The Diaries of Emilio Renzi

by Ricardo Piglia

  Thursday 18

  Series E. In these notebooks I must respect one rule: never write extensive texts. Everything I may say must be less than three hundred words. Stories, memories, readings, reflections, meetings: I must discover a way to synthesize and concentrate; the diary is a fine-linked chain, like the chain my grandfather Emilio used to hold his pocket watch.

  I will put a line from Borges at the beginning of my book Assumed Name but attribute it to Roberto Arlt: “One can only lose what one never had.” The line does nothing more than synthesize what, for me, is the central “theme” of that book: loss.

  According to Marx, Don Quixote’s madness lies in that he “long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.”

  Another from Marx: “In the twelfth century, so renowned for its piety, they included amongst commodities some very delicate things. Thus a French poet of the period enumerates amongst the goods to be found in the market of Landit, not only clothing, shoes, leather, agricultural implements, &c., but also femmes folles de leur corps (wanton women).”

  Sunday

  I force myself to rest from an overly agitated week. First I go to the theater to see Kurosawa’s version of Macbeth, and then, once back, I sit in front of the TV to watch the 1950 Hollywood version of Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited,” and when the program ends I go to my armchair, light the lamp and once again read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in one sitting. I consume foreign stories to erase my mild afflictions.

  Series E. Two days for the transcription of the diary: (1) Call up all of the women who have the same names. (2) Include quotes from other authors without reference, as phrases that form part of the text. I’m going to write a story using the papers that appear in my notebooks: from what can be seen, I keep the same things there that I have in my desk, sentences, lists, schemes, plans, quotes, messages into the void.

  Monday

  (Notes from an old class with Nilda Guglielmi on medieval culture.)

  In the Middle Ages all readers were, at the same time, authors who copied interesting passages by the authors they read in their books. Then they would add their own commentaries and the book would grow and take form in this way. The book is never “published,” simply one day it would start to circulate from one person to another, while the author went on inserting new commentaries. The book never had a singular content—or theme or sphere of ideas—and would include all of the authors’ centers of interest. Does a diary, ultimately, repeat this medieval technique? Dispersion, copy, a book to be read after death.

  Wednesday

  My notes on Pavese are published in the cultural supplement of El Cronista Comercial; a variety of offers come, trying to get me involved. Five hundred thousand pesos per month in exchange for two articles, selling the same pieces in Venezuela (via Mario Szichman) for one hundred dollars apiece. I can live off that easily; I could go from making a living on reading to making a living on writing, but I don’t think so. As Pound said, speaking about Joyce: “He is also dead right in refusing to interrupt his stuff by writing stray articles for cash.”

  Friday

  The double sustains the writing: it is the other who writes, and I attend to his work.

  Lafforgue comes over. I correct the proofs of “The Madwoman and the Story of the Crime”: I don’t like the story very much, little space to develop the plot; still, the change in style is good, as is a certain density in the story that goes beyond the plotline.

  Wednesday, October 1

  Yesterday the prize was awarded. Borges appears, goes unsteadily down the stairs, as if in a dream. He sang old tangos in a proud voice; he likes prison lyrics, and his favorite is “Yvette.” He made several political comments: we are worse now than in Rosas’s era, it makes no sense to go into exile because when you return you always finds the government worse. He left on Donald Yates’s arm.

  I go to the Martín Fierro bookshop, then find Gusmán, Di Paola, Germán García, Pichon-Rivière, Norberto Soares at a table in Banchero: entertaining discussions about a variety of distinguished strangers.

  Friday

  A roundtable about Sartre last night at the Hebraica with Rozitchner, Matamoro, and another gentleman whose last name I forget. I say a few words about Sartre and literary criticism in Argentina. I argue with Matamoro about Masotta.

  Sunday

  Little by little, I regain my interest in my old work on Borges; I would like to write it in a fluid style, nothing technical. A thought that arose in bed as I was smoking the first cigarette of the morning after reading the papers and before starting work on tomorrow’s class.

  Today I’ll stay in to watch the boxing match between Clay and Frazier that’s coming on in a little while.

  Thursday 9

  The first galleys of Assumed Name are coming today, I’m going to get them and read the book once more in the dark bar on Diagonal, near Vivex. Some fear that I will find too many flaws that can no longer be fixed. Little by little, I am getting used to the idea that what I’m reading is my own book. I correct the proofs in Iris’s house, improving the text as much as I can. Now we will see if it’s possible to see the book in print before the end of the year.

  Friday 10

  It is beautiful to see the evening fall, the river is darkening, and the sun’s last light reflected in the glass of a bank building looks as though it were catching fire. It is seven in the evening and I’m sitting in the leather armchair and writing this, drinking a whiskey, waiting for Lola, fantasizing. A strange mixture of desire and love.

  Monday

  A peaceful weekend, my mother was visiting, I took her to the theater. Then, last night, I stayed in to write the jacket copy for my own book, but it’s impossible. What can I say about myself, someone I know less about than any other?

  When I get home I see stains on the hallway floor. “They didn’t clean,” I think, but then I see that someone has scratched an insult into the door with a nail. The mark of evil. Who can it be? They don’t write my name, only insult me. I remember writings on the wall of my childhood home, the same surprise in the face of anonymous hate.

  It would be impossible for me to write a text about my own stories. All of the alternatives appear, alongside the faces of all of my friends. I could write many different texts, defending my writing with actions, between the stories and reality. Defending my experimentation in “Homage…”.

  Tuesday 14

  The novel is coming together bit by bit in my head. I find the beginning: “I made the mistake of telling Maggi about the letters.” Maggi is writing the biography of an unknown nineteenth-century hero.

  On Friday I see Lola. We have dinner at Hansen and stay together all night. Today she comes back to end things. She managed to do what I wanted (to erase me from her life) and did it well. A very slight melancholy, and at the same time the certainty that it was the last thing (the only thing) I could do for her.

  Tuesday 21

  Circulations, digressions. The days are marked off by classes and meetings. Nothing worthy of being recorded. David, going to the United States; women, Julia, Tristana, Lola, entering and exiting my life.

  Friday 24

  At Siglo XXI today I saw the cover copy written by Schmucler, the usual annoyance at seeing something written about me, as though I were spying on a letter that was not addressed to me, in which I was being slandered or praised; what matters is the feeling that I am reading something that does not belong to me. Cuqui Carballo just showed me the proofs of photos for her cover design, images of the city. Slowly a fetish forms; once published, I no longer want to know anything about the books I have written, but they persist in me with the light of a dangerous and sacred object.

  I should recognize the prosperity of this time, no economic distress, a book about to be released, and the trip to Europe with Iris in sight.

  Monday

  The final page proofs of Assumed Name at the publishing office. The days
spent shut in, the empty years are all there. No illusion, rather the certainty of the rejection, or rather, indifference that will come from everyone. I will never produce a book that is at the level of my expectations.

  Tuesday

  I meet Mario Szichman at Ramos. He “buys” from me the notes on Brecht, the article on Arlt, the piece on Pavese (seventy-five dollars each). So my relationship with money is also improving these days. I would like to experience this era in the way I will remember it.

  Obsessions, organizing the house, throwing out old papers, making another bookcase.

  Monday 10

  Circular digressions made even worse. A dark day on Friday, I meet Julia, who tells the truth about my life and destroys everything in order to let me know she has not forgotten me. Before and after that the course, classes, and discreet readings. Proposals for an article in Crisis, in El Cronista. A possible agreement with Fischerman to write a detective film. I live up in the air, I go to the movie theater every day in spite of everything and wait, not really knowing what I’m waiting for.

  Complacency and acceptance, an inability to think intensely, except in limited circumstances, which I always know in advance (for example the classes, the interviews). I seek “harmony,” nostalgia for a paradise lost, but discovering reality would make the world worse, would destroy the peace. Better that I connect myself with the ideas I don’t want to think about. Am I a peaceful assassin?

  Wednesday 12

  Rage, the meaning of which I do not know. Is it from waiting for the book? I see women passing by, uncertain desires as I walk around the city.

  Tuesday 18

  I go in and out of darkness, a single essence that I don’t want to see; I know what it is and lay it aside, as though someone were preventing me from seeing clearly.

  At Siglo XXI today I see the book cover. No emotion. I came walking down Corrientes under the warm sun. Final proofs of the detective story.

  Friday 21

  Sitting in front of the typewriter, I rewrite old papers, the same ones I’ve looked at again and again for years. Many difficulties. I don’t know how to talk about myself.

  Exhausted from teaching courses, growing closer and closer to Iris, I only wait for a chance at relief. I will finally go to Europe in January, not too excited. Navigating.

  Monday, December 1

  Norberto Soares comes over, a confusing pretense that we should meet to do something I can’t quite discern. Thus, my complicated relationships with friends. Thus, the stifling drama from demands that others naturally lay upon me. I wander around the city, have to move and don’t know which way to go.

  Tuesday 2

  I let myself go, read randomly. I also fill my time with Ludmer’s book on Onetti, which I am reading with great interest. A good beginning, the first two chapters are excellent conclusions on the cutoff and beginning of the story, but at the same time there is something of an overinterpretation that makes you think about criticism going too far and adding its own meanings, so that it can be read as autobiography of critics themselves, unknowingly writing about themselves.

  I enter and exit Argentine history. Now the origins of the theater.

  I stop by Martín Fierro, Gusmán develops his theories with a certain brusqueness. He defends Medina and the best sellers. “We all benefit.” There’s always a realist thought underneath. It is clearly visible that the “avant-garde” subject thinks about the market as the future site of his texts.

  Wednesday

  According to the man who listens to him, his anxieties are no more than old beliefs that he will not relinquish. Anyway, a strong oppressive feeling since the beginning, a stone—one of those cement blocks used to build the jetties that hold off the sea in Mar del Plata—in his chest.

  Slowly I get used to the idea of the trip to Paris. I meet Goligorsky, who has already returned. The hotel in Paris is splendid, and everything seems like a Fitzgerald story.

  More and more, I think I must abandon politics before it abandons me. My relationships with Elías and Rubén fluctuate between boredom and distance. Maybe my qualms have to do with the rise of repression.

  Thursday 4

  Hours in the Civil Registry going through the process of changing my residence. The employee attending to me has a face like a bird, he talks forcefully and unexpectedly shows his knowledge of philosophy.

  Friday 5

  I return to the Police Department to renew my passport. The same as in ’67 and ’72, always in December. I sit down to wait in a bar on the corner and read the Quentin Compson chapter in Faulkner’s novel.

  Saturday

  I see Norberto S., who tires me by always repeating the same thing about Armando Discépolo. We meet at his house to go over my interview, which he and the people from the newspaper think is “perfect, intelligent,” etc., but I think it’s terrible. I have to cut out one response and not refer to Marxism. I accept that without arguing because I don’t want to make things difficult, and also because I think it’s better not to classify one’s thinking according to previous, recognized labels.

  Tuesday, December 9

  I talk as always from the public telephone in the dry goods store on Santa Fe and Canning. At Siglo XXI they confirm that the book came today. What do I think? Distant happiness, unreality. At the counter, one of the secretaries shows me the copy, a beautiful edition. I take twenty-nine and bring the book to Iris, then I meet Andrés at La Paz, he gets excited when I give him the book and rambles about the stories he is writing in his Faulknerian style, then I go to see Gusmán. I end up eating alone at Claudio, I reread “Homage…” which this time seems excellent to me.

  Wednesday 10

  At Air France, a final date for the trip: Monday, January 5 at 3:30 p.m. Everything is falling into place. In the afternoon, at Querandí, they take photos of me for the literary supplement of El Cronista. With Iris, before bed, I have a strange feeling when she critiques “The End of the Ride” (now that it can’t be fixed). The worst part is that she’s right, all stories can be improved. I support myself, nevertheless, on Saer’s enthusiasm for the story, which he relayed in a very generous letter. I placed that story first in the book and am happy. Maybe because I couldn’t have written it better.

  Thursday, December 11

  In the morning at the publishing office, the first copy of Assumed Name, the book is too expensive (twenty thousand pesos). Then I see Dipi, Soriano, Gusmán and ironically discuss the article by Enrique Pezzoni; in an evaluation of the year, he wrote that I am the best Argentine critic (because of my essays on Arlt).

  Monday 15

  I have lunch with Lafforgue, digressions and returns to the past. He gives me a copy of Nuevas aguafuertes de Arlt, and I give him my book.

  An interview on Radio Rivadavia in the early morning, I improvise tired answers to add to the oppressive and melancholy atmosphere of the radio journalists. I return to the city that breaks apart at dawn.

  Wednesday

  First references to Assumed Name, someone saw someone reading it on the subway. My friends’ tastes are divided between “The End of the Ride” and “The Price of Love.”

  Thursday 18

  Series E. In the profile in El Cronista, I talked about this diary for the first time in public, shall we say. Now that I have made it known, it would be good if I finally started writing it well.

  I go down to buy something to eat; in the shop, a climate of euphoria. The Aeronáutica rose up, the military coup is underway. A feeling of old catastrophes, my first thought: “I’ll stay and live in Paris.”

  Friday 19

  The crisis stabilizes. The aviators make their fascist programs known. Videla keeps the army as arbiter of the situation.

  Sitting in the bar on Corrientes near Rodríguez Peña, I read my own words, my article on Brecht reprinted in Colombia. I kill time before returning home.

  Saturday

  A strange restlessness after seeing my photo taking up a whole page in the supplemen
t of El Cronista. I can’t read my statements, it’s as though I were a stranger. News about the book, praise ignited by Pezzoni, Muraro, etc.

  Last class with my group on Saturdays. We will resume next year.