Savage Theories

by Pola Oloixarac

  These are the roots that beauty and war have in common. This is the philological triangle of charm and brutality on the verge of blowing apart:

  Each of the three vertices, the three synonyms for beauty, is a vector projected through time. Bonello mutates toward the idea of bueno, the good, conserving its roots in Spanish; it is the aspect of beauty that is carved out by the moral sense. Pulchritudo is the beauty that adorns the harmonic ratio of the precise, the ordered, the hygienic; the pulchrum posits the beautiful in opposition to the repugnant. Pulchrum and bonello are the facets of a Platonic diamond wherein what shines is Being itself. Bellitudo alone of the three synonyms has not been domesticated by Platonic ideals, by the imposition of pure being, the astral house of the just, the good. Bellitudo is beauty inhabited by war, much as beauty inhabits war. Bellitudo encloses a tumultuous seed: the beauty of the bellum, wherein roars the deadly, predatory nature of the bestia, the bellua, synthesis of sovereign Eros and Mars the Seducer.

  The Deeds of the Divine Augustus contains several important illustrations, among them a reproduction of the central frieze of the temple of Mars the Avenger. As is all too well known—and there is nothing the least bit personal in this comment—in that frieze, Vulcan stands outside the temple calling desperately for Venus, unable to do anything about the fact that she has already left with Mars, her lover, at whom she smiles sweetly, enjoying her act of betrayal.

  All of which reminds me of a certain accursed afternoon in the labyrinth that is the top floor of the Philosophy and Letters building. Augustus was walking hurriedly, poking around in one of his shirt pockets, the one where he always keeps his cigarettes and that pelican-blue Mont Blanc they gave him when he won the Ezequiel Martínez Estrada National Essay Prize. He was carrying folders, books, loose papers . . . and perhaps a manila envelope, one enclosing a dazzling message signed by Rosa Ostreech?10

  Reacting quickly, I hid. It wasn’t that I was afraid to see him or speak to him, but that I am wholly and terrifiedly conscious of the fact that words spoken aloud (the mysterious syntax nested within them) determine and actualize transcendentally the events in which they are embedded. My derailed heart beat wildly; when I saw that he was turning in my direction, I lost all control of my muscles and waved hello, the fat tome in my hand thrashing back and forth overhead. For an instant, it seemed that he’d noticed the eagle of my gaze alighting beside him, and was turning away. But I calmly watched as the scene played out—and in the end, the dove of peace devoured the raptor.

  In his attempt to avoid a frontal encounter with an Ethics adjunct who was dragging her existence through the vicinity, he failed to notice that the dark heavy object in my hand was nothing less than a volume of Byron. (In the previous class, Augustus had devoted a rather inopportune interlude to a number of “encrypted” sonnets that some dangerous madwoman had offered up to the poet, who wanted nothing to do with her, hated her and did everything possible to avoid her letters, propositions, and company. At one point it got so bad that he’d had to chase her away in public, in the middle of the town square.) I’d been looking for the passage Augustus had quoted, but still hadn’t found it—in the annals of English philology, the title Complete Works is invariably either fraudulent or blasphemous. Of course, the Ethics adjunct couldn’t infer anything from any of this; she deftly intercepted my dear theoretician, and poor ashen Augustus prolonged the lively encounter as if it were some Ciceronian sententia.

  That would have been my final assessment of the episode, but then I detected the equine shadow of the odious one at the end of the hallway; her hair was tied up in a little bun, and her eyes were fixed on me. When he managed to free himself from the Ethics adjunct, Augustus headed directly for that woman, and she whispered something to him, whispered it almost directly into his ear. Both of them turned to look at me. Their lips continued to move.

  I walked back to my house, kicking at piles of leaves and stepping in dog shit. Barely in through the door of my pied-à-terre, I realized that I’d forgotten to feed little Montaigne, who mewed resentfully as I crossed through the rarified darkness. As for Yorick, he’d managed to survive Montaigne’s kittenish hunger, and was swimming peacefully in his bowl. I found the whole scene very moving. So many days without them. As if in slow motion, Yorick floated up to eat the food that drifted down through the rising bubbles. To please him, I brought a mirror up to the side of the bowl. He immediately went on high alert; he intended to fight this intruder, this other fish, this stranger swimming in front of him. I let him play like this for a time. When he began to tire, I covered the mirror, and instantly his feathery blood-red dorsal fin began to swell: the other had withdrawn, and Yorick had triumphed. The individual consciousness is a function of one’s vanity, whose rank determines the body’s spectra of possibilities. The truth of this axiom is verifiable even in populations most often ignored in psycho-political studies, including cold-blooded animals, whose miniature brains hearken back to pre-mammalian evolutionary phases. Oh the things I’ve never told you, Augustus, the things I’ve kept to myself.

  Watching my pets at play, I get a sense of how the Voice who organizes the tale returns to float above her prey like some logical, succinct she-wolf. In short, Augustus, I just don’t know. It’s hard for me to keep going, following your signals. I let my thoughts travel through the dark until I can no longer hear them. When a state of amorous emergency is declared, the sovereign takes control of others’ lives. He looks out over the long line of heads bowed in his honor, the long white strip that is the napes of the necks of those who revere him, and he rises, looks again at those necks: inside runs that which is surrendered in silence. He contemplates, he deciphers, he rises. But if he were up in the heavens, what would he see?

  A canopy of black branches hanging over the pastures. Open spaces like stains; the black branches interlocked, a coven of spiders. Oily, dark green undergrowth. Black birds spiraling. Glittering fog, dragging itself along the grass. Totora reeds. A small boat at anchor, a barking dog.

  Your hostage is down there. Motionless, somewhere.

  * * *

  10 This is the name behind which your faithful narrator hides.

  4

  Kamtchowsky made her way to 3960 Lt. General Domingo Perón Avenue: the Ronald McDonald House. She and Miguel had agreed to meet at six in the afternoon; just because he had Down syndrome, she reasoned, didn’t mean he’d keep her waiting for an hour. Of course he did, but K had something to read to keep herself entertained, and her ass was perfectly comfortable—it was only the slightest bit wider than the stair on which she sat.

  The text she had in hand had been a most fortuitous acquisition. On her way to this date with Miguel, Kamtchowsky had descried a hamster-colored mane next to the ticket machine in the Malabia station on the B line. They hadn’t seen each other in months; her mother gave her a kiss, asked how she was doing, and informed her that she was on her way back from a meeting with the guys at the publisher. She had with her the proofs of Aunt Vivi’s diary, and the book was almost ready. Do you want to have a look? Her mother’s little claws, the hamstery hair on her forearms, the manuscript held out. Kamtchowsky took it with a smile. Vivi’s notebooks had been her favorite thing to read as a child, not counting Emilio Salgari, the Sissi comic book series, the sagas of female inmates, and Che Guevara’s diary, and also not counting the casuistic tomes of child psychiatry that infested the family library. Then when she was twelve or so, her mother had hidden the treasured notebooks and forbidden her to read them, without explaining why. And now the two women, who looked so unalike that no one would have taken them for mother and daughter, said their quick goodbyes.

  Dear Moo:

  On Monday I pulled on some jeans and an Oriental blouse, put on my new blue eyeshadow, and headed out. I’m tired, Moo, and it feels wrong to keep myself hidden safely indoors, cursing my country’s fate. I feel like I have to do something, like the current situation is unsusta
inable, like something’s got to give. I met up with Fernando, the dark-haired guy from the unit, remember? We sang beautiful songs about love and the battle for justice. He doesn’t know that I’m a member of the Pro-China Insurgency Alliance—I’m pretty sure he thinks that any day now I’m going to sign up with his group. Anyway, I don’t think we’re going to be seeing each other much longer. Something pretty awful happened, Moo. I don’t even know if I should tell you. We had sex. It was extremely pleasant. That wasn’t the problem. But first he wanted me to give him, well, a fellatio, with my mouth, on his penis. I’d done it before with L., and before that just once with Juan Carlos. Fernando and I were kissing and he grabbed my head and pushed it downward, softly but firmly. I stopped right there in front of his thingy, so nervous that I started to laugh. It was if his dong was looking at me, saying hello like some merry caterpillar, coming happily up to see me as I went down. It was still half-covered by its little sleeve, and Fer (he always asked me to call him Fer) gave me a small, seductive smile. Then he started reciting a poem by Nicolás Guillén:

  I’m impure, what do you want me to say?

  That I love (women, naturally,

  my love dares to speak its name),

  and I love to eat pork with potatoes,

  and garbanzos and chorizo, and

  eggs, chicken, veal, turkey,

  fish and seafood,

  and I drink rum and beer and cane liquor and wine

  and I fornicate (even on a full stomach).

  Fernando was still licking my ear at this point, and started kind of singing the poem, quietly (and with the accent of a Spaniard, though Guillén, as far as I know, is Cuban):

  I believe that there are many pure things in the world

  that are nothing but pure shit.

  The purity of clerics.

  The purity of academics.

  The purity of grammarians.

  The purity of those who assure you

  that you have to be pure, pure, pure.

  The purity of those who’ve never had gonorrhea.

  The purity of the woman who’s never licked a glans.

  Whoa, I thought! Nice way to make a “suggestion”! I gathered myself up to kiss him on the mouth, and I lifted my skirt to show him that I wanted it too, that I desired him, that we were still going to have sex and there wasn’t any reason to make a big deal about it. What?! he said. You’re not going to do it? (He was talking about the other thing.) He said that I was a prude with bourgeois values down to the marrow. That he’d thought I was different. That there is no sensation more beautiful than feeling the happiness spurting up out of someone else’s body, and that he regretted having been so honest with me. But really, what was he thinking? That being honest and “winning” are synonyms? I told him that he was completely wrong. That I am a true revolutionary, and a member of the Pro-China Revolutionary Insurgency Alliance. He didn’t believe me, so I showed him your official Party photographs and your Little Red Book. His face went deadly serious, and he started in with, Well, of course, of course you’re one of those craven sepoy leftists. He said that any serious Marxist analysis of the Argentine situation would demonstrate the unrenounceable responsibility to unite with the Peronist masses. That I’m not on the side of the people and never will be. That I’d better get rid of all my Maoist books and photos or I’d end up in serious trouble. I felt awful. The argument kept getting louder and louder—he all but shouted that I was some prissy imperialist pro-Yankee proto-fascist bimbo.

  Son of a bitch. I just don’t get them, you know? I can’t, I can’t . . . Talking to you like this, having to talk to you like this, it seems like some macabre joke. Because you’re a man too. I don’t even want to think about this, don’t want to, I want to act as if . . .

  Later, looking for a little support, I met up with some people from the Party. Alcira and I drank some mate, and she told me about L. She said that he’s dating someone named Silvina. I got pissed off and told her everything. She said that I should go find this Silvina and settle things with her. That you can’t trust men. That if Silvina was a full-fledged revolutionary and knew that L. was my man—well, if she was truly a revolutionary, she’d be in favor of abolishing private property, would say that if you’re happy thinking of him as yours, then fuck you, go ahead and think it all you want, but nobody belongs to anyone else. Anyway, Alcira said, in the end your little speech might get out of hand, but Silvina’s the one who would end up walking away. There are tons of guys out there, she said, especially in the Montoneros, tons of cute guys, much cuter than L. (I didn’t get mad when she said this—she was just trying to make me feel better.) The thing is, I said, I’m all in favor of personal liberty, and as for abolishing private property, god, that goes without saying, but the problem is that I don’t feel the need to be with any body except his; what I want is to be with him, and if I felt the need for someone else, well, I’d sign right up for open relationships and everything else, but I’d do it for real, I’d totally commit to it, not just say “fine” with a nod while my mind was somewhere else. The thing is, (this is still me talking to Alcira here,) L. would say that I’m contradicting myself, that I can’t fight for the principles of social change out in the street and then forget them once I’m back home. Because the revolution is needed everywhere, Moo, and whoever doesn’t like that can get as mad as they want, and then get lost. So I said, Fine, Alcira, why don’t we heighten the contradictions? I’m going to find L. and say, If you don’t want to be with me, tell me and we’ll end things once and for all, goodbye to what we’ve shared, goodbye to our projects, and give me back all those Benedetti and Rimbaud books I lent you. Well, said Alcira, you don’t have be so drastic. I thanked her for talking with me—she’s the only one beside you, Moo, that I can talk to about these things. She told me to be careful about keeping a diary, that they can be extremely compromising evidence. Then she leaned back in her chair and gave me a serious look.

  Later I realized she told my superior everything, because the next day they called a meeting and said that as Party militants we couldn’t hold onto personal documents that might put anyone at risk—our comrades, ourselves, the Party itself; that as residents in a bourgeois society that has a century and a half of experience in total domination, we have to remain vigilant, able to foresee any and all reactionary violence on the part of the consorts of power, and so on and so forth for two hours.

  They don’t want me to write to you, Moo. The Party has forbidden the writing of texts documenting the past. They forbid the use of memory, Moo, and many of them don’t understand that a revolution is built of both ideas and blood. The blood of thought, and the thought of blood. All the same, I know that Alcira had nothing but good intentions, that she did what she did because she felt it was her duty to protect me. I don’t feel betrayed. She’s a good comrade, and supports the revolution with all her might. The day that girl loses a little weight she’s going to find a bunch of guys attracted to her kindness and intelligence.

  I am so worried, Moo. I read and read all day long to get away from that feeling of anxiety. I just finished Eduardo Galeano’s Vagamundo. Alcira told me that a friend of hers had gotten together with him at work, a girl who writes for Crisis. (Guess who it was! Ha ha, yeah, Marisa, who always seems so prim and proper!) Galeano is a complete intellectual, totally committed to the cause. Just like Sabato, only cuter. Apparently Galeano likes to date several women at once. Still, it seems to me that Marisa is responsible for whatever happened. She gave herself to him too quickly. And look, he’s a really great guy, maybe twenty years older than her, and Marisa, you whisper two words in her ear and boom, she’s spreading her legs, giving up the treasure. I think her case is totally different from mine. L. and I had made our way together up a path of shared ideas, convictions and projects; it’s not like one day we started merrily screwing our brains out and the next day I was complaining about him not respecting me. And
also, L. and I are almost the same age, while Galeano is maybe twenty-five years older than Marisa. Boy, I don’t know, Moo, all this talk about the miseries of others has me thinking about L., but from a place where there are no hard feelings, where peace is the only goal. Peace, that’s what I need. I want to get away from everything that follows you around and fucks with your head, and dedicate myself to just being alive. I’m going to sign up for a Physical Theater course. That will help, will do me good.

  On top of all that, I have to get a root canal. While I was at the dentist’s office, I was paging through a copy of Para Ti, (believe me, Moo, the situation was dire—my only other options were Great Chess Moves and Today’s Textiles) and I happened to open the magazine right to a personality test called, “What is hiding behind that mole?” There was a drawing of a face covered with numbers; each number stood for the location of a mole. I copied down the meanings of the ones that really caught my eye—actually, they’re the moles L. has.