[11.18. Rum, sodomy, and the lash, we cheered. We threatened.]
11. (20, see below). Beautiful, detailed notation by Aída on pulque and the agave plant. We all cracked open a beer, except Luini, who moved tentatively for the sangria. Once finished, he seized the bottle of tequila, and poured himself a reckless measure.
11. (23, prime numbers). Toast finished. Zi Benno (after yielding to his obsessive compulsion of applying lip balm to prevent his lips from cracking) steered the conversation towards topics of interest to him … “In what language did Traven write?” he asked. “German,” answered the room. Zi took a seat. “How weird,” said Luini, who held that B. Traven and Arthur Cravan were one and the same, and that he decided to remain a célibataire when he was in Mexico (the reason he never traveled to Buenos Aires to meet up with his betrothed, Mina Loy). No doubt Cravan became Traven in Mexico, and that it was Traven’s shadow we see cast over Marcel Duchamp’s journals.
Aída was put at ease by her husband’s comment (a comment she herself should have made): “But then, at some point, the bachelor must’ve emerged from the shadows. He has a legitimate daughter who looks after his estate in Mexico City.”
“Estate?” asked the room. He meant the author’s royalties and copyright.
11.28. After some idle talk by Luini, the day’s first nautical incident. Our boat was almost swept under the hull of a very large, very luxurious yacht (“when describing a boat, should I refer to the draft?” I’ll ask Captain Bonzo once I’m back in Buenos Aires). Its occupants (crew would be an exaggeration) hardly noticed the incident. In fact, they seemed to be getting on with having a good time. We signaled them to pass us by.
“What a bunch of shitheads!” said Luini [with his usual impertinence] after they were gone. “It wasn’t that big, no bigger than the billiards table inside. Speaking of which, let’s have a game.” “It’s a snooker table,” said Zi emphatically, the only time I’d heard him speak so emphatically, which caused my admiration for him to grow. “If it wasn’t that big,” interjected Hernán, “you wouldn’t have noticed that it nearly capsized us.”
11.33. Got back on track. Before long, finished first bottle of tequila (thanks mostly to Luini’s animal thirst). Hernán tried to recall last the time he played snooker. “It was in the Hirsute in San Diego, no … the Champlines, no, no … in the Venusón in Guadalajara!” We asked what that was. “Was? Is” said Aída, who then proceeded to explain: “the largest and most densely populated brothel from Acapulco to Laredo, I’ll have you know. Tell them Hernán.” So Hernán continued the hyperbole. We seemed to be in Brazil, where I’m from, where everyone’s prone to exaggeration. “Not very often,” Hernán hastened to add [confess]. “But I used to go once in a while.”
11.40. Then Zi remembered that he was supposed to go see it the last time he was in Mexico. Not for pleasure, [he assured us] (none of us suspected otherwise), but because he was invited to the Guadalajara Book Fair and the Venusón wasn’t far from where he was staying. But while in Guadalajara, he also intended to pay a visit to a convent that apparently houses the best preserved mummies in the world, because the previous time he went, way back in 1985, when he was accompanied by a friend, Quatrocchi, a sinologist — whom he introduced to me one morning during their visit in the Colegio de México — he was in a rush and didn’t get a chance to go either to the Venusón or the convent …, so they planned to go last year …, because he thought that would be his last ever time in Mexico …, and once again forgot …, about both! Only when he was on the plane back to Buenos Aires, did he remember …
Prolonged silence. Then tactfully, furtively, with dignified misgiving, Zi added: “Of course being with friends at all those literary conferences, whether in Mexico or River Plate, helps make the time pass by more quickly …” But Aída and Hernán were still suspicious so he finally confessed that everything he said was actually [in reality] just the précis of a story he was writing called “The Motive,” that he intended to publish and distribute in the form of fliers around Buenos Aires. For free, of course. We all demanded copies.
11.48. Initial assertion on the artificiality of memory followed by [simpatico] effusions on said topic. Photos taken, then more toasting.
11.51. The Venusón of Guadalajara, they say, was built at the start of the twentieth century, and is distinguished for having been modeled a la manière of the most exquisite houses of ill-repute in New Orleans. For this, they gathered together three architects, two painters of the academic style, and a gringo [Greek] pimp: Milos (afterwards, Eros) Catsaunis, who brought along the first employees — Hungarians, made available by the generous Zwi Migdal Foundation. In 1901, there were already one hundred pupils. As a principle of order, the first madam (ex-principal of a rural public school) decided to give them all new names, using a triadic or tripartite alphabetical criterion (Amanda Albéniz Amadis, Fátima Fajardo Fez, Zenobia Zilphia Zardos), and to group them accordingly within stables, each group’s designation being the first names of each of the five ladies in that group, the designation being pronounced rhythmically after an iambic or amphibrachic pattern, with all groups together, of course, forming part of a single group, that Fourier-inspired phalanstary called the Venusón. In the early days — the Belle Époque, specifically, but above all in Mexico — the Venusón was run by a committee, each of whose members was supplied with a catalogue (basically, a large photo album). Aída still has the one she inherited from her grandfather, an eminent hygienist who’d made a memorable contribution (I can’t remember the year, but Aída wrote it down somewhere) in enforcing the use of Venusiline (or Veniciline, as it’s called in old manuals and dated encyclopedias).
Famélica Fátima íntima, crooned Luini.
12.02. We hear a distinctively whiny voice coming from outside. Turn to see a boy on the pier, leaning over the gunnel, holding a basket. He was watching us attentively. Such serious eyes, he smiled a toothless smile. Luini passed a [frivolous] remark about the poor being more varied and interesting than the rich [the poverty of enrichment]: the rich look the same wherever you go, but a city is made distinctive by its poor. Indeed, it is the poor we erect as models to be imitated, it is they that easily pass through the eyes of needles. He gave some examples, to boot (the castle, the museum, the oasis) …
The boy offered us corn, marijuana, axolotls, magic mushrooms, more tequila, Angostura bitters, a mercury or cinnabar casserole (which came with a clarification: specular soup for the reptilian brain). Zi wanted to try it, in spite (or as a result) of Hernán telling him it had hallucinogenic effects (similar to those brought on by severe fasting, according to a mendicant monk he knows who spends his summers on Mount Athos).
Asked to describe it, Hernán said it was a colloidal substance, with a taste like rolled oats mixed with a drop of sacramental wine (Nebbiolo or Semillon), which he remembers from his boyhood. He said he got used to the taste of the soup during a long trip around Patagonia with his stepmother. As regards its consistency, he tried to be precise (recalling his studies in chemistry) and therefore once again began by insisting it was a colloidal substance … something he had as a boy … like rolled oats and sacramental wine … In the end, we bought a parrot Aída fell in love with. It flitted from shoulder to shoulder and then became like the Paraclete of scripture or Felicité’s little mascot in that sentimental though charming provincial parable of Flaubert’s.