Augusto Monterroso - Complete Works and Other Stories

Note

1 Contrary to the idea cherished by some that every poet should be prohibited from publishing a second book of verses unless he can offer convincing proof that the first is sufficiently bad.

Humor is realism carried to its final consequences. With the exception of most humorous literature, everything that man does is laughable or humorous. In war what we do stops being funny because in war man stops being funny. As Eduardo Torres said: “Man is not content with being the stupidest animal in Creation; he also permits himself the luxury of being the only one that is ridiculous.”

Recently he had been coming to his office a little late, very late really but within the limits he thought the system tolerated, placed there precisely so they would not work, would not get in the way, so that he could come in late because, as he gave it some thought, the important thing was not to stay out altogether, to come in, to be there. Then the boy offered him a cup of coffee, which he accepted gratefully, since it was good to feel you were doing something, that you had something to wait for during the next three minutes, even if it was only a cup of bad coffee smelling of old, very old rats. When the secretaries told him that no one had asked for him (“no one” was different from nobody; “no one” of course meant some superior, some boss in the office hierarchy), he felt calm and confident. The morning would go by with no major anxieties, and now it was all a matter of waiting patiently for noon and then one o’clock and then half past two. But this was always an illusion. The hours are hard to chew, and like the boa with its victims it is better to salivate each one slowly, calmly, so that you can swallow it minute by minute, although in the offices you could see clearly that sometimes after each hour there is another, and then another and another, and there are still thirty minutes left over which you finally use up somehow and then you can go. Naturally you can always count on the newspaper, but you can’t spend the whole morning reading the paper. But you know your reserves and are certain that someone, the Great Someone, will be there to talk to you. Someone always listens with interest, or at least pretends to, which is no small matter — listens to your problems with interest and says yes when you need someone to say yes and no that’s not right when you need someone to disapprove of the way your wife handles money, or your children, or the papers and books you always leave around with that famous characteristic disorder of yours — you always know where everything is as long as they don’t straighten your damn desk; or maybe the movies, no, sports, even less, literature, perhaps, but not very deeply since even if you really know about most of the novels that have been written recently, especially in Latin America, which is all the rage, in fact you haven’t read them although you know, well, although you think it is your duty as a writer, but after all you can talk about them as if you really had read them, your instincts or a skimming through are enough to know where Cortázar, Vargas Llosa, García Márquez, or Lezama Lima are heading without having to work so hard especially now when not a day goes by without something new being published and there’s really no time to read everything, especially those long novels that are complicated intentionally by the authors just to show they know how to do it. Have you noticed? Have you read Paradiso? I couldn’t. You haven’t finished one thing when the next one appears. You’ve read it? No, you say jokingly, I’m still getting through Don Quixote, knowing full well you’ve never read Don Quixote, that it bores you to death as the great Lope de Vega said about Dante on his deathbed. But joking aside, no, the fact is you haven’t had time. Then you think with determination that in half an hour, when you leave, you’re going to catch up with the Spanish American novel, and you see a perfect world, a kind of Garden of Eden, where you come home and everything is ready and your wife with her pretty pink apron and her smile, that smile that never leaves her face except when she has problems, serves you your supper right away and your children are all sitting around the table quietly with “10”s in conduct and quick as a wink you eat your dessert and go to your room and pick up Paradiso and like those swimmers with big batrachian fins on their feet and oxygen on their shoulders God knows how many meters under the water in slow motion and in colors no one has ever seen before you sink into a deep marvelous reading interrupted only by your own impulses, like going to urinate, or scratching your back, or walking downstairs for a glass of water, or putting on a record, or trimming your nails, or lighting a cigarette, or looking for a shirt to wear to the cocktail party this evening, or making a phone call, or asking for some coffee, or looking out the window, or combing your hair, or contemplating your shoes, in short, all those things that make good reading — and life — so pleasant.

But I have been losing any resemblance I may once have had to a writer as my economic circumstances have improved too much and my social relationships have widened to the point where I cannot write anything without offending someone I know, or unintentionally flattering one of my protectors and patrons, which means most people.

Someone who always complains bitterly of the cross he has to bear (husband, wife, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, son, daughter, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law) is at the same time the cross of another person who bitterly complains of constantly having to bear the cross (daughter-in-law, son-in-law, mother-in-law, father-in-law, stepdaughter, stepson, stepmother, stepfather, daughter, son, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, wife, husband) it has been his lot in life to carry; and so from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.

Without standing on tiptoe, I easily measure five feet, three inches. I have been little since I was little. My mother and father were not tall either. When I realized, at the age of fifteen, that I was growing into a very short man, I began to do all the recommended exercises, which did not make me taller or stronger but did improve my appetite. And this was really a problem, because at that time we were very poor. Although I do not recall ever going hungry, it is more than likely that I was malnourished for long periods during my adolescence. Certain photographs (which do not always have to be blurred) prove it. I am saying this because it may be true that if I had eaten not more but better food back then, my height would be more respectable now. On my twenty-first birthday, and not a day before, I acknowledged defeat, gave up the exercises, and went out to vote.