La Grande (47 page)

As often happens with avant-garde movements, the leaders sacrifice themselves to the arduous creative labor, leaving the administrative work to their seconds in order not to overwhelm them with responsibility. Tardi, Brando's lieutenant, was in charge, during the first volume, with the trips to the press, with typing up the maestro's poems, along with the correspondence
with their advisors and with the radio stations and the papers. He was slightly older than Brando, and because he'd started out publishing in
Espiga
, the neoclassicists called him a traitor, and because he was Brando's first disciple and his name was Pedro, they often said, in reference to his somewhat feeble intelligence,
Upon that Rock he will edify his church
. It's well-known that a conflict between Brando and Tardi caused the first rupture.

The groundswell that opened between the members of the group came to light with the fourth precisionist manifesto, which appeared in the fourth and last issue of the first volume of
Nexos
. Its title—
A precisionist sonnet is like no other sonnet
—gave legal force to an aesthetic position that Brando adopted in order to critique a triptych by Tardi whose publication had been postponed since the second issue. Needless to say, everything published in the magazine was discussed at the editorial committee's periodic meetings, and Brando's decisions were always final. The publication of the triptych had been delayed a third time, and for the same reason:
residue of pre-precisionist lexicon
. The unspoken distress among the ranks of the movement was revealed less in the passion of their discussions than in their disillusioned conversations as they were leaving, when Brando wasn't around.
If he can't win, he calls it a draw
, Tardi muttered in the ear of the person who followed him out. Even without Brando's psychological refinement, the discontent would have been obvious. For the purpose of a radical break, the fourth manifesto spelled out their doctrine and outlined, one by one, the deviations.
Poetry
, it concluded,
will be precisionist or not. Precisionism is conscious of the unease that its crusade generates. But its most lucid representatives know how to recognize its enemies, whether inside or outside the movement
.

To make it any clearer it would have had to be written in water.
Now he'll know what it's like to spend entire days at the
printer
, Tardi said malevolently as he left the last meeting, which resolved upon the dissolution of the movement. In order to finish the preparations for the fourth issue of
Nexos
, Brando had to accept the collaboration of two kids who were still imitating Espronceda and the Río Seco romances and who hadn't even finished high school. Tardi's triptych appeared in the fall issue of
Espiga
, after a cleansing, demanded by the neoclassicists, of all traces of precisionist vocabulary.

One less piece of bullshit
, said General Ponce Navarro, who didn't approve of the dinners that his eldest daughter had been attending even before she was married, or of the literary scandals that his son-in-law was caught up in.
My dear General
, Brando would retort, cheerful and patient, although somewhat scalded,
if the troops understand their orders it's thanks to the work of poets, who purify the language
. And because he had nerves of steel and a temperament that refracted all bitterness, he didn't allow himself to be distracted by the defection of his collaborators, and had already begun to prepare a limited hardcover edition of his poems. Doubt had no place in the repertoire of his states of being. Like any good realist, the elder Brando attributed that character trait to his wife's family, and it produced a sort of ironical aversion in him. On the other hand, his literary sensibility was closer to the regionalists than to the precisionists. Not only was he friends with Cuello, but he also
went native
, as they say. Cuello, who was a meticulous student of the flora and fauna in the province, aroused his admiration. He'd saved enough to buy a motorboat, and on the weekends he'd often explore the islands in it. Sometimes, the elder Brando would accompany him. They slept along the coast, in a small tent, and ate whatever they caught. On Sunday nights they'd come home dirty, tired, and unshaven, and before they said goodbye they would drink
one last beer at the counter of some bar. Out of mutual discretion, the topic of precisionism was never brought up.

One Sunday in April, 1947, Brando was shaking his head in disbelief over the ineptitude of the most recent issue of
Espiga
when he received a visit from the general and his bother-in-law, the first lieutenant. Lydia and her mother were at mass, and the general wanted to take the opportunity to speak to Brando. In short, it concerned the following: there was a possibility of obtaining a post for Brando as cultural attaché in Rome, but because Lydia had always been very close to her mother he hadn't wanted to speak of the matter in front of the women, given that Brando wouldn't have been the one making the decision. The general, for his part, recommended that he accept. A new era had begun in the country, and new blood was needed in every field. The general added that, when he brought up Brando's name at the ministry, the acceptance was immediate and practically enthusiastic.
And that, no doubt, owing to what you call bullshit
, Brando responded thoughtfully, smiling condescendingly. Although he'd decided on the spot to accept, he asked for forty-eight hours to think it over, arguing that this sort of decision shouldn't be taken lightly, something which increased the general's respect, but also his anxiety, given that he'd already given his word at the ministry that his son-in-law would accept.

The news caused considerable commotion in the literary media. Gamarra, the head editor of
Espiga
, repeated the same joke everywhere he went, namely that Brando, who took himself for avant-garde, was arriving twenty years late to the march on Rome. But
La Región
published a very long piece that Brando practically dictated to the journalist, in which it said that the nomination recognized less the value of a man than of an aesthetic and philosophical doctrine. In the three or four weeks
leading up to his departure, Brando made himself visible often, on San Martín and at parties, as though he wanted the density of his person, highly polished and neatly combed, to be engraved on everyone's memory during his absence. His elegance was sober, not that of a dandy, as may have been expected from his avant-garde tendency, but rather that of a tasteful bourgeoisie, who isn't trying to call attention to himself with extravagances, but who always dresses in the manner that his station both obliges and permits him to be seen in the street, adding two or three personal touches to show that a bourgeois fits naturally into his social class while at the same time being a well-differentiated individual. Some golden accessory, whether they were cufflinks or a tie clip or a ring that stood out when juxtaposed with his wedding band, always gave him an additional glow. Cuello said sarcastically that he always looked like he was on his way to or from a wedding.

With Brando's departure, the rest of the precisionists scattered: Tardi and two others, Carreras and Benvenuto, fell in with the neoclassicists. Benvenuto started to specialize in German romanticism and eastern philosophy. Tardi and Carreras ended up on the editorial committee for
Espiga
, which was last published in 1950. Among the other four, two abandoned literature completely, and of the two who were left, one moved to Buenos Aires and the other one committed suicide sometime later (it was rumored that he was a pedophile). There was less activity in the literary world, and politics seemed to be the main topic of conversation. Members of the opposition spoke in low voices, like conspirators, and those who had joined the government or the official party pontificated openly, demonstrating their enthusiasm. Gamarra, who refused to join the party, arguing that he was apolitical, lost his post at the university, and thanks to his relationships at the Alianza Francesa, went to live in France.
The regionalists were also divided. One, who had been an anarchist, ended up joining the communist party after Cuello joined the official party. Among the neoclassicists, two or three radical Catholics joined the government, but the rest, who'd joined the opposition, claimed that
El Gran Conductor
had a brain tumor—in the sella turcica of the sphenoid bone, to be precise—and didn't have long to live. Somehow, everyone kept publishing chapbooks and hardcover editions and individual poems in literary supplements. But the era of the precisionist dinners and the Friday cookouts at the San Lorenzo grill house had come to an end.

Every so often there was news of Brando. Someone had seen him in Trastevere, driving around in an Alfa Romeo. Someone else thought they'd heard, though they couldn't quite remember from whom, that he was summering in Sicily. The elder Brando, who was now too old to accompany Cuello around the islands, but who had a cookout with him every so often, and who'd taken to calling his son
Il Dottore
, said that Lydia had just had a baby girl and that the post at the embassy left them plenty of time to travel. In 1950, Lydia had another daughter, but, according to the first lieutenant (who was a captain by then), who'd run into Gamarra once on a bus to Buenos Aires, they were getting tired of being away from their family, and Lydia didn't want their grandparents to die without knowing their granddaughters.

Most Tuesdays at eleven in the morning, Tardi would pass by the Highway Administration, where Benvenuto worked, to meet him for a cup of coffee at the corner bar. Once, Benvenuto was waiting for him with a copy of the previous Sunday's
La Prensa
(which had been banned by the government). There was an article by Brando in the rotogravure.
He's worth his weight in gold!
Benvenuto had said, brandishing the rolled-up newspaper. While Benvenuto finished organizing some forms, Tardi read it, shaking his head and issuing surprised, scandalized laughter every so
often. It was an essay on Dante, written practically at the foot of the Florence Cathedral. According to Brando, contemporary literary language was like Latin in the era of Dante: it was dead.
De vulgari eloquentia
, and if it couldn't stand up as a valid program, it had, nevertheless, the value of a universal token inasmuch as it demonstrated with clarity that every great poet should forge his own language. Dante couldn't express himself with precision in Latin; he needed a new language. Given this, he didn't go against his time at all, because he'd adopted the language of his time. Without shrill, false rebellions he'd managed to express a complete philosophical system. That had cost him more than one hardship. For instance, his disciples, his friends, his group
Dolce Stil Novo
, were no doubt unable to stand it that Dante, elevating himself above doctrinal squabbles, and above the limited reach of every little courtesan poet, would have dared to take on, in his great philosophical poem, all knowledge, both human and divine.
Yes, but Dante was forced into exile, and he lives off the fat of the dictatorship
, Tardi exclaimed, throwing the paper on the table and lowering his voice slightly when offering that aside.

The elder Brando died in late 1950. In the final years he may have glimpsed the reason for his repudiation of his ancestors, the ones who had Taine for dinner and led him through a labyrinth of
palazzi
: it was a kind of melancholy. He ended up taking with him to his grave the interior chuckle with which, not without some compassion, he regarded the known universe. The following autumn, Brando and his family arrived from Italy. According to Cuello, who knew one of his brothers-in-law, an agronomist who managed some family farms near Malabrigo, Brando, while still in Rome, had demanded that all actions concerning the inheritance be frozen until his arrival, and so no one touched a paper, but when
Il Dottore
arrived (always according to Cuello, who was sarcastic yet incapable of slander), the first thing he did was
burn the manuscripts of his father's realist novels. Everything else, which he was not indifferent to after all, came second.

He never left again. According to him, family complications kept him home, but coincidentally, a few months later, soon after an aborted coup, the general retired, and the embassy was never spoken of again. Brando did not seem too upset. The polish of his gold accessories was now supplemented by the splendor of his time in Europe, giving him, that winter, a particular luster. That veneer remained forever, and even for those who knew him later, the new generations of poets who didn't care much either for precisionism or its inventor, it worked. Brando was one of those people who exemplified better than most, from a sort of personal density, the old idea that all men are unique. He was recognizable from a distance; his arrival was always remarked; his presence was never ignored. And, once he had been seen, it was immediately understood why six or seven poets, some even older than him, had given themselves to his aesthetic doctrines, and for several years had put themselves almost exclusively at his service. The poets who publicized his tenets or typed up his poems must have found, in his compact soul, a possible model for counteracting the uncertainty of their own beings and the interminable afternoons. It had nothing to do either with ethics or with literary talent, nor with any particular capacity for seduction, because, in that regard, Brando was in no way industrious or demanding. In fact the opposite could be said: he was someone who rarely, if ever, demonstrated his affection, and his relations with people consisted rather of an icy and seemingly distracted courtesy. The contradictory nature of his principles was immediately obvious, given that it would never have occurred to him to conceal his irreconcilable inclination for scientistic poetry and social position within the heart of the philistine bourgeoisie. If he read his disciples' poems it was, invariably, in order to tear them
to pieces in the name of the precisionist aesthetic; if he published them in the magazine it was, unequivocally, because they clearly demonstrated that the hand of the
chef de file
had given them their final touch. To the company of poets he preferred that of rich and illiterate frivolous attorneys from the Club del Orden, that of Rotarian doctors, and that of neat, brutal, and shaven-headed horsemen of the Círculo Militar. If he went for coffee with some local writer who survived on a meager pension from some public office, he, who had considerable assets and who upon returning from Europe had left his old law firm in order to start his own, always managed to make himself invisible when the check came. It was difficult to imagine him in those tasks or positions that are the burden or delight of most other humans: defecating, fornicating, cutting his toenails, relating in some way or another to contingency. Every so often, an extremely faint scatological echo, which one had to be very alert to perceive, vibrated in his conversation. Whenever he made an observation that he considered keen, and which often were, he would sit for several seconds, as I've said before, staring at his interlocutor, waiting for his reaction. But, otherwise, it was impossible to meet his gaze. He was always looking at something over your shoulder, if he was taller than you, and at the knot of your necktie, if he was shorter. To be more precise, it should be said that what he actually had were listeners and not interlocutors. When he stopped speaking and the conversation passed to the other party, to what might be called
the external field
, his eyes, which were large and brilliant while he talked, narrowing, clouded over or shut down. And, all the same, three or four months after his arrival, in June or July of 1951, the precisionist machine began to function once again.