My Two Worlds (14 page)
Authors: Sergio Chejfec
Before my fear of being unmasked, to give it some name, café tables were promising places for me, spaces for materialization, where what was potential—poetic inspiration, literary expressiveness, whatever it may have been—used to become real. I had my protocols, like all writers, in any event not overly ambitious or complicated, after which I’d take out the notebook, read over what was most recent or maybe also what was least fresh, and after a few moments of taking stock, I’d dive into writing, without undue haste, but without distractions, either. Now my memory of those scenes is one of absolute happiness.
I wondered about the origin of that sensuality, ever-unsatisfied and ever-renewed, that led me to continue, unmindful of the interruptions, especially since writing in other places, non-public ones, say, subjected me to different experiences and feelings. I’m not talking about results, that would deserve other, less clear-cut explanations and conclusions; I mean the question of my location. The answer is grounded in my being a public writer, in a literal sense: writing in public, like a pianist who plays before an audience or a declaimer in the moment of acting. The incidentals didn’t bother me, whether or not people were looking, nor if someone was secretly peeking into my notebook. There was something of a vocational commitment in that, a kind of anxiety that was unfocused and super-concentrated at once, until, after a brief moment of compenetration between my ideas’ development and the colonized page, I would feel a slight tremor surrounding me.
Not my own tremor, the one that comes from true creation—which in any case I’ve never known—and leads one to hesitate, stumble, and at times even fall, so they say; but instead the tremor of the atmosphere surrounding me at that moment, which seemed intent on heightening the pressure in anticipation of an imminent blast, like those general quiverings which one finds difficult to ascribe to a visible source and which precede explosions or disasters in general. Yet I don’t remember those moments as ones of mounting tension, or of menace, but, rather, of harmonious waiting. The atmosphere would begin to vibrate because something was happening, though nothing sufficiently important to call the attention of those present. The vibration concerned only me and was expressed, more than in an easily recognized change or rupture, in a sort of repressed contention of things: tables, display cases, chairs, counters, everything that made up the café. Objects lost their consistency or density, though not their form, and in a second reaction, since they couldn’t explode, they became soft, springy, as if they were rubber or silicon models. Hence the reaction to the slightest current of air or of sound, expressed in a subtle, though massive, tremor that overcame the immobility of the ensemble, only to confirm it.
My two friends don’t provide any significant details about their writing moments. They’d have no reason to. In any event, both mention them, and perhaps because of an excess of loyalty, or of feelings of indebtedness toward them, I now believe I should elaborate. I was saying, then, that things would go soft and begin to tremble. These were minimal vibrations, like electric ones or maybe sonic, who knows, which reminded me a little of the particular quivering of flan, when it shakes bashfully at a touch, as if it were afraid. That was the indication that something was happening in the session; compenetration, as I said, the absence of the surroundings, but its opposite, too, because it pertained to a private scale, my own scale of equilibrium or coexistence with the “publicness” I sought to attain. That is to say, what surrounded me was turning into a copy, it was a soft reality or soft version capable of including me. An anonymous scribe in a café governed by the murmurs of the congregation and the irritating sounds of the cups and dishes clattering behind the counter. Sometimes, if the things didn’t go soft they could change color; barely a tinge, the next shade on the gray scale, which upset everything uniformly
. . .
Contrary to the past, I was now sure that if I started writing in the Café do Lago nothing would tremble or change around me. Maybe that was the proof or the warning that I was going to be discovered and unmasked, I mean, that reality was no longer in solidarity with my activity, no matter what my compenetration; anyhow, I don’t know, but what’s certain is it ended up being my reason to feel a certain nostalgia for that past without cares or, more precisely, without fears. People were entering the terrace of the café and stopping to look at the lake, at the stand of leafy trees clustered to one side, they were even looking insistently toward where I sat, probably intrigued by this solitary and fairly unknown man. My dream, to be a nobody, a secret writer again, once more attained
. . .
On the lateral path that led to the café, and that went on behind it to one of the park’s exits, people would pass by every now and then, strolling along. At one moment it seemed to me that one of those people was the old man from the fountain, though at that moment I wasn’t able to confirm it, a doubt that stays with me to this day. He walked without lifting his feet much, and so seemed to be dragging them, which I interpreted as a new sign of his definitive tiredness. For a moment I had a contradictory thought, that perhaps he was walking barefoot, because of a forgetfulness on waking hadn’t put on the shoes he’d left to one side under the bench. I thought of going to retrieve them and then pursuing him to give them back.
Nevertheless, without deciding on doing anything, I sat contemplating the lake, which at that hour, nearly dusk, displayed a stillness that verged on the inert. I realized I could adopt for good the habit of visiting the Café do Lago to see the waters; or that I could run to inspect the bench beside the fountain, and in the event I found that gentleman’s footwear, pursue him until I’d returned it. From that point on another story would develop, first of all a half-mysterious dialogue plagued by confusions, half-words and suspicions. The old man would tell me the story of his life without my having inquired, mixing political opinions and bitter commentary on his children or his niece and nephews.
And in this man’s intention, more than in anything else, I would see myself reflected, better yet, I would feel myself interpreted. I said before, describing our encounter by the fountain, that he resembled me, or conversely, I resembled him; that we could even be the same person at different points in time. A specter from the future, an eloquent warning, but of unclear significance, aside from his zeal for walking.
What I want to say now is, as almost always, crisscrossed with imprecision. There on the terrace of the Café do Lago I ruled several things out, but I found myself in a kind of disjunctive: stay seated or run after the old man. It didn’t occur to me to think that the following day I’d be going back to my country, dozing on the trip like the rest of the passengers. Immobility, waiting, and all related situations, on the one hand, and actions and exchanges with one’s neighbor, on the other. I was searching for the delicate boundary between the two parts, as if I lived under protest in each of the two worlds. Needless to say, as has happened to me on other occasions, I arrived at no lasting conclusion, much less a self-evident one. As a disjunctive it was undoubtedly middling, but it seemed to be the only one to which I could aspire.
In general, I know that when speaking of private and opposing worlds, one tends to refer to divided, sometimes even irreconcilable facets of personality or of the spirit, each with its corresponding secret value and its psychological, metaphysical, political or simply practical—or even pathological—content. But in my case there was neither a moral nor existential disjunctive, what was more, I saw that my two worlds weren’t separated in an equal or reciprocal way; neither did one world linger in the shadows or in private as the flip side of the other, the visible one, who knows which; nor would they seek to impose themselves over the other or to merge as one, by force or not, as tends to occur in these cases. Nothing of the sort; they seemed a nearly abnormal example of coexistence, of adaptive tendency and of absolute absence of contrasts. I took all this into consideration, and it seemed worrisome and insoluble
. . .
But an instant later I resigned myself, thinking that when all was said and done I ought to bow to these conditions, because just as we cannot choose our moment to be born, we also know nothing of the variable worlds we’ll inhabit.
Author Bio
Sergio Chejfec, originally from Argentina, has published numerous works of fiction, poetry, and essays. Among his grants and prizes, he has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in 2007 and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 2000. His books have been translated into French, German, and Portuguese. He teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish Program at NYU, and
My Two Worlds
is his first novel to be translated into English.
Translator Bio
Margaret B. Carson translates contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama from Latin America. Her recent translations include Virgilio Piñera’s “Electra Garrigó” and Griselda Gambaro’s “The Camp,” published in
Stages of Conflict: A Critical Anthology of Latin American Theater and Performance
. She teaches in the Modern Languages Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College.
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