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Accepted for the LibrariesSig nat:ure RerTlc>ved Date accepted __~J,--/'-"d--,----",S,--~-,()~G;,---- _ On Eloisa Cartonera and Cesar Aira: Much More than just a Translation of El Cerebra Musical
By STEPHANIE REIST
Professor Leyla Rouhi, Advisor
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Comparative Literature
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
Williamstown, Massachusetts
th May 8 , 2009 Acknowledgements
To the Spanish and Comparative Literature Professors at Williams, for your guidance, knowledge andfriendship. Your love oflanguage and literature has inspired me to have high expectations for my own work. I am honored to have worked with and learnedfrom many ofyou. And to Gail Newman, for introducing me to Williams and Comparative Literature. I am grateful for all ofyour advice.
To Prof Jennifer French, my second reader, for her invaluable insight and time.
To Prof Leyla Rouhi, my thesis advisor and Mellon mentor, for being simultaneously very understanding and demanding. Your ability to engage students with a text is unparalleled.
To Prof Seoane and all ofmyfriends in Buenos Aires, for encouraging me to explore such a vibrant city.
To Molly Magavern and Bob Blay at aSAP, thank youfor always being so dedicated in helping me accomplish my goals.
To my friends at Williams and elsewhere, be they students, administrators, professors or employers, for making sure my college experience has always been amusing, challenging, and exciting.
Andfinally to myfamily, for always supporting me in my endeavors at home and abroad. And especially to my mother. Thank you for teaching me that college is about my education and not career training, otherwise I may not have chosen such a fulfilling and rewarding major. Contents
Introduction: Translating the Book-Object 1
Chapter One: Eloisa Cartonera: Cover Story 11
Chapter Two: Translating El Cerebra Musical 24
Chapter Three: The Musical Brain 37
Works Cited 59
Reist 1
Introduction: Translating the Book Object
It may seem odd that the text I chose to translate, El Cerebra Musical by Cesar
Aira, is bound by a cardboard cover. It is difficult to make out the title and author that are hand-painted on the cover in red and orange against a yellow background, mirroring the red lettering on the cardboard itself. One can still read the address in Buenos Aires where the box was made, and the words "INDUSTRIA ARGENTINA" are still legible under the title. The barcode on the back is not a proof-of-purchase of the book, but rather of some lost transaction made by the supermarket Dia. It is a flimsy cover, hardly protecting the text within, but no other copy of this book has these same features. This uniqueness is what has made Eloisa Cartonera, the publishing house in Buenos Aires that creates these cardboard books, an inspiration to other "paper picker presses" throughout
Latin America, the subject of documentaries, and the starting point of my own lllvestlgatlOn.. .. 1
I found out about Eloisa Cartonera as part of a class that I took titled "Cultural
Icons as National Commodities." During one of my last weeks in the city, we visited the workshop in which Eloisa Cartonera CEC) is located. The "cartoneros," or "cardboard pickers," had become an unwanted symbol of Argentina after the 2001 economic crisis.
Rather than reject this symbol, the founders of Eloisa Cartonera decided to create cardboard books in order to employ, rather than exploit, the "cartoneros". They are the backbone of the publishing house, supplying the raw materials and hand-painting the covers of the books in this artistic cooperative. Despite being a small, independent press,
Eloisa Cartonera is responsible for all aspects of production. The covers reinforce the
1 See Mike Mclean. "De amor y carton." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP6S-pPoEMw. for a trailer of his documentary. The World Fund has established another Cartonera project in Mexico called Amiga Cartonera, http://www.worlclfund.org/cultuntl-agents-initiative.html. Reist 2 materiality of the book because they underscore all the processes that have lead to its production, particularly the work of the "cartoneros" that is the publishing house's name
sake.
Yet I had decided long before venturing to Argentina and encountering Eloisa
Cartonera that I would like to do a translation for my senior thesis. If Eloisa Cartonera reinforces the materiality of the book, then how does that material object effect translation? Does one translate a book or a text? Walter Benjamin states that
"translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translated; it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the
original manifests itself in its translatability.,,2 Yet, the very aspects of the books that
drew me to them-their socially conscious production, their uniqueness-are the very
aspects of the book that are untranslatable. By translating a work published by Eloisa
Cartonera, I am affectively questioning the unified "book," since I can only engage in
translating the text and not its cover. Is the book the material, or commodity, form of the
text? Is the text, separated from the cover, a material object? Is language itself a material
object? It seems that if I had chosen any other "book" by Cesar Aira that was not
published by Eloisa Cartonera many of these questions would not be as pertinent.
These questions are at the very center of structuralism, post-structuralism,
deconstructionism, and postmodernism, and have spawned debates within literary theory
too vast to detail within this investigation. Yet they are important to keep in mind when
considering "cartonera" books and/or translation theory in general. Translations do not
necessarily bare the same covers as the original book, and other details, such as font and
2 Walter Benjamin, "The Task of the Translator." In Theories ofTranslation: an Anthology ofEssays from Dryden to Derrida, Ed. Rainer Schute and John Biguenet. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 72. Reist 3 the number of pages, also change. These changes may seem trivial in another context, yet my process of translation will inevitably transform the 'text' in substantially material ways: it will be on 8 Yz xlI in. paper, it will not have a cover, and it will include explanations beyond the text-footnotes, other chapters. Yet during my process of translation, I have sought not to alter the text; for example, I have never written in my copy of El Cerebra Musical. Even when engaging with the text in order to translate it, I have not engaged with the book. The book's physical uniqueness is something that I have chosen not to disturb.
The terms are what are at stake: book versus text. Derrida asserts that a fundamental difference must be established between the two:
The idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite, or infinite, of the signifier, this totality of the signifier cannot be a totality, unless a totality constituted by the signified preexists it, supervises its inscriptions and its signs, and is independent of it in its ideality. The idea of the book, which always refers to a natural totality, is profoundly alien to the sense of writing. It is the encyclopedic protection of theology and of logocentrism against the disruption of writing, against its aphoristic energy, and ...against difference in general. If I distinguish the text from the book, I shall say that the destruction of the book, as it is now under way in all domains, denudes the surface of the text. 3
On the one hand is "the idea of the book," and more generally the work, that implies a grand master, even genius, creating a piece of singular meaning. On the other hand is the text whose meaning is in constant relation with other texts. The destruction of the book enables one to investigate the intertexuality of any given text. Intertextuality has been extended beyond written pieces, encompassing visual, video, and other media, and critics have even ventured to read texts as nonverbal as Greta Garbo's face. 4 In some sense,
3 Jacques Denida, Of Grammatology. Gayatri Chanavorty Spivak, Trans. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1997) 18. 4 See: Roland Barthes. Mythologies. Annette Lavers, Trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.) Or Roland Barthes. Image, Music, Text. Stephen Heath, Trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.) Reist 4 then, I can conceive of the EloIsa Cartonera book as a piece of multi-media, or
"intratext": the cover as one visual text that can be read-indeed I started this chapter with a simple reading of it-the actual written El Cerebra Musical as another text, and their relationship to each other in the composite book as yet another text.
Though the use of cardboard emphasizes the physical book, the fact that the original graphic design of the cardboard is not done away with, and the hand-painted uniqueness of each book would suggest that EC is not in the business of producing a totalizing book. No cover is the cover for the particular text it encases. Intertexuality is at play between the covers as much as it is at play in the process of writing itself that
Derrida suggests. Some covers use only lettering while other have simple pictures, some bare only the title while others also include the author's name. The covers also suggest that no grand master is at work in its production; after all, EC is a cooperative, and the covers display the marks of all of the people that participated in its production, even the business responsible for the original box.
Part of ElOIsa Cartonera's social project is to put forth texts that would otherwise go unpublished. This includes both unknown and established authors. By publishing conventionally "unwanted" texts, EC questions the same totalizing logic argued against by Derrida. It does so with a practical approach: by altering the book production itself.
Otherwise unpublished authors have their work bound in unwanted materials that are painted by the very marginalized members of society that had collected the material. The authorial genius is not only replaced by the writer but by the "cartonero" as well.
Though Derrida's argument enables me to conceive of the intertextuality of a book, as opposed to the book, his argument does not make my translation any less Reist 5 problematic. What of the translation of Spanish text in to English? Intertextuality is a key component in recent translation theory, yet even the notion of intertextuality rests on the instability of language itself, since as Derrida states: "the idea of the book is the idea of a totality, finite, or infinite, of the signifier."s The lack of a totality in the signifier and the signified extents to both denotative and connotative language, and translations must acknowledge the instability of both. These issues can best be summarized by Benjamin; he states: "The words Brot and pain 'intend' the same object, but the modes of this intention are not the same. It is owing to these modes that the word Brot means something different to a German than the word pain to a Frenchman, that these words are not interchangeable for them that, in fact, they strive to exclude each other.,,6 As someone not formally trained in the linguistic procedures for translation, much of my translation has, indeed, rested upon interchangeability, or at least upon a faith in the intended signified.
It would then seem, at least on a superficial level, that both the physical EC book and the instability of language would render mine a futile task. At best it would appear to be a task of alteration, inspired by but only partially related to ElOIsa Cartonera. Why then did I choose a text by Cesar Aira? I had actually found out about Aira before EC, after asking some professors and friends about contemporary Argentina authors. I immediately read two of his works, EI Llanto (The Crying) and Paremindes. I was intrigued by his worked, but with a catalogue of over fifty works, ranging from his own literary criticism to full-length novels and short stories, I felt overwhelmed in choosing just one. Indeed, Aira seems more famous for his prolificacy than for anyone text. He is,
5 Derrida, 18. 6 Benjamin, 75. Reist 6 however, rarely translated into English with only four to date. My initial goal in
Argentina was to find such an author. It seemed all too coincidental that Aira had three works published by EloIsa Cartonera including Mil gotas (One Thousand Drops, 2003),
El todo que surca la nada (Everything Ploughs through Nothing, 2003), and El Cerebro
Musical (The Musical Brain, 2005).
Why a text by Aira published by EC? On a pragmatic level, I chose Aira because he is one of the better known authors, along with Ricardo Piglia, that has been published by EC. Some of the more up and coming authors may have lacked the literary stature to produce a thesis. On an aesthetic level, I liked what I had read of him up to that point and to combine his writing with a hand-crafted cover seemed too good to be true. It made my decision of a text much simpler.
Though the notion of a text versus a book may question the author as artistic genius, translations still bear the name of the original author as the primary author. Thus,
a translator could be conceived of as translating not only the text, but also the author; in a
word, their writing style. The style of Cesar Aira, however, is quite difficult to describe.
In an interview with Craig Epplin and Phillip Penix-Tadsen, talking about how he enjoys
writing for small publishing houses, Aira states: "There I can give them anything. That is
what I like to write-anything."? And it would appear that he does precisely that-write
anything. His body of work includes literary criticism, translations, novels, novellas, and
essays. He has even written a dictionary of Latin American authors.
Is there something about a lack of a specific style that would allow a certain
translatability? Or was I simply looking for an author who has not often been translated
7"Ahf plledo darle cllalqllier cosa. Que es 10 que me gusta escribir-cualquier cosa." Craig Epplin and Phillip Penix-Tadsen, "Cualquier cosa: un encuentro con Cesar Aira." 4 July 2005, http://www.leh man .edll/faculty/guinazu/ciberletras/v15/epplin.html Reist 7 into English? Would that not suggest that his work lacks translatability? I do not think that is the case. Though many literary critics emphasize the inability to give a genre to his work, or to even say whether it is good (he is often associated, and associates himself, with "literatura mala"), that does not necessarily mean that one would be unable to translate his texts.8 Chris Andrews has translated three of his works (How I Became a
Nun, Ghosts and An Episode in the Life ofa Landscape Painter), and in an interview with
Scott Bryan Wilson of the Quarterly Conversation, notes, "...the reader is always wondering how 'seriously' to take what he says. The same goes for his speculations and theorizing: some of it seems serious to me (and fits with what he has written in his essays), but other speculative digressions seem to be fictive theory, a kind of irresponsible, joyous playing with concepts.,,9
Aira characterizes his own "playing with concepts" as a literature of process: "the tool of the vanguards.. .is the process....The great artists of the 20th century are not those that made works, but rather those that invented processes so that works would make themselves, or they would not."IO Aira identifies ready-made, cut-up and automatic writing as forms of this process and states that John Cage is exemplary of an art of process, since his music could potentially sound like anything. This is a similar, though less theoretical, analysis of art that Derrida makes in regard to Nietzsche as a writer.
Writing surpasses the work, or the book. The vanguard for Aira exalts writing in order to resist commercial fiction, i.e. the book.
8 See Sandra Contreras. Las Vueltas de Aira. Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo, 2001. 9 Scott Bryan Wilson, "The Chris Andrews Interview." Quarterly Conversation. 8 (Summer 2007). http://quarterlyconversation.comlthe-chris-andrews-interview 10 "La herramienta de las vanguardias ...es el procedimiento....Los grandes artistas del siglo XX no son los que hicieron obra, sino los que inventaron procedimiento para que las obras se hicieran solas, 0 no se hicieran." In Cesar Aira, "La Nueva Escritura." La Jornada Semanal. 1998. Reist 8
After much of my research, I no longer found it odd that this text is bound by a colorful cardboard cover. In many respects Aira is playful and works like El Cerebro
Musical thoroughly demonstrate this. Books are obviously important to both the fictional narrator Cesar of El Cerebro Musical and the actual author Cesar Aira; El Cerebro
Musical plays with the idea of the creation myth and imposes it upon the home of books: the library. This is what Sandra Contreras identifies as Aira's "rare capacity to imagine and tell stories" that are seemingly from nothing. II Yet much like Eloisa Cartonera, Aira seems concerned with "much more than just books." He saturates the markets with books marked with his name, if only to demonstrate that no book is the Aira. There is a certain disposable quality to this saturation of the market and it becomes a personal choice which Aira's are worth reading and which are 'throw-aways.' EC converts what was thrown away into a piece of art. Coupled together, Aira and Eloisa Cartonera break down the components of the book into their simplest forms-cover and text-in order to suggest how stories are ephemeral, just like the cardboard and just as writing is ephemeral for Derrida.
Perhaps translation distorts this relationship that both Eloisa Cartonera and Aira share with the book industry and particularly with commercial fiction or the bestseller. It suggests that this is the work by this author that you should read in your own language.
Aira himself has translated works, yet his opinions of its use value are disheartening at best: "Well alright, I translated only to make a living.. .I never liked translation in literature. People should learn languages and read books in their originallanguage.,,12
II " ...capacidad inusitada para imaginar y contar historias." Sandra Contreras, "Cesar Aira, la estricta etica de la invenci6n," Insula 771. (March 2006): 20. 12 "Bueno, bueno, yo traduje solamente como trabaja alimentario...Nunca me gust6 la traducci6n para la literatura. La gente debe aprender idiomas y leer los libros en su idioma original. " Reist 9
Perhaps translation cannot attain this same sense of process that Aira so highly regards. A translation cannot and should not result in "anything." But what is the difference between a ready-made and a translation? Both have the marks of two or more agents upon the end product, both, in a sense, reposition an object within a context in which perhaps it was not intended to be situated. Perhaps the final product, the translated text or the ready made, is no longer as the dialogue between it and the original.
I may have not resolved the issues that I presented at the beginning of this chapter; though, I believe I have made my task less futile. If I could find a way to
"translate" the cover, would my undertaking become less problematic; or would it simply substitute one problem for another? By thinking of every aspect of my thesis as a translation, perhaps I am limiting its potential as well; or maybe a broader definition of translation is in order. After all Eloisa Cartonera seeks to translate the idea, and it translates the very word, "cartonero" from 'marginalized, destitute paper picker' to someone with agency within the company and their own lives. More than simply investigating translation, my encounter with both Aira and Eloisa Cartonera have led me to investigate book production as well. Aira's emphasis on process is similar to an Eloisa
Cartonera book because both question commercial fiction. Commercial fiction, at least in today's world, is inseparable from the book. The book, in turn, is what is often translated, because the more successful a book as a commodity is in its own language, the more likely it is to be translated. With this in mind, I too will question book production, which returns us to my previously mentioned goal: to translate an author whose texts are
Craig Epplin and Phillip Penix-Tadsen. "Cualquier cosa: un encuentro can Cesar Aira." 4 July 2005, http://www.lehman.edll/facllJty/guinazu/ciberletras/v15/epplin.htmJ Reist 10 not available in English. It would seem that I have not only found that, but an actual
"book" that is rarely translated as well. Reist 11
Eloisa Cartonera: Cover Story
Princeton University houses over 100 works from Eloisa Cartonera, an Argentine cardboard book publishing house, which are considered as notable holdings within its graphic arts collection. The University of Wisconsin boasts an entire database containing over 250 works from various Latin American Cartonera publishing houses. Cartonera books within both libraries fall simultaneously under the category of art and book: titles can be searched for in the library catalogue or covers can be viewed as standalone works of art within a digital database. Indeed, at the back of any Eloisa Cartonera (EC) book, much like a book from any other publishing house, is a list of selected titles and authors that they have published, though this list is preceded by Eloisa's slogan: "jMucho mas que libros!" (Much more than books!). As evident by the Princeton and University of
Wisconsin collections, Eloisa Cartonera does embody much more than just books, and this chapter seeks to investigate certain aspects of that 'more.' Is it the socio-economic story behind the publishing house, the covers themselves as works of art, or the literary works within those covers that truly establishes the works of Eloisa Cartonera as unique?
Eloisa Cartonera certainly conflicts with the old adage not to judge a book by its cover, and brings into question the role of the book not only as cultural and material commodity but also as vehicle for social change.
The Cover and the Market
The fact that Eloisa Cartonera books are considered part of the graphic arts collection at Princeton University suggests that these hand-painted cardboard books possess a certain aesthetic appeal. The first question to ask then would be: how has the book-object, and particularly its cover, been perceived as beautiful within cultural and Reist 12
literary theory? Robert Escarpit describes the book as a composite art consisting in "the
letter [....] page design, printing, illustrations, binding" which all contribute to the
"objective beauty of the book.,,13 Though arguments can be made regarding the
'objective beauty' of a book, all of these aspects do contribute to the aesthetics of the
book as object. Investigations involving the book-object have often fallen under the field of Cultural Studies, such as Roger Chartier's The Order ofBooks: Readers, Authors, and
Libraries in Europe between the 14th and 18th Century, which seeks to identify the role of
printing throughout the centuries not only in terms of what was read but how books were regulated and classified. Regulation and classification, however, still remain heavily
concerned with content: with what the pages have to say. The interest in book-binding as an art form, especially with regards to library preservation, draws more closely upon the
materiality of the book-object because rare editions are often housed in museums or
university special collections. Randy Silverman notes the importance of preservation
because "these three dimensional works provide evidence of two hundred years of book history, including technological advances brought on by the Industrial Revolution, the
development of commercial art, and the changing nature of women's work.,,14 Thus, the
history of the book and its cover as a commodity provides insight not only for the role of
literature within society, but also how the actual production of books affects society. The
question, then, is not the perceived beauty of the cover, but rather its function within
capitalist markets.
Though bound books do highlight developments, the publishing industry has
come to be dominated by mass-produced hardcover and, to an even greater extent,
13 Robert Escarpit, The Book Revolution. (London: George G Hanap & Co. and UNESCO, 1966),31. 14 Randy Silverman, "Can't Judge a Book without its Binding." Libraries & the Cultural Record._42.3 (2007). Reist 13 paperback editions since the late nineteenth century. The artisanal work of book-binding was initially intertwined with the advent of the paperback book, since owners often had their own books bound to create uniform libraries. This allowed publishers to cut some of their own costs. Many other factors contributed to the ubiquitous presence of paperback books: they were increasingly used for leisure and thus gained a 'disposable' quality, the light weight of paperbacks made them more portable during travel, and they represented a democratization of reading by providing literature at a low cost. IS Paperbacks have also been a vehicle for publishing companies to brand themselves through similar cover designs and lettering. 16
The paperback, as well as the hardcover, is emblematic of the book-object as commodity, and the cover issued by the publisher serves as the first impression of the goods. That is not to discredit the author, since author recognition is often the strongest influence on consumers. 17 Michael Foucault used the term author-function in order to distinguish the biographical author from the role of the author within the system of book production. The author-function is not an isolated figure generating texts but rather one bound in "modes of circulation, valorization, attribution, and appropriation." 18 Publishers exert great control over the author-function in these very modes. They decide who gets published and how that book is to be presented to the public. Publishing houses also produces all the aspects of a book beyond the text that account for its aesthetic value, as pointed out by Escarpit. To a lesser degree, publishing companies also determine who
15 Alistair McCleery, "The Paperback Evolution: Tauchnitz, Albatross and Penguin." In Judging a Book by its Cover._Ed Matthews, Nicole and Nickianne Moody. (Bodmin: Ashgate_2007), 4. 16 Ibid. 17 Angus Phillips, "How Books are Positioned in the Market: Reading the Cover." In Judging a Book by its Cover. 21. 18 Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?" 1969. In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed Donald F Bouchard. (Ithaca: Cornell D, 1997), 137. Reist 14 reads a book, or better stated, to whom a book should appeal, which is how covers primarily function within the market. For example, Bloomsberg issued a second, more adult-targeted cover once it realized that the Harry Potter series had a large adult following. 19 Publishing houses value the author, but they also value all that is external to the text, and use the cover as a means of communicating with the public.
Covers also indicate how successfully a book functions in the market. They often boast the reviews of critics, literary prize medals are superimposed on them, they function as posters for film adaptations, and titles are introduced by such phrases as
"New York Times Best Seller." The printed word, particularly books and newspapers, have served as a catalyst in the development of modern societies that Benedict Anderson coined as "imagined communities;" mass-produced literature serves as a form of simultaneity between separate peoples: 'everyone' is reading this work, in a fixed language, at roughly the same time. 2o These additions to the cover reinforce this notion of simultaneity: they advertise a community of like-minded readers, and urge you to join.
The hand-painted covers of Eloisa Cartonera, of which no two are alike, seem at once to challenge the use of covers as advertisements within the market, while emphasizing the short-comings of the larger global market through its use of waste products. However, this form of publishing is very much grounded in the specifically Argentine publishing industry.
Brief History of Argentine Publishing
Literature and reading occupy an important place within Argentine culture.
Avenida Corrientes in Buenos Aires is renowned for its numerous bookstores, ranging
19 Philips, 22. 20 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread ofNationalism. ( London: Verso, 1983.) Reist 15 from known chains to small kiosks. According to a 2001 census, the country has a 97.2% literacy rate and the government allocates 3.8% of the nation GDP to education. 21 Much of the importance given to literacy within the country stems not only from the large wealth of well-known Argentine authors like Cortazar and Borges, but also from the development of the Argentine publishing industry. During the 1940's and '50's there was a so called Golden Age of Argentine publishing during which the country was the leading producer of books within the entire Spanish-speaking world, producing over 630 million copies over the two decades. The cultural scope of the many Argentine publishers is evident beyond mere numbers; Editorial Sudamerica first published
Columbian author Gabriel Garda Marquez's Cien aiios de soledad (One Hundred Years ofSolitude) in 1967 while the magazine Sur was responsible for the first Spanish translations of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno?2 As Francine Masiello states:
"[...J despite the richness of literary texts of those years, this market mode also yielded, for the purpose of consumer society, a paradoxical unification and flattening of very different literary texts so that a strange homogeneity of cultural production was used to globalize Latin American writing.'023 Thus, the Argentine publishing industry is intrinsically linked to the production of the "imagined community" known as the Latin
American Boom. This production is two-fold: Argentine publishing exposed the global community to Latin American literature while also exposing readers and writers of that literature to European trends of thinking, as with Adorno and Benjamin.
21 "Argentina." The World Fact Book. 18 December 2008. CIA. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ar.html (16 January 2009) 22 Secretarfa de Industria, Comercio y de la pequefia y media empresa. Centro de Estudios para la Producci6n. "La Industria dellibro en Argentina." 2005. http://www.industria.gov.ar/cep/industrial/2005/industria libro.pelf (15 January 2009). 23 Francine Masiello, "The Unbearable Lightness of History: Bestseller Scripts of Our Times." In The Latin American Cultural Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 462. Reist 16
The Military Dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1982, censored written works and targeted intellectuals, with repercussions that caused the industry to decline: a mere
176 million books were produced in the 1980's. The drop in publishing over the '70's and '80's caused many Argentine publishing houses either to merge or be bought out by large multinational corporations such as Random House Mondadori of Spain during the
'90's. Spain surpassed Argentina as the largest producer of Spanish language literature, such that many Latin American authors, especially those producing the bestsellers of
Masiello's study, were no longer published within Latin America. This produced considerable growth, and by 200 the industry peaked at 74 million copies in that year alone. Yet the economic crisis of 2001 devastated the industry: 2001 produced 60 million copies, a number which fell to only 28 million copies in 2003. Small and medium-sized companies were particularly affected by this seemingly sudden downturn.
As of 2005, these companies comprise 85% of the total number of publishing houses in
Argentina, yet contribute only 25% to total production.24
EloIsa Cartonera
Eloisa Cartonera emerged out of, in spite of, and because of this economic upheaval. The economic crisis caused staggering inflation, high levels of unemployment, and it greatly increased the price of raw materials including paper that were often imported. "cartoneros," or paper-pickers, became a symbol for the failed economy.
Buenos Aires, a city that had once held its head above its impoverished Latin American counterparts, was and still is the city to which many people travel long distances in order to forge some sort of living out of the discarded high commodity of recyclable paper products. La Nacion reports that in 2002 some 200,000 people amassed in the city by
24 Secretarfa de Industria, Comercio y de la pequefia y media empresa. Reist 17 night for the sole purpose of sorting through garbage, though the city itself deemed the 25 practice unlawful, despite its lack of government sponsored recycling programs. It would be foolish, however, to conceive of the "cartoneros" as an organized body. These people are often comprised of family units struggling to deal with the unemployment caused by the financial crisis.
"Cartoneros" can usually sell their finds for approximately 20-30 peso cents per kilo to paper mills located far outside the city. The founders of EloIsa Cartonera saw an opportunity to break the cycle of exploitation. Poet and author Washing Curcuto teamed up with graphic designer Javier Barilaro and artist Fernanda Laguna (who had already started a low coast publishing house known as Belleza y Felicidad in 1999) in order to form EloIsa Cartonera. The publishing house is located in the barrio of La Boca, one of the more impoverished neighborhoods of Buenos Aires despite being a main tourist destination. It is housed in a small "taller," or workshop called No hay cuchillo sin rosas
(No knife without roses). "Cartoneros" are generally paid between 1 to 1.5 pesos for each kilo according to the publishers' website.
Yet the "cartoneros" are not mere suppliers. As the website states: "Eloisa
Cartonera is an artistic, social and community non-profit project. It's located in a cardboard workshop called No hay cuchillo sin rosas where "cartoneros" exchange ideas with artists and writers.,,26 Thus, the location is paramount: artists and writers are located in the cardboard workshop, so in more than a literal sense everyone is on equal ground.
2S Jose Ignacio Llad6s. ""cartoneros", el tema del ano." La Nad6n. 3 Dec. 2002. http://wwwl.lanacion.com.ar/nota.asp?nota_id=455397 26 "~De que se trata?" Eloisa Cartonera. http://www.eloisacartonera.com.ar/gue.html. "Eloisa Cartonera es un proyecto artistico, social y comunitario sin fines de luero. Una cartoneria, llamada No hay cuchillo sin rosas, es su sede, donde "cartoneros" cruzan ideas con artistas y escritores." (All translations my own unless otherwise noted). Reist 18
The "cartoneros" are also paid 3 pesos an hour to help bind and paint the books, taking on the role of artist in their own right. Nicolas Pinkus and Gustavo L6pez have observed that EC encourages a breaking down of the hegemonic cyclical nature of poverty by not only giving the "cartoneros" visibility but also by giving them agency within a legitimate
system of production.27 This has prompted Craig Epplin to consider the mode of production within Eloisa Cartonera as similar to that in new media because "it enables momentary social encounters to take place around the recycling of trash into aesthetic objects" which is comparable to chat rooms or programs like Second Life that also create
"unique, ephemeral textual product[s]." 28 He asserts that this mode of production in
itself is a type of "imagined community."
Though Ee lacks many of the features of other, even small, publishing houses, it has made something of a name for itself within Latin America and the world as well. It has quite literally done this through a joint publication, with Akademie Schloss Solitude
in Stuttgart, of a book aptly named, No hay cuchillo sin rosas: Historias de un editorial
latinoamericana y Antolog{a de j6venes autores. The book is not accredited to any
author on the title pages: it simply acknowledges the participation of the authors within
the Nuevo Sudaca Borders anthology. It begins with a bold heading spanning two pages:
"La editorial mas colorinche del mundo," (The most colorful publishing house in the
world.)29 "Colorinche," though it does mean colorful, more specifically refers to
everything that is "colorful and alive, but in a derogatory way. One typical use: the upper
27 Nicolas Pinkus and Gustavo Lopez. "Eloisa Cartonera, la subversion suave ante la crisis." In Piquete de 0)0. Ed. Maria Ledesma. (Buenos Aira: Nobuko, 28 Craig EppEn. "New Media, Cardboard, and Community in Contemporary Buenos Aires." Hispanic Review 7.4. (2007) 393-394. 29 No hay cuchillo sin rosas._Stuttgart: Akademie Schloss Solitude & Eloisa Cartonera, 2007. Reist 19 class ladies talking about the cheap looks of their domestic service.,,30 It has heavy connotations of class, yet that is something to be embraced by a producer of cardboard- bound books. Rather than featuring the founders of the publishing house, the book contains black and white photographs of the people who work there day in and day out, cutting cardboard, binding books, painting the covers, with captions about their personal lives, the soccer teams they prefer, the songs they enjoy singing as they work. This would suggest that the encounters created through the production of the books in No hay cuchillo sin rosas are not mere "momentary social encounters" of disparate groups, as
Epplin would assert. The workers at EC have forged a sense of solidarity among themselves. Perhaps Epplin is reducing the relationships between individuals to the relationship between the people and their product; the "cartonera" book may be considered "ephemeral" only when texts meets cover, for the authors, not the
"cartoneros", are most absent from the physical production of the book-object. Though the covers are unique, the process is not.
The book serves as an introduction and mission statement to all the factors that make EloIsa Cartonera much more than just a producer of books. Beneath the bold heading is a simple and understated explanation of the company's goals. This introduction is further broken down into a list of answers following the question, "Why do we make cardboard books?
Because each book that we make is unique. Because we meet people. Because we create our own work. Because we leam by doing everything ourselves. Because we do not like staying home. Because we have fun. Because we discover that through our work we can leam many things. Because people like what we do. Because our books are the most colorful (colorinche), inexpensive, and entertaining in South
30 Mariano Seoane and Santiago Deymonnaz. "Sneaking in the Illegal." Ts. New York University. Reist 20
America.3l
The use of the first person plural throughout this list echoes the black and white photographs that follow. Eloisa Cartonera is a cooperative; so much so that it even affords the "cartoneros" the opportunity to work as authors. This emphasis on learning also departs from Epplin's attempt to associate Eloisa Cartonera with new media because it implies that the production of books is ongoing for the "we" involved.
The publishing house is known for its lack of editing. It puts its faith in the capabilities of its authors both known and unknown. In this way it has truly established itself as much more than just a producer of books. It represents the vanguard, to the point that it even holds its own literary competition known as "Nueva Sudaca Border de
Narrativa Muy Breve." The authors within the anthology in the second half of No hay cuchillo sin rosas have participated in this competition. The competition has received the stamp of approval from well known authors such as Cesar Aira and Ricardo Piglia, who have served as judges. EC often uses a "cartonero" as a judge in the competition. The competition and participation in other events, such as the International Book Fair of
Buenos Aires, have helped the publishing house gain recognition not only for its inspired approach to the manufacturing of books, but also for its literary achievements.
The project of Eloisa Cartonera as a publisher of cardboard books that contain avant-garde texts has special implications as well. Francine Masiello has also theorized about the role of the avant-garde within Argentine literature of the '20's and '30's. She asserts that unlike the avant-garde of Europe that represented "the peak of individualism
3l Porque cada libro que hacemos es unico. Porque conocemos gente. Porque creamos nuestro propio trabajo. Para que aprendemos haciendo todo nosotros mismos. Porque no nos gusta estar en nuestra casa. Porque nos divertimos. Porque descubrimos que a traves de nuestro trabajo podemos aprender muchas cosas. Porque a la gente Ie gusta 10 que hacemos. Porque nuestro libros son los mas colorinches, econ6micos y entretenidos de Sudamerica. No hay cuchillo sin rosas. Reist 21 and signal[ed] the triumph of the petite bourgeois within modern art," the Argentine avant-garde "did not serve to erase the 'I' but rather to affirm its own subjectivity and to 32 formulate an epistemology of [the] otherness" of marginalized people. The subjectivity of the "cartoneros" forms the backbone of No hay cuchillo sin rosas. They are the publishing house's name sake and the authors of within the anthology, like the authors of the 1920's vanguard, "[fight] for the prestige" of this marginalized group "over the prestige of the individual author.,,33
The emphasis on the "cartoneros" as producers explicitly evokes not only the cardboard material but also their role in obtaining it: by shifting through garbage.
Garbage and found objects have often been used within art. 34 Art historians would point to the assemblage art of the mid-to late 1950's in the US as the inception of this trend within high art. Found objects had been used in earlier art movements, but this has usually taken the form of a 'ready-made' rather than an object incorporated into a large composition (so, in this way it is related to collage). The art form sought to introduce new materials to art while also blurring the lines between 2 and 3 dimensional works of art.
Assemblage art stems from abstract expressionism in its "emphasis on the act or process of art. ,,35 This is certainly the case with Eloisa Cartonera from its 'resources' to its finished product. EC also has a connection to Argentina Pop Art of the '60's through the work of Marta Minujin and others, who also used found-objects. Marta Minujin's art
32 "La critica...ha insistido bastante en que la vanguardia representa la cima del individualismo y sefiala el triunfo del espfritu pequefioborgues modemo," (302) and "no sirve para bOlTar el yo sino para afirmar la propia subjetivad y formular una epistemologfa de la 'alteridad' (otredad)," (301). Francie Masiello, "La politica de la marginalidad en la vanguardia argentina." Nuevas Criticos, 1.2 (1988). 33 " ...los escritores lucharon par establecer el prestigio del grupo sabre el prestigio del escritor individual." Ibid, 303. 34 Suzanne Seriff, "Recycled, Re-seen: Folk Art from the Global Scarp Heap." Afi'ican Arts, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996),42-94 . 35Diane Waldman, Collage, Assemblage and the Found Object. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1992) Reist 22 especially differed because "far from accentuating the objects themselves (as in USA
Pop), [her art] was largely symbolic.,,36 The books of Elofsa Cartonera work on both levels: EC does not try to mask the origin of the cardboard gained from garbage and destitute social conditions, and thus the symbolism of its social commitment is obvious.
The goal is not a total recycling of the material, but rather an affirmation, through reuse, of the very material of cardboard and of the subjectivity of the "cartoneros."
Despite all of this, one question remains: are books made of cardboard beautiful?
The publishing house does not neglect a pursuit of new and interesting literature, but there seems to be an emphasis on the book-object, on its colorfulness, affordability, and on the ideology that forms it. The ideological aspect has definitely appealed to many, as the Princeton and University of Wisconsin websites demonstrate with their emphasis on the "cartoneros" and their involvement in production. 37 It has also inspired a sister project in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and other projects in Peru, Mexico, and Chile, all of which employ "Cartonera" in their name. It is as if "cartonera" has become a kind of brand. A brand that belongs to no-one except those inclined toward social change through the manufacturing of cardboard books. A brand that does not erase the brand names of grocery stores, food products, and other goods, but rather incorporates them into a book cover that simply has the name of its author and title painted across. A brand in which no two covers are the same, except in their simplicity. The Cartonera brand represents a democratization of literature far greater than that of the paperback book, for it not only
36 Jacqueline Barnitz, "A Latin Answer to Pop." In Readings in Latin American Modern Art. Ed. Patrick Frank. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 37 "Ediciones ElOisa Cartonera Book Covers." Latin American Cartonera Publishers Database. University of Wisconsin at Madison. http://digital.library.wisc.eclu/1711.cll/Arts.EloisaCart. "ElOisa Cartonera," Graphic Arts.Princeton University 2008. http://blogs.princeton.eclu/graphicarts!2008/04/eloisacartonera.html. Reist 23 makes books available to many as objects of reading, but it also allows substantial participation in every aspect of their production, including authorship. This is perhaps where Epplin can locate the imagined community: within the un-owned name-brand
"Cartonera"
If anything, one may initially assume the garbage to be covering up the 'actual' art, the work of literature within. The cover asks one to first recognize the materials of the book-object and conceive of the conditions of its production, for that is the story that it tells. The cover, then, becomes the locus upon which debates regarding authorship and ownership are centered because these covers reveal far much more about Eloisa
Cartonera than about the authored text within. Yet, Eloisa Cartonera does not ignore its authors but rather promotes them with the simplest means-their names hand-painted on the cover. Thus, the uniformity between covers in their production prohibits that any book, or author, is known for its market value. The author and the title form the composition of the covers. With this in mind, the books can be seen as more than the composite proposed by Escarpit: they can be seen as a tangible piece of multimedia. The sort of "rough" beauty of the covers reinforces the vanguard of the authors within. The text and its cover work together simultaneously to tell a story that is "much more than just books." Reist 24
Translating El Cerebro Musical
Some Issues in Translating Aira
As I have already mentioned before, I felt the urge to translate before I even encountered the object of my study. Perhaps it is because I see translation as that murky area where literary critique and language come together. Translation seems at once to attest to a specific meaning for the language of a text while simultaneously avoiding a specific meaning for the work in its entirety. Yet even that claim is contentious: the sheer existence of multiple translations of the same text attests to the instability of the
"intended" object. To outline a history of translation theory is beyond the scope of this thesis, but there are some questions that must be kept in mind considering my lack of formal training in the field. Some may consider translation an act of interpretation, but could the same not be said for the act of reading?38 How about reading a text in another language known to the reader but with the help of a dictionary? In many ways the mere act of translation seems to encompass many of the problems within literary criticism: does one translate a text or an author? Who, then, ultimately 'owns' the translation?
These questions seem to go hand-in-hand with older debate within translation theory of fidelity and transparency, but also take into account the relationship between author, translation, and the book industry.
Ownership seems a pertinent question especially given the nature of the text that I have translated; or rather, given the cover that surrounds it. My translation, though inspired by Eloisa Cartonera, ultimately cannot, and perhaps should not, try to duplicate
38 For instance, Gregory Rabassa often questioned the very notion of translation theory, thinking of himself as somewhere between active reader and creative writer. See Rabassa, Gregory. Ifthis be Treason: Translation and its Dyscontents, a Memoir. (New York: New Directions Publishing Corp. 2005). Reist 25 the cover. This is not to say that EC is itself opposed to translation. EC does offer some
Portuguese-to-Spanish translations in its catalogue, but it only publishes authors from
Latin America. It excludes authors from Spain and those from the US and Canada who write in Spanish. Yet this may not be simply an act of exclusion, but rather an act of specified inclusion: EC publishes authors from many different Latin American countries that would other wise not appear in print.
However, Cesar Aira is not such an author, yet that has not always been the case.
Many critics have noted the difficulty in characterizing Aira's style due to his self- professes emphasis on process. It is similarly difficult to categorize him within a particular movement of Latin American authors. Chronologically one may say that he belongs to the Post-Boom with the publication of his first novel Moreira in 1975. The early part of his career, however, is rarely discussed, except for those books that have been reissued like Ema, fa cautiva CEma, the Captive, originally published in 1981 and reissued by Mondadori in 1997 and 2005). Little attention was paid to Aira until the late
Nineties, because he had been publishing two to four books a year over the course of the decade. Contreras and other critics such as Jesus Montoya Juarez and Graciela Montaldo have suggested that Aira's obsessive publication is a critique, or inversion of the publishing industry itself creating a "marca Aira" that saturates the industry.39 The peculiarity of Aira, then, stems from an inability to group him with authors of his own generation, since he seeks to identify himself with the younger vanguard like those writers of Eloisa Cartonera, and also from an inability to group anyone of his texts with the next.
39 Jesus Montoya Juarez. "Aira y los airianos: literatura argentina y la cultura masiva desde los noventa." In Entre 10 local y 10 global: la narrativa latinoamericano en el cambio del siglo (1990-2006), Ed. Jesus Montoya Juarez and Angel Esteban, (Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial, 2008), 51. Reist 26
He has been published by many different types and scales of publishing house.
His career outside Latin America, and more specifically Argentina, has ultimately been marked by these varying relationships. For example, Como me hice monja (How I
Became a Nun), his most critically acclaimed work, was originally published by Beatriz
Viterbo in Rosario, Argentina in 1993. Yet international acclaim for the book did not come until it was reissued by Random House/Mondadori in Spain in 1998. Obviously, the publishing industry influences an author's prestige. Translation can similarly function to increase an author's popularity at home or abroad. Some make the case that Gregory
Rabassa's translations of One Hundred Years ofSolitude and Hopscotch, among many others, were and still are instrumental to understanding the Latin American Literary
Boom.40 Aira has gained some prestige elsewhere: an entire colloquium organized by his
French-language translator Michel Lafon, entitled Cesar Aim, une revolution, was held in
2005. However, How I Became a Nun was not translated into English until 2007, by
Christopher Andrews and New Directions Publishing Corp. Why such a long passage of
time?
Perhaps it could be argued that not all of Aira' s body of work is worthy of
prestige, and for that matter translation. El Cerebro Musical would probably not be
considered Cesar Aira's most accomplished work. Mil gotas (One Thousand Drops)
which he also published with Eloisa Cartonera in 2003 sold over eight-hundred copies
within two years, a great feat for any sized publishing house. Christopher Andrews
identifies a certain element of disappointment within many of Aira's texts.41 This
40 Elizabeth Lowe and Earl E. Fitz. Translation and the Rise ofInter-American Literary Study. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007), 135. 41 Scott Bryan Wilson. "The Chris Andrews Interview." Quarterly Conversation. 8 (Summer 2007). http://quarterlyconversation.comlthe-chris-andrews-interview Reist 27 element is very much connected with Aira's large catalogue suggesting that maybe he simply publishes too much. Sandra Contreras asserts that the question should not be
"why does he publish so much?" but rather "why does he publish everything?"-the good, the bad, the disappointing. 42 Publishing then becomes another step within Aira's process. It is the necessary proof that he does in fact accomplish his goal to write
'anything.' By saturating the market with his varied texts, Aira effectively demonstrates that "publication is itself part of his body of work.,,43 Ownership with the texts of Aira then encompasses a willingness to have his name on all works, praiseworthy or otherwise. Prestige and fame are not Aira's aim, so publishing companies which seek to translate Aira into English are simultaneously hard-pressed to keep up with his excessive production and hard-pressed to justify the translation of a piece of bad literature.
It would be easy to find El Cerebro Musical outlandish and over-the-top: what begins as a childhood memory of a book donation is quickly interrupted by a midget love-triangle, the destruction of the Musical Brain, and a grotesque flying creature attacking a crowded theater. Yet I would not say that I was outright disappointed by El
Cerebro Musical. Perhaps I read it differently knowing that I was going to translate it; some translators translate as they read for the first time, to avoid judgments of "worth."
Regardless of whether it is good or bad literature, Aira's attempt to "write anything" is seen within this one text. El Cerebro Musical is what Aira would call one of his
"novelitas." It is a mere twenty-three pages long, which makes the cardboard's thickness feel that much more substantial. Despite its length, the "novelita" quickly takes on many
42 "jwero par que publica tanto?! jwor que publica todD?!" Contreras, Sandra. "Cesar Aira, la estricta etica de la invenci6n." Insula 711. (March 2006): 20. 43"00 .muestra hasta que punta el acto de publicaci6n es parte misma de la obra." Contreras, 19. Reist 28 forms: part pseudo-autobiography, part kunstlerroman, part mystery. His emphasis on process then similarly becomes a mixing and reinvention of notions of genre, and moreover, of notions of what can be expected from a novel.
Though to translate Aira's sense of process would to some extent require me to translate as many of his works as possible, I feel that as a text it exhibits many of the general features found within his oeuvre. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss my own translation while also acknowledging the aspects of El Cerebra Musical that relate to some of these more general features found in many of Aira's works.
My Process of Translation
I began my translation of El Cerebra Musical without much knowledge of Cesar
Aira's literary reputation. Of the three "novelitas" that he has published with ElOIsa
Cartonera, I found it to be the least absurd. For example, Mil gotas features a homosexual romance between one of the paint drops of the Mona Lisa and the Pope. I must admit, however, that I only saw El Cerebra Musical as representative of Aira's work after I had begun translating. I did not necessarily have a set method of translation, so Professor Rouhi and I decided to set our own parameters and simply see where the very act of translation would take us. I think this lack of a method and my lack of knowledge regarding Aira's literary reception went hand-in-hand: rather than reading about Aira as I translated, I read some of his other works in both Spanish and English translation. I had attempted to identify a specific styIe within Aira before I discovered the lack thereof.
I thought translation would be somewhat intuitive as I relied on my own knowledge of the Spanish language. As I started to translate, mistakes were to be Reist 29 expected. El Cerebra Musical begins: "Yo era chico, tendrfa cuatro 0 cinco afios. Era en mi pueblo, Coronel Pringles, a comienzos de la decada de 1950.,,44 I had initially translated this as: "I was young, about four or five years old. I was in my town, Coronel
Pringles, at the beginning of the 1950's." I had overlooked perhaps the most reiterated lesson within any of my Spanish language classes: the difference between "estar" and
"ser." Careful editing led me to change the phrase to "It happened in my town." But how could I have made such an egregious mistake? I realized that I had been thinking too much about the word "era" and its appearance within both sentences and had ignored how this one word can function differently in two sentences. I mention this, on the one hand, for the sake of humor, and on the other hand, for the sake of demonstrating the subtleties of Spanish that could easily be over looked if a non-native were just reading El
Cerebra Musical with a dictionary in hand. My training in translation had been essentially this: reading with a dictionary. Now I was attempting something far more active and rigorous.
Whereas I can use a dictionary while I read, translation comes down to making choices. Yet these choices were not simply limited to the selection of what I felt was the best con'esponding English word; they where also present in decisions of style and tone.
Within the first paragraph of my translation I had to decide whether or not to use contractions. Spanish does not contain verbal contractions, so my choice had to do more with tone and the perspective of the narrator than with language. The narrator of El
Cerebra Musical, also named Cesar, shares many biographical details with the author: both are from Coronel Pringles (yes, this is a real city in the Province of Buenos Aires), both grew up in the 1950's, both leave the small town in order to pursue literary careers
44 Aira, Cesar. El Cerebra Musical. Buenos Aires: Eloisa Cartonera, 2003. Reist 30 in the Capital. However, Aira frequently fictionalizes his past within his works-though one should not assume that the young Cesar Aira in Como me hice monja is one and the same with the Cesar of El Cerebra Musical. 45 This use of his own past within his novels lends to them an anecdotal quality that I think warrants the use of contractions.
Other decisions could not be so broadly applied to my own translation, and this is particularly evident in the many ways I approached Aira's use of commas and clauses.
At times I tried to remain as faithful to word and clause order as possible. The first paragraph of the text contains an excellent example:
Quien sabe que circunstancias nos habfan llevado esa noche allujoso restaurante del Hotel, a sentarnos alrededor de una mesa de mantel blanco, cubiertos de lata, copas altas, platos de porcelana con una guarda dorada, tiesos e inc6modos: estabamos vestidos de punta en blanco, los mismo que todos los demas comensales presentes.46
Who knows what circumstances had brought us to the luxurious Hotel restaurant that night, to seat ourselves around a table with a white cloth, silverware, tall glasses, porcelain plates with gold trim, stiff and uncomfortable: we were dressed from head-to-toe in white, the same as the others present at our table.
The many comas are due to the list of items that the family encounters on the table as they dine at the Hotel. Yet the confusion lies in the adjectives at the end of this list,
"tiesos e inc6modos." The Spanish allows for these adjectives to correspond simultaneously with the "platos" and with the family that both agree in gender and number. Part of the ambiguity stems from that fact that the family only becomes the subject of the sentence after the colon. Though adjective agreement is not the source of ambiguity in my English translation, I believe that by maintaining word order and
45 Manuel Alberca Serrano. 'Una lectura transitiva de Cesar Aira.' Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. N 655, (2005): 83-94. 46 Aira, 3. Reist 31 avoiding the addition of verbs, "tense and uncomfortable" can similarly apply to both the plates and the family.
In other passages, however, I felt it necessary to rearrange clauses and add certain verbs in order to establish clarity in English. After the accidental destruction of the
Musical Brain by the narrator's sister, the mystery of the missing midgets is sorrowfully solved: "Porque en medio de esa masa flotaban muertos, en posici6n fetal mutualmente invertida, los dos enanos hombres, los mellizos.,,47 I translated this sentence as: "Because in the middle of that mass were dead bodies floating in an upside-down fetal position; these were none other than the midget twins." The first thing that is apparent within my translation is the conversion of this sentence into two, separated by a semicolon. Part of the difficulty in translating this as one sentence stems from the fact that the subject, "los dos enanos hombres," comes after a prepositional phrase. Yet if I were to have simply repositioned the subject in the English translation, the element of surprise would have been lost. Rather than reiterating the subject as Aira does, "los dos enanos hombres, los mellizos," within the English translation, I condensed the subject into "the midget twins" and allowed the phrase "these were none other" to replace that repetition of the subject and still allow the sentence to be suspenseful.
At times, however, I began to see this use of clauses everywhere within the novel and ignored other possible uses of commas. I came back to one particular sentence over and over again: "Mi madre, orgullosa de su linaje familiar de me16manos refinados, recitadoras y tnigicos, denostaba esas manifestaciones del gusto popular tipificadas por
Leonor Rinaldi.,,48 I was convinced that "recitardoras y tnigicos" somehow modified
47 Aira, 17. 48 Aira, 9. Reist 32
"mel6manos refinados." At first I thought that the phrase had a specific Argentine meaning of which I was unaware. I had completely overlooked the differences in gender that would have signaled that this was in fact a list within a clause due to of an over awareness of Aira's long multi-clausal sentences. Finally realizing my error, thanks to the help of the language T.A.'s, I translated the sentence thusly: "My mother, proud of her lineage of music-lovers, poetry reciters and tragedians, reviled these demonstrations of common taste typified by Leonor Rinaldi."
I often found myself spending a considerable amount of time dwelling on specific words as well. The narrator, looking back on his own speculations about the value attributed to the boxes of books at the book soiree, states: "No se quien me habfa explicado estas cosas, 0 si eran resultado de mis propias elucubraciones y fantasias,"
(emphasis added).49 It is not that I struggled to find an English equivalent to the word, which is simply "lucubrations" (both languages have alternate spellings with or without the "e" though without seems to be the most common in English), but rather that I could not quite define the word with the use of various Spanish dictionaries that would justify using such a pretentious word in my translation.5o There seems to be a negative connotation to the act of "lucubrar," since it is an act of unfounded speculation. However,
"elucubraciones," the often plural noun form, also suggests a written work that is the result of such. Later in the passage the narrator confesses to "always inventing stories and plots for things I didn't understand." This seems to fit very well with the specific
49 Aira, 4. sO"Elucubraci6n." Diccionario manual de la lengua espanola. Larousse Editorial, S.L. 2007. 1. Pensamiento 0 reflexi6n sobre algo conseguido tras un intenso trabajo intelectual. lucubraci6n. 2. Hip6tesis 0 especulaci6n no fundamentada y producto de la imaginaci6n: pon los pies en la tierra y dejate de elucubraciones. lucubraci6n. However there is a slightly different definition. "Lucubraci6n." Diccionario enciclopedico de la lengua castellana. Larousse Editorial, S.L. 2009. 1. Acci6n y efecto de lucubrar. 2. Vigilia y tarea consagrada al estudio. 3. Obras 0 producto de este trabajo. Reist 33 definition of the word, and deterred me from translating the word as "meditations" or
"deliberations." This is why it is so important that he does not know where these thoughts came from because they are simultaneously the result of his past lucubrating and his present recollection of these stories placed within the written narrative as lucubrations.
I was hesitant in my translation of "interpolaci6n" in the following passage for similar reasons: "Las estrellas en el negro profundo debieron de ser una interpolacion de los escalofriantes sucesos posteriores en el techo del Teatro," (emphasis added).51 I eventually translated this sentence as: "The stars in the black depths must have been an interpolation to the terrible events that happened later on the roof of the Teatro." I think that in this case the word "interpolation" is most readily defined in the sense of inserting text into an already existent document.52 This is supported in the continuation of the passage: "The very peculiarity of the story, in part, justifies my mistake; its different incidents, even if they were linked in a fairly predictable order, could also be isolated like the stars in the heavens that were the only witnesses to the outcome, to the point that everything that fits appears to do so because of fantasy and not reality." The narrator's constant inability to recall the chronological order of the story suggests that other instances may have also been interpolations.
Both "lucubrations" and "interpolations" are fitting, specialized words within a text that contains numerous instances of self-reference and metanarration.53 Throughout
51 Aira. Pg 16. 52 "Interpolar." Real Academia Espanola. http://buscon.rae.es/c1raeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO BUS=3&LEMA=interpolacion. March 2009. 1. f. Acci6n y efecto de interpolar. 2. f. Ecd. Palabra 0 fragmento afiadido en la transmisi6n de un texto. 53 Jesus Montoya Jmirez asserts that the self-referential tendencies within Aira's work are one example of how he is effectively a postmodem author. See: Montoya Juarez, Jesus. "Las mil caras de Cesar Aira." Reist 34
The Musical Brain the narrator speculates about his own reliability. This reliability, or lack thereof, is specifically related to the narrator's ability to remember and to forget. Of particular mention is the scene in which the narrator recalls a discussion of Sarita
Subercaseaux with his mother. It is difficult to distinguish the narrator as the one remembering the discussion from the narrator as character who has perhaps forgotten or misremembered Sarita. His mother asserts that Sarita died before Cesar was even born and attributes his sense of memory to the stories that she must have told him. The narrator, now reflecting over the past discussion states: "Whenever we disagreed over any detail from the past, without fail she was right and I was not." The narrator insists that the reader takes his mother's word over his, yet concludes with an affirmation of his own memory: "Sarita...was the very image of sterility. This I do remember." Perhaps
Cesar the adult looking back on this conversation is only firm in his ability to remember the image of Sarita.
Other instances of metanarration are more obvious throughout the text. After the above mentioned scene the narrator ends his own interruption, stating, "Returning to the scene in the Hotel," as if to say 'returning to a part of the story in which I am the reliable narrator.' But how can any claim to a narrator's reliability be made when Aira himself is all too aware of his own metanarration: "It's true that I have always been a favorite among the studious, the academics, the universities, because my novels have like a meta- narrative side. There are elements that professors can show off with, places for them to
Revista electronica de estudios filologicos. N 9, 2005. http://www.um.es/tonosdigital/znum9/estudios/aira.htm Reist 35 find things."s4 Aira is an enigmatic character: an author who makes a living doing translations yet is skeptical of translation's merits, a literary critic who seems almost annoyed at those who try to critique his work, an author whose goal is not to write the elusive 'something' but rather that at times excessive and absurd 'anything.'
Would a better awareness of Aira have changed my translation? Would I not have read this author character who knows all too well what academics want at every turn of the page? Perhaps it is an exaggeration to assert that Aira lacks a specific style. I found certain elements within this one text-sentences with several clauses, specialized language, anecdotal tone-that allowed me to produce what I think is a consistent translation. Need it be consistent with an entire body of work, a body of work that aspires to anything?
I began seeking merely to translate and discovered a much richer dialogue between cover, text, and the act of translation itself. I do not which to suggest that El
Cerebra Musical was the 'perfect' work by Aira to translate; quite the contrary, no text by Aira is the Aira. And the cardboard cover alone impedes any notion of a perfectly translated book. Just as Eloisa Cartonera reuses the cardboard that would otherwise be discarded and employs people that would otherwise be left by the wayside, and Aira publishes "anything" in order to avoid privileging anyone text, I somewhat serendipitously found a book that may have otherwise not been translated. My investigation, however, yielded a relationship that is not as coincidental as it may appear on the surface. Translation, Eloisa Cartonera, and Cesar Aira all provide different
S4 "Es cierto que yo siempre fui un favorito de los estudiosos, de los academicos, de las universidades, porque mis novelas tienen como un costado meta-narrativo. Hay elementos para que los profesores se luzcan, 0 encuentran cosas ahi." Epplin, Craig and Phillip Penix-Tadsen. "Cualquier cosa: un encuentro con Cesar Aira." 4 July 2005, http://www.lehman.edll/facIIIty/guinazu/ciberletras/v15/epplin.html Reist 36 insights into the book industry. El Cerebra Musical, the story of the beginnings of
Coronel Pringles's library, is one place where those insights intersect. Reist 37
The Musical Brain
I was young, about four or five years old. It happed in my town, Coronel Pringles, at the beginning of the 1950's. One night we went to dinner at the Hotel, it must have been a Saturday; it wasn't often that we ate out, we lived as if wewere poor without being so, because of the strict habits of my father and the insurmountable distrust my mother had of any dish not prepared by her. 55 Who knows what circumstances had brought us to the luxurious Hotel restaurant that night, to seat ourselves around a table with a white cloth, silverware, tall glasses, porcelain plates with gold trim, stiff and uncomfortable: 56 we were dressed from head-to-toe in white, the same as the others present at our table. At that time there were rather strict rules regarding attire.
I remember that an incessant movement prevailed, because everyone was standing the whole time in order to go to a small table, like an altar in the back of the room, carrying boxes of books. They were small boxes, most of them cardboard, though some were wooden, and some wooden ones were even painted and lacquered. Behind the table there sat a small woman with hair combed into the shape of a feathery egg, a string of pearls, and a sky-blue dress with sequins. She was Sarita Subercaseaux, the woman who many years later and during all of my school years would be the Supervisor of the
Teachers' Assistants. She was receiving the boxes, examining their content, taking notes in a notebook. I followed all of this movement very closely. Some of the boxes were so full that the lid would not close well, others were half empty with so few books inside
55 I decided to use contraction throughout the translation because I feel this novella has a conversational tone. 56 This is the first example of Aira's almost excessive use of commas and clauses. By displacing "tienso y incomodos" until the end of the sentence, the Spanish hints at the possibility of these adjectives as describe the table accessories, the plates-"platos"-specifically, or the family simultaneously given that the plural masculine functions for all of the above. I have decided to keep the word order intact in order to preserve these possibilities in the English. Reist 38 that they shook, making an ominous noise. However, their value did not depend so much on the number of books (if the number even mattered) but on the variety of titles. In the best case scenario, all of the books in the boxes would have been different; the worst, they would all be copies of the same book; but the latter happened more frequently.57 I don't know who had explained these things to me, or perhaps they were the result of my own lucubrations and fantasies; that would have been very characteristic of me, to invent everything, because I was always inventing stories and plots for the things I didn't understand, and I hardly understood anything. Who was going to explain things to me?
My parents were not very communicative, I didn't know how to read, at the time there was no television, and my group of neighborhood friends were just as ignorant as 1.
Viewed from a distance, that scene with boxes of books seems a little dreamlike, just like when we dressed up for a photograph. But I am sure it happened just as I tell it.
Every once in a while I remember it, and I have come to find a reasonable explanation.
In those years, the Public Library of Pringles must have been on its way to being established, and someone would have organized a soiree in which to donate books with the help of the owners of the Hotel, maybe "a dinner for a book" or something like that.
It's probable. It's supported by fact that the date of the libraries founding corresponds to that time, which I was able to confirm a few months ago during my last visit to Pringles.
Another detail that matches up is that its first director was Sarita Subercaseaux. During all of my childhood and adolescence I was a frequent patron of the library; I believe that I was more devoted than anyone, borrowing a book or two per day.58 And it was always
57 The Spanish neuter definite article "10" before an adjective makes it an abstract noun that, in this case, avoids the long prepositional phrase, "In the best case scenario," necessary in the English. 58 This sentence is an example of the frequent need to insert verbs in clauses within the English translation that do not appear in the original Spanish. Reist 39
Sarita who filled out my card. This came to be of importance when I started high school and she was the Supervisor of the Teachers' Assistants and a figure of great authority in the teachers' lounge. She told everyone that despite my young age, I was the best-read resident of Pringles, and that made me a famous prodigy and it simplified many things for me: I got my diploma without studying and with excellent grades.
A few months ago, during the visit to Pringles that I mentioned, I tried to confirm my memories and I asked my mother if Sarita Subercaseaux was still alive. She let out a smile.
"She died many years ago. She died before you were born. She was already old when I was a child..."
"That can't be," I exclaimed. "I remember her perfectly. In the library, in the school..."
"Yes, she worked at the library and at the school, but when I was still single. You must be confused by all the things that I might have told you."
It was impossible to get anything else out of her. Her certainty disconcerted me, especially because she was never wrong, and I was. Whenever we disagreed over any detail from the past, without fail she was right and I was not. But still, how could it be? It occurred to me that maybe Sarita Subercaseaux had had a daughter identical to her and who had repeated her fate and profession. But that was impossible. Sarita had died single and, moreover, she was the prototype of the single woman, the classic old maid in
Pringles, always meticulously put together, made up, with her hair done, cold, reserved, the very image of sterility. This I do remember. Reist 40
Returning to the scene of the Hotel: the coming and going between the tables and the little altar on which the books were accumulating was constantly interrupted.
Everyone there knew each other, and so those who stood up from their tables to take their box to the back would stop at other tables and exchange greetings and a comment with their acquaintances. These people would shorten the conversations that struck up, creating the supposed courtesy that suggested that standing speaker was carrying a box of considerable weight (although they were probably carrying a pathetic half-full box).59
For their part, the carriers would respond with the greatest politeness, meaning that they prolonged the conversation, giving the impression that the pleasure that they got from chatting with a neighbor far compensated for the effort of carrying the weight. This ebb and flow, as involved as it was in the genuine curiosity that all residents of Pringles felt for the lives of others, turned out the be rich with information, and this was how we found out that the Musical Brain was being exhibited in the next room in the hall of the
Teatro Espanol. Otherwise, we probably would not have known and we would have gone to sleep without doing anything else. The news served as an excuse to cut short the formality of the dinner, which was annoying us all.
The Musical Brain had appeared in our town some time before, and an informal association of neighbors had taken charge of it. The original plan had been to lend it to people's homes for short periods of time following the list of requests, more or less the same way that an image of the miraculous Virgin had been shared. 6o Except that the
59 The Spanish reads: "Estos abreviaban los dialogos as! en tablados, creando el supuesto cortes de que el interlocutor de pie iba cargando con una caja de peso considerable." The English is unclear of what is being created if it were to read "creating the supposed courtesy that the standing speaker was canying a box of considerable weight." The addition of "that suggested that" clarifies this confusion. 60 Though I try to maintain word and clause order as faithfully as possible, I believe the sentence is much clearer in the English with less commas by moving the clause "for short periods of time." This also Reist 41 request to house the Virgin were due to sickness or family problems, while with this new, magic device the motives were pure curiosity (if not superstition). Without the backing of religion, and without an authority that formalized the rotation, it would have been impossible to respect the turns; on the one hand there were those who wanted to get rid of it the day after it came, with the pretext that the music would not let them sleep; on the other hand there were those who had built elaborate niches or pedestals, and expected to keep it indefinitely, arguing that they had incurred many expenses. In a short time it got lost, and those who had not seen it, as was our case, ended up believing that it was a tall tale. Hence the impatience we felt when we found out that it was visible a few steps away.
Father asked for the check and when it came he took his famous wallet, which I admired more than any other object in the world, from his pocket. It was very large, made of green leather that was marvelously embossed with Arabesque designs, and the two outside covers were filled with colorful scenes of paths made of crystal beads. This wallet had belonged to Pushkin, and according to legend, he was carrying it in his pocket on the day he was killed. An uncle of my father had been an ambassador to Russia at the beginning of the century and he had purchased many works of art, antiques, and curiosities, which his widow redistributed between the nieces and nephews upon his death since he had no children.
The Teatro Espanol, which was part of the Sociedad Espanola de Socorros
Mutuos61 complex, was attached to the Hotel. But we didn't go there directly, instead we crossed the street, towards where the truck was parked, and then we turned around and prompted me to change "como se habfan hecho" to "had been shared" in order to provide verbal clarity in the English. 61 The Spanish Society of Mutual Aids. Reist 42 crossed again. This detour complied with a scruple of mom's, who didn't want the other guests at the Hotel to think that she was going to the Teatro, in the remote case that they were looking out of the windows and could see something.
We entered the hall, and there it was, placed on the crate, a crude wooden crate that Cereseto (the theater vendor) had obscured with little strips of white paper, the kind of paper that you use to pack fragile objects; this didn't come out so badly because it looked like a large nest, and suggested fragility in two ways: the objects that you pack carefully and the eggs that you place in a nest. The famous Musical brain was made of cardboard and was the size of a trunk. It reproduced, with quite a bit of realism, the form of a brain but not its color, because it was painted florescent pink and was crossed with blue veins.
We stood there silently in a semicircle. It was one of those things in front of
which you do not know what to say. Mom's voice drew us out of our daze:
"And the music?"
"Of course!" said dad. "The music..." he furrowed his brow and leaned toward it.
"Could it be off?"
"No. It never turns off. That's why this is strange."
He leaned closer until I thought he would fall on to the Brain, and suddenly he
stopped and turned his head toward us with a knowing smile.
"Yes. There it is. Do you hear it?" he said.
My sister and I got closer. Mom shouted: "Don't touch it!"
I had an unreasonable desire to touch it, if only with just the tip of my finger.
Actually, I would have been able to do it. We were completely alone in the hall. Even Reist 43 the ticket salesman and the usher must have been in the concert hall watching the play that seemed about to end.
"How can you hear with all this ruckus!" said morn.
"It's just a murmur. And to think they returned it because the noise bothers them!
What a shame."
Morn agreed, but they were talking about different things. Dad, who was the only one who had heard the music, remained fascinated with the Musical Brain, while morn was looking around and seemed more aware of what was going on inside the theater.
From there carne a roar of laughter that made the building shake. It must have been a complete sellout. The Company of Leonor Rinaldi and Tomas Simari was on with one of those cheap and theatrical comedies that ran for years throughout the country and that people never tired of enjoying. The alleged music that carne from the Brain, quivering and secrete, could not compete with the guffaws and clapping.
My mother, proud of her lineage of refined music-lovers, poetry reciters and tragedians, reviled these demonstrations of common taste typified by Leonor Rinaldi.
She more than reviled them, she actively fought against them. The theater was her most sensitive point, her battle field, because in it she waged a cultural class war, at least in
Pringles. One of her brothers directed a local philo-dramatic group named Los Dos
Canitulas,62 dedicated to serious theater; the other group, directed by Isolina Mariani, cultivated comedies of manners. That night the dona Isolina addicts must all have been in the audience, admiring the rabblerousing services of Leonor Rinaldi, learning from her, and drinking up her ticks like an invigorating syrup.
62 The Two Masks Reist 44
My mother's aversion to that type of theater was so great that more than once when those kinds of companies were in town we had to eat dinner early so we could park outside the theater (but at a certain distance, hidden in the shadows) at the time of the event and take note of the attendants. Usually there weren't surprises because those who went were lowly people from marginal neighborhoods, to whom my mother referred as
"the dark-skinned riff-raff," and who generated the most basic disrespectful comments, such as "what would you expect from those ignoramuses." But sometimes people of a decent class would line up, and so her critiques became more energetic and she felt that her spying was worth it, and "now we know where they stand" regarding certain cultural hypocrites. One time she got out of the car to reproach an educated dentist who was going up the steps of the theater with his daughters. She expressed her disappointment at seeing him there. Wasn't he ashamed to encourage this type of vulgarity with his presence? And with his daughters! This was his idea of education? Luckily, he did not take her very seriously. He responded with a smile that for him all theater was sacred, that all theater was theater even in its degraded version, and above all that he wanted to expose his daughters to the crudest of common culture to give them perspective.
Needless to say, his arguments didn't convince mom.
In conclusion. To continue with the memorable soiree of the Musical brain: we got in the truck and we left. We had a yellow Ika pickup-truck with an open bed. Even though all four of us fit in the cab, I usually traveled in the trunk in the open air, in part because I liked it, in part to keep the peace because I always fought loudly with my sister, in part (mostly) to be with my great friend Geniol,63 who was our family dog. Geniol
63 A play on 'genio' which means genius and also, probably, "genial" which means friendly or pleasant in both Spanish and English. Reist 4S was very large, white of indeterminate breed, and had a big head (thus the name). We could not leave him alone at home because he would cry and make such a fuss that the neighbors would complain. But he behaved well in the truck.
Another more latent reason why I enjoyed riding in the trunk was that as I was isolated from the voices in the cab, I didn't know in which direction we were going, and the journey had an unpredictable sense of adventure. If I paid attention I knew where we were going when we left, but mom, as soon as she sat in the truck, felt so seized by curiosity that she would ask dad to turn into this or that street in order to see a house or a store or a tree or a jail. He was used to this and he enjoyed it, as a result of which any trip that we should have made in a straight SOO-meter line often because a complicated maze 10 kilometers long. In its own way, it was mom's form of stretching the town from within because she had never left Pringles.
That night we only needed to turn at the corner and go down three streets to reach home. But we turned the other way, which didn't surprise me. It was very cold, but the wind wasn't blowing. The streetlights in the alleys hung motionless, suspended from the four diagonal cables that came from the corner poles. And above the Milky Way was all lit up, full of twinkling lights. I hugged Geniol and put him on my lap against my chest.
He relaxed. His snow white fur reflected the starlight. We continued toward the plaza, and there we turned onto the Boulevard. Sitting with my back to the cab, I saw the square tower of the Municipal Palace vanish in the distance, and I figured we were going to the Parking Garage because of one of mom's whims. The Parking Garage was far away and the mere idea that we were going there made me tired. Geniol had already fallen asleep. After a few blocks down the Boulevard, the fading buildings were replaced Reist 46 by large, dark, lots invaded by mallow and thistle. They were mysterious territories without owners. My eyes began to close...
Suddenly the dog shook, jumped from my lap, and growled while leaning toward one side of the trunk. His nervousness frightened and disoriented me. I looked also, removing myself from the web of sleep that enveloped me, and understood what was going on and why dad had slowed down the truck until we stopped: we were passing by the Circus. The small window in the cab had been pulled down and my sister leaned out shouting in her half language: Cesar, the circus, the circus! Of course I knew that the
Circus had come to town; I had seen the publicity parades through the streets, and we had already been promised that they would take us the next day. I looked at it starry-eyed.
The canvas big top, which seemed to me as tall as a mountain, allowed streaks and points of intense light to pass through and the whole thing seemed impregnated by the interior
light. There was a performance and you could hear very loud music and the shouts of the
public. The sounds of the wild beasts had made Geniol nervous. Behind the big top, in
the darkness, I thought I saw the shadows of elephants and camels pass by.
Many years later I left Pringles, just as many other young people with artistic and
literary interests leave small towns, thirsting for the cultural offerings promised to me by
the Capital. Many years after that emigration, once in a while, I came to ask myself
whether I had just followed an illusion. In effect, the memories from my childhood bring
me such varied nights in Pringles that it's like asking myself whether I gave up wealth for
poverty. The night that I am describing here is a good example: a soiree for a book
donation, a theatrical performance, and a circus, all at the same time. There was so much
to choose from, and moreover, you had to choose. Even so everything was completely Reist 47 sold out. The circus was no exception. When we were just in front of the entrance, we had a fleeting vision of boxes jam-packed with numerous families and balconies that seemed to cave in from such loads. In the ring, the clowns had made a human pyramid that collapsed, provoking an outburst of laughter. The whole town was at the circus. The residents of Pringles must have thought it was the safest location.
This needs an explanation. The circus had arrived in town three days before and the company had almost immediately been shaken by a huge scandal. Among the circus' attractions were three midgets. The two men were twin brothers. The third was a woman, married to one of the brothers. This peculiar triangle apparently was unbalanced by a split that created a crisis in Pringles: the woman and her brother-in-law were lovers, and for some reason they chose to elope in our town, taking with them the savings of the deceived and abandoned husband. The residents ofPringles wouldn't have heard about this grotesque mess had it not been for the fact that, a few hours after it happened, the cuckolded midget64 also disappeared, carrying the circus owner's nine-millimeter pistol along with its corresponding box of bullets. His intentions could not have been more explicit. Before a tragedy could take place, the police intervened. The witnesses
(clowns, trampoline artists, and animal tamers) all sympathized with the growing anger and resentment of the cuckolded midget and with his firm decision to shed blood. They believed him, because he was a violent little man with a history of destructive tantrums.
The weapon that he had stolen was lethal at close and long range, and it wasn't necessary to know how to use it in order to kill. The police put all of its forces in action: despite the
64 The Spanish simply uses "el cornudo" as a substantive. Thus, I was left with the option of either adding "man" or "midget". In keeping with the nan-atar's trend of only referring to them as midgets-the Spanish also has the advantage of distinguishing between male and female-I decided to have "cuckolded" modify "midget." Reist 48 circus authorities' vehement requests for discretion, the news spread. It could not have been otherwise, since the police needed the collaboration of the public to know the whereabouts of the fugitives, that is, both the lovers and their pursuer. At first it seemed like an easy job: the town was small, and the description of those being sought was easy and definitive since it could be reduced to one word: "midgets." Men in uniform turned up at the Station, at the long-distance bus terminal and at the two roundabouts at the opposite ends of town that led to exit roads, which in those days were still dirt roads. The only thing these procedures established was that the midgets were still in Pringles.
People didn't speak about anything else, and that was the least they could do.
Between jokes, bets, and useless searches in vacant lots and empty houses, a joyful effervescence and a delicious suspense prevailed. Twenty-four hours later, the mood had changed. On the one hand a vague, superstitious fear crept in, and on the other, a very real one. The former resulted from the bizarreness provoked by the lack of a solution.
The residents of Pringles lived by the widely affirmed assumption of social transparency
and of the town's property value. How could it be that in this tiny crystal box something
as conspicuous as three midgets could escape from view? Not to mention the aggravating
circumstance that they weren't a group, but rather a hiding couple and a third who was
not only looking for them but was himself hiding. A touch of the supernatural consumed
the incident. The dimensions of a midget revealed themselves to be problematic, at least
to the perturbed collective imagination. Did one have to look under rocks, turn over
leaves, search in the cocoons of bugs? Meanwhile, mothers looked under their children's
beds, and children took apart their toys to look inside. Reist 49
But there was also a more real fear. Or, if not real, at least it was called that in order to rationalize the other, unnamed, fear. There was a lethal pistol in the hands of a desperate man. That he might kill his victims didn't worry anyone (without necessarily accusing them of racism or discrimination, since it's understandable that in a state of emergency the residents of Pringles would think of the midgets as a separate species whose life and death played out amongst themselves, and didn't concern the life of the town) but shots don't always hit their target and anyone at any moment could find themselves in the line of fire. It could be anyone, really, because no-one knew where the midgets were and much less where the encounter would happen. No one judged the aim of the husband as much as they judged the trivial flight of the adulterers. The same imaginative miniaturization that was used to justify the failure of the search led to the belief that all shots were random. 65 How can you hit a hidden atom, or even two? At any place, at any moment, there could be a bombardment of stray bullets that might slay us or our loved ones.
After another twenty-four hours the two types of fear had intertwined so tightly that the most acute persecution mania prevailed. Homes didn't seem safe and the streets even less so. Public gatherings, the more crowded the better, had a calming quality: the bodies of others could be used as human shields, and just as one throws altruistic scruples out the window during times of distress, nobody cared if someone else died riddled by bullets. This must be the reason why we ate out that night, which was something we never did. And, to go back to another decidedly magical motivation, it must have been
65 This sentence contains a typo: the Spanish reads "diaparos" which could only be "disparos" or "shots" in this context. Reist 50 the reason that papa carried Pushkin's wallet in his pocket, which was reserved for special occasions. As we all know, Pushkin was killed by a bullet to the heart.
I now close the explanatory parentheses and return to the story. However, in so doing, I notice that I have made a mistake. That is because the story continued in the hall of the Teatro, which means that the trip down the Boulevard and the sight of the circus must have happened before, when we were en route to the Hotel. And, actually, now that
I think about it, it seems that the sky behind the Palacio and above the big top was not completely dark: it was the blue hour, which still contained the pinks of dusk and white glow that lay in the West. The stars in the black depths must have been an interpolation66 to the terrible events that happened later on the roof of the Teatro. The very peculiarity of the story, in part, justifies my mistake; its different incidents, even if they were linked in a fairly predictable order, could also be isolated like the stars in the heavens that were the only witnesses to the outcome, to the point that everything that fits appears to do so because of fantasy and not reality
Things happened more or less in this way: once our curiosity about the Musical
Brain was satisfied, my parents headed for the street, partly because there was nothing else to see and partly because they wanted to leave before the audience in the theater; the play must have ended but the applause continued, though not for much longer, and mother didn't want anyone to see her leaving with "the riff-raff' and think that she had stooped down to the tastes of a Peronist.
Her desire to leave, to turn away, was so definite that I felt the moment had come to give myself the pleasure of freely touching the great pink object. Without thinking further, I did so with the tip of my finger. For hardly a fraction of a second the tip of my
66 "Interpolation" here is used in the publishing sense, such as the insertion of new material into a text. Reist 51 index finger touched the surface of the brain. For reasons that will be explained, I had every reason never to forget that touch, and I never have.
My prank went unnoticed by my parents who continued to walk toward the doors that led to the street. The one who did see what I had done was my sister, who was two or three years old and who copied my every move. My daring act encouraged her and she tried to touch it too. But because she had the clumsiness of a little devil, she didn't do so with finesse. The tip of a finger didn't exist for her. From her tiny stature, which barely reached the box pedestal, she stretched out her little arms and leaned with all of her weight. I held back a gasp when I saw what was to come, which I let out in the form of a cry when I saw the Brain move. My parents turned around and stopped, and I think they were able to take a step or two towards us. For me the whole scene had taken on a ghostly precision like the thousandth rehearsal of a play. The Musical Brain slipped heavily toward the edge of the box, fell to the ground, and broke.
My sister had moved away and was crying, more out of guilt and fear of punishment than of what had just appeared before our eyes, which must have escaped her understanding. I, on the other hand, was mature enough to guess, but I did it with great difficulty in the midst of the horrifying confusion that my parents certainly must have shared.
The pink surface of the Musical Brain was pulverized from the impact, which showed its fragility because it hadn't fallen from much more than half a meter high. The interior was dense and compact like a well-molded gelatin in its shell. A certain squish, and perhaps a certain imagined quivering after the bang indicated that it wasn't solid.
The color didn't lie: it was semi-coagulated blood, and it wasn't hard to guess to whom it Reist 52 had belonged. 67 Because in the middle of that mass were dead bodies floating in an upside-down fetal position; these were none other than the midget twins. 68 They were like two engravings dressed in their little black suits, with their faces and hands as white as china; this contrast in colors made them stand out in the dark-red blood. They had bled from wounds in their throats, which looked like open mouths screaming.
I said that I saw the scene with a supernatural clarity and I continue to see it in this way. I now see more than I saw. It's like seeing the story within itself; not like a film or a sequence of images but like a single painting that has transformed, not with movements but with repeated fixedness. But there were movements, and they were many: it was vertigo, an abyss of irrational atoms.
Mom had a pronounced tendency toward hysteria, and her screams were lost in the sudden clamor coming from the theater. This was not foreseen. The routine ovation for the great Leonor Rinaldi had ended, as had the seven curtain calls; the actors were withdrawing from their final bow and the audience was already getting up from their seats; in that instant the characters were fading from the faces of the actors who stood in line on the stage and who bore their part in the play on their faces and bodies, but now the play, its plot, its surprises and misunderstandings were all made chaotic by the line of revered smiles, as if in the instant of applause the spectators recreated and reviewed the story and said good-bye to it like the fiction that it was, along with the fantasy great room with its arm-chairs, fake staircase, painted on windows, and doors that opened and closed
67 I had to remove the phrase "0 mejor dicho de quienes" from the translation because there is not a distinction between singular and plural for the English pronoun "whom." 68 I changed the word order and structure of this sentence considerably. The Spanish reads: "Porque en medio de esa masa flotaban muertos, en posici6n fetal mutualmente invertida, los dos enanos hombres, los mellizos." "Muertos" in this sentence does not function as a substantive, but rather modifies "los dos enanos hombres." Reist 53 in waves of comedic revelations, and the rest of the props...in that instant at the end of the party, the large plaster medallion of Juan Pascual Pringles detached from the top of the stage. The features of the national hero exploded like a nova of chalk and displayed before the astonished eyes of the public the strangest being ever produced by a theatrical
Deus ex machina: the midget woman. This had been her hideout and nobody would have ever found her. Some thought that it had been an accident, as if the vibrations of the applause and the Bravos of the full theater had loosened the old molecules of the plaster war hero; but this assumption could not stand up to the evidence presented by the facts: the collapse was due to internal causes, which were none other than her increased size.
The chrysalis assassin, after being impregnated, had hidden in a safe refuge in order to let
Nature take its course (because monsters also obey It). And she took the chance that this process would culminate at that exact moment; a few minutes later and she would have shown herself, as if on a balcony, to a dark and empty theater.
As things happened, it was a kind of "Encore" that no show has ever had nor will ever have again. Two thousand pairs of eyes saw a large head appear from the edge of the niche, with no eyes, no nose, no mouth, yet with a curly head of blonde hair, and chubby arms that led to claws and large voluptuous, red breasts with eyes instead of nipples .
She continued to emerge horizontally, close to the very high ceiling, like a gargoyle .
Until a few compulsive jerks released two wings, first one, then the other-enormous, iridescent membranes that flapped with the sound of cardboard-and already she was in the air. The rear part of her body was a thick pouch covered in black hair. She seemed to fall (had she done so, she'd have fallen into the orchestra pit), but one swift flap of her wings stabilized her in mid air, and she began an erratic flight. Reist 54
Then terror was let loose. A fire would not have produced as much panic as finding oneself trapped with this flying mutant from which one didn't know what to expect. The aisles were jammed, the exits were blocked, people jumped onto the seats, mothers looked for their children, husbands for their wives, and everyone was screaming.
Frightened by the uproar, the midget fluttered around aimlessly, also looking for an exit.
If she lost altitude, the screams in the orchestra intensified, and if she soared near the boxes, there the spectators cornered by the bottleneck on the stairs would shout all the more. In their despair, some climbed onto the stage, which the actors had already deserted. Some refugees in the balcony boxes also broke away from the semicircle of stage lights. Upon seeing them, others, who were pushing for the aisles but realized the impossibility of getting through the disorganized human mass, crossed the room in a frantic run and leapt toward the stage; it was like breaking a taboo, encroaching upon the realm of fiction, when they had paid not to; however the instinct to survive was stronger.
And the winged midget, the great dragonfly, after crossing the aerial space of the theater many times with her terrorizing clap-clap, each time more rapidly, and crashing repeatedly against the ceiling and walls, also rushed toward the entrance of the stage, which under the circumstances was the most reasonable option. She was swallowed up by the little bourgeois scenery of Leonor Rinaldi's company, and afterward there was a widespread collapse behind the scenes.
Meanwhile the theater had been emptied, but obviously no one wanted to go home. Stagmann Street became a large mess of excited people. The guests left the Hotel restaurant, some still with napkins at their necks, and more than a few with forks in their hands. The news had spread throughout the whole town; an official messenger had Reist 55 brought it to the circus, and since its arrival coincided with the finale of the show, the audience moved in a mass. When the police arrived, with sirens blaring, it was difficult to get through; likewise with the firemen, with those who had shown up on their own, and with the ambulance from the Hospital.
As the crazed raid left through the Theater hall, people had gone around and trampled over the pool of blood without any consideration. When the circus manager tried to regain the bodies of the two midgets, he was given two crumpled silhouettes, which the clowns passed from hand to hand in recognition. The clowns, along with the rest of the Circus personnel, had come in their work clothes given the urgency.
Horsemen, trapeze artists, fire-breathers, mingled with the actors of Leonor Rinaldi's company, with Leonor Rinaldi herself and with Tomas Simari, and all of them mingled with their respective audiences and other audiences, as well as with the curious, with neighbors, and with those who had been up all night. Even during Carnival no-one had ever seen anything like this.
The first investigation by the police, with guns drawn, in the depths of the Theater
(but led by Cereseto who was the only person who knew all of its ins and outs) resulted in nothing. The midget had disappeared again, wings and all. The rumor spread that she had found an exit and flown away; the hypothesis, which should have produced relief, provoked disappointment. Everyone had been overcome with spectacle and they wanted more. But an unexpected occurrence renewed hope: from the imposing mass arose innumerable bats and pigeons from all directions. The pigeons above all, which never fly at night, gave the scattered crowd a fantastic turn. Evidently these little creatures had perceived the presence of the monster and were escaping in a hurry. Reist 56
A moment of suspense followed, until a scream and a raised hand made all heads fling back and directed all eyes toward the pseudo-gothic molding of the Theater's fas;ade. There she was crouched in the small towers, the winged midget, her wings spread yet at rest, her body subjected to trembling that was visible even from a distance. A powerful beam of light from the fire truck focused on her. In the street, two of the clowns, with their colorful costumes and painted smiles, each got on top of the hood of a car and waved the bodies of the two midgets above their heads, like banners.69
Even if the residents of Pringles had never before seen a mutant with such characteristics, they were mostly country people familiar with the phenomena of reproduction. And no matter what bizarre forms are adopted beings in Nature, the basic mechanics of life recur in all. So that it didn't take long for the certainty to prevail that the midget was in the trance of labor. The process and the signs now overlapped: the closing ceremony so that the metamorphosis could occur, the sexual act that had taken place beforehand, the murders, the enormous pouch of the womb, the choice of an inaccessible location, and now the concentrated position and the shuddering. What no- one could foresee was whether she would lay one or two or many eggs, or millions; this last option seemed the most plausible since the formal characteristics of the case were closer to the insect world. But when the hairy, silken pouch began to tear, they saw that only one white and pointed egg the size of a watermelon came out. A vast "oohhh..." of admiration ran through the crowd. Perhaps because all gazes were fixed on the slow extraction of that fantastic pearl, the appearance of another figure turned out to be more surprising. The figure had slowly entered into the spotlight and had only made itself
69 This sentence is another example of Aira's use of commas and clause that result in several changes to word order. Reist 57 totally visible once the egg had completely come out and stopped on that dizzying cornice. It was Sarita Subercaseaux with her tidy hairdo, her pink face well powdered, her light-blue dress, and her flat shoes. How had she got there? What did she intend to do? She stood centimeters away from the midget, who, having ended her task, raised her head toward Sarita as if she were looking at her without eyes. They were the same height, and the same supernatural decision radiated from the both of them; a clash seemed inevitable, maybe a battle. The town held its breath. However, what took place was something else. With one jolt, as if waking up from a dream, the Midget opened her large wings and with only one flap she rose several meters; another flap of her wings, she turned, another flap, and she gained speed, and she was already flying, like a pterodactyl, toward the stairs that shined like crazy diamonds given the occasion. She disappeared among the constellations and nothing more. Only then did the crowd return its gaze to the roof of the Theater.
Sarita Subercaseaux had not been affected by the midget's departure. She and the egg were alone. With very slow movements she moved her arm from her body and raised it. She had something in her hand. An ax. Opposing screams surged from the people: No! Don't do it! Yes! Break it! The sentiment of the crowd was inevitably ambiguous. Nobody wanted the calm town of the Pampas to produce a monstrous birth of unforeseeable consequences. However, at the same time the unique occasion contained possibilities that were disappointing to give up. Right then the very fragility of an egg seemed somewhat precious.
However, the ax, when the movement of her arm came into full light, turned out not to be an ax but rather a book. And her intention was not to break the egg but rather to Reist 58 delicately balance the book on top of it. In the legend of Pringles, that strange figure continued as the symbol of the Municipal Library's foundation. Reist 59
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