The Incompletes Page 16
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.
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