Luis Chitarroni: The No Variations: Diary of an Unfinished Novel

Their apartment, which was a little larger than Inés’s, had a lounge, a single bedroom, and many framed photographs on the walls. In the early seventies, to own such expensive property could only have meant that one of them “came from money” … Charlie, the younger of the two, slept in the lounge. He was always pottering about picking up items of clothing, worrying about what would happen to Inés’s dog, Carolo. I remember his older brother, Richard, objected to the notion that they “adopt” him on the grounds that … But Charlie said it was only right, that it was the human thing to take care of the dog. They were both less than eloquent, as far as their diction, but of the two, Charlie was the better speaker. The intercom buzzed. Richard looked up and said dismissively, “It’s nothing, it’s only the knife-grinder.” Dr. Schnabelzon recognized a former patient of his in one of the wall-photos. “My stepfather,” said Richard. “He lives with my mother in Ibiza. He’s an artist [reference: Banyalbufar, Majorca].” The door opened on Ivan, with Carolo in tow. He was barking. “I’m going to lock him in the bathroom.” Peculiarly, the barking made the kid with the glasses start crying. Dr. Perete said, “He was a gift from me, you know.” The kid turned off the waterworks. “Or, rather,” the doctor went on, “I provided [gave her] the money to buy the dog [him].” The kid hiccupped, swallowing his tears. “I was told Nissus got her the dog,” he said accusingly. Dr. Perete wasn’t a man too much troubled by details. “I was getting to that, young man, I was getting to that,” he said reassuringly. Carolo was howling. “I’ll get the plastic bone Inés used to give him,” said Charlie [[innocently or with malice aforethought (thoughtlessly or out of a sense of duty)]] and went back out. The contrast between the doctor and the kid, which Dos and I never tired of evoking, was notable: the kid — thin as a stick figure, sickly green in complexion, in temperament brittle as glass, unsteady in his clogs, nervous at the prospect of having to walk in them, insecure due to having already stumbled many times, and [above all] for having done so in front of so many people, in front of us mourners — had obviously been in love with Inés, and even seemed to have gotten some encouragement in that regard. It was something in Inés’s helplessness that had brought them together, though what he would or could have admired most — as did we all — was the way she kept her vulnerability so discreet. Old Dr. Perete, on the other hand — short enough to rub shoulders with a midget, bald enough to share hairdressers with E. T., with a spine so misaligned he seemed perpetually to be staring at his shoes, and yet so full of nervous energy that anyone would have thought he was perhaps possessed of that prime-of-life, that “sexualidad perfecta” as described by the aforementioned Dr. Marañon — was also in love with her, but didn’t show it, or didn’t want to be seen showing it.

He told us that the breakfast ordered last night as compensation for adultery wasn’t enough. And the administrator, Falduto (significantly in debt), my sister’s future father-in-law. Extensive lobbying

The loose modality, the essential tolerance of the novel form invites pleonasm. NO — see the shift in narration from first person plural to third person omniscient in Flaubert’s imitators (Bovary’s pups), almost imperceptible if done skillfully.

Article in Lacanian journal: “The Scopic Drive and the Wandering Quest for the I.”

Contest. A Downbeat “Blindfold Test.” Charles vs. the narrator.

After all his many occupations and avocations, we finally arrive at the truth, the ultimate truth about Charles: jazz. His fanatical competitiveness — the pure form of that same quality which, more often than not, leads instead to enforced mediocrity among Argentine intellectuals — knows no limits.

Around the time María Elvira was captivating me.

— And do you recognize this one?

I had learned to adopt a poker face in this situation, whether the song in question was obvious or obscure, because my answering in the affirmative (or, I imagine, at all) seemed to send him into a profound depression.

Luckily, it was one of those Miles Davis records some of my other friends had bored me with before.

— Kind of Blue , I said.

I even managed to identify a piece by Chet Baker — thirty years since he’d last been “cool.”

— Ah, but what about this one?

I listened attentively for a moment. John Coltrane, I told him.

— The dove is mistaken, cooed Charles triumphantly — and what about this one …?

It was a question of saving face. I didn’t want to compound my error, but went all-in just the same. I tossed out all the names I knew, like a juggler with his pins, but I still managed to get several wrong in a row, mistaking Johnny Hodges for Ben Webster, Archie Shepp for Ornette Coleman, Cannonball Adderley for Albert Ayler, and Sun Ra for Lester Bowie, all to Charles’s great amusement, as I went on trying both to win and to lose — hoping in this way to win either my friend’s respect or, barring that, his gratitude.

— You’re a phony. And Marina even told me you write a music column for El Canditato Gauche ! The Madagascan Candidate, more like …

— I focus on rock.

— That’s no excuse. Still, it must be hilarious. [a riot]

Then he made another thrust. Thankfully, I knew this one too. His selections were getting worse and worse. John McLaughlin, Mahavishnu Orchestra — a nightmare from which musical history is still trying to awake, and which continues to baffle and horrify neophytes. And then, my most reviled band of all: Weather Report. What they used to call “Fusion,” a decade or more ago. All these played on a Revox turntable with tangential tonearm.

After the last piece (embarrassingly, I’d nodded off after getting another one wrong), I said:

— This one sounds like one of those interminable Beatles gag-songs, like “You Know my Name, Look up the Number …”

— No, you Neanderthal. It’s Mingus.

— I may write for a jazz magazine, but I did say it was a rock column …

Sad skin of the universe / Triste piel del universe .

Then: Morecambe & Wise / Gilbert & George. Dream sequence.

Second story: “St. Mawr.”

Vera Villalobos fax about what not to miss in London.

The D. H. Lawrence story Leavis was so enamored of (and, likewise — though [Y.W., J.W., D.T.F., W.S.?] didn’t mean to let this slip — Octavio Paz), and from which I derived no pleasure at all. Was I even capable? Have another look.

Get the cheap Penguin paperback. It has another story or novella included under the same cover. A no-frills sort of edition.

Kitaj’s The Londonist .

Note: as I’ve already stated (I think), I read “St. Mawr” in the village of Tor, Spain, in an Argentinian edition with the title La mujer y la bestia (The Woman and the Beast).

Detective Stories

Venus Cascabel

Venus Rattlesnake

Regina Constrictor

Vernon Gish

Bruce — Bruno — Terrier

Inés

Completes first edit in Basavilbaso—

He worked as if piecing together court records (here or in La Plata?)

Nail-biter, like Ada

Ways of dining, both indoors and out

Maspero / Betelgeuse.

Basilio Ugarte

Someone confuses Basavilbaso with Virasoro.

Deafness: as used by Kermode.

O Viamonte. Ob-viously

Parallel confusions (i.e., the same ones): Barnett Newman / Wallace Stevens. Additionally: Jakobson on Nabokov. Samuel Butler / Pessoa: lies as imprecision.

Others: Lino and Lalo Scacchi. Remo Sabatani. Eloi eloi lama sabachthani ?