Selected Cronicas

ONE FINAL CLARIFICATION

From time to time I receive letters asking me if I am Russian or Brazilian and people invent all sorts of myths about me.

Let me clarify this matter once and for all: I am sorry to have to tell you that there are no mysteries and these myths are untrue. My story is as follows: I was born in the Ukraine, the homeland of my parents. I was born in a village called Tchechelnik, which is too small and insignificant to appear on any map. When my mother was expecting me, my parents were already planning to emigrate either to the United States or to Brazil. They waited on in Tchechelnik until I was born and then set out on their long journey. I was two months old when I arrived in Brazil.

I am a naturalized Brazilian and, had my parents set out a few months earlier, I should have been born in Brazil. It was the Portuguese language which influenced my spiritual life and innermost thoughts, and this was the language I used to utter words of love. I began to write short stories as soon as I could read and write and, needless to say, I wrote them in Portuguese. I spent my childhood in Recife and I firmly believe that living in the Northern or North-eastern provinces of Brazil brings one into closer contact with Brazilian life at its most authentic, because there the country is remote from outside influences. My beliefs were nurtured in Pernambuco, the food I enjoy most is from Pernambuco. And from our housemaids I absorbed the rich folklore of those regions. I was already in my teens when we moved to Rio, this vast metropolis I soon began to think of as Brazilian carioca.

As for the way in which I roll my r’s, as if I were speaking French or some other foreign language, this is simply because of a speech defect. A defect which I have never succeeded in correcting. A defect which my good friend Dr Pedro Bloch tells me can be overcome. He has offered to help me but I am lazy and I know perfectly well I would never do the exercises once I was on my own. And besides my rolled r’s are not doing anyone any harm. So that should clear up yet another mystery.

Much more difficult to explain, however, is the path my life has taken. If my family had emigrated to the United States, would I still have become a novelist, that is to say, a novelist writing in English? In all probability I would have married an American and had American children. And my life would have been completely different. I wonder what I might have written about? Which political party I would have supported? What sort of friends I would have cultivated? There is a real mystery.