The Secret of Evil (12 page)

T
HE
T
ROUBLEMAKER

Some of his works were shown in 2003, during the European
protests against the war in Iraq, at an exhibition organized by the poet Ponç
Altés: mere sketches, as the artist pointed out himself, trials, private
exercises done in some anonymous and dingy room. About Vallirana, there is
little to be said: he was young, just twenty-one, unemployed, and he came from a
family that was relatively poor (but loving: they supported him). His literary
tastes were still developing, although he had, by then, read the complete works
of Alfred Jarry, his favorite writer, whose radiance the passing days could do
nothing to dim. As to Vallirana’s personality at that time, the accounts
diverge. Generally speaking, it could be said that he was a somewhat (though not
excessively) reserved young man and somewhat shy (although his shyness was not
excessive either). He believed only in art and science. For him, the union of
art and science was a matter of
work
. In that sense it could be said
that he was deeply Catalonian. God and chance belonged to art, eternity and
labyrinths to science. When the protests against the war in Iraq began, he spent
three days shut up in his room, like those young men in Japan who retreat to a
tiny bedroom in the family home and refuse to come out again to look for work or
go shopping or see a movie or take a walk in the park. Being an only child and
living in El Masnou, not Tokyo, Vallirana had a larger bedroom, and he spent
only three days in there, watching television almost nonstop (there was a set at
the foot of his bed), barely sleeping, following the protests, and thinking.
When the three days were over, he went up onto the roof and made a little sign.
The sign said: “NO WAR — LONG LIVE SADDAM HUSSEIN.” He wrote it in Roman square
capitals — the result was rather stylish — on a modest-sized sheet of white
cardboard, which he stapled onto a wooden stick about four feet long. In a
moment of malicious inspiration, he illustrated both sides of the sign with
little flowers that looked more like four-leafed clovers. The next day he took
the train to Barcelona and participated in an anti-war demonstration in
Hospitalet, which was poorly attended, but that night he joined the crowd
banging pots and pans in Plaza San Jaume, and held his sign up high. No one said
anything to him in Hospitalet. Or in Plaza San Jaume, where Vallirana
contributed powerfully to the racket with an umpire’s whistle. He missed the
last train back to El Masnou and slept on a bench in the subway along with the
homeless. The next day he took part in a march with students from the
Universidad Autónoma, who chanted antiwar and anti-US slogans as they walked
from the campus to Sarrià, stopping the traffic on numerous occasions. A girl
who was studying journalism came up to him as they crossed one of the ring roads
and said that she was against the war but that didn’t mean she supported Saddam
Hussein. The girl was called Dolors, and Vallirana told her that his name was
Enric de Montherlant. When the demonstration was over, they went to have coffee
on Plaza de Sarrià, and agreed to meet the following day and join the big march
from the Rambla de Catalunya to Plaza Catalunya. Then Vallirana went back to El
Masnou, where he took a shower and changed his clothes, vaguely suspecting that
he had picked up fleas the previous night. His whole body was, as it turned out,
covered with tiny, bright red bites. Before going to sleep, Vallirana made a
great many notes. He asked himself questions. And he didn’t choose the lazy
solution of leaving them all unanswered. When he’d finished writing, he went up
to the rooftop terrace and made another sign. This one said: “NO WAR — LONG LIVE
THE IRAQI PEOPLE — DEATH TO THE JEWS.” The first phrase, NO WAR, was written in
big letters, the second in smaller ones, and the third in letters that were
smaller again. The characters had curves and twists that were vaguely
reminiscent of Arabic script. Comic-book Arabic script. On both sides of the
sign he drew peace symbols. When he had finished he said to himself: Now let’s
see what happens. Then he dined on a ham sandwich and tomato bread, and shut
himself in his room and masturbated, thinking about Dolors, until he fell
asleep, the TV on with the volume turned down so as not to bother his parents.
First thing the next morning he caught a train. In his carriage there were
laborers and students, but mainly commuters on the way to the office, men
wearing ties and women in respectable, ugly suits, although, here and there, he
could see a few people dressed with a little more taste, who didn’t seem
completely resigned to leading failed lives. These individuals seemed to have
staked everything on sex and seduction, on attracting and being attracted, which
wasn’t much, thought Vallirana, but at least it was something. The others made a
pitiful showing: women with glasses and too much fat on their hips and thighs,
men who could only inspire disgust if they stripped off in a bedroom. As for the
laborers, who were easily identifiable by their blue or yellow overalls and
their lunch boxes or foil-wrapped sandwiches, they seemed to be in another
world; and to a large extent they were, since most of them were immigrants from
Africa or South America, who didn’t care what the Spanish were doing. The
students were dozing or going over their notes. When the train went into the
tunnel in Barcelona, before reaching the Arco del Triunfo station, Vallirana
shouted, “No war!” Some of the passengers, it seemed, were woken by the shout,
and others were scared, but after the initial moment of surprise, almost
everyone in the carriage responded by taking up the cry: “No war!”

S
EVILLA
K
ILLS
M
E

1
.
The title
.
In theory, and with no input from me whatsoever, the title of my talk was
supposed to be “Where does the new Latin American novel come from?” If I stay on
topic, my answer will be about three minutes long. We come from the middle
classes or from a more or less settled proletariat or from families of low-level
drug traffickers who’re tired of gunshots and want respectability instead. As
Pere Gimferrer says: in the old days, writers came from the upper classes or the
aristocracy, and by choosing literature they chose — at least for a certain
period that might be a lifetime or four or five years — social censure, the
destruction of learned values, mockery and constant criticism. Now, on the other
hand, especially in Latin America, writers come from the lower middle classes or
from the ranks of the proletariat and what they want, at the end of the day, is
a light veneer of respectability. That is, writers today seek recognition,
though not the recognition of their peers but of what are often called
“political authorities,” the usurpers of power, whatever century it is (the
young writers don’t care!), and thereby the recognition of the public, or book
sales, which makes publishers happy but makes writers even happier, because
these are writers who, as children at home, saw how hard it is to work eight
hours a day, or nine or ten, which was how long their parents worked, and this
was when there was work, because the only thing worse than working ten hours a
day is not being able to work at all and having to drag oneself around looking
for a job (paid, of course) in the labyrinth, or worse, in the hideous crossword
puzzle of Latin America. So young writers have been burned, as they say, and
they devote themselves body and soul to selling. Some rely more on their bodies,
others on their souls, but in the end it’s all about selling. What doesn’t sell?
Ah, that’s an important consideration. Disruption doesn’t sell. Writing that
plumbs the depths with open eyes doesn’t sell. For example: Macedonio Fernández
doesn’t sell. Macedonio may have been one of Borges’s three great teachers (and
Borges is or should be at the center of our canon) but never mind that.
Everything says that we should read him, but Macedonio doesn’t sell, so forget
him. If Lamborghini doesn’t sell, so much for Lamborghini. Wilcock is only known
in Argentina and only by a few lucky readers. Forget Wilcock, then. Where does
the new Latin American literature come from? The answer is very simple. It comes
from fear. It comes from the terrible (and in a certain way fairly
understandable) fear of working in an office and selling cheap trash on the
Paseo Ahumada. It comes from the desire for respectability, which is simply a
cover for fear. To those who don’t know any better, we might seem like extras
from a New York gangster movie, always talking about respect. Frankly, at first
glance we’re a pitiful group of writers in our thirties and forties, along with
the occasional fifty-year-old, waiting for Godot, which in this case is the
Nobel, the Rulfo, the Cervantes, the Príncipe de Asturias, the Rómulo Gallegos.

2.
The lecture must go
on
. I hope no one takes what I just said the wrong way. I was kidding.
I didn’t mean what I wrote, or what I said. At this stage in my life I don’t
want to make any more unnecessary enemies. I’m here because I want to teach you
to be men. Not true. Just kidding. Actually, it makes me insanely envious to
look at you. Not just you but all young Latin American writers. You have a
future, I promise you. Sorry. Kidding again. Your future is as a gray as the
dictatorship of Castro, of Stroessner, of Pinochet, as the countless corrupt
governments that follow one after the other on our continent. I hope no one
tries to challenge me to a fight. I can’t fight without medical authorization.
In fact, when this talk is over I plan to lock myself in my room to watch
pornography. You want me to visit the Cartuja? Fuck that. You want me to go see
some flamenco? Wrong again. The only thing I’ll see is a rodeo, Mexican or
Chilean or Argentine. And once I’m there, amid the smell of fresh horse shit and
flowering Chile-bells, I’ll fall asleep and dream.

3
.
The lecture must
plant its feet firmly on the ground.
That’s right. Let’s plant our feet
firmly on the ground. Some of the writers here are people I call friends. From
them I expect nothing but perfect consideration. The rest of you I don’t know,
but I’ve read some of you and heard excellent things about others. Of course,
certain writers are missing, writers without whom there’s no understanding this
entelechy that we call new Latin American literature. It’s only fair to list
them. I’ll begin with the most difficult, a radical writer if there ever was
one: Daniel Sada. And then I should mention César Aira, Juan Villoro, Alan
Pauls, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Ibsen Martínez, Carmen Boullosa, the very young Antonio
Ungar, the Chileans Gonzalo Contreras, Pedro Lemebel, Jaime Collyer, Alberto
Fuguet, and María Moreno, and Mario Bellatin, who has the fortune or misfortune
of being considered Mexican by the Mexicans and Peruvian by the Peruvians, and I
could go on like this for at least another minute. It’s a promising scene,
especially if viewed from a bridge. The river is wide and mighty and its surface
is broken by the heads of at least twenty-five writers under fifty, under forty,
under thirty. How many will drown? I’d say all of them.

4
.
The
inheritance
. The treasure left to us by our parents, or by those we
thought were our putative parents, is pitiful. In fact, we’re like children
trapped in the mansion of a pedophile. Some of you will say that it’s better to
be at the mercy of a pedophile than a killer. You’re right. But our pedophiles
are also killers.

Natasha Wimmer

T
HE
D
AYS OF
C
HAOS

Just when Arturo Belano thought that all his adventures were
over and done with, his wife, the woman who had been his wife and still was and
probably would be until the end of his days (legally speaking, at least), came
to see him in his apartment by the sea and announced that their son, the
handsome young Gerónimo, had disappeared in Berlin during the Days of Chaos.

This was in the year 2005.

Arturo packed his bags and that night he boarded a plane bound for
Berlin. He arrived at three in the morning. From the window of the taxi he
observed that the city was at least outwardly calm, although he glimpsed the
vehicles of the riot police and fires burning here and there in the streets. But
in general everything seemed calm; the city was under sedation.

This was in the year 2005.

Arturo Belano was over fifty and Gerónimo was fifteen. Géronimo had
gone to Berlin with a group of friends; it was the first time he’d traveled
without one of his parents. The morning Arturo’s wife came over, the group had
just returned, minus Gerónimo and another boy called Félix, whom Arturo
remembered as very tall and thin and pimply. Arturo had known Félix since the
kid was five years old. Sometimes, when he went to pick up his son from school,
Félix and Gerónimo would stay and play in the park for a while. In fact, they
might even have met one another for the first time in preschool, before either
of them was three, though Arturo couldn’t remember having seen Félix’s face back
then. Félix wasn’t his son’s best friend, but there was a kind of familiarity
between them.

This was in the year 2005.

Gerónimo Belano was fifteen. Arturo Belano was over fifty, and
sometimes he could barely believe that he was still alive. Arturo had set off on
his first long trip at the age of fifteen too. His parents had decided to leave
Chile and start a new life in Mexico.