Liliana Heker - Please Talk to Me - Selected Stories

The Costanera itself was a virtual wall. Between the crowd trying to find a good spot from which to view the sky, the smoke from the improvised bread-and-sausage vendors, and the absence of spotlights, the only thing visible from the Los Italianos Boulevard (where we now found ourselves) was a bloated amoeba of more or less human consistency, into which we were sucked and which didn’t stop moving and humming.

‘Over there, over there.’ Not far from me, a forceful voice managed to emerge from the amoeba. Several of us turned to look. I detected a thin and knotted index finger pointing towards the northeast.

‘Where? I can’t see a thing.’

‘There. Can’t you see it? A fraction to the side of those two stars. About this far away from the horizon.’

‘But is it rising?’ asked an anguished voice to my left.

‘Well, it’s rising slowly.’

I thought I saw it, gently separating itself from the tiny light of a booth or something, close to the horizon, when behind me a hoarse voice shouted, ‘No, it’s there, far up. To the right of the Three Marys.’

I had no trouble finding the Three Marys and I was scrutinising their right side when I heard a child’s voice full of enthusiasm: ‘I see it! There it is! It’s huge!’

I looked for the child’s finger and, somewhat hopefully, for something huge in the direction his finger indicated. In vain.

‘You know what the problem is?’ said a voice almost in my ear. ‘We’re looking for it straight on. And that can’t be done: it can’t be seen straight on. What we should do is stand sideways and look for it out of the corner of our eyes.’

I turned halfway round. I noticed that several other people had done the same, only they turned sideways relative to different things. I shrugged and looked upward out of the corner of my eye, first with my right eye and then with my left. A hand touched my ankle. Startled I looked down. There were several people lying on the ground.

‘Can I give you some advice?’ came a voice next to my feet. ‘Lie down on the grass. That way, face up, you can see the whole sky at once and I think you should be able to find it immediately.’

Obediently I lay down next to several strangers and again I looked upward. In the unlit and moonless night, under the continuous music of the universe, I felt on the point of discovering something that might have allowed me, perhaps, to continue with my life with a certain degree of peace. Then, a few metres away from my head, someone spoke: ‘Don’t you realise it’s useless to look up from the ground? The trick is to make a reticule with your fingers. Didn’t you read that this reticular effect increases the power of your vision? It’s just like having a microscope.’

The microscope man seemed unreliable to me, so I never got around to trying the reticular effect. Somewhat disheartened, I stood up. I looked around me. Pubescent youngsters, hunchbacks, women about to give birth, people suffering from high blood pressure, idlers and matrons were simultaneously and noisily pointing at the zenith, at the horizon, at the fountain of Lola Mora, at the planes taking off from the Municipal Airport, at certain falling stars, at fireworks, at the Milky Way or at the unexpected phantom ship of La Carrera . Cross-eyed, frowning, using the reticular effect, twitching their ears, jumping on one leg, swinging their pelvises, using telescopes, microscopes, periscopes or kaleidoscopes, through engagement rings, straws, the eyes of needles, or water pipes, everyone was peering at the sky. Each person was searching, among the avalanche of stars (cold and beautiful since the awakening of the world, cold and beautiful when the last little glimmer from our planet is extinguished), each one was searching among those stars for a singular undefinable light. We never even realised that we were discovering death. And yet that is what it was: we had lost, once again, our last chance. One day, like a melon, like a snake, like a scarf of light, like everything round or with a tail or resplendent that we can create through our sheer desire to be happy, the golden-tailed comet would spin again through the space that had been our sky. But we, we who struggled and waited that night under the impassive stars, we on this bank and shoal would no longer disturb the soft evening mist to chase it.

Short-story writer, novelist and essayist Liliana Heker was born in Buenos Aires in 1943. She founded, with Abelardo Castillo, the literary magazines El Escarabajo de Oro (1961–1974) and El Ornitorrinco (1977–1986), where she published essays and sustained polemics that went beyond the issues that stirred them. Heker published five short-story collections and was twice awarded the Konex Prize, granted to the best short-story books of each decade. She is also the author of two novels, Zona de clivaje and Elfin de la historia , and two nonfiction works, Las hermanas de Shakespeare and Diálogos sobre la vida y la muerte . Since 1978 she coordinates writing workshops, where she mentors many current Argentinian writers.

ALBERTO MANGUEL is an internationally acclaimed writer, translator, editor and critic. He is the author of numerous nonfiction books, including The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (coauthored with Gianni Guadalupi), A History of Reading, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography, The Library at Night, A Reader on Reading and Curiosity . Manguel has also published novels in English ( News from a Foreign Country Came ) and Spanish ( El regreso and Todos los hombres son mentirosos ). Among his many awards are the Guggenheim Fellowship and an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège. Manguel is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

MIRANDA FRANCE is the author of books on Spain and Argentina, as well as two novels. A regular contributor to books pages, she also teaches creative writing and has translated various works of Latin American fiction, including Alberto Manguel’s All Men Are Liars .