legend had been woven around him, a legend and a great enigma — what did he keep working for? For years the gamblers of Pringles had had their sights fixed on him, each of them proposing, on his own, to beat him at a game of cards; they knew that only one would manage it, only once, and that event, if it came, would be a great triumph over luck. He didn’t know this, and it wouldn’t have worried him in the least if he had. On the contrary, he would have laughed his head off.
He crossed the dark lobby, looking around with cloudy eyes. It was all his, as it had been so many times, as always. And there was nothing that wasn’t his, because there were no travelers checked in . . . Wait a minute: yes, there was someone, a beautiful stranger . . . who was also his, because he’d won her from the masked man. He set off looking for her, without stumbling. He opened the doors of all the rooms, all of them empty, until finally he came upon Silvia Balero’s. She was deeply asleep in the midst of a reddish fog. He stood looking at her for a moment . . . Th en he went to the bathroom, and stood looking at the red water boiling in the tub. Finally he stripped and submerged himself. No one could have withstood that temperature, but it did nothing to him. His heart nearly stopped beating, his eyes closed halfway, and his mouth opened in a stupid grimace.
Th e next step was to violate the sleeping woman. He didn’t notice she was pregnant; he thought she was only big-bellied, like so many women in the south of Argentina. Consequently, inside, a few pale blue little fingers grasped his member like a handle, and when he withdrew, puzzled, he dragged out a hairy phosphorescent fetus, ugly and deformed like a demon, who woke Silvia Balero with its shrieking and obliged them both to flee, leaving it master of the scene.
Th at was how the Monster came into the world.
17
IDLE DAYS IN Patagonia . . .
Tourist days in Paris . . .
Life carries people to all kinds of distant places, and generally takes them to the most far flung, to the extremes, since there’s no reason to slow its momentum before it’s done. Further, always further . . . until there is no further anymore, and men rebound, and lie exposed to a climate, to a light . . . A memory is a luminous miniature, like the hologram of the princess, in that movie, that the faithful robot carried in his circuits from galaxy to galaxy. Th e sadness inherent in any memory comes from the fact that its object is forgetting. All movement, the great horizon, the journey, is a spasm of forgetting, which bends in the bubble of memory. Memory is always portable, it is always in the hands of a wandering automaton.
Th e world, life, love, work: winds. Great crystalline trains that whistle through the sky. Th e world is wrapped in winds that come and go . . . But it’s not so simple, so symmetrical. Th e actual winds, the air masses displaced between differences in pressure, always go toward the same place in the end, and they come together in the Argentinian skies; big winds and little winds, the cosmopolitan oceanic winds as much as the diminutive backyard breezes: a funnel of stars gathers them all together, adorned with their velocities and orientations like ribbons in their hair, and brings them to rest in that privileged region of the atmosphere called Patagonia. Th at’s why the clouds there are ephemera par excellence, as Leibniz said of objects (“objects are momentary minds”: a chair is exactly like a man who lives for a single instant). Th e Patagonian clouds welcome and accommodate all transformations within a single instant, every transformation without exception. Th at’s why the instant, which in any other place is as dry and fixed as a click , is fluid and mysterious in Patagonia, fantastic. Darwin called it: Evolution. Hudson: Attention.
I’m not talking in patriotic metaphors. Th is is real.
Traveling is real. Opening the door to all fears is real, even if what comes
He crossed the dark lobby, looking around with cloudy eyes. It was all his, as it had been so many times, as always. And there was nothing that wasn’t his, because there were no travelers checked in . . . Wait a minute: yes, there was someone, a beautiful stranger . . . who was also his, because he’d won her from the masked man. He set off looking for her, without stumbling. He opened the doors of all the rooms, all of them empty, until finally he came upon Silvia Balero’s. She was deeply asleep in the midst of a reddish fog. He stood looking at her for a moment . . . Th en he went to the bathroom, and stood looking at the red water boiling in the tub. Finally he stripped and submerged himself. No one could have withstood that temperature, but it did nothing to him. His heart nearly stopped beating, his eyes closed halfway, and his mouth opened in a stupid grimace.
Th e next step was to violate the sleeping woman. He didn’t notice she was pregnant; he thought she was only big-bellied, like so many women in the south of Argentina. Consequently, inside, a few pale blue little fingers grasped his member like a handle, and when he withdrew, puzzled, he dragged out a hairy phosphorescent fetus, ugly and deformed like a demon, who woke Silvia Balero with its shrieking and obliged them both to flee, leaving it master of the scene.
Th at was how the Monster came into the world.
17
IDLE DAYS IN Patagonia . . .
Tourist days in Paris . . .
Life carries people to all kinds of distant places, and generally takes them to the most far flung, to the extremes, since there’s no reason to slow its momentum before it’s done. Further, always further . . . until there is no further anymore, and men rebound, and lie exposed to a climate, to a light . . . A memory is a luminous miniature, like the hologram of the princess, in that movie, that the faithful robot carried in his circuits from galaxy to galaxy. Th e sadness inherent in any memory comes from the fact that its object is forgetting. All movement, the great horizon, the journey, is a spasm of forgetting, which bends in the bubble of memory. Memory is always portable, it is always in the hands of a wandering automaton.
Th e world, life, love, work: winds. Great crystalline trains that whistle through the sky. Th e world is wrapped in winds that come and go . . . But it’s not so simple, so symmetrical. Th e actual winds, the air masses displaced between differences in pressure, always go toward the same place in the end, and they come together in the Argentinian skies; big winds and little winds, the cosmopolitan oceanic winds as much as the diminutive backyard breezes: a funnel of stars gathers them all together, adorned with their velocities and orientations like ribbons in their hair, and brings them to rest in that privileged region of the atmosphere called Patagonia. Th at’s why the clouds there are ephemera par excellence, as Leibniz said of objects (“objects are momentary minds”: a chair is exactly like a man who lives for a single instant). Th e Patagonian clouds welcome and accommodate all transformations within a single instant, every transformation without exception. Th at’s why the instant, which in any other place is as dry and fixed as a click , is fluid and mysterious in Patagonia, fantastic. Darwin called it: Evolution. Hudson: Attention.
I’m not talking in patriotic metaphors. Th is is real.
Traveling is real. Opening the door to all fears is real, even if what comes
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