Sergio De La Pava - Personae

In Cuba, Arce rebuilt what he’d lost but stood fast in his refusal to remarry, repeatedly characterizing such a move as a form of weakness. What he built there, aided by the island country’s improbably thriving economic environment of the nineteen-fifties, was a low-level media empire that included two radio stations and a newspaper. In 1960, the Cuban State began to help itself to private property including Arce’s stations and beloved paper. Though he was tempted to resist (Arce generally viewed Cuba’s men of violence as kind of quaintly cute) array enough numbers against any man and he accedes, meaning Arce had again lost everything including multiple boats he could have used to start anew.

What he did then was build a glorified raft with these crazy twin brothers everybody told him he should distrust and direct it to Florida, one of the United States of America. The waters between Cuba and Key West equal ninety miles of natural treachery. The unpredictable currents and a nasty storm with absurd swells made the many sharks therein suddenly and mortally relevant. The best Arce could manage at that point was to make the sharks most responsible for the death of the twins pay, like worker honey bees, the ultimate price for their aggression.

When he arrived on shore, after skillfully evading rescue , he walked in bloodied rags through horrified beachgoers to a remote area where he buried one belonging of each twin under a makeshift cross then made its sign. Then, after immediately and unfavorably assessing his surroundings, he continued on to New York City.

New York City in 1960 but all Arce seemed to see was books. His lack of English now offended him so he taught himself to speak, read, and ultimately write it. He did this while working as a restaurant dishwasher, one who was often kidded about his advanced age but rarely twice by the same person. Then he cooked and then he co-owned when the owner got himself into the kind of trouble with the kind of people that only Arce’s baleful intensity could get him out of.

From there Arce kept adding restaurants including some of the initial Colombian ones in highly Colombian Jackson Heights, Queens. He also began to write fiction. He wrote exclusively in English and he did so somewhat obsessively. On his 90 thbirthday, however, he destroyed everything he’d written to that point saying a man should only write that which he’d be willing to see engraved on his gravemarker. Expecting not to last much longer, he gave away his considerable possessions and devoted himself exclusively to writing.

In his last few years this devotion became almost monastic. He lived alone save for his cat Achilles. The circle of friends he played dominos and drank coffee with disappeared one by one and finally, inevitably, even his body began to give out. He kept writing best he could, often forgetting to eat or bathe to the point that the few interested observers wondered if intervention was warranted. It wasn’t and during this time Arce bled to produce The Ocean, Personae , and lastly Energeias: or Why Today the Sun May Not Rise in the East, Set in the West .

One of his last willful acts involved Achilles. Specifically, he came across the cat as it appeared to be torturing a mouse and prevented him from delivering the final blow. He then gave the cat away to a neighbor saying only “I’ve lost my stomach for it all.” The mouse ultimately perished due to its injuries but not before chewing an exposed line near the stove in Arce’s apartment creating a leak of CO or carbon monoxide that soon turned the cramped space into a kind of gas chamber. So what started as a headache that wouldn’t end was joined by nausea, fatigue, hallucinatory visions, and finally an extreme debilitating weakness that caused Antonio Arce to sit then lie on his kitchen floor where he died shortly thereafter. He is survived by no one. His influence, if any, is not yet known.

THE NEW YORK TIMES OBITUARIESWEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2011

Helen Tame, Otherworldly and Multivalent Talent, Dies at 40

Helen Tame, who began publishing highly influential scholarly articles at age 16 and later shocked the music world with inexplicably mature and groundbreakingly virtuosic piano performances beginning at age 20 before voluntarily and suddenly disappearing from that scene entirely, only to then reappear on the public stage years later having reinvented herself as a preternaturally gifted homicide detective often called on to solve some of law enforcement’s most longstanding and seemingly impenetrable mysteries, died yesterday at age 40.

Helen Tame was born on October 16, 1970, in Christ the King Hospital in Jersey City, New Jersey to Anthony Tame and the former Laura King. At age 5 she is said to have announced to her parents that they could either purchase a legitimate piano or put her up for adoption by a family that already owned one. Once the purchase was made, Tame apparently practiced constantly as a child although she never performed, adhering to her belief that musical performance by the too young was pointless.

In 1986, Tame, then a Princeton undergraduate, published her universally acclaimed monograph on the proper use of contrapuntal melody. A series of similarly lauded articles then followed in rapid if ambivalent succession. (Tame once famously said that “the only thing worse than writing them is not.”)

In the fall of 1990, Dr. Tame (at 19 she had acquired a PhD in both Music and Philosophy) performed an astonishing series of concerts at Carnegie Hall. She quickly became the most sought after pianist in the world. Despite that, her performances in the ensuing years were sporadic and she never permitted any recording of them, nor did she ever take advantage of any of the many lucrative offers she received to enter a recording studio.

Then, in 1997, Tame announced that she would never again perform for a concert audience and for the remaining 13 years of her life she made no more public statements beyond the occasional publication of more articles.

The reclusiveness gave rise to rumors: that she had retired because of impending motherhood, that she had specifically not ruled out studio recording because she was recording in her home studio what would prove to be the seminal performances of the complete Beethoven piano variations, or that a violent interruption had placed her on a surprising trajectory distinct from music.

This last rumor gained credence when in 2002 the NYPD’s police academy received a most unique cadet to be sure. Remarkably this fact remained largely unnoticed until Detective Helen Tame began solving several high-profile, and in many cases seemingly intractable, homicides.

Nonetheless her silence, at least for public consumption, persisted through stunning arrest after stunning arrest.

Yesterday Helen Tame responded to what appeared to be a routine death in a Manhattan apartment. The NYPD has not commented on why Dr. Tame was left alone at the location but she was found dead on a sofa there late last night. The cause of death is tentatively being listed as carbon monoxide poisoning. Details of any funeral services for Ms. Tame have not been released.

She is survived by no one.

ENERGEIAS: or Why Today the Sun May Not Rise in the East, Set in the West

WHICH is why someone seeking to encounter fewer people should generally go left in such situations. What this Man truly seeks is harder to define, even for him. He knows only that going right, away from the dropping sun, takes him to the place where the bad people are. He knows more too. He knows the bad people, all of them, are going to regret that what little remains of their lives has intersected with his remainder in this way.