Macedonio Fernández - The Museum of Eterna's Novel

The empanada-and-a-half was a unity 1that was used, at times, as local currency; it wasn’t unusual for the clause “Against reimbursement in cash or in empanadas-and-a-half” to appear in written or verbal stipulations. Other times you might hear someone say, “There’s a storm coming on, amigo — Yes, not even empanadas can stop it now.”

But, in resolution, we already said that Nicolasa, who loved the novel so, moved elsewhere so as not to deprive it of readers who passed by “La Novela.” It’s a quiet example of loyalty.

We want her to know that the novel sends its fondest regards.

But we can’t say goodbye to so sweet a person so soon, we’ll say something more. For example, we’ll talk about Nicolasa’s metaphysical theory.

The cornerstone of her doctrine was this principle: that there are in reality two massive powers: Soot and Electricity. But the Verity of the world is such that it holds back these powers: Soot is kept at bay by the feeble piece of paper, and Light and Lightning are held back by a pane of glass, wood, or rubber. So we must conduct ourselves with the proper fear of these potencies and constantly remember that the world provides us with unlimited methods to frustrate them.

But apart from her metaphysical doctrine, Nicolasa also has a long-standing grudge against geometers, because of a certain episode in her life. What is known for certain is that she had her vengeance by sweetly inviting them to a banquet of her preparation. She made delicacies so perfectly spherical, particularly the first course, that, in their scrupulousness, the geometers couldn’t decide where to begin eating them (having found themselves confronted with an infinity, which of course they had to respect). They didn’t taste them, and not having begun the banquet from the beginning, they abstained from beginning on the rest, which only increased their mortification, since the subsequent delicacies did not present geometrical impediments to their gustatory pleasure.

And now it is finally time to leave Nicolasa in peace.

1 This daring innovation was compared (by a “character in the novel”) to the audacities of Causs, Riemen, and the Babylonian astronomer of the sexagesimal (or base 60) system, which were celebrated at least in their town, and those nearby. Soon it will be universal ( Author’s note)

The hanging light of siesta, in front of the little house on the Estancia, can hide only one thing: another light, a little flame that nobody living there saw, that wanted to exist but did not want to be seen.

This little flame — maybe Eterna’s expression when she thinks of her dream of totalove, so dazzling that this expression vanishes in brimming, reverberating fantasy: she doesn’t know that the Day and the Little Flame within it, which are in perpetual connection with the house, are in fact the totalove that Eterna thinks of, and the gaze with which she views it.

But when he said goodbye, the Lover said to Eterna: “I know the little flame of the gaze that you fix on your dream of love at the height of each day on the Estancia in the novel. I don’t have the power, Eterna, to make your dream come true: it’s already much to have talked with you, and you will never return to my thoughts after today. My sadness for you in this instance occupied my spirit for a minute; only you could have achieved this: nothing outside of Ella, not even you, will enter ever again into my spirit.”

In all this novel’s time — which is the only time of artistic existence, and Eterna and Sweetheart’s only artistic existence — only Eterna can know the rosiness of Sweetheart’s cheeks, and only Sweetheart can know Eterna’s black eyes and hair and pale forehead, from window to window in the light of afternoon. In the silence of the country night they only hear the other’s voice, both lovely but very different, Eterna speaking to the unseen President, and Sweetheart and Maybegenius speaking by the window.

All that either knew of the other happened after this, on one day, and only one, fleeting encounter. Eterna held in her hands two roses, of different sizes, one white and the other red, that she had pulled out of a great hamper of flowers. Her gaze move from one to the other, comparing them; later she tied them together and put them in a vase for the President; still later, she untied them and left only the white one for him.

Jealousy? That he could love them both? And in the end, love only Eterna?

And so it was that this certain morning Sweetheart tried dressing her hair as Eterna did, a style she never wore, and in the end she took it out and went back to her own hairstyle, saying to herself with generous admiration: “It only looks good on her, even though she’s 39 and I’m only 19. Let him love her, and just stroke my hair sometimes.”

Sweetheart and Eterna never saw each other a second time, nor knew about what has been recounted here.

Novelists have long and lucidly understood that it does not discredit them to adopt the literary practice here proposed, which is to use borrowed characters. In this way they escape the ridiculous self-infatuation that happens when they try to develop brilliant, fully-formed character-geniuses. I have proved that this effort implies declaring the author a genius, and so they limit themselves modestly to taking a character from me. Maybegenius? Poor Maybegenius, the novels that await you!

The Maybegeniuses have procured for me some authorial respite during the nights of my grand initial program — a dubious distinction, the best kind. In this way I pruned myself down to a smaller project, when I couldn’t further reduce the maybegenius of my character to my initial character genius’s novelistic audacity.

I’ll tell you, Sweetheart, about the “reader’s accident.”

Anyone who comes impetuously or unprepared to a precipice falls, violently: an author must take care not to excite the interest of the reader when he has already chosen where to situate the end of his tale. In a novel of such intense, sustained interest as ours, the author has been careful not to destroy the reader with a precipitous fall. Rather, he prefers to slow down the narration close to the end — so much so, and I fear you’ll see this, reader — that he will finish the book smoothly, that is, asleep.

Not every author takes such precautions. I won’t let the reader be so surprised by the limit-end of the novel, when his passionate interest is most fired by the devilish skein of the book, that he falls headlong from the fullness of the novel into an attention-vacuum.

Since nothing happens to the author of the novel, it seems right to me, Sweetheart, that nothing should happen to the reader, except for the violent mental accommodation that he must employ just to enter into such a great novel, an accommodation of unique intensity, considering that he must first divest himself of this bulk of bloodless prologues.

(I make the readers love the characters in the prologues so as to spare the latter any bitter reaction on the part of the incredulous and discontented reader, when they first appear before him in the story.)