INGRID BENGIS MARIO BENEDETTI MONA BERGENFELD ^ /ID BERGELSON H. BUSTOS DOMECQ STEPHEN DIXON rcdSBERTO HERNÁNDEZ CARLOS MARTINEZ MORENO JUAN CARLOS ONETTI JOYCE CAROL OATES FREDERIC TUTEN H. BUSTOS DOMECQ 2 Monsterfest FELISBERTO HERNÁNDEZ 5 The Crocodile CARLOS MARTÍNEZ MORENO 9 The Wreath on the Door MARIO BENEDETTI 12 The Inartes JUAN CARLOS ONETTI 14 Junta, the Bodysnatcher MONA BERGENFELD 16 Fruit for the Funeral JOYCE CAROL OATES 17 Sunday Blues FREDERIC TUTEN 21 The Tump kins Square Park Tales INGRID BENGIS 22 The Woman and the Child STEPHEN DIXON 23 The Intruder DO VID BERGELSON 25 Joseph Shorr ALFRED ANDERSCH 30 The Windward Islands cFICTION^ EDITOR Markjay Mirsky SENIOR EDITOR Faith Sale EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jerome Charyn MANAGING EDITOR Edward Mooney COPY EDITOR Roger Kasunic EDITORIAL ASSOCIATES Linsey Abrams .Jennifer Gerard, Marianne DeKoven, Ed Norvell, Donna Wintergreen, Margaret Wolf, Norman Filzman EUROPEAN EDITOR Marianne Frisch GUEST EDITORS Suzanne Jill Levine, Emir Rodriguez Monegal CONSULTING EDITORS Louis Asekoff, Carole Cook LAYOUT Inger Grytting COVER House o f the Arias Twins by Fernando Botero. Private collection, New York Photograph courtesy Marlborough Gallery, New York Copyright ©1976 by Fiction, Inc., c/o Department of English, The City College of New York, New York, N.Y. 10031. Volume Five, Number One. All rights reserved. Unsolicited manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied by self-addressed, stamped envelopes. Advertising cannot be accepted until further notice. Address all busi­ ness inquiries, art work, and unsolicited manuscripts to Fiction, c/o Department of English, The City College of New York, New York, N.Y. 10031. Telephone (212) 690-8170. Assistance for the translation from the Spanish of this issue was given by the Center for Inter-American Relations. Why a tribute to Marcha? To publish literature is an act of political defiance. In the United States it is against what Henry Adams called the “ mental iner­ tia’’ of a population, now swollen past two hundred million. In Latin America, where the sophisticated written word seems to carry weight, the defiance is more dangerous, heroic, and perhaps satisfying. Serious writers of fiction and poetry know that the imagina­ tion is perilous to regimes which are afraid of questions, of the unknown, of dreams that might lead to something better. Across the Plate in Argentina, La Opinion, the leading liberal newspaper in Buenos Aires, does what no American newspaper of significance is interested in doing here—publishes a prominent weekly section of stories and poetry. Marcha 's extinction by the government of Uruguay was tragic. Yet it echoes the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam’s cry, “ At least they take our poetry seriously.’’ In the United States, the fate of the literary journal is merely pathetic. But we believe that literature and politics cannot be separated, that the genius of one is bound up in the practice of the other. The River Plate writers, not only the older generation included here, but their inheritors, Cortázar, Manuel Puig, Garcia Marquez, have changed the consciousness of the imagination in this century. Marcha is no more, but the dreams that Marcha published have just begun to do their work. Prologue or thirty-six years Marcha was the leading Europe and the Argentine government hadn’t FUruguayan weekly and one of the most made up its mind about who was going to important political publications in Latin win). For quite a long time, the story circu­ America. It was closed down by the govern­ lated underground in Buenos Aires, slimly ment last year, after a long political struggle protected by the pseudonym, H. Bustos which included repeated suspensions, fines, Domecq, which both authors used for their de­ and, in 1974, the jailing of its editor-in-chief, tective stories. It was first published in Marcha assistant editor, two members of a literary jury in 1955, in the aftermath of Peron’s down­ which had awarded a prize to a short story fall. Using a baroque language that stretches about political tortures in Uruguay, and the savagely the rather mild River Plate slang, author of the story. By the time, months later, Borges and Bioy (or Biorges, as I call them) that the journal was allowed to resume pub­ criticized the corruption and brutality which lication, all but the author having been set was then commonplace in Argentina. The free, its back had been broken. story and its very language do not attempt to Founded in 1939, on the eve of World represent realistically any specific historical War II, Marcha was not only of decisive im­ moment in Argentina but to symbolize the portance to the left—Che Guevara’s letter underlying grotesque reality. about the new revolutionary man, addressed to its editor, Carlos Quijano, was originally “ The Crocodile” (El cocodrilo) is typical published there—but also instrumental in pro­ of Felisberto Hernandez’s fumbling, absent- moting the new literature. Marcha's first liter­ minded by highly comical style. Born in Uru­ ary editor was Juan Carlos Onetti, who guay in 1902, Felisberto (as he was always brought to its pages some of his favorite called) combined a truly surrealist imagination authors—Céline, Faulkner—and opened the with a perhaps too colloquial speech to pro­ magazine to a new generation of Uruguayan duce small masterpieces about the horrors and writers. In the fifties and sixties, Marcha be­ hazards of everyday life. came a truly Latin-American publication: the “ Maria Bonita” was originally published Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias and the in Marcha as a short story about the dramatic Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Cuban Guil­ arrival of a small band of prostitutes to a sleepy lermo Cabrera Infante and the Argentine Julio and imaginary village on the bank of the River Cortázar became contributors. Plate, but it was actually an excerpt of the first But it was mainly the River Plate writers version of Juan Carlos Onetti’s most important who gave Marcha its unique flavor. To recap­ novel .Junta, the Body snatcher (published in ture now some of its tone and style, I have book form in 1964). The novel told its tale of selected five short stories published during its Gothic horror and laughter in a very elaborate most pioneering times. These make up only a way, alternating the narrative points of view of sample of what was printed year after year in a the main character, Junta, the owner of the weekly that represented Latin-American cul­ local brothel, and the townspeople, its shocked ture at its best. and voyeuristic costumers. For this selection, The spirit that made Marcha possible is the final version of the novel has been pre­ gone. O f the four Uruguayan writers in this ferred to the original text printed in Marcha. selection, only Carlos Martinez Moreno still Onetti (born in 1909) was then living in lives and works in Uruguay; Felisberto Her­ Buenos Aires and created the sleepy town of nández died in 1962, and the other two live in Santa Maria, where the story and the novel are , v exile: Onetti in Madrid and Benedetti in located, out of fragments of Montevideo and Cuba. On the other bank of the River Plate, a Buenos Aires. new Perón government has come and gone, “ The Wreath on the Door” (El lazo en I leaving both Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo la aldaba) is a brilliant exercise in satire. Layer Bioy Casares as incredible survivors of a can­ upon layer of Uruguayan gentility are re­ celed time. What remains of the days when the vealed in a story which appears to be con­ stories were first printed are the texts now cerned only with the sad and comic fate of a especially translated for Fiction. They are wit­ not too respected nor respectable mother. A ness to what was once an original culture. lawyer by profession, Carlos Martinez Moreno (born in 1917) brings to literature a lucid, im­ “ Monsterfest” (La fiesta del monstruo) placable eye. is the product of the joint effort of Jorge Luis “ The Iriartes” (Familia Iriarte) attacks Borges (born in 1899) and his friend and disci­ frontally some of the myths of bureaucracy ple Adolfo Bioy Casares (born in 1914). It is a (machismo is here shown as a deplorable form cruel parody of Argentina at the time of of the rat race) but the text never forgets to Perón’s first government, when anti-Semitism laugh at its own indignation. The author, as was rampant (the Nazis were still fighting in much as the characters and the readers, is in­ volved in the same reality. The most success­ ful of all Uruguayan writers, Mario Benedetti Emir Rodriguez Monegal teaches Latin-American litera­ (born in 1920) has had some of his stories and ture at Yale University. For seventeen years he edited Marc ha’s literary pages. He is the author of the Borzoi novels filmed or adapted for television in Anthology o f Latin-American Literature to be published Argentina. □ by Knopf next spring. Emir Rodriguez Monegal MONSTERFEST H. Bustos Domecq Photograph by Sy Rubin Here begins your sorrow. one of those guys you meet once in a while. ple who works as doorman for the committee —Hilario Ascasubi, The Blood Bath * Soon as I saw his expense-account face, I knew couldn’t break it up with his raving brooms. he was going to the committee too, and just in At a safe distance the gang got together the way of getting a view of the latest develop­ again. Loiácomo started talkin’, man, worse ments, we got to talkin’ about the distribution than the radio of the lady down the hall. The ’m telling you, Nelly, it was a regular civic of heaters for the great parade and about a Jew, thing about these fatheads with the big mouths I demonstration.