The Museum of Eterna's Novel

CHAPTER I (TIME, THE CAUSE OF TEARS, FLOWS)

THE "CHARACTERS" ARE TAKEN OUT FOR MANEUVERS: THEY TRAIN TO STRENGTHEN THEIR AFFECTION FOR ARTISTIC NON-BEING.

TEN GOOD-HUMORED RETURNS DESPITE STORM AND FATIGUE.

Moments before the present instant, the very present in which you, reader, are reading, the President abandoned his chair, which reclined against the back wall of the estancia “La Novela.” He usually occupied this chair when, separated from the rest of the characters, he meditated on sadness or action. In leaving his chair, he opted for the latter.

The modest old white house on the estancia seemed quiet. It was said that its façade, doors, and windows murmured in much the same way as the spirit of dust on a wide road murders when there’s no one walking there, only the noise of a dull footstep or the happy sound of a carriage’s bells in the distance. What does the house say, what does the road say?

“Men pass through me, immortal men.”

The house on “La Novela” has four windows: Time is the cracks in its plaster; the whisper of the wind in the kitchen chimney; the ever-present undulation of the brook next to the River Plate, its vibration making rivulets in the sand and waves like silk on the Plate’s horizon; and like the little triangular flame of a candle, standing very straight in the distance: the eternal boat of weak human endeavor, which every gaze encounters on every sea, moving along the horizon wherever some small sail touches the sky.

Rays of light along the length of the little valley where “La Novela” stands, a single cloud wandering in the green light of the last calm moments of the afternoon, collected one by one in the last hour of the day. Nevertheless, one can still make out the inscriptions on both pillars at the entrance to the estancia: “Leave your past at the gates;” “Pass here and your past will not follow.”

The subtle Watchman of the novel is at his post and he watches; his delicate, slim silhouette (he’s really a very small watchman) might be taken for a piece of fencing crowned with a motionless nest. He’s always at his post, which is a little ways away from the entrance to the house garden (except when he thought up and pointed out “part” of the finished novel, which was a lot of work for him, concerned as he is with historical and artistic truth); his perpetual immobility makes one think — and indeed some have thought — that he is an inanimate post, but if you want to be convinced that he’s watching, look at him when the last light of the day strikes his forehead with the additional luminosity of the lark’s song, or when the dark owl alights there, mute but meaningful, or when Fantasy unites all the characters of this narrative, here in the novel and in the estancia, like travelers brought together by chance in the same runaway stagecoach — except Eterna, who recently arrived during the night, and is hidden from the others, who do not know that she joins them in the novel.

ETERNA ANSWERS THAT IT'S “STILL NO" AND THE PRESIDENT LEARNS TO LOVE.

“But you led me to believe that tomorrow you were really going to put all the characters through their paces, and I've come not only to watch this training and assure myself that you are armed with the lucidity and strength necessary for undertaking this action, but also to convince you that I should ally myself with your venture and be near to care for your spirit.”

“That’s how you should think of it and that’s how it should be; I understood this when I saw you. You always think and do what each instant requires. But at the same time, seeing and hearing you close to me, I have suddenly lost confidence in my plans, even forgetting what it was that brought me to the idea of this action that now must absorb me, since I lack the talent of absorbing myself totally in the kind of passion that only you can bring me. I've suddenly forgotten why I didn’t win your love, or my own love. How did you fail to elicit in me the absolute passion that would have been absolute happiness, as everything I think and undertake is nothing more than a miserable ‘process’ of passion’s incapacity, a mimicry of thought and undertaking?”

“This does not move me, nor does it hurt you. As for what my presence here might bring you, leave it alone, think about it later. Don’t waver: perhaps after the action you will want to speak with me again and possibly with different feelings.”

“Yes, let’s dedicate ourselves to the ultimate sorrow: action without purpose, without love; I sense there’s salvation there, by which I mean I could thereby learn to love you.”

“Let’s not think about ourselves anymore. Tell me what I need to do.”

“At dawn tomorrow we’ll all go out with separate purposes to return the same day. Eterna, you will be the one who changes Thought to Love, and I will be the pause or the anticipation during which time cannot change things.”

“Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. I will give each of the others his mission.”

These are the missions the President gave each of the others, calling them separately while the rain began and a sudden wind moved in the trees surrounding the estancia, filling the house with the sounds of the foliage:

To Sweetheart, whom he called first and who, upon her arrival, looked at him with interest and melancholy: To seek out and find something “so good” that afterwards the only possible happiness and optimism is the determination to extinguish one’s life, because this aspect of life or of art was “so good” that it is followed, in this case, with a silence like suicide.

To Father: Seek out and find the injury that would kill the unjust offender, whose fault came of a justified rage but killed us with desperation or left us unhappy forever afterwards.

(Father was nearing the President’s office at just the same time as Sweetheart was leaving, after receiving her mission. They said: “What, you’re here, Father?”

“And you? Here’s where you’re hiding? I'm a friend of the President.”

“You shouldn’t have come. The moment I found out what you were thinking of doing with me, we should have each lived as if the other were dead, even though for others we are still alive.”

“How did you find out?”

“Why talk about it.”

“But I want to talk.”

“No.”

Sweetheart left, and Father went to receive his mission.)

To Maybegenius: Collect the secret that is told, but “in secret.” To the Lover: Bring back an imperturbable hope that lives in an unflagging memory.

To Simple: Find the only novel reader left who is moved when the novelist concedes that he doubts his own truthfulness or that something of what he narrates might not be possible.

So it was that the inhabitants of the estancia found out their tasks in the training maneuvers, by means of which the President invites them to change from living beings to “characters” in a novel, as if to say to them: “You can live and still be happy: I invite you to a training maneuver of ‘characters’ so that you can appear in a novel.”

The next morning they all left, with scarcely a chance to see each other. It was very dark, and the wind and rain were beating on the house. Eterna left first of all. They all had to leave, walking alone, those who had felt so happy and comfortable in the house surrounded by peaceful eucalyptus trees whose music, in the storm, was so pleasant to listen to. Even a couple traveling in the same direction could not go together, nor could they remain in the shelter of the estancia. The basic routine was this: each one separates upon leaving, even spiritual things that had been commissioned by nothing in particular and did not necessarily have to leave.

Maybegenius and Sweetheart looked for each other in the scant light. They walked together to the gate, and there each one took a separate path.

The President also left without seeing anyone, absorbed. The Lover walked with a tranquil pace, ecstatic.

Father’s pace was disheartened. He was always the only one to comment on the rain, but he did it with a certain verbal disdain: “Water is cheap.”

The little valley filled up with the river. The Watchman saw them all leave, rubbing his eyes, though this did not help him tell if he were dreaming or awake.

Each one returned that evening, breathless with fatigue and haste (because they had to hurry to get home before Sweetheart, so she wouldn’t have to be alone), soaked with rain and mud. Eterna, whom no one had yet seen, returned home first, and she said:

“It’s done. Is it for the best?”

The President got there later.

“It’s done. Will it work? I don’t know. At least it’s good for morale.”

Sweetheart and Maybegenius were reunited at the gate where they had separated that morning. Each exclaimed as they arrived:

“How wonderful, today we only saw each other in the dark!”

“Tomorrow we’ll see each other all day long,” added Maybegenius.

“After I talk to the President. But let me say this: I caught a glimpse, from a distance, of someone arriving who must now be at the estancia, a woman.”

“I don’t know who.”

The Lover came in and said:

“What a sweet old house! How I would love to do my work of remembering here!”

Father came in and said:

“The day is done. May it always be so for me, as long as I forget.” Simple came in and said:

“If the President puts me in charge of bringing mud, I’ll go and come back in five minutes, but finally I’m back in ‘La Novela’ once again, where it’s nice and warm.”

“Goodbye, then. I await your letters. I think I see it better, now.”

“Yes, I understand better than I did last night. If you don’t stay here, the happiness of today is ended. I will write to you many times, I have more hope now. Goodbye, Eterna.”

Father and Sweetheart met again.

“I’m going. So tell me, how did you find out?”

“When the President lived with us he wrote something. I found it afterwards, unexpectedly; it was called ‘Diary of Sweetheart, Writing to the President During His Residence In Her House.’ Here I read what happened at our table the day you got so angry at me, because of the terrible upset that I had caused you that morning, like so many others, with my carelessness. At the table, to placate you and to exonerate me, he said that I didn’t pay good enough attention or have a good memory. I said, “Yes, I’m not suited to jobs that demand memory, only for a continuing job or course of study.” And you looked at me so terribly, with a menace that I didn’t understand, and looking me up and down you said a few furious words. (Father remembered very well what he had told her: “I know what you’re good for.”)

Days after the horrifying instant we shared, I understood all of your punishments, injuries, and blows couldn’t reach me, no matter how sorry you felt for them afterwards, and even if you and the entire family had been driven to this behavior by the extreme misery and eternal despair of my incredible carelessness. I understood that I hardly even remembered these undeserved punishments, and I sadly supposed that this is why you had proposed a model correction.

(Father recalled in horror the moment in which, it was true, he had thought about making a mark on his daughter that no one could erase. He thought: “Happily I cannot commit that act which is motivated by desire, and never hatred”) By then the President had guessed your purpose that afternoon and, thinking I was neurotic, he warned me that if we didn’t separate either I would kill you or that, mad with rage at the calamities I caused at home, you would humiliate me; he also said: ‘Your father is a very good man who loves his entire family selflessly; there is no one more generous and compassionate than he. But there’s a trace of hysteria added to the growing burden of his bankruptcy, which has been accentuated with you. Avoid him until I return.’”

“It’s true, I thought: Poor President!”

And yet in truth it was Sweetheart who was to be pitied, “perhaps for her shame,” her form both innocent and sensual, her agreeable yet not meaningful face; with a beautiful voice lacking in musical sensibility, with a bit of a chip on her shoulder, blonde hair; very docile and kind and very intrepid regarding personal combat, to the point that when Father admonished her he had to be on the lookout for her combative, though not hateful, reaction.

In Sweetheart’s innocent and sensual curves one could see Buenos Aires gleaming, that supreme city prowling through the shadows of the limitless land, living in the darkness without destiny, like an ocean liner, illuminated in the vast darkness of the sea whose heart it cleaves; both live directionless, in the fullness of the present. When one lives historically there’s nowhere for Passion to go, there’s this progress of humanity, which is the emphasis of History; once one has experienced the passion of the present, progress and the future become pointless; the depraved notion of progress exists only in historical writing, not in anyone’s heart.

Passion does not think of situation, or time, comparatively; each lives the same present continuum; the insatiable notion of Progress is always empty, always nothing; everyone has the opportunity to “weigh anchor,” everyone has the opportunity of the Quixote’s two sallies towards Passion. Buenos Aires, Passion, Sweetheart…

Father finished his goodbyes, saying:

“Who knows when or whether we will see each other again. I’m glad you’re staying with the President. Goodbye, Sweetheart, I think you will forget me. I didn’t imagine that you were sick, and it even displeased me when the President told me his view of the situation, so that I wouldn’t punish you. Now I'm convinced. Goodbye.”

“I don’t know how I’ve had the bravery to remember and explain, nor how you’ve managed to hear me. Goodbye.”

As for Nicolasa, Federico, and Mountainclimber, upon whom the reader cannot rely — they aren’t in the cast, but they asked to undergo the training maneuvers of the characters so as to be worthy of another novel — it will be remembered that they brought back what appeared to them to be good; and between the three of them they were able to procure only a single thing, which they triumphantly handed over: “Here’s what this day is worth (no one would have believed it).” It was: the reason why gangster funerals are so well-attended, discovered after dedicating a day to attending such an event. Despite the rain, all of the people whom the deceased thug had threatened in life had attended his funeral without fail, out of gratefulness for the longevity he had conferred upon them by not carrying out his threats.

But Federico, who was bored because it seemed to him that the mud and the rain were scant, slept in and dreamed that the President said to him: “You who are light of foot, go all the way around the world in one day; humanity will forgive you for the long stick you carry if you dedicate some time this afternoon to putting a banana peel in front of every uneven patch, hump, or hole on every road in the world. This is the banana peel that every man who stumbles wishes had been there, just as common courtesy, to take the blame for his fall.” And he dreamed he exceeded this task, bringing also the little banana peel of the mind that we wish everyone would see as the cause of the moral slip up we have when, in the heat of an argument and out of vanity, we make an unmeditated assertion and we stumble about, searching for the arguments we need to substantiate it.

Emboldened by his dream of twofold success in his mission, Federico dreamed that they let him be in the novel — be real in it. But he only dreamed it; this is why he once approached Eterna to ask if, with her gift for changing the past, she would divest him of the notion of having once been a part of the novel, since no one was ever going to let him live there.

"DIARY OF THE HUMILIATED CHILD SWEETHEART WHICH HER FRIEND THE PRESIDENT COMPOSES IN SECRET, HIMSELF ALSO UNHAPPY, WHILE LIVING IN HER HOUSE FOR TWO YEARS."

Sweetheart unexpectedly reads “her” Diary, which she finds in the President’s desk, believing that he’s left it there on purpose so she’ll be driven to reflect on her passion for him, and to give up loving him. It was actually only carelessness on the part of the President.

The most interesting chapter in the aforementioned Diary is the interruption that happens in the very moments when Sweetheart’s unparalleled misfortune befalls her, and which will later be taken up again by its author, unaware of what he’s been reading, until one day he finds a note from Sweetheart thanking him for the interest he shows in her with this manuscript.

There are three reflections of the President in Sweetheart’s mind: Enamored of him, she wants to meet him, when in one of the journeys of her uncertain life the President takes up residence in her house for a while and Sweetheart thinks he is unaware of her love.

One day, upon reading the Diary written by the President pretending to be her, she sees that he had avoided being the person to whom the love applied in the title the Sweet-Child-of-an-Undeclared-Lover that, although impossible, was now more undeclared than ever. And now she knows that the President is her “friend.”

After a while, the President and Sweetheart meet as friends in “La Novela,” a third reflection of one life in the other.

The Traveler appears, saying:

“I’m the only one who believes this is happening. Why don’t the others believe that I travel? And why am I the one in charge of destroying the hallucinatory moment when the reader believes that it really happened?”