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Praise for Juan José Saer
“Juan José Saer must be added to the list of the best South American writers.”
—Le Monde
“To say that Juan José Saer is the best Argentinian writer of today is to undervalue his work. It would be better to say that Saer is one of the best writers of today in any language.”
—Ricardo Piglia
“The author’s preoccupations are reminiscent of his fellow Argentinians Borges and Cortázar, but his vision is fresh and unique.”
—Independent
Also by Juan José Saer in English Translation
The Event
The Investigation
La Grande (forthcoming from Open Letter)
Nobody Nothing Never
Scars (forthcoming from Open Letter)
The Witness
Copyright © Juan José Saer, 1986
c/o Guillermo Schavelzon & Assoc. Agencia Literaria, [email protected]
Translation copyright © Steve Dolph, 2010
Originally published in Spanish as Glosa, 1986
First edition, 2010
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request.
ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-99-3
Design by N. J. Furl
Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press:
Lattimore Hall 411, Box 270082, Rochester, NY 14627
To Michael, Patrick, Pierre Gilles, who practice three true sciences, grammar, homeopathy, and administration, the author dedicates, for the Sunday conversations, this comedy
but then time is your misfortune father said.
In another man devoured
my own death I don’t see
but plagued by geometric flowers
I waste away the hours
and now they keep vigil for me
Contents
The Next Seven Blocks
The Last Seven Blocks
Suppose it’s October, October or November, let’s say, in 1960 or 1961, October, maybe the fourteenth or sixteenth, or the twenty-second or twenty-third maybe—the twenty-third of October in 1961 let’s say—what’s the difference.
Leto—Ángel Leto, no?—Leto, I was saying, has, a few seconds ago, stepped off the bus on the corner of the boulevard, far from the usual stop, compelled by the sudden desire to walk, to traverse San Martín, the central avenue, on foot, and to let himself get lost in the bright morning instead of shutting himself up in the dark mezzanine of one of the businesses where for the last few months he has patiently but impassively kept the books.
He has, then, stepped off, not without bumping into some passengers who were trying to get on and in his haste generating among them a momentary wave of vague protests; he has waited for the bus to pull away and move metallically down the boulevard toward the city center; he has crossed, alert, both sides of the boulevard separated by the center median, which is half planted and half paved, avoiding the cars driving, placid and hot, in both directions; he has reached the opposite sidewalk, has bought a pack of Particulares and a box of matches at the cigarette kiosk that he has put away in the pockets of his short-sleeved shirt, has walked the few meters to the corner, where he has just arrived, turning the corner south on the eastern sidewalk, the shady side at that hour; and he has begun to walk down San Martín, the central avenue—its parallel sidewalks, as they approach the city center, begin to fill with businesses selling records, shoes, groceries, fabric, candy, books, cigarettes, and also with banks, perfume shops, jewelry stores, churches, galleries, and which, at opposite ends, when the cluster of businesses thins out and finally disintegrates, reveal the pretentious and elegant façades, including some—why not—residential buildings, many of which are decorated, beside the front door, with the bronze plaques that publicize their occupants’ profession, doctors, lawyers, notaries, engineers, architects, otorhinolaryngologists, radiologists, dentists, accountants, biochemists, brokers—in a word, essentially, or in two better yet, to be more precise, every thing.
The man who gets up in the morning, who takes a shower, who eats breakfast and goes out, afterward, into the sun of the city center, comes, without a doubt, from beyond his bed, and from a deeper and heavier darkness than his bedroom: nothing and no one in the world could say why Leto, instead of going to work this morning, like every other day, is now walking easy and calm under the trees that amplify the shade from the row of houses, down San Martín to the south. He suffered so much, said his mother Isabel during breakfast before she left for work; alone afterward, Leto poured a second cup of coffee and went to drink it in the rear courtyard. This He suffered so much was stripped of its representations while he walked around the cramped and blooming courtyard where in the shady corners grass and shrubs, flowerpots and planters retained the dampness of the morning dew, but its overall shape and its impalpable reverberations still preserved their fragile and distracted resonance. Maybe the damp and concentrated shade that persisted at the foot of the houses, on the central avenue, or that mix of damp and brilliance the foliage displays in spring, and which stands out in some front yards, is what recalls his mother’s expression to Leto’s mind once again, how it doubles as sincere gesture and set phrase. The morning humidity that persists in the rising but mitigated heat is absorbed, by association, into the persistent and well-framed image, strange but at once familiar, of his mother who, turning from the gas stove, bringing the steaming coffee pot in her hand, uttered, in a low and thoughtful tone, as though to herself, without the slightest connection to what she had been saying just then, that sentence: He suffered so much. In the early penumbra of the kitchen, the little blue flames joined into concentric rings continued burning behind her after she removed the coffee, the milk, the water, the toast, and turned toward the table with the steaming coffee pot. To Leto, the sentence that was just uttered and has dissipated in the kitchen has the characteristic ambiguity of many of his mother’s assertions—he finds it difficult to understand its precise meaning; and when he raises his head, stifling his embarrassment and maybe even his shame, and begins to scrutinize Isabel’s expression, his suspicions that this ambiguity is deliberate only increase, now that, against the backlight of the little blue flames, Isabel’s now slightly thickened figure advances in silence, her eyes lowered, avoiding his gaze, disarming any inquiry. She has let her comment slip unexpectedly, during the routine exchange over breakfast in the kitchen, when phrases, spoken politely, out of courtesy, a dubious motive, have no more significance or extension than the sound of silverware striking plates. And Leto has begun to think, while he takes the first sip of black coffee and watches her sit, abstractedly, on the other side of the table: It must be the hope of erasing her humiliation that makes her pretend he suffered so much—but,