PRAISE FOR
JUAN JOSÉ SAER
“Brilliant. . . . With meticulous prose, rendered by Dolph’s translation into propulsive English, Saer’s The Sixty-Five Years of Washington captures the wildness of human experience in all its variety.”
—New York Times
“While some of Saer’s sentences are long enough to rival Proust’s, they are infused with a palpitating sensuality, their breathing equally crafted.”
—The Nation
“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
“Juan José Saer must be added to the list of the best South American writers.”
—Le Monde
“The author’s preoccupations are reminiscent of his fellow Argentinians Borges and Cortázar, but his vision is fresh and unique.”
—The Independent (London)
ALSO BY
JUAN JOSÉ SAER
IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
The Event
The Investigation
La Grande
Nobody Nothing Never
The Sixty-Five Years of Washington
The Witness
Copyright © Juan José Saer, 1969
c/o Guillermo Schavelzon & Assoc. Agencia Literaria, [email protected]
Translation copyright © Steve Dolph, 2011
Originally published in Spanish as Cicatrices, 1969
First edition, 2011
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available upon request.
ISBN-13: 978-1-934824-98-6
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
for BIBY
Imaginary picture of a stationary fear
—Edwin Muir
Contents
February, March, April, May, June
March, April, May
April, May
May
FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, MAY, JUNE
THERE’S THIS FILTHY, EVIL JUNE LIGHT COMING through the window. I’m leaning over the table, sliding the cue, ready to shoot. The red and the white balls are across the table, near the corner. I have the spot ball. I have to hit it softly so it hits the red ball first, then the white, then the back rail between the red ball and the white ball. The red ball should hit the side rail before mine hits the back rail, which it should make for at an angle after it’s hit the white ball. Like so: mine will just kiss the red—which will then hit the side rail—and ricochet toward the white as the red comes back toward the white ball, in a straight line, from the side rail. My ball will trace an imaginary triangle. The red will travel the base of this triangle, from one point to the other. If the vector isn’t perfect, the red won’t have time to travel far enough toward the white. It will need to have crossed enough of the table—coming from the side rail—before mine hits the back rail and comes back again, slowly, at an angle.
That cold, filthy light coming through the window. It’s colder than who knows what. And what we need is a sun that’s like the people, not this watery light. All it’s good for is showing how the cigarette he just threw on the tiles is still lit. A thin, disintegrating, blue smoke column that rises and disappears. And with everything so slow it always looks like the same thin column and always the same disintegrating trail, not a continuous trail of smoke rising and disintegrating into an imaginary block of light. No, not a block. That filthy light couldn’t be a block. Who knows what rancid sun it came from. It shouldn’t be here, there’s no use for it. It should make for some other bar on some other planet, some godforsaken, misbegotten planet somewhere else. It shouldn’t be here. We need something different, a hot, dry, blinding light. Because it’s cold. It’s fucking cold. Cold as the blessed mistress. The polar icecap is probably a sauna compared to this. It’s nuts. In Antarctica you could be walking around butt naked, and here you hock up a ball of phlegm and an ice cube hits the sidewalk. Everyone goes around coughing up ice. Just the other day some guy walking down San Martín opened his mouth to say Hi to his friend on the opposite sidewalk and couldn’t close it again because it filled up with frost. They had to take a soldering iron to his mouth because the cold was pouring in and freezing his blood. If this keeps up, the first chance I get I’m jumping in bed with like ninety blankets and not coming out till January.
Since flicking away that cigarette he hasn’t done a thing. He’s standing there, stock still, with the cue in his hand. Watching how I slide the cue, aiming, slowly. He doesn’t seem to see. Thinking of something else, for sure. Who knows what. Maybe he’s thinking about a pair of tits, because he’s one of those guys whose brains are all at the back, pressed against their spine by a big pair of tits that takes up at least eighty percent of their skull. Some guys, all they have in there is a pair of tits—a pair of tits and nothing else. Some guys you can even see the nipples coming out through their eyes. Those are the guys with purple pupils. You can tell right away by looking at the color of their pupils—they’re purple. Maybe he’s not thinking about that. Maybe he’s thinking about the week ahead, one night, sitting down under the desk lamp and in one go writing something that changes the world. Tons of guys pass the time thinking one week to the next, pow, they’ll rock the world with a single uppercut. All they have to do is raise their hand (condescend to raise their hand, as they see it) and like that they’ve covered the surface of the earth with the holy word. Maybe he’s also thinking that the cigarette burned his mouth, that he should roll his tongue and collect some saliva to cool it off, then spit, or that now he’ll take his right hand from the cue and put it in his right pants pocket. Or maybe nothing. Maybe even the tits are gone and now there’s nothing in there, nothing but surface, not the pale cone of light or the dim field of sound echoing around the pool table, the cone of light that contains just the three balls, the cues, the table, and the two of us—and him just barely—nothing but the dry green-black walls, corroded by the built-up rust of old thoughts and memories, dark all throughout. Watching, motionless, hunched, as I slide the cue, slow, aiming. He looks, but I don’t know if he sees. Who could swear he does? Not me. If someone wants to swear he sees, go ahead and swear. I won’t. All I know is that after flicking the cigarette he turned his head toward where I’m bent over the table sliding the cue, that an exhausted, absolutely evil June light is coming in through the bar window, and that my task holds back every external thing that’s flooding in toward the table. My task is to make my ball run slowly toward the red, hit it, then ricochet toward the white, connect again, then rebound off the back rail, returning at an angle, in the opposite direction, giving the red enough time—after it hits