These studies of plants or insects looked like sketches God had made before Creation. First came the detailed study, of a dragonfly for example, as if Salvatierra were inventing it, including it for the very first time in the universe of his canvas. He would draw it in different colors from above, below, and face on; it was only some weeks later, when it seemed as though he had forgotten all about it, that the dragonfly made its reappearance, perfectly naturally, smaller but alive, integrated into the background of some scene or other.
I was always astonished at the way things came and went in the work. The canvas was one long open-air procession where beings could vanish and return some time later. Something similar often happens in music, when certain themes reappear with variations. Salvatierra once painted a baby hare I had found and later on, although the hare died on me, he painted it again, asleep in the grass. “Is that mine?” I asked, and he nodded. “Where was it hidden?” I said, and he pointed to the colors and brushes.
Possibly because of this sense of the limitless flow of nature that the canvas had, I find it hard to call it a painting, because that suggests a frame, a border that surrounds certain things, and that’s precisely what Salvatierra wanted to avoid. He was fascinated by the lack of a limit, of a boundary, by the way different spaces communicated with one another. Boundaries are suppressed in his work: each being is at the mercy of all the others, trapped within the cruelty of nature. They are all prey. Even the humans.
Salvatierra wanted to create the impression that, once something was included in the canvas, it could cross the painted space, advance along the work, reappear. Nothing and no one is protected. Not even the scenes in the privacy of a home manage to be enclosed or safe; there is always someone lurking in the shadows, spying; or a man is sleeping while the sick beasts of his nightmares slip in through the bedroom mirrors. There is no “inside,” no home; everyone is vulnerable in the constantly evolving world of color.
Salvatierra painted every day. Each Saturday he would paint the date in blue at the bottom of the point he had reached. Some weeks he managed to paint five meters; others, it would be one, but never less than that. The amount varied according to how much detail each fragment demanded. He never stopped, because for him the canvas itself never stopped. That seemed to be his way of exorcising any painter’s block. It was as if the canvas itself was constantly unfolding to the left, in a manner over which he had no control. He never allowed himself to go back over things. If he didn’t like something he had done, he painted it again further on with variations, but he never went back. Like the past, he considered it impossible to change whatever he had painted.
Sometimes the force driving things on like a torrent is so strong that the figures start to lean, to lose their balance. There are parts of the canvas where they are painted horizontally, dragged along by the rushing current of life, as if the force of time were greater than the force of gravity.
This instability became more pronounced following my sister’s death in 1959. At first Salvatierra began to paint gloomy, lonely corners of the countryside, full of chañar and thorn bushes. These are dense episodes in which every centimeter seems to be viciously alive. In one, there’s a little girl standing motionless while a host of ants climbs her leg and a swarm of wasps surrounds her head and smothers her face. The entire space is a struggle between stinging and biting beings; they all use each other to survive and reproduce.
After that, Salvatierra began to paint my sister in a less painful way: drowned, as if she were asleep, purified by the river, an Ophelia of warm, muddy waters. In his work, Salvatierra had sought to portray the force of the river, and in return the river had demanded his twelve-year-old daughter. The river was carrying her slowly but implacably away, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. That was how he painted her: Estela drowned in the pool beneath the willows; Estela among the monster fish, her hair entangled in the reeds by the water’s edge, her heavy dress, her closed eyelids in the calm current; Estela barely visible beneath the surface, floating through the clouds of reflected water.
This is where everything begins to be flattened by the gusting wind of time. People are suddenly horizontal, swept along by the invisible current. The tree branches flail about, the animals, rain, everything slants to one side, unable to resist. Further on still, they start to appear upside down, to turn tail, until at a moment of complete loss of balance when I think my father must have been close to going mad, the universe tips over completely, the landscape does a somersault, the sky is at the bottom and the land at the top, as though my father were once again seeing the world with the fear of dangling from the stirrup of a horse galloping out of control among the trees.
20
Jordán's house had no bell, so I clapped my hands. A curious yellow puppy came out, then the black dog from the previous day appeared. The house was at the back of a small lot; it was a square building with two rooms and a bare cement front. Next to it stood a trellis vine that gave shade. I was about to leave again when I heard a sneeze. Jordán was inside, but he hadn't heard me. I called out to him. Still no reply. I opened the gate and went in. The dog growled and pranced about, but I tried to walk on without looking down at it. When I got close to the house it gripped my trouser leg. I started shouting “Get off me!” but it wouldn't let go. Then Jordán appeared, his hair tousled. He shooed the dog out of the way, and peered at me in astonishment.
“I'm Salvatierra, do you remember me?”
“Aha.”
“Forgive me for entering like this, but I was clapping my hands and…”
“Come on in,” he said.
We went into one of the rooms, which turned out to be a kitchen. It had no light, only a table and a few chairs. On the wall there was a small, round mirror and a calendar with photos of rodeo riders demonstrating their skills. I sat down and Jordán put some water on for mate tea. I noticed his right hand was bandaged. He sat in the far corner of the room while the water boiled.
“Don’t you practice on the accordion anymore?”
“No,” he replied, bending to reach for something behind him. “Now I practice on my shotgun.”
He was pointing a double-barreled shotgun at me. I was once robbed in a Buenos Aires taxi, and they pointed a revolver at me, but I never saw it because it was pressed into my ribs. The guy must have been a cop, because he had short hair and was very calm. This was different. A crazy old man whose hands trembled was pointing a gun meant for blasting capybara straight at my face.
I started to rise to my feet, warning him to be careful.
“Sit down or I’ll blow your head off,” he said.
I sat down and he stared at me.
“So, Salvatierra… Still after the same old thing, are you?”
“After what?” I asked.
“That little painting of yours.”
“Yes, but why don’t you put that gun down, Jordán? We can talk about it peacefully, there’s no need to threaten me.”
“You owe me.”
“Owe you?”
“You’re nothing but a henpecked asshole.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is that shotgun loaded?”
“Orbea 16 mm cartridges. Two shots. One to make you suffer, the other to finish you off.”
“Stay calm, boss. I’m going to leave now. Tomorrow without fail I’ll bring what you say I owe you. Agreed?”