It’s probably clear by now that literature has nothing to do with national prizes and everything to do with a strange rain of blood, sweat, semen, and tears. Especially sweat and tears, although I’m sure Bertoni would add semen. I can’t say where Chilean literature fits in. Nor, frankly, do I care. That will have to be worked out by the poets, the novelists, the playwrights, the literary critics who labor in the cold, in the darkness; they — who amount to little or nothing just now alongside the strutting peacocks — will face the challenge of making Chilean literature into something more decent, more radical, more free of chicanery. Shoulder to shoulder or all alone, they are the ones called to shape Chilean literature into something reasonable and visionary, an exercise of intelligence, adventure, and tolerance. If literature isn’t all of that plus pleasure, what the hell is it?
3. Between Parentheses
I (JANUARY 1999 — APRIL 2000)
THE BEST GANG
If I had to hold up the most heavily guarded bank in Europe and I could choose my partners in crime, I’d take a gang of five poets, no question about it. Five real poets, Apollonian or Dionysian, but always real, ready to live and die like poets. No one in the world is as brave as a poet. No one in the world faces disaster with more dignity and understanding. They may seem weak, these readers of Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel, these readers of the deserter Archilochus who picked his way across a field of bones. And they work in the void of the word, like astronauts marooned on dead-end planets, in deserts where there are no readers or publishers, just grammatical constructions or stupid songs sung not by men but by ghosts. In the guild of writers they’re the greatest and least sought-after jewel. When some deluded kid decides at sixteen or seventeen to be a poet, it’s a guaranteed family tragedy. Gay Jew, half black, half Bolshevik: the Siberia of the poet’s exile tends to bring shame on his family too. Readers of Baudelaire don’t have it easy in high school, or with their schoolmates, much less with their teachers. But their fragility is deceptive. So is their humor and the fickleness of their declarations of love. Behind these shadowy fronts are probably the toughest people in the world, and definitely the bravest. Not for nothing are they descended from Orpheus, who set the stroke for the Argonauts and who descended into hell and came up again, less alive than before his feat, but still alive. If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America, I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.
THE WOMEN READERS OF WINTER
During the winter they seem to be the only ones brave enough to venture out into the icy cold. I see them at the bars in Blanes or at the station or sitting along the Paseo Marítimo by the water, alone or with their children or a silent friend, and always carrying some book. What do these women read? wondered Enrique Vila-Matas a few years ago. Whatever they can. Not always great literature (though what is great literature?). Sometimes it’s magazines, sometimes the worst bestsellers. When I see them walking along, bundled up, buffeted by the wind, I think about the Russian women who fought the revolution and who endured Stalinism, which was worse than winter, and fascism, which was worse than hell, and they always had books with them, when suicide would have been the logical choice. In fact, many of those winter readers ended up killing themselves. But not all of them. A few days ago I read that Nadezhda Yakovlevna Khazina, exceptional reader, author of two memoirs, one of them called Hope Against Hope, and wife of the assassinated poet Osip Mandelstam, took part, according to a recent biography, in a threesome with her husband, news that inspired astonishment and disappointment in the ranks of her admirers, who took her for a saint. I, however, was happy to hear it. It told me that in the middle of winter Nadeshda and Osip didn’t freeze and it confirmed for me that at least they tried to read all the books. The saintly readers of winter are women of flesh and blood, and they couldn’t be braver. Some, it’s true, committed suicide. Others endured the horrors and returned to their books, the mysterious books that women read when it’s cold and it seems as if winter will never end.
PASTRY COOKS
My friend Joan Planells, pastry cook of Blanes, claims he never gets sick and is always in a good mood. He says this half in jest and half seriously, but in fact he’s the only person I know who’s made it through this terrible winter without catching the flu. It must have to do with my job, says Joan, suddenly a bit gloomy. Maybe. The pastry profession yields characters with iron constitutions. Take the generous and selfless Raguenau, humble patron of Cyrano de Bergerac, and J. V. Foix, poet and pastry cook of Sarrià, whose pastry shop I visit occasionally, when I go to see my editor. At Foix’s pastry shop in Sarrià, one can admire a bust of Cyrano, which is the kind of thing few pastry shops in the world give themselves the luxury of displaying. Most uncanny, though, is the behavior of the saleswomen. They all seem to have been reading (for years) the complete works of Foix. All of them, the girls as well as the older women, wait on the customers they don’t know — that is, the ones drawn to the pastry shop by the emanations of the poet who claimed to see everything more clearly in his sleep — like professors of Catalan literature or hosts at a strange conference. In fact, that may even be what they are. The point is that every time I go into Foix’s pastry shop, I get the sense that they’re sizing me up. The youngest salesgirls silently pity me and the less young say “you’ll never be a poet, because the secret of poetry is. .” At this point our telepathic conversation breaks off and I walk out eating a sweet roll and thinking about the iron constitution of pastry cooks. My friend Joan Planells says that the secret is to stay relaxed and read a lot and work constantly. But don’t you ever get sad? I ask him. Sometimes I get sad, he says almost in a whisper, but I’m always happy.
THE BOOKSELLER
We all have the bookshops we deserve, except for those of us who have none. Mine is the Sant Jordi, in Blanes, the bookshop of Pilar Pagespetit i Martori, in the town’s old riverbed. Once every three days I go there to poke around and sometimes I exchange a few words with my bookseller. Pilar Pagespetit, who, as her name suggests, is a small woman, spends the mornings and some afternoons, too, when there aren’t many customers, sorting orders and delivery requests and reading her favorite books. At these times of day, Pilar Pagespetit is present and she isn’t present. In other words, she’s there, but it’s as if she’s not. At these times of day, the bookstore becomes an explorer’s outpost in who knows where. In a wild country, maybe, or barren lands. And everyone who comes in looks like a castaway, even the women who’re there to buy Pronto. At these times of day, there’s jazz playing at the Sant Jordi (which puts me on edge and relaxes Pilar), although at other times there might be classical music, ethnic music, or Brazilian music, the sounds of which also serve to relax my bookseller. Certainly, any bookseller has more than enough reasons to be nervous, I say to myself when I hear the somber chords of John Coltrane, although my bookseller, surrounded by soothing music, doesn’t seem to take things too hard. When I ask her if this was the kind of work she always wanted to do, she says she doesn’t know. She began as a librarian in Tordera, and eighteen years ago, when she came to live in Blanes, she opened her bookstore and she seems happy. I’m reasonably happy with my bookseller, too. She gives me credit and she usually finds me the books I want. That’s all anyone can ask for.