Monday, July 21, 2014

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

El Cantor de Tango -Tomás Eloy Martínez


"Eso es Buenos Aires, se dijo en aquel momento Grete y nos lo repetió más tarde: un delta de ciudades abrazado por una sola ciudad, breves ciudades anoréxicas dentro de esta obesa majestad única que consiente avenidas madrileñas y cafés catalanes junto a pajareras napolitanas y templetes dóricos y mansiones de la Rive Droite, más allá de todo lo cual - le había insistido el taxista - están sin embargo el mercado de hacienda, el mugido de las reses antes del sacrificio y el olor a bosta, es decir el relente de la llanura, y también una melancolía que no viene de parte alguna sino de acá, de la sensación de fin del mundo que si siente cuando se mira los mapas y se advierte cuán sola está Buenos Aires, cuán a trasmano de todo.
Cuando entramos a la avenida 9 de Julio y vimos el obelisco en el centro, me dio tristeza pensar que dentro de dos días tendremos que irnos, dijo Grete. Si pudiera nacer otra vez, elegiría Buenos Aires y no me movería de aquí aunque volvieran a robarme la billetera con cien pesos y la licencia de conducir de Halsingor porque puedo vivir sin eso pero no sin la luz del cielo que he visto esta mañana."

Monday, May 12, 2014

Equatore - Miguel Souza Tavares



"Le isole sono un luogo di solitudine, e simile verità non è mai così nitida come quando riparte chi vi è giunto appena di passaggio e rimane invece sul molo, a salutare, chi resta. Al momento dell'addio, è assai più triste restare che partire, e su un'isola esiste fra le due cose una differenza sostanziale, come si fossero due categorie di esseri umani: coloro che vivono sull'isola e color che arrivano e ripartono. (...)"

(...)
"Quando arrivava una nave...Tutti accorrevano allora sulla spiaggia, e non solamente coloro che attendevano parenti o amici, o un carico speciale, ma anche una moltitudine di ragazzini, di donne di casa oziose, autorità che non avevano niente da fare e fingevano di svolgere qualche dovere d'ufficio, e tutti i curiosi in generale, di quella curiosità silenziosa e paziente di chi vive una vita intera fatta di arrivi e partenze appena osservati. (...)"

Friday, April 11, 2014

Andre Dubus - Dancing after dark



Falling in Love
"(...)
On a Friday afternoon near sunset, they stood at his window, looking at the river and Cambridge. She said: 'I have to do something before I go to New York. I'm six weekes pregnant.'
He looked at her eyes, and knew that what falling inside him would not stop falling till it broke. He said: 'No.'
'No what? I'm not pregnant? Did you think you were shooting blanks?'
'No, don't do it.'
'I'm twenty-two years old, I'm going to New York, and you want me to have a fucking baby?'
The falling thing in him hit and broke and he trembled and said: 'Not a fucking baby. Our baby, Susan. Our baby.'
He had to look away from the death of everything he say in her eyes.
(...)"


A Love Song
"(...)
The woman's name could not encompass what was happening. Nor could the words love and lie and sorry and you, nor could her own name on his tongue, on the night he told her in the bright light of their kitchen the color of cream, while upstairs their daughters slept. Nor could tears, nor any act of her body, any motion of it: her pacing legs, her gesturing arms, her hands pressing her face. The earth itself was leaving with her sad and pitying husband, was drawing away from her. Stars fell. That was a song, and music would never again be lovely; it was gone with the shattering starts and coldly dying moon, the trees of such mortal green; gone with light itself.

These words in the kitchen, these smoked cigarettes and swallowed brandy, were two hours of her life. What began as the scent of perfume on wool, then frightened and sorrowful ratiocination that led her beyond his infidelity, into the breadth and depth of the river that was their sixteen years of love - its falls and rushing white water and most of all its long and curving and gentle deep flow that never looked or even felt as dangerous as she now knew it truly was - ended with not even two hours of truth in the kitchen, for truth took most of the two hours to appear in the yellow-white light, and the gray cirrus clouds of blows and rising and drifting smoke, or perhaps took most of the two hours to achieve. Then it was there, unshadowed, in its final illuminance.
(...)"