FINISHED SYMPHONY
“And I could tell you,” the fat man interjected in a rush, “that three years ago in Guatemala an old organist in a neighborhood church told me that in 1929 when he was asked to catalogue the music manuscripts in La Merced he suddenly found some unusual pages that intrigued him and he began to study them with his usual devotion and because the notes in the margins were written in German it took him a long time to realize they were the two final movements of the Unfinished Symphony so I could just imagine his feelings when he saw Schubert’s signature written clearly and when he ran out to the street in great excitement to tell everyone of his discovery they laughed and said he had lost his mind and wanted to trick them but since he was a master of his craft and knew with certainty that the last two movements were as excellent as the first two he did not lose heart but swore instead to devote the rest of his life to making people admit the validity of his discovery and that was why from then on he dedicated himself to methodically visiting every musician in Guatemala with such awful results that after fighting with most of them and without saying anything to anybody least of all his wife he sold his house and went to Europe and once he was in Vienna it was even worse because they said no Guatemalan Leiermann1 was going to teach them how to find lost works least of all ones by Schubert whose scholars were all over the city and how could those pages have ended up so far from home until almost desperate and with only enough money for his return passage he met a family of elderly Jews who had lived in Buenos Aires and spoke Spanish and listened to him very attentively and became very agitated when God knows how they played the two movements on their piano viola and violin and at last grew tired of examining the pages every which way and smelling them and holding them up to the light that came in through the window and finally found themselves obliged to admit at first very quietly and then with great shouts they’re by Schubert! they’re by Schubert! and began to cry in despair on each other’s shoulders as if instead of finding the pages they had just lost them and I would have been amazed at how they continued to cry although they calmed down a little and after talking among themselves in their own language tried to convince him as they rubbed their hands together that the movements excellent as they were added nothing to the value of the symphony just as it was and on the contrary one could say they detracted from it since people had grown used to the legend that Schubert tore them up or did not even try to write them certain he would never surpass or even equal the quality of the first two and the pleasure lay in thinking if this is how the allegro and the andante are what must the scherzo and the allegro ma non troppo be like and if he really respected and revered the memory of Schubert the most intelligent thing would be to allow them to keep the music because besides the fact that there would be an endless polemic the only one who would lose anything would be Schubert and then convinced he could never achieve anything among the philistines much less the admirers of Schubert who were even worse he sailed back to Guatemala and one night during the crossing under a full moon shining against the foaming sides of the ship with the deepest sadness and sick of fighting bad people and good he took the manuscript and ripped the pages one by one and threw the pieces overboard until he was certain that now no one would ever find them again”—the fat man concluded in a certain tone of affected melancholy—“while great tears burned his cheeks and he thought bitterly that neither he nor his country would ever claim the glory of having returned to the world those pages that the world should have received with so much joy but which the world with so much common sense had rejected.”
Note
1 organ-grinder
FIRST LADY
“My husband says it’s just another one of my dumb ideas,” she thought, “but all he wants is for me to stay home all the time, slaving like I used to. And that’s just what he won’t get. Maybe the others are afraid of him but not me. If I hadn’t helped him when we were really broke, we’d still be in a mess. And why shouldn’t I recite poetry if I want to, if I like it? He’s President now but that shouldn’t stand in my way — he should realize that this way I can help him even more. The fact is that men, presidents or not, are full of their own dumb ideas. Besides, I wouldn’t run around giving recitals any old place like a lunatic, just at official functions or benefits. Yes sir, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
There was nothing wrong with it. She finished her bath. She went into her bedroom. While she was combing her hair, she saw in the mirror the shelves behind her. They were filled with books in disarray. Novels. Poetry. She thought about some of them and how much she liked them. Anthologies of the thousand best poems in the world, no one had surpassed those giants and reciters of poetry — she had marked the most beautiful ones with little strips of paper. “Laughing with Tears in My Eyes,” “The Rabbi’s Head,” “Tropics!” “To a Mother.” My God, where did they find so many things to write about? Soon there’d be no more room for books in the house. But even if you couldn’t read them all, they were the best legacy.
Several copies of that night’s program were on the dresser. She really felt like giving a reading all by herself. Until now, because she was so modest, she had not arranged anything like that. She knew, though, that she was the principal performer.
This time it was a benefit that had been organized in something of a hurry for the School Breakfast Program. Someone had noticed that schoolchildren were undernourished and that some of them were fainting at about eleven in the morning, probably the very moment when the teachers were at their best. At first it was attributed to indigestion, then to an epidemic of worms (Department of Health), and only recently, during one of his frequent attacks of insomnia, did it occur in a hazy way to the Director General of Education that they might possibly be cases of hunger.
When the Director General called a good number of parents to a meeting, most of them objected loudly to the idea that they might be so poor, and for the sake of their pride, none was inclined to believe what he said. But when the meeting adjourned, several approached the Director individually and confessed that sometimes — not always of course — they sent their children to school on an empty stomach. The Director was horrified at seeing his suspicions confirmed and decided it was necessary to do something soon. Fortunately, he remembered that the President had been his classmate in high school, and he arranged to see him immediately. He did not regret it. The President received him in the nicest way, probably with more cordiality than he would have displayed had he occupied a less elevated position. So that when he began, “Mr. President…” he laughed and said, “Cut out the ‘Mr. President’ crap and tell me straight out why you’re here,” and laughing all the while he made him sit down with a light pressure on his shoulder. Things were going fine. But the Director knew that no matter how many slaps on the back he gave him, things were not the way they were back in the days when they were in school together, or even two years ago when they would have a drink with friends at the Danubio. In any event, he was obviously beginning to feel comfortable in his office. As he himself had said as he raised his index finger over dessert at a recent dinner at his parents’ house, first to the general anticipation and then to the thunderous applause of his relatives and comrades-in-arms: “At first it feels strange, but you get used to everything.”