Listening to them, I realized that most of them had been at other conferences together, and I asked them, do you all know each other? to which Supervielle replied, well, the ICBM is new and this is its first conference, but we’ve met at similar events. Kosztolányi added, those of us in the trade have periodic meetings, more or less once every two years, I can understand your surprise, I don’t know what writers’ conferences are like. They both looked at me, so I said, writers’ conferences are usually on a specific theme that’s sufficiently vague for everyone to fit in, things like The Writer and the New Century or Where is Literature Going? and, well, once the group is together there’s an opening reception similar to this one, and then the round tables start; some people bring written texts and read them and others improvise, depending on their experience, and the members of the audience applaud and get quite excited because the only reason they’re there is that they’ve read the authors’ works or have heard of them, and at the end of each session they come up and ask for autographs and dedications, anyway, it’s all a bit mechanical. At night, some writers set off on the prowl looking for young female readers or women delegates, and it’s normal to see them in the bars and on the terraces, making passionate speeches about themselves or their books, enthusiastically telling anecdotes in which they, with all due modesty, appear as heroes or even superheroes and their books as outstanding masterpieces of modern culture. Others prefer to stay in their hotel rooms watching TV channels like MTV or Discovery so that they can then talk about them with scorn at dinner, when what they’re actually saying is, I don’t mix with you, you lousy bunch, I’m above all that, thereby creating an aura of respectability and mystery about themselves. There are also those who devote their time to drinking and forging closer ties that will allow them to obtain invitations to other conferences, and so some colleagues are able to go from one conference to another and spend the whole year traveling, giving interviews from which literary matters are usually rather absent, either because they’re talking off the tops of their heads or because what they really want to create is some kind of political controversy, and so the writers sound off, taking sides and making accusations, ensuring themselves a great deal of visibility in the press, which records their invectives in banner headlines, and if the writer in question is lucky enough to be contradicted by some political or ecclesiastical authority, things really start to heat up, giving rise to a juicy polemic that increases their fame, and other writers jump on the bandwagon to support that first writer, because if the controversy is big enough there’ll be enough left over for them, too, although, of course, the first writer wants to protect the fame he’s acquired, he doesn’t want to lose it to opportunists, and so, in the end, his books will sell more copies and the polemic will have given the event a contemporary, committed, and cosmopolitan air, which benefits everyone and will undoubtedly ensure that the banks and the financial or political organizations that sponsor them want to continue supporting them, even if one of those organizations was the very one that was being criticized or insulted.
On the last day, the historic achievements of the conference are proclaimed, both from a libertarian point of view, and in generating pure concepts and ideas, and a great final binge is held at which everyone swears friendship and respect and at which traditionally, in spite of the fact that each person knows that he is the best, everyone praises everyone else, saying things like this, “You’re the greatest living storyteller since Cervantes, or Borges, or the best poet since César Vallejo,” to which the other replies, “Oh no, don’t exaggerate, that’s going a little bit too far,” they exchange quotations from books, and raise their glasses, and usually, by the time dawn breaks, there are already two and even three Nobel Prize winners at each table, depending on the amount of alcohol they’ve imbibed, including some who swear they’ll refuse it if it’s offered to them, because it’s a disgrace that they never gave it to Borges, which means it’s worthless, all these vows made on a great tide of whiskey, before they rush to the bathroom to throw up.
Kosztolányi and Supervielle looked at me in surprise, and Kosztolányi said, my God, you don’t have a very high opinion of your colleagues, but I hastened to say, don’t take all this literally, one always criticizes one’s profession, but the truth is that I’ve also attended excellent conferences in which people talk seriously; nor did I say I wasn’t myself one of the writers I was talking about. For years all I ever did was go to conferences.
After her triumphant entrance, Sabina Vedovelli had settled elegantly in the middle of the room as if she was in her own home. A tray of drinks was brought to her. With two fingers, she picked up a glass of champagne and raised it to her lips slowly and with great relish, as if instead of a glass container it was a fruit or a delicious ice cream or even a penis, and I could not have been the only one to think that, seeing that several men, including the main speaker, cleared their throats and shifted nervously.
Suddenly somebody clapped a hand on my shoulder, and when I turned I almost fell to the floor in surprise, it was my friend Rashid Salman! In the second it took me to open my arms and receive him I remembered evenings in Rome with him and his movie associates, barbecues at a cultural festival in Damascus, and encounters in Berlin and Oslo, as well as his novel Arab Sunsets, translated into many languages, in which he recounts his own life as a young Israeli Arab educated in a Jewish school, and the contradictions and humiliations of that situation, and in the same second I thought, how on earth could I have forgotten that Rashid lived in Jerusalem? how come that wasn’t the first thing I thought of when I arrived in this city?
My friend, he said, I saw you on the list of delegates and was starting to wonder where on earth you were! I’ve been in the room for more than an hour thinking, if he hasn’t changed, sooner or later he’ll come to the bar for a drink, and I was right! I know you’ve been sick, how are you now? Very well, I said, back on form, as you can see, happy to be here and embarrassed that I didn’t look you up earlier, but I only arrived this afternoon.
Our previous encounter had been five years earlier in Vienna, yes, Literature on the Frontier, that was it. He had gained weight and his hair was very short, like an adolescent’s, an image reinforced by his pink Converse tennis shoes combined with his linen suit and his tie knotted below the second button of his shirt. His face was still the same, a huge smile and two cross eyes, like planets floating in the middle of a storm. I could tell by the way he spoke and waved his hands in the air that he had already drunk quite a bit. This is going to be a really special conference, he said, like nothing you’ve ever seen before, I can guarantee you that! So I asked, are you referring to the war that’s going on outside? and he said, no, that’s the least of it, there’s always been war here, I’m referring to the helplessness, the profound solitude that infects this region, even though it’s in the eye of the hurricane, but come, actually I was referring to something more serious, which is that this hotel has the best bar in the Middle East, let’s go fill our glasses, what are you drinking?
Kosztolányi and Supervielle were talking to a couple of venerable-looking old men, so I left them and followed Rashid through the crowd. Listen, I said, what on earth does Alqudsville mean? and he said, oh, that’s nonsense, don’t take any notice, people invent that kind of thing to give the foreign press something to write about, but here it’s of no importance, you know wars are fought at every level, including the level of language, we’ll see what happens, just forget it for now, better to hit this damn hotel’s reserves of alcohol, don’t you think? I took a long slug of whiskey and remembered that evening many years earlier, I no longer knew how many, when Rashid and I had gone to an Arab wedding in Tira, his native town, north of Tel Aviv. The bride and groom greeted the guests in the door of the living room, beside a huge strongbox with a slot, into which, after congratulating them, people put envelopes containing cash. Of course, the Arab tradition of not serving any alcohol was being respected, so we sat down at a table at least a hund
red yards long that snaked through the living room and waited for dinner. There were bottles of mineral water, Fanta, and Coca-Cola, so Rashid, his father, and I spent the whole time passing each other a bottle of whiskey under the table. Parties without alcohol tend not to last long, so within a couple of hours we were already back in his house, drinking and waving to the neighbors. Rashid’s novels were about the people of that town, so that journey was like entering the world of his books. A few years later, we met again in Bremen, at a conference called Writing in the Midst of Chaos, at which we were asked to reflect on fiction in countries in conflict, in cities under siege or under pressure, and of course, there were Rashid and I, an Israeli and a Colombian, as well as a couple of Angolans, some poets from Rwanda, and a few Yugoslavs, in addition to the Western Europeans, who theorized about other people’s violence and seemed to have the best ideas. As it turned out, the best thing about that conference, as we both remembered, was the night the Belgian professor Céline July burst naked along the corridors of the sixth floor of the hotel, very drunk and a bit drugged, fleeing from the Congolese poet Abedi Lassora, who was following her waving a cock so big it knocked down flowerpots and candlesticks as it swung from side to side. They had been about to have sex when the author of the essay Postcolonial Metaphor in the Former Zaire had been startled to see the exaggerated dimensions of the member possessed by one of the leading practitioners in her field.
Something similar could well happen at this conference, given that the presence of Sabina Vedovelli seemed to emit a kind of eroticizing gas into the atmosphere of the hotel, affecting all the men and women gathered there. Would anyone succeed in getting to first base with her? As I thought this, I searched for her with my eyes and spotted her at the far end of the room, just as she was putting her tongue in a glass of martini to extract the olive. A long red tongue that was like a living being. Then Rashid pointed to somebody and said, come, let me introduce you to my publisher, he’s the man over there, his name is Ebenezer Lottmann, he runs Tiberias, the largest publishing company in the country, come, you should meet him. We made our way through the human tide until we reached a short, bald man in a tuxedo, who greeted Rashid effusively. After we had been introduced, the little man looked me in the eyes, nodded, and said, it’s a pleasure, my friend, a real pleasure, but before we say anything else I need to tell you something: one of your books is being considered by Tiberias, our editorial board is very selective and I haven’t heard anything from them yet; I prefer to tell you that now, in order not to raise false hopes. Don’t worry, Mr. Lottmann, I hastened to reply, the fact is, I didn’t even know my agent had submitted anything to you, but he insisted, I prefer to be honest from the start, I’m surrounded by writers who want to get their friends published, and of course Rashid is no exception, but I want to make it quite clear that if the verdict of the editorial board is a negative one it won’t have been through any fault of mine, let alone of your friend Rashid’s, don’t think that, the board is very selective, as I already said . . .
I turned my back on him and walked away in irritation. His harangue was starting to ruin the party for me, but Rashid caught up with me and said, wait, he’s a good man, just a bit distrustful, as you know, everyone has some stupid flaw in their character, and his is that he’s a bit arrogant, but I assure you he’s worth it. I thanked Rashid, and said, I know the world is full of rich, arrogant people, but I think it’s time I went to bed, I’m tired. Come even if it’s only for a minute, he insisted, and the little man, who had heard my words, approached saying, don’t worry about Rashid, really, if publication with Tiberias isn’t assured it’s not because of him, you must try to understand that we’re very selective, so I said, I understand that perfectly well, but this scene strikes me as absurd, I have no idea what happens to my books until things actually work out and I have to give my agreement or sign a contract, do you follow me? so I’m not expecting anything at all from you, because until thirty seconds ago I didn’t even know you existed, got that?
The little man tilted his head to one side and looked at me gravely, in silence, then, suddenly, he gave a smile that spread all over his face to such an extent that it distorted it, contracting muscles and making his eyes bloodshot, and he said, almost cried, excellent! really excellent, friends, a little masterpiece! Was that prepared or was it an improvisation? At that moment I also laughed and decided to have another whiskey, one last one, because I was starting to like the little man.
You should know, dear friend, that Tiberias has the most demanding editorial board in the publishing world, because it works like an inverted pyramid: at the bottom are the least perceptive, those who can only spot obvious mistakes in construction and characterization, but then, at the second level, the book or manuscript begins its Stations of the Cross, because I want you to know that the same system applies to everyone, even Rashid had to experience this Via Dolorosa, dolorous indeed, if you’ll pardon the expression, climbing through every level until it reaches the top of the pyramid, where I sit, the final stone, and I want you to know that just because I’ve worked my way up from the bottom doesn’t mean I’m in any way indulgent toward the candidates, no sir, quite the contrary, when I know perfectly well that I run the best publishing company in my language, how could it be any other way, do you see that?
I told him I did, and, my curiosity aroused now, asked him what Latin American authors he had in his catalog, and he replied, ah, well, that’s another matter, it’s no secret to anyone that Tiberias publishes the most exclusive products of the human mind, hence the difficulties of selection and, of course, the huge disappointment of those who remain on the outside, which has brought us, believe me, a great deal of criticism, my God, they’ve said the most horrible things about us, but all that, as you can imagine, is a product of envy and frustration, which is understandable on a human level, I know that a rejection from us is a tragic occurrence to an author and I understand that the natural thing is to search for extra-literary reasons, to play the aggrieved victim, or claim that there is some kind of personal vendetta against him, can you imagine, most of those who remain on the outside of what I call the “Tiberias ladder” react with anger and immediately swell the ranks of our most embittered critics and enemies, oh, my friend, you look surprised but I assure you that’s the way it is, and that’s why I dare to ask you, to beg you, if we reject your book, not to be tempted by hate, antipathy, or resentment, don’t do it, I implore you, stay away from those resentful coteries, because in the long run it achieves nothing, none of the more spirited refutees has ever gotten in with subsequent books, while those who choose the stoic path of resignation, with integrity and a vision of the future, always get a second chance, and believe me, we have had notable cases of condemned men who swallowed their pride and persevered and in the end saw their books in the sky blue covers of Tiberias, yes sir! and as he said this, he raised his glass and said, a toast to forbearance and tolerance, and the three of us drank.
Lottmann did not drink alcohol, only soft drinks. Excuse me, Mr. Lottmann, I said, but you haven’t answered my question, and he looked at me in surprise, what question? I did answer, you have to be patient and wait for an answer, but I said, no sir, I asked you what Latin American authors you have in your catalog, and he said, ah, yes, well, you see, I’d rather not give you names now, in spite of the fact that our catalog is no secret; I prefer to tell you the type of writer we’re interested in publishing, and then you’ll be able to think about it, then confirm your ideas by taking a look at our website, tiberias.net.com, do you think you can remember that?
And now, coming to the main subject, what interests us is what we might these days call the “versatile writer,” the writer capable of adapting to the tastes of the public without in any way renouncing his own creative magma, his individuality, do you follow me? I’ll give you an example: do you remember, a few years ago, there was a great explosion of historical novels about sects and secret societies in the Middle Ages and that kind of
thing? I nodded, and he continued: that is the typical situation of which a “versatile writer” will take advantage, putting his own logs on an already blazing fire and making it burn gracefully, while keeping his own identity, of course, which will allow him to defend himself against the accusations and insults heaped on him by old, dyed-in-the-wool writers, who will brand him an opportunist, a sellout, a traitor, a whore, and all those things the resentful say, those who don’t sell, the fundamentalists who cling to tradition, you know who I’m talking about, well, anyway, that’s my idea of the “versatile writer,” the writer who is able to swim in the cloudy waters of popular taste without it being too obvious, without shouting it on the rooftops, without being seen at fashionable parties and getting his face in the papers, because that would be suspicious and counterproductive in the long run, it’s good to keep a high profile but not too high, better a two-thirds profile, a three-quarters profile, because anyone who’s always at the crest of the wave will fall in the end, I don’t know if I’m explaining myself well, number three on the bestseller lists here, a second prize there, a mention somewhere else, do you understand me? Perfectly, I said, and you’ve made me so curious that bright and early tomorrow morning I’m going to ask at reception for a computer so I can look at your catalog, and he replied, ah, my catalog, the Tiberias catalog! you’ll be surprised, the list of guests at the most exclusive council of the human spirit, the great literary party of the century, the one that has now finished and the one just starting; at this point, I raised my glass and said, well, then I propose a toast to the only one of your authors I know, Rashid, and he said, dash it, Rashid is a very special case because, without being really “versatile,” seeing as he persists in a confessional vein with touches of drama and humor, a literary stance that, in theory, might appear decadent and suicidal, yet has turned out to be very successful, his books are very popular and we never have any problem in selling the foreign rights, so for me he’s the exception that proves the rule, oh, God knows yes, at the end of the day nothing in this business is written in stone and that’s why one should feel one’s way, or rather, crawl one’s way.
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