No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series)

by Luis Chitarroni, Darren Koolman

  The consul’s wife was having an affair with one of our superiors. Our superiors were more accomplices than associates. Haedo worked with us in our office. Blamires was the one who said we should always return the machines to their natural state of repose. Haines had his lover in his office, or perhaps it’s better to say, he made sure she was working with him in the same office. Molly—a curvaceous missionary with her hair dyed blond from raven black—was the one who took all the important phone calls, and who addressed all five of us using the same submissive vocative: “my king.” Once, Gustavo asked her to call him “viceroy.”

  The translation of Venus Cascabel was done out of house by one of the editors of the three journals, specifically, the one we never met. And we more or less avoided the other one. Gustavo had more luck in this than I. But on one of the occasions we bumped into him, he said:

  —Look, we [my partner and I] aren’t exactly lacking in insight, we understand that you, like ourselves, are only galley slaves working in a trireme that masquerades as a company, Beehaitchhaitch. Still, despite the tight shackles and endless drudgery, despite the difficulty in dealing with all this, how should I say, journalistic prose—for that’s what it is: lifeless, banausic drivel that rushes like a torrent and lacks all color and rhythm, except that it seems to come in waves, but you could at least pace yourselves by contending with these waves one at a time, consider only the number of strokes to be made between each strike of the clock, instead of dwelling on the calendar. The problem is, guys, we [my partner and I] have noticed the same two tendencies in all of you. Primordial tendencies, unforgivable, although at least correctable. Their names don’t matter. Let’s just call them A and B. Every time the strict numbering tightens its mummy bandages round the body of the text [[without yielding any reward]], A, in desperation, lavishes commas, rococo curlicues, resting points for idle intellects, to ease some of the strain, and if the bands are still too tight, it sprinkles needless “buts” and “thoughs,” like gaudy rubrics packing every page. B, on the other hand, specializes in either avoiding the continuous present tense, or abusing it whenever it’s employed, and worse, doing so in a mawkishly Gallic fashion. Blessed be friar Feijóo and friar Isla, and even William the Conqueror, that you guys forgot about one of them. One of the two. They were renamed by one of us [two] Coma Ocioso and Gerundio Galicado.

  Emilio Duluoz, The Office Next Door,

  [move to Calumnies?]

  The Scacchi brothers played the part of the Goncourt brothers during an overlong literary soirée. The evening was organized by Elena, but Belisario was the one who invited the two brothers. Nicasio lost all interest in them after he discovered the real reason for their pig-headedness. It was the subject of Lester’s longest story, which, indeed, took him the longest time to finish. “One of the two,” said Manjares, “has to have talent, but I can’t decide which.” They’re both painstaking artists—Remo an engraver, Enea a draftsman—and they do pretty well in managing the printing press they inherited from their father, Lino Augieri, a painter of majestic scenes that purport to disclose the secrets of the Dalencourt school. After his death, however, the brothers took their mother’s maiden name, boasting that it was a tactful decision—they were both fond of chess. They’ve since earned a reputation as braggarts. In the early days, when they were wandering up and down the country [very á la Goncourt], creating sketches for works they never completed, provoking both the admiration and suspicion of Répide (the only art critic to whom Urlihrt confided about them), they divided their responsibilities between them, although scrupulously taking into account their respective individual needs. Incidentally, it was during this time that the earliest draft emerged of a story for which Eloísa and Nicasio would use the title “The Imitation of an Ounce” (later versions of which would be given the title, “Specular Soup”).

  [[Remo ended his days as an editor of horoscopes and other bric-a-brac for an obscure newspaper. Enea, although now obsessed with numerology, is still living. Lester depicted them—like Gilbert & George—as a pair of lovers (combining some of their qualities with those of Richard and Charly, friends of Inés) in “Too Late.” As a tribute to them (or an epitaph prepense), Luini copied [translated] a few lines by Augusto dos Anjos:

  Harried by misfortune, it is my fate

  To live my life fastened to that wing

  As an ember always rooted in the ash

  As a Goncourt brother, a Siamese twin]]

  It’s not unusual, representative examples of the “brushstroke I didn’t see.”

  The lack of completeness. The final draft.

  7.

  At that time, in response to an ad, a timid ingénue, Inés Maspero, joined the editorial team at Agraphia. She told Ingrid, Urlihrt’s secretary, that she was an art critic. She contributed to the magazines Expert, The Night Watch, and The Court of Apelles, all of them insignificant. She said she’d begun working at fourteen, sorting out court records. Despite Inés claiming to be a specialist at something that didn’t exist in the country, Ingrid and I were moved [sic] by her former Galdosian trade, so we hired her without further quibble. Inés arrived the following day with a letter of recommendation from Belisario. [Elena, who spent her lunch breaks in the office next door, noted that] she was chewing her nails, she was a nail-biter. The second person who came in the door was the first who fell in love with her.

  Elena Siesta, Dead Aunt’s Diary

  8.

  I went to Cambridge in 1992 at the behest of my friend (and, in time, my editor), Henrietta [Bonham-Carter / Hornsby-Gore], to follow up on two investigations I’d started on in Barcelona. The first concerned the musician, Bruce Montgomery, who was known for writing a series of crime novels—utter tosh he’d written under the pseudonym, Edmund Crispin. Secondly, I had to meet up with a scholar, who was giving me a copy of his thesis on an Argentine literary group, a cenacle of unequivocal and “magical” influence, which functioned almost as a sect. But both investigations were interrupted. The first, because a magistrate of the High Church intervened (I remember the series of gestures—three—with which Henrietta took for granted my discretion and obedience. In English, primado and primate are both subsumed in the latter word).The second, tragically, because the scholar was found dead in his Cambridge dorm. It isn’t known whether the cause of death was suicide or misadventure. We assisted the youth’s father in arranging the funeral service. He was a jobbing actor based in London, who was forced to get by—as many were in the decade following the one of excess—mainly on welfare. The next day, there began a series of events that would bring us from Cambridge to London, which I tried to adapt in a work of fiction—my oft-repeated “St. Mawr.”

  Eduardo Manjares, Postcard from the Inquisitor

  2 EMPHASIS

  1.

  One doesn’t write well when not writing, one doesn’t write ill when writing well. The writer doesn’t really want to write, he wants to be; and in order to truly be, he must face up to the difficult challenge of not writing at all—not even a single line—of not theorizing, of not lifting a finger. I took the precaution of becoming deaf. There are whole days that go by when I don’t hear a single word, when not a single thought obtrudes upon my thoughtlessness. It doesn’t matter if there are voices around me, speaking, so long as I cannot hear the words they say. Everything I know or have learned to do well, I don’t know how to teach. Everything I could know or learn how to teach, I cannot do well. Our age is too pessimistic to allow us to pass comment on complex matters, or even simple matters, without recrimination. After all, didn’t you know our age is a tribunal? A tribunal of vultures. The kind of chopped up verse you only disregard, I regard with utter contempt (as I do poets who’d make firewood of King Arthur’s table): verse without measure, without form, ephemeral, ill-fated. The time goes by so slowly, and slow is the memory that reckons the delay: I was almost twice as old as this age is old when I realized this for the first time. The poets whose recitals I attend are therefore twice as old as
you. The world never changes, only the cast of players. Yet, the work doesn’t seem to improve. [He lifted his head to see if we were taking note of what he was saying.] Apart from plagiarism, the only natural cure I know for this particular kind of drunkenness is inspiration, but in our age, sobriety is inimical to inspiration … Or maybe we should give up the plagiarism. Remember what Sterne did with Burton.*

  “Memory is the least attractive of the muses. And although she always changes her appearance, I only ever remember the least appealing. But why should this be if imagination dresses herself like a bawd in her rouge and seamed stockings—surely gaudiness is worse than ugliness …? It had been some years since my divorce from memory, but only a few months ago, there was a reconciliation.” (…) “There’s no better example of this than Dámaso Alonso, a man capable of discerning the significance of every syllable in a poem, and yet incapable of writing a poem with a single discerning syllable …” And he repeated Barnet Newman’s maxim, “Aesthetic is to the artist as ornithology is to the bird.” But he thought he was quoting Wallace Stevens.

  Nicasio Urlihrt, A Toast with Death at Night / Nocturnal Toast with …

  Cheers, [Cheerio]

  *The plagiarist laboratory is absolutely beyond the scope of the word-for-word copyist drudging away at his desk. Let’s not forget about Mallarmé, who, according to Valéry, restored syntax to its proper place on the summit of mount Helicon. And so we all continue to aspire—as Duchamp, as Leonardo—to achieve the draft, the final draft.

  2.

  Elena Siesta was obstinate; Nicasio Urlihrt a pedant, who brayed solemnly about succession and inheritance. Lester was, and then he was no more. Felipe Luini never was: although he tried to be. Belisario Tregua faded away years before he died. The Scacchi brothers faded away before they could even be. Inés Maspero, alias Eloísa Betelgeuse, killed herself; many others tried the same, without consummating the act. Because of love, despair. (The key year 1979?)

  3 LITURGIES

  Annick Bérrichon was one of the most prestigious literary critics; (which is the only reason why) Nicasio had been greatly interested in her. Besides this, she was also a professor of Balkan literature, although no one knew how she obtained the title or to what institution she was affiliated. But this last mystery is what piqued Belisario’s interest. Annick’s friendship with Elena soon led to her being introduced to the most prominent committee members of Agraphia, including Nicasio. One afternoon in June, almost seven months after Eloísa’s death, they met with a medium in the house on calle de las Posadas (not the one on calle de las Piedras).

  Miss Bérczely’s face was a grotesquery of warts and other excrescences, an especially nasty case of what Elena termed—post-laforgian, post-lugonian—“lunarism.” She spoke with what sounded like an imitation German accent with a hint of French in the guttural. Everyone pretended to understand what she was saying.

  Those present were Dos, Oliverio Lester, and someone else who came with them; Elena had dragged along her best friend, Sofía Sarracén, who was even more superstitious than she—a pianist with certain mediumistic talents, who brought along her fiancé [Eloy Armesto: Lupanal …]—a student of Bérrichon’s—to introduce him to the rest of the group.

  At last, Nicasio arrived. His system of responses resembled those adopted by Elena to translate Blevgad: quibbling, nibbling, double negatives—disagreeable in any language—delivered in the passive, reflexive, voice …

  As it was a commemorative date—June 23, launch of Oxyrhynchus—the committee was hoping Hilarión Curtis would attend (who not only owed the journal but also his fellow Argentine citizens answers).

  According to the more or less reliable testimony of those present—particularly Sofía’s fiancé—the first to induce a fit of histrionics and table tapping was a confused little girl who was communicating with the medium on the subject of writing. Suddenly, the medium began coughing and choking, perhaps because there was a change of … “visitant,” or because someone had taken off their shoes … [???] A high pitched voice then spoke in impeccable Castilian: “I am Zelda Bove, grandmother of Benkes, and the legitimate proprietor of his falsehoods …”

  Annick Bérrichon’s spiritual ancestry has been discussed in an essay by Lupanal. Suffice it to say the literary critic’s grandfather—whose nom de plume, Belén Mathiessen, is better known to the uninitiated—[was a partner] of Dunglas Home, who had duped many nineteenth century positivists. Today, we can conclude that Annick Bérrichon and all her pseudonyms—so suited to Agraphia—was born, as Blevgad prophesied, to unpack this piece of history, although her activities would succeed only in blurring the chronology. Her grandfather died in a pitiful way, although not as Luini described—nobody will ever know if her account precedes his—in both “Lemurids, Cheiroptera, et Cie” and Sherbet Aria.

  2.

  Hilarión Curtis—illustrious ancestor of Nicasio Urlihrt—took a seat in the second row. From there, he could espy, without anyone noticing, everything that was happening backstage. The theater had little to offer. Managed by a board and a consortium, it received financial contributions from Doctor Yturri Ipuche and Hilarión himself, although their efforts would cost them dearly. All to bring culture to those [so-called] forgotten lands.

  The function began with a recitation by Iris Oratoria of a work of Doctor Yturri Ipuche’s // [an adaptation of Andrés Bello’s then out-of-print “Silva a la Agricultura de la Zona Tórrida”]. Afterwards, what looked like a bunch of school kids enacted part of Juan de Miramontos y Zuazola’s Armas Antárcticas. Then Culcuchina and Curycollor appeared, two Inca princes.

  Finally, Atanor Lupino was on the stage, a porteño actor with a yellow beard who performed musical improvisations and imitations of other artists. He sang a ballad in denigration of Washington Barbot. After this, he said that, with the exception of imitations of anyone present, he was going to do his “classics.” He started with Don Julián Acosta …

  With his imitation of Don Lucio Mansilla, the act became a farce, because some poor mulattos and a midget were playing the part of Ranquel Indians, wriggling in obeisance on the ground, while the plump and pompous Don was running up and down the stage with his prop sword hanging from his belt.

  [Exaggerated scene from the Junk Museum]

  Then, twirling his moustache and raising his eyebrows high, an affected Frenchman no one knew took to the stage. He started giving orders left and right, which the extras obeyed by halves, because by the time he’d finished barking one command, it was already superseded by another more urgent one.

  This is the River Plate, said Hilarión to himself, that everyone around ridicules.

  Midway through the interval. A dozen people, mostly ladies, approach him to say hello. Hilarión gets the impression some of them—the more serious-looking ones, the more astute ones—were approaching to apologize. How odd, he thinks, as if there were something [in this] that offended him. Doctor Yturri Ipuche [a one-time foundling] had arrived late. He rushed to take his seat next to Hilarión. The effort to do so made him breathless. But he had enough left in the tank to say the tribunal believed everything he said was true. The lights dimmed and some very terrestrial [[pedestrian, territorial]] acrobats came onto the stage, dragging their feet behind them. A woman was singing the national anthems of various countries, while it seemed Iris Oratoria was free to do whatever she wanted. After this, Atanor Lupino made another appearance. He made the appropriate apologies, in case the public had been put out [troubled, confused] by the presence of so many figures onstage …

  The most eminent and imposing was … And, without saying the name, he proceeded to imitate the features and gestures of a doctor who is at the point of a great discovery. Darwin confronted by the missing link. Stroking his beard, he assumed the air of a bald [glabrous] skeptic, his doubt, his silence, suspending the public’s literal function as an audience—hearing—and thereby keeping them all guessing.

  Many years later, Hilarión Curtis and his stepdaughter went to
watch a silent film in a crowded room on Corriente Street specifically to recapture the outrageous, uncanny effect of that performance.

  The rabbits of Malambo, the frogs of Aristophanes

  The fighting cocks

  Bad Times, fictional biography by Hilarión Curtis, Delfín Heredia Kleiber, Cisplatina publishers, 1960.

  Reading Mackay (Popular Delusions) is like reading an over-edited, systematized Pynchon.

  3.

  21 Giordano Bruno, John Florio, Philip Sidney

  Sir Valdemar Hilarión Curtis, who are your physicians?

  They are:

  Dr. Phibes. Dr. Génessier (Les yeux sans visage).

  Dr. Angelicus. Dr. Sublime. Dr. Sardonicus. Dr. Zhivago. Dr. Atl. Dr. Scholl. Doctor No.

  The Mass in tongues by Remo Sabatani

  Quote Poe, Ivor Winters

  —Is this a tribunal?

  —Don’t get your hopes up, friend: it’s only a social gathering.

  —The Pole told us it’s Sircular Cymmetry—said Mardurga. It was recorded as such in the Club Maguncia logbook.

  —Sircular Cymmetry expelled us.

  —Nefelibata—someone sneered.