the plaza. It was five in the afternoon; Matanzaâs infamous wind was blowing. I wanted to go back to my apartment in peace, forget about the Vivars, sleep calmly. In a couple of days the story would be written. The strange feelings would be forgotten. Once written, the truth about the parts played by Alicia and Boris Real would be reduced to those of characters in a book (or worse, in a journal), and Matanza and Navidad would become exotic towns on postcards from provincial Chile.
Before going back to Santiagoâwhile buying a postcard that depicted a fisherman smiling on the cold, dry beach, under a white skyâI randomly overheard the conversation of a man working in the market and a woman, sitting on a wicker stool, weaving. The man told her that heâd finally be able to pay off a debt because heâd come into some unexpected money. A few days ago, while he was walking with Violeta on the beach toward the cove, âBorisâ had approached him and asked if his daughter, who was shivering because sheâd just come out of the water, would be interested in becoming an actress. How random, the woman said. Boris toldhim that at the school in Navidad they were going to be putting on a play at the beginning of the school year. And Violetita would be perfect for the part. Imagine that, Violetita an actress, said the woman indifferently.
I interrupted to ask the man where I could find this Boris. At the service station they both replied at the same time; the service station attendant is named Boris.
89
L ITERATURE IS A LIE . Embrace the wind. Today is Saturday, the fourteenth day of September in the year two thousand and two since the birth of Jesus Christ. Iâm sitting in front of the screen, the keyboard, and the speakers of my computer, at eight hours twenty minutes past noon, in an apartment in a building on Merced, whose number, with respect to the Plaza de Armas in Santiago de Chile, is four-hundred seventy-one. Twenty-five years have passed since my mother gave birth to me. More than twenty minutes ago a beautiful woman left my apartment, up from the armchair, out through the door into the hallway, and gone. Thirty minutes from now Iâll be sitting in front of the television. Only what happens exists. Only what I can see, hear, touch, smell, taste. Nevertheless, she bit her bottom lip and smiled. She looked at the floor. I sensed for a brief instant the chess game of God. Sheâd been thinking about me too, and my body was attracted to hers like metal to a magnet. It is now, here. You might say that I want to raise walls, construct a bedroom, write a chapter in a novel where the two of us would touch each other freely. But I donât. She looks at the clock and says: I have to go.
It is a game. Not a novel.
There is no story. Only rules.
99
D O YOU REMEMBER how many times we discussed that Wittgensteinian way of looking at things? And how many times we talked about idealism? That objects donât exist, dear Sabado, only words, which build and break, build and break. Itâs impossible to know what happens to the apple when you bite it. To write with hate. Under the effect of hadón, wanting my words not to bite the open chin, the purple cheek, the white eyes of Martes, but to bite your throat, your neck, your mouth, from a distance. Let me hate you,Sabado, since I canât touch you, to dispel the death of these four walls. For this I write you.
âBut tell me, do you hate me?â Martes asked me, before smashing his head against the wall of mirrors and falling unconscious to the floor. Heâs not dead; he sleeps, I believe. I hope.
The only way to save the head is to train it. In the Lacanian sense of the term, Montes would say, because, he claims, the mind is only language.
Or an invention of language.
I too let myself fall to the floor of the entertainment room, my hands locked together, staring at Martes. Theyâve locked the door from outside, right?
Before going back to Santiagoâwhile buying a postcard that depicted a fisherman smiling on the cold, dry beach, under a white skyâI randomly overheard the conversation of a man working in the market and a woman, sitting on a wicker stool, weaving. The man told her that heâd finally be able to pay off a debt because heâd come into some unexpected money. A few days ago, while he was walking with Violeta on the beach toward the cove, âBorisâ had approached him and asked if his daughter, who was shivering because sheâd just come out of the water, would be interested in becoming an actress. How random, the woman said. Boris toldhim that at the school in Navidad they were going to be putting on a play at the beginning of the school year. And Violetita would be perfect for the part. Imagine that, Violetita an actress, said the woman indifferently.
I interrupted to ask the man where I could find this Boris. At the service station they both replied at the same time; the service station attendant is named Boris.
89
L ITERATURE IS A LIE . Embrace the wind. Today is Saturday, the fourteenth day of September in the year two thousand and two since the birth of Jesus Christ. Iâm sitting in front of the screen, the keyboard, and the speakers of my computer, at eight hours twenty minutes past noon, in an apartment in a building on Merced, whose number, with respect to the Plaza de Armas in Santiago de Chile, is four-hundred seventy-one. Twenty-five years have passed since my mother gave birth to me. More than twenty minutes ago a beautiful woman left my apartment, up from the armchair, out through the door into the hallway, and gone. Thirty minutes from now Iâll be sitting in front of the television. Only what happens exists. Only what I can see, hear, touch, smell, taste. Nevertheless, she bit her bottom lip and smiled. She looked at the floor. I sensed for a brief instant the chess game of God. Sheâd been thinking about me too, and my body was attracted to hers like metal to a magnet. It is now, here. You might say that I want to raise walls, construct a bedroom, write a chapter in a novel where the two of us would touch each other freely. But I donât. She looks at the clock and says: I have to go.
It is a game. Not a novel.
There is no story. Only rules.
99
D O YOU REMEMBER how many times we discussed that Wittgensteinian way of looking at things? And how many times we talked about idealism? That objects donât exist, dear Sabado, only words, which build and break, build and break. Itâs impossible to know what happens to the apple when you bite it. To write with hate. Under the effect of hadón, wanting my words not to bite the open chin, the purple cheek, the white eyes of Martes, but to bite your throat, your neck, your mouth, from a distance. Let me hate you,Sabado, since I canât touch you, to dispel the death of these four walls. For this I write you.
âBut tell me, do you hate me?â Martes asked me, before smashing his head against the wall of mirrors and falling unconscious to the floor. Heâs not dead; he sleeps, I believe. I hope.
The only way to save the head is to train it. In the Lacanian sense of the term, Montes would say, because, he claims, the mind is only language.
Or an invention of language.
I too let myself fall to the floor of the entertainment room, my hands locked together, staring at Martes. Theyâve locked the door from outside, right?
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