Count the present days until today arrives (BERNARDA)
(In the first pages of Antonina's book, one character seems to dominate the narrative thread, without actually being a narrator. It's Miguel Hespeld, an agonistic, withdrawn musician, an existential lament embodied in Spanish, in a context of sentimental adventures undone by endless nocturnal adventures (all within the space of a few months); apparently lost in Madrid, in an artificial heaven of gourmet bohemianism that feeds on libidinous matter and baroque human weakness. In the most striking dialogue of this passage, Hespeld invites a cultural attaché from the Lithuanian embassy to "Be calm, because those who are always calm need not demonstrate any courage. Courage as a merit emerges only from that state of nervousness closest to disintegrated hatred and animal disorientation. Constantly judging what this or that government did or didn't do in the Defense Department won't restore you to proper perspective now!" (in Antonina's manuscript) --- Pure music, this Hespeld, in my opinion, a rigorous timbre of chromatic discourse, an elaborate echo of a demanding musical Spain inspired by Lope de Vega and Tomás Luís de Victória; and as the "narrator" tells us later: "Once graduating in music from the University of Berlin, Hespeld disappears into the mists of Swiss diplomatic circles; soon he is studying political science at Harvard; after graduation he meets a wealthy Canadian woman and marries. Marriage doesn't distance him much from his "last prolonged solitude," his years at Harvard, all thanks to his wife's alcoholism, a bloated, elitist, and self-centered frown who makes no secret of her disdain for classical music and art in general, which quickly dismantles the structure of the life together that Hespeld had in mind when he "fell in love" (according to him, of course, the affective matter of the common Spaniard, the obscure depths where this race thrives, Passion). "Terribly boring and distressingly predictable," he confides to a close friend, recounting his wife's crises. While surrounding himself with friends, seeking the refinement of human relationships, he feels enveloped by an octopus of layered friendships that, emerging from all sides, seem to orchestrate the new direction of his life, inviting him to trips, events, and lectures. --- At this moment, Hespeld realizes all the hours of his life are blending, merging, becoming a single, dark form of the world's time. He is always engaged in serious, private, scholarly conversations amid the desolate appearance of expensive hotels that suggest a wall of secrecy and camouflage built just for that purpose. Study and musical composition are largely sidelined, but they frequently resonate in the rigorous timbre of characterizations and political prospects he delivers with unparalleled tact, on an itinerary of lodgings and lunches that covers the entire region from Switzerland to Belgium. Frankly, my heart, at that point, beat for Hespeld whenever he appeared in Antonina's book. For me, although I can't hear her, only imagine her, the voice in men is of paramount importance. I react very sexually to certain timbres of a man's voice; not finding the right timbre or ''note'' in any of their voices, I become apathetic, disinterested ---
ResponderExcluir--- I hate men who slur their words, or those whose vocabulary is simple, from the street or television, from the lower social classes or from the bourgeoisie domesticated by a standardized and repetitive media or virtual litany, left or right (in other words: everyone) --- there's no point in compensating for a poverty of vocabulary with ridiculous hand gestures or posture, like in the public speaking courses that come in online workshops to get a job in company interviews, reproduced daily on television media, with that boredom of a den of bourgeois monkeys who have never read a serious book in their lives --- And now, after almost two sleepless nights, reading and rereading immediately what I read in my hotel room, I remained connected, irresistibly enraptured, with an almost physical desire to continue forever, as if I were living dangerously inside the book --- I thought that in moments like this, in a burning ivory tower, I felt that anyone who tried to approach me would see me assume the most incomprehensible attitudes, to prevent access to my egocentric kingdom of glory and poetic delight ---
---however, it was more or less in a moment of cowardice and weakness that I yielded to the call at the hotel reception: a woman named Yerma (whom I vaguely remembered as a Spanish writer from Ávila or Mérida) requested "my attention for a moment"; and "for a moment," as I put the intercom back in place, the world went dark and strong gusts of wind in my head messed up the whole Antonina story-- "Sure, tell her I'll be down in a minute," if I hadn't reacted so automatically, I think I would have thought of an excuse not to answer her. Yes, because people in the book world, especially in Spain, love to chatter, and news spreads quickly within that small spectrum of writers. Could it be? Antonina's death was an anonymous event, in that case. But sometimes it really does seem like everyone knows everyone, and it would be embarrassing for the deceased's only friend not to offer some clarification. Poor Antonina! I went downstairs --- Yerma smelled of jasmine, or there were jasmines around the hotel pool, I don't know; she put her arm around my shoulders, like a sister, and conveyed her condolences for Antonina.
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ExcluirI got a strange vibe from her. We sat at a table and ordered gin and basil. Her face was almost as beautiful as her body, firm and shapely, in a late Balzacian. Such expensive clothes --- and I never contented myself with admiring the women I came into contact with from just one angle (if someone saw me from afar, they would think I was ogling them, but that wasn't quite it, I'm not sure) --- "It's true, I knew Antonina too, and since, Bernarda, you were by no means her only friend," Yerma said, affecting a pang of pain in her chest, "Antonina knew the underbelly of almost every chic and lively city in Europe. She lived that restless existence that begins at ten at night and lasts until dawn. And she had a talent for writing the gallant political and social chronicle of the Old Continent, I'm sure!" The "Who's Who" of all spheres of influence, and also the genealogy of all the people who practice what worries governments and the morals of a law-based society. Almost infallible!'' she concluded ---
---I don't know if it was the timbre of Yerma's voice, or her restless eyes, with their falsely sleepy lids, her pupils that constantly dilated against the sunlight, scanning every corner of my face like the caress of a brush on a damp canvas; but, after a few minutes of conversation, I became strangely disposed to listen to her completely (I don't know why, I let my guard down and remembered Hespeld). --- ''I always thought that seeing in Antonina only bile and vinegar bubbling in a chaotic and frenetic environment was a mistake; she was merely looking for stimuli and material to bring her obscure characters to life. Despite everything, what brought me here (I have to say) wasn't exactly her; her death only served to inform me better about you and your whereabouts. Ever since I glimpsed the possibility of meeting you in person here in Bahia, Bernarda, I spent an entire month preparing with great care and caution (the care that, in my opinion, the delicate situation deserved) to convey to you something that, I believe, must be of inestimable value to you, and which I have kept to this day, for nine long years, with exquisite care, security, fidelity, and secrecy. This is a copy of the manuscript. An absolutely unpublished novel by your ex-husband, and also my ex-boyfriend (I don't know if you know?), Julian Monleón:
ExcluirThis is invaluable, dewy, visionary material; a literary experiment perhaps unprecedented in Spain, or even in the world: the subject seeing, speaking, and thinking at the same time, but more like a hot brick, a psychic sweat of life's small combinations, as in Joyce, only, sleepless, it is always altering the character and forcing him into confrontation with another who replaces him. It took me years to properly assess what I had in hand. Attached here is a copy of a letter in which Julian confesses the horrific suffering that writing this caused him at the time, day after day; It was written even before our courtship, long before you two met: as Julián's SINGLE EYE merges with the speaking darkness of each character, the reader perceives a FORM moving toward a SKY OF INITIATIC MYSTERY, yet completely legible, a diamond-like text in a language of revealed acids, typical of that salivating realm of Julián's vivacious words. By God, it is the secret pulse of the avant-la-lettre literature of our great Spain! This needs to come to light, but I judged that the right thing to do is for it to come through you!'' Yerma snapped. ---
Excluir--- At that moment, my head had its own bells ringing, announcing the aristocratic expansion of my recent privileges: "There are no more rules in life, except those I choose to dictate!" I thought, brutally vain --- something inhuman, a level at which I was no longer incapable of reacting to what came to me from the world in a normal way, established itself within me definitively --- to my astonishment, it was at that moment that Yerma smiled at me for the first time and ordered from the waiter a sea bass baked in salt for two and an expensive Meursault to go with it --- "And when do you intend to give me the originals?" I asked her, and immediately felt her leg brushing against mine under the table --- what a texture of leg and clothes! I ADMIT! : I really felt no annoyance at realizing another beautiful woman ogling me in such cultured terms --- I shivered with excitement)
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