The Diaries of Emilio Renzi

by Ricardo Piglia

  Saturday 5

  In a room at Signos publishing, we recorded a roundtable in which Aricó, Altamirano, Schmucler, and I discussed the Padilla affair. The problem is the self-critical confession that sounds, on the one hand, like something forced by the police and, on the other hand, like a parody deliberately carried out by Padilla himself to take all of the seriousness out of the situation. But that would be a cynical reading because the truth is that it makes no sense to take a poet prisoner, not because he is a poet, but rather because it is supposed that literature has no political potency. And so there are two possibilities: either the Cubans have become fanatics of the potency of poetry, or they are using Padilla in order to attack tendencies or groups opposed to the government’s politics.

  León R. calls me at midnight and then comes over, desolate and sad, to have a glass of wine, “tormented” because his opinions on Borges in the newspaper La Opinión were unclear and because of his article on the Soviet Union in the UNESCO magazine.

  Imaginary economy. Yesterday, after León left, I went down to the street at three in the morning in a bad mood to buy La Opinión and look at his article about Borges, and on the way back I found five thousand pesos (almost a hundred dollars) in the entry door. Delight, a strange feeling of a trick or a crime: I took the stairs so they wouldn’t see that the elevator stopped on my floor and be able to find me. I turned out the lights to make it seem like I was sleeping, and then I thought the bills were counterfeit or had been stolen and were marked. Only tonight, when I paid for my dinner, could I believe that the cash was real. Actually, I perceived the fetishistic relationship between the money found in the street, as though it were just paper, and real value; it was “trash” and not money while it lay on the ground, and if it was money, it was only there to make me dirty and compromise me. All of these delusions because it’s irrational that five thousand pesos could be thrown on the floor, in reach of my hand.

  Wednesday, June 9

  Standing on Corrientes and Talcahuano with Luis Gusmán: I’m looking for a biology book for Julia, and we talk about his book, which I’ll take to read. A couple approaches us; she is bleached-blonde, he wears tight pants and has a book. He bends forward and speaks with excessive humility: “Could you give us any change, we have no money to travel.” I give him what I have in my pocket and they leave. Then I think about the two of them in some kind of boarding house, counting the coins. A way of life that must surely organize their relationship in a “singular” manner.

  Thursday 10

  Yesterday I met with Haroldo Conti, who experiences winning the Barral prize in Spain “as though it were happening to someone else,” just as depressed and insecure. We had lunch together at a greasy bar on Lavalle where he works on a “Latin American” script with Sarquís (in the style of Glauber Rocha).

  Lots of vacillation over the Padilla affair. First discussions about the matter with Schmucler and Aricó. A decision not to push forward any statements, to let things run. Then David, who is just as euphoric as he is every time he has money (fifty thousand pesos for Lisandro); I argue with him, forcefully, about his letter to Cuba (liberal, hesitant, etc.).

  Friday 11

  In the morning I write the introduction to the article on Chile for Cuadernos Rojos, which I sign as Juan Erdosain.

  Saturday 12

  At night at home with Páez, a delegate from the combative labor unions of SITRAC. The usual amazement, especially for me, of being rapidly implicated by “others” in a special situation that I generally haven’t chosen, as though I were dragged in by the circumstances themselves. And so today, Páez from SITRAC, one of the leaders in the Cordobazo. He sat down on the sofa with his bare feet on the table, the center of attention all night. “A seducer,” I thought, “this guy is a seducer.” It had to do with something else, but that’s the way I think about situations that are foreign to my world. The problem, according to him, is motivating the unions individually by factory so as to oppose the bureaucratic centralization of the Peronist unions. Of course, that weakens the popular sector’s ability to negotiate.

  Monday

  I go in circles around the city, which I no longer yearn for as I did in the old days, when I had my life ahead of me and a clear sense that justice would prevail for me. (Who will make their voices heard in this deserted city?) Now, by contrast, I perceive what can never be had.

  At Los Libros I meet Viñas, Germán García, Casullo, et al. Many projects: a press conference tomorrow at Philosophy and Letters with the people from SITRAC, which we prepare for with (excessive) enthusiasm.

  Among the books that I receive to review for the magazine, one is an anthology, Nuevos narradores argentinos, which Néstor Sánchez put together for Monte Ávila in Venezuela (it includes “La honda,” a story I wrote ten years ago).

  Tuesday, June 15

  I crossed the city in the warm June night to attend the SITRAC press conference at the Núñez University campus. I remembered an assembly at the College in La Plata (how long ago?), which I didn’t attend because it was raining. Luis Alonso’s face in the doorway, unable to believe it.

  Friday 18

  I walk down Corrientes, pass through the bookshops, spend a long time looking over used books in Moro. I run into Luis Gusmán at Martín Fierro and we talk about Lacan, or rather he talks about Lacan while I think about something else: I have to let Haroldo Conti know that the second edition of A Moveable Feast came out. Then I go back, buy sausages at the market, cook them up, and eat them with salad; I think I’ll have the whole afternoon to work in peace. Now I’m going to make some maté.

  Tuesday 22

  I’m reading Macedonio: extraordinary narrative positions about the possibilities for writing a novel. Analogy: Macedonio is to Borges what Pound is to Hemingway.

  Wednesday

  Luna came from Córdoba unexpectedly, the same stories as always. That bastard Montes, who betrayed Fiat in exchange for four hundred thousand pesos so he could pay off his debts. After that, he “fled” to Buenos Aires like a criminal.

  Friday

  I decide to take a walk, to distract myself for a bit; I run into David and go to El Foro with him. He smothers me with his current obsession: the magazine La Comuna. We discuss the inclusion of a poem by Gelman. Opportunism, I don’t agree with it (Gelman directs the literary section of La Opinión). David knows I’m right, so he gets angry. He just came from seeing Aricó, which reminds me about my article for Pasado y Presente. I keep going and walk alone down Calle Corrientes toward Air France, where I ask if a ticket to Paris came for me from the Cubans. As I walk around the city, ideas circulate around my head at top speed: better to write at night, to detach, to see no one. But, since I always wake up at sundown if I work until sunrise, because I go down to have breakfast and buy the papers, it’s better to work in the morning…

  All that time going in and out of bookshops on Corrientes, Florida, Viamonte, absurdly looking for a book of short stories by Raúl Dorra, and when I leave Ateneo I hesitate between going back toward Viamonte and Florida or continuing along Reconquista to Paraguay. I do the latter. I enter Harrods and go to the bookshop where Lecuona is. I am awkward and brusque, but in spite of everything I confirm that Dorra’s book is in Tres Américas, number 1300 on Chile. I go out and come across Miguel Briante on Paraguay, but I barely wave to him and then keep going at a distance even though he stops, wanting to speak to me, and I turn halfway around and get into a taxi. (We have decided to save up and not spend more than a thousand pesos—two dollars—per day to make it to the end of the month without debt.) I spend four hundred pesos on a book that I’ll likely never read.

  Saturday, June 26

  It is three in the afternoon. I just ate a couple of sandwiches for lunch with a glass of milk, an apple, and a double espresso in the bar on the corner, and now I’m at home alone with the door locked, the phone covered with blankets to muffle the ringing. It is cold, the afternoon is gray, my freezing hands make
it hard for me to write, and I am happy.

  Sunday

  Series E. The Pavesian part of me is mythical resonance, and so these notebooks must be “open,” with stray information and moral centers.

  July

  Satisfied with the roundtable in Clarín: a certain obsessive repetition of the same idea (to write is to think) gives some coherence to my remarks.

  I run into Horacio. I used to play with him as a child, and now he has a Citroën, two children, a profession, and lives in the house where he was born; he is who I would be if I had stayed in Adrogué. We wander around the city in the sun and eat lunch by the river. Everything that I “have,” I have gained by “losing” what he has, and vice versa.

  I am reading Kafka.

  Friday 2

  The matter of a pair of shoes: Julia buys them for me because, in my flight from reality, I won’t even do that for myself. She brings them over and I think the salesman gave her the wrong ones, these shoes aren’t size 40. They feel too big (especially in the right foot), so I vacillate between going to exchange them or not, wasting the afternoon on that, and now (having decided to keep them because I can’t deal with showing up in front of the salesman with the box) I feel my foot is too loose in the right shoe, as though enveloped by some void.

  I ended up at the theater to make myself forget the wasted day: Metello by Bolognini, based on Pratolini, old stories that I admired in my adolescence.

  Saturday 3

  A good afternoon’s work on the novel, sometimes I think I have a “great” book in my hands. Earlier I saw David on Montevideo as I went out, furtively, to buy milk and ham for breakfast. He “hangs” on me once again, conspiratorial after our recent distance. He came back from Córdoba, where he had fled to get away from a new emotional crisis. As always, he creates ideologies to compensate: he leaves without warning and disappears for a week so that everyone will think he committed suicide or is in prison, and he chooses Córdoba as a place of refuge because he can justify himself when he returns by talking about politics, the need to see what’s going on there, etc. Typical.

  Monday, July 5

  X Series. Rubén K. in a blue suit, handsome, because he came to say goodbye to his father, who is going to Europe. He brings a record by Viglietti, and “interprets” the lyrics while he listens to it, humming, etc. He is able to be many people at the same time, which is all of a politician’s allure. He talks about the difficulty of working in Córdoba, where they concentrate on SITRAC without paying attention to the rest of the country. Stubbornness, optimism that must be renewed every day.

  Earlier with Schmucler. Worried about the difficulties of making Los Libros work without support from Galerna. We prepare for the trip to Córdoba in August. I get some books and am content (Henry James, Hammett, etc.).

  Tuesday

  At night with Edgardo F. and Eduardo M. A woman follows Eduardo and gets onto the train to Mar del Plata after him. “Her makeup deformed her face, don’t you think it’s strange that a woman would have so much makeup on at eight in the morning?” The fatal coherence of the paranoiac: a great subject. Then at midnight in La Paz, with Dipi Di Paola describing his journey to Robinson Crusoe island. He makes himself call at the magazine (Panorama) where he spends his afternoons, even though he has no interest in the work, writing a book review every week for five thousand pesos.

  Wednesday

  I travel to La Plata with Roberto Jacoby to participate in a conversation with García Canclini in Fine Arts, and we discuss the role of the union bureaucracy. Roberto thinks that breaking up the workers’ movement into unions by factory weakens the struggle; you have to be attentive to real politics. He is a Trotskyist, but also half Peronist. A packed room in La Plata, one hundred “artists” who don’t understand a single word. We talk—especially Roberto—about art as a social practice that includes circulation as a part of the work. Then an assembly, and a kid with Bulgarian features defends the Ninth Symphony…

  Friday, July 9

  I went down to the city at midnight, populated by strange groups, young people with manes of dark hair, half-naked women. I walked alone along Corrientes as I had before, five, six, or seven years ago, barely sustained by my excessive hopes and grand fantasies. The lights, the passers-by, the music in the shops. I know of no more perfect solitude.

  I am reading Virginia Woolf’s diary.

  Sunday 11

  I spend the morning at a table in La Paz reading newspapers and magazines, and then I take a walk through San Telmo and come back along Carlos Pellegrini to avoid the wreckage caused by the lengthening of the avenue, admiring the profile of the city that seemed to grow against the ruins.

  X Series. Yesterday Lucas and I ate lunch together at Pippo after walking down Avenida de Mayo, and we ended up having a coffee at Ramos (he found a hundred pesos on the sidewalk, so we could pay for it). We grew closer to one another, sizing each other up with the help of irony: his fictitious self-appreciation, brusque shyness, resentment for his failure in the great omnipotent projects from age twenty. More than anything else, these things unite us. Politics is what coincidentally comes afterward, something we throw away because it hinders the fluid circulation of intelligence. He was a prisoner after Taco Ralo, and that experience radicalized him even further. He is always armed.

  Monday, July 12

  I go to León R.’s course. An agitated argument about mythology in Greek art according to Marx. León sees in mythology something previous to ideology; I find him religious, Hegelian, but of course I cannot prove it. Anyway, I drag the ensemble of people attending the class behind me. “But then everything is ideology to you,” León rages, and we start all over.

  At night I go to the theater and see The Gospel According to St. Matthew by Pasolini. There can be no more beautiful story: all of them come from there, from Shakespeare to Faulkner. I’m moved by incessant monologues, always aimed at proving something: sermons, parables, prayers, speeches, there is no other word. All it accomplishes is to give the word of Christ a delirious and obsessive dimension. A good way to create a character: on one hand, everything he says is “significant” and, at the same time, that very expressivity serves to create him as a character. Thus, he is the “bearer of a message” and at the same time a delusional character who only speaks of God, of heaven, of hell and, faced with any action, question, or situation that takes place in front of him, responds with sermons and stories. Thus his relationship to Don Quixote. Both are “naïve” because their word is preexisting, already written (in the books of chivalry or the Holy Scriptures), and both are slightly ridiculous because they always seem to be talking about “something else.”

  Tuesday 13

  Near the end of a good afternoon’s work, Juan Carlos Martini calls me on the phone: “I’m recording,” he says. “What’s your opinion on Proust?” After that I splutter and say foolish things like someone caught off guard in an uncomfortable situation—climbing over a wire fence, let’s say—who is asked to recite “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by Keats. When the interview comes out in Confirmado, I’ll die.

  David came over at noon; more and more time goes by when we don’t see each other, but there’s always the same sympathy as a result of our agreements and (my) concessions. He grumbles about the PCR cadres, following him at half speed on his project for La Comuna. He discovers the same schematization, the same foolish resolutions that are traditional for militant politicians. Distance from the most flexible leaders and, along with that, the personal obsessions that he turns into ideology, against which (the politicians) must fight. He wants to write a theater piece about Manuelita Rosas, etc. Euphoric about the success of his work Lisandro, which has given him enough money so that he is absent from the places he frequented when he was poor (that’s why I see him less than before). My situation with him: deep down, I seem “cold” and not very sincere to him; he says that I’m his best friend, and at same time he demonstrates a way of being—excessively explicit and self-centered—t
hat is my antithesis. He keeps getting stuck on certain writers, Manuel Puig, Conti, Borges, Cortázar, or Bioy, who are, according to David, carrying out a project for the right. I argued this point very determinedly with him, saying that he talks like that because he doesn’t read books, just builds his theories based on arbitrary and very intelligent readings that center around the figure of the writer. At the end of the argument, I offer the example of Walsh, who has written ten short stories in ten years of work and now directs the newspaper of the CGT.

  Wednesday, July 14

  Series E. I spend the morning rereading these notebooks, and with this one I have reached number forty-eight: a thousand pages written, and I hope two hundred can be salvaged. Maybe 25 percent? I’m getting sick of all these numbers.