Restlessness - Marta Kapustin

Texto en español: Inquietud, capítulo 1 

También aquí

Traducido al inglés por Martín Shifino y Kit Alexander Maude

Chapter I

I'm not the woman I used to be. I realized this as soon as we landed in Europe. She needs to get away, they said. If I took my leave discreetly, I'd be in a better position to negotiate, they insisted. I obeyed.

Just before I boarded, Agustin hugged me in silence, and I covered my daughter with anxious kisses, unable to hold back some last-minute advice. The lawyer formally made his farewell. You'll soon be back. Soon is a long time. Take care of my children. I will. Finally, I rang my secretary from a public phone and promised to keep her updated while she repeated yes, doctor, yes, doctor.

I stayed glued to my seat. A flight attendant asked me if I needed anything in particular and I asked her to come and hold my hand every now and again. Are you travelling alone? Alone and against my wishes. She served my dinner first, gave me a napkin. She handed out magazines, chocolates and for breakfast, gave me an apple - fresh, polished.

As arranged, Jack came to pick me up. My flight was delayed; even so I had to wait for him, squashed under my excessive luggage, sunk into that atmosphere of identity loss and terror that airports bring to mind. At least he was tactful enough not to ask me anything about the enforced move and even said 'you look thin' which was his way of paying me a compliment. We went silent, we were both distant. Perhaps, I thought, he wanted to be with a younger woman or at the least a younger me. Villages, sown fields and the leaden sky of an unknown country passed us by, and I fell asleep, profoundly asleep.

Jack unloaded the suitcases, and surprised me with a CD player, my favourite biscuits and a bottle of wine for the first moments of my arrival. But that same afternoon he resumed his holiday. After dropping him at the Central Station, I bravely returned the car, fearing that I might get lost, run someone over or crash into one of the interminable number of cyclists. I got back on the tram just in time for Jack to check that I had returned safely - l guess he was worried about the rented car, a convertible.

They got me this place to live, as good as if l'd chosen it myself: a peaceful central street abutting onto a small square with a bench, beautiful houses, gardens with hydrangeas, manicured lawns; a warm two-bedroom flat on the first floor, low, wide, with a creaking staircase.

I immediately put up pictures of my children; in the corner that functioned as a kitchen I hung a tea-strainer which I had brought with me. I checked the clock, taps and bathroom. Opened the shutters, aired the cupboard. Exhausted, I put my feet up on the coffee table and tried the remote control of the TV: I didn't understand anything.

Armed with a plastic bag and dictionary, I went to the shops; bread, cheese, mineral water. I unplugged the phone, changed dollars, bought a city map.

l was alone.

Here I am, in this quiet small town which was picked at random. On a cobbled street sit the tables of the cafe where I write every day at breakfast, the coffee with milk and cinnamon. Beyond, where the traffic lights keep changing, graze equestrian monuments, glorifying lost battles. Well-built boulevards, winding side streets. Chestnut trees in flower, their petals falling on the pavements.

The official guide features a history of absolutism, battles and aqueducts, but everyday life here is normal, calm. There's a corny ice cream shop, an Italian pizzeria, a Chinese tea house: illegal immigrants lining their pockets. Cross at the corner, the only option; wait for the lights to change; follow the map and various directions. This is not your city, don't forget.

As soon as you've settled in, time passes quickly. Time is short, as everyone knows: exhausting when waiting, treacherous when in fear. Fear is always in the present tense. Time finds you discounting previous plans because in the northern hemisphere southern plans appear little by little. The be all and end all is to get off that kind of train.

On a day like any other your neighbour offers you a nutty bread roll that she has baked, or the local paper is left in your letter box. You're integrated. Your person resides here, distanced from the subjects and ideas that represent you. This is already your neighbourhood, the same as it always was, though without the open hallways or the bands of boys wolf-whistling at you. Boys didn't whistle at me: I was ugly, antisocial, my mother didn't help me; and if during carnival time they tried to throw water at me it was only so that my bra would show through.

You'll miss that shape anyhow, that city where you grew up and you were your former self. And you'll miss it because here there are no kisses.

Where I was born kisses abound. Women kiss women, women kiss men, men kiss women and men. Here you don't see kisses. Two girls bump into each other at the bakery after a long time - perhaps they were schoolmates or used to take their children to the same kindergarten - and exchange memories in whispers and phone numbers with laughter, but say goodbye without touching. In another scene a grandfather greets his granddaughter: she must be five, and is eating an ice cream; the old man is moved, but only holds her small caramel-covered hand.

I recall the hugs of those who left early in the morning after my birthday, of friends who stay the night and wake up at noon. I calculate how many bear hugs we gave each other when democracy returned. I remember the sweet taste of our team's goals during the world cup and my contains dancing the cancan one night on the sodden garden. Rowdy, expansive, talkative. We sang out of tune, stumbled, wolfed down food. And always, always hugged each other. Or greeted each other with a kiss. Or asked for a kiss when the children went on holiday or simply to bed. Give me a kiss, buddy, I'm still your mother.

My yearning is abundant. My famous hairdresser's, a refuge; silly magazines, faits divers, failed actors, Freudian slips. Hordes of women who look like the tortured Tupac Amarú; some get married on that same afternoon. They smoke like truckers, pig out on food, ask for coffee or tea (when it's free). We all happily fill our heads and we love concoctions.

And what can I say about the dive where I waited while my children sat their secondary school entry examination. Uneven chairs, lamps covered in flies, and the second in which they proudly came out knowing they'd passed and hugging one another.

I also recall the porters in the building where I had my practice: Gregorio and Gregorito, the assistant. Always ready to help. They take the car at the door, park it and wash it; distribute letters. As they looked after me, I was able to have a minister as a patient while his many body guards waited outside cleaning their long fingernails.

Once I've gone over a large part of what is lost, there's still my shrivelled aunt or my first boyfriends to go, the employees at home who clean my clothes and hang out the sheets to dry in the sun. No more ironing smells, nor the chirping sound of the garden fountain. I live here now, somewhere else.

As I'm unemployed, I walk more than usual, without high heels; I brought my favourite shoes and they're still in bags, the poor things. Shop windows do not interest me; besides, who can get into the spirit of Spring when it's ten degrees. I wander around the city centre, peek into antique shops, while away the afternoon. I'd never experienced afternoons like these.

People are easy to deal with: I practise the verbal skirmishes that make up part of a foreigner's adventure. You have to say something, even if it's in a foreign language, a pause at the wrong time makes you incomprehensible. To stammer or speak like a baby makes you vulnerable. The alphabet is the same as the one I'm familiar with, though the letters with mysterious sounds and words of unknown meaning put you on a roundabout of histograms.

I spend my day like that, whispering with my friends and consulting my children. I walk around with them - in a manner of speaking, don't worry - and show them where I am, the things I buy, the funny names for peas, talc or a broom. And in the Turkish market, I communicate in a mixture of languages, enough to say please, good night, it's raining, thanks, many thanks, that's very kind. And ''definitely not'' which is my favourite way of saying ''no''.

You left to get yourself to safety and they welcomed you without even asking you your real name. No one came looking for you, in the sense that you've received no invitation at all; but if you look over that fact, we'll arrive at the wrong conclusion about your place here, how much space you've got for your stuff and concerns. Our style is abrasive and criticism won't be fruitful because they don't need it. They don't need us, to be more accurate.

Time has come for me - I used to make the Chief Nurse tremble with my comments and attention to detail - to be humble. Humility is difficult, although I've just learned how, at a pharmacy in the suburbs.

l go inside having rehearsed what I want: I’ll use discrete, convincing arguments. The door opens into an impeccable, efficient establishment. I loiter by the toothbrushes. I weigh myself on the scales. The pharmacist appears, stuffed into a white coat, fat, rosy-cheeked, with calloused feet. He smiles, I smile. He greets me and immediately apologists for only speaking the local language. I wasn't expecting that. There follows a silence of a few seconds, long enough for me to forget the lines I've rehearsed. Then I improvise: inflammation, cramps, burning. I understand, he says. You know we don't sell medicines without a prescription, he also says. But, he adds after a long pause, we'll make an exception. He ceremoniously turns around, fumbles for something on a shelf at the back, picks up a box, puts it into a paper bag and, always kind, polite, sells me suppositories at the price if gold.

As I went out I didn't deign look at him. l walked on, upright, packet in hand, wishing l could reach my flat in one stride. My face burned, wrapped up in anger. l wanted to cry. For the first time since my arrival I wanted to cry. l held back the tears. Otherwise they'd win.

The be all and end all is to get off that kind of train. 

 Marta Kapustin

Inquietud, Random House Mondadori Argentina, 2012.

The merciful women, Chapter 1 - Federico Andahazi

Texto en español "Las piadosas".

Traducido al inglés.

THE CLOUDS WERE BLACK CATHEDRALS, TALL and Gothic, about to topple at any moment on to the city of Geneva. Further away, on the far slopes of the Savoyard Alps, the storm was angrily whipping up the wind, unsettling the calm of Lake Leman. Trapped between the sky and the mountains, like a hunted animal, the lake fought back, kicking like a horse, clawing like a tiger and lashing out with its tail like a dragon. In a hidden opening between the rocks that sunk into the waters lay a small beach: barely a strip of sand in the shape of a crescent moon, waning with the rising tide and waxing with the ebb. On that stormy July afternoon of 1816, a small boat docked at the western tip of the beach, at the head of the pier stranded like a ghostly skeleton overflown by gulls. The first to disembark was a lame man, trying to keep his balance so as not to fall into the lashing waters whose fury shook the pier's weak structure. Once his feet touched the ground, the traveller grabbed on to one of the piles and held out a hand to help his companions disembark: first two women and then another man. The group started to walk along the pier towards dry land like a troop of clumsy but cheerful tightrope walkers, without waiting for the third man who had been left to manage, not without difficulty, on his own. They walked in single file against the wind and up the slope until they arrived, sodden, merry and out of breath, at the Villa Diodati, the house on the top of a small cliff. The third man trotted along with short, quick steps, glum and not lifting his eyes, like a dog following his master's tracks. The women were Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her stepsister. Jane Clairmont. The former, in spite of being still unmarried, claimed the right to call her-self Shelley, the surmame of the man who was to be her husband; the latter, for reasons less well known, had renounced her given name and called herself Claire, The men were Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. But none of these characters matters much in our story, except the man who disembarked last, and who was walking all on his own, far behind: John William Polidori, Lord Byron's obscure and despised secretary.
The events of that summer in the Villa Diodati are sufficiently well documented. Or at least some of them are. A stack of recently discovered letters may bring to light certain other events which have remained unknown until this day, concerning the life of Dr Polidori, the shadowy author of The Vampyre. And even more importantly, they may offer reasons for his tragic and early death. As everyone knows, The Vampyre is the first vampire story, the cornerstone of the countless succession of stories that have made vampire lore a true literary genre which peaked (at least as far as celebrity is concerned) with Bram Stoker‘s all-too-famous Count Dracula. But no vampire story exists that does not owe a debt of gratitude to the satanic Dr Ruthwen fathered by John Polidori. However, the events that surround the birth of The Vampyre appear to be as mysterious as the tale itself. It is a truism to say that there is nothing as open to doubt as paternity, and yet this truth can be extended quite naturally to all literary offspring. Even though repeated cases of plagiarism (accusations old and new, whether proven or imaginary) seem to be part of the history of literature since its very beginnings, the controversy over The Vampyre did not stem from copyright claims. On the contrary, for some strange reason, no one wished to claim as his or her own creation the evil creature that was to break new literary ground. The novella was published in 1819 under the name of Lord Byron, but here a paradox must be noted: while Byron accepted responsibility for the doubtful 'pregnancy' (so to speak) of Claire Clairmont, he furiously and vehemently rejected all responsibility for The Vampyre, placing the blame entirely on the shoulders of his secretary, John William Polidori. That is how the story was told. And yet a tale as dark as The Vampyre could not, of course, have had a birth less murky than its contents. We know that, after Polidori‘s death, a considerable number of letters, legal documents and other writings were found in the doctor‘s possession, which were to contribute various undesirable facts to the biographies of several illustrious persons who had every right in the world to wish upon themselves an undisturbed posterity. The correspondence in question is not new. Or rather, the absurd and scandalous controversies — juridical, scholarly and even political — to which these documents were subjected are well known to all. The arguments concerning their authenticity turned into something like a war. Expert opinions were published, as well as the results of calligraphy tests, ambiguous depositions of witnesses, and the indignant denials of those parties more or less implicated in the affair. But what was never, ever, made public was the contents of a single one of the letters, because - it was said - these perished in a fire that destroyed the archives of the court in 1824. All this was to be expected. But scandals, though giving the impression of being ubiquitous and everlasting, are often as fleeting as the time that separates one incident from the next, and they invariably end up buried under tons of paper and drowned in rivers of ink. The adamantine silence of all those involved, the progressive lack of interest of the public and, finally, the death of the main players relinquished into oblivion the controversial papers of which, it was said, nothing remained but ashes. The only document to survive was the no less dubious diary of John William Polidori. As the reader will no doubt have guessed, an inevitable ‘however' is forthcoming. Indeed, for entirely fortuitous reasons, some time ago I found myself in Copenhagen, where I was approached by a delightful character who intro-duced himself as the last of the teratologists, one of those commentators on ancient texts concerning monsters, a sort of archaeologist of horror, a researcher into whatever testi¬monies might have been left behind by the mythical tterators' in their dreadful sojourn on Earth. In a word, my acquaintance was a taxonomist of unique and fearful human prodigies. He was a pale, thin man, with the elegance of another age. Ours was a brief conversation on a premature Danish winter night, in the Norden Café across from the Stork Fountain, at the end of Klareboderne Street. He told me that he was aware of a recent article of mine on a subject dear to his heart, and he had felt impelled to swap titbits of scholarly information with me. Since what I could offer him was not much, I was forced to confess that I was little more than an amateur in teratological matters. He seemed surprised that, as a native of South America, I had not heard the theory that much of John William Polidori‘s corres-pondence had ended up in an old Buenos Aires mansion that had once belonged to a certain aristocratic family with distant British roots. My colourful acquaintance had never been to Buenos Aires and the information he had was scant and imprecise. Nevertheless, with merely his vague description of the house and its location ‘close to the House of Congress‘, I had no doubt about its identity, It was a dilapidated mansion which, through a curious coincidence, I knew well. Countless were the times I had crossed the threshold of this ancient house on Riobamba, whose vaguely Victorian architecture never fitted well with the features of Buenos Aires. I had always been surprised by the disproportionate palm tree that, in the very centre of the city, rose above its sinister garden walls, and by the wrought-iron fence, fierce and threatening, that guarded the patio, efficiently dissuading casual salesmen from venturing beyond the entrance. As soon as I returned to Buenos Aires, I repeated our conversation to my friend and colleague, Juan Jacobo Bajarlía (surely our most knowledgeable scholar in the realm of Gothic literature), and he immediately offered to be my Charon on the infernal journey which began at the gates of the house on Riobamba. Let me say at once that, thanks to his wit as a lawyer and his wiles as a writer, we reached, after seemingly endless enquiries, our desired goal. Having given my word to be discreet, I must not reveal any more details concerning the method by which we finally arrived at the alleged 'documents'. And if I protect myself behind the wary adjective 'alleged' and behind the cautious quotation marks of 'documents‘, I do it merely through a germine uncertainty: though I cannot swear that these papers were apocryphal, nor can I affirm that they were not, because, to tell the truth, I never even had the opportunity to hold them in my hands. During our meeting in the old house, I saw none of the original documents. Our host (whose identity I will not reveal) partly read out loud and partly glossed over the con-tents of numerous folders, consisting of practically illegible photocopies. The large dark basement in which we found ourselves could barely contain our amazement. Since we were not allowed to keep any material proof of these docu¬ments - neither a copy nor even a note - what follows is not a literal recollection but a laborious literary reconstruction of what we heard. The story that transpired from the succession of letters - fragments barely - is as fantastical as it is unexpected, suggesting that the facts concerning the origin of The Vampyre might lead to other incredible findings that would shed new light on the very notion of literary paternity. As far as I am concerned, the possible apocryphal nature of this correspondence is unimportant. Literature (it is sometimes necessary to resort to a platitude) has no other value than to be literary. Whoever may have been the author of the reconstructed tale that follows - whether protagonist, direct or indirect witness, or mere narrator — I have no doubt that the whole thing is but an infamous invention concocted by a monstrous mind: a mind whose rightful place in the realm of the grotesque I leave to those more versed than I in teratology. Concerning therefore the truth (and, even more, the verisimilitude) of the events I am about to reveal, I must subscribe to the words of Mary Shelley in her preface to Frankenstein: '1 shall not be supposed as according the remotest degree of serious faith to such an imagination; yet, in assuming it as the basis of a work of fancy, I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of supernatural terrors.‘
Whatever the case may be, our story begins on the shores of Lake Leman in the European summer of 1816.

Federico Andahazi
Publicado en la página del autor.

The Century of Women (The anatomist) - Federico Andahazi

Texto en español "El siglo de las mujeres", de la novela "El anatomista".

Tradudido al inglés.

The sixteenth century was the century of women. The seed sowed a hundred years earlier by Christine de Pisan flowered throughout Europe with the sweet scent of The Sayinge of True Lovers. It is certainly not by chance that Mateo Colombo's discovery took place when and where it did. Until the sixteenth century, history had been recounted in a deep masculine voice. "Wherever one looks, there she is, always present; from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, always on the domestic, economic, intellectual, and public stage, on the battlefront and in moments of private leisure, we find the Woman. Usually, she is busy at her daily tasks. But she is also present in the events that build, transform or tear apart society. From one end to the other of the social spectrum, she occupies all places and those who watch her constantly speak of her presence, often with fear," write Natalie Zemon and Arlette Farge in their History of Women.3
Mateo Colombo's discovery happens precisely when women, whose place had always been indoors, began to conquer, gradually and subtly, the world outside, emerging from behind the walls of convents and retreats, from whorehouses or from the warm but no less monastic sweetness of home. Timidly, woman dares argue with man. With some exaggeration, it has been said that the "battle of the sexes" begins in the sixteenth century. Whether this is true or not, this is the age in wich womanly matters become an acceptable subject for discussion among men.
Under these circumstances, what was Mateo Colombo‘s "America"? No doubt, the borders between discovery and invention are far more vague than they might seem at first glance. Mateo Colombo (the time has come to say it) discovered that which every man has dreamt of at some moment or other: the magic key that unlocks women's hearts, the secret that governs the mysterious driving force of female love; that which, from the beginnings of History, wizards and witches, shamans and alchemists, have sought by means of brews, all manner of herbs or through the favor of gods or demons; that which every man in love has always longed for, when wounded, through unkindness, by the object of his troubles and sorrows. And also, of course, that which is dreamt, of by kings and rulers in their sheer lust for omnipotence: namely, the instrument that subjugates the volatile female will. Mateo Colombo searched, traveled and finally found the "sweet land" he longed for: "the organ that governs the love of women." The Amor Veneris (such is the name the anatomist gave it, "if I may be allowed to give a name to the things by me discovered") was the true source of power over the slippery, shadowy free will of women. Certainly, such a finding had many serious consequences. "To what calamities would Christianity not be subjected it the female object of sin were to fall into the hands of the hosts of Satan?" the scandalized Doctors of the Church asked. "What would become of the profítable business of prostitution if any poor hunchback might obtain the love of the most expensive of courtesans?" asked the rich proprietors of the splendid Venetian brothels. And, worst of all, what would happen if the daughters of Eve were to discover that, between their legs, they carried the keys to both Heaven and Hell?
The discovery of Mateo Colombo's America was, all things considered, an epic counterpointed by an elegy. Mateo Colombo was as fierce and heartless as Christopher. Like Christopher (to use an appropriate metaphor) he was a brutal colonizer who claimed for himself all rights to the discovered land, the female body.
Beyond what Amor Veneris meant to society, another controversy was sparked by what it was really supposed to be. Did the organ discovered by Mateo Colombo actually exist? Perhaps this is a useless question wich must be replaced by another: did the Amor Veneris ever exist? Ultimately, things are nothing but the words that name them. Amor Veneris, vel Dulcedo Apeletur (the full name with which its discoverer christened the organ) had a strong heretical ring to it. The question of whether the Amor Veneris coincides with the less apostate and more neutral kleitoris ("tickling"), which alludes to effects rather than causes, is one that would later concern historians of the body. The Amor Veneris existed for reasons other than anatomical; it existed not only because it inaugurated a New Woman but also because it sparked a tragedy.
What follows is the story of a discovery.
What follows is the chronicle of a tragedy.

Federico Andahazzi

Publicado en la página del autor.

The Dawn of Observation (The anatomist) - Federico Andahazi

Texto en español "La primera mirada", de la novela "El anatomista".

Traducido al inglés.


"O my America, my new-found-land!" Mateo Renaldo Colombo (or Columbus, to give him his English name) might have written in his De re anatomica.1 Not a boastful cry like "Eureka!" but rather a mournful lament, a bitter parody of his own misadventures and misfortunes, compared to his Genoese namesake, Christopher. The same surmame and, perhaps, the same destiny. But they share no common blood and the death of one takes place barely ten years after the birth of the other. Mateo's America is less distant and infinitely smaller than Christopher's; in fact, it's not much larger than the head of a nail. And yet, it was to remain secreted away until the year of the death of its discoverer and, in spite of its insignificant size, its discovery was, equally momentous and disturbing.
It is the Age of the Renaissance. The verb is “To Discover”. It is the twilight of pure a priori speculation and the abuse of syllogisms, and the dawn of empiricism, of knowledge based on what can be seen. It is, quite precisely, the dawn of observation. Perhaps Francis Bacon in England and Campanella in the Kingdom of Naples chanced upon the fact that while scholastics were lost in syllogistic labyrinths, the illiterate Rodrigo de Triana was, at the same time, shouting "Land!" and, without knowing it, heralding in a new philosophy based on observation. Scholasticism (as the Church had finally understood) was not profitable enough or, at least seemed less useful than the sale of indulgences, ever since God had decided to soak money out of sinners.
The new science is good as long as it helps to bring in gold. It is good as long as it doesn't contradict the truth of Holy Writ or, what is even more important, a magistrate‘s writ of property. Just as the sun no longer spun its path around the Earth (something which obviously didn't stop happening from one moment to the next), geometry had begun to chafe against the confines of its own paper landscape and had set off to colonize the three-dimensional space of topology. Thi is the greatest achievement of Renaissance painting; if Nature is written in mathematical characters (as Galileo says), painting must be the source of a new vision of Nature. The Vatican frescoes are a mathematical epic: witness, the conceptual abyss that separates Lorenzo de Monaco's Nativity from The Triumph of the Cross over the apse of the Capella della Pieta. For similar reasons, not a single map is left unchanged. The cartography of Heaven changes as well as that of Earth and that of the body. Here now are the anatomical maps that have become the new navigational charts of surgery. And thus we return to our Mateo Colombo.
Encouraged perhaps by the fact of sharing a name with the Genoese admiral. Mateo Colombo decided that his destiny, too, was to discover. And so he set off to sea. Of course, his waters were not those of his namesake. He was the greatest anatomical explorer of his time; among his more modest discoveries is nothing less than the circulation of the blood, anticipating by half a century the Englishman Harvey's demonstration in De motus cordes et sanguinis. And yet, even this astonishing discovery is of little importance compared to his America.
The fact is that Mateo Colombo was never able to see his discovery in print, since his book was not allowed to appear until the very year of his death, in 1559. One had to be careful with the Doctors of the Church. The cautionary examples are almost too numerous. Three years earlier, Lucio Vanini "chose" to be burned by the Inquisition in spite of (or because of) his statement declaring that he would not give his opinion on the immortality of the soul until he became "old, rich and German-.”2 And certainly Mateo Colombo's discovery was far more dangerous than Lucio Vanini's opinion—even without considering the aversion our anatomist felt toward fire and the stench of burnt flesh. above all if the flesh was his own.

Federico Andahazi
Publicado en la página del autor.

Innocent Spirit - Alicia Steimberg

Título original: "Su espíritu inocente".
El texto en español no se encuentra en la Web.

Traducido al inglés por Andrea G. Labinger.

Excerpt One

I’m thirteen. I ask permission to do this or that; if they give me permission, I do it, if not, I don’t, or else I do, depending. But I don’t have to ask permission to look. I’m really interested in looking at older people. Lots of them are married and have kids. It’s a big deal, this business of getting married and having kids. First they’re boyfriend and girlfriend; she gets all dressed up and he brings her presents. Then they get married, and for a while they still seem like they were before, boyfriend and girlfriend: they live in a cute little apartment with all new furniture and she waits with her freshly polished nails for her husband to get home from work. But everything falls apart when the baby comes: diapers and bottles and little jars of baby food are everywhere, and in the overheated room there hangs a strong smell of baby poop mixed with alcohol. The grandmothers, one of them scrawny and the other big and fat, float from one room to another. The mother drags along in her nightgown from the bed to the bathroom. More and more visitors arrive, and the newborn baby screams like a stuck pig. Not even a shadow of the engagement remains and the new mother’s breasts are crossed with little blue veins. I’m thirteen. I watch all this with great interest, but then I sit down in a corner to read whatever I can find. A newspaper, some comics, a big, fat novel – anything to take my mind off that horrible room with no trace of romance at all.
It’s the greatest pain and the greatest joy, says Matilde’s mother, talking about childbirth. I listen attentively, not understanding. So a woman feels very happy when she has a baby? Well, if the lady says so, she must know what she’s talking about. I understand about the pain: the lady explains that when the baby passes through the canal that will bring him into the world, “he splits his mother’s bones wide open.” I tremble and run to look up “childbirth” in the encyclopedia. I find a detailed description of the suffering and the final stage in which, according to the encyclopedia, the mother recovers her strength and spirit and helps the baby to be born. Now that I’m on the P’s, I look up penis, penetration, prostitution. This volume is full of interesting words. The encyclopedia uses quotations to illustrate the words. Under prostitute, it says “See whore, and then a little poem: “Whore of a bitch/whore of a pup/whore of a blanket/that covers ’em up.” That saying reminds me of another one that I’m sure I read in this same encyclopedia:
“In bed we laugh,/in bed we cry;/And, born in bed,/in bed we die.” I don’t talk about these things with anyone, and I’m convinced that I’m a degenerate, a pervert who’s interested in the most disgusting things in the world. The most terrible thing is God’s nearness. God’s not a shadow or a ghost: He’s right there, in a dark corner of my room staring at me, while I think disgusting thoughts and touch forbidden parts of my body. The devil surely lives in those parts of my body, because if I touch them for a while, God disappears. In that corner of the room there’s nothing but a broken-down chair with some clothing that I’ll have to put on the next morning, and the devil possesses me. Then I fall asleep, and by the next morning God’s right back in His usual place. He’s invisible to everyone, but not to me: I get dressed quickly, thinking about Him and His punishment, which no doubt will come if I don’t change my ways and do penance. But, my God, I can’t change. As I walk the four blocks from the subway entrance to my school, I think: I’ll have to change, sooner or later, and I think about it even more when I look around me in the classroom and see my classmates, who, I believe, aren’t capable of abnormal behavior like mine. Although maybe Matilde … No, no, she’s too Catholic; she’d have to confess everything to the priest. She’d stop herself, even if it was only because of that. I say she’d stop herself, but what do I know? And what about Francisca, the girl who dances the muñiera? That one probably has no shame; maybe she doesn’t even realize how bad she is. Señorita Hesse, our Geography teacher, tall, thin, and blonde, who’s wearing her pool table green dress again, with the four aces appliquéd on the bodice, calls my name. I stand up, startled, smiling in order to hide the traces of daydreaming that probably show on my face. Isobars, isotherms, isohyets (isohyats?) – imaginary lines, all of them; they cross continents and oceans on the map before my eyes.
I wonder if she, Hesse, I mean, practices coitus very often. Sure she does, with those four aces on her chest. Love is a vice, just like gambling and drinking. Señorita Granate, on the other hand, probably doesn’t practice it and never did. She has huge tits, but they’re not pretty. In the first place, they look like she’s wearing a corset; I’ve seen those one-piece garments with whalebones, dreamed up to give fat women that squarish appearance. Granate teaches us Alfonsina Storni’s verses:

On this divine October afternoon,

How I’d love to stroll along the sea’s distant shore …

“All right, girls, who wants to recite?”
“Recite it yourself, miss, with that sour voice of yours,” Rosario whispers at my side. I’m the only one who hears her, but I don’t even move a muscle. Old Granate would die if she knew anyone was making fun of Alfonsina, her one true love.
And the married teachers: do they practice coitus with their husbands? The old ones, too? I imagine them one by one, legs spread wide, in bed with their husbands. The husbands don’t take off their glasses or their ties. They just drop their pants.
At recess three other girls and I draw a chalk skull on Nélida Rigalta’s backpack. Underneath we write: “The Fearsome Foursome.” “The Fearsome Foursome” consists of Rosario, Matilde, María, and me. All four of us with our cotton socks and lace-up shoes, and all of us missing a button on our coats. Nélida Rigalta, who’s prettier than anyone else and wears finer stockings and moccasins, walks back into the classroom, looks at her backpack, and bursts out crying. The Fearsome Foursome stares straight ahead at the blackboard. That afternoon I phone Nélida Rigalta’s house, and her mother tells me her daughter won’t talk to me because I’m one of the girls who torture her.
So she figured it out, I guess. What a shame, because it’s a long, boring afternoon. And Nélida lives in the neighborhood. If I ask permission, they’ll let me walk the six blocks to her house, and I’ll be able to look at her album with pictures of movie stars, especially Sonja Henie, the ice skater, Nélida’s favorite. I phone again and apologize to the mother. I end up crying. Nélida’s mother weakens, and Nélida must be awfully bored, too, because she says yes, I can come over. I’m allowed to go to Nélida’s house because her dad’s a doctor; it seems that’s a guarantee of I-don’t-know-what.
Nélida’s little house is modest, but she has a satin bedspread and some composition dolls in her room. They invite me to stay for dinner; I call home and ask permission. Granted immediately, because Nélida’s dad offers to drive me home afterward. Nélida’s mother serves a piece of juicy meat, a few sticks of fried polenta, and a lettuce salad with vinaigrette. To me it tastes like divine ambrosia. We browse through Nélida’s dad’s collection of detective novels on some shelves in the garage that bend under the weight of the books: Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen …
“My papa doesn’t like practicing medicine,” Nélida confides to me.
“Oh, no? What would he rather be?”
“A sailor.”
“Why didn’t he become a sailor, then?”
“My grandpa didn’t want him to. He wanted him to become a doctor. Anyway, now that he’s a doctor, he’d like to become a surgeon.”
“So why isn’t he a surgeon?”
“His hands shake.”
I don’t know what to say, and I imagine that Nélida Rigalta, who has become very serious and sad, doesn’t expect me to say anything.
“Papa teaches me everything about sex so I won’t turn out like his sisters,” she says.
“What happened with his sisters?” I ask.
“They read a book called Why Pleasure Doesn’t Last Long Enough, and other books like that, and now they’re hookers.”
Now I’m really quiet. Nélida’s mother shows up, all dressed up and elegant, to tell me that they’re ready to take me home.
“We’re going to a dinner party,” she announces. “All doctors and their wives.”
I imagine that table surrounded by doctors and their wives as if it were a gathering of Olympian gods.
Sometimes I close my eyes and see myself sitting on the toilet in the bathroom of the old house. I open them again and see myself at my work table, but only one second has gone by, not thirty years. Eyes closed, I see myself back on the toilet again, pondering so many things. More recent moments from my past, when I no longer lived in the old house and was surrounded by other people, my own children, for example, my husband, my friends, less clear and much more distant. They seem to belong to another life. At the back of the classroom sit those big girls who are also thirteen years old but look eighteen. Their voices are huskier; they flash ironic smiles. They look at us with pity. Of course, time will smooth over the differences, but for now, in their eyes we’re a bunch of pathetic little insects who haven’t yet managed to emerge from our cocoons. They belong to the real middle class, and they’re not afraid of anything. They reply with self-confidence when they’re asked a question, and they don’t look like they’re always daydreaming. Then comes the group of aristocrats who talk about “benefits,” parties they attend in order to collect money for the poor. There are three or four pariahs: Francisca, who has no bench-mate; Ema, who everyone thinks is macrocephalic; the English Brown sisters, one of them with the green felt piano key cover draped around her neck, and then there are the wild girls who laugh for no reason at all and commit atrocities like torturing Nélida Rigalta, or eating the sandwich of an absent-minded girl who left it on her desk during recess and not confessing to the crime even under duress, making horrible caricatures of themselves and the others …
Spring has come again. I take a shower with water that’s been warmed on the alcohol burner and I sing:
They try to tell us we’re too young …
Too young to really be in love.
They say that love’s a word,
A word we’ve only heard
But can’t begin to know the meaning of …
Since I’m no longer thirteen, but rather seventeen, and I’m wearing a Scotch-plaid taffeta dress and shoes whitened with a cotton ball dipped in liquid … And since I’m wearing Peach Flower cologne and creamy lipstick, and tonight there’s a party at Patsy’s…
The minute I go out into the street, everything changes: behind me are the decrepit walls, the leaks, the enema bag in the bathroom. And boys look at me, compliment me, ask me to dance – why should I care about the rest of it? I turn the corner and pass by the house of the neighbor who wants to burn the walls down. The fragrance of native jasmine drifts into the street. The sky is filled with stars; vampires can’t see their reflections in the mirrors. The aroma of French fries emanates from certain houses; it’s very typical to make French fries for dinner. Sweet families sit down to eat, fathers don’t look at anyone, mothers scuff their slippers along the dining room floor. Two fried eggs, like two big, merciful eyes, fall on each serving of French fries. The eyes of He Who Sees All, perhaps. I laugh to myself as I walk down the street. Not because I’m crazy, but because I’m happy.

***
Excerpt Two

“It isn’t true.”
“It’s true.”
“It can’t be. It simply can’t be.”
“Yes, it’s a fact. Matilde leaves her used sanitary napkins under the dresser. The maid complains, and rightfully so.”
“But it can’t be.”
And yet something tells me that it can. I remember how Matilde carries around a cruddy piece of paper in her pocket, and when you ask her what she’s got there, she shows you the contents: face powder. And an equally cruddy piece of string, the kind you use for tying packages, sticks out of the collar of her school smock. I try to pull it off, thinking it got caught there by mistake. But it’s tied in a knot.
“What’s that, Matilde?”
Matilde smiles, pokes her hand around inside the neck of her smock, and shows me a medal of her favorite saint dangling from the string. I remember my visit to her house, the pile of empty bottles on the patio. Anything is possible.
Then I’m not the only one who’s miserable?
But we never discuss our respective misery. In our class there are at least two girls who are driven to school by a private chauffeur. It’s a sure bet they don’t leave used sanitary napkins under their dressers. And they don’t carry a thermos with hot coffee and milk into their bedrooms, either, in order to be able to get up in the icy mornings when it’s colder inside the house than out.
I never mentioned that business about the thermos, but it was a great invention. I used to place it on a chair beside my bed, and when the damn alarm clock went off, I’d stretch out one arm, trying to wake up as little as possible, and pour some coffee with boiling milk, already sweetened, into a cup I’d left on the chair for that purpose. Once the hot café con leche had run down my gullet, I would be alert and brave enough to climb back underneath the covers and remove my nightgown. Then I’d stick out my arm, grabbing and putting on, one by one, the items I’d laid out so carefully the night before, like the thermos and cup; my underpants; the garter belt – a hateful garment that served to hold up stockings and which was always missing some hook or fastener. Petticoat, shirt, skirt, sweater, stockings. Once my stockings were on, I’d poke my legs out from the warmth of the bed, exposing them to the frigid bedroom air, in order to put on my shoes. Overcoat, scarf, cap, and off I’d go to the bathroom. Crossing the patio in that temperature was no less complicated than crossing Avenida Nueve de Julio. I returned to my bedroom for the thermos, carried it into the kitchen, and consumed the rest of the café con leche, this time with bread and butter. I grabbed my book bag and headed for the street. It was as dark and freezing as midnight. Once, because I had set my alarm clock incorrectly, I arrived at school an hour early. I had to wait for them to open the doors, and then I entered the empty vestibule. At least I had a roof over my head, although inside it was even colder than it was outdoors. In the vestibule there was a group of reproductions of Impressionist paintings. I studied them in detail, one by one. They had a lot of foliage, but not a single human figure. Much later another student came along, and then many others. Some arrived without gloves, their hands swollen with chilblains, like Francisca, the one who danced the muñeira. Others had pretty, knitted angora gloves. We all chattered until the head monitor arrived, a woman whose mere glare was sufficient to cause chills, even in summer. But it was early and school hadn’t officially started yet: she smiled. A bell rang and we filed out to the patio to sing the hymn. Then to our classrooms.
As she calls roll, our monitor keeps her free hand in her pocket and hops around a little. She’s cold, too. This year our classroom faces the street. The window’s very high, so from our desks we can’t manage to see the people passing by. You might say this is a kind of jail, and we can only guess at the faces of the free people walking around out there. But it’s not true. This isn’t my prison: it’s my freedom. In here, I’m not who I am, but who I want to be, or rather, I’m the most presentable part of myself. At home I’ve left behind the Jew, the sinner, the girl who replaces the missing fastener on her garter belt with a safety pin, the one who prepares her thermos of café con leche to face the icy mornings, the one who thinks about penises, vaginas, and coituses. To school I bring the nice, lively girl, the one who knows how to make the others split their sides laughing, the one who says she’s Catholic, although nobody believes her, the one who invents lies about her ancestors, but who, on the whole, is acceptable and even envied, because now that the clouds of her earliest years have parted, she understands everything and can even explain it. I’m sixteen years old, seventeen. I’m split in two pieces that are, nonetheless, irreconcilable, and for a long period of my life I’ll go on that way: split in two.

Alicia Steimberg