The Diaries of Emilio Renzi

by Ricardo Piglia

  Sunday 30

  Yesterday Héctor came over, hurried, excited. He’s planning to take theater into the street, expropriate the setting, make an enclosure, he seeks me out and it is effort for me to think with him.

  Thursday, August 3

  I work amid interruptions, but at least I organize a presentation on philosophy for the group on Mondays. I find some core ideas: negation, speech acts, the situation of utterance. I want to make the psychoanalysts think about the grammar and thought of analytic philosophy. Oscar Landi suggests that we take over a professorship in Philosophy. I’m not sure if we can work as peacefully if we enter the academic structure.

  Then a meeting for Los Libros. In the middle of the conversation, I see the shadow of a woman through the beveled glass of the door, a patch of red, and suddenly Vicky appears, timid, and I follow her out into the hallway. She has come from La Plata. “I wanted to chat,” she says. We spend the night together, all the way into Friday afternoon.

  Monday 7

  Vicky waits for me in the station, making plans, and as always, I look at her from a distance, sitting with her in the noisy bar among people who come and go.

  Tuesday 8

  A fantasy of escape, going to a hotel in some country town, bringing a draft of my novel and staying there until I finish it. Working at night, eating in the hotel dining room, taking an afternoon walk through the town and returning to work, over and over, until I finish the book.

  Friday 11

  Some traces of “insanity” lately, which make me see possible fates. Vicky comes over, we had dinner at Hermann last night, and I look at her with surprise, some uncertainty that she doesn’t seem to perceive. The next day—today—things improve. Just like last time, it’s necessary to promise something, some fictional trap that appears of its own accord. And so, today, my certainty that the “matter” wasn’t working: an explanation of my present state (breakup with Julia, desire to finish the novel), a pretext to leave everything as it stands, not see each other, etc.

  Anyway, the best part came just afterward. We go down to the street, I with the intention to accompany her to the bus station and then be alone. We walk down Santa Fe to Coronel Díaz. There, we decide to take the train at nine, but as soon as we step on, I realize that the prologue for Gusmán’s book isn’t in my briefcase. I think I’ve lost it, don’t have a copy, etc. I get off the bus at the first corner and walk down Santa Fe, clinging to the idea that I’ve left it in the apartment, but it isn’t there. I go back out to the street, and then something incredible happens: on the corner of Canning and Santa Fe, on the pavement, in front of the store, I see a sheet of paper. It’s page nine of my prologue, carried off by the wind; among the cars, I find another six pages. From there, I go on amid traffic from all four sides, trying to guess the direction of the wind. I go in circles, from one side to the other. At some point Vicky signals to me; in the gutter, in the middle of the block, on Santa Fe, I find all of the pages except one floating in the water, about to sink in. As has happened a few other times, this shows me how far my current “insanity” can go.

  Wednesday, August 16

  X Series. A meeting for the newspaper. An absurd discussion about the actions of the ERP; they freed Santucho, as well as other guerrilla leaders, after taking over Rawson prison and Trelew airport, where they got a plane to take him to Chile. Elías and Rubén criticize the adventurism of the guerrilla groups, putting political work in danger.

  Friday 18

  I bring the prologue for Gusmán to the Martín Fierro bookshop. Some wavering from Gusmán, influenced by O. Lamborghini, who, angry that I didn’t mention him, wants Luis to redo the prologue. Of course, I tell him he has every right not to publish it if it’s causing problems with his spiritual leaders.

  Sunday 27

  I meet with David, who receives my call very cordially and gets past my criticism. He shows up in Ramos, now bearded, and we let ourselves be carried away by our old mutual understanding. We get dinner together in the restaurant on Paraná and go over David’s old obsessions (Peronism, Cortázar), and finally he pushes me on with everything and gets excited to have me write a plotline on the subject of the theft of the Luján virgin. “I think it’s sensational, it has to come out in the theater,” he says. We end up in the bar with the balcony where I saw him having coffee with Jorge Álvarez one afternoon many years ago, and now we drink coffee again and talk about our “old issues.” He apologizes without feeling, and we change the subject. Finally we go to his place, he lends me one of the books from the Coloquio de Cluny, we talk about his project of writing about Túpac Amaru; the city below is filled with lights, and I return home, in the end, without great expectations.

  Thursday, August 31

  A dream. I was dying behind a garden wall in a vast park, a woman was trying to lift me into a wooden stroller. “Can’t you see I’m dead?” I ask her. I woke up with a start, trying uselessly to remember whether I saw myself dead or whether, as happens in dreams, I just knew I was dead and accepted it naturally. Dreams are an example of how a story can be told as long as the reader knows the subtext and believes in it. A dream has the peculiarity of joining the narrator, spectator, and hero of the story in a single image; you are simultaneously inside the scene of the dream and watching yourself while the events transpire. Of course, it also you who is telling the story.

  September

  In reality—as I learned from Brecht—emotions that reconcile and console in the common ground of “profound” feeling (extreme misery, abandoned childhood) are always the visible extremes of a shameful reality; they are easy to access, real illusions that enchant beautiful souls. The Trelew massacre allows everyone to talk about their impressions instead of seeking an answer and finding something useful beyond the explanation.

  Saturday, September 2

  I miss an appointment at night when I leave the theater after seeing the excellent film Deep End. I lose my way in the city, on Saturday night, and waver between whether to eat at some restaurant on Corrientes or go back home; finally I make up my mind but just miss the train at Callao station and stand under the light on the empty platform, looking at posters, and Marcelo Díaz appears at the far end, almost hidden in shadows. I latch on to him (as others who were alone used to latch on to me), and we have dinner together at El Ciervo.

  Tuesday

  I call C., a psychologist recommended to me by Oscar Masotta. An appointment on Monday, October 2 at 6:15 p.m. in a clinic on Calle Díaz Vélez.

  At the movie theater again, We Are All in Temporary Liberty, a premonitory title. Afterward I leave to meet B. at Colombiano. Someone touches my shoulder, it’s Lola Estrada, excited, staring at me, mischievous and shy. “I saw you the other day,” she says, “with Rivera at La Paz.” I tell her I’m going to call her, that we’ll get a meal together. Both of us know that I know she told Marcelo she wanted to sleep with me. I “don’t want trouble” (I don’t want to go back to my promiscuous life of 1962–63). Anyway, it amuses me that she would remember having seen me, as though, in these gloomy days, I’m affected by a woman noticing me.

  Tuesday

  Some symptoms last night. I see Nené at Galerna, she tells me she wants to stop by my place tonight to pick up Brodie’s Report (as if she couldn’t get it anywhere else). I tell her I can’t today. “And tomorrow night?” she asks. I can’t do that either. It’s clear that she came to the bookshop at five in the afternoon because she knows she can always find me there at that time. Quickly I decide that I’m not interested in getting dinner with her or sleeping with her. I prefer to make a date with Ana despite the fact that I no longer have any interest. I teach the class at the Institute and call Ana on the way out, but she can’t see me, and now here I am with the empty night, so I stay downtown and go out to dinner alone. I have a few glasses of wine and suddenly decide to call Lola. It’s eleven at night and I apologize like a phantom; she can’t either, she’s finishing a project, why don’t I call tomorrow?r />
  Monday, October 2

  First session with C. Some restlessness during the half hour before. I have a coffee at La Paz to kill time and then get a taxi on Lavalle. Calle Díaz Vélez reminds me of the boarding house on Medrano, the bridge that crosses the tracks near Rivadavia. The waiting room is just a garage, there’s a heater, and I’m by myself. Leather armchairs, a painting. After a while, a short, scrawny guy with a boyish face comes in, looks around, greets me with a powerful voice and climbs the staircase in leaps. He isn’t wearing a jacket, carries books under his arm, seems intelligent; I later confirm that he is C. Now I’m thinking that he only came for me, that he had no patients, that he spent five minutes studying my information. A woman comes in after a while, then two more. Some guys with intellectual faces peek over the banister of the staircase, call for them, and they go up. Once 6:15 has passed, I think I was supposed to confirm the appointment by phone, I try to make up a pretense, “I didn’t call because I wanted to postpone.” But if I had called, he would’ve thought I was compulsive. I’m going to say that I just came back from traveling. But couldn’t I have called five minutes before? At that point it occurs to me to leave, find a telephone, and call. I don’t know what I can do to let him know I’m here. A short while later a young girl dressed in a pink smock appears. “For Doctor C.” she says. I follow her. We go down a hallway with several side doors, and I’m again reminded of a hotel (with appointments?), a boarding house (something squalid). To the left there’s a little room with a dim light, a couch (Giacovate?) with a plastic cover, a desk. Behind it sits C.; on a corner of the table, against the wall and next to the table lamp, is a stack of books. Then he opens a drawer and several five hundred-peso bills are visible. I look at the couch, at the wall with a painting hanging on it, and I try to imagine what it will feel like to lie there, where he will sit, what part of the wall I will see. (Today, I dreamed I was lying down in the other direction, so that I was facing the painting and he was in front of me. Except I sit down in this chair, that is, I use it because the other is behind the desk and the couch can’t be moved.) As always, I work a priori. He isn’t going to talk, I have to get to the essence, etc. I talk about my separation from Julia, my work conflicts. In general, he keeps himself out of it, and I don’t look at him. He intervenes two or three times, nothing spectacular, more affective, you could say, than intelligent. He tells me that the basis of my work seems solid to him, that it has positive results and gratifies me, but that I should be able to accept that there’s no contradiction between going to therapy to break from certain molds that impede my progress and fearing that therapy will dismantle my relationship with the work. In the end we talk about money; he’s very expensive, and I set my limits (between thirty and forty thousand pesos per month). He extricates himself, asking for another session on Friday. After I leave, I wander a bit around the neighborhood, which I can’t place (somewhere near Almagro?). I think: “What a sense of time, he knew it was time to stop after fifty minutes without glancing at the clock.” I think: “Money and time lie behind everything.”

  Monday, October 9

  Monologue (1). When I first came here, I told him, I thought I’d have to decide what the first sentence of my psychoanalysis would be. Where to begin?, etc.

  Series C. The circulation of telephone calls and staggered appointments, just now calling Julia to see her today, Lola to see her tomorrow, all governed by the vertigo I live with. I can’t pay full attention to anything, and the girls imaginarily accompany me in the confusion. There will always be someone who’s there when I call her.

  Thursday 26

  Yesterday another goodbye with Julia. I meet her in El Foro, across from the building where David lives, which is being cleared out because there’s danger of a collapse. She starts analyzing, and says we have to stop seeing each other; after much reminiscing, I tell her I’m about to travel to Europe. Two minutes later we leave the restaurant. I find Perrone at a table, he holds me back; out in the street, Julia is already gone. I walk alone through Paraná, alone in the night, doggedly. Almost two hours of walking takes me to the end of the city, past the rails of Palermo, where the low houses begin, and I take a taxi there and return home.

  A meeting for the magazine; Toto doesn’t come, Germán doesn’t come, the others come but without enthusiasm. We decide to face the matter head on next Thursday (a different magazine?). At La Moncloa, everything for me revolves around Nené’s signals, a certain mutual understanding. We leave together. We make a date for Saturday. Then I go to Lola’s place, everything goes well with her as always, casual. We walk around the house, look at Russian posters, have dinner at the Salguero restaurant, spend the night together.

  Friday, October 27

  I meet Beatriz at El Foro and we go looking for Gregorich to go to the roundtable in Morón, and there begins one of the most delirious and mixed-up nights I can remember. We go across the city to Retiro, take a train with Susana Zanetti and Nené, get off at Morón. Throughout the trip, many jokes with Beatriz about the cultural progressiveness of the West. On the podium, little white folders and a ceramic jug. My participation goes well, more or less. Going last, Beatriz is nervous, imprecise, academic, running over her time. We have dinner at a typical restaurant and I argue unenthusiastically with G. about Borges. Finally the train back, we arrive at Once, I get in a taxi with Nené, we go to her new house in San Telmo, she doesn’t have the keys. Two drowsy friends appear and let us in. We finally get in, a desolate place. Once we’re alone, everything continues with the same tone. Nené is frightened by the place where she’s going to live, she insists that she doesn’t want anyone to protect her, doesn’t want dependent relationships. “You want to sleep with me,” she says. “Of course, that’s why I came.” Nené sits down on the staircase leading upstairs. I left in a taxi, thinking it was all a kind of creole circus, very funny.

  Thursday 2

  X Series. Rubén K. stops by looking for me and we go to Constitución for lunch with Chiche P., two working professionals. Lives that intrigue me; there’s something bureaucratic in the succession of meetings and something epic in how they dedicate their lives to the political struggle.

  A meeting of the discussion group with Landi, which is going along very well. The violence and political circumstances as a field of experimentation for discursive reality. How do a series of newspapers, tasked with describing the political world, refer to the situation?

  At Los Libros we begin the political discussion, seeing what will become of the magazine. We can’t continue with the way things are. The core of the matter is Peronism, but I also insist that we must go back and define our specific objective and plan.

  In the meeting Nené is beautiful, childish. Very melancholy right away, and we exchange a couple of glances. She arrived late, and I left early. That’s how things are for me.

  Earlier on the phone with Lola. I stopped by to see her at night. Things went well, and neither of us wanted to stretch out the matter any further. We exchanged compliments, comforted each other, and I left, trusting there would be no dramatic farewells.

  My upcoming trip to China is a point of escape for me. On the one hand, I’m explicitly retreating from areas of conflict in my current life. On the other hand, it’s like going to the moon for me, a place that I imagine because I’ve seen it in the imaginary nights of the culture of the left. I hope the time to leave comes soon.

  Saturday

  In the morning at the College of Engineering, an empty labyrinth at this hour, the slow elevators and at last a group of students very similar to what I was at the age they are now. They are quick, intelligent, connect well, have initiative. Discussions about the Russian avant-garde, Proletkult, and the art of propaganda.

  Walking along Paseo Colón to Plaza de Mayo, I go down the avenue, feel the loneliness of the city without affection. Then I call Tristana, make a date with her, and we eat together; I cling to that woman as I would do with any other who showed me care and affe
ction. We plan to meet at her house at night, while I finalize the trip to Córdoba.

  This woman helped me through these difficult months, and now I think I’m alone and have no one to turn to, he said, everything is distant, socialized, and false.

  During the trip to Córdoba, Héctor, onto whom I project my old delusions from the sixties, tells me a story about a Spaniard who takes some people to his attic and proudly shows them a letter he received from Cuba (“from Fidel”) in response to his own, which he had written because he listens to Radio Havana in the night.

  Sunday, November 5 in Córdoba

  X Series. The cafeteria on the terrace at the terminal, the city under the sun. I have lunch at Rubén K.’s house. He makes the food in a didactic style while they organize the working plan and discuss relationships with other Maoist organizations. Rubén, serene, wise, firm, knows how to listen.