They looked at me in surprise and Supervielle said, we were talking about the conference, of course, and about the dramatic context of this war, unpleasant and inhuman like all wars; we were saying that people are talking in small groups about those spray-painted notices that have started to appear all over the city and the roads with the word Alqudsville, which sounds oddly picturesque, you know that the Arabic name for this city is Al-Quds, so the word is a kind of joke, or worse, something that many fear but that nobody here dares to say out loud, don’t you think so, my friend? So I said, I’m not sure what to think, I haven’t been following current events for quite a while now because of my convalescence, so it’s hard for me to express an opinion, but I’d love to hear yours, it would be enlightening. Kosztolányi made as if to speak, raising his index finger like a conductor about to bring in the percussion or the wind section, except that instead of words we heard a loud explosion that shook the building, cut off the electricity, and turned out the lights.
There were cries, people running blindly, and a couple of glasses fell to the floor and shattered, but the master of ceremonies, helped by the flickering light from the candles, jumped onto the platform and begged for calm; then he ordered the musicians to carry on playing, by heart. The party continued and Kosztolányi said, it was a six-inch shell, I can recognize them, I think it’s time for another drink, we don’t want to lose the momentum, we’re at war and war is men’s business, so he moved his bottle closer and filled our glasses.
After the conflagration, the second speaker went up to the platform, knocked with his fingers on the microphone and started speaking, thanking the audience for their presence, especially the international delegates, and said, I know this is a strange time to be holding conferences, these fateful years it has befallen us to live through would be more suitable for seclusion and solitude, and that is why we are so grateful to you, the intellect must continue its work in the midst of the most horrifying circumstances, it’s always been that way and today more than ever, when the present is growing ever angrier as if to punish us, it is worthwhile looking at the past, turning to memory, which is one of the keys of this international conference, because in memory lies the origin of ourselves and of reality, let us remember that each one of us, or so the novelists tell us, is unique and irreplaceable, but above all it is what each person can tell or remember, what he can tell others, or that other who takes shape in the smooth mirror of writing, and I’m sorry if I speak to you in metaphors, in spite of being a sociologist I have cultivated poetry, where I have found the best of life, its truest consistency, anyway: that thing, so precious and fragile, that is in danger just outside these walls, and not only here but in so many other places, and in so many other wars, that is why we must continue to speak and write and tell stories; I believe in the redeeming power of the word and I know you do too, and that is why I now raise my glass and say, cheers, welcome, shalom, and thank you.
I listened to the speech passively, without knowing who the man was, let alone why he was on the platform. I assumed that at the beginning of the party the organizers of the conference had introduced themselves and that was why they were not doing so now, so I asked Kosztolányi, who’s the man who just spoke? and he said, ah, you’re a dreamer, adrift in reality, it’s obvious you’re a poet! That man is none other than Shlomo Yehuda, president and director of the ICBM, author of at least fifty books, scholar of language, essayist, teacher, and legal consultant, one of the most distinguished intellectuals in the country, and that’s why I advise you, dear friend, when you’re introduced to him pretend you know him, say something like: it’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Yehuda, I have known your name since I was a boy, I never thought I’d shake your hand, do you see? You have to tell him something flattering because Shlomo is a vain man, an all too common failing in exceptional people, unfortunately, prepare one of those phrases that don’t commit you too much and which, above all, don’t have to be explained.
Suddenly the door opened and a woman came in. I recognized her immediately. It was Sabina Vedovelli, the Italian diva of the porn industry. I looked at her with great interest and was genuinely captivated by what I saw. Her body and her clothes seemed to say, or even scream, to each man present: “I know how good I am, that on seeing me your cocks stand up like harbor cranes, pulling your underpants to one side; I know you’re trying to imagine my boobs jumping over your face and that you’re fantasizing about my inflamed cunt and imagining my labia swallowing your penis, and your veins are already as swollen as the muscles of an athlete, and I also know that you’re visualizing my anus that you’d like to sodomize, and you want to kiss me like a thirsty dog drinking from a puddle, and bite my tongue, which has sucked so many different cocks, oh, how well I understand you and how sorry I feel for you.”
Sabina Vedovelli was wearing a one-piece black leather tailleur, like Modesty Blaise in the comic strip (does anybody remember that?), with prominent cleavage, high heels in spite of her height and a silk bow around her neck. She had padded lips, violet eyelids, and intense dark blue eyes, like the doom-laden sky in a painting by Van Gogh, which seemed able to drill holes in anything put in front of her. Of course, seeing her I thought of the other woman, the one I’d seen not so long before, and I thought, she isn’t the same, they were very different although there’s something about them, the way you can say about somebody that they have a similar rhythm to somebody else, a certain cadence, even though the first one had a beauty that seemed to have appeared fully grown, pure and uncontaminated.
I remembered the video I had seen on the internet, her ass lifted in that legendary position, immortalized in the drawings of Milo Manara, which some experts on erotica call Looking at Constantinople. It seemed incredible that this was the same woman and yet here she was, before my very eyes. Part of her unattainable air came from the two gorillas who came in with her — and when I say gorillas I do not mean Tarzan’s friends, I am using the term in the other sense, meaning bodyguards — two men with dark glasses and earphone leads sticking out of their ears, who cleared a path for her through the crowd. She waved and smiled at the organizers as if these men were not beside her, intimidating everyone, and I thought, she must be used to it, they are her guard dogs and for her they do not even exist.
Supervielle and Kosztolányi were also looking at her.
She’s a catlike, dangerous woman, said Kosztolányi before taking a big slug of his whiskey, but you can’t imagine the talks she gives, they’re real performances, with photographs and animations, I was at a conference similar to this in Stockholm and the fact is, her contribution was fantastic, don’t you remember, dear Edgar? Supervielle said, yes, although I must confess that her aggressive style bothers me, without wishing to be critical, I know it corresponds to a way of life that’s very widespread in all cultures and it’s useful that she’s among us, which does not prevent one from feeling somewhat. . how can I put it? remote from it all, yes, that’s the word. Then they remembered an occasion when Sabina Vedovelli (was it in Seattle or Bucharest?) had appeared with a tiger cub, which had aroused a mixture of admiration and fear in the audience.
Listening to them, I realized that most of them had been at other conferences together, and I asked them, do you all know each other? to which Supervielle replied, well, the ICBM is new and this is its first conference, but we’ve met at similar events. Kosztolányi added, those of us in the trade have periodic meetings, more or less once every two years, I can understand your surprise, I don’t know what writers’ conferences are like. They both looked at me, so I said, writers’ conferences are usually on a specific theme that’s sufficiently vague for everyone to fit in, things like The Writer and the New Century or Where is Literature Going? and, well, once the group is together there’s an opening reception similar to this one, and then the round tables start; some people bring written texts and read them and others improvise, depending on their experience, and the members of the audience applaud and get quite excited because the only reason they’re there is that they’ve read the authors’ works or have heard of them, and at the end of each session they come up and ask for autographs and dedications, anyway, it’s all a bit mechanical. At night, some writers set off on the prowl looking for young female readers or women delegates, and it’s normal to see them in the bars and on the terraces, making passionate speeches about themselves or their books, enthusiastically telling anecdotes in which they, with all due modesty, appear as heroes or even superheroes and their books as outstanding masterpieces of modern culture. Others prefer to stay in their hotel rooms watching TV channels like MTV or Discovery so that they can then talk about them with scorn at dinner, when what they’re actually saying is, I don’t mix with you, you lousy bunch, I’m above all that, thereby creating an aura of respectability and mystery about themselves. There are also those who devote their time to drinking and forging closer ties that will allow them to obtain invitations to other conferences, and so some colleagues are able to go from one conference to another and spend the whole year traveling, giving interviews from which literary matters are usually rather absent, either because they’re talking off the tops of their heads or because what they really want to create is some kind of political controversy, and so the writers sound off, taking sides and making accusations, ensuring themselves a great deal of visibility in the press, which records their invectives in banner headlines, and if the writer in question is lucky enough to be contradicted by some political or ecclesiastical authority, things really start to heat up, giving rise to a juicy polemic that increases their fame, and other writers jump on the bandwagon to support that first writer, because if the controversy is big enough there’ll be enough left over for them, too, although, of course, the first writer wants to protect the fame he’s acquired, he doesn’t want to lose it to opportunists, and so, in the end, his books will sell more copies and the polemic will have given the event a contemporary, committed, and cosmopolitan air, which benefits everyone and will undoubtedly ensure that the banks and the financial or political organizations that sponsor them want to continue supporting them, even if one of those organizations was the very one that was being criticized or insulted.