The Incompletes Read online

  Alone in the middle of the room, Felix passes an aesthetic judgment (then immediately feels ashamed and looks around to see if anyone has noticed): he finds the victim’s pose exaggerated, almost like an impersonation; it does not represent the cruelty inflicted on him or his pain at the end, but only the repetition of a gesture. He is also unsure why there is something like a smile on the man’s face. One might fall back, he thinks, on the old cliché that death found him at peace, with a clean conscience and no outstanding debts; that even though he wasn’t looking for it, it brought him the satisfaction of an obligation fulfilled anonymously and, as they say, to the fullest. In his room in the Hotel Salgado, he thinks if he could see that photo for the first time (strangely, he says “See it again for the first time”), perhaps the memory of the figurine would be different, maybe it would change as a result of that experience. Felix went on thinking things like this as he lay sleepless throughout that long winter night.

  Well, as people sometimes say as they take their leave, I think it’s time to gather my things. Up to this point, I have described a few of Felix’s dubious adventures and the related commentaries that came to my mind several years ago, after receiving his simple note from the Hotel Salgado. I remember opening the envelope with a pair of heavy scissors, feeling the paper’s resistance and hearing the crunch that brought me right back to my childhood, when I would cut card stock or cardboard in school. Inside the envelope was the small sheet of paper, folded in two; the paper was as rough and thick as parchment and had dried out from the passage of time, turning the fold into a cleft that threatened to break it in two. In any case, the writing occupied the top half, while the only thing on the lower half was the signature—a clarification that was unnecessary for me and would be illegible to anyone else. His signature was like a private ideogram I never bothered to understand or decipher. I knew it was his, and that was enough. Moreover, for someone who didn’t know Felix, or didn’t know that particular scribble was his and somehow represented him, the person behind those words didn’t matter. (He was writing, which presumably meant something, but from a place of non-existence.) As time went by, the little sheet of paper eventually tore and, as if this were the beginning of some legend, the message and signature were separated forever due to my chaotic lifestyle and disorganized relocations. The message ended up in my yellow folder and Felix’s signature was simply lost. I didn’t take the precaution of taping or attaching the pieces some other way when I had the chance; the consequence being that one day, when I saw the text by itself for the first time, I took it as proof that we (me, him, everyone) were gradually fading into oblivion.

  Only a few years had passed since then, but the difference between the lines written in his hand and the others, the truly anonymous ones he had copied in his hotel room, was almost entirely effaced; I even thought that, in some fair or even-handed way, the words had returned to their original lack of definition, as if it were a stronghold they defended with all their strength, even in times like these, forging alliances with objects from the material world in order to preserve their indeterminate nature. Without a signature, the letter was incomplete—and this was entirely in keeping with Felix’s elusive personality.

  One last memory from the morning he left from the port of Buenos Aires: as preparations began to accelerate, a series of alarms or horns sounded on board, inviting the travelers’ companions to disembark. I had chosen to stay on land along with several others, most of whom were elderly or physically impaired. A little while later, the companions began to emerge and I noticed how some of them, having said goodbye to the real travelers just a moment before with a hug on the deck, simulated an arrival as they descended the gangplank. They were children and youths returning to the autumnal land of old age, where a group of elderly people awaited them with little idea of what to do with them, eyeing them with a mix of incredulity and incomprehension, the way they tended to look back on their own youth. The joke distorted what should have been reality.

  Earlier, while, as I said, Felix and I talked in front of some warehouses with our eyes fixed on the cobblestones, I told him about a thought I’d had that morning. I’d been walking from the neighborhood of Retiro out to the docks. Past the old Torre de los Ingleses, I noticed the glint of the streetlights reflecting off the paving stones, which seemed to move on their own due to the undulations of the road. The trucks drove slowly at that solitary hour and I thought to myself that the day would soon unfold, bit by bit. Once I’d passed the market or street fair that was there back then, and which might still be, I began to see the pale shadows of a few major buildings from Perón’s time—the Hospital Ferroviario and a few others, all imposing and austere—which grew clearer as I approached. And I had an idea or, rather, a desire: inexplicably, it occurred to me to knock down everything that had been built, alone and outfitted with a single hammer—a task to which I would apply myself over days of solitary but efficient labor. Today, I see this as one of those things that is said for the sake of speaking, or to avoid mentioning something else. Nonetheless, Felix’s reaction was surprisingly practical. After thinking for a few moments, and with his eyes still glued to the ground, he said that one hammer wouldn’t be enough: one way or another, it would break or end up unusable before the job was done, due to the wear and tear.

  This notion of reality, as if words should be carried to their ultimate consequence, intrigued me. I had never thought of it that way. It was a convincing argument, but I found it hard to believe that, if treated with care and in a hypothetical situation, a hammer might not be able to do all that was asked of it, no matter how arduous the task. Now I understand: the truth is that I never planned to finish the job, or probably even start it. Instead, I saw it as a slow and secret labor, repeated over several days without making any progress. Come to think of it, this stasis was what I wanted for my own life—not inaction, but rather the absence of change, and also a task that would justify my existence to others, whatever opinions my personal choices might generate. Maybe Felix was searching for the same thing, along a different path. His choice proved to be the most correct and the one best suited to the way things move; whereas I was not able to avoid the snares of immobility.

  Sometimes I think there is a puppeteer directing my steps and those of everyone we know, Felix included. Our awareness is always partial; moreover, we seek to conceal and to show ourselves at the same time. The next morning, once the column of light had faded and the day had definitively begun, I passed the same places near the port and in Retiro on my return as I had on my way there. My clothes were soaked, as I said, and I was feeling slightly drugged from exhaustion. Felix’s goodbye, the preparations aboard the boat, and the start of his extended journey that still continues today—all that seemed to occupy a distant moment. I would not be exaggerating if I said that those things seem closer to me now than they did then. A new era began that morning, a new time: one of waiting for the next memory to emerge.

  SERGIO CHEJFEC, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. He currently teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at NYU. His novels, The Planets (a finalist for the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in fiction), The Dark, and My Two Worlds, are also available from Open Letter in English translation.

  HEATHER CLEARY’s translations include Roque Larraquy’s Comemadre, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, César Rendueles’s Sociophobia, Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets and The Dark, and a selection of Oliverio Girondo’s poetry for New Directions.

  Inga Ābele (Latvia)

  High Tide

  Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark)

  Rock, Paper, Scissors

  Esther Allen et al. (ed.) (World)

  The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim & a Life in Translation

  Bae Suah (South Korea)
/>   A Greater Music

  North Station

  Zsófia Bán (Hungarian)

  Night School

  Svetislav Basara (Serbia)

  The Cyclist Conspiracy

  Guðbergur Bergsson (Iceland)

  Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller

  Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès (World)

  Island of Point Nemo

  Per Aage Brandt (Denmark)

  If I Were a Suicide Bomber

  Can Xue (China)

  Frontier

  Vertical Motion

  Lúcio Cardoso (Brazil)

  Chronicle of the Murdered House

  Sergio Chejfec (Argentina)

  The Dark

  The Incompletes

  My Two Worlds

  The Planets

  Eduardo Chirinos (Peru)

  The Smoke of Distant Fires

  Marguerite Duras (France)

  Abahn Sabana David

  L’Amour

  The Sailor from Gibraltar

  Mathias Énard (France)

  Street of Thieves

  Zone

  Macedonio Fernández (Argentina)

  The Museum of Eterna’s Novel

  Rubem Fonseca (Brazil)

  The Taker & Other Stories

  Rodrigo Fresán (Argentina)

  The Bottom of the Sky

  The Invented Part

  Juan Gelman (Argentina)

  Dark Times Filled with Light

  Oliverio Girondo (Argentina)

  Decals

  Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria)

  The Physics of Sorrow

  Arnon Grunberg (Netherlands)

  Tirza

  Hubert Haddad (France)

  Rochester Knockings: A Novel of the Fox Sisters

  Gail Hareven (Israel)

  Lies, First Person

  Angel Igov (Bulgaria)

  A Short Tale of Shame

  Ilya Ilf & Evgeny Petrov (Russia)

  The Golden Calf

  Zachary Karabashliev (Bulgaria)

  18% Gray

  Ha Seong-nan (South Korea)

  Flowers of Mold

  Hristo Karastoyanov (Bulgaria)

  The Same Night Awaits Us All

  Jan Kjærstad (Norway)

  The Conqueror

  The Discoverer

  Josefine Klougart (Denmark)

  One of Us Is Sleeping

  Carlos Labbé (Chile)

  Loquela

  Navidad & Matanza

  Spiritual Choreographies

  Jakov Lind (Austria)

  Ergo

  Landscape in Concrete

  Andreas Maier (Germany)

  Klausen

  Lucio Mariani (Italy)

  Traces of Time

  Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece)

  Why I Killed My Best Friend

  Valerie Miles (World)

  A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction

  Iben Mondrup (Denmark)

  Justine

  Quim Monzó (Catalonia)

  Gasoline

  Guadalajara

  A Thousand Morons

  Elsa Morante (Italy)

  Aracoeli

  Giulio Mozzi (Italy)

  This Is the Garden

  Andrés Neuman (Spain)

  The Things We Don’t Do

  Jóanes Nielsen (Faroe Islands)

  The Brahmadells

  Madame Nielsen (Denmark)

  The Endless Summer

  Henrik Nordbrandt (Denmark)

  When We Leave Each Other

  Asta Olivia Nordenhof (Denmark)

  The Easiness and the Loneliness

  Wojciech Nowicki (Poland)

  Salki

  Bragi Ólafsson (Iceland)

  The Ambassador

  Narrator

  The Pets

  Kristín Ómarsdóttir (Iceland)

  Children in Reindeer Woods

  Sigrún Pálsdóttir (Iceland)

  History. A Mess.

  Diego Trelles Paz (ed.) (World)

  The Future Is Not Ours

  Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer (Netherlands)

  Rupert: A Confession

  Jerzy Pilch (Poland)

  The Mighty Angel

  My First Suicide

  A Thousand Peaceful Cities

  Rein Raud (Estonia)

  The Brother

  João Reis (Portugal)

  The Translator’s Bride

  Mercè Rodoreda (Catalonia)

  Camellia Street

  Death in Spring

  The Selected Stories of Mercè Rodoreda

  War, So Much War

  Milen Ruskov (Bulgaria)

  Thrown into Nature

  Guillermo Saccomanno (Argentina)

  77

  Gesell Dome

  Juan José Saer (Argentina)

  The Clouds

  La Grande

  The One Before

  Scars

  The Sixty-Five Years of Washington

  Olga Sedakova (Russia)

  In Praise of Poetry

  Mikhail Shishkin (Russia)

  Maidenhair

  Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson (Iceland)

  The Last Days of My Mother

  Maria José Silveira (Brazil)

  Her Mother’s Mother’s Mother and Her Daughters

  Andrzej Sosnowski (Poland)

  Lodgings

  Albena Stambolova (Bulgaria)

  Everything Happens as It Does

  Benjamin Stein (Germany)

  The Canvas

  Georgi Tenev (Bulgaria)

  Party Headquarters

  Dubravka Ugresic (Europe)

  American Fictionary

  Europe in Sepia

  Fox

  Karaoke Culture

  Nobody’s Home

  Ludvík Vaculík (Czech Republic)

  The Guinea Pigs

  Jorge Volpi (Mexico)

  Season of Ash

  Antoine Volodine (France)

  Bardo or Not Bardo

  Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven

  Radiant Terminus

  Eliot Weinberger (ed.) (World)

  Elsewhere

  Ingrid Winterbach (South Africa)

  The Book of Happenstance

  The Elusive Moth

  To Hell with Cronjé

  Ror Wolf (Germany)

  Two or Three Years Later

  Words Without Borders (ed.) (World)

  The Wall in My Head

  Xiao Hong (China)

  Ma Bo’le’s Second Life

  Alejandro Zambra (Chile)

  The Private Lives of Trees

  WWW.OPENLETTERBOOKS.ORG