No Variations (Argentinian Literature Series) (7 page)

After two pages of frenetically-written fustian, full of unconnected ideas and obscure references, Scacchi proceeds along the following line of thought: “It’s curious to trace in the history of this feeble cruciate sign the adventitious influence that has led to its being given coronal rank in the hierarchy of letters. Nonetheless, in the majority of cases, writers, from Ben Jonson to Gertrude Stein, Confucius to Cummings, Argensola to Gerardo Diego, have rejected it with disdain. Ben Jonson wanted to remove poor X from the alphabet, saying it was ‘rather an abbreviation, or way of short writing with us, than a letter,’ and Gertrude Stein spoke of its triviality, its function as a simple strikethrough, swift deletion, blind shorthand. Some countries and languages—like Welsh and Gaelic, for example—have never felt its influence. Yet, its wholly gratuitous or fatuous acoustical expression is married to its striking graphical representation like no other letter in the abecedarian chronicle.”

For more on the casuistry, the soteriology, and even the proctology of the letter X, see Edgar Lee Meaulnes.

NO

Felipe Luini,
Hunting Journal

Ideas of Order
, Wallace Stevens

Table of Contents

1. T
HE
S
CENT OF
T
HUNBERGIAS

I. Early

II. The Imitation of an Ounce

III. Returns

IV. Occupation

V. The House on Calle Piedras

VI. The Cult of St. Mawr

VII. America

VIII. The Scent of Thunbergias

2. T
HE
S
EYCHELLES

I. Laetitia Pilkington

II. Hilarión Curtis

III. Doris Dowling

IV. Constantin Berev

V. Lord Swindon

VI. Irene Adler

VII. Venus Rattlesnake

3. S
HERBET
A
RIA

I. Stealth//Centipede

II. Centaur

III. Arena

IV. Rhetoric

V. Karmapolis

VI. Ahnungslosigkeit

VII. Sestina

VIII. Pop Museum

IX. Portrait of a Tin Soldier

X. Chronoscopy

XI. Sircular Cymmetry

XII. Lycergical Glossary

XIII. Away with Them [Dead Aunt’s Diary]

XIV. Epilogolipomena

4. P
OPULAR
M
ECHANICS

I. Every Nerve and Sinew

II. Semblance

III. Replicas

IV. The Xochimilco Diary

Appendices

All About X

Fame, Polyonymy, and Denial in
Agraphia

Photo Anthology

The Biographies

Epistolary

The Dry Martinis

Poem and Sestina

NO

Glenmorangie—Nicasio

Better: Lagavulin

Or bourbon—Wild Turkey—prefers Jim Beam to Jack Daniels. Four Roses. Canadian Club.

Wyborowa. Stolichnaya.

Angostura. Negroni

dosage

Fernet or Negroni, Eiralis.

Red without question. And lots of it. Lalo.

The Dry Martinis

To sing sweetly then perish
—“For Janis Joplin,” A. Pizarnik

She seems quite despondent in that photo of her seated barelegged: an attitude of cloying introspection induced (more than likely) by the Southern Comfort

NO

Include “The Slow Ones”?

Because we were late in arriving, because we were late in departing, because we didn’t care that we’d be late, and, above all, because those for whom we waited turned out to be ourselves, which is to say, the others, the ones we called “the slow ones.”

There were whole days and nights during which we lost our way, during which we lost our purpose. We bummed around exchanging tales of days gone by, anecdotes, gossip.

Because we’ll be late in arriving, because we are loath to depart, because we don’t care that we’ll be late. Above all, because those for whom we wait will turn out to be ourselves, which is to say, the others, the ones we call “the slow ones.”

Neither drunkenly nor sleepily they’ll call us—no,
are
calling us—“the slow ones.”

And when the prize finally arrives, when it ripens, there will be music that will saturate us, sweep us from here to there,

reveal us to the women. When that very night suffocates us in its witching hour, the décolletées begin their long-awaited shift.

The night has plucked itself a jasmine, a gardenia, and we have vowed beneath our breaths to say now what tomorrow will catch (how this promise will bloom) in our throats.

It is now late (or expected) and obvious (or transparent)

the context to be demolished is night. Night, yes, but so close to the moment when she’ll take her leave, as that old Egyptian relic begins nodding off, that it’s practically day in the desolate dark.

They must conceal themselves. They are few, but they surround us. None can name them. They come, they float downstream, the décolletées.

“He dined on a mess of shadows,” one of them said, “what a mouthful (placed out of the children’s reach, yesterday—out of reach of their grasping nails). And now, once again, investors want to pluck out their own eyes, to be merely clients, but the kind that don’t pay.”

But we cannot be less useful than we are. We arrive late, but we don’t care. We are content to dine on leftovers. We, the Slow Ones. We take in their necklines with inadequate glances. We used to be nearsighted—now we’re farsighted; myopes become presbyopes (curious, is it not, the transit from a silent
E
to one with a stress?). That which we used to be, we are, in the high Sufic night, we, the violate relics. How we suffer to return.

[II] An eruption, a volcano. The scientific vocation is certainly wanting in mortals who commune closely with the gods.

Clucking tongue. The décolletées passing. Scapular. Swaying solemnly
,
that arbitrary souvenir
,
a volcano scapular from Storyville
,
the red-light district
,
which I still have. Why do I keep it
,
what will I do with it?

NO

Superimposition

of the bottom of my glass, a brief instant—a slick of melting ice, to the last drop—over the window of a Havana hotel. It’s raining in the dry season.

Out of a Greek Gift

Ranelagh, 29 December, 1995/91?

“So Doctor Yturri Ipuche is also Doctor Purcenau?”

“Could be”

“And apparently he lied about everything”

“Don’t know, maybe it was just
nearly
everything.”

“Nor could one simply attribute this to the fact that they’re all, well, fictional characters?”

“Hardly even that: they’re floating voices, like in that Sarraute novel …”

“Some English writer did the same thing”

“
Les Fruits d’ Or
”

“careful now, it’s not like we don’t have examples closer to home”

“since nobody understood a word they said”

“There’s just no way it can be sustained for long. Four or five voices without social or political status to differentiate them, all chasing after the same chick, a muse with a capital
M
”

“Please stop”

“Ave María purísima …”

“Ave martini … dry”

“Maybe if they shared a real project, a political agenda, then you’d be able to include them. What did you say the book was about, exactly?”

“Well, it’s centered mainly on her, as a peripheral figure—no, better to say a hidden figure … being a girl. But—in any case. Here they saw the potential for many roles, right?”

Hopefully it rained. It was raining
.

“How learned you are, what did you say it was called, again?

“No, those guys were such navel-gazers. Completely incapable of telling a story … Look, if I’d actually studied …”

“It was psych, for me, lit for everyone else …”

“thing is, it was going to be a play, the title of which escapes me just now …”

“Urn something”

“and you called it … ?”

“oh, a … prolegomenon to an awful play.
The
awful”

“He was no stranger to them. And didn’t those guys also do work with the Brits and the Galicians?”

“perfectly bilingual”

“well, there you are, Melchior, it’s already getting hazy for you—he was Flemish,
un
flamand
, he spoke six languages.”

“with that stupid face of his? … Tribilin … [?lingual]”

“Come now, we don’t want to let our reminiscing spoil your …”

“Spoil what?”

“The broth. This theory, hypothesis, or whatever it is”

“Wrong and wrong. Want another guess?”

“It’s a monograph”

“The hell you say”

“Don’t let the owner know, but that review of theirs keeps on coming out”

“and we two still contribute. Sporadically”

preaching to the deaf. My illegitimate father. Second chance
,
prayer of the river at the shores of
.

how strange that I loved so …

“she’s no less important to us. As a spokeswoman”

“But how old are they?”

“Who?”

“Look, they’re coming down”

“How many miles has it been?”

“when did you finally tell the assistant?”

“So much the worse for us that we were picked to ‘discover her’ and “tell the story,’ in the movie by that friend of yours …”

“Every once in a while, or every so often, a novel, or a book with some political agenda is found …”

“the assistant”

“Lucky him”

“Politics in a novel, said Stendhal, is like firing a pistol during a concert. That’s stayed with me”

“We won’t ask for examples”

“But there are some”

“It’s a can of worms, Inés”

“But isn’t that all you do together?”

She wanted a glass to continue the argument. The other guy handed her one
.

“that thing about the history of Prague—I read it too. And it was—what can I say? Bankrupt, inane …”

“Well, there are periods in history of which nothing survives. Or a little, just a little”

“Psychedelia, psycholalia … who the hell knows … experimental cinema”