“I forgot about the mustache.”
“Why do you disguise yourself?”
“So as not to recognize people.”
“I don’t know anything about you. I think that trust should be mutual. Why don’t you talk to me? Why don’t you tell me about your life?”
“I know important parts of your biography, don’t forget.”
“The events of a life don’t shape the character of a person.”
“But doesn’t people’s behavior with regard to those events give an indication of their character?”
“Not at all. There are people who are very hard to know well.”
“I know you. I haven’t gotten to know anyone else so closely. In the final analysis, you want to hide yourself, to hide your true personality. Why don’t you tell me about your dream from last night?”
“What obligation do I have to tell you?”
“It’s normal a thing to share. How reserved you are!”
“Men are very reserved.”
“And women are very distrustful. I don’t believe what you tell me.”
“And why should I lie to you?”
“To get to know me a little better than you believe you know me.”
“I don’t lie to you. I dreamed that you were killing me.”
“Do you want me to believe that we had the same dream? Let’s see—I killed you. And what else?”
“You took the knife that I was about to stab you with away from me. Then while I embraced you, you stabbed me instead.”
“You behaved like some sort of vulgar queen, in her nuptial flight. And the black man? That black man who had a child in his arms—who was he? Why was he wearing a mask?”
“That was Claudio. But he was also the pyromaniac.”
“I wonder what desires of yours were expressed in that dream.”
“How absurd you are. To think that I went by the Green Rose every day and that I thought that Esmeralda Street was a common emerald. How many days have gone by since yesterday!”
“To think that you passed by every morning of my life, without seeing me, and that I didn’t see you either. Why did we come to this place? I would prefer a prison to this little window next to a wall with piles of hatboxes.”
“We couldn’t have stayed here for good. The mice would have eaten us.”
“I came to feel at peace with the mice in this house. They have such a funny way of behaving, like the mice who obeyed Saint Martin of Porres.”
“I am afraid.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must be nervous because you haven’t slept. You are afraid of the man. Are you afraid that he is dead or that he isn’t dead?”
“It’s not that.”
“You are afraid of meeting people.”
“No. I am afraid that Cristina is not alive, that she has never been alive.”
“I exist. You exist. The kiss we shared exists.”
“We never kissed. If you think we have kissed it’s because you’ve kissed a ghost.”
“The piles of boxes exist, as does the storeroom of hats, with the adornments and all the felt.”
“Everything seems so unreal. I would have to hurt myself to discover whether I exist.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry. There is always something that hurts us.”
“But I am referring to a wound of the kind that bleeds, a wound made by a knife. For instance, if I had a knife I would cut myself.”
“You haven’t slept. You are nervous.”
“You have no imagination.”
“But I have a memory. We had the same dream. My life is very poor. If I were to tell it to you, you wouldn’t keep telling me yours. There’s no time for so many confessions. In Native American secret societies, the only initiates who are admitted are the ones who have had certain predetermined dreams. We had the same dream . . .”
“That’s true. Perhaps we have been having the same dreams since we were born. Tell me yours. You must have dreamed a lot before you met me. And I always dream about myself. When I was a little girl, I had conversations with my own image. I spoke to it a million times. At night I dreamed about this mirror. Perhaps it was the influence of reading Alice in Wonderland, which fascinated me. They say that at the moment of death one remembers all the incidents of one’s life. When I was preparing to die tonight, I relived the feelings of my childhood before this mirror.”
“Don’t you agree with Stendhal when he says that ‘love is the miracle of civilization’?”
“Do you still have illusions?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name.”
“Daniel.”
“Daniel. That’s my favorite name. In religion classes I imagined Daniel a million times in the den of lions. Your eyes are so light that they make me believe in the truth. It’s a pity that we only met on the last day.”
“The last day?”
“The last day of my life.”
“Nobody could imagine that we just met, or that for that reason you must be totally indifferent to me, or me to you.”
“Would you give up everything for me?”
“I would die for you. And you—would you live?”
“We haven’t known each other long. And now this whole matter of suicide—it’s absurd, isn’t it?”
“Why did you promise to kill me?”
“To avoid a suicide. Who is Cristina?”
“A ten-year-old girl.”
“And why could a ten-year-old girl matter?”
“It’s a mystery, and besides she is ten, a fairly mysterious age. We don’t know what she’s up to or whether she exists.”
“And what is the girl going to do with the mannequin?”
“She likes it better than a doll. Why don’t you tell me your secrets?”
“I will tell them to you if you agree to live. Do you agree?”
“How can I agree to things that are none of my business? Blessed are those who died or lived at a time when mirrors didn’t exist. Nothing kept them from killing themselves, as I would like to do with the contents of that innocent glass. Leave. I want to look at myself in the mirror. What I most adore in the world is water: drinking it, looking at it, imagining it. In this glass I am holding some of it captive, even though it’s mixed with that other thing that is less pure. Mirror, I will approach you and kiss you. How fresh, how pure, how unlike anyone you are! I press my lips against yours as if no one could ever separate us. All the photographs are mirrors of what we were, but not of what we are or of what we will be. Let me look at myself. I am the only thing I don’t know. I am going to drink something better than life itself. Luckily I know everything that is not me. I approach the mirror. I want to kiss myself. Nobody will prevent me from kissing myself. Nothing will prevent me from kneeling. No distance keeps us apart, not even the glacial cold of the flat surface. I am going to die right now. I will undress and be totally naked. Totally naked. If anyone comes near, they should leave right away, leaving me to see myself for the last time. What a strange noise. Where is it coming from? What I hear is coming from up above, as if something were being broken. I arrived at this house so long ago and I’ve never heard that before. Could the mice have slipped behind the mirror? Or maybe something is loosening in this huge tower. Why am I so afraid of you, oh mirror? I wasn’t afraid of you before. Before I would approach, but now I am drawing away. Are you going to kill me? Will you dare? I will die beneath your glass. I will kneel at your feet. I will cover my head with my arms so as not to see the cascade of falling glass. What garbage you are. I will look for myself in all of the fragments of you: an eye, a hand, a lock of hair, my feet, my navel, my knees, my back, the beloved back of my neck, but I will never be able to piece them back together.”
“I don’t have much voice left. Those who are looking for me are the worms, the mice, dust. The death of a person isn’t like the death of a mirror. I never believed I would have the luck to die with
you.”
(COM)PASSION
NO ONE noticed the passion that dominated her until after her adolescence: the desire to inspire compassion. The desire was so strong in her that she voluntarily contracted various diseases and put herself in situations surrounded by severe illness in order to awaken a deep feeling of compassion in those around her. I will try my best to give a brief account of her actions that allowed me to understand her motives.
This is how I fell in love with her: I spent summer vacations at a beach and her tent was near mine, allowing me not only to talk to her and share ocean swims but also to hand her a towel so she could dry her hair, a mirror so she could brush it, invite her to have a sandwich, and take a picture of her completely nude among the tamarisks. Then one brilliant night perfect for a swim, she returned disheveled and in a terrible state, with blood on her lips, saying that five young men had raped her among the tamarisks. I tried to console her. She was upset with me because I had taken a nude picture of her. Even if nudity was in fashion, she said, the young men weren’t used to such permissiveness, and seeing her naked had incited them to rape her. She cried so much that I had to accompany her to the eye doctor the next day.
“Nobody will want to marry me,” she whispered, sobbing.
“But are you a virgin?”
“Yes, even if you could care less,” she answered, weeping even more.
“But today virginity has no importance,” I told her. “Besides, you could easily recover your virginity with the help of a gynecologist.”
“I would never deceive the man I love,” she answered.
I fell in love with her because her beauty was so imperious and I couldn’t resist her charms. No matter how incomprehensible her feelings and words were to me, there was the fact of her green eyes, her mouth, her angelic profile, her sensitive hands, her ears, all willing to tell the truth. Will I be happy with her someday? I asked myself. Will we have children? Will we live in a house with a garden? She was a rich young woman who lived in a fancy house, but I never thought about her wealth when I imagined marrying her. Nor was any interest in improving my social position part of my desire to marry her. I am poor, but I don’t envy people who have more than I do. Leaving poverty behind actually frightened me when we were about to marry. I sleep with my dog, but she didn’t like it; I have a canary, but she hates that pet, too. I eat raw onions, which disgusts her, and she criticizes me for being messy. I prefer to wear the same style of blue-colored shirt but she makes me change into a pink one. I don’t wear a tie to the movies but she insists that I wear one. I cut my hair once a month but she wants me to cut it four times a month. “You are a pig,” she said once, while I was eating a sausage. Not eating sausage seems impossible to me.
It’s better not to get married if you don’t share the same tastes with your spouse. Besides, love can be expressed with the same passion whether you are married or single if the one you love gives herself fully to you.
Through a long series of conversations, the most significant aspect of which were the goodbyes, I gradually came to know her. I cannot forget that afternoon during Carnival when she dressed up as a Dutch peasant woman. The flannel outfit was very warm, with three skirts, one on top of the other, and two jackets, one of white cotton and the other of velvet. Two braids of yellow wool completed her stylish hair. She sweated so much that she didn’t want me to touch her. In the middle of the party she fainted, falling to the ground like a bolt of cloth. The whites of her eyes showed when she had her eyelids closed. I thought she was dead. With a weak voice she said, “I feel that my life is leaving me . . . I hear distant voices as if from some other world and everything looks blurry—it’s like the day of the apocalypse that I read about in the Bible.”
I was surprised that she could utter such a long sentence in the state she was in. I cried in desperation, from a feeling of impotence. For an instant I thought I could see a smile of satisfaction on her face, but I quickly attributed it to the blessedness of dying. I took care of her until five in the morning, giving her drops of coramin and little cups of coffee that I prepared for her in the kitchen along with cups of verbena tea. Then, as my distress increased, she suddenly seemed to improve. I told her that I loved her with all my heart, something that I had never told her or felt the need to tell her. Life changed for me. I thought seriously about marriage.
“How sad this world is,” she said, while being dressed in her bridal gown. As she combed her bangs, she tore the veil they had sewn and made everyone cry. “It’s a bad omen,” she exclaimed, picking up some of the orange blossoms that had fallen. “We will never be happy,” she said, looking into my eyes.
“Why are you so superstitious?” I asked her. “Don’t you think that only attracts misfortune?”
“If you don’t attract it, it will come anyway,” she replied, and smiled with the same smile that I had seen with surprise when she saw me weep.
After the wedding, among other calamities—a bad fall while ice-skating, the loss of a valuable ring—she became ill.
She said she was diagnosed with a contagious virus, but she never let me accompany her to the doctor. Her illness was strange, as she swayed from the heights of euphoria to the deepest depression, accompanied by nausea and headaches. She was in bed for a week, not allowing anyone to open the blinds so that the sun wouldn’t disturb the clarity of her vision or ruin the silk curtains. When she finally recovered she seemed even more lovely and delicate. I took her for a ride around the lakes of Palermo Park. We stopped next to the Andalusian patio, where we had ice cream. The passing tourists stared at us. I attributed it to my criminal appearance.
Living together turned out to be difficult. We trusted each other. There was a desk where she kept her papers. She didn’t mind if I read the letters which I confess filled me with curiosity. One day I found a little envelope that intrigued me because of its shape and color. I opened the envelope and read the letter inside it:
Dear Baby Jesus, Christmas is approaching and I am very sad. I hurt my knee on a piece of glass and the pain is like being in hell. The biggest cut I have is on my knee. To make me feel better from this pain I would like to have a dollhouse with an ambulance and nurse, as well as a first aid kit. I am signing with my own blood. Felicia. Christmas 1955.
“How old were you when you wrote this letter? Seven?”
“I didn’t write it. My aunt did.”
“But did you sign it?”
“Yes, with my blood.”
“And did Baby Jesus bring you everything you asked for?”
“Everything except the ambulance, which cost too much when you added it to the expense of the dollhouse, which was already quite expensive.”
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I FIRST met Silvina Ocampo in 1978, when I visited her husband, Adolfo Bioy Casares, at their apartment, wanting to interview him for some research related to my dissertation. The writer José Bianco invited me to dinner the same night, telling me that Ocampo had phoned him every few minutes while I was there, asking about me, commenting on my youthful appearance. A few days later there was a dinner at Bianco’s apartment, the other guests being Borges, Bioy, and Ocampo. At one point that evening, she retrieved a book from Bianco’s shelf—a copy of her story collection Las invitadas inscribed with a dedication to Bianco—and added a new dedication to me. On subsequent visits to Buenos Aires we met often and became close friends. I remember her reading my palm and my aura, and I still have a portrait she drew of me. During our many conversations, the idea for this book was born. Ocampo insisted that we choose her cruelest stories, and we corresponded frequently about details of the translation. Eventually, Penguin Canada accepted a selection for publication, though by the time the book appeared in 1988, Ocampo’s mind had already gone, and five years later she passed away.
I am grateful to Jeffrey Yang and New York Review Books for giving our book a second chance in a considerably revised and expanded form. To the previous collection we’ve added the magnificent n
ovella El impostor, published in Autobiografía de Irene (1948), and a selection of early stories from Viaje olvidado (Forgotten Journey, 1937) and from the last two collections Ocampo published in her lifetime, Y así sucesivamente (And So Forth, 1987) and Cornelia frente al espejo (Cornelia Before the Mirror, 1988). Ocampo’s reputation has grown tremendously in the two decades since her death, and a whole range of unpublished works—stories, a verse autobiography, aphorisms, a novel—have appeared in Argentina, in careful editions by Ernesto Montequín, who has also produced new editions of Ocampo’s previously published books. Critical work on Ocampo in Spanish, English, and French has also thrived—as it happens, the languages she also spoke and wrote in—and some of her stories have been adapted to the theater and the screen.
For me, Ocampo’s most accomplished short stories are still the ones we selected together those many years ago, from La furia (The Fury, 1959) and Las invitadas (The Guests, 1961). Brilliant and chilling, these stories are also thoroughly strange, not only in narrative content but in their wild syntax and language. Revisiting my old translations I have tried to preserve the oddness of the language, even as I have revised to pull the English syntax a bit farther from the Spanish. Argentina is more familiar to English readers now than it was a quarter century ago, so I have restored some place-names in Spanish, keeping the original accents and spellings. In one case I added a footnote to clarify a reference to a line of poetry that wouldn’t be familiar to English readers, but I have held back from explaining the world of secret references in these mysterious, fantastic tales.
I dedicate this new translation to Silvina, in fond memory.
—DANIEL BALDERSTON
Thus Were Their Faces Page 35