The next day when I arrived at breakfast I did not find Sonia. I asked about her at reception, and an employee informed me that she had just left with the citizen Vlamata (sic), that she would return at noon. I took a walk through the city, returned to the hotel, read the book by Karlinsky, in which Gogol’s behavior seemed inconcievable to me, everything might be true, althouth the sources seemed flimsy. Those who knew Gogol were aware, or at least sensed, that his sexuality was not ordinary; some thought he was impotent, from birth or because of the effects of a veneral disease in his adolescence; others, that he was a masochist, a homosexual, who ate excrement in excess and only from men and women of voluminous bowels, and in the last years of his life, when he was a mere skeleton covered in hideous skin, his friends, now very scant, had come to terms with the idea that his vices were leading him quickly to his death, but no one would speak to him about it, those who attempted immediately lost his friendship. The book by Simon Karlinsky destroyed such conjecture, slander, and vulgarities. Following painstaking research, Karlinsky was convinced that the final infirmity, that which led to his death, was the same that all biographies determine when they reach that point, that he died slowly and in extreme pain at the hands of a priest, Matvei Konstantinovski, his confessor, his spiritual father, who when he had him in his hands set out to purify the sinner’s conscience and to prepare him for a honorable and Christian death. During the first phase, he demanded that he recant: “Renounce Pushkin! He was a sinner and a pagan.”51 The moribund patient refused to besmirch the figure whom since youth he had worshipped as a god. Pushkin was one of his first readers, the first to notice Gogol’s future greatness from his youthful stories, he gave him the plot for The Inspector General, The Overcoat, and—no less!—Dead Souls. The poor creature, weak and terrorized, was defeated, and he forswore his idol. The second demand from the inquistor was that he curse Pushkin, and he did it; the rest was easy, he subjected himself to extreme penitences: not to feed his body except with water to purify himself of all darkness; to flagellate himself at least three times every day with a whip with nails on the tips. The perversities that people attributed to him did not exist; he was something else, a necrophiliac, a sexual compulsive who loved corpses. Karlinsky urges us in his study to think that this mania was not radical in him. Gogol never searched for corpses in hospitals, nor did he pay those sinister characters who disinter coffins from cemeteries so that young officers and their courtesans might have funereal orgies throughout the night; no, Gogol’s necrophilia was more subdued, spiritual, even pious; in Rome he fell in love with some young men, a Russian painter who painted him in the nude, some Russian princes who were infirm, moribund young men; he would sometimes kiss them, but everyone knows that Russians kiss their friends and even strangers; he would gently caress them like little brothers; in the middle of my reading of Karlinsky I noticed that it was time to eat and went down to the first floor; I asked for Enrique and Sonia, and I was told the same thing, that they had not arrived. Annoyed, I went to the restaurant. I had still not spoken to Enrique during the trip, my translator had abandoned me, which to me seemed a breach of courtesy, an impoliteness, a dirty trick. Perhaps they were having an affair, but that’s what nights are for, and I tried to discover some former trace of egotism in my friend, but I found nothing, and that put me in a worse mood. Suddenly I saw Sonia, with some newspapers beneath her arm, walking toward my table, accompanied by someone who could be an Asian prince or a young sheik from Hollywood: a tall young man, wearing a tunic of a dazzling elegance and sheen, a very sheer weave of reds, purples, blues, solferinos, and golds, leather trousers, ankle boots, and a camel-colored cap. As they approached I was confused, was it or was it not Enrique, from the voice and smile I thought I recognized him, but I immediately dismissed it because the eyes were not his. “What do you think?” he said to me, he circled the table and walked from one side to the other like a hussar, until finally sitting down and unleashing a hardy guffaw. “It’s Omar Tarabuk, whom Allah kneaded with this own hand, I’m Muhammad Seijin, who worshipped the youngest daughter of the Rabbi of Carthage, I’m Tahir, the crazy grandson of the caliph of Córdoba. Are you crazy, don’t you recognize me?” At that moment I was scarcely sure that the face I was looking at belonged to Enrique, splendidly made-up, with almond-shaped eyes and light brown skin like the men of the desert. Sonia would not eat with us, she had lots of work in the office, as she always said. When we were alone, Enrique began to speak, he was surprised by his welcome: “Look at the clothes, these weaves came from the hands of the mother of all mothers of the weavers of Ashbagat, a woman who was at least one hundred, they took me to her shop, I saw her, and old mute woman, surrounded by a dozen women of all ages, everything is camel thread, touch it. I don’t know who they think I am! Yesterday I was with the filmmakers in their studios, we drank ourselves to death, some actors showed up, folkloric dancers, singers, and some Russian girls. The director, the one who was at the banquet yesterday, told me that when he saw me he thought I was Delon from Rocco and His Brothers, but improved, he knew it instantly, and he added that he had a great intuition. Everyone wanted me to talk about Spanish cinema, about my career, and I told them what I could, above all the Catalan film aspect, and my small role in it. I explained to them in broad terms what Catalunya is and its relationship to Spain. I think they understood that it was like their relationship and submission to the Russians. They’d love to make film agreements between Catalunya and Turkmenistan, what’s more, make some films together, they don’t think it would be very difficult because they’ve got oil and that provides a lot of money. So, I’ll be honest, a lot of times I get bored, that’s not my thing. This morning they came to get me before seven, just imagine!, they came in my room with Sonia, got me out of bed, dressed me, shaved me, and made me up. For them you’ve got to be made up all the time. From the hotel they took me to the Ministry of Culture to greet the minister.” He showed me the day’s newspapers, one in Russian and another in Turkmen; he also showed me the photographs they took at yesterday’s meal, then he continued: “Tomorrow all the papers will be full of photos of me in this outfit, I’ve never felt as good as I do in these clothes. Do you like them? Today there’s a national celebration, did they tell you?, We’re invited to a Turkmen opera, I’m worn out, but it’s impossible not to go; I should sleep a little, right?, They’re going to make me up again before I go out.” He was radiant, never before and not since have I seen him like that. He moved like Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik. As we walked toward the elevators he took a card out of a bag: “Do you know this singer? I don’t know anyone from opera, except Caballé and Contreras,” and he handed me the paper: Italo Cavalazzari. “No, I don’t know him,” I told him, “he must be Italian; I know all the good ones, but perhaps he’s new, someone who’s come along in recent years and still doesn’t have a name outside his country.” “He hasn’t arrived, you know, even the president of the republic is upset at his rudeness. But he’s probably not young, he made his career in Australia, where he’s lived for a long time, at least that’s what they told me, he’s established himself in Germany recently. How strange! As royally as they’ve treated me, a nobody, as royally, just imagine, the attention they’ll lavish on this baritone.”
We went on foot to the opera, just two blocks from the hotel. The people in the street stopped to admire Enrique dressed as a grand Turkmen; surely they thought he was one of the artists dressed in advance. The building that housed Ashgabat’s opera and ballet was large and rather rundown, like some of the old movie houses of my youth in Mexico’s tropical cities. Upon entering they escorted us to the front row, a throng of young people surrounded Enrique asking for his autograph on their programs. The opera was titlted Aina, like its protagonist. It was the first opera in Turkmen following the Second World War. The story was in the most orthodox line of socialist realism. The plot was simple, but entertained me a great deal; its naïveté and poetic formalism like the Peking Opera softened the pol
itical message. I wrote about Aina in my diary. It’s the story of a weaver, she has a proletarian boyfriend, they’re in love and are about to get married; along with the factory manager (who dresses in Western clothes) they are the three protagonists. The manager of the region’s most important factory is the piece’s archvillain, who’s on the payroll of foreign capitalists and at every opportunity blocks the factory’s work, he burns the production, destroys pieces of machinery, steals money from the wages, etcetera, and accuses the best and most loyal workers. During one of the boycotts, the manager accuses Aina’s boyfriend, they put him on trial and are about to condemn him. Aina is desperate, she sings her troubles beneath a monumental statue of Lenin, manages to unmask the traitor, then comes a happy ending with a large chorus made up of the entire company.
During the intermission, Enrique remained seated in order to memorize some notes, while Sonia and I went outside to smoke. “They’ve asked me to say a few words of thanks, and I’m going to do so with real gusto,” he paused and added: “The bad thing is I don’t know how to speak in public, and I might look ridiculous.” Sonia has told us that at the end of the opera the Minister of Culture was going to speak, the director of the opera, and some guests, everything would be quick, the guests such as he would have no more than two or three minutes.
I think I mentioned that I had not seen Enrique for a few years. When I saw him he was almost always with close friends, he spoke little, was very introverted, but very cordial and pleasant, without question. I had read his first book, Mujer en el espejo contemplando el paisaje [Women in the Mirror Contemplating the Landscape], an exercise in style as Héctor Bianciotti called it. He was still far from his magnificent and eccentric exemplary novels that came later: A Brief History of Portable Literature, Hijos sin hijos [Sons without Sons], Bartleby & Co., a masterpiece, Montano’s Malady. The Ashgabat Vila-Matas was surprising me at every turn. When he rose to the podium and greeted the important functionaries, the singers, and the public he was imposing, decked in Turkmen garments, his face even more Asian due in particular to the more horizontal slant to his eyes caused by a pair of black lines that ran to his temples. More than his elegance I was surprised by the preciseness of his elocution. He stood up, thanked the authorities and the new friends he had made in Ashgabat. He wished first of all to undo a comedy of equivocations that a morning paper had sown; there appeared a series of statements that he had not made; he never said that he wanted to act in the near future in a film in Turkmenistan. Above all because he wasn’t an actor. He felt very close to the cinema, for this very reason he had traveled to the Film Festival in Tashkent, and there appeared by coincidence some photos of him in a few films made by friends. His relationship with the cinema had been as a critic. His statements to the press were a promise to do everything possible so that conversations with people from Ashgabat’s film industry would become a reality, and he praised what he had seen in so few days and was leaving very grateful and things of that sort. The applause was long and thunderous, but I noticed that our neighbors in the front row, the important guests, were not applauding but instead were stone-faced, and those in the box where the governor, the Minister of Culture, and the powerful functionaries were sitting seemed as if they had been hit by a shower of frozen water, I don’t whether because of what Enrique had said or because they envied the audience’s delirious reception.
Suddenly, at the hall’s main entrance there was a commotion accompanied by heated shouting. Uniformed guards appeared and moved quickly throughout the theater. The door opened slightly for a moment, and a woman of middle age ran through, disheveled, garishly dressed, with a shoe on one foot and the other in her hand, hitting a policeman who had stopped her, while from behind the half-opened door howls that sounded like the old Neapolitan song “Torna a Sorrento” could be heard. Sonia told us later that the baritone Italo Cavalazzari and his wife had made a scene because they tried to enter the opera house in an impossibly drunken state and so were denied entrance. We asked our translator if there would be any festivities to celebrate the anniversary of Aina. “Here people go to sleep very early, they have to work at dawn,” she answered, but we decided not to remind her of the wedding party that ended at dawn and the one that night Enrique spent with the filmmakers. Enrique, his face radiating, begged off from the reporters and photographers and autograph signing. “I’m going to introduce you tomorrow at the university, the teachers invited me,” he told me at the end of dinner at the hotel.
I can’t remember anything from the next day. In my diary there’s nothing more than a few incomprehensible lines: “There’s something tense in the air,” or “they’ve formed a circle of ice around us,” “Enrique says I’m being paranoid,” “In the newspaper there’s a good photo of Enrique, but they did not print his words from the theater.” Sonia had abandoned us almost all day; when we asked her to translate the lines beneath the photo, she read: “A Spanish individual has arrived in Ashgabat to introduce the cultural attaché from the Embassy of Mexico at the University of Turkmenistan…” That night we saw Oleg at the hotel, he greeted us as if trying to avoid us, he said the usual: lots of work to do.
“It’s essential that we be at the restaurant at nine in the morning. It’s urgent. Have your bags ready to go to the airport,” were his last words.
We thought it was a joke.
“Are you sure it’s tomorrow, because I have to give a lecture at the university and they’ve invited Enrique to introduce me,” I explained to him, still thinking it was a joke.
He paid no attention to me, saying only that he would fly with Enrique to Kiev; he would go from there to Frankfurt, where he would take a connecting flight with Lufthansa to Barcelona.
“Enrique is my guest and will spend a few days with me in Moscow.”
“Impossible. Look at the visa, the departure day is there. He’ll have to leave the hotel within three hours.”
There was nothing we could do. I went with Enrique to his room to pack his suitcases, and as we went down to the lobby we heard some ghastly shouting that was gesturing toward singing, it was nothing less than “Torna a Sorrento.”
Vedi il mare di Sorrento, Che tesori ha nel fondo…
It was a fat old man dressed in dirty, disheveled clothes, being carried by two hotel guards toward the door. Sonia explained to me: “He’s been coming in to cause trouble ever since the restaurant opened hours ago. He’s the singer who made the scene at the opera. He’s an idiot, we were waiting for him with a lot of excitement, they say he’s an extraordinary baritone, and look how he has treated us. They put him and his wife, both of them drunk the whole time, in another category of hotel. They have no reason to expect a better hotel after making a mockery of the opera celebration the way they did.”
Three hours later the four of us left for the airport. We were all dismayed. I had scarcely spoken to Enrique, neither about what he’s doing in Barcelona nor what he plans to do. He’ll continue writing, I hope. At the airport we walked up to the window for the flight to Kiev. Oleg arranged everything, the luggage, which was huge, he handed the passport and ticket to the employee. The employee, surly, returned the documents to him and shouted: “You are wrong, comrade, this is not the correct window, the passenger is traveling to Moscow and not today but tomorrow at two p.m. Can you not read?” I understood all the Russian. Oleg took another ticket out of his jacket, and put away the one that the employee had handed him. I insisted in Russian that my friend would leave with me the next day and showed her my diplomatic card. Several airport functionaries arrived. Sonia, very nervous, took me to the side and hinted that it could go worse for Enrique, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything. Oleg was speaking to the employee and Enrique. When we returned to the window, Enrique had agreed to leave, apologized for the mess he had caused for me and at that moment, as we were hugging goodbye, we heard the same sinister voice:
Vedi il mare di Sorrento, Che tesori ha nel fondo:
Chi ha girato tutto il mondo Non l�
��ha visto come qua…
The great Cavalazzari! He was traveling on the same flight as Enrique.
That night, as I arrived at the University, I was surprised. The rector, a woman, surrounded by a large group of teachers, the majority also women, was waiting for me, in addition to an infinite number of students, the majority Russian, also almost all women. I had never been received by such a large audience, I felt like a rock star in front of such a crowd of young people filled with expressions, gestures, laughter, and elbowing. I became anxious all of a sudden. I was certain that neither The Mangy Parrot nor Fernández de Lizardi would have anything to say to them. How could they conceive of the last years of New Spain, the problems, the tension that that the criollos felt in the winds of Independence? Yes, I was more than certain that it would be a total failure.
The Magician of Vienna Page 21