“He was a good dog. Small, happy. One day he found himself in an environment that was not his own: the country. One morning a porcupine…”
Leopoldo closed Katz’s book, where he had found nothing about porcupines. He asked for another book that studied them but was told that, unfortunately, very little had been written about them, so for the moment he had to content himself with the uncertain information contained in the Little Illustrated Larousse:
“Pig (Lat. porcus). Hog; domesticated pachyderm mammal. Fig. & fam.: dirty, gross man: To behave like a pig. Porcupine, rooting mammal of North Africa whose body is covered with quills: the porcupine is harmless, nocturnal, and feeds on roots and fruits. Amer. coendú. Prov. Every pig has his St. Martin’s Day, everyone must suffer eventually. The best acorns to the worst pig, those who least deserve it are often the most fortunate. The pig is a valuable animaclass="underline" all parts of its body are edible. The meat, which should always be well cooked, can be preserved with salt. The fat, still attached to the skin, produces bacon; melted down, it constitutes lard. The bristles or hairs of the animal are used for brushes and brooms. Raising pigs is simple and quick; If there are no acorns, chestnuts, and potatoes, of which it is very fond, this animal is content with refuse of any kind.”
“Tomorrow,” Leopoldo said to himself, “tomorrow I will take a trip to the country for documentation.”
A trip to the country! What a beautiful story he could write!
THE CONCERT
In a few minutes she will elegantly take her place at the piano. With an almost imperceptible nod she will receive the thundering homage of the audience. Her dress, covered in sequins, will shine as if the light were reflecting the accelerating applause of the 117 people who fill this small, exclusive room where my friends will approve or reject — I never know which — her efforts to reproduce what I think is the most beautiful music in the world.
I think, I don’t know. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. I’m used to hearing it said that they are incomparable, and I myself have come to imagine that they are. And to say they are. I would much prefer not to find myself in this position. In my heart of hearts I am certain I don’t like them, and I suspect that everybody sees through my false enthusiasm.
I have never been a lover of the art. If my daughter had not decided to be a pianist, I would not have this problem now. But I am her father and know my duty and have to hear her play and help her. I am a businessman and feel happy only when I am handling money. I repeat, I am not an artist. If there is an art to accumulating a fortune and controlling the world market and wiping out the competition, I claim first place in that art.
The music is beautiful, of course. But I don’t know if my daughter is capable of recreating that beauty. She herself has her doubts. Frequently, after concerts, I have seen her cry despite the applause. On the other hand, if someone applauds without enthusiasm, my daughter has the ability to discover him in the crowd, and that is enough to make her suffer and then hate him passionately forever after. But it’s not often that someone applauds without feeling. My closest friends have learned to their sorrow that unfeeling applause is dangerous and can ruin them. If she did not indicate that she considered the ovation sufficient, they would keep applauding for the rest of the night because each of them is afraid to be the first to stop. Sometimes they wait for me to grow tired before they stop applauding, and then I see how they watch my hands, afraid to begin the silence before I do. At first they fooled me, and I thought they were sincerely moved: Time has not passed in vain, however, and at last I know them for what they are. A constant, growing hatred has overwhelmed me. But I myself am false and deceitful. I applaud without conviction. I am not an artist. The music is beautiful, but basically I don’t really care if it is or not, and it bores me. My friends are not artists either. I like to humiliate them, but otherwise I don’t care about them.
But the other ones irritate me. They always sit in the front rows, writing constantly in their notebooks. They receive free passes that my daughter writes out with care and sends to them personally. I despise them. The journalists. Of course they are afraid of me, and often I can buy them. But the insolence of two or three of them knows no limits, and from time to time they have dared to say that my daughter is a terrible performer. My daughter is not a bad pianist. Her teachers assure me of that. She has studied since she was a child, and she moves her fingers with more freedom and agility than any of my secretaries. True, I rarely understand her performances, but I am not an artist, and she knows that very well.
Envy is a hateful sin, and this vice in my enemies may be the hidden reason for the occasional bad review. It would not surprise me if one of those who is smiling now, and in a few moments will be applauding, in fact originated the adverse criticism. Having a powerful father has both helped and hindered her. I ask myself what opinion the press would have of her if she were not my daughter. I can’t help thinking that she never should have had artistic ambitions. They have brought us nothing but uncertainty and insomnia. But twenty years ago nobody would have ever dreamed I would be where I am today. We will never know for certain, she and I, what she really is, how good she really is. For a man like me, the question is ridiculous.
If she were not my daughter, I confess I would hate her. When I see her walk on the stage, a persistent anger boils in my chest — anger toward her and toward myself because I allowed her to follow such an absurd career. She is my daughter, of course, and for that very reason she has no right to do this to me.
Tomorrow her name will appear in the papers, and the applause will multiply in print. She will swell with pride and read to me the laudatory opinions of the critics. But as she comes to the final ones, perhaps those in which the praise is most admiring and exalted, I will see how her eyes fill with tears, how her voice weakens to a faint murmur, how, in the end, she cries, disconsolately and endlessly. With all my power I will feel unable to make her think she really is a good pianist, that Bach and Mozart and Beethoven would be completely satisfied with her ability to keep their message alive.
Now there is the sudden silence that always precedes her entrance. Soon her long, harmonious fingers will glide over the keys, the room will fill with music, and once again I will suffer.
THE CENTENNIAL
“Which reminds me,” I said, “of the story of the ill-fated Swede, Orest Hanson, the tallest man in the world — in his time. These days the record he set is frequently broken.
In 1892 he made a well-deserved tour of Europe to display his height of eight feet, one inch. The journalists, with the imagination that distinguishes them, called him the Giraffe Man.
Imagine. Since the weakness of his joints made any effort almost impossible, in order for him to eat, one of his relatives had to climb to the branches of a tree and place special little meatballs, with small pieces of beet sugar for dessert, into his mouth. Another relative tied his shoes for him. And still another was always on the lookout for the moment when Orest would need to pick up some object that by accident or because of his peculiar clumsiness had slipped through his fingers and fallen to the ground. Orest looked at the clouds and allowed himself to be waited on. His kingdom, in fact, was not of this world, and you could see in his sad, distant eyes a persistent nostalgia for earthly things. In his heart of hearts he felt a special envy for dwarfs, and he always dreamed of trying with no success to reach doorknobs and of breaking into a run as he used to in the afternoons of his childhood.