Tetro

How many poets never become poets? It is the question that every writer asks himself, especially if fame has until now eluded him. Failure has many hues and brushes, but we accept that failure at certain trials means success in others because we have a limited amount of energy and attention. Most great artists of legitimate talent have become great because that was the only thing they ever wanted to achieve, and no other event – be it a marriage, the birth of a child, a death, a betrayal – could ever clutter the straight path of destiny. Art, while man's greatest intellectual accomplishment, is an all-consuming fire that some allow to engulf all the meadows of their everyday contentment. A brief preface to this fine film.

Like other movie monsters, Tetro (Vincent Gallo) does not take long to rear his scruffy head. An American resident of Buenos Aires, our Tetro was born Angelo Tetrocini, son of the famed conductor and generally pompous buffoon Carlo Tetrocini (a cetacean Klaus Maria Brandauer). This fact is the most important of Tetro's life, and the one from which all other facts may, seriatim, be revealed. The second fact, almost as important, is that he is a failed writer, and spends every second of every day under this invisible burden. They are merged in a flashback on a cruel beach when Carlo, informed of his son's literary ambitions, claps him patronizingly on the shoulder and whispers: "If you want to live from your writings, you have to be a genius. And there's only room for one genius in this family." Argentina, on the other hand, has been kind to Tetro, albeit not initially. We see him in a mental asylum called La Colifata (which the intergalactic weapon known as Google tells me is lunfardo for "crazy") with enough Spanish to participate in the usual group therapy sessions that always seem far too civilized and logical for a madhouse. He is a broken, humble man who "holds everything he ever wrote in a file pinned to his chest," and has a tendency to prevaricate about a past he has been unable to forget. Which, we are told, is exactly what makes him so attractive to Miranda (Maribel Verdú).

Unpretty but pleasant-looking with distantly placed eyes and a quiet mission, Miranda is that fictional necessity, the unbelievably good woman. More importantly, her foil, the unbelievably bad man, is not Tetro. Tetro is scarred, bitter, and somewhat enraged at the hand life has dealt him (in Italian, tetro means "gloomy" or "bleak"), but he is not evil. He copes with his perceived inequities by channeling his energy into being a different person, the author of a play that he "will never publish," a stagehand at a shoddy little theater plagued by vulgarian whims, and the husband of Miranda. They have no children because children would mean that Tetro would have to love and Miranda would have to love something other than Tetro. Into this uneasy truce with life comes Bennie (Alden Ehrenreich). Bennie is Tetro's brother from a different mother – and we learn that Tetro's mother didn't have much of a chance of having too many other children. Bennie is seventeen but lied his way onto a cruise ship where he works as a waiter. Of course, the cruise ship breaks down in Buenos Aires (precisely where I would scuttle my vessel if I were a captain), and Bennie is left with the option of spending a week in dry-dock or visiting that long-lost brother of his who once wrote him a terribly clichéd letter in which he promised his return. 

No one is fooled by this coincidence – not Miranda, not the viewer, and least of all, not Tetro. When Bennie first sees Tetro, the latter sports a cast and crutches from having challenged a bus; later in the film, another character will endure a similar injury and we correctly understand the appurtenances in both cases as excuses. Bennie asks the usual questions, often to Miranda since Tetro selectively ignores most queries from Bennie and everyone else. Miranda does not really apologize for her husband's behavior as much as contextualize it ("family dispute," "mother's death," etc.), and punctuates it with a magnificent adage: Tetro is "a genius without enough accomplishments," exactly how all young and unsung artists feel when they see others gushing over well-known mediocrities. Bennie recognizes his brother's talents and does not let him feel sorry for himself ("How do you walk away from your work? Doesn't it follow you?"), but the film's basic conflict persists: younger sibling wishes to know everything from the beginning; older sibling wants the past sunk irretrievably in some remote swamp. Given this disparity in outlooks, that the brothers communicate at all, and often through exchanges pregnant with meaning, is remarkable. I give nothing away by including the interference of a woman introduced as "Alone," in apposition, "the most powerful writer and critic in Latin America." Once upon a time, she was Tetro's mentor "until she turned against him" ("no one knows quite why" is the equally mysterious echo). People like Alone never have any talent and yet possess the despotic desire to determine who does – a trap which would repulse any first-rate writer. But Bennie sees the woman, an inexorable fraud who only cares about her reputation and control, as an opportunity. All of which leads to a festival so named, one supposes, in order for its founder never to be subject to its dreadful implications. 

While Ehrenreich, Brandauer, and Verdú are all excellent, this is Gallo's vehicle and he makes it hum. At times his Tetro reminds us of Willem Dafoe playing the lead role in a Michael Douglas biopic. The plot of Tetro is straightforward in that only one person is concealing information. Once that information is revealed, everything makes more sense, but somehow our impressions of the characters do not radically shift. The announcement is not inevitable, but it is plausible and, in a way, the best possible explanation for what came before it. And what of the family drama that came before it? Oddly, that natural self-awareness or stage presence that imbues interesting people with a sense of the dramatic is intentionally lacking in many parts of Tetro, lending it much of the amateurish feel of the horrible little play it encapsulates – which cannot really be coincidence. For the film's duration only the flashbacks and imaginary scenes are in color because they are exciting and actual life is uneventful and drab, and because for Tetro they are much more real than anything he could ever do in Buenos Aires (the dream sequences that borrow liberally from this work are especially wonderful). We may expect violence, nudity, or profanity, but thankfully our expectations remain unrewarded. For even though all these things occur in Tetro's life, he knows they are the easy resorts of the talentless hack. This is his film, and he does not care – as he tells one character after another, although each time with a slightly different insinuation – what others may think. So forgive him, if only this once, the axe he brings to dinner.   

El fin

A short story ("The End") by this Argentine writer. You can read the original here.

Still lying down, Recabarren half-opened his eyes and saw the clear, oblique sky of rushes. From the other room came the strumming of a guitar, the sort of impoverished labyrinth that became entangled then undone in infinite alternation ... Little by little he recovered reality, the daily things that he could never exchange for others. He gazed unmercifully at his large, useless body and the plain wool poncho wrapped around his legs; outside, beyond the cross-pieces of the window, the evening and prairie were dissolving into one another. He had slept but the sky was still stained in light. He groped around with his left arm until it came across a bronze cowbell at the foot of the bed. He rang it once or twice; the humble chords echoed back from the other side of the door. The perpetrator was a black man who had shown up one night with the pretension of being a singer and challenged another foreigner to a long musical duel. Bested, he continued to frequent the local store as if waiting for someone. He whiled away the hours on his guitar but had never sung again – perhaps his failure had left him embittered; in any case, people had already gotten quite accustomed to this inoffensive fellow. As owner of the local store Recabarren would never forget this duel in vocal counterpoint, and the next day while putting away a few bottles of the local beer his right side had died on him and he had lost the faculty of speech. Since we always pity the misfortune of the heroes of novels, we end up pitying our own misfortunes excessively. Yet such was not the long-suffering Recabarren, who accepted paralysis the way he had accepted the rigor and solitude of America. He had grown used to living in the present, like animals do, and now gazed upon the heavens and thought that the red circle of the moon presaged rain.   

A boy of Indian-looking features (his son, perhaps) pushed the door ajar. Recabarren's eyes asked him whether there were any customers. Taciturn, the boy gestured that there weren't; the black man did not count. He remained in his bed prostrate and alone, his left hand playing a bit with the cowbell as if he were exercising some kind of power.

Beneath the sun's last flashes the prairie was almost an abstraction seen in a dream. One point danced upon the horizon and grew into a horseman who was coming, or appeared to be coming, to the house. He saw the broad-brimmed hat, the long, dark poncho, the Moorish steed, but not the face of the man who, at last, held his gallop and approached in a trot. About two hundred paces away, he turned around. Recabarren did not see any more of him, but did hear him chatting, alighting, tethering his horse to the post and entering the store with a firm step.

Without taking his eyes off his instrument, where he seemed to be looking for something, the black man said gently:

"I knew I could count on you, my dear sir."

The other replied in a gravelly voice:

"As I knew I could count on you, my dark friend. For some days I made you wait, but now I have come."

Silence ensued. After a time, the black man said:

"I am used to waiting. I have waited seven years."

The other explained without a trace of urgency:

"I spent more than seven years without seeing my children. The day I found them I did not want to show myself to be a man inured to knife fights."

"I took care of that," said the black man. "I hope that you left them in good health."

Having sat down at the counter, the foreigner had a hearty laugh. He ordered a beer and savored it without drinking it all. 

"I gave them some good advice," he stated, "advice that was neither platitudinous nor at any cost to them. Among other things, I told them that one man should not shed another's blood."

A slow chord preceded the black man's response:

"You did well. In that way they won't be like we are."

"At least not like I am," said the foreigner and added as if he were thinking aloud: "My destiny has obliged me to kill and now, once again, has placed a knife in my hand."

As if he hadn't heard him the black man quipped:

"Once autumn comes, the days will be shorter."

"The light that remains is good enough for me," said the other, getting to his feet. He stood at attention before the black man, then said to him almost fatigued:

"Leave that guitar alone, because today another type of counterpoint awaits you."

The two men walked over to the door. As he was leaving, the black man muttered:

"Maybe in this contest I will do just as badly as I did in the first one."

The other answered with all seriousness:

"You didn't do so badly the first time. What happened was that you went about the first contest desirous of the next contest."

Walking in unison they distanced themselves from the houses. One spot on the prairie was the same as any other and the moon stretched out in resplendence. Suddenly they exchanged glances and stopped, then the foreigner removed his spurs. They were standing there, ponchos in hand, when the black man said:

"Before we get to work I want to ask you for one thing. I ask that you invest all your courage and skill in this endeavor; just as you did seven years ago when you murdered my brother."

For perhaps the first time in their dialogue, Martin Fierro detected hate; his blood goaded him on. They mixed it up and his sharp steel blade struck the black man's face.

There is an hour in the evening when the prairie seems ready to speak, to reveal something. It never says it, or perhaps it says it infinitely and we do not hear it, or perhaps we hear it yet it remains untranslatable like music ... From his bed Recabarren saw the end. A lunge and the black man recoiled, lost his footing, feigned a chop to the face, then fell far upon the blade that penetrated his stomach. Then came another lunge which the storekeeper could not make out and Fierro did not get up; still and unmoving, the black man appeared to be watching his laborious agony. With some grass he wiped off his big knife soaked in blood and, without looking back, slowly returned to the houses. Having fulfilled his task of vengeance, he was no longer anyone; rather, he was the other: he had no destiny on this earth and had killed a man.         

El secreto de sus ojos

A long time ago, it seems, I was more skeptical about love and more partisan of passion. That is because love in its romantic sense is not worth experiencing too early on in life, while about passion fairly the opposite can be said. An egregious stereotype exists about women and passion that needs no further coverage here; what we can state with certainty is that the emotion can be enjoyed regardless of what else life has offered the impassioned, because if we understand someone's passion we can trace his portrait in broader strokes. Anyone with a faint knowledge of etymology, however, will tell you the real meaning of this oft-abused word, and in a way it will make even more disturbing sense. A brief introduction to the guiding principles behind this film.

Our place and time is Buenos Aires on the eve of the current millennium, and our protagonist is the newly retired criminal investigator Benjamín Espósito (Ricardo Darín). Of these three, only the time will change. Espósito is writing a novel and decides to recur to a case closed a quarter of a century before, the rape and murder of a twenty-three-year-old schoolteacher by the name of Liliana in her apartment one dreadful day. When he asks Irene Menéndez-Hastings (Soledad Villamil) how he should begin his initial foray into the world of literature (we see a waste-paper basket of crumpled first pages), she recommends that he start with the strongest and most brilliant image – which, of course, is Irene herself. Twenty-five years ago, she was not married or the mother of two children, but a Cornell-educated lawyer and Espósito's immediate superior in the ministry of justice. Irene could be the thinking man's runway model: tall, trim but well-nourished, lovely, educated, intelligent, dapper, restrained, and, perhaps most importantly, entirely reasonable. There is no doubt that Espósito has loved her from the very first day they are introduced by the cantankerous old judge to whom they both report; in time we learn that his love may be the weaker of the two. Espósito follows her advice – as he has always wanted to do whatever she says – and the film pendulates between the Buenos Aires of 1999, a warm, pleasant modern city, and the compromises of a period in which thousands of outspoken Argentines were silenced. My understanding is that a film about 1970s Argentina without reference to the operations of the secret police would be an even bolder statement, but El secreto de sus ojos does not really want to delve into politics. The typical police procedural aspects – the brutal, unsolved murder, the framed suspects one of whom just so happens to be an impoverished Bolivian immigrant, our righteous protagonist and his overtly malevolent colleague Romano (Mariano Argento), a man who believes only in power and in those who take it for themselves – are all washed away by the development of two love stories and two secondary characters. Our first love story never really quits the screen, but the second is wrought out of curiously posthumous emotions on the part Liliana's widower, the run-of-the-mill bank employee Morales (Pablo Rago). 

Morales's first reaction to the murder is one of disbelief and delusion, but this changes when Espósito peruses some albums of Liliana and discovers three separate photos in which a young man finds her lovely face much more riveting than the camera lens. "Did she have a brother?" he asks the morose Morales, who suddenly perks up and replies in the negative. Using the tracing paper numerical scheme Morales taught his wife, an eerie outline emblematic of the "disappeared" persons identified only by some hidden code, the two find out that the man who could not keep his eyes off Liliana is a glum, creepy-looking lowlife called Isidiro Gómez (Javier Godino). Espósito takes a particular interest in Morales, whose icy indifference to the investigation would make him in most films a suspect, yet the thought never crosses the investigator's mind. Morales – his name is not a coincidence – seems to represent something more than a bereaved husband. As he sits in alternating train stations waiting for Gómez, he opines that he has started to forget, that the human ability to bury pain along with the deceased, the mnemonic equivalent of endorphins, is remarkable. He may be waiting for his wife's alleged killer, but he seems indifferent to the person and more interested in the penalty, which is when we remember that the fellow works at a bank. Every day things must be balanced or he cannot go home. I firmly believe that those who are attracted to banks and ledgers and bookkeeping are likewise attracted to justice and, if necessary, even revenge. There must be equality at the end of the day or at least at the end of a life. Looking at our humble bank clerk, it becomes difficult to determine whether he is reliving the scant memories of a young marriage or killing a purported murderer again and again in his mind. 

Gómez has the distinct privilege of being in the film's two best scenes and being the subject of the third best. In this last episode, Espósito breaks into a house in which the camera always stays a room ahead, as if it were his very fate to come across game-changing evidence. Yet the documents our investigator discovers and filches initially seem trivial until elucidated by his drunken sidekick Sandoval (Guillermo Francella). This precipitates the investigators' visit to this team's soccer stadium, which from the bird-eye's swoop, to the revelation just as the goal is scored, to the frenetic chase, is one of the most magnificent five minutes in recent cinema and has to be seen to be believed (admittedly, there is something exhilarating about fifty or a hundred thousand people agreeing with you). But even through these impressive touches the film focuses upon how these characters discover the truth about one another. Irene catches Gómez staring at her cleavage and realizes that he may be much more dangerous than she thought, and her insults prod him to do two very foolish things. Espósito treats Sandoval in a sardonically cruel way in an attempt to make him turn his life around. And Romano, with his final on-screen appearance, speaks with malicious glee for all the military police that almost destroyed Argentina in the 1970s. Since these are his last words to us, we assume that some variation on them probably adorns his now otherwise unmarked tomb.

Like many European or foreign mysteries, El secreto de sus ojos is not so much a whodunit as a clothesline on which the director can hang a few portraits and then gaze at them with an intensity that does not befit the wafting museum visitor. What these people think of one another and how they express it are the main motifs. But since every work of art needs some nominal structure, they find their common language in a crime as senseless as it is unexplained (the exact connection between the killer and his victim is never given full vent, suggesting that while we should pity Liliana, her story is only a vehicle for a greater perspective). So many details are eloquent with meaning: after chastising Gómez for his lascivious stare in some pictures with Liliana, Espósito then finds a snapshot of himself looking with only slightly less desire at Irene; when Sandoval creeps up behind his partner, Espósito is legitimately scared and not at all amused; and Irene's eyes, in the excellent and almost requisite reopening-of-the-case scene, speak volumes about her love for Espósito, and here we remember that we are still reading a fictionalization of the events. The film's only flaw is its omission of what prompted Espósito, who did marry a "Jujuy princess" (in Irene's words) but never had children,  to write a novel at all. Surely retirement from the force could not possibly be the reason? But then again, for some people old passions don't die hard as much as bide their time.

Juan Muraña

A work by this Argentine from one of his later collections, El informe de Brodie.  You can read the original here.

For years I stated that I had grown up in Palermo; now I know that this was mere literary braggadocio. The fact is that I grew up on the other side of a long wrought-iron gate of spears, in the house and garden and library of my father and grandparents. Palermo of the knife and guitar would linger (they assure me) around the corners. In 1930, I consecrated a monograph to Carriego, the singer and preacher of our local slums. Chance led me, a bit later, to Emilio Trápani. I was going to Morón; Trápani, who was next to the window, called out to me by name. I didn't recognize him right away: so many years had passed since we shared the same bench in a school on Thames street. Roberto Godel might have recognized him.

We had never been fond of one another. Time had separated us physically but bound us in indifference. I remember now that he had taught me the rudiments of our waggish Buenos Aires slang. We started up one of those trivial conversations so insistent on finding useless facts and resulting in our discovery of the death of a classmate who was now no more than a name. All of a sudden, Trápani said:

"I borrowed your book on Carriego, and you keep going on and on about thugs ... Tell me, Borges, what could you know about thugs?" He looked at me with some kind of holy horror.

"I researched the matter," I answered.

He didn't let me continue and said:

"Researched is the word. But I, you see, I don't need any documents. I know these types of people." After some silence, he added, as if bestowing upon me a secret:

"I am the nephew of Juan Muraña."

Of all the knife throwers of Palermo up to the nineties or so, Juan Muraña was the most talked about. Trápani went on:

"My aunt Florentina was his wife. The story might interest you."

Certain rhetorical emphases and longer phrasings led me to suspect that this was not the first time he was telling this tale.

"My mother, you see, was always disgusted by the fact that her sister joined her life with that of Juan Muraña, who for her was a cruel, heartless being. For my aunt Florentina, however, he was a man of action. Many stories have circulated about the fate of my uncle. One very popular tale was about how one night, after a few drinks, he fell out of the driver's seat of his car trying to pass on the corner of Coronel, and how stones shattered his skull. It is also said that the law pursued him and he fled to Uruguay. My mother, who could never stand her brother-in-law, never explained the matter to me. I was very young and retained no memory of him.

"During the centennial we were living in Russell passage in a long and narrow house. The back door, which was always locked, gave out onto San Salvador. In the attic lived my aunt, already along in years and a bit odd. Bony and gaunt, she was – or at least she appeared to me to be – very tall and frugal in her words. She was scared of being outside and never went out, nor did she want us to enter her room. More than once I caught her stealing and hiding food. Around the neighborhood it was said that the death or disappearance of Muraña had driven her insane; I always remember her in black. She had acquired the habit of talking to herself.

"The house was the property of a certain Mr. Luchessi, owner of a barber's shop in Barracas. My mother, who was a seamstress of some corpulence, was going through a bad time. Without understanding all that was going on, I heard the stealthy words: law enforcement official, eviction for default of payment. My mother was the most affected by all this; my aunt repeated obstinately: Juan would never allow that wop to throw us out. I remembered the case – which we knew by heart – of an insolent bastard from the south of Buenos Aires who had dared to challenge the courage of her husband. Juan, as far as I know, paid his way to the other end of town, sought him out, fixed him with a dagger, and threw him in the Riachuelo. I don't know whether the story is true.  But what matters now is that the story is told and believed.

"As for me, you could find me sleeping in the holes of Serrano street begging for alms, or with a basket of peaches. I tried anything to free myself from going to school.

"I don't know how long this foundering went on. Your late father once told us that time could not be measured in days, like money was broken into cents or pesos, because the pesos were equal and every day is different, perhaps even every hour. I didn't quite understand what he meant, but the sentence remained etched in my memory.

"One of those nights I had a dream that became a nightmare. I dreamt of my uncle Juan. I hadn't had a chance to get to know him, but I imagined him Indian-looking, hefty, with a sparse mustache and long hair. We were heading south, between the large quarries and the undergrowth, but these quarries and weeds were also Thames street. In my dream the sun was high. Uncle Juan was in black. He stopped next to a type of  scaffolding in a narrow pass. He kept his hand under his jacket at the level of his heart, not like someone who was about to pull out a gun but like someone who was hiding one. In a very sad voice he said to me: I have changed greatly. He took out his hand and what I saw was the claw of a vulture. I woke up screaming in the darkness.

"The next day my mother ordered me to go with her to Luchessi's. I knew that she was going to ask him for an extension; doubtless, I was taken along so that our creditor could see his negligence. She didn't say a word to her sister, who would not have agreed to debase herself in such a manner. I had never been to Barracas; there seemed to be a lot of people, more traffic, and little wasteland. From the corner we saw guards and a group in front of the number we were looking for. A neighbor was walking around telling everyone that shots had rung out towards three in the morning. He had heard the door open and someone come in. No one had closed the door; at dawn they had found Luchessi lying in the hallway half-dressed; he had been stabbed. The man had lived by himself and the police never found the culprit. Nothing had been stolen. One person remembered that towards the end of his life, Luchessi had lost his sight. Another said in an authoritative voice: 'His hour had arrived.' The report and tone impressed me; and as the years passed I came to notice that every time someone died there was always a sententious voice announcing the same discovery.

"The people at the wake invited us for coffee and I had a cup. In the casket there was a wax figure in place of the deceased. I said as much to my mother, and one of the funeral home employees laughed at me and explained that this figure in black clothing was Mr. Luchessi. I was fascinated looking at him, and my mother finally had to take me by the arm and pull me away.

"For months no one talked about anything else. Crimes were rare then; think about how much talking came from the the affair of Melena, Campana, and Silletero. The only person who didn't bat an eyelid was Aunt Florentina. She repeated insistently in her old age:

"'I told them that Juan wouldn't allow that wop to leave us without a roof over our heads.'

"One day it rained and rained. Since I couldn't go to school I started nosing about the house. I went up to the attic. There was my aunt with one hand atop the other; I sensed that even thoughts were not reaching her. The room was dank; in a corner was an iron bed with a rosary on one of its posts; on the other, a wooden case to keep clothes. On one of the whitewashed walls there was the image of the Virgen of Carmen. On top of the small night table was a candle.

"Without raising her eyes, my aunt told me:

"'I knew that you'd come here. Your mother must have sent you. She doesn't understand that it was Juan who saved us.'

"'Juan?' I managed to say. 'Juan died more than ten years ago.'

"'Juan is here,' she said. 'Do you want to see him?'

"She opened the drawer of the night table and pulled out a dagger. She continued talking softly:

"'Here he is. I knew that he would never leave me. There has never been a man like him on this earth. He did not grant that wop any respite.'

"So I was the only one who understood. This poor unwise woman had killed Luchessi. Driven by hate, madness and perhaps, who knows, maybe by love, she had slipped out the door that gazed upon the south, crossed street after street in the middle of the night, arrived at the house, and then with her great bony hands plunged the dagger into his heart. The dagger was Muraña, it was the dead man that she continued to adore. I never knew whether she told my mother. She died just before we were evicted.'"

Until now I have never heard the story of Trápani again. In the tale of this woman who remained alone and who confused her man, her tiger, with this cruel thing that he left her, the weapon of his acts, I begin to see, I think, a symbol of many symbols. Juan Muraña was a man who walked my streets, who knew what men knew, who knew the taste of death and who then became a knife, and now a memory of a knife, and tomorrow oblivion, collective oblivion.

Simulacros

A short story ("Shams") by this Argentine, who died thirty years ago this month.  You can read the original here.

We are a strange lot.  In this country where things are done out of obligation or boastfulness, our family prefers unfettered activities, tasks just because they're tasks.  We shams are of no use for anything else.

We have one flaw: we lack originality.  Almost everything we decide to do is inspired – frankly speaking, copied – from celebrated models.  Any novelty we might contribute is actually inevitable: an anachronism, a surprise, a scandal.  My eldest uncle claims we are like carbon copies, identical to the original but of another color, another role, another purpose.  My third eldest sister likens herself to Andersen's nightingale, and her romanticism makes us nauseous.

There are many of us and we all live on Humboldt street.

We do things certainly, but relating them is difficult because we lack the most important element – the anxiety and expectation of doing things, the surprises more tantalizing than the results, the failures in which the whole family collapses on the floor like a house of cards and for days nothing can be heard other than guffaws and laments.  Relating all that we do is hardly a means of filling the inevitable holes because at times we are poor, or imprisoned, or ill, and at times one of us dies (it pains me to touch upon the matter), or one of us betrays, or resigns, or enters the Ministry of Taxation.  But from this it should not be deduced that we are melancholy or doing badly.  We live in the Pacífico neighborhood, and we do things every time we have the chance.  Many of us are brimming with ideas and eager to put them into practice.  The gallows, for example: until now no one has been able to agree on the origin of the idea.  My fifth sister says that it was one of my first cousins, who are all rather philosophical; but my eldest uncle insists that the idea occurred to him first, after he had read a cloak-and-dagger novel.  But in the end we care little either way.  The only thing that matters is doing things, and for that reason I tell these tales with little zeal, if only to distance myself from the rain this empty afternoon.

The garden is in front of the house, which is odd for Humboldt street.  It is no bigger than a patio, but with three steps higher than a sidewalk, which lends it the showy aspect of a platform, the ideal location for a scaffold.  As the railings are of masonry and iron, work can be done without having the passers-by, so to speak, in the house; they might lean up against the railings and stay there for hours but that doesn't bother us.  "We shall begin at the full moon," my father ordered.  During the day we would go look for wood and iron in the lumberyards on Juan Bautista Justo Avenue; yet my sisters remained in the living room practicing their wolf howls, after which my youngest aunt determined that scaffolds attract wolves and incite them to bay at the moon.  At my cousins' costs I acquired our provision of nails and tools; my eldest uncle sketched out the plans then argued over the variety and quality of the instruments of torture with my mother and my second uncle.  I recall the end of their discussion: they cruelly agreed on a rather elevated platform over which they mounted a scaffold and wheel with a bit of free space designed to inflict pain or decapitate according to how things stood.  My eldest uncle thought the whole contraption a much feebler version of his original concept, yet the dimensions of the garden in front and the cost of the materials always restricted our family's ambitions.       

We began construction one Sunday afternoon after ravioli.  Although we have never worried about what our neighbors think, it was clear that the few snoops we did have believed us to be mounting a couple of additions to the house.  The first one to be surprised was old Mr. Cresta from across the street, and he came over to ask why we were installing something akin to a platform.  My sisters retreated to a corner of the garden and emitted a few wolf howls.  A lot of people gathered but we kept working until nighttime, stopping only once we had finished the platform and the two gangways (for the priest and the condemned man, who must not go up together). 

On Monday some of our family members went to their respective jobs – since something has to die – and the rest of us began to raise the scaffold while my eldest uncle looked over some old plans for the wheel.  His idea involved placing the wheel as high as possible above a slightly irregular pole such as, for example, a burnished trunk of poplar.   To placate him, my second brother and my first cousins took the truck out to look for a poplar; meanwhile my eldest uncle and my mother fitted the spokes of the wheel into the hub and I prepared an iron hoop.  It was at times like these that we enjoyed ourselves immensely: everywhere you could hear hammering; my sisters were baying in the living room; the neighbors were gathering at the gates and exchanging their impressions about what was going on; and between the sulphur and mauve streaks of dusk ascended the profile of the scaffold with my youngest uncle sitting astride the crossbeam to fasten the hook and slipknot.

At this stage, the people in the street could not help but realize what we were doing, and a chorus of protests and threats pleasantly encouraged us to crown our day's work with the erection of the wheel.  A few hecklers had tried to impede my second brother and my cousins from entering the house with the magnificent poplar trunk from their truck.  A tug-of-war ensued; pulling in disciplined fashion our family gradually gained control of the trunk, placing it in the garden beside a baby only a few months old taken from its home.  My father personally returned the baby to its exasperated parents, handing it over politely through the railings.  And while attention was focused on these sentimental alternatives my eldest uncle, helped by my first cousins, placed the wheel on the end of the trunk and began to raise it.  The police arrived just as the whole family was gathered on the platform commenting favorably on the scaffold's great view.  Only my third sister remained near the door, and she ended up having to talk to the deputy commissioner in person.  It was not hard to convince him that we were working within the boundaries of our estate on a project that could only involve anti-constitutional power if used; the whisperings of the neighbors, we added, were but the product of hatred and the fruit of envy.  Nightfall saved us from further wastes of time.      

Under a carbide lamp we dined on the platform watched by a hundred-odd resentful neighbors.  Never did pickled suckling pig ever taste so exquisite, never did Nebbiolo seem so black and sweet.  A breeze from the north softly jostled the scaffold; once or twice the wheel squeaked as if the crows had already alighted to commence their feast.  Muttering vague threats the onlookers began to disperse; twenty or thirty remained glued to the gates apparently waiting for something to happen.  After we had coffee we turned off the lamp in favor of the moonlight rising over the balustrades of the terrace.  My sisters bayed and my cousins and uncles slowly walked around the platform making the foundations quake with their steps.  In the silence that followed the moon rose to the height of the slipknot and the wheel looked like it was lying in a silver-rimmed cloud.  At both the moon and the wheel we gazed, so happy that it became a pleasure, but still the neighbors were muttering at the gates as if disappointed.  They lit cigarettes and went to lie down, some of them in pyjamas and others more quietly.  The street remained, with the smoke of a watchman's cigarette in the distance and the 108 bus that passed every so often; and we had already gone to sleep dreaming of parties, elephants, and silken garb.