Trafalgar
By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon
The González Family’s Fight for a Better World
Trafalgar
a novel
Angélica Gorodischer
Translated by
Amalia Gladhart
Work published within the framework of “Sur” Translation Support Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture of the Argentine Republic. Obra editada en el marco del Programa “Sur” de Apoyo a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina.
Small Beer Press
Easthampton, MA
Trafalgar
©
Angélica Godorischer,
1979
©
Emecé,
2001
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed
in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.
Trafalgar
copyright
©
1979
by Angélica Gorodischer. All rights reserved.
Translation copyright
©
2013
by Amalia Gladhart (amaliagladhart.com). All rights reserved.
Cover art “Caloris Basin—Mercury”
©
2012
by Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com). All rights reserved.
Small Beer Press
150
Pleasant Street #
306
Easthampton, MA
01027
www.smallbeerpress.com
www.weightlessbooks.com
Distributed to the trade by Consortium.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gorodischer, Angélica.
Trafalgar : a novel / Angélica Gorodischer ; translated by Amalia Gladhart. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
isbn 978-1-61873-032-9
(
alk. paper
)
-- isbn 978-1-61873-033-6
(
ebook
)
I. Gladhart, Amalia. II. Title.
pq7798.17.o73t713 2013
863
’
.64--dc23
2012035130
First edition
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Text set in Minion.
Paper edition printed on 50# 30% PCR recycled Natures Natural paper by in the USA.
To
Hugo Gorodischer
Plus loin que le fleuve qui gronde,
Plus loin que les vaste foreês
Plus loin que la gorge profonde,
Je fuirais, je courrais, j’irais’.
Victor Hugo
MEDRANO, TRAFALGAR: Born in Rosario, 2 October, 1936. Only child of Doctor Juan José Medrano Sales, the city’s eminent clinician, who was chaired professor of Physiology in the College of Medical Sciences of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and president of the Medical Society of Rosario, and his wife, Doña Mercedes Lucía Herrera Stone. He received his primary and secondary education at the Marist Brothers’ school. His parents hoped he would study medicine, but after a brief incursion into the university cloisters, the young Medrano chose to dedicate himself to commerce, an activity for which he undoubtedly possessed uncommon gifts, and from which he obtained great satisfaction, not solely in financial terms. The tragic deaths of Dr. Medrano Salles and Doña Mercedes Herrera in an automobile accident will be remembered. At that time (1966), Trafalgar Medrano was thirty years old, he had consolidated the commercial contacts established some time before, and his position in the world of business could be classified as brilliant. Outside of the expansion, perhaps unprecedented, of his business activity, his life is without—as he never ceases to remark—notable occurrences. He is single. He lives in the large home that belonged to his parents, in a residential neighborhood to the north of the city of Rosario, a big house, a little antiquated but which he refuses to modify, aside from having it painted every two years, and which during his repeated and sometimes extended absences is left in the care of his faithful servants Don Rogelio Bellevigne and Doña Crisóstoma Ríos de Bellevigne. His offices operate in the building located at 1253 Córdoba Street, attended amiably and efficiently these last twenty years (when they moved from those on the top floor in the 700 block of Mitre) by doña Elvira Suárez de Romegiali and the accountant Servidio Cicchetti. He is a member of the Rosario Pelota Club, the Jockey Club, of The Circle, of the Argentine Academy of
Lunfardo
. At the death of his parents, he donated Dr. Medrano’s scientific library to the Medical Society of Rosario. He possesses, however, a very rich and varied library composed of works of narrative, detective stories, and science fiction, whose volumes in some cases originate in unexpected places. He displays extremely simple tastes: fine cuisine, without excesses; fine wines, even more sparingly; cats, music, black coffee, cigarettes, reading (Balzac, Cervantes, Vian, Le Guin, Lafferty, Villon, Borges, Euripides, Métal Hurlant, Corto Maltés, to cite only a few of his favorites); the company of friends, among whom he names with particular affection Ciro Vázquez Leiva; Dr. Hermenegildo Flynn, physician; Sujer and Angélica Gorodischer; Dr. Nicolás Rubino, attorney; Dr. Simeón Páez, also attorney; Miguel Ángel Sánchez; Roberto Brebbia; Carlos Castro; and distinguished poets such as Jorge Isaías, Mirta Rosenberg, Francisco Gandolfo, et cetera. He owns a number of notable works by the visual artists of Rosario, who also figure among his friends. One can admire in his home pictures by Luis Ouvrard, Gustavo Cochet, Juan Grela, Pedro Giacaglia, Hugo Padeletti, Leónidas Gambartes, Francisco García Carrera, Juan Pablo Renzi, Manuel Musto, Augusto Schiavoni, et cetera, and a very beautiful sculpture by Lucio Fontana, the
Smiling Girl.
He habitually frequents the Burgundy, the well-known establishment that has seen pass through its premises in the 1100 block of Córdoba so many of the city’s leading personalities, and he collects gramophone records with recordings of tangos by his favorite orchestras.
(
Who’s Who in Rosario
. Edited by the Subcommittee for Public Relations of the Association of Friends of the City of Rosario. Rosario: La Familia Press, 1977.)
From here on, dear reader, kind reader, even before you begin to read this book, I must ask you a favor: do not go straight to the index to look for the shortest story or the one that has a title that catches your attention. Since you are going to read them, for which I thank you, read them in order. Not because they follow chronologically, though there is something of that, but because that way you and I will understand each other more easily.
Thank you.
A.G.
I was with Trafalgar Medrano yesterday. It’s not easy to find him. He’s always going here and there with that import-export business of his. But now and then he goes from there to here and he likes to sit down and drink coffee and chat with a friend. I was in the Burgundy and when I saw him come in, I almost didn’t recognize him: he had shaved off his mustache.
The Burgundy is one of those bars of which there aren’t many left, if there are any at all. None of that Formica or any fluorescent lights or Coca-Cola. Gray carpet—a little worn—real wood tables and real wood chairs, a few mirrors against the wood paneling, small windows, a single door and a façade that says nothing. Thanks to all this, inside there’s a lot of silence and anyone can sit down to read the paper or talk with someone else or even do nothing, seated at a table with a cloth, white crockery dishes, and real glass, like civilized people use, and a serious sugar bowl, and without anyone, let alone Marcos, coming to bother them.
I won’t tell you where it is because one of these days you might have adolescent sons or, worse, adolescent daughters who will find out, and good-bye peace and quiet. I’ll give you just one piece of information: it’s downtown, between a shop and a
galería,
and you surely pass by there every day when you go to the bank and you don’t even see it.
But Trafalgar came over to me at the table right away. He recognized me, because I still have the appearance—all fine cheviot and Yardley—of a prosperous lawyer, which is exactly what I am. We greeted each other as if we had seen each other a few days before, but I calculated something like six months had passed. I made a sign to Marcos that meant, let’s see that double coffee, and I went on with my sherry.
“I haven’t seen you in a long time,” I said.
“Well, yes,” he answered. “Business trips.”
Marcos brought him his double coffee and a glass of cold water on a little silver plate. That’s what I like about the Burgundy.
“Also, I got into a mess.”
“One of these days, you’re going to end up in the slammer,” I told him, “and don’t call me to get you out. I don’t deal with that kind of thing.”
He tried the coffee and lit a black cigarette. He smokes short ones, unfiltered. He has his little ways, like anyone.
“A mess with a woman,” he clarified without looking at me. “I think it was a woman.”
“Traf,” I said, getting very serious, “I hope you haven’t contracted an exquisite inclination for fragile youths with smooth skin and green eyes.”
“It was like being with a woman when we were in bed.”
“And what did you do with him or with her in bed?” I asked, trying to prod him a bit.
“What do you think one does with a woman in bed? Sing Schumann’s
Lieder
as duets?”
“Okay, okay, but tell me: what was there between the legs? A thing that stuck out or a hole?
“A hole. Better put, two, each one in the place where it belonged.”
“And you took advantage of both.”
“Well, no.”
“It was a woman,” I concluded.
“Hmmm,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”
And he went back to his black coffee and unfiltered cigarette. Trafalgar won’t be hurried. If you meet him sometime, at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club or anywhere else, and he starts to tell you what happened to him on one of his trips, by God and the whole heavenly host, don’t rush him; you’ll see he has to stretch things out in his own lazy and ironic fashion. So I ordered another sherry and a few savories and Marcos came over and made some remark about the weather and Trafalgar concluded that changes of weather are like kids, if you give them the time of day, it’s all over. Marcos agreed and went back to the bar.
“It was on Veroboar,” he went on. “It was the second time I’d gone there, but the first time I don’t count because I was there just in passing and I didn’t even have time to get out. It’s on the edge of the galaxy.”
I have never known if it is true or not that Trafalgar travels to the stars but I have no reason not to believe him. Stranger things happen. What I do know is that he is fabulously rich. And that it doesn’t seem to matter a bit to him.
“I had been selling reading material in the Seskundrea system, seven clean, shiny little worlds on which visual reading is a luxury. A luxury I introduced, by the way. Texts were listened to or read by touch there. The rabble still does that, but I have sold books and magazines to everyone who thinks they’re somebody. I had to land on Veroboar, which isn’t very far away, to have a single induction screen checked, and I took the opportunity to sell the surplus.” He lit another cigarette. “They were comic books. Don’t make that face—if it hadn’t been for the comic books, I wouldn’t have had to shave my mustache.”
Marcos brought him another double coffee before he could order it. That Marcos is a marvel: if you drink nothing but dry sherry, well chilled, like me; or orange juice—not strained—with gin, like Salustiano, the youngest of the Carreras; or seven double coffees in a row like Trafalgar Medrano, you can be sure that Marcos will be there to remember it even if it’s been ten years since you went to the Burgundy.