got to get used, not only to this new situation, but to the world in general, it’ll be better if we talk, though probably not all three of us, just we two who lived through so much join
tly playing the piano with our four hands, why should we rush to settle everything when we’ve got all the time in the world ahead of us, before we settle things let me enjoy little Beatriz for a while, let me have long talks with her, don’t worry, not about this problem, the last thing I want is for the image she has of you to suffer, and I’ll talk to Rolando as well, but later on, for now everything seems so incredible to me and I keep thinking I’ll wake up from dozing off again on the plane. Obviously, this is a fairly accurate variation, especially knowing Santiago as I do, because when he decides to stay calm he usually succeeds, and here it’s more than simply a question of not losing his calm but his wife as well. Rolando also thinks that would be what he would do if he were Santiago. For now, he tugs a sideburn and arches his eyebrows. He’d like everything to reach its climax as quickly as possible. In reality, it’s Graciela who has to make the final decision, because both Santiago on one side and he on the other want to be with her, sleep with her, live with her. And possibly it’s here that he, Rolando Asuero, enjoys a slight advantage over Santiago, because he is aware that when it comes to bodily semantics Graciela and he have such a close understanding, besides which of late she has often given him the tender certainty – no, the almost ferocious certainty – that she is going to continue with him and not with Santiago. But Santiago’s advantage might be regarded as little Beatriz, because if, depending on what happens and what decisions are taken, Santiago wants to take her with him, Rolando is not so sure that Graciela, who is a lion of a mother, would easily accept giving up her child, someone who logically in addition is dazzled by a father who has spent five years in prison and is a complete novelty to her. Then again, Rolando Asuero tells himself on the way to the airport, is it a situation that may not be ideal, but is at least reasonable? What real benefit would Santiago get from such a forced union, where the kid was nothing more than a pawn in a game of blackmail? Of course, he doesn’t like that word; he admits it shows a lack of respect towards Santiago, and he mentally decides to remove it from the equation. But human beings are so unpredictable. It could also be that Santiago prefers to continue with Graciela in a diminished relationship than to see Graciela in bed with another man, even if this other man is a soulmate, or precisely because of that far from negligible detail. All right, here’s the airport at last, and as he descends from the bus Rolando is so caught up in his thoughts he almost misses a step.
Extramural
(Arrivals-Arrivées-Llegadas)
strange I feel strange walking on this ground/ just as well it’s raining/ the rain makes everything the same and the umbrella becomes humanity’s common denominator/ at least of sheltered humanity
I feel strange, but that will pass/ no one dies of strangeness although they can die of becoming estranged/ it was too much all at once/ the news/ the saying goodbye to people there/ the ridiculous red tape/ the triumphant smile of the last official but one/ carrasco/ departure with no one accompanying me/ the journey the long journey with dreams and doubts and plans/ oh and the meals/ of course it felt strange after five years of that disgusting slop
the official studying the document for ages/ the truth is that four minutes can be an eternity/ please take your beret off and then a careful comparison with the photograph/ still serious but very pally so you’re another one/ yes another one/ I respond in kind/ only then a smile and his stern face changes into a that of a puckish little indian/ good luck my friend/ good luck friend he told me
now I have to wait for the luggage/ my poor case will arrive or will not/ this is going to take time/ and all those people waiting/ there are so many heads on the far side of the glass/ if only I could see them/ find them
yes, there they are/ it’s them of course it is/ uruguayans our fatherland or our tomb/ workers of the world unite/ eureka/there’s only one sky-blue flag/ fiat lux/ nosce te ipsum/ fatherland or death we will overcome/ long live those who fight/ shit how happy I am
graciela and dad and that lovely little thing who must be my kid/ graciela the beautiful/ to think that’s my wife/ little beatriz, what a party we’re going to have/ and who’s that other one raising his arms? /why if it isn’t the duke/ it’s the duke of endives in person
Palma de Mallorca, October 1980–October 1981
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published as Primavera con una esquina rota 1982
This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2018
Copyright © Fundación Mario Benedetti, c/o Schavelzon Graham Agencia Literaria, www.schavelzongraham.com
Translation copyright © Nicholas Caistor, 2018
The moral right of the author and translator have been asserted
Cover: Ananke Asseff
I don’t want to talk about it (Remains of paradise)
Analog photograph 63 x 50 inch
2008
ISBN: 978-0-241-30263-7
EXILES: (CORDIALLY INVITED)
fn1 AAA: The Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance was a far-right paramilitary group who kidnapped and murdered people in Argentina in the early 1970s.
EXILES: (HE CAME FROM AUSTRALIA)
fn1 Frente Amplio: The coalition of left-wing parties in Uruguay in the early 1970s.
fn2 General Liber Seregni, one of the founders of the Frente Amplio. He was imprisoned from 1973 to 1984.
fn3 In April 1980, thousands of Cubans stormed the Peruvian Embassy in Havana, seeking asylum in order to leave the island. This became the Mariel exodus, when as many as 125,000 Cubans were allowed to travel to Miami.
THE OTHER: (TO WANT TO, BE ABLE TO, ETC.)
fn1 maté: This drink is typical of Uruguay and Argentina, a kind of bitter herbal tea which is served in a gourd and drunk through a metal straw. There is a ritual surrounding it; it is usually drunk among friends, each of them passing the maté on ceremoniously to the next.
fn2 This is a quotation from a tango song called ‘Cambalache’ (‘Pawnshop’), which was written in 1934 by Enrique Santos Discépolo. It’s a bitter reflection that nothing has real value any more, that everything is the same and can be pawned or swapped for anything else.
BATTERED AND BRUISED: (A TERRIBLE FEAR)
fn1 One of the leaders of the fight for the independence of Uruguay in the early nineteenth century.
INTRAMURAL: (THE BONUS)
fn1 The real name of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.
fn2 The ‘one from the other island’ is Fidel Castro, who visited Uruguay in 1959.
EXILES: (IMMOBILE SOLITUDE)
fn1 José López Rega was the Minister of Social Welfare during the Peronist government of 1973 to 1975, and one of those responsible for the killings by the right-wing Alianza Anti-Comunista Argenta (the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance).
EXILES: (THE ACOUSTICS AT EPIDAURUS)
fn1 Tato Bores: An Argentine comedian famous in the 1970s and 1980s.
fn2 Political prisoners under the Uruguayan dictatorship: Líber Seregni, Héctor Rodríguez, Raúl Sendic, Jaime Pérez.
DON RAFAEL: (A COUNTRY CALLED LYDIA)
fn1 Treinta y Tres Orientales: These were the thirty-three leaders of the revolt in 1825 which led to the liberation of the Oriental Province from Brazil and the establishment of Uruguay as an independent nation.
EXTRAMURAL: (F
ASTEN SEAT-BELT)
fn1 Sandokan is the hero otherwise known as the ‘Tiger of Malaysia’ in a series of swashbuckling adventure stories for children written by the Italian writer Emilio Salgari (1862–1911). His novels were translated into many different languages, becoming particularly popular in Portugal, Spain and Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America, such as Uruguay and Argentina.
Springtime in a Broken Mirror Page 16