Navidad & Matanza (5 page)

I looked at him, waiting.

– Only perfect love dispels all fear, he quoted.

39

F
ROM
: Lunes

T
O
: Domingo

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: I heard Alicia singing softly in the elevator, I slipped out and disappeared silently down the stairway, like a disease I felt and continue to feel. The virus of language, the constant use of the illative connotes an obsession.

As always, she'll remove her keys from her backpack full of books, put the key in the lock, enter. But the dark apartment will be filled with a damp, heavy odor that'll make her think of death by drowning, about the water that might exist after such a death, at least about the water that existed before.

I made the horrible sacrifice of ascending in that frightening elevator, and it was all in vain! At any rate, I ran into a cousin of mine in the hallway, such is life. I'm not even sure if this is the right apartment.

XOXO
            

Lunes
           

•

F
ROM
: Martes

T
O
: Domingo

CC: Lunes

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: I might kill her. Better yet: she might never die.

I THINK I HAVE DISAGREEMENTS WITH THE DIRECTION THE NOVEL IS GOING.

Before sending you my chapter (I've arrived in the silver room to write my chapter and I notice a disastrous absence: I left the sheet the board is printed on in my dorm), I wanted to send you my observations about the novel-game. It seems necessary to better define the connections, the movement the connections engender, and the trajectory of the characters. Causes-connections-characters. To me it seems useful to compare the mass of connections to a tree. The coherence of each bifurcation (ramification-connection) is stable at the outset, when they are branches. But as the growing tree branches out and bifurcates, in addition to specifying the content of each point, the branches begin to intermingle and cross over each other. But this only works when the origin of each branch is well defined. In this way, you can better sketch out the direction of a novel, with characters and stories, without having a surprising connection distort the narration. This makes the movement of the story easier to follow for the reader, and narrows down the millions of interrelations that appear when looking at a mass of, on their own, flat connections. Another point that seemed a little bit dicey to me was the inclusion of religious citations. Domingo,
if you want to include particular beliefs in this sort of work, I think it's necessary to clearly define their purpose, especially when it is a purely religious message. When divulging a message, until that message is clear, it suffers; better not to offer mere glimpses that in the end serve no narrative function (really they're just a distraction because they have no contextual significance).

I'm very pleased with what I've read and for that reason and that reason alone I've taken the liberty of criticizing the points that don't live up to my expectations. Which says a lot, because in general my expectations for some people are very high. Well, Domingo, I hope this doesn't seem boring or disappointing, that's all. Chao.

•

F
ROM
: Miercoles

T
O
: Lunes, Martes, Jueves, Viernes, Sabado, Domingo

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: She'll open the curtains and before she sees how the sun dips below the horizon, even before she sees how her hand ceases to be a hand, passing behind the window's glass to touch it from outside, perplexed, she'll see hundreds of hanging towels. She must've seen the bathtub early in the morning, when, for no reason, she'd gotten up to go look at herself in the bathroom mirror and to see B above her, below her, leading her toward the dunes, in spite of her odor. She must've looked at the bathtub and noticed that I'd left dozens of towels soaking in water of an unpleasant color and aroma. She believes this heap of cloth (can you wring out something that is still underwater?) to be an image from a dream, disappeared in the deepest sleep. So she'll think these towels,
stamped with the faces of her friends from the game, pinned to the wall and oozing onto the wallpaper that I chose, are part of a nocturnal terror that will inevitably dissipate when she thinks: No, it's not death, it's life, I'm awake, dry, soft, he's at my side snoring, if I tell him I had a dream, he'll open one eye, embrace me weakly and say: Tell me what you dreamed.

You know? It makes no difference that the rest consider me your invention. The joke doesn't work because two of them know me. Or is it three? Or four? Do you remember? You drank too much whiskey that night in Domingo and Lunes' room. Everyone was there but Sabado, Sabado wasn't invited. Remember? I remember because I was there, more than ever I was there. We played a board game, something involving throwing dice and pondering possible lives, imagining and giving those lives coherence. I don't remember very well, I wasn't paying attention because I dedicated myself to spilling whiskey on the floor of that stupid dormitory, and to stepping in the puddle so that everything got filthy. You remember. Look yourself in the eyes. Don't act like someone who has no memories or emotions. Remember the funny and stupid face Domingo made when he asked you to clean the floor, the stain, and you ignored him. But I looked him silently in the face, mocking myself at the same time, then everyone realized that I was sleeping with you. I don't care if they think I'm quiet just because I don't prattle on like they do. I occupy myself with what's important, you dedicate yourself to the other, to pleasing.

•

F
ROM
: Jueves

T
O
: Domingo

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: I'll set everything up. Days and hours at her side, talking about love and imitating precisely the behavior and character of her father—dominant, sophisticated, and manipulative, but also attentive, well-meaning, and sometimes a little bit awkward—so she'll want to take care of me as she would him. I won't try to hurt her, on the contrary, I'll try to protect her. Breaking down the memory of the old man, roaming the highway without apparent motive (as far as she can tell), B's Porsche pulling over on the shoulder, B who is sitting in the back seat of the convertible, gesturing and speaking to the old man: Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to the Mormon golf course? And she: a girl wrapped in a towel, chasing B, who at the same time, was chasing a towel wrapped around the small body of a girl. Days and hours acting like the old man, putting my hand on her shoulder so we walk at the same speed, buying her books that she almost likes, almost. Asking her if she enjoyed the movie she went to see with a friend. In short, loving her. Wrapped in towels, of course. And wet. Floating.

When and where is the meeting? I agree that we should create a system that avoids repetition of squares. I also think that if we had more time to develop the fragments the quality would be higher (I've never understood more time as necessarily resulting in longer texts).

Clearly we shouldn't write for children, rather we should write like children (although this might frighten young readers), since it's true that young readers are essentially indefinable (tending to
shy away from fixed categories). There's nothing worse than a children's book written for mothers.

With respect to children's books as objects, I think that, as a religious person, you might be interested in something I came across in my research. I don't know if you know this, but one of the first publications exclusively for children was a hieroglyphic bible, that is, text and drawings laid out next to each other, so that a child could read it by describing the drawings (like comics in newspapers). The book is from like the seventeenth century and the pictures of it on the Internet are very odd. It's called
The Hieroglyphical Bible,
you should check it out. I own a book by Lewis Carroll with a prologue by Leopoldo María Panero where he discusses at length why Lewis Carroll wrote for children. The text, written in a slightly schizoid way, is good, and since this theme interests you, I can lend it to you if you'd like.

Well, the words have run out, it remains only for me to give thanks.

•

F
ROM
: Viernes

T
O
: Lunes, Miercoles, Sabado, Domingo

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: I'll want you like this: recalling what's forgotten, your face poking out of a dirty pile of sodden towels, panting, sometimes pretty, sometimes ugly, and the saddest thing is that my cruel examination will last only a fraction of a second, because I'll walk by on the avenue and in that moment look absentmindedly up at the window, seeing you covered with dozens of towels like
a zombie. It won't be an insult, just the opposite, the line of the horizon flashing in your pupil, hollow because you're only here, I repeat, for a fraction of a second. I won't be there but I'll see you. Wretched. Remnant. Mine.

Cheers, it's very important that we set up a meeting for the end of the week. We should decide what to do if people land on the same space.

Also we should roll all of the dice. The novel will be bullshit if we only have one day to write; I insist that our texts have a respectable period for development.

I am sending this message to you because I don't know how the hell to send it to everyone at once, I need you to do that for me, thanks.

V.
           

•

F
ROM
: Sabado

T
O
: Domingo

D
ATE
:

S
UBJECT
: She'll enter the room and, as a blast of moisture hits her face, realize that it's been locked all day. She's been out in the street for a long time looking for B. She doesn't know his face, or his name, just the initial. Still, not knowing why, she feels she'll find him. The delicate shape of his head from behind, his shoulders, the name, the quiet, understanding smile, the difficulty speaking, the gelled and messy hair. He might turn around and suggest that they sit down, that they speak, that they search. A passing gleam in
which name, face, moisture, laughter, three bears and a wound, a garden, a white stone among many, never alone, please, that gleam that lasts only a fraction of a second and as it appears someone else shares; everything will overlap, no, another word, it'll come together, it'll converge in the name. Soon, however, it'll be of little importance, because curiously, as Rimbaud and the Evangelist simultaneously say, “life is elsewhere.” She'll patiently retrieve the towels from the walls, she'll hang them on the balcony, she'll tell him on the phone how strange the prank was, again she'll look for him until he comes.

What do I know? In any case, the fundamental thing is this: we're not fucking infallible, being a Christian is not to be less wrong, or being wrong is not to be bad, or being imperfect is also compatible with success. Maybe you'll meet someone who loves this fragility, the twisting, everything, someone who can also be this way, and everything will be fine. What I told you the other day makes sense, but it doesn't have to be the truth.

Domingo, it's very late. I've already written my brand new episode. Viernes has made you his secretary? I'll do the same, please forward my chapter to everyone. We need to have a meeting, but this weekend I'm leaving and have to leave. I'd like to be at the fucking meeting. Would it be possible to have it sooner? I agree about the repeated squares, but only to a certain extent (it's also fun to watch people organize things to make something new, in one way or another, that isn't identical and fits in every way, variations on a theme, I don't know, for some reason the stories sometimes cross each other but are in a way independent, right? Don't
you think?). The timing is a little problematic; it seems the trick would be to write something about the progression. I don't know. Take care.

Sabado
           

•

F
ROM
: Domingo

T
O
:

D
ATE
: 09/14/2002

S
UBJECT
: Wet towel. I remember it wrapped around you.

All I do is think about what someone said to me, about what I say, about what I'm saying, about what I'll someday dare to say. I go to my room and write, I come to the silver room and write to you, later I lie down and pray. What I always want is to pray without words, but I'm nowhere near the “full-time mystics.” It's just that sometimes words exhaust me. They are, how to put it, communication, tool, pleasure, and doubt. Forgive the complaints and the affectation. I can't avoid it. That is to say, yes I can, but I must speak.

The meeting for the novel-game was brief and insignificant, but now I'll go to bed feeling that everyone had more than enough to say to each other. At least everyone seemed to be happy about having to read and write. Your fragment was praised in passing, by Viernes if I'm not mistaken, as a marvel of concision. Or was it Jueves. I don't know. My words, I stain everything, almost everything, you know. About Wednesday, an open day, regrettably, Viernes suggested that a friend of his write. He says that he has
a rational, essayistic style that no one else has. We all agreed. It's worth a shot.