Purgatory (32 page)

Authors: Tomás Eloy Martínez

‘Simón is not dead,’ she interrupts me angrily, as though my words could somehow kill him all over again.

‘You told me he was with you, that I’d get to meet him tonight. How much longer are we going to wait for him?’

‘It’s not up to me. He’ll do what he wants to do. And I know what I want to do, I want to follow him wherever he goes. I love him more with every day that passes. Without him, I don’t exist.’

‘I’d like to meet him. Anyone who can inspire such deep, such enduring love is from another world.’

‘Simón is the same as he always was. One, continuous and indivisible, motionless, occupying the same space ever since time is time.’

Either I’m not hearing what I’m hearing or Emilia is unconsciously quoting Parmenides. I follow the thread of her memories, decide to go with them wherever they lead. I ask her: ‘When did you find him? The last time I saw you, you were still looking for him.’

‘Friday, a week ago. We spent the weekend alone in my apartment until Sunday night and then we left together. I was afraid of routine, of reality, of the repetition that destroys everything. He didn’t care if life just took its course. He’s – how can I explain this? – on the margins of life, watching as things shift, disappear, are reborn.’

Then I listen as she tells me what she experienced. She tells the story as I will write it: the meeting at Trudy Tuesday, the journey back to the apartment on North 4th Avenue in the Altima, forgetting the Altima at the Hammond offices, her surprise at discovering that Simón stills loves her with the beauty and the passion he did thirty years ago. ‘Better than it was back then,’ she says, ‘because now he knows how I think, he can anticipate my every wish.’ She tells me about her disastrous wedding night, the joy of her honeymoon, Dupuy’s services to the Eel and everything that followed. Her cowed obedience to her father’s orders, the cowed obedience of the country to every crack of the military whip. She tells me about her mother’s madness, the visits to the old people’s home, Simón’s stay in an old people’s home (perhaps the same one, perhaps another) where he learned the laws of the eternal noon. ‘I have everything I ever wanted now,’ she says, ‘I’m happy.’

The Amtrak station is a few blocks away. I think I heard the whistle of trains several times while Emilia was talking but now I can hear only the bellowing of a passing train which returns us to the night where we never were. She drops her car keys on the table and says: ‘Give them to whoever you like. To Nancy, to the police. I’ve parked the Altima in the lot just over there, on level two.’

‘What about you? What are you going to do?’

‘I already told you. I’m happy. That’s all I want.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Simón is waiting for me in a boat by the riverbank. We’re going to sail upriver together. Who knows, maybe we’ll run into Lieutenant Clay, sailing up the river to find Mary Ellis. We’ll fire a harquebus in a salute to Mary Ellis. I’ve always loved happy endings.’

‘The river is very low,’ I tell her. ‘A lot of boats have been running aground. If you lean out over the bridge, you can see them. You won’t be able take a boat anywhere now, certainly not a sailboat. The river’s narrow, it’s barely a trickle.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says. ‘It will grow broader and deeper just for us.’

Notes

1

kaffeklubben
: a remote island near Greenland.

2

Rand McNally cylindrical projections
: the ‘standard’ map of the world in which meridians are mapped to equally spaced vertical lines and circles of latitude are mapped to horizontal lines.

3

Almendra
: probably the most famous 1960s and 70s Argentinian rock band.

4

Taoist encyclopedia
: A description of Pangu, the first living being in Taoism. The Mundaka Upanishad describes him: ‘This is the universal Self, the Virat; his head is the shining region of the heavens; his eyes are the sun and the moon; his ears are the quarters of space, his speech is the Veda full of knowledge; his vital energy is the universal air; the whole universe is his heart; his feet are the lowest earth.’ When Pangu died, his breath became the wind and clouds, his voice the rolling thunder, and his eyes the sun and the moon. His hair and beard became the stars in the sky, his skin the flowers and trees, the marrow in his bones became jade and pearls, and his sweat the good rain that nurtured the earth.

5

How ‘came I in’?
: from Ezra Pound: ‘The Tomb At Akr Çaar’ (Faber, 1955).

6

brainless burlesque dancer
: Bataclana (a stripper) – María Estela (Isabelita) Martínez de Perón was a nightclub dancer before she married. General Perón. She took power as acting president after his death and was deposed in the coup of 1976.

7

Raya morada
: this may refer to the Franja Morada – a university-based political movement in Argentina.

8

‘El discurso de Ayacucho’
: A piece of patriotic rhetoric routinely learned by school children, written by Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1738).

9

Caracazo
(or
Sacudón
): the name given to the wave of protests, riots and looting and ensuing massacre that occurred on 27 February 1989 in the Venezuelan capital Caracas and surrounding towns. The riots – the worst in Venezuelan history – resulted in a death toll of anywhere between 275 and 3,000 people.

10

Valle de la Luna
: Ischigualasto is a geological formation and a natural park associated with it in the province of San Juan, north-western Argentina.

11

I want everyone to know
: lines from a poem by Julia Prilutzky called ‘Quiero Llevar Tu Sello’.

12

Montoneros
(Movimiento Perónista Montonero): an Argentine Perónist urban guerrilla group, active during the 1960s and 70s.

13

People’s Revolutionary Army
: Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP).

14

Tiempo de revancha
(1981) is a serious, sober film directed by Adolfo Aristarain about the price of remaining silent during the Dirty War;
La fiesta de todos
, a short documentary directed by Sergio Renán, is a piece of blatant propaganda funded by Videla to hide the ‘disappearances’ by depicting Argentina as a paradise during the 1978 Football World Cup.

15

Diario del Juicio
: the testimony given at the 1985 Trial of the Juntas/Juicio a las Juntas, collected daily and published in newspaper form as
El Diario del Juicio
(‘The Newspaper of the Trial’) by Editorial Perfil, currently republished online at http://eldiariodeljuicio.perfil.com.

16

a book by Donald Rayfield
:
Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
(Random House, 2005).

17

the annoying gaggle of women
: the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ who for years campaigned about Argentina’s disappearance.

18

‘Hail Mary, most pure’
:
Ave María purísima
is said in the confessional to the priest and is the equivalent of ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned’; the priest’s response being ‘
sin pecado concebida
’.

19
José María Muñoz, the commentator for the 1978 World Cup.

20

Horangel
: famous Argentine astrologer.

21

‘Hear, mortals, the sacred cry!’
: the first line of the national anthem.

22

Carmona
: a character in Martínez’s novel
La mano del amo
(1983).

23

‘La hermanita perdida’
(‘Little Lost Sister’): a poem (later a song) about the Malvinas/Falklands War.

24

Señor Ga
: a character in Macedonio Fernández’s very short fable, ‘Un paciente en disminución’.

25

The house on the corner . . .
: these lines are from a poem by Juan Gelman, ‘La casa de la esquina ya no es un río ni llora’.

A Note on the Author

Tomás Eloy Martínez was born in Argentina in 1934. During the military dictatorship (1976–82), he lived in exile in Venezuela where he wrote his first three books, all of which were republished in Argentina in 1983, in the first months of democracy. But it was his later books, including
The Perón Novel, Santa Evita
and
The Tango Singer
, that made his international reputation. In 2005 he was shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize, and until his death in January 2010 he was a professor and director of the Latin American Program at Rutgers University.

By the Same Author

The Perón Novel

Santa Evita

The Tango Singer

A Note on the Translator

Frank Wynne has won three major prizes for his translations: the 2002 IMPAC for
Atomised
by Michel Houellebecq, the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for
Windows on the World
by Frédéric Beigbeder, and the 2008 Scott Moncrieff Prize for
Holiday in a Coma
by the same author. He is also the translator of many other books, including
An Unfinished Business
by Boualem Sansal and
Kamchatka
by Miguel Figueras, which was shortlisted for the 2011
Independent
Foreign Fiction Prize.

Translation of
La Preñez
by Gonzalo Rojas by John Oliver Simon

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Martínez, Tomás Eloy.

[Purgatorio. English]

Purgatory / Tomas Eloy Martinez ; translated from the Spanish by Frank Wynne.

— 1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

I. Wynne, Frank. II. Title.

PQ7798.23.A692P8713 2011

863'.64—dc22

2011015232

First U.S. Edition 2011