La Noche Boca Arriba
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Y ante el
vacío que avanzaba hacia él a medida que su sangre se escapaba, buscó una razón
para haber vivido, algo que le hiciera valedera la serena aceptación de su
nada, y de pronto como un golpe de sangre más que el que le hubiera, el
recuerdo de Ana la Cretense le fue llenando de sentido toda la historia de su
vida sobre la tierra. El delicado tejido azul de sus venas en sus blancos
pechos, un abrirse de las pupilas con asombro y ternura, un suave ceñirse de su
piel para velar su sueño, las dos respiraciones jadeando entre tantas noches,
como un mar palpitando eternamente; sus manos seguras, blancas, sus dedos
firmes y sus uñas en forma de almendra, su manera de escucharle, su andar, el
recuerdo de cada palabra suya, se alzaron para decirle al Estratega que su vida
no había sido en vano, que nada podemos pedir…
La muerte
del estratega
Álvaro
Mutis
La muerte
del estratega
Álvaro
Mutis
My translation
On Sunday, October 13th
I arrived in Toronto from a long flight from Buenos Aires. It was four
in the morning and I managed to make it to a nearby hotel that my Rosemary had
kindly found for me. I had a 12-hour wait for my trip back from Toronto to Vancouver.
I managed to crash for two hours, in spite of a terrible cough that was later to be diagnosed as pneumonia. I woke up suddenly. My arms were numb and my chest felt restricted. I was short of breath. My immediate thought was not fear of death but the fear that I would never see my wife Rosemary again or my two cats. I was in a sort of calm panic. I managed to get up and make myself a pot of hotel-room coffee. The little heart action subsided.
I managed to crash for two hours, in spite of a terrible cough that was later to be diagnosed as pneumonia. I woke up suddenly. My arms were numb and my chest felt restricted. I was short of breath. My immediate thought was not fear of death but the fear that I would never see my wife Rosemary again or my two cats. I was in a sort of calm panic. I managed to get up and make myself a pot of hotel-room coffee. The little heart action subsided.
I recalled immediately
the beautiful story by Colombian poet and writer Álvaro Mutis who died at
age 90 on September 22 in Mexico City.
That calmed me down. But there was another story that did the opposite. This
was Julio Cortázar’s La Noche Boca Arriba (The Night Face Up) about a young man
who has a terrible accident on a motorcycle and is having a horrific nightmare
in his hosptial room. He dreams that he is a prisoner of the florid wars in
ancient Tenochtitlan
and that the Aztecs are carrying him up to the top of a pyramid for his
eventual sacrifice. It is only at the end that Cortázar reveals to the reader
that the dream is the strange world of motorcycles, cars and red and green
traffic lights and that the reality is that indeed an obsidian knife is about
to be plunged into the poor dreamer’s chest.
I managed to get enough
energy to take a picture with my new Fuji X-E1 of the two Argentine books I was
reading on the plane. I had finished the one of Eva Perón and was in the middle
chapters of the second one on Juan Perón.
I did get back to the
airport and back to Vancouver.
I have been in bed ever since relishing and enjoying every moment of being with
Rosemary and my two cats. Unlike Mutis’s Estratega I don’t have to be bleeding
to death from an arrow shot in battle to realize that my life indeed has a
purpose.
