My mother. Ever fragile and living in married hell, at times lost among barbiturates, dreaming of trains that would run her down, silent and long-suffering enemy of my father, whom, however, she needed if she was to write the diary, as becomes clear in “Theory of Budapest,” where she rails mercilessly against him and against the noisy staircase in the building on Barcelona’s Sant Joan Avenue, and against the daily horror, in short, against this, that, and everything. And says that she is not happy, but nor does she particularly want to be, since then she would have nothing to write about in her precious diary.
The “Theory” contains some of the best writing in her square notebooks, but the last line in her diary, the last of all, deserves to be framed, as I have done in my own home. Written three days before her death, when my mother knew that she had only a few days of life left, this last line obsessively — as if she were looking at the old school exercise book where she had learned neat penmanship — repeats a verse by Oliverio Girondo, the avant-garde poet whom she considered a distant relation, I do not know if in relation to real literature as well.
This verse by the avant-garde poet — which she had found within a poem by Félix de Azúa — this verse — repeated ad infinitum at the end of her diary, repeated in beautiful handwriting about thirty times, by way of bringing her square notebooks to an unsettling close — this verse — written obsessively at the end of her diary, as if my mother wished through so much repetition to sum up what had been the repetitive daily hell of her life: a circular, reiterative and unbearable hell — this verse by the avant-garde poet, a verse my mother wished to repeat so many times at the close of the great disaster that had been her life — and it was as if finally by repeating it she were lamenting having reached the dying moments of her life’s delirium without the prized, and at times indirectly announced, suicide — in short this once-avant-garde verse said as follows:
What’s the use of Pentothal.
“THEORY OF BUDAPEST” (EXTRACT)
Solitude this August afternoon, anxiety controlled by poison, Pentothal for the lukewarm, dead horizon. It’s been more than an hour since I started writing this Theory, I feel the time has come for a short rest and I give way to delirium.
Pentothal for the lukewarm, dead horizon. Here I am, quiet and alone, in my white clothes. The afternoon is flat. And there is a cold kiss on the window. I write this August afternoon in a dialect of ice, I write sentences I do not understand, sentences that merit no commentaries. At times I perceive the second life of things, the secret and elusive life behind what is on view, behind famous reality. There is nothing worse than fame, and reality definitely has this fame. Whenever I think about this, I recall Seneca, who said that fame is horrible because it relies on the judgment of others. How horrible reality seems to me when it is on everybody’s lips, when it is famous and grateful for the judgment of others, and poor reality laughs without realizing that it is no more than mere appearance, and I disregard its fame, minute by minute, I erase it on the map of the future. Because I perceive what will happen and I also perceive the second life of objects and say things that even I do not understand and that merit no commentary […]. I perceive the secret and elusive life behind what is on view, behind reality. At times I see this, what I call the second mask, but I have no one to share this perception with, unless it be Hamlet — I dream in him — or else my poor son, who one day, on some byroad in the night, will bump into Hamlet, who will ask him about me, and by then I shall be only white clothes and a blank look of a forgotten back room, the distant echo of a woman who on a day like today, one August afternoon like today, wrote sentences she did not even think, sentences to find rest from the effort of an essay that will not merit a single commentary by anyone.
COMMENTARY ON MY MOTHER’S EXTRACT
At the age of fifty, José Cardoso Pires — he himself tells the story in an unforgettable book — decided to smoke in front of the mirror and ask, And now, José?
To smoke in front of the mirror, as everyone knows, is an intelligent exercise, it is also to know how to confront our most ordinary, considered face. I also am now smoking in front of the mirror, it is midnight and I am standing — having been left alone in the city, Rosa has traveled to Madrid during this long weekend on which half of Spain has taken to the road — I am standing and smoking in front of the mirror. And now, Rosario?
I shouldn’t have been left so alone at home, on such a long weekend, I am dangerous without Rosa watching over me, I am capable of draining every single bottle in the house during this weekend, I am capable even of ceasing to write this dictionary, I shouldn’t have been left so free in such a big house, with so many bottles and the whole weekend ahead. And now, José?
I stand looking at myself in the mirror and I smoke and I think about Rosario Girondo, my mother. And I tell myself that there is evidence of madness in the extract from “Theory of Budapest” that I have included in this dictionary, but there is madness throughout her diary: conventional housewife on the one hand; disturbed woman writer on the other.
The opening to the extract from “Theory of Budapest” has an acceptable poetic rhythm — with the tendency to say nothing, but in a way that sounds nice. However, my mother soon quotes Seneca and loses the rhythm of the narrative — if there ever was a narrative — and even makes grammatical mistakes, as, for example, “I dream in him” with reference to Hamlet. One deduces that she meant she dreamed of Hamlet, not in Hamlet. And yet I must be grateful for this possible error of my mother’s, since it gave me the idea for the short story, “11 rue Simon-Crubellier,” which I attributed to my son in Montano’s Malady, that story which supposedly condenses into seven squalid pages the history of literature seen as a succession of writers unexpectedly inhabited by the memories of other, earlier writers: the history of literature seen with reversed chronology. This story by Montano contains a series of writers who dream in, inside, in the interior of other writers preceding them in time. I believe that thanks to my mother saying “I dream in him” about Hamlet, thanks to that minute error, I had the whole idea of that spectacular story that enabled Montano to escape from his tragic writer’s block, from the imposed silence that so tormented him back in the bookshop in Nantes.
I must accept reality. My mother behaved impeccably as a housewife, but as a writer of a secret diary she more than took revenge on her conventional life and filled the diary with the language of dementia. That she was mad when she wrote is perfectly clear in the extract from “Theory of Budapest,” where she herself says that she is going to give way to delirium, where she talks, for example, of Hamlet and says quite naturally that one day he will ask about her, and by then she will be “only white clothes.” I need not add what she says about my bumping into Hamlet on some byroad. Though this turned out to be somewhat prophetic, since in Montano’s Malady I talk to my son, who thinks he is Hamlet, and I took the idea from her.
Dangerous weekend, which could give way to drink and a tragic trail of traceless days. And now, Rosario.
For the moment, I abstain. I smoke in front of the mirror and tell myself that basically my mother always had Montano’s malady, was literature-sick. I inherited the disease from her, this much is obvious. And now, José.