The Museum of Eterna's Novel

CHAPTER III

Sweetheart: “What’s coming up in the novel, Maybegenius?” Maybegenius: “When I’m the author, I’ll tell you.”

Sweetheart: “And then what happens?”

The President approaches Maybegenius and tells him:

“Listen, Maybegenius, I have a job for you.”

“If it’s a really hard job, Mr. President, why not give it to the Lover, who has the talent of unflappability? Anyway my brains have been under the weather for a few weeks.”

“Your eyes have been busy, though.”

“I don’t understand, Mr. President.”

“I’ll tell you another time.”

“The Lover seems very bright and calm to me. It seems like he knows everything that I’m doing and thinking, and he smiles about it. I don’t like him to look at me, even though he saved me from the dogs. As you know, Mr. President, the day I came it would have looked pretty bad for me if the Lover hadn’t come to my aid so quickly. Frankly, Mr. President, I sometimes think I’m dreaming if I look at him.”

“That’s because you don’t yet have faith in his eternity, which is the same thing as not having faith in him: a mortal is a non-being. If you must know, he seems real enough to me, but like everyone, sometimes he doesn’t, when my faith is flagging.”

“Regardless, when I have to do something, or talk, or instruct, I prefer him not to look, although sometimes he does anyway, and I perform badly. If it weren’t for that I’d be with him all the time.”

“Or perhaps you prefer other company?”

Maybegenius looks at him; he doesn’t think the President really said it, he thinks he only imagined it, so he doesn’t answer.

“Good. You will procure for us the support or discretion of Petrona. You must conquer her feelings in such a manner that, out of deference to you, she will abstain from talking about and disclosing matters concerning ‘La Novela.’”

“Very well, Mr. President, I’ll work on it.”

“Just now Sweetheart was asking for you. She’s lying down.”

“I’ll go see her. Also this gives me an idea about how to win Petrona’s friendship. How much time do we have to start working on what you proposed?”

“Two months.”

“Farewell.”

“Farewell. Close the window if the light’s coming in while she’s asleep; you can talk to her later.”

Sometimes Maybegenius thought about Sweetheart while he was with her; other times he dreamed about her; other times he thought about her without looking at her (Eterna would never forgive this in the President). But she was always Sweetheart.

(It hasn’t yet been stated that Maybegenius truly had certain physiological traits… eyes… a nose… but caramba, that’s a lot of work and now I remember that I have his photograph in my pocket, which, by the way, was taken at the renown studio of Generosius the Pole and is labeled: “Photography That Comes Out Well.” I have it here, with the tremendous dedication that Maybegenius gave me: “Kind Author: even though I have been unable to detect any trace of the talent, sentimentality, caustic wit, and joviality that others attribute to your personality, I love and admire you profoundly, and I believe you to be the most sequential and clear of novelists because you helped me to entertain Sweetheart and to attract her attention, and you’re on my side in working for her happiness. Your friend and humble colleague, Maybegenius”)

MOMENT OF ETERNA AND THE PRESIDENT, SCENES OF THEIR FIGURES, DANCING

The two pardons of Eterna.

Mischief in Eterna’s fingers, isn’t that forgiveness itself, the capitulation to love?

Today the President is at the mercy of Eterna’s mischief.

Today he’s at the mercy of her forgiveness.

Eterna is earthy of body, and yet no sign of desire shows on her face. She is just as exquisite as a headmistress, and no one can tell the difference between seeing her and thinking of her.

The President can’t tell, either: he only knows that each time she comes to see him, Eterna covers his eyes with a little handkerchief that is embroidered with circles and diamonds, or sometimes just with her hands, pretending to put the handkerchief to his eyes: the

President can’t manage to say whether he sees it or imagines it. If he says that he’s seen it, Eterna asks him how many circles there are, and how many diamonds; he almost never gets it right. And she’s crestfallen, because when the President sees her well, it’s when his soul is at its most powerful.

Today the President is more immediately aware of both pardons: a powerful intellectual discovery reached in the last two days makes him directive and intellectual, seeking clarity in their love. Sometimes the President wastes the two pardons, the current one and the one from the past. When that happens, Eterna’s sadness is complete; the President’s fatal days are upon him; after which he has nights of dejection and later a tenderness of new delicacy. Today the President and Eterna are in a moment of clarity.

SPACE WHEREIN A DIALOGUE WITHOUT AUTHOR, OR NON-AUTHORED PROSE, TAKES PLACE: MAYBEGENIUS AND SWEETHEART ATTEMPT AN EXPERIENTIAL MERGER.

Maybegenius: “Sweetheart, don’t ask me what we have in ‘La Novela’ today. This time we’re not in character, we’re going to speak for ourselves. This time we are, we are not characters; to understand what I mean, Sweetheart, look up there, at the heading for this page.”

“But are you asleep, Sweetheart?”

“I was, but I heard you come in.”

“So there’s no point in tiptoeing?”

“Regardless you would have made noise to wake me up, so you wouldn’t have to miss out on our conversation.”

“It’s true that I have here some great conversation, but I know how to tiptoe and what’s more, I always walk around that way, because he who knows love does not seek out worldly ears.”

“You know love?”

“See? Even you didn’t notice! I tiptoe around with my love.”

“You are provoking in me a great desire to converse. I’m going to get up.”

“Should I go, then?”

“Stay, but don’t look, and that way I can keep this conversation that you might otherwise have given to the Lover. The Reader shouldn’t look, either, now and any time I undress. Read, but only over your shoulder.”

“It’s true, they are peeking.”

“I can’t even hear you breathe. Are you thinking?”

“It’s strange — I’m not thinking. I’m waiting to see you, let me turn around now.”

“You can. I’m preparing the mate and I forgot that you were turned around so you wouldn’t see me; I thought you were entertaining yourself by looking out at the countryside.”

“The pampa is peaceful, but I wouldn’t take my eyes off of you for that; you wouldn’t let me look, remember? But before I tell you what the President has ordered me to bring him, let me congratulate you on this insuperable mate.”

“So the President is very active, then?”

“So much so that just now, with this last mate, I am on my way to get ready for my first interview with the lady Petrona.”

“Nevertheless, the President also has his calm moments: sometimes he just watches his cigarette turn to ashes, and he burns himself.”

“True. What an intense life the President leads, under his apparent placidity. I’m going now.”

“What, already?”

“Not ‘already’ for me, certainly. Nor for you, since if the President finds your rooms in disarray he will be happy, deducing that you are placidly sleeping; he always recommends that we not wake you.”

“He hasn’t come to his office today, nor yesterday except for very late, when the lady came with her black dress.”

“Just a moment ago I saw through the window that they had given her a room.”

“Why?”

“Because she paces.”

“What do you mean?”

“She paces her room; she passed in front of the window a few times and looked out through the curtains.”

“What’s she like?”

“You haven’t seen her? I’m going to the patio; finish getting dressed and I’ll come back and tell you a story; if you want, meanwhile, you can see her from where I’m standing now, she’s tall and very beauteous in form. Better see for yourself, I won’t say anything more. Don’t forget to remind me to tell you this story, whose title is:

‘The lady at home

At home without her.’”

Notice that by proposing this narrative, the crafty and sensitive Maybegenius found a way to change the conversation from the topic

that would have made Sweetheart sad: the President’s incognito visitor.

“Go get your story ready. I already looked, but I couldn’t make out the person. I’m going to say good morning to the President, I’ll go to his room and come back.”

Maybegenius, to himself: “Pretexts, curiosity; she is mortified by the unexpected presence of this unknown lady”—then out loud:

“If it’s just to give me time for the story, don’t bother, stay. I already have it ready; I thought it up just now; I can tell it to you just as it was told to me.”

“Wait five minutes, my friend.”

“How it pleases me to do your bidding!”

“The President isn’t there.”

“So? Does that frustrate you? So often he’s gone, but I am here now. And now I’m going too.”

Sweetheart, to herself: “I know that you’re here, good Maybegenius, but there’s a reason for you to suffer these stupid allusions to the President.” And then continuing the conversation:

“What are you doing here, Maybegenius, when you’re walking through this chapter on your own errand?”

“I was looking for the part of the novel where I could have life of my own; I thought it was here at the window of ‘La Novela,’ where we could breathe, where life would come for us both.”

“Why, Maybegenius? You know the President isn’t interested in life.”

“Is it possible, now that you have told me that I have your love? We don’t know whether the President can love; he seems unhappy. Why live this unhappiness? But we ask for life for ourselves, we who have found this tenderness. For the President, who is down on his luck, to only ‘exist as a character’ seems a marvelous stroke of luck; he owes life to those of us who are happy in love.”

“I can tell you… I don’t know what to tell you, Maybegenius, you are making much of an instant of love that palpated in me for you; now what I feel is friendship; that instant was real, but fleeting.”

She was telling the truth; in the spirit of their communal action, in the first hours of knowing each other, Sweetheart had fallen in love with Maybegenius for a day; Maybegenius knew it, and perceived that this love had faded by the second day. The Lover consoled him, saying: “Take this day of Sweetheart’s love and make it your eternity.” Maybegenius accepted this as his consolation forever.

“I don’t like this conversation; I will ask you to start this dialogue over again. For example, I would come to your door and, opening it halfway, I would make my voice and my gait just as the President recommended:

“Sweetheart, are you awake? Because if you aren’t, I’ll shut this window that’s letting in the light.”

“Yes, Maybegenius, I’m asleep.”

“For how long?”

“Since seven.”

“It’s two.”

“Very well, I’ll get up. What will Maybegenius do? (this is what you should have said).”

Sweetheart: “I don’t understand you; and the poor reader!”

“I said that you said, ‘I’m getting up.’ You’re right: ‘without knowledge of my presence?’ It’s hard to think for somebody else. What’s more, notice: I am the one doing the whole dialogue, but when it happens that you have to get out of bed, like now, you’re the one who has to tell me what to do.”

“Well then, stay here, and look away.”

“Very well, I’ll retire. Tell me something: I must conquer Lady Petrona. Sweetheart, what should I do?”

“Clean yourself up and tell her stories from the movies; I can’t think of anything else. Do you need her help?”

“I’m afraid I do, she must not divulge the secrets of ‘La Novela.’ But I haven’t cleaned myself up, as you suggested I do.”

“Yes, but I agree. I steered you wrong. How will you do it? Your face looks nice.”

“Now would be the moment in the dialogue when you again tell me: ‘Today I love you, Maybegenius, character in The Novel of Eterna and Sweetheart:’ But you say nothing.”

“I keep silent so as not to tell you that great characters, characters worthy of Art, never say ‘I love you’ like any other character would; no one who truly loves would think of saying ‘I love you.’”

“Oh, how I wish those were other words. But you do not have them for me. . I’ll press on in my preparations for my mission. Tonight I’ll rehearse a little, and if this helps I’ll tell you what I rehearsed. What’s too bad is that reading Lombroso filled me with enthusiasm; it would appear that this man of genius is mentally ill. The President assures me otherwise, that Lombroso is very much a genius and not at all a lunatic.”

“But how silly, to talk about genius! So much so that there’s none to be found around here.”

“Nevertheless. I am very sane.”

“What luck! That’s the important thing. But what makes you say that now?”

“It’s just that I think a lot.”

“And you don’t get confused?”

“No, it’s not that. When I’m confused, it’s about something else.”

“I hadn’t thought.”

“And how am I to resolve all the problems we have with the President, who is himself disquieted, if I don’t think? If he weren’t so preoccupied, he’d have had Petrona silent and compliant, all it would have taken is one enchanting visit.”

“It’s better if you go; don’t tell him anything else about it. You’ll have a good time on this mission, it will give you something to tell us about at night.”

“If it comes out badly I won’t want to tell you anything. But I’ll do a lot of thinking.”

“It seems like you’re always thinking.”

“I believe so; it’s a facility I’ve got.”

“And does the President really work so hard? Make me a sweet mate (I haven’t had breakfast yet), and I’ll ask you a few things.”

“Fine. Where are the mate things?”

“There, you don’t see?”

“Ah yes, I’ll prepare it. Thinking it over, I realize that I, too, have time to take mate. I’ve already guessed what you want to ask me: the letter that he received, and the lady who arrived afterwards.”

“Ah, there was a letter?”

“Here the dialogue would change, and I would beg you to relive what happened during those two hours in the kitchen, the day you arrived.”

“It didn’t even occur to you to ask my name, or why I had come. I thought the first words I pronounced here would be: ‘My name is Maria Luisa.’ Why didn’t you let me say that, since I like to say my name and I had been practicing the whole way here? Though it’s true it wasn’t really my name, and I had forgotten to make up a last name.”

“Your name was clear as day; I knew it the moment I saw you; your name is Welcome.”

“You took my suitcase, and you said, ‘Come with me.’ But now

I’m going to get dressed, Maybegenius, there’s barely time to tidy his office.”

“It’s a lot of work with all those glasses he wants shining when they’re filled with water.”

“And the paintings?”

“What paintings?”

“He calls those mounds and bunches of colored paper that you see scattered around his room paintings, since at first he had oils and watercolors, which he replaced later with chrome imitations, very well-chosen, but now all of that is supplanted by colored paper; it’s his painting salon. He’s a great admirer of painting.”

“He’s extravagant, and later he says that since Lombroso was a genius one must grant even less credence to the theory that geniuses are madmen.”

“Again we speak of genius.”

“It’s just that I’m very level in my judgment (and as such, when I received you, although I relieved you of your load of boxes and packets, I didn’t take the bouquet of flowers from your hands, even though it pained me to see you with it in your hands the whole duration of our long conversation, I never offered to take it from you, nor did I know whom it was for, nor did I ask).”

“Ah! It’s true that you are anxious to clarify this problem with geniuses.”

“All I know is that I’m very sane. It’s been a while since we’ve heard you singing at the piano; the President says you should be studying music and that when a musician friend comes he’ll have him evaluate your voice.”

“So you’re leaving?” Sweetheart says here, detaining Maybegenius as he gets up to go.

“I could stay here forever conversing with you.”

“So stay in this ‘dialogue,’ that’s what it is. Or go visit The Lover.”

“He’s not here now.”

“How you love him! He’s very delicate. If he had as much on his mind as the President, do you think he’d be as sweet?”

“I think so.”

“Fine, since, as you’re fond of telling me, you like it when I order you around, begin your visits to Petrona. You’re just standing there staring, don’t you like it when I tell you what to do?”

“I’m looking at you, Sweetheart, and I will go where you tell me.”

“You will conquer her, Maybegenius; you know, I know nothing of conquest; you are good, intelligent, and free.”

“Free? I was; I will never again be free because I cannot forget.”

“You’re in love, that’s for sure, I can see it. How painful that must be! And she can’t love you back?”

“No, she can’t.”

“So she’s in love already.”

“Yes, maybe she doesn’t know it; and the person she loves is in the dark, too. I’m the only one who knows of her love, and I love her too, and she doesn’t know it.”

“How much suffering! That’s life!”

“I’d rather you didn’t sigh over it. I’m leaving.”

“You’re a good man, Maybegenius; you’re good looking and elegant; she’ll receive you well. But that tie…”

“It’s bad, I know.”

“Go get someone to fix it for you.”

“Why don’t you do it, put your hands on me for that. I’ll only mess it up later.”

“What!”

“You straighten it, and I’ll mess it up a bit.”¹

“I don’t understand a thing.”

“Let me do it. I’ll go. While I do encounter new impediments, I do have hope of winning her friendship.”

“I understand even less.”

“It’s a great thought; In order to make Petrona love me, every day she must see something that needs fixing in my moral character.”

“Moral character?”

“Yes, my moral character is how I comb my hair, arrange my tie, my watch fob, my hatband, everything that has a right side and a reverse side, that can be orderly or disorderly, put on the right way or twisted. I’m sure of it: for Petrona, this is my moral character. Don’t worry about understanding it, don’t think yourself unintelligent, since I wouldn’t understand it either if someone said it to me.”

“If you want I’ll say I understand, but since you say I shouldn’t worry, that it’s a riddle…”

“You’ll understand it better tonight when you listen to my communique informing of the result of my first visit. Goodbye, Sweetheart.”

“Wait, listen: I'm anxious about telling you what I have to say: why were you so good to me when I first came here?”

“Who knows. . You seemed so sweet, and you looked frightened.”

“I wasn’t afraid; I knew the President well enough. Be that as it may, however, if I want to keep living I hope to encounter no more good people.”

“How strange! That lends itself to confusion much more readily than my opinion about badly-knotted ties.”

“Explain your incomprehensible seduction procedure to me one more time. I understand that it all happens naturally. Is Petrona not attractive?”

“She would be, except for her face.”

“You also must explain why you feel no regret about making Petrona believe in your false love.”

“Very well: The procedure — I’ll shoo away the flies of regret — charms me to the extent that it absolves me of all morality, casting aside the fact that Petrona is a trollop. I don’t think there’s a single woman of her type, or even women much superior to her, who can resist the unsettling affect of a twisted hatband, or a badly-knotted tie, or a stain on a piece of clothing, wrinkled socks, or a loose button. It’s an unease that, when prolonged by repeated presentations in the person of a single gentleman, drives women to such a state of desperation that they must take charge of the man entirely, to the point of using conjugal union to put an end to all the sartorial imperfections of this person who has so irritatingly crossed her path…”

“That’s all fine and well but: Doesn’t it seem undignified that you would push yourself up against a wall just to stain your back with whitewash — and on the way to see your beloved? What will the reader think of your plan? How rude, we never consulted him in this.”

“Well then, why not tell us your plan, distinguished reader — or has he gotten distracted, and left us alone?”

Reader: “I am as interested in your ideas as I am discreet about them; you can be sure that I’ll only distance myself when I suspect the fatality of a kiss, and I’ll return once I’ve calculated that the friendly spectator would not be an indiscretion. Now, of course, I'm at your service, and I approve of your plan.”

“Thank you very much, that’s worth living.”

Maybegenius went on his way and Sweetheart was left to recite her favorite quintet:

How good it would be

to be good and

Only with good people live.

To suffer with every pain,

And smile at every good fortune.

Simple: “Oh, Sweetheart, how have I not adorned my time here with your conversation, as I see you now free and happy.”

Sweetheart: “It’s true, I feel very happy. What delight to be a part of the camaraderie of ‘La Novela.’ I was doubtful when the President invited me to come, because at that time my life was so insignificant that any possible change terrified me.”

“I also remember with emotion what he told us: ‘I invite you to a “training of the characters,” so that you may be happy in the novel.’”

“This change has been everything for me; I’ve forgotten my past, and I feel hopeful again.”

“I already had some happiness in life. I had begun to understand happiness.”

Actually, Simple is the most adept man when it comes to happiness: as an usher at the Teatro Colón, he knew to keep his place while the orchestra and the song of the great tenor and the great diva resonated together with an astonishing clamor of immense and powerful force, while the distinguished conductor waved and shook his coattails and hair, alternately calming and inciting operatic fury with his gestures. During all this devastating virtuosity, including the virtuosity of knowing how to absorb oneself in this opulence, Simple knew to keep to himself while the singer let out a string of “do re mi.” He played a toccata on his guitar, docile and content and feeling satisfied with life, so much so that in some moments it was possible, amidst all that ruckus, to hear his instrument.

Sweetheart: “I, on the other hand, have had to learn everything here. Like everyone, I think.”

Simple: “But for some of them it’s difficult. It’s difficult for Maybegenius, a man who couldn’t learn to cough unless you put a conductor in front of him.”

What joke of Maybegenius, told while they both painted the walls of the vestibule, had led Simple to try to poke fun at their mutual friend’s difficulty with happiness? Sweetheart smiled broadly, and together they continued sunning themselves among the poplars, while Simple explained that he possessed a soul capable of procuring the “world on a string” for him. (It is not known whether, apart from the novel’s time, there is also good or bad time that accounts for Simple’s mood swings.)

Maybegenius makes his way to the conquest of Petrona, whistling. Is there something conceited about him, perhaps?

Maybe: a pinch of the seducer’s infatuation, and two pinches of jealousy maybegenialize his character.

My perhaps frightening affirmation will perhaps come as a surprise, that besides Maybegenius’s solid moral sense, that is, his general sympathy for the “other I,” for the plurality of sensibilities or individuals which he displays in this motto: “In this life, at the very least everyone has to leave his seat warm; leaving his place, or the time and place in which he lived, a little more comfortable for the next man than it was before (or perhaps he meant: labor, and the warmth that disinterested labor yields, should be left for others, rather than taking recourse in the great egoism of one’s own destiny); one must be the sort of man who did a little more good than harm;” very well, despite this motto and, what’s more dissonant, despite his supreme elegance in egocentric and severe inspiration, Maybegenius is jealous of two things — and jealousy is the most durable indignity from which a personality can suffer, it’s a fault in egocentrism (it must be, to be narrowly egocentric to the point where Passion cannot be realized as an absolutely selfless love): he envies the waiters in a bar their enviable muscular-tactile pleasure, as when they wipe down the marble counter when something has spilled there, and the consummate drying effect, almost not to be believed, so swiftly and softly has the rag run across the surface; but he is more envious of the grocer boys’ delight as they sling glasses, teapots, and mugs down the length of the counter.

And so Petrona replies to Maybegenius:

“Your presence here strikes me as rather insolent, courteous and amiable though you may be.”

“Truly, Señorita Petrona, I would love to be able to say to you in this moment what I expressed in a similar circumstance, in another novel, to a young woman who almost equaled you in charm. I remember what I told her: ‘This mention of insolence is very cruel, Señorita Luciana. I am truly motivated to desist in this visitation.’ This last part is what I cannot say to you, Señorita Petrona. Because today I do not feel the urge to desist in my visit, I will simply say: Your impressive and seductive presence alters my language and my bearing, and so I may seem insolent. I got out of this very well by desisting in my visits to Señorita Luciana in the aforementioned other novel. I cannot deprive myself of the exchange with you that circumstances offer me in this case.”

Other honeyed words and a few improvised couplets made happy this day for Maybegenius (who wanted to tell Sweetheart everything) and the secret of “La Novela” is safe for now.

1 (Author: An unknown feeling pesters me. What if there’s some bitter critic reading me right now, mocking me because, with my weak grammar, for “you” I sometimes use the Spanish familiar “tu” and sometimes the regional Argentine “vos”?)