Horacio Castellanos Moya - Revulsion - Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador

They told me all about it recently: Olmedo was one of the hundreds of naive kids assassinated thanks to accusations that those rats were being infiltrated by the enemy, hundreds were assassinated by their own leaders who charged them with treason, they were assassinated by their own leaders’ orders on the outskirts of the San Vicente volcano. Horrible, Moya, Olmedo was such a poor imbecile, he found the death he sought. It’s horrible to think about the happiness with which some people kill in this country, the ease with which thousands go to their sacrifice like sheep for their vomitous causes, killed for their vomitous causes, ready to die for their vomitous causes, said Vega. And for what? So a party of thieves disguised as politicians can share the booty. It’s incredible, Moya, really incredible, human stupidity has no limits, particularly in this country where people raise human stupidity to unusual heights, only in this way can one explain how the most popular politician in the past twenty years was a psychopathic criminal, only in this way can one explain how a psychopathic criminal who assassinated thousands in an anticommunist crusade transformed himself into the most popular politician, how a psychopathic criminal, who ordered the assassination of the archbishop of San Salvador, became the most charismatic politician, the most loved, not only by the rich but by the general population, it’s a revolting, monstrous fact, if you think about it, Moya, a psychopathic criminal who assassinated the archbishop is transformed into a hero of the fatherland and transmuted into a statue paying homage to the people, because this torturer assassin blasphemed with such brutality that his tongue rotted with cancer, his throat rotted with cancer, his body rotted with cancer, only in this country and with these people could barbarism of such magnitude occur, it’s so revolting that this psychopathic criminal could be transformed into a founding father, said Vega. Which is why, once I complete the sale of my mother’s house, I’m leaving as soon as I can for Montreal, Moya, even if the house still hasn’t sold, even if I have to leave the responsibility for the sale to my brother, to confide in him, even if in the end he deceives me and keeps my share of the sale of my mother’s house, even if I lose the only inheritance my mother left me because my brother robs me of my share of the money, I prefer to leave as soon as possible, Moya, I cannot endure another minute, I could die of revulsion, of a profound and burning corrosion in my spirit, I will leave even if I have to before the sale; thinking about it, I could wait at most a week, but I don’t have any reason to wait two weeks, tomorrow I’ll change my reservation to immediately after the lawyer says I have to sign all the necessary papers, said Vega. I don’t want anything to do with this country, Moya, other than to come here each day to have a couple of drinks at this bar between five and seven in the evening and sign the documents related to the house we inherited from my mother. I have nothing to do with this place. Listen to me closely, Moya, I’m sure that my brother will do everything possible to rob me of my share of the money from selling my mother’s house, I’ve seen it coming from a long way away, he has every intention of taking the money from the house in Miramonte that my mother passed down to both of us, I could see from a long way away that he’s worked with a lawyer to try to rob me of my small inheritance, because my brother Ivo never thought that my mother would include me in her will, he was always sure that my total absence from the country excluded me, and that he (Ivo) would be the only inheritor, he who would actually snatch the house in Miramonte, said Vega. Which is why Ivo must have been surprised when the notary read him the will that said that my mother had passed her house in Miramonte down to her two sons, with the only condition that I come to her funeral, after which he wrote me that it was up to me to decide what to do with this house. I’m completely sure, Moya, that if my brother Ivo had read the will by himself the moment my mother died, he wouldn’t have alerted me, I’m entirely sure he would have invented something to keep me from coming here to claim my part of the inheritance, to get me to not fulfill the clause my mother included in her will. But Clara, Ivo’s wife, unwisely called me minutes after my mother died, an unwise act that at the time seemed irrelevant to them, because they were both sure that I wouldn’t return to the country, even if my mother was dead, but neither of them knew about the clause in the will that my mother had given to the notary, neither was aware that my mother had let me know already that if I weren’t present at the funeral ceremonies, she wouldn’t leave me any part of the Miramonte house, they both already believed they owned the Miramonte house, said Vega. And so it didn’t shock Ivo and Clara when I announced that I would arrive the following day, when I asked them to delay my mother’s burial until then, and when I entered the funeral parlor from the airport. Two days later the notary read us my mother’s will in which she gave me rights over the Miramonte house, Moya, a house valued at one hundred thousand dollars because it’s located just two blocks from the Camino Real Hotel, a house that my brother didn’t have the least intention of selling because he wasn’t desperate for the money, a house in which I lived practically my entire life in San Salvador, a house unrecognizable from the outside thanks to the cement wall surrounding it, a wall that never existed while I lived there, a wall that’s not exclusive to my mother’s house, Moya, because the terror everyone feels here has made them convert their homes into walled fortresses, a horrible landscape, Moya, this city of walled houses like barracks, each house is a little barrack the way each person is a little sergeant, both are evident, Moya, and now the enormous wall surrounding my mother’s house is the best example, Vega said. My brother Ivo couldn’t believe what my mother put in her will, he also couldn’t believe that I was interested in selling the walled house as soon as possible, anxious to rid myself of the walled house without the least delay, Moya, he couldn’t believe the fact that I only wanted to secure some forty-five thousand dollars as quickly as possible, since I didn’t have the least intention of returning to this country; for nothing in the world would I step foot here, this is what I told my brother and the lawyer, my only purpose is to sell the walled Miramonte house for money that will let me live more comfortably in Montreal and never again return to this revolting country, said Vega. My brother Ivo and I are the most different people you can imagine, Moya, we don’t resemble each other in any way, we have not a single thing in common, no one would believe we’re from the same mother, we’re so different we never even became friends, only a few acquaintances know we share the same parents, the same last name, the same house, said Vega. We haven’t seen each other for eighteen years. We never write each other. The half dozen times my mother would call me and he’d be with her, Moya, we’d hardly exchange hellos or commonplaces; we never called each other because we didn’t have anything to say, each of us lived without having to think about the other, because we’re complete strangers, we’re total opposites, living proof that blood doesn’t mean a thing, it’s random, something perfectly worthless, said Vega. I just turned thirty-eight years old, Moya, same as you, I am four years older than my brother, and if my mother hadn’t died I would have been able to live my entire life without returning to see my brother Ivo; that said, Moya, we don’t hate each other, we’re simply two planets on distinct orbits, without anything to say, with nothing to share, no similar tastes, the only thing that brought us together is the task of having inherited my mother’s house in Miramonte, nothing more, said Vega. I have nothing in common with a guy who dedicates his life to making keys, a guy who has dedicated his life to making copies of keys, whose only concern is that his business produces more and more copies of keys, Moya, someone whose life revolves around a business called “Millions of Keys.” His friends gave him the inevitable nickname “Key Ring,” his total universe, his most vital worries, fail to exceed the dimensions of a key, said Vega. My brother is a lunatic, Moya, it causes me true sorrow that someone could live a life like that, it causes me profound sadness to think about someone dedicating his life to making the most possible copies of keys, said Vega. My brother is worse than someone possessed, Moya, he’s the typical middle-class businessman trying to accumulate the money he needs to buy more cars, houses, and women than he needs; for my brother, the ideal world would be an immense locksmith operation, and he would be the only owner, an immense locksmith operation where they would only talk about keys, locks, doorknobs, latchkeys. And it’s not going badly for him, Moya, on the contrary, it’s going very well for my brother, every day he sells more keys, every day he opens another branch of “Millions of Keys,” every day he accumulates more money thanks to his key business, my brother is a true success, Moya, he’s found his goldmine, I doubt there exists another country where people have the same obsession for keys and locks, I don’t think there exists another country where people so obsessively lock themselves in, which is why my brother is a success, because people need tons of keys and locks for the walled houses they live in, said Vega. For fifteen days I haven’t had a conversation that’s been worth it, Moya, for fifteen days these two have talked to me only about keys, locks, and doorknobs, and about the papers I should sign to make the sale of my mother’s house possible, it’s horrible, Moya, I have absolutely nothing to say to my brother, there isn’t a single minimally decent topic we can address with intelligence, said Vega. The principal intellectual preoccupation of my brother is soccer, Moya, he can talk for hours and hours about teams and players, especially about his favorite team, called the Alliance, for my brother the Alliance is the finest manifestation of humanity, he doesn’t miss a single game, he’d commit the most heinous sin if it meant the Alliance would win all its matches, said Vega. My brother’s fanaticism for the Alliance is so high, after a few days it actually occurred to him to invite me to the stadium, can you imagine, Moya, he invited me to the stadium to support the Alliance in a difficult match against their longtime rivals, that’s how he proposed it to me, as if he didn’t know that I detest huge crowds, that concentrations of humanity produce in me an indescribable affliction. There’s nothing more detestable to me than sports, Moya, nothing seems more boring and stupid than sports, most of all the National Soccer League, I don’t understand how my brother could give a damn about twenty-two undernourished morons running after a ball, only someone like my brother could almost have a heart attack about the stumbling of twenty-two undernourished men running after a ball and making a show of their mental deficiency, only someone like my brother could have passionate ideas about locksmithing and a team of undernourished morons that calls itself the Alliance, said Vega. At first my brother thought he would be able to convince me that we shouldn’t sell my mother’s house, that it was best to rent it instead, according to him the real estate market improves every day, my brother said he had no desire to sell my mother’s house; but I was emphatic from the start, I had no doubt that the best decision was to sell her house, it’s what suits me best, so I never have to return to this country, so I can break all ties with this place, with the past, with my brother and his family, so I don’t have to hear anything more about them, which, to be blunt, is why I was emphatic from the start, I didn’t even let my brother make his case against the sale of the house, I said I only wanted my half, if he could pay me the forty-five thousand dollars right then, he could keep the house, that’s what I told him, Moya, because I saw his intention to blackmail me with idiotic sentimentalities, with ideas natural to a guy whose life is limited to keys and locks, idiotic sentimentalities like saying my mother’s house represents the family heritage, like saying we were raised there and similarly the house is associated with the best moments of our youth, I didn’t let him continue with that nonsense, Moya, I told him that for me the family was coincidental, without any importance, proof of this was that the two of us had been able to pass eighteen years without a single conversation, proof was that if this house hadn’t existed we surely wouldn’t have decided to meet again, that’s what I told him, Moya, and I explained that I wanted to forget everything that has to do with my youth spent in this country, my youth lived in this walled house that now I must sell, there is nothing so abominable as the years I spent here, nothing more repulsive than the first twenty years of my life, said Vega, they were years committed only to idiocies, Moya, horrible years, associated with the Marist Brothers, with anxiety about getting away from here, the uneasiness caused by the inevitability of having to live my life in the middle of this rottenness. I’ll ask Tolín to play the CD of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor one more time, said Vega, I want to hear this concerto one more time before someone shows up with another request, I could listen to this concerto by Tchaikovsky a dozen times in a row without being bored, without being tired, Moya, I love this place because at this hour there are never other patrons who annoy me and Tolín always satisfies my musical tastes. Now I know that my brother will do everything possible to swindle half the money from my mother’s house that belongs to me, now that he’s realized I don’t plan to return to this country, my brother will do everything possible to swindle the money from me, I’m sure, Moya, from miles away you can see his happiness about my decision not to return to the country, his expression reveals that he’s thinking about the best way to maximize the selling price of my mother’s house, he’s thinking about the best way to avoid sending me the money that belongs to me from the sale of my mother’s house, at the very least he’ll delay sending it for six months so it earns interest sitting in his bank, said Vega. But this plan of his runs into one problem, Moya, a single, convincing problem, I’ve already revealed it by alerting the lawyer that if they try to perform any sort of fraud, I won’t return to Montreal, instead I will waste my forty-five thousand dollars by making their lives impossible, they’ll be confronting a Canadian citizen, so they better be careful. You should have seen the face my brother made, Moya, super-offended, as if I’d doubted the Virgin Mary’s purity, said Vega, as if the ability to rob and defraud didn’t precisely characterize the people of this country. My brother Ivo started shouting that I was disgraceful and inconsiderate with neither heart nor soul, I had scum in my head, and because I was like that, I thought everyone in the world was like me; he started shouting in the lawyer’s office this morning that I didn’t deserve anything, that he didn’t understand why my mother decided to include me in her will when I had never worried about what happened to the family in my life. He was shouting at me like that, Moya, said Vega. And since my nerves were already shot after fifteen days in this country, after fifteen days in my brother’s house, fifteen days of signing documents and visiting offices, as though my nerves weren’t already disturbed enough I told him I didn’t care what he thought about me, that if there were really something I didn’t care about it’s his opinion of me, that I’d never worry about the opinion of someone who only has his mind on keys and locks and, worse, intends to strip me of money by selling my mother’s house, which is what I said to him, Moya, and I warned him that he couldn’t defraud me, that he’d have to pay every dollar coming to me from the sale of my mother’s house, said Vega. My brother is truly revolting, Moya, which is why I decided this morning to get away from his house, I decided to move to the Terraza Hotel this very morning, after leaving the lawyer’s office, I went to my brother’s house to recover my things and move to the Terraza Hotel, it’s what I should have done as soon as I came to this country, I don’t know how it could have occurred to me to accept my brother’s offer to stay at his house, with his wife and their two kids, I don’t know how the idea could have crossed my mind that I could stand living a month with people like that, only in a state of extreme perturbation could I accept the proposal to stay in my brother’s house, Moya, taking into account that I’ve lived alone the last eighteen years of my life, taking into account that since I managed to escape this country and my mother’s house I’ve always lived alone, said Vega. Luckily, Clara, my brother’s wife, wasn’t around when I recovered my things, lucky for her, I say, Moya, because thanks to my disturbed nerves I would have told her that I actually had nothing ingratiating to say to her, that the last fifteen days I spent in her house had been the worst fifteen days I could remember in my life, that I’ve never been immersed in an environment as miserable, as stupid, as foreign to my spirit, an environment that only served to keep me in a state of extremely anxiety, said Vega, everything was completely crude, the proper environment of a middle-class family in San Salvador, something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. My brother’s house is located in Escalon Norte, Moya, a horrible neighborhood beginning with its name, a neighborhood for middle-class arrivistes aspiring to live in the actual neighborhood of Escalon but who don’t have the money to buy a house in actual Escalon, so Escalon Norte was invented for these middle-class arrivistes like my brother, who as soon as they save enough money will buy themselves a house in Escalon, not in Escalon Norte that only has in common with actual Escalon the fact that both neighborhoods are built on the hillside leading up to the volcano, said Vega. It’s horrible how this city has grown, Moya, it’s already eaten up half the volcano, it has already eaten up nearly half the surrounding green area, people here have the tremendous vocation of termites, they consume everything, one only needs to travel a couple of kilometers from San Salvador to realize that sooner or later this whole country will be an immense filthy city surrounded by equally filthy desert, said Vega, the city as it is right now is one of the filthiest and most hostile cities, a city designed for animals, not human beings, a city that converted its historical center into a garbage dump, because since no one was interested in history, they figured the historical center was disposable and therefore they converted it into a garbage dump, really a citywide dump; it’s a revolting city, Moya, intended for dimwits and thieves, whose only preoccupation is to destroy whatever architecture minimally suggests the past in order to construct Esso gas stations and hamburger joints and pizzerias. Tremendous, Moya, said Vega, San Salvador is a grotesque, inane, stupid version of Los Angeles, populated by idiots who only want to seem like the idiots of Los Angeles, it’s a city demonstrating the congenital hypocrisy of its people, the hypocrisy they carry in their most intimate souls is that they want to become gringos, Moya, what they most desire is to become gringos, I swear, but they don’t accept that their most precious desire is to become gringos, because they’re hypocrites, Moya, and they’re capable of killing you if you criticize their revolting Pilsener, their revolting pupusas, their revolting San Salvador, their revolting country, they’re capable of killing you without blinking an eye, and yet they’re absolutely not interested in anything other than destroying their city and their country with infectious enthusiasm. It’s truly revolting, Moya, I assure you, I can’t stand this city, said Vega, it has all the miseries and filth of big cities and none of the virtues, all of the negatives of big cities and not a single basic positive, it’s a city in which you’re screwed if you don’t have a car, because the public transportation is the most incredible thing that can be imagined, the buses are designed to transport livestock, not human beings, people are treated like animals and no one protests, their daily life is spent treated like animals, the only way they’re actually used to traveling by bus is if they’re being treated like animals. It’s incredible, Moya, the bus drivers have been pathological criminals since birth, criminals converted into salaried bus drivers, said Vega, they’re guys who were no doubt torturers and participated in massacres during the civil war and now they’re recycled as bus drivers; the moment you arrive here, to get on a bus is to realize you’ve put your life in the hands of a criminal who drives as fast as possible, who doesn’t respect stop signs or red lights or any sort of traffic signals, a lunatic whose sole goal is to end up with the highest number of lives in his hands in the shortest possible time, said Vega. It’s terrifying, Moya, an experience that’s not recommended for cardiac patients; no one in their right mind could travel every day on a bus in this city, one would have to be permanently and sadistically degraded in spirit to travel every day with these recycled criminals who drive the buses, I swear to you, Moya, I made two trips by bus, soon after I arrived in this city, and it was enough for me to understand that repeating the experience would wreck my nerves in a flash, it was enough for me to understand the level of degradation bus drivers subject the majority of the city to on a daily basis, said Vega. You, Moya, because you have a car, you don’t know what I’m saying, surely you’ve never needed to travel by bus, it never would occur to you to get on a bus, even if your car were broken down it would never occur to you to get on a bus, you would prefer to pay for a taxi or ask some friend to drive you where you want to go. The people in this city are divided into those who have a car and those who travel by bus, this is the most emphatic division, the most radical, said Vega, your income level or the area where you live doesn’t matter much, what is important is if you have a car or travel by bus, it’s truly an infamy, Moya. Luckily, now that I’m at the Terraza Hotel I won’t need to deal with my brother anymore, or his wife, Clara, or their offspring, those boys that don’t do anything except watch television, it’s really incredible, Moya, that pair of kids spending their lives in front of the television, because I want to make it clear that my brother has three televisions in his house, you wouldn’t believe it, three televisions they often turn on at the same time to different channels, a true hell this place is, Moya, I’m thankful to have left that house of lunatics this morning, they only spend their time watching television: the one television that mortifies me most is in the dining room in front of the table, it’s situated in such a way that there’s no way to avoid it at dinner time when you’re trying to eat; the other television is in the kids’ room, and the largest, with a gigantic screen and a VCR, is in the master bedroom. It’s horrible, Moya, hair-raising if you think about it; a family that in its free moments at home doesn’t do anything except watch television, said Vega, not a single book exists there, my brother doesn’t have a single book in his house, not even a reproduction of a painting, not even a recording of serious music, nothing that has anything to do with art or good taste can be found in this house, nothing that has anything to do with cultivating the spirit, nothing that has anything to do with the development of intelligence, it’s incredible, on the walls they hang only diplomas and stupid family photos, and on their bookshelves, instead of books, there are only those idiotic little trinkets that they search out whenever there’s a sale of knockoff jewelry, said Vega. Really I don’t know how I could have lasted fifteen days at that place, Moya, I don’t know how I could have lasted fifteen nights in a row in a house where three televisions simultaneously droned, where not a single record exists with minimally decent music, we’re not talking about classical, but minimally decent music, Moya, it’s abominable the musical taste of these two, it’s abominable their total absence of taste in everything having to do with art or any manifestation of the spirit, said Vega, they only listen to revolting music, tacky, sentimental music interpreted by singers warbling out of tune from beginning to end, and still my brother had the gall to ask me why I wasn’t going to return to live in this country, it’s incredible, Moya, that the possibility that I could return to live in this country even occurred to him at any point. I almost vomited, Moya, I almost vomited from revulsion when he said that, since I’m an art history professor and nowhere in this country do they teach art history, maybe I would have many opportunities to teach art history here, he said this to me, Moya, he said it seriously, that if I stayed in San Salvador I would probably become a highly coveted professor because there would be no competition in teaching art history, all the jobs would be mine: the universities would fight over me to be their top art-history professor, and maybe in a few months I would be able to establish my own art-history academy and then, why not, in a little while I could found my own university specializing in art. This is what he said to me, Moya, without laughing, I assure you that he wasn’t making fun of me; he was talking seriously, lamenting that in the business of keys and locks there already exists sufficient competition, unlike in art history where the road is wide open for me. Luckily I’ve left that house, Moya, I feel as if I’ve rid myself of a weight on my shoulders, you don’t know how good it feels not to have to talk with my brother and his wife anymore; but I want to tell you that my brother and his wife aren’t the exception, Moya, imbecility isn’t an attribute exclusive to them, some of their friends are even worse, I assure you, like this gynecologist to whom the brilliant idea also occurred that I should found a university of art; he’s a gynecologist who evidently already has his own university, where they don’t teach gynecology but business administration and other similar careers, a gynecologist in whose hands I wouldn’t want to be if I were a woman, said Vega. Doctors are the most corrupt people I have encountered in this country, Moya, they’re so corrupt that you cannot feel anything less than indignation and revulsion for them, in no other country are doctors so corrupt, so capable of killing you while stealing as much of your money as possible, Moya, doctors in this country are the most immoral people that exist, I speak from my own experience, no one is more appalling, more vomitous than this country’s doctors, I have never seen anyone more savage and ravenous than the doctors here, said Vega. A week ago I had an appointment at which I was prescribed something for the nervous colitis that had been exacerbated by my mother’s death, by my stay in this country, by staying at my brother’s house, this colitis that’s been with me ever since I can remember, Moya, but which is exacerbated when I am forced to confront disagreeable situations, colitis for which I only need some medication, but the doctor figured he’d encountered a gold mine that day, his eyes shone like you can’t imagine, Moya, the most unbridled greed sparkled in his eyes; he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm at having encountered a sucker to exploit in the most merciless way, it’s incredible, a doctor here in a white coat with his hands recently washed is evil incarnate. He asked me to submit to thousands of examinations, making a face of compunction, as if my case were very grave, he said without the least reserve that I was about to suffer a peritonitis, and in the middle of his rehashed terminology he said that probably if the examination results were positive I’d need to consider the possibility of surgical intervention, he told me this, Moya. You can imagine that I didn’t return for another consultation, said Vega, that I just limited myself to taking a stronger dose of my regular medication. Which is why I said who knows what type of gynecologist this friend of my brother was really, who knows how many women he disgraced, how many children died thanks to his imbecility, he had to have been a miserable gynecologist if it occurred to him to found a university instead of simply working in his office, said Vega, although in this country, founding a university seems as easy as opening a doctor’s office; I don’t believe there exists anywhere else where there are so many private universities, the most private universities per square kilometer, the largest quantity of private universities per inhabitant, it’s incredible, Moya, that just here in San Salvador there are more than forty private universities, you can imagine, a city with hardly a million and a half inhabitants has almost fifty private universities, it’s truly an aberration, because almost all of these universities aren’t anything more than businesses to defraud incautious people, it’s the denial itself of knowledge, take for example that in no other country is higher education so thoroughly demolished at a level as low as this, said Vega. The more private the university, the more imbecility and treachery there is among those graduating: that is the rule, Moya, clear evidence that knowledge interests no one in this country, people are only interested in having a degree, obtaining their degree is the goal, to get a degree in business administration that lands them a job, although they understand nothing; they’re not interested in learning anything, there’s no one to teach them anything, the professors are a bunch of starving cats who were only interested in obtaining their degree so they could give classes to the next bunch of cats hoping to obtain their degree, it’s truly a calamity, Moya, said Vega. And the most calamitous of all, what’s a tremendous disgrace, is the University of El Salvador, the autonomous university, the only university maintained by the state, the supposedly governing principle of higher education, the oldest and at one time (various decades ago) the most prestigious university in the country. I couldn’t believe it, Moya, the morning I decided to visit the campus of the University of El Salvador, I couldn’t imagine anything so disgraceful, it seemed like a refugee camp in Africa: crumbling buildings, a ton of overcrowded, infested wooden constructions, and defecation in the hallways of buildings that were still standing,Читать дальше