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

I’m neither “proud” nor “flattered” that the Urlihrt estate is apparently so “flattered” and “proud” concerning the prospect of my “editing and introducing” the book in question, and look, I seem to have used more of those inevitable quotation marks, but then I would never have known how to word this long sentence if you hadn’t yourself provided the — borrowed or invented — vocabulary. Don’t forget, although I’m now a learner, I started out as a teacher, same as Nurlihrt and Quaglia. Well, thank the widow in any case for putting my name forward. (But do your best not to antagonize her — I know how bad your temper is, but she’s got a chorus line of family lawyers on retainer.)

In any case, I’m getting by fine here, doing odd jobs, so am not nearly desperate enough. Still, if the book’s already been signed on, I thought of two people who might do the trick. You know them, they’re old colleagues: Inés Macellari and/or Corvalán’s missus. (By the way, did you know that our old dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas’s aide-de-camp was one General Manuel Corvalán? Go tell that to your “historical” editor, and if anything comes of it, be sure to send me my percentage.)

Anyway, I do appreciate the gesture and offer you my warmest regards,

V.

(The epistolary Eiralis …)

Belisario Tregua (or Basilio Ugarte) in a new draft of “Early”:

“Say that again. Can’t you see I’m hard of hearing? What was it? Glorify him? Vilify him? I met Robert Lowell here, you know. Now there was a man whose head practically glowed in the dark, a real bundle of nerves. Truly a magical thing, that brain of his — a brain that absorbed experience so rapidly the price was an early death, too early a death — with language blindly battening away at the pulp and marrow of his faculties, at all remaining potential, promise … I’m quoting someone or other. Look, I don’t know if it was the same Salas. I told the CIA everything that went on. And I’m still pimping for my friends even today. See, right here in my briefcase I have the depositions of two friends who want to get a divorce. And look, these aren’t newlyweds. But now they’ve come around. And believe me, they’re doing the right thing. That’s why I never got married — seeing my parents fight all the time. It’d be hell, no? My two friends say just the same. They live to ask me favors. And it’s like people say, no good deed goes unpunished. Anyway, he asked me to translate a Russian story — from the French. And now he’s asking me — because the publisher asked him —to retranslate it into a kind of Spanish flea-market slang. Christ, the shit they expect me to swallow …”

Bambi in St. Mawr

“It’s all very well saying ‘the sixties,’ Mr. Rico, but the sixties weren’t really the sixties for those who survived them. Looking back on them, now, from my place in the attic [of my life], I regard them with more astonishment than nostalgia.

“I made my debut in some provincial company, as an understudy. My stage name was ‘Cyprian.’ At fourteen, I was already capable of following Israel Regardie’s regimen of anorexia and vomiting — so fashionable today.

“Soon I joined a traveling theater company, The Serendipitous Ashram, which staged plays, among other happenings. You know, Mr. Rico, as someone once said, all is change in this world — except avant-garde theater. So we started doing group improvisations, with disastrous results. In Amsterdam I almost got deported, though in Hamburg we had such a successful premiere that I stayed in Germany for three years. Then I started my solo act.

“They said the way I walked was like a dance, like the way Edie Sedgwick moved. And I used to mix LSD and cocaine, also like Edie [Sedgwick]. I would stay in Almería from time to time. By then the original company had disintegrated, each member going his own way. I worked in a bunch of movies, as an extra or in minor roles. I remember one movie scene in particular, a scene we rehearsed so many times — I don’t even know how many times, perhaps a hundred — until it came out right. And it was so right, Mr. Rico, that I still feel proud whenever I see it today. In it, I’m standing in line with my brother, an attractive if unkempt boy, and we have to pass a message to one another during a funeral. To do this, we file past the coffin and cross ourselves in a particularly elaborate manner. If you ever get to see it, I’m the third in line — after my so-called brother and grandmother.

“I shouldn’t have left Germany. After all, I was getting on quite well with the language, working myself into real verbal ecstasies. Rainer played the sax behind me, and I fell in love with him, then I fell in love with his best friend Brian. I wasn’t ambitious, just couldn’t sustain it, but Brian [Colin] was just the same — a Briton, he’d inherited a small fortune and some property in Islington, so by the early seventies, I found myself living in London again. And let me assure you, far from how it might appear to most adult mammals of our species, it isn’t the best place to live. Perhaps the seventies wasn’t the best time to be alive, Mr. Rico. I felt just like Ziggy Stardust did — or would.”

Suddenly, the rather unfriendly James of St. Mawr, agitated and taciturn, sat down by us, but didn’t participate in the ongoing conversation. He was supposed to come and collect us. But we hadn’t imagined he’d arrive so early.

“I went back to Brian’s home, Mr. Rico, but there was always something wrong. We would argue about this or that, and I’d think to myself, ‘At least I’ve got a guy on the side.’ I think real women must have other options. Nonetheless my lover was the unhappiest man I ever met. Lord Swindon — excuse my sighs — wrote an entire book just to show off — not just to me, but to a proper audience! — his clandestine love. Poor deluded man! He called it The Naked Bed and it was a complete failure. He went on writing other books, of course— Loud City, A Beetle Called Greg —as I’m sure you remember. And, soon enough, he’d found another lover.

“As for me, Mr. Rico, my high point and low met for the first time like two stray dogs in the street, sniffing at one another then … humping, do you say? — a spectacle, to be sure, but by no means spectacular.”

I have the worst ear in the world. The music was the same sort you’d expect to be broadcast on any FM station in the world. But Bambi gave me a special look whenever the first few bars of a Fleetwood Mac song began.

“Cocaine and adultery, those were for the eighties. I was ahead of my time.”

I was ecstatic, couldn’t take my eyes off her — her redskin profile, her Adam’s apple.

“It’s not me, Mr. Rico, but desire that’s grown stale. Become old. I began to realize this in Rio about four years ago. I was on the beach one day and was suddenly overcome with boredom. The bodies I saw did nothing for me, they looked like barely distinguishable mannequins as they passed … and I remembered … The world is a grand, rickety monument erected by some mediocre architect, but the truth of the flesh was carved by none other than Phidias … That’s what my Catalan friend used to say, Mr. Rico, a man far more interested in the subject than either of us, these days. But in that vaunting statuary, that beacon of human flesh, there was no substance, no delight, no heat. How I would have preferred to lick, bite, and suck at those delicacies until I choked to death, turned blue. Drowning, asphyxiation, cyanosis, are triumphs in comparison with the slow apnea of mere survival. The sublime course of the shark — I say, très chic. But there’s nothing special about dying for love. Merely surviving as time goes by is the ‘done’ thing, these days. And, despite appearances, Mr. Rico, I followed suit. Swallowing my saliva, holding my breath, and heading to bed early.”