Horacio Castellanos Moya
Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador
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Warning: Edgardo Vega, the central character of this report, exists. He lives in Montreal under another name, an Anglo-Saxon name that’s not Thomas Bernhard. He surely relayed his opinions more emphatically and with more carnage than this text contains. I’ve softened perspectives that may have offended certain readers.
Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador
GLAD YOU COULD COME, Moya, I had my doubts that you would come, so many people in this city don’t like this place, so many people don’t like this place at all, Moya, which is why I wasn’t sure you’d come, said Vega. I love coming here toward the end of the afternoon, sitting out here on the patio, sipping a couple of whiskeys, listening to the music I ask Tolín to put on, said Vega, I don’t sit at the bar over there inside, it’s hot at the bar, very hot over there inside, the patio’s better, with a drink and the jazz Tolín puts on. It’s the only place where I feel at peace in this country, the only decent place, the other bars are filthy, abominable, filled with guys who drink beer till they burst, I can’t understand it, Moya, I can’t understand how they so eagerly drink such nasty beer intended for animals, said Vega, it’s only good for inducing diarrhea, what they drink here, and what’s worse is they’re proud to drink this nasty beer, they’re capable of killing you if you tell them the beer they drink is nasty putrid water, but it’s not beer, Moya, nowhere in the world would this seriously be considered beer, you know it as well as I do, it’s a revolting liquid, but still they drink it with ignorant passion, said Vega, they are so passionate about their ignorance, Moya, they drink this nastiness with pride, even with a sort of national pride, they’re proud thinking that they drink the best beer in the world, they think El Salvador’s Pilsener is the best beer in the world, not swill only good for inducing diarrhea as any healthy person would think, instead they say it’s the best beer in the world, this is the primary and principal characteristic of ignorance, to consider your very own swamp water the best beer in the world, if you call it anything other than that, if you deride their swamp water, their nasty diarrhea-inducing swill, they’re capable of killing you, said Vega. I like this place, Moya, it’s nothing like those nasty bars where they sell that nasty beer they drink with such passion, this place has its own personality, it’s decorated with some taste, although it’s called La Lumbre, and it’s horrific at night, it’s unbearable with the racket of rock groups, the noise of rock groups, which is perversely annoying to all those in earshot thanks to rock groups. But at this time of day I like this bar, Moya, it’s the only place where I can come, where no one bothers me, where no one hassles me, said Vega. That’s why I invited you here, Moya, La Lumbre is the only place in San Salvador where I can drink and do nothing else for a couple of hours, between five and seven in the evening, for only a couple of hours, after seven this place becomes unbearable, it’s the most unbearable place in existence thanks to rock groups, it’s as unbearable as those bars filled with guys proudly drinking their nasty beer, said Vega, but now we can talk in peace, between five and seven no one will bother us. I’ve come to this place every evening since last week, Moya, I’ve come to La Lumbre every evening since I discovered it, between five and seven, which is why I decided to meet you here, I have to chat with you before I leave, I have to tell you what I think about all this nastiness, there’s no one else I can relate my impressions to, the horrible thoughts I’ve had here, said Vega. Since I saw you at my mother’s wake, I said to myself, Moya is the only person I am going to talk to, no other friends from school showed up at the funeral, no one else thought of me, none of the people who call themselves my friends showed up when my old mother died, only you, Moya, but maybe it’s for the best, because none of my school friends were really my friends, none of them I saw after school ended, it’s better that they didn’t show up, better that none of my old companions showed up at my mother’s wake, except you, Moya, because I hate wakes, I hate to receive condolences, I don’t know what to say, it bothers me when these strangers come up to hug you and act like intimate acquaintances only because your mother has died, it’d be better if they didn’t show up. I hate to have to be nice to people I don’t know, and the majority of people who give you sympathy, the majority who help at the wake, are people you don’t know, you’ll never see them again in your life, Moya, but you have to put on a good face, a contrite and grateful face, a face that’s truly grateful for these complete strangers who have come to your mother’s wake to extend their condolences, as though in times like these what you most need is to be kind to strangers, said Vega. And when you arrived, I thought what a good guy Moya is, and it’s even better that he left so quickly, good old Moya, he left so promptly, I thought, I don’t have to deal with any old school friends, said Vega, I don’t have to be kind to anyone, because hardly anyone attended my mother’s wake, except my brother Ivo and his family, a dozen acquaintances of my mother and my brother, and me, the oldest son, who had to come as quickly as he could from Montreal, who’d hoped to never return to this filthy city, said Vega. Our ex-friends from school have turned out for the worst, Moya, they’re truly revolting; what luck I didn’t run into any of them, except for you, of course, we have nothing in common with them, there isn’t a thing that unites me with one of them. We’re the exception. No one can maintain their lucidity after having studied eleven years with the Marist Brothers, no one can become the least bit thoughtful after enduring an education at the hands of the Marist Brothers, to have studied with the Marist Brothers is the worst thing that’s happened to me in my life, Moya, to have studied under the orders of those fat homosexuals has been my worst shame, there is nothing as stupid as having graduated from the Liceo Salvadoreño, the Marist Brothers’ private school in San Salvador, the best and most prestigious Marist Brother school in El Salvador, there’s nothing as degrading as studying with the Marists who molded our spirits for some eleven years. That doesn’t seem so long, Moya? Eleven years listening to idiocies, obeying idiocies, swallowing idiocies, repeating idiocies, said Vega. Eleven years responding yes, brother Pedro; yes, brother Beto; yes, brother Heliodoro, at the most revolting school for submission of the spirit, that’s what we were in, Moya, which is why I don’t care if any of those characters who were our friends there came to my mother’s wake, they underwent eleven years of spiritual domestication, eleven years of spiritual misery they wouldn’t want to remember, eleven years of spiritual castration, whoever would have showed up would have served only to remind me of the worst years of my life, said Vega. But I just ordered a drink, as you can tell by my rant I haven’t settled down, drink a whisky with me, let’s call Tolín, the bartender, the disc jockey, the jack of all trades at this hour, he’s a good guy, someone I’m grateful to for minimally easing my stay in this horrible country. It makes me happy to chat with you, Moya, although you’ve also studied at the Liceo like me, although you have the same uncleanliness of soul that the Marist Brothers instilled in me during those eleven years, I’m glad to have run into you, an ex-Marist student, who hasn’t participated in the general cretinism, in this we’re similar, Moya, you’re the same as me, said Vega. I’ve been away from this country for eighteen years, and for eighteen years I haven’t missed any of this, because I was precisely fleeing from this country, it seemed the cruelest and most inhuman thing that I was destined to be born in this place considering all the possible places in the world, I never could accept that of the hundreds of countries I could have been destined to be born in, I was born in the worst country of all, the stupidest, the most criminal, I could never accept it, Moya, which is why I went to Montreal well before the war began, I didn’t leave as an exile, not in search of better economic conditions, I left because I never accepted the macabre joke of being destined to be born in this place, said Vega. After I arrived in Montreal, thousands of sinister idiots born in this country arrived, fleeing from the war, searching for better economic conditions, but I was in Montreal well before them, Moya, because I ran from neither war nor poverty, I didn’t flee for the sake of politics, I simply left because I never accepted the idiocy of being Salvadoran, Moya, it always seemed to me the worst kind of idiocy to believe you cared about being Salvadoran, which is why I left, and I neither interfered with nor helped those guys who called themselves compatriots, I had nothing to do with them, I didn’t want to remember anything about this nasty country, I left precisely to have nothing to do with them, which is why I always avoided them, they seemed to me a plague with their solidarity committees and all their stupidities. I never thought about returning. Moya, it always seemed like the worst nightmare to return to San Salvador, I always feared that the moment would come when I had to return to this country, and I avoided it by any means necessary, I avoided it at all costs, the possibility of returning to this country, and not being able to leave again was always my worst nightmare, I swear, Moya, this nightmare wouldn’t let me sleep for years, until they gave me my Canadian passport, until they converted me into a Canadian citizen, until then this horrible nightmare ruined me, said Vega. I mustered the courage to come because of this, Moya, because my Canadian passport is my guarantee, if I didn’t have this Canadian passport I would have never been motivated to come, it never would have occurred to me to get on a plane if it weren’t for my Canadian passport. Even so, I came because my mother died, Moya, the death of my mother is the only reason I felt obliged to return to this filthy pit, if my mother hadn’t died I would never have returned, even when I was thinking that my mother would eventually die, Moya, it never occurred to me that I needed to come back. My brother had said he would arrange everything, he would sell my mother’s belongings and wire my share of the inheritance to my bank account in Montreal, said Vega. I had no intention of coming even for my mother’s wake, Moya, she knew it, every time she came to Montreal to visit me I repeated that I didn’t plan to return if she died, that I wanted nothing to do with this filthy pit of corruption, and my mother always told me not to be such an ingrate, that when she died I had to return to attend her wake, she told me this so often, she insisted to such an extent, it weighed on me so negatively, that now I’m here. My mother won, Moya, she made me return; she’s dead now, sure, but she won: after eighteen years I’m here, I returned for nothing other than to confirm that I did quite well by leaving, that the best that could have happened was to distance myself from this misery, that this country isn’t worth it, this country is a hallucination, Moya, it only exists because of its crimes, as such it was smart to distance myself from this country, to change nationality, to not want to know anything about this place, it’s the best that could have happened to me, said Vega. Here comes Tolín with your drink, Moya, it delights me to befriend whoever serves me drinks, I love that they serve me substantial drinks at this bar, without chintziness, without measuring, nothing more than tipping the bottle over the glass, which is why I like to come to this place, Tolín is an excellent bartender, he gives me the best service, he serves me the best drinks, if he weren’t here I wouldn’t come, don’t doubt it, I come here because Tolín pours me generous whiskeys, said Vega. Thankfully I found this place to make my stay a little more tolerable, Moya, because in the end I had to return because of my mother: she avenged everything, the old lady, she avenged everything I did to her in Montreal, she avenged my disappearance, she listened to none of my negativity about this country, my outright negativity she countered with the whereabouts of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, she countered that one of my childhood friends has become a successful engineer and the other worked in an esteemed medical office, she retaliated after hearing me debase every single thing that had to do with this country, telling me about my school friends, my neighborhood friends, said Vega. The last time my mother came to Montreal twelve years ago, she warned me, Moya, she said I had to return when she died, I couldn’t be an ingrate. Now here I am, even if it’s only for a month, even if it’s no more than thirty days, I don’t intend to stay here a day longer, although we haven’t been able to sell my mother’s house; I’m here in a place I never thought I’d return to, to which I never wanted to return. But I don’t understand what you’re doing here, Moya, this is something I wanted to ask you, this worries me the most, how could someone who wasn’t born here, someone who is free to live in another country, someplace minimally decent, prefer to stay in this shithole, explain it to me, said Vega. You were born in Tegucigalpa, Moya, you spent ten years during the war in Mexico, which is why I don’t understand why you’re here, how could it occur to you to return to live here in this shithole, to settle in a city that sucks you down more and more into its pit of filth. San Salvador is horrible, Moya, and the people who populate it are worse, they’re a putrid race, the war unhinged everyone, and if it was already dreadful before I took off, if it was unbearable for my first eighteen years, now it’s vomitous, Moya, a truly vomitous city where only truly sinister people can live, which is why I can’t explain why you’re here, how you can be around people who are so repulsive, around people whose greatest ambition in life is to be a sergeant; have you seen them walk, Moya? I can’t believe it when I see it, it’s the most repulsive thing, I swear, they all walk like they’re soldiers, they cut their hair like they’re soldiers, they think like they’re soldiers, it’s horrific, Moya, they all want to be in the military, they’d all be happy if they were in the military, they’d all love to be in the military so they’d have the power to kill with total impunity, everyone carries a desire to kill in their eyes, in the way they walk, the way they talk, they all want to be in the military so they can kill, this is what it means to be Salvadoran, Moya, to want to be like a solider, said Vega. It’s revolting, Moya, there’s nothing that produces more revulsion in me than soldiers, as such I’ve suffered revulsion for fifteen days, it’s the only thing this country produces in me, Moya, revulsion, a terrible, horrible, dreadful revulsion that everyone wants to be like soldiers, to be a solider is the best thing they can imagine, it’s enough to make you vomit. Which is why I say I don’t understand what you’re doing here, although Tegucigalpa must be more horrible than San Salvador, the people in Tegucigalpa must be imbeciles just like the people in San Salvador, in the end they’re two cities that are too close to each other, two cities where the military has dominated for decades, infected, horrid, filled with guys wanting to be in good standing with the military, wanting to be around the military, anxious to be like soldiers, they look for the least opportunity to grovel before the military, said Vega. It’s truly revolting, Moya, the only thing I feel is a tremendous revulsion; I’ve never seen such a bottom-dwelling race, so fawning, so happy to whore themselves out to soldiers, I’ve never seen anyone so possessed and criminal, with all the vocation of an assassin, it’s truly revolting. Just being here fifteen day