Edgardo Cozarinsky translated by Cayley Taylor

It starts, always, in the temples, an almost imperceptible throbbing at first, and in the precise moment he acknowledges it, that pulsing starts to grow until he feels as if his head is going to explode and his vision gets cloudy and the distance between him and the objects surrounding him wavers and the arm that he stretches out for the phone is slow in reaching it and the emergency medical service number doesn’t show up in the list though he knows that he’s added it to the phone’s memory. But it’s not just the head. The chest replicates the throbbing of the temples, the thorax narrows and the ribs press down on something that he can only think to call heart, he can’t breathe and the air doesn’t enter his open mouth. He ... Read More »]]>

Edgardo Cozarinsky
translated by Cayley Taylor

It starts, always, in the temples, an almost imperceptible throbbing at first, and in the precise moment he acknowledges it, that pulsing starts to grow until he feels as if his head is going to explode and his vision gets cloudy and the distance between him and the objects surrounding him wavers and the arm that he stretches out for the phone is slow in reaching it and the emergency medical service number doesn’t show up in the list though he knows that he’s added it to the phone’s memory. But it’s not just the head. The chest replicates the throbbing of the temples, the thorax narrows and the ribs press down on something that he can only think to call heart, he can’t breathe and the air doesn’t enter his open mouth. He goes out the front door, an impulse that will seem ridiculous to him the next morning, he didn’t want them to find him dead when they battered down the door after not seeing him for days, and he is sitting on the doorstep by the sidewalk when the doctor arrives, meaning that he finally managed to get a hold of the phone number that seemed impossible to find and he was able to speak to ask for help, and in that instant he remembers that on other occasions the electrocardiogram never detected any trace of a heart attack, not even a pre-heart attack, and it’s only months later, when he resigns himself to following his doctor’s order not to call the emergency service again, which only gives him a sleeping pill so strong that it leaves him stupid for part of the following day, only then will he hear about panic attack when he agrees to put himself in the hands of another doctor whose specialization always inspired mistrust, psychologist, psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, how to trust his soul to someone who hasn’t read Dostoevsky or Saint Augustine, but he accepts anyway, agrees to abide by his verdict and submit himself to a psychoactive drug that he will soon abandon to seek and find remedy in words, or rather, in writing them as soon as there’s a sign of crisis, in putting them in a certain order. He resorts to the notebook or the screen and writes something that one or two days later might seem useless to him or, on the contrary, surprise him by revealing that he has descended into a relegated darkness, and he realizes, not without shame, that he had chosen to suppress that darkness, that he never would’ve dared to summon it outside of those nights of terror, in that state that others call normality and which he already understands is the sly censorship to which he has relinquished his daily life.

* *

From Dark (Tusquets 2016). Image: Luna Paiva, “wheel and gun” (2012).

Translated by Victoria Lampard and Heather Cleary

From “Ultramarina,” a contemporary opera by Marcelo Lombardero, with music by Pablo Mainetti and a libretto by Edgardo Cozarinsky, based on his novel “El rufián moldavo” (Emecé 2004). “Ultramarina” premiered in “Hasta Trilce” in April 2014. The excerpt that follows is a play on tango kitsch sung by a prostitute named Perla.

A CLEAN SLATE

If I could spit out all the kisses That tainted my young lips…

If I could wash away the scratch of of all those god-forsaken sheets…

If I could wipe away the caresses that consumed my skin, then I could love you.

Oh how I wish you were my first, the one who lied to me a thousand times.

(Does it matter? It is a man’s way to lie to a woman, and love her all the same),

How I wish you could see me as I once was, and ... Read More »]]>

Translated by Victoria Lampard and Heather Cleary

From “Ultramarina,” a contemporary opera by Marcelo Lombardero, with music by Pablo Mainetti and a libretto by Edgardo Cozarinsky, based on his novel “El rufián moldavo” (Emecé 2004). “Ultramarina” premiered in “Hasta Trilce” in April 2014. The excerpt that follows is a play on tango kitsch sung by a prostitute named Perla.

A CLEAN SLATE

If I could spit out all the kisses
That tainted my young lips…

If I could wash away the scratch of
of all those god-forsaken sheets…

If I could wipe away the caresses
that consumed my skin, then I could love you.

Oh how I wish you were my first,
the one who lied to me a thousand times.

(Does it matter? It is a man’s way to lie
to a woman, and love her all the same),

How I wish you could see me as I once was,
and I could give myself to you as though you were my first.

How I wish, for you, I once again had
A body that you could please,

I know: there is no hope
for a clean slate, a fresh start

A clean slate, a fresh start,
It is too late, I know.

Some nights I dream it could still happen…
I dream that not all is lost.

Something, I feel, still beats inside me,
Something in me lives on…

It scares me to say it, even to think it:
Could this something be my heart?

* *

Image: Pola Oloixarac

Edgardo Cozarinsky translated by the author

1. “Il vecchio non trova pace”

What’s that you’re saying, I am about to snap at the barman with my coldest voice and a killer look, when I realize he wasn’t staring at me but at another old man, maybe younger than me, who knows, but who showed those signs of senectitude I take care not to offer to the perfidious onlooker—head bowed, definitively defeated, trying to follow the spasmodic shaking of a blonde on the dance floor.

And how could he find peace, il vecchio, who knows how much champagne he has already bought her, and how much else if this is not their first time, and of course the blonde is deep inside herself, shaking and shaking for nobody, no one, two, or four, not caring who is in front of her, ... Read More »]]>

Edgardo Cozarinsky
translated by the author

1. “Il vecchio non trova pace”

What’s that you’re saying, I am about to snap at the barman with my coldest voice and a killer look, when I realize he wasn’t staring at me but at another old man, maybe younger than me, who knows, but who showed those signs of senectitude I take care not to offer to the perfidious onlooker—head bowed, definitively defeated, trying to follow the spasmodic shaking of a blonde on the dance floor.

And how could he find peace, il vecchio, who knows how much champagne he has already bought her, and how much else if this is not their first time, and of course the blonde is deep inside herself, shaking and shaking for nobody, no one, two, or four, not caring who is in front of her, possessed by In a Gadda da Vida, imagine a DJ choosing that half a century later, I danced to it in Buenos Aires in my prehistory.

And me, alone, but on my own two feet at least, and proud of it, not crumpled and crumbling on a stool like il vecchio in this shitty bar in Rome, if only it were in the centro storico or in Trastevere, but I am in Parioli, in a hangout for the jeunesse dorée, I wonder if people still call them that, I can smell them from far off, here or in Buenos Aires at 878 or the Rond Point, children of the well-off or of advertising.

But at some point I understand that il vecchio is just a warning, I didn’t need the barman’s stare, il vecchio is the image of everything I am postponing, what I cannot deny—of acting my age, of thinking I can approach my prey and set the process in motion without her seeing me like someone who’s already agreed to pay, in the best of all possible worlds a funny guy good for a moment’s talk, no more.

I believe each man chooses his own madness, I never doubted it, and there are nights when my impression of Corsini comes off rather well—“Keep my glass filled, dear bartender.”

*

2. The magic fades

She says she feels better with me than with anybody else, but at a certain point in the evening she leaves the table to smoke a cigarette, she says, I don’t trust her and wait two, three minutes before I follow her and find her talking on her cell phone, I’m sure it’s with the Monster with Herpes, a horrible boyfriend I’ve never seen but whom I’ve Googled, figuring his notoriety in the media might have earned him a photograph on the Web, and there he was, young of course, with a sly look, a resentful smile, fashionable hair.

It’s not that, she says, I was talking to a friend who is about to give birth, forgetting that half an hour earlier she was telling me she couldn’t stand how she talked about her water breaking all the time, and also who would call a woman about to deliver after midnight. I wonder if she knows I know she’s lying, but maybe she doesn’t mind, whatever, she says, knowing silence is richer and lets me imagine more, worse things.

She asks me to close my eyes, I obey, not really trusting her, and she puts a finger to my lips, I bite it, it tastes bitter and I realize she’s spread MDMA on it, I suck it and when there’s nothing left I tell her she’s crazy, that she should have put the MDMA on her pussy, where I’d love to lick it off her, my little dulce-de-leche pussy, I always called her. Not tonight she says, she just wants me to relax and put aside this ridiculous jealousy, but right then her cell phone rings again, and she’s about to answer when I take it from her hand, throw it on the sidewalk, and step on it.

You brute, she says, give me money for another phone and say goodbye to the dulce-de-leche, I’m already forgetting you, I never told you I felt better with you than with other men, you made it all up, you phony jerk-off, give me the money right now or I’ll start to scream.

I do not speak right away. I dig around in my pocket for a five-peso bill and throw it at her feet, go to a payphone and call him, if you’re lucky he’ll give you herpes, and I walk away. She follows me, discharging her fists on my head, my shoulders, a policeman stares at us, what can you do, I say, they’re wild this summer, and he smiles, I smile, and she gets tired and starts to cry.

*

3. January foreboding

It’s January 15th and very hot in Buenos Aires, but I can already feel the days growing shorter, at 8:30 the sky goes from light blue to deep blue to grey to black, it doesn’t hold on to its brightness like on glorious December 21st, the longest day of the year in this southern hemisphere it took me so long to love again after the ridiculous distance I put between us.

It is January in Buenos Aires and the city is not deserted but free from the rush and bad temper of the rest of the year, that’s why I like to keep this month to enjoy while the crowds are off packing the beaches and dirtying the sea. To walk the city. To give it a good look. To be silent.

This January I am drinking white wine again, after years of avoiding it precisely because for years I drank too much of it, now it keeps me company, fresh, dry in this heat that promises a little fresh air for later, when a lazy breeze starts moving the leaves on the trees on this corner, ever so softly.

I sit at the same sidewalk café table as in other Januaries, my shelter on this corner. This year, shorts are back in fashion, and there is no end to the parade of hard, proud, defiant buttocks. The waiter bringing my glass of white remarks, Did you catch that? Impossible to take your eyes off them… And it looks like rain today—the catwalk is not at its best.

I know summer will be over before long and the benign autumn of these latitudes will arrive without cold but with its decaying light, and it will be like age, which doesn’t seem to hurt but still robs us of that other light, the one we know we will not find again. (Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, of course. Who else?)

* *

Image: Christos Katsiaouni