Diego Maenza - All Love Letters Are Ridiculous

All love letters

are ridiculous

Diego Maenza

Translated by Gastón Jofre Torres

www.traduzionelibri.it

www.diegomaenza.com

© Diego Maenza, 2020

© Tektime, 2020

© Gastón Jofre Torres, translation, 2020

www.traduzionelibri.it

www.diegomaenza.com

All love letters

are ridiculous

Diego Maenza

Translated by Gastón Jofre Torres

INDEX

FOREWORD FOREWORD Abelard looks up at the sky. Smiling, satisfied, as he hasn't been for days, as he hasn't been for weeks. The clouds crowd in a hazy gray, foreboding. His nervous and excited legs lead him down the sidewalk, but his mind is imagining the imminent encounter with Eloisa, the love of his life. Under his right armpit he has the manuscript, squeezing it as if protecting it in advance from the coming storm. He feels the breeze brush his face, ruffle his thick hair, caress his cheekbones. Abelard looks down at the ground. Look at the trash that vibrates with the wind. His feet go down to the road, carefree, like his dreamy instinct, like his restless eyes that go astray again in the shapes of the cloudscape. That is why he does not notice the car that crosses the avenue quickly, that is why he does not listen to the last and useless moment the desperate horn of the imprudent driver. The metal of the vehicle impacts Abelard's body. Her skin rustles, her flesh lacerates, its bones are destroyed, its beaten anatomy is ejected several meters in the same direction that the breeze carries. Certain splashes of his blood are confused, mixed, integrated, with the vermilion hood of the car. The boy's head hits the pavement and causes trauma. The rain begins to fall, very delicately. The most carefree pedestrian, whose inquisitive nature of the human being will be more focused on verifying the circumstantial details than on directing his attention to the center of the incident (perhaps with the intention of materially taking advantage of the tragic situation), will be the only person who will notice the four words that head the manuscript that has ended up near a sewer, those four words that are already beginning to dissolve throughout the page due to the insipient drizzle, and that constitute the title of the work that yearns to publish the badly wounded young Abelard: Theory of affects.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

EXALTATION

EPILOGUE

Abelard looks up at the sky. Smiling, satisfied, as he hasn't been for days, as he hasn't been for weeks. The clouds crowd in a hazy gray, foreboding. His nervous and excited legs lead him down the sidewalk, but his mind is imagining the imminent encounter with Eloisa, the love of his life. Under his right armpit he has the manuscript, squeezing it as if protecting it in advance from the coming storm. He feels the breeze brush his face, ruffle his thick hair, caress his cheekbones. Abelard looks down at the ground. Look at the trash that vibrates with the wind. His feet go down to the road, carefree, like his dreamy instinct, like his restless eyes that go astray again in the shapes of the cloudscape. That is why he does not notice the car that crosses the avenue quickly, that is why he does not listen to the last and useless moment the desperate horn of the imprudent driver. The metal of the vehicle impacts Abelard's body. Her skin rustles, her flesh lacerates, its bones are destroyed, its beaten anatomy is ejected several meters in the same direction that the breeze carries. Certain splashes of his blood are confused, mixed, integrated, with the vermilion hood of the car. The boy's head hits the pavement and causes trauma. The rain begins to fall, very delicately. The most carefree pedestrian, whose inquisitive nature of the human being will be more focused on verifying the circumstantial details than on directing his attention to the center of the incident (perhaps with the intention of materially taking advantage of the tragic situation), will be the only person who will notice the four words that head the manuscript that has ended up near a sewer, those four words that are already beginning to dissolve throughout the page due to the insipient drizzle, and that constitute the title of the work that yearns to publish the badly wounded young Abelard: Theory of affects.

To talk about her (I have always said and maintain it) is to talk about the least common creature. What could I say about her that does not sound like something hackneyed or an easy phrase, a hackneyed topic? The problem does not lie in the lack of anecdotes on which to speak. The complication turns out to be the opposite, because in fact there are too many things that I could comment on his life. The issue is that I will not do it because he will start telling this story. And I must take it easy. Detailing his life will be an interesting process, but it could be an inexcusable slip on my part to err for a moment. Perhaps some other more talkative interlocutor is the appropriate person to capture his essence with accuracy and objectivity; However, my claim is much more ambitious: I need, in this process, to reveal what she has meant to me. Where can I find the most crystalline source of truth if I can not find it in her? For her lips the lie is forbidden and this empowers her to do with me what she wants. Her struggle to be a woman has forged the most utopian animal that carries a desperate idolatry towards life. She likes loving... She likes loving me. To enter into details of her being would be to desecrate her. Have believers tried to describe their gods? But I must take the risk, even at the cost of not escaping the attempt unscathed. Her raw and stately character, the haughty breasts that draw curves in the air, the voice of sticky and sweet melody, the mischievous gaze pinching me in indelible caresses, her practical intelligence and generous spirit, the invisible claw of her hips hitting the wind in her peculiar way of walking, her sense of humor, the skillful smile designing her picaresque profile. This is her. The prototype of the perfect woman. A fictional being transmuted into reality. Her name is Eloisa.

My name was Eloisa and I am no longer young. Not after everything that happened. Even over the years and despite the youth of my cells, I found myself eaten away by a spiritual old age that I have preserved until today and that never left my veins. The body is sometimes the reflection of the soul and other times its torture. Because we were born in a time and in a space where beauty is synonymous with misery, although they insist on saying the opposite.

I was slim and beautiful, graceful and fragile like the gazelle that shows its slenderness without realizing that hungry hyenas and starving wolves lurk from the shadows.

Today, telling you this, young friend, I may even know what each of them thought at the time of the incident. The first, the fat one had looked at my thin, brown legs that were appealing for their voracious prey. The second one, the strongest looked at my nascent breasts, small buttons that protruded from my blouse and prompted the man to bite them throughout the work. And the third one, the young man was awakened by the luminous showiness of my turned and firm buttocks based on aerobics and contemporary dances. They were all pigs.