same tomorrow, something like
Plato’s Primordial Idea or Bergson’s crystals of time, although the singer had never heard of them.
According to Alcira, Martel’s interest in the mirages of time began in Tita Merello’s cinema, one June day, when they went to see two movies Carlos Gardel had filmed at the Paramount
studios in Joinville,
Melodia de arrabal (Suburban Melody)
and
Luces de Buenos Aires (Lights of Buenos Aires).
Martel had observed his idol with such intensity that he felt at certain
moments – he said then – that he was him. Not even the terrible condition of the prints had disappointed him. In the solitude of the theater, he sang softly, in a duet with the voice on
screen, two of the tangos,
Tomo y obligo (I’ll have a Drink and so will You)
and
Silencio.
Alcira couldn’t hear the slightest difference between one singer and the other.
When Martel imitated Gardel,
he was Gardel
, she said. When he strove to be himself, he was better.
They went back to see the two films again the next day at the matinee and, on the way out, the singer decided to buy copies on video that they sold in a shop on Corrientes at the corner of
Rodríguez Pena. For a week he did nothing but watch them over and over again on the television, sleeping now and then, eating something, and watching them again, Alcira told me. He’d
pause them to look at the rural landscape, the cafés of the day, the greengrocers’ shops, the clubs. Gardel, on the other hand, he listened to spellbound, without pauses. When it was
all over, he told me that the past of films was an artifice. The tones of the voices were conserved as clearly as in the recordings they retouched in the studios, but the surroundings were painted
cardboard and, even though what we saw was the very same cardboard as the day it was filmed, the gaze degraded it, as if time contained a force of incorrigible gravity. Not even then did he stop
thinking, Alcira told me, that the past was intact somewhere, maybe not in people’s memories, as we might suppose, but rather outside of us, in some uncertain point in reality.
I didn’t know any of this when I went to the arcades of the Liniers market at eleven-thirty the next morning, the day after my encounter with Valeria. Among a sea of cables, beside two
trucks loaded with spotlights and sound systems, I made out the two young actors from La Brigada in patent leather high-heeled shoes. The filming had finished and I didn’t approach them. The
place was lit by the soft November sunlight and, despite the cracks of humidity and age, it still had a severe beauty. Behind the arcades were glimpses of entrance halls and stairways to the
offices of a union, a pottery class and the neighborhood committee, while across the street was a sign for a Creole Museum I didn’t care to visit. In the center, a sixty-foot-high tower
topped with a clock threw its shadow across the Plazoleta del Resero, where a few tipas trees grew, like in Parque Lezama.
Although the street’s hustle and bustle was incessant at this time of day as heaving buses went past, leaving a wake of asthmatic sounds, the air smelled of cows, calves and wet grass.
While I waited for noon, I went into the market. An intricate web of corridors surrounded the corrals. Despite the late hour, two thousand head of cattle were waiting to be auctioned. The
consignees executed an inimitable minuet in those galleries, one step of which was discussing the livestock prices among themselves, at the same time as writing hieroglyphics in their electronic
appointment books, talking on their cell phones and exchanging signals with their colleagues, without getting confused or missing a beat. On one occasion I heard the cathedral-like bell ringing in
the distance announcing the auction, while the drivers moved the cattle from one corral to another. After having seen
Faena
, knowing the fate that awaited each one of these animals –
an inevitable fate that, nevertheless,
Plato’s Primordial Idea or Bergson’s crystals of time, although the singer had never heard of them.
According to Alcira, Martel’s interest in the mirages of time began in Tita Merello’s cinema, one June day, when they went to see two movies Carlos Gardel had filmed at the Paramount
studios in Joinville,
Melodia de arrabal (Suburban Melody)
and
Luces de Buenos Aires (Lights of Buenos Aires).
Martel had observed his idol with such intensity that he felt at certain
moments – he said then – that he was him. Not even the terrible condition of the prints had disappointed him. In the solitude of the theater, he sang softly, in a duet with the voice on
screen, two of the tangos,
Tomo y obligo (I’ll have a Drink and so will You)
and
Silencio.
Alcira couldn’t hear the slightest difference between one singer and the other.
When Martel imitated Gardel,
he was Gardel
, she said. When he strove to be himself, he was better.
They went back to see the two films again the next day at the matinee and, on the way out, the singer decided to buy copies on video that they sold in a shop on Corrientes at the corner of
Rodríguez Pena. For a week he did nothing but watch them over and over again on the television, sleeping now and then, eating something, and watching them again, Alcira told me. He’d
pause them to look at the rural landscape, the cafés of the day, the greengrocers’ shops, the clubs. Gardel, on the other hand, he listened to spellbound, without pauses. When it was
all over, he told me that the past of films was an artifice. The tones of the voices were conserved as clearly as in the recordings they retouched in the studios, but the surroundings were painted
cardboard and, even though what we saw was the very same cardboard as the day it was filmed, the gaze degraded it, as if time contained a force of incorrigible gravity. Not even then did he stop
thinking, Alcira told me, that the past was intact somewhere, maybe not in people’s memories, as we might suppose, but rather outside of us, in some uncertain point in reality.
I didn’t know any of this when I went to the arcades of the Liniers market at eleven-thirty the next morning, the day after my encounter with Valeria. Among a sea of cables, beside two
trucks loaded with spotlights and sound systems, I made out the two young actors from La Brigada in patent leather high-heeled shoes. The filming had finished and I didn’t approach them. The
place was lit by the soft November sunlight and, despite the cracks of humidity and age, it still had a severe beauty. Behind the arcades were glimpses of entrance halls and stairways to the
offices of a union, a pottery class and the neighborhood committee, while across the street was a sign for a Creole Museum I didn’t care to visit. In the center, a sixty-foot-high tower
topped with a clock threw its shadow across the Plazoleta del Resero, where a few tipas trees grew, like in Parque Lezama.
Although the street’s hustle and bustle was incessant at this time of day as heaving buses went past, leaving a wake of asthmatic sounds, the air smelled of cows, calves and wet grass.
While I waited for noon, I went into the market. An intricate web of corridors surrounded the corrals. Despite the late hour, two thousand head of cattle were waiting to be auctioned. The
consignees executed an inimitable minuet in those galleries, one step of which was discussing the livestock prices among themselves, at the same time as writing hieroglyphics in their electronic
appointment books, talking on their cell phones and exchanging signals with their colleagues, without getting confused or missing a beat. On one occasion I heard the cathedral-like bell ringing in
the distance announcing the auction, while the drivers moved the cattle from one corral to another. After having seen
Faena
, knowing the fate that awaited each one of these animals –
an inevitable fate that, nevertheless,
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