Saturday the 16th
This morning I went out with a book under my arm to sell it and see if I could get the 50 cents. I was allmost there when I met Don Jacinto the man who livs here and I was very embarassed being he reads alot Im going to right this because its an adventure when he saw me with the book he said so you like literature. It made me very embarassed and I said yes. Then he kept on asking questions and I kept on answering. And do you like to right my young friend? I said yes I right all the time. And what do you right pomes or stories. Stories. Id like to see sum. But no there very bad Im just begining. Come come dont be modest Ive noticed a grate deal of talent in you and Ive observed for a long time that you right alot. I said just a little. When will you show me one? When I finish the one Im doing now. It must be very nice. Its OK. Today I will tell everyone at the table that among us there is a great unnown righter, at dinner he told everyone at the table that I was an unnown righter and it made me very embarassed and I said yes. Tomorrow Im going to start to right a story its easy I just have to imagine something and right it and make a good copy. I couldnt see the movie but Juan told me everything from the middle on being he got there late he told me they kill the bandit at the end. I should erase everything I rote today thats no adventure I didn’t have any adventure today.
This was how his writer’s vocation had been born. From that day on he took notes all the time, he invented plots for movies, plays, detective and mystery stories, love and science fiction stories, in first person, in indirect style, in epistolary or in diary form, with dialogue or without, bloodcurdling stories found in a bottle on a beach or, sometimes, peaceful descriptions of cities and customs. But the moment for picking up the pen moved further away as the years passed. He made notes on facts and themes, he observed and thought deeply everywhere, all the time, but the truth is that despite his undoubted vocation he almost never wrote. He was never satisfied and never dared to think of any work as finished. No, no need to hurry. Among his friends his reputation as a writer was assured. This comforted him. One of these days he would surprise them all with the masterpiece they were waiting for. His wife had married him because she was attracted in part by his reputation. She never saw anything by her husband published anywhere, but she more than anyone was witness to how he had a box full of notes, how he was always filling his pen with inspirational blue ink, how his imagination was always working, how he was always saying he could write a story about anything, even the most trivial incident.
One day the need to prove to himself that he really was a writer drove Leopoldo to begin a story. After allowing his unconscious mind to work all night, Leopoldo awoke one morning and was inspired. It occurred to him that a fight between a dog and a porcupine was a splendid subject. Leopoldo held on to it and gave himself over to the task with frenetic intensity. But he soon realized that it was much easier to find themes than to develop them and give them form. Then he told himself that what he lacked was culture, and he began a voracious reading of everything he could get his hands on, especially anything about dogs. After some time he felt relatively confident. He prepared a good amount of paper, demanded quiet throughout the house, put on a green eyeshade to protect his eyes from the harmful effects of electric light, cleaned his pen, made himself as comfortable as possible in his chair, chewed his nails, looked intelligently at a patch of clear sky, and slowly, interrupted only by the beating of his impassioned heart, he wrote:
“There was once a very pretty dog who lived in a house. He was a good breed and therefore was rather small. His owner was a very rich man with a beautiful ring on his little finger who had a country house, but one day he felt like spending a few days in the country to breathe clean air he was not feeling good being that he worked very hard at his business that was in fabrics and so he could buy good rings and go to the country too, then he thought that he had to take the little dog if he did not take care of him the maid would neglect him and the little dog would suffer he was used to being cared for carefully. When he reached the country with his best friend who was the little dog being that he was a widower the flowers were very pretty it was spring and in that season the flowers are very pretty being that it is their season.”
Leopoldo was not lacking in critical sense. He knew his style was not very good. The next day he bought a rhetoric and a grammar. Both confused him even more. Both taught how to write well but not how to avoid writing badly.
The following year, however, with fewer preparations, he was ready to write:
“The dog is a noble and beautiful animal. Man has no better friend, not even among men, where one encounters with painful frequency both disloyalty and ingratitude. In an elegant and well-situated mansion, in a large city, there lived a canine. Of a good breed, he was rather small but strong and extremely brave. The owner of this generous animal, a rich and powerful gentleman, owned a country house. Fatigued by his many important duties, he decided one day to spend some time at his rural retreat, but concerned with the treatment his dog would receive during his absence at the hands of unsupervised servants, the kind and prosperous industrialist took the grateful dog with him. Yes, he feared that the coarse servants would make him suffer because of their indolence and neglect.
The countryside is very beautiful in spring. In this sweet season there are brightly colored flowers in abundance, with dazzling corollas to delight the eye of the dusty pilgrim, and the mellifluous chirp of the happy and trusting little birds is a feast for the delicate ear of the thirsty traveler. Oh Fabius, how beautiful is the countryside in spring!”
He had learned his rhetoric and his grammar well.
Out of danger with regard to this important point, Leopoldo reached the moment when the beautiful and noble animal had to confront the porcupine. He had already covered more than one hundred thirty-two pages with his firm, clear writing; it is true that of these he had sacrificed some fifty-three. He wanted his work to be perfect. His desire was to include everything in that simple theme. His speculations concerning time and space cost him no less than six months of study. His prolonged digressions concerning who is the better friend of man, the dog or the horse, concerning life in the country and life in the city, concerning the health of the body and the health of the soul (not to mention his novel translation of the aphorism mens sana in corpore sano), concerning God and concerning dogs without masters, concerning the howling of dogs at the moon, concerning the courting habits of animals, concerning dogsleds and concerning Diogenes, concerning Rin Tin Tin and his times (the dog ascending to the sublime heights of art), concerning fables and concerning who really wrote those attributed to Aesop along with the countless variants that this name has supported in Spanish cost him more than two years of fruitful labor. He yearned to make his work a subtle mixture of Moby Dick, La Comedie Humaine, and Au Recherches du Temps Perdus.
That was some months ago.
At the time in which we find him, he had changed his mind. Now he was in favor of synthesis. Why write so much if everything, absolutely everything, can be expressed in the sobriety of a single page? Convinced of this truth, he had begun erasing and cutting mercilessly, with complete faith in his new artistic direction and, quite often, with an elegant spirit of sacrifice.
On the day we saw him go into the library, his work, considerably reduced, had taken this form, give or take a few words: