12.46. I spent some time thinking about yesterday (which, through the alcoholic haze, seemed no different than today — a horrible day, whose unfolding I seemed to control at every opportunity by consulting the oval on my fragile left wrist, to verify that within that small space behind the glass face, only you and I exist).
I completely forgot. The evening spent at the home of Septimio Mir’s widow had been exceptional. The refined Uruguayan poet asked with oriental courtesy what had happened to the hototogisu in Zi’s novel … “The what?” yelled the poet’s husband, posing like a River Plate sodomite. Zi explained that the nightingale is in fact the cuckoo. The poet’s husband thought the words didn’t sound alike: the cuckoo, a scoundrel according to his moral lexicon; but not the hototogisu. How is it possible that within a belletrist culture like that one, there was so much admiration for the works of Zi — with their soppy sentimentalism and bumpkin sophistication, their bad grammar and archaic anacoluthia, and all those gigantic leaps away from the slightly credible to the wholly fabulous? Why him, a mere essayist, a literary seamster, a sower of gaudy patchworks, of varicolored doormats …?
As always, Luini showed his true colors. For example:
12.55. In fact, there were many at the widow’s house: first, he attempted to steal a work by Gironelli (I doubt he’d have appreciated it, but it was the only book he could fit in his pocket); then he spent the whole night flattering guests and then backbiting them when they were out of earshot; finally, after slobbering his food and swilling his drink like a cuirassier, he soon had his face in the toilet, one of the two complementary seats of capitalism, the other being the bank. He shouldn’t have banked on us defending his actions though.
14.35. The widow’s house on Edgar Allan Poe Street, in Colonia Polanco, was like a museum. Paintings of the highest order.
14.36. (Wolfgang Paalen, Robert Motherwell, Adja Yunkers), portraits of the widow before she was widowed (posing with her husband as proof), and then, next to the latter, the former, the antecedent — the last — another of her posing with some friends — more like accidents of geography (who were clearly, unmistakably, indissimulably Cuevas, Fuentes, Ríos). There were also some other paintings there: autographed eyesores, according to Zi.
13.00. Enrique Gelzhaller, the husband of the Uruguayan poet, took advantage of the widow’s momentary absence (she went to speak with Sherman, her executor, on the phone) to tell some hilarious anecdotes about other literary widows.
In Montevideo and Buenos Aires (the Berlin of South America), there was one who boasted that her husband was with her everywhere she went, that she couldn’t blink without seeing him; and, indeed, it was true she was never seen in public without her distinctive eyelashes. Since none of us understood what he meant, Enrique, a verecund polyglot, hinted: “Poil pubique.” Laughter. More laughter. “Watch out,” said the poet, at the cusp of an epigram: “if the widow overhears, she’ll widow me.”
“You watch out,” he retorted. “I’m not the famous one here.” Someone suggested the title of a River Plate bolero.
13.04. Enrique took his wife’s advice: after all, he was [looked] much younger than she. The topics were [being] covered in quick succession: Communism and Amorim’s good fortune, the conjugal relations between Felisberto Hernández and the KGB (via África de las Heras). Juanele, Juan Emar, Juan Almela. The widow returned and the conversation switched back to her favorite topic of discussion, her widowhood. “Did any of us know Federico Prosan?” We all said yes. Later, we all went out onto the balcony to see the empty Edgar Allan Poe street in the dim moonlight. (“If you’re standing alone, don’t lean against the balustrade. It’s dangerous.”)
[stretch-marked] Hagarene supplementaclass="underline" celibate alabaster scimitar. Secret mission accomplished. Melancholy — the Ultraist’s melody [Borges].
Someone indicated that my watch had stopped, died. Ah, I return abruptly to the present. “Now let’s see if we can pause long enough to see it. That’s to say, pause long enough to see if we can see it,” said Hernán oratorically, seeming to look at us panoptically.
Later, when the Uruguayan finally said the last word on the last of her serious topics, Zi and I began discussing our own: Francisco Coloane, Pablo Palacio, Pilar de Lusarreta, Pedro Leandro Ipuche. No one was paying attention. Our conversation ran its course.
13.10. In the middle of the Xochimilco event (nobody could tell if it was really the middle, considering where we were and our level of drunkenness), but we were actually in the middle of a perfectly blue, perfectly oval lake, a perfectly reflective lake as would be found in the northern land of Zembla. Zi, on returning from somewhere far away, or, according to Luini, a distant and unchartered X that encroached on the letter Z — for Zembla — was in good spirits, and he broke into a recitation, chanting the measures, counting the beats for the synod’s delectation. At the expense of the parrot / and forgoing any Latin / this sonorous feat / by Aurelio Asiain:
Salvador Novo was suppressing his laughter
as he proudly unveiled his smiling Mona Lisa:
A photograph of José Gorostiza—
Fair-haired pharos of fishermen’s trawlers—
flanked on both sides by many a señora.
And as time went by, it was as if Zi’s words were filling an old scrabble board sustained on Xochimilco’s noonday shoulders.
13.14. Then suddenly the drunken boat lurched towards a topic already discussed the evening we were at the widow’s house, Federico Prosan. But one of Luini’s imprudent interruptions saved the day. Who are the ones responsible for the literary supplements over there? A bunch of kids, we said. Explanation of what we meant. Gave examples. Then we came to a unanimous conclusion. Just like here, we said.
13.27. The huge head was the very first thing we saw. The legend goes that when he leaves his [ancestral] bed for the second time, he does so feet first. But no. The great mythological monster slowly emerged according to the normal conventions of birth, top to bottom, looking like a huge stuffed animal that was custom made for an acromegalic child … Without hair! “Residual alopecia,” said Zi, taken aback. Then there was a rumbling noise like the sound of distant thunder, or a seismic event attenuated like a wave by the very air, the breeze transmitting it.
True, the circumstances demanded more than cheap suspense. There was supposed to be introspection. I was distracted by the sight of Zi looking at the giant head. There wasn’t an iota of energy wasted on those commonplace reactions of amazement and wonder. That’s right [he was introspecting]! He seemed to absorb the image like the pages of my Mexican journal absorbed the ink from my pen. Ah, my Mexican journal. With such beguiling voracity it absorbed [drank, swallowed] the ink from my pen! I bought it the day after I arrived on Donceles Street, in one of those stores that always confuse tourists because they sell different things and things under different names to the right, correct, and just way they’re used to back home.