The Diaries of Emilio Renzi

by Ricardo Piglia

  Political conflicts in the meantime, disagreement that advances amid Andrés’s deviations. Rubén stays over for the night and gives me his version: Andrés is being pressured by Susana I., some resentment. León visits me on Saturday in the middle of all that, and I have a good time with him after months of veiled tension.

  Tuesday, 25

  I’m working, answering letters for the publishing house, writing articles, jacket copy and introductions (Uwe Johnson, LeRoi Jones, etc.).

  Sunday 30

  David stops by to see me, euphoric about the success of Lisandro, an opening week with five hundred audience members every day, and his newspaper and television adventures: he denounces Jozami’s kidnapping live and direct on Channel 9.

  Thursday 4

  The first issue of Desacuerdo comes out, made out of what we have. We reversed the slogans: against the dictatorship’s Gran Acuerdo Nacional. Intense days, meetings, success by the priest Longoni, Rubén’s driving force, and a variety of other events that I observe with unpleasant irony.

  I write in these notebooks because it is no trivial thing to accumulate facts or implications that will be erased for everyone. Today, for example, I’m about to start the prologue for Chandler, and Aurora is on her way, coming to occupy the apartment while I go to the meeting for Los Libros.

  Monday 15

  David visits me, euphoric about the success of his work, great impact. He accumulates projects like a madman.

  Tuesday 16

  Diary of the young man who made an attempt to kill Wallace, the governor of Alabama. The pages tell the story of a lonely and confused boy. Some passages say: “Happiness is hearing George Wallace sing the national anthem or having him arrested for a hit-and-run traffic accident.” “I am part of the world… I am one three billionth of the world’s history today…” “If I live tomorrow… it will be a long time.” “I’m playing the game of life to win.” He had been living in his apartment since November; the neighbors say he was a recluse and they only saw him a few times, and they even said that his mother came to see him, and, though she knocked on the door and heard noises inside, there was no response.

  Wednesday 17

  Last night David invites us over to dinner. On the way out, Germán, Osvaldo Lamborghini, and Luis Gusmán, whom I had actually been planning to meet, are talking on the corner. I go have a coffee with them to break the tension, primarily caused by David. Plans to organize an anonymous literary group, to publish a pamphlet against the channels of literary distribution. I continue wandering around the city with David, euphoric, paranoid, until three in the morning.

  Earlier with Mario S., naïve to the point of the grotesque. He comes to me with a story of his romance a few days before with a blonde coworker. He finally asks her out on a date on Friday, arrives in La Paz at six in the afternoon and gives her a box of chocolates with a card declaring his love. All of this, of course, said with all seriousness. She backs out kindly, etc.

  I’m reading Eve by Chase. Striking, I’m going to publish it. Later, a book by Mailer with an autobiographical story written in third person.

  Also excited about the idea of incorporating family history into Artificial Respiration.

  Sunday 21

  I travel to Córdoba with Boccardo and Ricardo. Six hours recording life stories in a church. On Saturday a dance for the political prisoners, a record player alone on the stage, the empty paddle ball court, a false happiness. At the end, everyone sings “La balada de Sacco y Vanzetti” with fists raised in the air.

  Wednesday, May 24

  In the morning David comes over with a suitcase, escaping from the hotel where he was, and everything seems to be halfway done. David is raving more and more, hiding his weakness behind exasperation. He argues with Somigliana-Cossa and Halac-Talesnik: he shouts at them that Lisandro is the finest work in Argentine theater. The kind of outburst that he needs to believe more than anyone else.

  I go around Los Libros with Beatriz S., we agree that David suggests a nineteenth-century literary model along the lines of Sarmiento, and Lisandro, settled into that project, finds a passive, comfortable audience.

  Thursday 23

  I spend five hours listening to the tape recorded in Córdoba, good at certain moments. Eventually, Andrés and Rubén and I go out for dinner at Pepito. “Overjoyed,” Andrés tells me about David’s fit, how he threw himself at Cossa, Halac, etc., challenging them to outdo Lisandro. In the restaurant, Julia, who has reappeared in my life, very dazzling, corners Rubén, arguing about the place of women in politics.

  Friday 26

  Altamirano came to see me so that I’d go to the first meeting. When I get back, David drops in, going on about his obsessions. He wants me to be witness to an argument with León in the next three or four months, planning to accuse him as a false friend.

  Saturday, May 27

  I woke up at six in the afternoon, having fallen asleep at noon after writing several letters and going out to buy envelopes in the freezing morning. I read until seven thirty. Then David came and we went to have dinner on Paraná and Sarmiento, and I went to the theater with him: sold out, with bourgeois ladies and gentlemen applauding at the least expected moments.

  Monday, May 29

  I go downtown and find Marcelo with Ismael and Tula. Trotsky’s books found in the used bookshop for three hundred pesos, Ismael will go to see David’s play with assistance from Soriano, since “my brother didn’t send me tickets.” Then I meet Néstor García Canclini, misfortune in La Plata after the Peronist invasion at the College.

  A meeting at home with Rubén, Ricardo, and Carlos. Rubén gives a very dense account of the source of the funds, the relationship between money and politics, “donations” and austerity. Julia and I went out to get empanadas; she finally signed the lease for an apartment on Cangallo. Each of us will live on our own.

  June 1

  I go to the Lorraine theater to see Made in USA by Godard again, the shadow of David Goodis. The room cold, its paint peeling. The group of cinephiles—four or five—watch the film passionately, and the rest of the spectators—some twenty—just watch pictures to kill time. I am a synthesis of these two behaviors.

  That fit of paranoia when we spent a few days at Alicia’s house, having left the apartment on Calle Sarmiento after it was broken into by the army. I was writing some notes on the living room table (white, oval shaped) and, in a surprising episode that summarized the tension caused by the events, I went down to the street, certain that the house had been “burned” and that the police had tapped the phone.

  Busy all morning yesterday with the semi-covert move. I can’t carry the sofa bed and the cupboard that I’m giving Julia; the moving-van driver—an old Italian man with a light and comical air—complains bitterly and, in the end, hires a worker. Even so, they leave the cupboard on the second floor and I have to hire another two men to carry it up.

  I finish my works in progress: the introduction for an article on street theater for Desacuerdo and a piece on Uwe Johnson for his book at the publishing house. I stop by the magazine office and see Carlos Altamirano, who reminds me about the roundtable with several intellectuals (Viñas, Rozitchner, Aricó, Sciarretta, etc.), which I am the only one to attend. I travel around the whole city by bus as far as Núñez before finding “Farolito” in the bar on the corner, the redheaded guy who instigated student struggles among the young people. He seems to have inflated, besides the little moustache that gives him the look of a villain in a Hungarian film. Along the way I’m uncomfortable because I couldn’t get myself free. In the College of Architecture, students are painting posters, talking with ironic gravity about everyone who is absent, and I stand firm, not admitting I was the only one to show up. With an admirable motion, Gutiérrez—student leader who was expelled from the university and moves among the students like a fish in water—invents a varied series of arguments to prove why, in fact, instead of the scheduled action on Vietnam, the best strategy is an i
nflammatory assembly for the students imprisoned in the mobilizaton on May 29. Carlos reads a proclamation that we’d prepared, and the students listen apathetically, yelling at him every now and then to speak louder. We leave, going down alleyways covered with posters and writings, and go to the little plaza from which the buses depart: a beautiful image of white lights from the buildings of the University campus, glass and wood in a sort of Mondrianesque abstract structure. Carlos and I come back, commenting on the state of the left among intellectuals, discussing whether specific work in that field is appropriate (as I believe), or whether the matter is an area (as Carlos insists) that must be determined “from the outside” through political struggle. Some jokes, too, after an incident that takes place while we were waiting for the matter to be established: one of Carlos’s student friends approaches. Straight away I don’t like the guy (the idiot is studying architecture and sociology); he goes around with a sort of snobbish superiority made out of current references: the situation with Portaniero’s professorship, Sciarretta’s courses. On top of that, he seems obsessed with Oscar Landi, whom he quotes, paraphrases, praises, and traces in every magazine or class he can get his hands on. After his praise for Landi, he talks about the Nuevos Aires roundtable and says: “The one I don’t understand is Renzi, too avant-garde.” Conspiratorial looks with Carlos, and he explains it to the guy, who is immediately embarrassed. I smiled at him, understanding, and a while later recall a line from Brecht: “It is good when one who has taken up an extreme position is overtaken by a reactionary period.”

  A meeting for Los Libros in the afternoon; Germán, Carlos, and I argue with Toto, who is fascinated by the success of Peronism among intellectuals. Hard times are in store for this land, there is no doubt that they have the hegemony and will leave no room for us. Toto is a symptom, they control the media (newspapers, magazines, film, consensus) and can do whatever they want; and, since they employ certain phraseology that seems similar to ours, it appears that they’re able to impose a line, not because of that but because of their own political ability. By contrast, we always seem ineffectual and abstract, detached from practice. In this regard, Viñas should be analyzed as a populist who separates himself from them faster than anyone, not just because of that, but because he is anti-Peronist.

  David comes over and we have dinner together, then he takes me to see his new apartment on Corrientes and Paraná, very high up. Above the city. He stands fearfully on the balcony and looks at the lights of the city as though they were the signs of some personal triumph. He’s very wise when he talks about literature, seeking his place and continuously reconstructing the history of Argentine literature. “Sicardi, for example,” he says to me during dinner. “You know what’s present in El libro extraño, there’s all of the grotesque, Arlt is there already.”

  June 3

  I get up late and go walking from Callao to Santa Fe, and on Córdoba and Callao someone walks parallel to me: “Documents,” he says. It’s the porter from Pasaje del Carmen. Desolate, he tells me about how they kicked him out. He talks without stopping, bearded, his teeth chipped and stained, furious, almost cornered. He won’t leave the apartment, threatening to kill someone. He can’t get work. Expelled from the Communist Party, close to the PCR, the administrator kicked him out. And he says: “I have dignity, it’s not pride, it’s dignity. A porter isn’t a doormat.” He trusts that they will help him. “My comrades won’t abandon me.” He was a metalworker, laid off in the strikes of ’62, and he moved around the city like a shadow about which we—the intellectuals of the left—make up theories. “Want to get a coffee?” he asks me. “No,” I say, “I’m in a hurry, you know.” We say goodbye, I can’t remember his last name at that moment and smile, trying to seem optimistic about his future. “No,” he says. “The whole thing’s fucked up.” I go into the subway entrance, kill some time leaning there in the staircase, and then furtively go out again and cross Córdoba in the middle of the street, trying not to let Merlo see me.

  Sunday, June 4

  Julia tells me a comical story about David trying to seduce a girl, and then she makes up a ridiculous theory, he always falls into a kind of theatrical mauditism (he offers to take the girl to Europe, to buy her fine clothes), and she immediately starts to interpret him ideologically to her credit with quotes from Marcuse and others. Ultimately, it reminds me of a series of writers who think that their writing warrants any behavior in the world, like Oscar D. for example, who always has a Bataille quote at hand. On the other hand, the economic success of David’s play has made him turn out worse; his work is much better when he thinks like a failure.

  Monday 5

  I wake up at nine thirty, read the paper in bed, then take a shower, tidy the apartment, make toast and drink café con leche. I’m reading the original of Red Wind by Chandler to decide the subject for the cover image and the introduction. Walsh’s translation is very good, he captures Chandler’s tone just right, a sort of ironic distance that creates a twofold plot: the view of the narrator on one hand and the series of events on the other. In his best moments, Chandler is as perfect as Borges; he narrates violence well (or rather, the effects of violence) and is a master of the incidental details that create an atmosphere of reality in stories that are always a bit far-fetched. The detective gets mixed up with murderers, femmes fatales, police, cadavers, and junkies as though he were in a space suit; none of these dramas belong to him, and he watches them from the outside, looking for clues without emotion, sustained by a cynical sarcasm. Detached, the narrator, who is the hero, attends to events as though he were watching a film at the same time. His story is constructed like commentary on events that have already transpired, a sort of comic critique. On the one hand, the “romantic” effect that underlies Chandler comes from an uncertainty: at times, the detective who narrates is touched, is implicated in the events; on the other hand, he does everything for money and is a loser, and yet he has lonely and sentimental rituals (the rite of coffee, chess games against no one). When the two planes intersect, Chandler’s best work appears: the ceremony of the gimlet, etc. That double bind is concentrated around Linda Loring, a deadly blonde, attractive and romantic, who is also a millionaire. In essence, one of the core elements of Marlowe is the fluctuation between economic profit and stoic morality, which also defines the tone of the story.

  As with many great writers, Borges first of all, there is a contradiction in Chandler that is never resolved: an attraction to aspects of life that most traditional writers end up resolving by choosing one of the two (for example, in Chase only the cynical side is valued), whereas the greats always struggle against two symmetrical temptations.

  Tuesday 6

  At noon I went over to Pocho P.’s place. He’s a likeable gangster who works on the black market: an automatic elevator to the 14th floor, where you have to say the name of the confidant who recommended you to the person spying from behind the electronic peephole. Inside is a carpeted and very luxurious office: international travelers, servants in white jackets, high-class women clutching their purses to their chests. No gangster looks like a gangster here, they’re all gentlemen who’ve learned their manners and style from Playboy. A certain nervous anxiety breathes through this rather abstract office with its view over a long stretch of the Río de la Plata. Inside, constant activity, elegant men coming and going, employees, numbers, prices dictated by the movement of the black market. The dollar may change its value at any moment, rising and falling to create a sort of theatrical metaphor here for money as fate within capitalism. Maybe a satire could be written with this setting: the characters feel, suffer, and become happy according to the fluctuations of the global market, as if their bodies were connected directly to the international circulation of capital. P., gray-haired, well-mannered, attends to everyone, resolving several issues at the same time, going in and out of different offices. “I’ll send Willie for you,” he tells me. “Here’s another,” and he indicates Marcelo Díaz, who, with his murderou
s appearance—he’s letting his beard grow and his face is shadowed as though stained or dirty—is trying to find out, in the finest tradition of the detective genre, who stole the five hundred dollars that the University of Mexico sent as payment for the magazine advertising. I go back with Marcelo and together we stop in at Martín Fierro to see Gusmán, who’s anxious about publishing his novel. There I run into Puig, who has returned from Europe.

  At five in the afternoon I meet with Néstor, who always seems frightened, and in a while the students from Universidad de la Plata show up, proposing a course for me on literature and the avant-garde.

  Wednesday 7

  Series E. In my case, it is a difficult and slow road to what Pavese calls “maturity,” meaning autonomy and passion as a territory that must be earned each day. I don’t like the work, but I don’t want to practice the juvenile rhetoric of the writers in my generation either. I’ve been writing a diary for fifteen years and that should be the proof that I’m trying to transform some things in my life.