#6 CALUMNIES
Elena Siesta, “Sestina of Departure”
What did our detractors mean when they said “without stories” …?
Nicasio Urlihrt, letter ending on a semicolon
Letter ending on its tippy-toes
What did they mean to say, Don Julio? They meant to say that no one understood what in the world they were talking about or writing. What do they mean to say? They mean to say that all of them, all are just gazing at their navels with the kind of smug self-satisfaction that others find repellant. See, for example, if anyone can understand a word of the discussion regarding Agraphia’s aporia in “The Mass in Tongues”: there is so much understatement, so many baffling interpolations and obscure references, it would exhaust most normal readers’ curiosity and patience. To know that Duchamp’s nine malic molds correspond to the thirty-six family doctors, and that the number of ocular witnesses weren’t in fact four but three: north and south; that 646416 was the magical cipher in the arcane numerology known to the initiated. One must become familiar with automatic formula for the anagrams and pseudonyms and use it to share ones devotion to cryptic books …
Victor Eiralis, idem
#24
Carelessly, I got used to the idea that paradoxes themselves were acceptable to everyone, and often mentioned them in passing, though I saw no signs of support or even sympathetic smiles around me. But, occasionally, when I was alone, I indulged my superstitious sense of self-importance. Thence, ready to begin my narrative about the cult, or the legion, I remembered that my two favorite stories in English are about sects or lodges: “False Dawn” by Kipling, and “The Primate of the Rose” by M. P. Shiel. But then I realized, after thinking a while about these stories and their themes, that I was wrong: neither of them have anything to do with sects or lodges. Sebastian Birt, Lenten Diary (Diary to Elena)
#8 FAREWELLS
[#27]
Before closing the door on the previous day
[Shortly before Elena sneaked into the background with Bindo, quietly and deftly, so they wouldn’t hear her speak about them, she left a note that was, in both style and substance, the very opposite of a suicide note.]
By doing it so badly, maintaining my distance and calm, and because Remo was there, and because his languid liquid stare made me nauseous. For this and because of my rough and narrow throat (almost all we ever did was smoke). For this and because I knew about Allegra Siri, all of those characters, so to speak, placed at yours and our mercy. Dos, Pimpernel, whoever. And I see I must carry away a flock of adjectives (“every ewe with its mate”). Except they’re not ewes but lemmings. The edge of Agraphia’s fjord placed by you over there so we don’t fall.
(…) All the stubbornness, the foolishness, the constant betrayal, and the pride — especially in his case. My constantly aching molar seems unjustly to be at his temperament’s disposal. Without justice of divorce, you’ll say. I don’t deserve it when he’s the one to blame. He’d like to be the next presbyobe, the one who pays no attention to the details — not I, the one who stays at home. La plus cruelle absence est celle que l’on peut toucher avec le main. Toulet, apt, isn’t it, considering our arrangement? Remind her of it, whoever she is. The drafts are still there [in Vidt]. If, at some point, Teode wants them back, it’s your duty N. to return them to her. Also, give her those books you merely hoard without bothering to read them. It would help if you collected books instead of women, they said to CC. I [on the other hand] feel incapable of doing either: I have no contempt for books or women, but I’m quite indifferent to collections of them. I only lately understood the impulse: collections, collections. I’m an irregular verb.
[There are things that surround us, that abound in great numbers, that slither or crawl, and yet, today, they don’t matter. The monkeys are clamoring above our heads. I assert, I insist: I’m an irregular verb.]
Note of farewell by Elena Siesta / Laetitia Pilkinghorn
Shortly after the last throes of Agraphia, justified because of the password “after the first death, there is no other” [Dylan Thomas bromide], and after the latest babbling in search of a scheme or pattern [“Specular Soup,” “Early”], the group had been reduced to a small circle of snobs with exclusive tastes and reverential airs, committed to a grim [sterile] formalism, that varied between free experimentation and idiotic oulipienne extremes, but which had the virtue — or defect — of not incorporating the audacity or stringent formalism of the latter, only the enthusiasm, effeminacy, and acedia [anesthesis] of its practitioners.
Emilio Duluoz, Last Paid [Pure] Vacations
On Hilarión’s resurrection from the dead and the reburial
I live in communion with the dead [Quevedo]
One stormy night, Nicasio brought us to the house in the south where Hilarión’s wake was being held. We gathered round him. He said: “there won’t be many of us.” Since there was no more coffee, they brought us mugs of milk. The smell of dead flowers was repulsive. “After three days, the body starts to reek,” said Nicasio before adding: “these three are the cultural apostles of the distant far away.” He was referring to a certain young man, an older man with the look of a lawyer about him, and Felipe Luini’s girlfriend. [Dead?] The Fedora [of imitation felt] resting motionless on his chest, a recent Band-Aid on his ring finger, a copy of The Barefoot Path. Also, an umbrella dripping outside the narrow furrow of his march, a standing ashtray brimming with inhuman ash, and some empty mugs balancing on a coffee table. At certain times, in an adjoining room lit with tubes, the three were face-to-face with the ambassadors of the distant faraway, and the youth took the opportunity to air his relationship with a woman ten years his senior.
“I expect the worst: that she’ll commit suicide. And that she’ll make the decision while I’m away.” The confession prompted a contest. The lawyer revealed he was in a relationship with a woman who was making his life impossible. Luini’s girlfriend said her brother was running the risk of being assassinated by a group of vigilantes, and that no one knew how to convince him to flee the country. Back in front of HCs coffin, someone standing next to Lester said: “How strange it is.” At which Nicasio explained: “Like a crustacean. The integrity of the corpse and the lack of smell are due to the illness. As it advances, it stops growth and corruption. We’ll be attending a premature burial.” Luini’s girlfriend — the sister of the threatened man, whom we all wanted to save in that same hour — ventured to ask something we’d disregarded: “If it wasn’t going to last more than a day, why have a wake?” Nicasio delayed in answering: “Don’t know. A whim. It just had to be seen.” And someone else puffed: “Was it really worth it?”
The following day, the dead of night seemed to reward them, but it was a false alarm, although it made the priest’s youth sermon more tolerable, and for Luini’s girlfriend, it made more tolerable the incessant advances of the obsequious lawyer with the ridiculous name.