Friday, November 12
TOLD YOU NATALIA GINZBURG
For two years we worked together in the editorial, we had tables facing each other. Very friend of my husband, leaning on him as a son of his father, more than a friend in another friend. It was a strange guy. Affectionate with everyone, only cared about two things: the woman whom he loved and the book he was writing. Seemed to choose carefully which women fell in love: they were always authoritarian, harsh, cruel. It never occurred to choose one that was good, sweet, quiet. After each disappointment, I always thought of killing herself. When I met him, was just a kid and I talked about killing himself. He liked to discourse on what the best method: the gun, gas, poison. He often did, apparently in jest. At forty seemed he no longer was any book written. Turin was in a desert sweltering and all his friends we had gone on vacation, and the last woman he had dreamed of marrying decided to return to America. He begged her to stay. She said: "You are a sad, bored me to be with you." And then rented hotel room that Rome knew she would never sleep alone in a hotel room. Or any other party.
Saturday, November 13
MIRACLE IN THE MEADOWS
Nearly three hours of bubbling happiness. Two rogues, Norina and Malatesta, take advantage of a miser, Don Pasquale, Ernesto and his naive nephew. Faced with a seductive and hilarious Anna Netrebko, a woman whispers to her husband: "It's like a mix of Victoria de los Angeles and Lina Morgan."
In my local cinema hear Donizetti and all problems are left at the door. Yet raised the curtain. The camera with the stylish entertaining spectators that fill the seats at the Met. Some, worried about who knows what things, lock eyes for a moment, puts his hand to his forehead, unaware that half the world is watching, that his sorrow for a moment becomes huge and fills the screen.
I like to think also that unknown contagious the alacrity with which the singers do their work. And then imagine, in the interval, wandering alone among the groups who laugh and chatter. Those who are not in New York are more fortunate: when the curtain falls, cross the other side and we admire the work of the vast and fascinating stage machinery. And the singers do when they stop acting and believe we do not see: Anna still want to play jokes, even makes a nod to a handsome electrician.
Upon returning home, park across the dark and lonely (in the background, the stubborn rock of San Julián de los Prados), how much gratitude. Collect treasures, and this is not the least of them: nearly three hours outside of my world, another world crazy and happy.
Monday, November 15
CHALLENGE "A nice story that history treasure yours. Because it is a story. So long ago I read that and I've noticed that you do not have your life, tell stories, "says Valdés when I step this afternoon by the Library of Campillín. "And what a way to define you outright that it is your friend!" He adds.
Any life, even the gray, full of unbelievable stories. I remember that fight at the jail have told a hundred times and each time I find less credible. We climbed to the cells from the courtyard, and a bad-looking type bumped into me and insulted me. I would not have made much of either one thing or another. The insult was something like "you are communist bastards" and I had very little communist. But I could not lower his head and move on. I had to reply. There was a hint of coming to blows. Separated us immediately. "Not here, or you'll spend a month in solitary confinement. Tomorrow, the tiger. " The tiger was in services, where officials often did not peep. I spent a sleepless night, terrified. But I could not go back. If not appear, make me a shit in garbage that anyone could trample. My opponent was a bad bug, which was there accused of having killed in a robbery at a civil guard. The next day, after breakfast, when we released in the cold courtyard that I felt like Johannes Dahlmann Borges tale that accepts a challenge to guess what will not come to life. "Dahlmann firmly grasps the knife, which perhaps would not know to handle, and out into the plain", ends the story by Borges. I thought of that phrase, when pale, wanting to run away, but knowing I could not do otherwise, surrounded by curious, I went to the tiger. Guti was already there (I think that was his name). There was expectation. I, skinny, bespectacled, always with a book in hands, it was a strange person in that place: the seventh Carabanchel gallery in the fall of 1974, yet Franco had died or had occurred the previous shootings. Formed a circle around us waiting two. "Let me keep the glasses," said one of the friends I had in those days, a small-time robber who had spent the orphanage and reformatory reformatory prison with brief intervals of freedom. And I hid my fear that a total impassive, I prepared to take them off. My opponent then, unexpectedly, gave me a punch and glasses were blasted into the air. I blind I jumped on him, but only managed to strike at those who had come between us. Because, apparently, in those fights there were unwritten rules and my opponent had violated the. Should have waited for me to remove my glasses as they give the order to start. A voice then told that one of the officers approached, perhaps surprised that there were so few people on the patio. The group dispersed. I nose was bleeding slightly, but the glasses were not broken (they had picked up in the air) and I was the winner. He had proved he had guts, something that in prison, as in life, is fundamental. "Beware of the bastard. Bad people. Do not let it get through. You can stick a skewer in the back, "he warned. But it did not come. And some of the toughest guys in the gallery soon organize a full-scale riot "had a gala to be my friend even asked me to give them kind of Marxism. I went from odd, denied everything, but if it was true what was said, had more black future that none of them. But that's another story, also true and, of course, completely implausible.
Tuesday, November 16
PARIS COFFEE
I'm a bad reader of novels, I've said many times. And most of the novels that I read about what they are novel. What a great book would Celtic's dream of Vargas Llosa, one with which we were told the best way possible the prodigious history of Rogert Casement. But in the end, there are still those who think that a mediocre novel is always preferable to a good biography (especially when sales). Everything
novel has plenty of me within a month within a year , I found Sunday in the Fontan, and whose cover fascinated me: a magical corner of Paris, the terrace cafe Les Deux Magots, with the tower of St-Germain-des-Prés in the background. We in the fifties and is the atmosphere of the time what I try to find in mediocre prose Françoise Sagan.
Recalling that I, like everyone else, I sat in the corner before the march seemed the entire universe, I open the novel:
Bernard came into the cafe, hesitated a moment under the eyes of some customers disfigured by the neon light and went to the cashier. He handed his phone card without smiling wearily. It was about four o'clock. I knew it was stupid to call someone at that time. He leaned against the wall and took out his pack of cigarettes. A sleepy voice answered from man. In the background she heard her voice: "Who's calling?". Bernard stood for a moment motionless, terrified. Then hung up. While walking along the Seine, tried to calm down: "After all, is free and you're not even her lover." He had said he was single, had talked about life and books, had spent a night together. Now going to go home, where he would meet with the drafts of the novel he was unable to write about his work table and in bed with his sleeping wife with a blond baby face turn toward the door as if fearing that he never come back, waiting for him in his sleep as expected during all day, anxiously. "
Thursday, November 18 ANCIENT HISTORY
As I discuss in class, new classes of the old school of teaching which I enjoy so much to give, Ángel González's poem "Address to the youth "and spoke of Franco and irony as a means to circumvent censorship, I think it happens that students who listen to me is ancient history to me is autobiography. Makes me want to tell you that when I was his age and sit where they sit, back in 1968, students and pupils were strictly separated, went in different doors, floor classrooms were distinct and isolated. One day, for the first time since the civil war, we went on strike. The next day was a grand assembly in law, who was then in the central building of the university. We went there to look around a few naive freshmen every day we moved by train from Avilés. From the square of the Escandalera saw that there were several gray vans at the gate of the university. We did not dare to approach. We stayed there, watching and commenting, amazed and frightened. We did not reach the half dozen. The police entered the university, sirens sound, people running out ... I looked at everything from a distance. Of Suddenly a car stops beside us down several police officers and begin to pound. We looked stunned, unfinished believe it. A woman passing by stares and exclaims: "That, that. Studying, studying. "
When looking back, I smile. Turns out I also had my May 68, but not in Paris but in the Place de la Escandalera. And without eating or drinking, without trying to change the world, being a naive teenager who had learned everything from books and not sure what happened or what was next.
In these things I think, as commented Ángel González's poem. Resist the temptation to talk about it. Fortunately still I'm not old enough to go around boring others with my battles.
0 comments:
Post a Comment