Out of the Line of Fire (17 page)

Now as I sit looking at it, looking at Elena standing there with Anya supported on her hip, it is Anya’s
eyes
that immediately strike me. They are almost unnaturally blue, unnaturally intense. In my mind I can see an image of Wolfi as I saw him for the first time, standing nervously outside the door to my room in Heidelberg. I see
his
intense blue eyes, and then through them, I see Elena on the beach. I see the wisp of pubic hair poking out from beneath her swimming costume. I feel Wolfi registering her as a separate being for the first time.

Returning to the photograph, I look first at Anya’s face and then at Elena’s—and back. The resemblance is unmistakable. Behind Elena’s smile she seems to be laughing, as though at some shared secret. I reread the inscription: ‘Viele Grüsse von Deinen zwei Lieblingen’ [A big hello from your two little darlings].

For a long time I sat trying to reformulate conversations I had had with Wolfi, trying to piece together chance remarks that might have confirmed or denied what I had begun to think. I tried to recall when Anya had first come up in our conversation, what exactly
had
been said. I felt as you would feel if, as a reader, you were now forbidden to go back to the conversation that took place the day she actually was first mentioned. And yet I cannot be sure that this
was
the first time. I simply cannot remember.

Moreover, it did not end there. It wasn’t until I had begun to rewrap the photograph and the phrase ‘sexuelles Verlangen’ [sexual desire] caught my eye that I took a good look at the piece of newspaper in which it had been wrapped. It was a page torn from the issue of
Die Zeit
dated 12 June 1982. On it was reprinted an interview with the Latin-American writer Ramon Fernandez together with the last half of one of his short stories. I have translated this from the
Die Zeit
article
not
from the original Spanish. An alternative version can be found in Fernandez’s collection
Internal Exile and other stories
[Hoddard & Co., New York, 1984]. It would be years before I was able to confirm that its inclusion had been no accident.)

ZEIT
Sein eigener Gefangener
[
Internal Exile
] has received a lot of attention for its startling beginning…

FERNANDEZ
The view of Inocenta as a child, an angelic vision?

ZEIT Yes. Some commentators however have felt that the transition to Placido’s point of view in the latter half of the story is too obviously symbolic of the fracture in the relationship between Inocenta and Placido that follows.

FERNANDEZ
Yes, perhaps you are right. But remember, Placido never actually stops loving her, and in a sense, it is his actions, his withdrawal, which forces Inocenta to act as she does. Initially the story was quite different…quite different. Perhaps now, as you say, it is a bit heavy handed.

ZEIT Different in what way?

FERNANDEZ
Well the story, you know, began as a commission for Olivares…

ZEIT Diego Olivares, the film maker?

FERNANDEZ
Yes. He came to me with the idea to make a film about two brothers, one of whom goes off to fight in the revolution while the other stays at home to look after the family business. In the original version Placido doesn’t see Inocenta for the first time until almost midway through the story. For him it is an apocalyptic experience. Here is a man who in ten years of fighting has left his adolescence and his innocence behind and has become a legend, both as a fighter and a lover. Then, on the very day peace is declared, in a small village church a thousand kilometres from his own home town, he sees this vision, a vision in the shape of a twelve-year-old girl, a mere child, singing in the choir.

ZEIT So the episode in the church was shifted to the beginning of the story.

FERNANDEZ
More or less.

ZEIT Why?

FERNANDEZ
For two reasons. The first was that I became increasingly dissatisfied with the symmetry of the first draft. The first draft opened where the finished story ends—with Placido in the makeshift courtroom. He is standing in the dock and he reaches up to feel the raised skin of a scar on his chest. This sparks off a series of flashbacks and we see him and Santiago as children climbing into the mountains, having secretly taken their father’s rifle from its cabinet in the hall of their home. To shoot rabbits or tomatoes, something like that. You have to remember that this was going to be done as a film and these things are easier to do cinematically. Of course the inevitable happens and there is an accident and Santiago shoots Placido…

ZEIT And the other reason?

FERNANDEZ
The other reason was the character of Inocenta. In the first version I felt that she wasn’t sufficiently clearly defined. She was too static. Apart from being a woman-child we knew too little about her at the end to identify that it was really her tragedy that was important. Instead, we seemed locked into Placido’s perspective and she remained merely peripheral. By devoting half the story to her, introducing the narrative from her point of view, it changed the weight of the story as a whole. The balance is better. Besides, when I was exploring what I would do with the three main characters she was a very strong presence even though she hadn’t, at that stage, been fully articulated. I think I began to fall in love with her myself [laughs].

ZEIT Does this happen often?

FERNANDEZ
What? That I fall in love with my own characters? No, That’s probably an exaggeration.

ZEIT But you do identify with them, see them as more or less real?

FERNANDEZ
Yes, to some extent I suppose I do. This is one of the problems with drastically changing a story. Some of the things you like, some of the characters you meet, have to go.

ZEIT Can you give us an example?

FERNANDEZ
Well, I remember in the first version of
Internal Exile,
and even more so in
The Repentance,
which was also substantially revised, there were a number of scenes which I particularly liked that, in the end, just had to go. For example, after the war when Placido returns to Charada, and remember, the war lasted ten years and when Placido left he was still a boy. In any case, he arrives back in Charada and is standing on the station platform looking across at the little township beyond, thinking to himself that nothing much has changed. You know, the air is still hot, the sun oppressive, the same flies buzz about his face, the shadows still fall in their old familiar patterns. He sees the station-master, a certain Don Miguel Fernandez [laughs]—a little joke between Olivares and myself—so he sees Don Miguel walking along the platform towards him and he says hello to him. I can still remember writing: ‘Buenos días, Don Miguel replied. But he uttered the words coolly, without affection.’

And you see, Placido is hurt. It does not occur to him that
he
has changed, and that this long-time family friend, a man who had showered gifts on him as a child, has simply not recognized him.

Similarly, when Placido arrives at his mother’s house later that afternoon, the young sister he left behind ten years earlier has developed into a beautiful young woman. Their meeting, and the scene which followed with his mother, struck me then, and still does, as being absolutely authentic. Placido enters the house without knocking.

At the sound of his footsteps, a young woman stepped into the hallway from the kitchen.

Yes? she said, her voice faintly anxious.

Placido stared hard at her face.

Amaranta, he said. My little Amaranta.

Yes, she said again, her voice trembling. Then she whispered: Placido?

He smiled.

Placido. She repeated the word slowly, incredulously, then turned and ran to the back door.

Mama, Mama, she called. Come quickly.

She waited a moment, clenching and unclenching her fists. Then she ran back to where Placido was standing and he swept her up into his arms and embraced her. She was sobbing.

Placido, you’re back, you’re back. She pulled her head away to see his face. I don’t believe it, you’re back.

She kissed him elatedly, joyfully, on both cheeks.

With her still clasped to him he walked to the door and pushed it open. His old mother was walking through the yard wiping her hands on her apron. Half a dozen chickens scattered in front of her like noisy scraps of paper caught in a gust of wind.

When his mother stood before him he released Amaranta. She stayed beside him, her arm around his waist, her head leaning against his shoulder. For a moment, the world seemed to grow silent. Then his mother spoke.

So, you’ve finally come home.

She wiped her hands again.

The two of them stood looking at each other. Then, slowly, his giant hands reached down to her and he picked her up and held her to the sun. Her lightness frightened him. This tiny woman who had struck fear into his soul as a child now seemed to him a child herself.

And there is a moment, later, four years after his return to Charada, four years in which the vision of a child singing in the choir has begun to haunt him, that he realizes he can stand it no longer.

So one hot summer evening, while his mother and Amaranta sat talking on the dimly lit verandah, he went to them and, without saying a word, kissed first Amaranta and then his mother on their foreheads. His mother could still feel his lips against her skin as he disappeared into the night.

All of that had to go.

ZEIT You sound disappointed.

FERNANDEZ
Yes, in a sense I suppose I am. Those moments are like memories for me, memories that just weren’t good enough. There is a sense of personal nostalgia about them. It’s difficult to explain. I guess it’s just part of what the real difference between life and art is.

ZEIT And what’s that?

FERNANDEZ
Editing! [laughs]. But in a way it’s true. I mean, what you’re going into in a novel or short story is an alternative world where you’re completely in control, whereas life is mostly not being able to control anything. It’s also quite comforting to be in the position of making all the right moves and if it’s not right no one knows about it. You just start again.

ZEIT You’re serious?

FERNANDEZ
Absolutely. It’s one of the reasons I enjoy writing for the cinema. Here you have this ludicrous situation in which real people, actors, clamour to play roles from a world that initially exists solely in your head. It’s insane really, people wanting to get inside your head…But that’s another issue. Where were we?

ZEIT I’d like to put a question to you about form. You have been criticized for consistently breaking down the conventions normally associated with the short story. How do you react to such criticism?

FERNANDEZ
I think it’s largely irrelevant. For me a narrative, in its telling, naturally inscribes its own centre, a point about which the narrative tends to ‘gravitate’ as it were. All I do is refuse to allow this centre to stabilize. This is not to say that there are no patterns, no conventions, no structures to my narratives. They are just not the ones you’d normally expect to find. Technically then, the challenge for me is to give enough suggestive detail to allow these patterns of narrative implication to appear without, at the same time, committing myself as an author to any definitive articulation of one or other of these. Besides,
Internal Exile
is hardly unconventional.

ZEIT No, but you would have to admit it is atypical.

FERNANDEZ
Relatively atypical, yes.

ZEIT In
Internal Exile
,
the breakdown of the relationship between Inocenta and Placido is particularly movingly told, from the almost childlike reverence Placido experiences in the face of Inocenta’s physical beauty and, on her part, the awakening of her sexual desire, to the eventual gulf which separates them as it becomes obvious that Inocenta cannot fall pregnant. And it is through Inocenta that we feel Placido’s silent, hopeless rage, his sense of powerlessness in the face of the cruel blow fate has dealt him. We see him turn away from her. He becomes, literally, his own prisoner, exiled within himself. Yet it is exactly this that has led some commentators to see the story as a political allegory that Inocenta represents your homeland at the time of the revolution and that Santiago and Placido, two brothers with houses adjoining, represent the forces, neither intrinsically good nor bad, struggling to gain control.

FERNANDEZ
Yes, but this is an aberration. This is
not
reality, you know. I mean, it’s ridiculous. It annoys me that people still read hidden political agendas into my work.

ZEIT But what about Chavez’s music?

FERNANDEZ
Chavez’s music is different. I used this episode from my country’s history because it had for me the feeling of a universal truth. There was something mythical about it, something about its paradoxically fictional content that transcended temporal and historical reality. Placido himself is like this for me. That’s why they’re linked at the end. I disagree, by the way, with your statement that neither is ultimately good or bad. Remember too, that music and Inocenta are indissolubly linked as well. It is her voice which reaches out continually to him across the vastness which separates them. The only time the perspective changes to Placido’s in the entire first half of the story is when he is returning in the train to Charada and the image of Inocenta singing in the choir suddenly reappears in his consciousness: