— Don’t steal my thunder—Mona warned. But I had already taken her phrase:
arrested
arrested
libido
and made it mine. She had explained that arrested meant delayed, retarded, but I thought arrestada, like confined, imprisoned, like halt, you’re under arrest. She tossed and turned all night, worried that I had stolen her thunder, and literally I had. I stole her thunder and her arrested libido.
— And think of all the stories you swiped from me.
— Why should I have to defend my thunder. Ask Dalí how many thunders he stole from Lorca and Buñuel from Dalí and Lorca. And Picasso from we don’t even know how many, he himself a thunder thought no credits were to be given to Nobody. He himself his own thunder became a creditor with so many debts. An here you are telling me stories, knowing that I’m going to swipe them.
— Stop picking your toes.
— Hay mucha tela que cortar. Si me saca sangre, y se me hace un hoyo, como, como, como una cueva, me excita más. Go on.
— Let me tell you about what happened to a young man who married a very wild, unruly wife. Everybody, including her own father, begged him not to marry her. At the wedding, they pray for the poor sap’s life.
— He’s a lazy gold digger, she’ll bury him alive.
On the wedding night, Hubby asks his dog for a glass of water.
— A Dulci
— No, the dog acts more like Otti, cocks his head and stares at him.
— Hey, you, Mutt, I said I want a glass of water.
Dog does nothing, guy pulls out sword, wack, off with the dog’s head.
— Hey, you, Pussy, water, now.
Not a meow. Hubby grabs the cat by the tail and cracks his furry lil’ head open against the door. Horse and wife look at each other, apprehensive, of course. Wife thinks: nah, not his horse, he wouldn’t kill Stud—it’s like blowing up your own car, uninsured that is. Slowly, he paces toward his horse, and with his bloody hands, he wacks, wacks, wacks the head off his own bloody horse. He turns to his wife.
— Water.
— Immediately, water, here.
— Supper.
— Immediately, supper, exquisite, delicious, here.
— Now hussy get to work. I’m going to bed. Don’t disrupt my sleep.
The honeymoon is red dead silent. By daybreak the whole town is stunned to see the wretch obedient, especially her father who runs home and stabs a rooster in front of his wife.
— Too late you ol’ fart. Beheading a herd of horses would do you no good. We know each other too well.
Style is set from the start. Do I have to explain.
— This one is about the structure of fantasy:
events — what happened
laws — how it happened
origins — where it came from
— I guess from Cantos de Vida y Esperanza:
Y no saber a dónde vamos
ni de dónde venimos
Ínclitas razas ubérrimas. La U ubérrima mía viene de Darío. At least I know, but who knows.
— There’s this fine fellow, Doctor Z, who was in love with a little girl named Amelia. After globe-trotting in quest of truth and knowledge, he returns to Buenos Aires and visits her house thirty, forty years later. Potbellied and bald, the good doctor finds Amelia’s sisters, wrinkled and gray, shrouded in an aura of mourning. He fears Amelia must be dead.
— Ouch!
— No te conformas con la del pulgar, ahora la del meñique. Busca toilet paper. La cama se va a embarrar de sangre.
— Continúa. Ouch, me duele.
— Limpia aquí.
— It already soaked through.
— Límpialo.
— Sigue.
— In frolics a little girl, the spitting image of Amelia. First, Dr. Z thinks it is her daughter, but no, it is Amelia, the very girl who stole his thunder. She stayed the same. Innocence is not lost.
— Ask Proust. En busca del tiempo perdido.
— Darío says the opposite. She never grew up.
— Maybe, in his mind’s eye, he saw her as a little girl again — although she was older, although time had passed — because he felt the same relentless passion towards her. And she acted the same way. To repeat the scene.
— Magic realism. One of the ways of stopping time.
Realism — time runs and people age.
Magic — time stops and people stay the same.
Darío called it looooove.
— I call it trrrrrrrueno.
— Repeat after me: thunder. The tongue behind your teeth: Th-under.
— Don’t steal my th-thunder. I really love the phrase. As if a thunder could be stolen from the map of the universe. As far as I know, it’s a phenomenological thunder.
— Okay, but she thinks it is hers and you are using it as yours.
— I’m reproducing her noise.
— It sounds different.
— So.
— As I said, you’re stealing the language.
— Ostriker.
— Frozen serpents, she said.
— I can say whatever I want.
— Where are you from?
— The world.
— Russian?
— How did you know?
— I could have sworn you were from one of the islands. I’m from Jamaica. I was the #1 runner in my country. A hero. I ran in the Olympics. I went the distance, but coming from a small island, I didn’t have a chance.
— Don’t blame your island. Napoleon conquered the world, and he was from a colony.
— So you’re from the islands.
— I was once a tennis champion, but I quit. No more tennis. Now I write poetry.
— Once a champ, always a champ.
— Yes, once you learn to be consistent — to endure — not to lose hope or patience. I had a lover who told me that I’m intense, but of short duration. He underestimated my stamina.
— Why do you have to bring Jabalí into everything.
— I was in a park, with a bunch of friends, at night. And we were goofing around, my friends and I. Some fellows came by, and we started shaking branches, furiously, cackling and screeching like the devil.
— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!
Off they scrambled in pursuit of mercy. Another fellow came, and we did the same, and gone was he in a cloud of dust. Next came a family. The proud father walked ahead, and behind him the mother with three small children. We thought for a second that maybe we should not frighten the little ones, but we could not help ourselves.
— Ca-ca-ca-ca-ca-ca!
The man bolted, coward, but the woman, brave woman, did not run, she stopped — gathered one, two, three crying children and then ran off. Where was the father? Gone. It showed me how much stronger women are.
— Some and some not.
— Maternal instinct
— Some and some not.
— My mother did everything for me.
— I bet she didn’t do everything for your sisters.
— True.
— You know why? Because when women have sons, they think it’s their turn to be men. Or to exercise power over these men. Have you thought about your sisters? I bet they were as talented as you are. Of course, you exalt the courage of mothers, like yours, she invested everything she had in you.