Matías Ariel Chiappe Ippolito translated by Andrea Rosenberg

日々旅にして旅を栖とす。 （松尾芭蕉）

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” –Matsuo Bashō, tr. Sam Hamill

I’d been told I should get in touch with Hideki, whom everybody calls “the sensei.” I thought I was prepared for my visit to the city of Nikkō—I’d asked a number of people and looked at a bunch of websites; I’d even acquired a tourism pamphlet about Tochigi Prefecture that I hadn’t gotten a chance to read yet. I knew about the surrounding area: Kegon Falls, the Shinkyo Bridge, Mount Nantai. I knew that the main attraction was the Rinnoji Temple and the shrines of Futarasan and Toshogu, the latter of which houses the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun of the Edo period. I knew I was about to ... Read More »]]>

Matías Ariel Chiappe Ippolito
translated by Andrea Rosenberg

日々旅にして旅を栖とす。
（松尾芭蕉）

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”
–Matsuo Bashō, tr. Sam Hamill

I’d been told I should get in touch with Hideki, whom everybody calls “the sensei.” I thought I was prepared for my visit to the city of Nikkō—I’d asked a number of people and looked at a bunch of websites; I’d even acquired a tourism pamphlet about Tochigi Prefecture that I hadn’t gotten a chance to read yet. I knew about the surrounding area: Kegon Falls, the Shinkyo Bridge, Mount Nantai. I knew that the main attraction was the Rinnoji Temple and the shrines of Futarasan and Toshogu, the latter of which houses the tomb of Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun of the Edo period. I knew I was about to enter an ancient, magical place whose buildings were decorated with carvings of dragons and cats and, most famous of all, one with three monkeys covering their mouth, ears, and eyes, respectively. A place suspended in mist and crisscrossed by a million lantern-lined paths.

Each of these elements has a story. One of the lanterns, for example, is known as 化灯籠 (Bake-Doro), the Ghost Lantern. This lantern is famous because, thanks to its particular design and the properties of the materials it’s made from, the shadows it casts are unusually dense. The samurai of centuries past, believing that the lantern was invoking ghosts and spirits, would attack the shadows, never making contact with those illusory menaces. You can still see the marks of their swords, born of paranoia or a bad trip, on the lantern’s lattice-work. People were so terrified of the lantern that even today it’s lit only once a year, from April 13 to 17, during the Yayoi Festival, when the place is packed with people who could come to one’s aid in case of a spectral assault.

“You’re into that crap?” Hideki asked me when I said I was going there next, describing my intention to follow in Matsuo Bashō’s footsteps on a trip that would take me through all of Japan. I stared at him for a second. Then I looked down. I felt like a tourist, a dupe; I sensed that the man before me knew a great deal and carped about the same things Ariel Rodó had objected to in Rubén Darío’s imitations of Loti: the novelty of appearances; frivolity; easy, amusing puerilities. “I guess,” I said, like an idiot. He laughed and told me all those things were only interesting on the surface. “So what’s the best thing in Tochigi, then?” I asked. Telling me to hang on, he got up from the futon, went over to a little bookcase to fetch a book, and opened it in the middle. He showed me the image, which filled the entire page.

“Tochigi is the land of Japanese marijuana,” he said, showing me other photos from the book: hemp fields, ukiyo-e woodblock prints of weed, lacquered smoking pipes in every shape and color. Then he added, “It’s grown other places too, like Nagano and Okinawa, but nothing as potent as what we have here.” He continued in the tone of somebody giving an academic talk: the material produced from the marijuana plant (commonly known as hemp, he clarified) was used in countless ways on the Japanese archipelago starting in the Jōmon period, a thousand years before Christ. Later it was used in the manufacture of clothing and baskets, to make writing paper during the Heian period, to tie coins together in the years of the feudal lords, in performing dohyō-iri (when a sumo wrestler cleans the combat area wearing a hemp rope around his waist), and, because of its durability, for soldiers’ hats during World War II. In addition, cannabis has long been a symbol of purity in Japan’s native religion, Shintoism, and is used for rituals and ceremonial clothing.

“But in 1948 production was outlawed during the US occupation of Japan.” Apparently, General Douglas MacArthur thought marijuana was closely linked to communism, politica non grata after the war. It was also associated with the black musicians who’d ruined real American jazz. As his homeland was wont to do, he established a prohibition in Japanese territory. “Yukio Funai, the author of this book, says it was because of military factors—a way of reducing Japanese military power, which had been running a vibrant, profitable industry.” Whatever the case, that prohibition remains in place today. Politicians have even been reluctant to loosen (I mean, update) the penalties or even consider allowing medicinal marijuana, Hideki added. Again I stared at him in silence. On this topic, it seemed, Latin America and Asia, or at least Japan, shared a history of imposed Yankee hypocrisies.

At any rate, Tochigi became the epicenter of a countercultural resistance, reclaiming the country’s long tradition of cannabis use. “So that lantern thing doesn’t have anything to do with the lantern’s design or materials. The samurai, honoring customs from our most ancient traditions, were high as a kite, and they’d just go whacking away at the metal pole with their swords.” The image of a Rastafarian samurai flitted through my mind. This meant that one of the most important centers of so-called “Japanese culture” was actually a pot paradise. “Did you see the movie The Beach?” “Of course, I’m obsessed with the ’90s.” “Well, kind of like that, but with Japanese scenery.” How many other cultures could explain themselves through their use of sacred psychotropic plants? I recalled that Albert Hofmann and Robert Wassan proposed something similar about Greek culture when they analyzed the concoction consumed during the ritual to the goddess Demeter; they concluded that the mixture of wheat and barley was an excellent medium for the fungus Claviceps purpurea, from which a precursor of LSD can be derived.

“This is all I have left from then . . .” Hideki said, opening a little box decorated with an image of a smoking geisha. While loading a pipe, he asked me if I’d ever thought about the connections between marijuana and poets like Bashō, who “were actually the hippies of their time,” he noted. A counterculture that resisted first the imperial aristocracy and then the military elite. “That’s why they had such an impact on the beatniks.” Haiku poets as forerunners of stoned hippies? It was true that the beatniks had taken Bashō and his disciples as models. Not just in terms of pilgrimage, escape, and vanishing lines, but also by adopting Zen Buddhism as the core of their philosophical project. “Exactly,” Hideki said, bringing the flame up to his face.

One poet who exemplifies these unexpected connections was Dom Sylvester Houédard, a Benedictine monk at Prinknash Abbey, who translated the Bible while exchanging letters with Ginsberg, Burroughs, and others. Like the beatniks (or, rather, like Saint John of the Cross and Sor Juana Inés), Houédard was seeking some kind of mystic revelation, which he found both in Catholicism and in haiku. Unlike the beat poets, however, he chose to write visual poetry, so-called “concrete poetry,” and especially calligrams. In fact, he wrote a number of pieces of literary criticism, each of them in a different calligraphy. He also translated Bashō’s famous haiku about a frog:

frog
pond
plop

The original (古池や蛙飛びこむ水の音 Furu ike ya kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto, which can be translated literally as “Old pond / a frog leaps / sound of water”) has been the object of hundreds of versions, with greater and lesser degrees of embellishment: “The old pond / a frog leaps in, / and a splash” (Makoto Ueda); “Un vieil étang / une grenouille plonge / le bruit de l’eau” (Joan Titus-Carmel); “Un viejo estanque / salta una rana, ¡zas! / chapaleteo” (Paz and Hayashiya). But I think Bashō would have liked Houédard’s (even more) minimalist version. Or at least found it amusing. Maybe it would have confirmed for him that there are coincidences in this world, in this universe. After all, one of his contemporaries had experienced a similar revelation. Bashō observed a frog jumping into a pond and—splash!—a moment of mystical enlightenment. Meanwhile, in England, an apple fell on Newton’s head and—thump!—a moment of rational enlightenment.

Hideki reached out and handed me what from that moment on I began to think of as a basic and even necessary element of “Japanese culture”—if such a thing exists, if it is necessary to qualify it in national terms. Then he stretched from the futon without getting up and moved his fingers on the touchpad of his computer. Scroll up, scroll down, and, with a little tap like a leaping frog, he selected a song from a playlist. “These guys do a mix of folk, ska, and reggae, all in the Ainu language spoken by that ethnic community in Hokkaido.” I looked over and managed to see the name of the band: Oki Dub Ainu. Hideki told me about other similar groups: the rapper Oni and his band Still Ichimaya; the singer Likkle Mai; Cicala Mvta, who’d done a cover of Víctor Jara’s “El derecho de vivir en paz.” It was a brief, fascinating trip through stoner music in present-day Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ByiXt0TUr0&list=PLN8jn1rpcIHCCDsH3_Tg5rO2_4x3-_JI1

After a while, I couldn’t get my eyes to focus anymore. Hideki was telling me about the trees around the Nikkō shrine. “Out in those woods, I had the best . . . the most intense trip of my life.” He told me he’d gotten so high on a joint of Toshigi marijuana that he didn’t even know where he was. At one point he got lost in the music in his headphones and started wandering aimlessly through the trees, along a creek, and past some waterfalls—walking for two, three, who knows how many hours—and came to a clearing with a cabin, through whose windows he thought he spied naked bodies in bizarre sexual positions; he kept going and ended up in a little town right out of the American Old West, with horses and barrels and the inevitable sign reading “Saloon”; and then he got the feeling like somebody was after him and took off running, and only then noticed that there were some ninjas with swords behind him. “ほんとだ！” he added. He said he managed to escape that nightmare—he doesn’t know how, but he reached a train station, where he boarded a train and slept the whole way back. “Like I say . . . the most potent ganja in Japan.” His story seemed so wild that I never for an instant doubted it was true.

We said goodbye and he told me, “Have a good time in Nikkō. Next May we’ll go to the legalization march together.” I left. In the train on the way back, I rummaged in my backpack and found the same items as always: my collapsible umbrella, that Pynchon novel I can’t seem to finish, the kanji flashcards that by now I think are going to be with me for the rest of my days, as if they were prayer cards or some kind of talisman. Way down at the bottom, I came across the tourism pamphlet. I opened it. There, among other things, I found information on the Kinugawa Sex Museum; the Old West–themed amusement park; the ancient village of Edo, where they still do ninja shows . . . Even all about a “Marijuana Museum.” “Tochigi, Japan’s most amazing prefecture,” the pamphlet declared. I thought back to the pyramids at Chichén Itzá, swarming with vendors; Notre-Dame Cathedral, where they sell souvenirs during mass; the section of the Great Wall of China where they installed a slide for visitors to ride down on little carts. I sat staring straight ahead, eager to get home. When I left Koenji Station, the wind blew a ticket out of a woman’s hand and down a storm drain. It was a moment of revelation, a trip: I was suddenly filled with the words I’ve just written here.

*   *   *

Bibliography

船井幸雄 [Funai Yukio].『悪法! ! 「大麻取締法」の真実』[¡Damn law! The truth about the marijuana prohibition in Japan]. Tokyo: Business-sha, 2012.

Mitchell, Jon. “Cannabis: The Fabric of Japan.” The Japan Times. Accessed 21 Nov. 2016.

長吉 秀夫 [Nagayoshi Hideo].『大麻入門』[Introduction to marijuana]. Tokyo: Gentosha, 2009.

*   *   *

Images courtesy of the author.

Andrea Durlacher Translated by Anna Rosenwong

It’s something no one regrets.

Menacing rituals arrive like an avalanche

and social norms.

Their arrival scares off any afternoon idle.

Shut the doors.

We’re cast down defeated in moonlight.

In turn

the reckoning.

*

I hope the moon

doesn’t draw us toward violent times.

I was never violent

and I won’t turn violent now.

As for you I love you moonless

in the sin of your own courage.

*

The letters of each syllable sink

in my room monsters surge back to life from a word.

Isolated birds

in scattered cages.

I remain.

I regard my thoughts.

Image: Eloisa Ballivian

Juan Gómez Bárcena Translated by Andrea Rosenberg

You go to the window to watch the Neighbor leave. He’s accompanied by two men. They’re wearing hats pulled down tight over their ears and a sort of kerchief or scarf that leaves only their eyes exposed. But you recognize them anyway: you’ve seen them many times under this very window, carrying their portfolios and their leather briefcases. They look like they’re in a hurry, and the Neighbor is practically dragging his leg as he limps along. You watch them head down the street toward the river.

They disappear.

From the other side of the wall, the voice of the Girl again. She switches from world capitals to multiplication tables, where she seems more self-assured and more mechanical, and from there to the right and left tributaries of the Danube, and finally to a long ... Read More »]]>

Juan Gómez Bárcena
Translated by Andrea Rosenberg

You go to the window to watch the Neighbor leave. He’s accompanied by two men. They’re wearing hats pulled down tight over their ears and a sort of kerchief or scarf that leaves only their eyes exposed. But you recognize them anyway: you’ve seen them many times under this very window, carrying their portfolios and their leather briefcases. They look like they’re in a hurry, and the Neighbor is practically dragging his leg as he limps along. You watch them head down the street toward the river.

They disappear.

From the other side of the wall, the voice of the Girl again. She switches from world capitals to multiplication tables, where she seems more self-assured and more mechanical, and from there to the right and left tributaries of the Danube, and finally to a long recitation of Great Moments in the Labor Struggle. She rattles off the publication date of the Communist Manifesto. The martyrs of Chicago. The Odessa uprising. The Winter Palace. A pause, and in that pause, the sound of the door. Guadalajara. Stalingrad. Berlin. The Korean War. Another sound, this time in the hall. It’s the Wife. You’d recognize the tapping of her heels anywhere. She stops on the other side of the door, as if she were about to come in. But why would she, when you’ve still got water, and food, and cigarettes, and the bucket almost untouched—there’s still a while to go before another of those endless days finally comes to an end. That’s when you hear the Girl stop reciting. Or, rather, you stop hearing her, because the sound of water has filled everything. The water, again, lapping at the cold, white surface. The Wife’s sigh. Her clothing coming loose, garment by garment, almost reluctantly, in pauses pervaded by steam and tile. Her bare feet padding toward the water. You hear it all with a new, almost terrifying precision that soars above the sounds issuing from the other side of the window. You realize that the bathroom door must be open. And why wouldn’t it be, since yours is, as usual, closed? You press your ear to the wood to confirm that the Wife has started her bath—her heels ring on the ceramic for a moment, her hands gripping the edges of the tub with a noise like a cephalopod sucker or an amphibian. And then, just as you’re about to hear the rest, all the damp and heat of her body, the voices start. A rising chant. Fevered cheering that seems to come from across the river, with whistles, clapping, and shouts of approval. You attempt to unplait the voices that arrive woven into a uniform murmur, waves that surge and ebb. Voices calling for resignations, voices calling for calm, voices calling for international assistance, voices calling for weapons. They all want the same thing: a country free of Russians and a Russia free of Soviets. That’s what they repeat in a frenzied ovation, and there are so many mouths, and they are shouting so loudly in all directions, that you have no doubt they’ll achieve their aim. Underneath the repeated words, you hear many others that do not repeat. You hear a little boy whose molars are aching. You hear a taxi driver who is honking his horn and the crowd that isn’t moving aside. You hear a dozen radio broadcasts reporting live in different languages and one that is stubbornly repeating the same military fanfare. You hear the ripping sound of a pair of hands tearing up a Party membership card and the swish of scissors slicing through a flag’s hammer and sickle. You hear a soldier loading his weapon. You hear the rustle of a man taking advantage of the crush of the crowd to brush his lover’s waist. You hear seventeen lighters lighting seventeen cigarettes in different spots around Bem Square. You hear one voice that’s cursing God and nine others praying to Him. You hear the poems that a student is reading from a rooftop or a dais. You hear an agent of the secret police who’s asking if it’s time to intervene yet and his sergeant who doesn’t answer or answers with a gesture. You can hear everything. Everything but the Wife’s body. And so you’ve reached out your hand to grasp the door handle, the door handle that seemed all this time like it would burn you but doesn’t.

You open the door.

And then there she is. First her hand, resting on the edge of the tub. A hand that from time to time moves, seems to vibrate, maybe trembles.

A hand shaken by the touch of a thought or a nightmare. The hair loose, tumbling softly. The motionless profile of her face. The closed eyes. You look at those eyes and realize she’s crying. Crying soundlessly. And it’s strange, maybe even impossible, because though you seem to hear the fragile breeze of her respiration, even hear her pulse, muffled through the water, you cannot make out her weeping. Maybe she’s not crying. How could you even discern her tears from here? You see her crying because you think she should be crying. Maybe she’s simply taking a bath, while out on the street everybody is shouting and demanding things you don’t understand.

Slowly she rises from the water, suddenly presenting you with the sight of her naked body. She offers herself to you as if glimpsed through the fog of a dream. A heat spreading through the steam and the hallway: the warmth of her body. And then, when you see her, you suddenly realize that the Wife is no longer the Wife. She’s not that girl who once opened the door to you. She is a woman. A woman who’s gotten her first wrinkles and maybe even her first gray hairs. A woman who is afraid. A woman who cries or who perhaps does not cry. Who has needed all those trays, all those newspapers, that endless ferrying of buckets, to become what she is now. Because you never looked at her—at least not till this moment. You accepted her mugs, her bowls, her basins of water, but you didn’t look at her. You saw her fossilized smile, a smile made of fatigue and time. And now yes, you look at her, now you see her as the woman she’s become, and you even seem to see the man you’ve become. A succession of images and thoughts that flit past in the time it takes for her to reach out her hand and grab the towel. The instant between that movement and the insignificant movement of lifting her face to look at you. Suddenly, her gaze.

And with that gaze, no movement at all. The Wife bears up under the weight of your eyes, her face utterly motionless. As if all her focus were on the other movements: wrapping the towel around herself, drying her hair, shaking first one foot and then the other. She looks at you for a period that seems neither long nor short but simply incomprehensible, almost mineral, like the passing of geological eras. And her gaze, too, seems to be made of stone, looking at you without seeing, without expression, without judgment, and even so it still doesn’t shift away, it remains fixed on you while she dresses slowly, while she adjusts her bra unhurriedly, untrembling, while she pulls up her skirt and almost blindly her hands gather up the garments scattered across the floor. She looks at you as if you were the one made of stone. Perhaps with a hint of curiosity, of the sort aroused by a mute’s first spoken word, even if it is an unforgivable curse or insult that is forgiven all the same. That is how she looks at you during this instant that doesn’t last, this during in which time runs aground, and which nevertheless comes to an end—she slips on her other shoe, turns out the light, and moves off down the hallway without looking back, as if you didn’t exist or as if it were only now that you had begun to exist.

She disappears. And yet she is still there before you, still standing and still naked in the empty bathroom. She is young again. Five, ten, maybe even fifteen years ago. You see her just as she was when you first arrived at the house—though you feel as if no time had gone by, as if that first day had never ended. She is still naked, but she’s no longer standing in the bathroom door. The door isn’t even there yet. Only the steam from the tub or something akin to the steam from the tub remains, plumes of mist rising from the frozen earth. And she is lying on the snow. She is naked and she is also, most certainly, dead. You picture her like that, eternalized in the act of opening her mouth, fossilized by the frost. She’s not alone. All around her are other bodies, women who are naked and dead like her, heaped up on the snow. Suddenly, a sound. A cart approaches, rocking back and forth: two men in prison uniforms are laboriously pushing it. They stop, glance at each other, and walk over to the first body, leaning on their walking sticks. Rising from their mouths is the heat of their breathing, in quick puffs that dissipate in the air. They bend over and start lifting the corpses. Except they’re not corpses—that’s what they’ve been taught. You have to call them shit, dolls, garbage, scarecrows. If anyone messes up and says the word deceased, the word victim, the soldiers flog him with their whips. So that’s what they’re doing now: picking up scarecrows. Later they’ll drink a dish of mud and call it water; they’ll chew a patty of black clay and call it bread. Because they’ve learned that surviving means, above all, knowing the right name for things. They know, for example, that organizing a shirt means stealing it; that you should avoid the prisoners with a green triangle sewn on their uniform but that the ones with a pink triangle or a yellow star are easy to take advantage of; that being chosen in the selections means becoming a scarecrow yourself; that you have to sleep on top of your bowl and spoon to keep others from organizing them in the night; that working in the Kanada section extends your life and shoveling coal shortens it. What they’re doing now has a name too. It’s called cleaning the field, and you have to do it quickly, before the kapo comes over. They’ve also been around long enough to learn the word kapo.

The prisoners—because wearing a striped uniform means being a prisoner, in this language and in every language on earth—start dragging the garbage toward the cart. Each of them takes his own load, just as the soldiers have taught them: all they have to do is place the handle of their walking stick under the chin—the chin of a scarecrow—and pull, pull hard. The heels cut shallow furrows in the snow, which sometimes becomes tinged pink. The dolls seem faintly blue when they’re still lying on the snow, and white when they load them one by one onto the cart. They do it carefully, with something that is akin to consideration or respect, or that maybe is just exhaustion. Five, ten, twelve, twenty scarecrows arranged the way you pile up railroad ties: one going one direction and the next going the other way. Making the most of the space. Those men know what they’re doing, and the cargo seems infinitely light in their hands—forty, maybe thirty-five kilos each. As if they really were stuffed with straw. It’s not a lovely sight: the dolls are broken and dirty, and the men try not to look at them. There’s one that looks like an old woman—with coarse, wrinkled skin—and another that looks like a little girl and a third that’s pregnant like a Russian matryoshka, and also a doll that seems to be missing pieces or to have extras: blotches like dried blood gleam against her white skin. They’re all ugly. They’re all smeared with crusts of mire and ice and have shaved heads. The men lift them as quickly as they can, and when they hoist them into the air, the emaciated arms dangle heavily, slack as a disjointed marionette.

Only the Wife’s body seems unblemished. Only hers seems, in fact, like a body, and one of the prisoners stops short just as it’s her turn. She has her head shaved too and is glowing like plaster, but she doesn’t look like a doll. She is a woman. A beautiful woman, in that contradictory and unbearable way that a corpse can be beautiful. She looks like an actress, a model, a ballerina, with long, sculpted legs hanging in the air: a young bride delivered into her groom’s arms, and the groom hesitating to step over the threshold. Her body is fleshy, inviting, with no cuts on the feet or splatters of mud. Against her white skin, only her nipples stand out, quite red and quite hard, like berries shining in the frost. Seeing her up close, it turns out she’s not the Wife. She can’t be, of course, but even so it’s easy to confuse them. You could say she is the Wife if time were able to run backward. The Wife if, rather than taking a bath, she’d instead expired in the snow. She doesn’t seem to have worn wooden clogs either, or wielded a shovel, or endured a single lash on her back. She’s simply dead, and the prisoner, still hesitant, lifts her into the air. Maybe he thinks she’s too pretty to be a doll, a piece of garbage, a scarecrow. Maybe he’s calculating whether he can load her on top of the others or if doing so will cause the pile to collapse. His uncertainty is almost touching. And she is practically a girl still, with unmarred hands made for embroidering tablecloths or grasping fountain pens. She was young and beautiful in some very distant place, in Greece or Norway, in Spain or Yugoslavia, in France or Russia or Italy, and now there she is, nestled in a stranger’s arms, as if waiting to continue her journey. She must have been a virgin still. And it’s inevitable to imagine the immense effort it required to care for and feed that body for so many years, all her life covering it in dresses and blankets, nightgowns, skirts, stockings, shawls, garters, bracelets, underskirts; warm baths in the tub and Sundays with rouge and perfume. Her mother wrapping her daughter day after day like a gift so that one day she’d find a good husband who’d unhook the clasp of her bra, like a boy tugging on a piñata’s rope. And later discovering that the only thing men wanted was to take her from her village—and maybe that was her very first journey—and pile her into a too-small cart the way you pile logs. Hers is a story that cannot be told, that must not be told, because it ceases to make sense. How could they understand it, those anonymous boys who became men while dreaming of undressing her with their hands, who hid one night below her window to peer in at her in the darkness and catch a glimpse of a breast, a thigh, an ankle, any minuscule portion of her flesh laid bare. Now she’s there, held indifferently aloft, with the secret of her beauty revealed at last and ultimately useless. That nakedness preserved for so long for nobody, now transformed into garbage that everyone avoids looking at or touching. A useless thing that only perplexes the prisoner, who’s wondering whether to pack the cart a little tighter or make a second trip. He, too, is very young. Sixteen, at most seventeen years old, weighing forty-five or a maximum of fifty kilos. Perhaps he, too, is a virgin. This could be the first time he’s touched a naked woman. Maybe he feels disgust or maybe he’s aroused—who knows. Because it’s the first time he’s touched a naked woman, and maybe it’s also the first time he’s touched a dead body. Or maybe he isn’t thinking, isn’t feeling anything. A moment of hesitation, and then a sudden decision: they’ve got to fit in the cart, all twenty-three of them. Let’s cram them in as best we can, or the kapo will punish us for the delay.

Image: “Bricks, Budapest” by Marina Salles

Martín Gambarotta Übersetzt von Timo Berger

Hier ist das Wasser anders, die Schuppenblätter

der Artischocken sind anders, alles ist

im Wesentlichen anders

aber der, der eine Flasche aus dem Kühlschrank fischt

und sie auf die Arbeitsplatte stellt, ist

grundsätzlich derselbe.

*

Ihr, die ihr euch für die Konfrontation

entscheidet, ihr die ihr euch für

die Konfrontation entscheidet, ihr

die ihr euch für die Konfrontation entscheidet

Ihr die ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet, ihr

die ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet, ihr, die

ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr euch für den Zweifel entscheidet, ihr

die ihr für den Zweifel entscheidet, ihr, die ihr für den Zweifel

entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr die für die Anomalie entscheidet, ihr

die ihr für die Anomalie entscheidet, ihr, die ihr für die Anomalie

entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr millimetergenau eure Handlungen

messt, ihr, die ihr millimetergenau

eure Handlungen messt, ihr

eure Handlungen messt.

*

Fünfzehn Monate, drei der Monate

um den Rest der Monate zu entschlüsseln

deine Monate, das ... Read More »]]>

Martín Gambarotta
Übersetzt von Timo Berger

Hier ist das Wasser anders, die Schuppenblätter

der Artischocken sind anders, alles ist

im Wesentlichen anders

aber der, der eine Flasche aus dem Kühlschrank fischt

und sie auf die Arbeitsplatte stellt, ist

grundsätzlich derselbe.

*

Ihr, die ihr euch für die Konfrontation

entscheidet, ihr die ihr euch für

die Konfrontation entscheidet, ihr

die ihr euch für die Konfrontation entscheidet

Ihr die ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet, ihr

die ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet, ihr, die

ihr euch für den Nachhall entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr euch für den Zweifel entscheidet, ihr

die ihr für den Zweifel entscheidet, ihr, die ihr für den Zweifel

entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr die für die Anomalie entscheidet, ihr

die ihr für die Anomalie entscheidet, ihr, die ihr für die Anomalie

entscheidet.

Ihr, die ihr millimetergenau eure Handlungen

messt, ihr, die ihr millimetergenau

eure Handlungen messt, ihr

eure Handlungen messt.

*

Fünfzehn Monate, drei der Monate

um den Rest der Monate zu entschlüsseln

deine Monate, das heißt im Norden der

Monate war nichts.

*

Ich schließ mich der Gewerkschaft

des Zweifels an

ich schließ mich

der Gewerkschaft des Zweifels an

ich schließ mich der Gewerkschaft

des Zweifels an

*

Ihr, die ihr fähig seid zu materialiseren, ihr

die ihr fähig seid, zu materialisieren. Ihr, die ihr fähig seid

zu materialisieren.

*

Ihr, die ihr den Nutzen nicht versteht

stundenlang, ganze Tage Vögel

mit Fernstechern beobachtet zu haben und

ihre Namen in Bestimmungsbücher einzutragen.

*

Die Vogelart

gut zu kennen

bevor man sie benennt

ist die einzig ehrliche

Form

sie zu benennen

als er sah

was vier wilde Papageien

schienen

im rasenden Flug

durch die schütteren Palmen

eines Platzes

und unisono: grüne

Jagdflieger

in Miniatur

Zickzack fliegend

um zusammen Tel Aviv

in den Himmel zu schreiben

konnte er deshalb

die Erfahrung

nicht gut verdauen

*

Der flüchtige Schachspieler in einem Vergnügungspark

Die Haarspalterei verzerrt den Blick

*

Es ist nicht der Moment, die Artischocke

auf eine makellosen Arbeitsplatte aus Edelstahl zu legen

und es ist nicht der Moment zu untersuchen

warum er keine Artischocke

auf die Arbeitsplatte gelegt hat: Es ist nicht der einziehbare Moment

der alles zurückversetzende Moment, der Moment

jedem Monat eine Farbe zuzuweisen

der Moment des schwarzen Lappens, der über

seinem Kopf flattert.

*

Wenn du willst

dass dein Zuhause

Babylon ist

ohne Visum

kannst du nicht

singen

wenn du dich nicht

auf eine Plastikstuhl

setzen möchtest

wenn du singt

gibt man dir kein

Visum.

*

Er ist nicht hier

ist Mazze

holen gegangen

er ist nicht hier

ist für ein Bad

zun Fluss gegangen

er ist nicht hier

ist sich in der Leere

drehen gegangen

er ist nicht hier

ist aus der Kälte

in die Kälte gegangen

* *

Go back to the English

* *

Bilder: Delfina Estrada, “Campo de batalla” [Schlachtfeld]

Carlos Gamerro 

They lived together on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse, both bachelors; lay together; had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same clothes and cloak etc. between them.

—John Aubrey, Brief Lives

ONE 

October to November 1612

Letter from John Fletcher to Francis Beaumont, 31st October 1612.

My dear Damon,

I began work on our Cardenio yesterday with Will, or rather on Will with Cardenio, for I was forced to play the peddler and urge its many virtues and beauties, all but begging him to help me write it: to this state your desertion has brought me. The going was not easy, and he is far from won over yet. The story we so often read to one another with such delight and so dreamed of bringing on the ... Read More »]]>

Carlos Gamerro 

They lived together on the Bankside, not far from the playhouse, both bachelors; lay together; had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same clothes and cloak etc. between them.

—John Aubrey, Brief Lives

ONE 

October to November 1612

Letter from John Fletcher to Francis Beaumont, 31st October 1612.

My dear Damon,

I began work on our Cardenio yesterday with Will, or rather on Will with Cardenio, for I was forced to play the peddler and urge its many virtues and beauties, all but begging him to help me write it: to this state your desertion has brought me. The going was not easy, and he is far from won over yet. The story we so often read to one another with such delight and so dreamed of bringing on the stage, he took as a wary patient will a bitter pill: not to swallow, but to keep in the corner of his mouth, and spit out as soon as the doctor’s back is turned.

We sat in the poet’s nook, chilled to the bone, but the fire was out; darkling, yet no candles were lit; parched, and not a drop to drink; truly it had been a miracle if aught in our imaginations had kindled in a habitation so sober, sombre, and chill. Upon my suggestion we removed to our club-room at the Mermaid, where we warmed our bones by a sea-coal fire aided by two beer-glasses of sack, and talked of friends departed (mainly you, and Ben) and friends dead (mainly Will’s). Master Will Johnson sends his best regards and asks when will you be back with your pots of gold. ’Tis not easy, this having to begin anew; like lying down a scholar and waking up a schoolboy. It took me back to our Philaster days, nay, further back: for I find it hard to think there ever was a time when we two were twain.

But O what remedy. The Winter season is nigh, the Globe will soon close his doors, the Blackfriars open his, you have your wooing to do and your own masque to devise, and I have one more play to complete, which I cannot write on my own. I asked Jack about the contract: he said that as long as the play is ready for the Christmas season, he does not mind if I write it with my dog. I wish we owned one, for I believe his naked paw should prove more instrumental to the task than our friend’s empty glove. I fear me Dick is right: he seems to have lost all his fire for writing, as if his last had gone into the engendering of Caliban and his brood.

But this present burden, which I’ll gladly carry for your sake, dear friend, may prove a benefit in the long run. For who do you think will take his place, when he be gone? Dick loves Ben’s plays, but the bear himself he’ll keep at bay—particularly since Ben tried to school him in the speaking of his verse. Occasion must be seized by the forelock. So what do you say? Shall Olympus by Pelion piled on Ossa be overtopped? What would you rather inherit, a few acres in Kent or the roundness of the Globe?

Joanie bids you be wary of chills, draughts, and wetness, whether from downpours or drabs. She has been much given to moping lately. Yesterday she broke another cup, the one we liked to think of as yours. There will be a new one awaiting your much longed-for return.

Your (fleetingly) faithless shepherd,

Pythias

Conversation between John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Blackfriars Theatre, London, 30th October 1612.

JF: They find him in the bowels of the mountain, thick-bearded, bare-headed, and exceedingly toasted by the sun. A wild man, leaping barefoot from rock to rock, as nimble as a goat and in apparel all torn: but his rags are holland and his tatters velvet and lace. By this they imagine him to be the owner of the dead mule and the rotting portmanteau they found in the ravine. They learn from some local mountaineers that he arrived some six months ago, demanded of them which was the most secret and inaccessible part of the mountain, and has dwelt therein ever since, spending his days in the roaming of the forests and the procurement of bread when he has his wits about him; in the tearing of his hair and the cursing of his fate when he does not. His meat he sometimes begs of the mountaineers with humble and courteous speech, and receives with tears of gratitude; but when he is taken with his fit of madness he will snatch it with curses and thank it with blows. When the knight and his squire finally come upon him he is in one of his meeker, yet not untroubled, moods, for he approaches with much biting of his lips and bending of his brows, muttering to himself and fixing his eyes on the ground. After eating of what Sancho and his master offer, he agrees to tell his story. His name, he tells them, is Cardenio; his place of birth, one of the finest cities of Andalusia; his lineage noble, his parents rich, and his misfortunes so great as neither birthplace, cradle, nor wealth . . .

WS: Spare me, Jack.

JF: I’m sorry. To be brief, then, this Cardenio loves a maid called Lucinda, has loved her since early childhood, she loves him back and is willing to marry him, they are both equally noble and rich, they have secured her father’s consent . . .

WS: So? What stands in the way of their perfect happiness then?

JF: A trifle merely. The girl’s father would have the suit directly breathed to him; by the lad’s father, that is. This condition seeming entirely reasonable and appropriate—Cardenio sets off toward his father’s rooms full of courage and resolve—which presently begin to drain from him, and drop apace, as if the very earth were sucking the blood from his legs. He knows not why, but he fears that his father’s consent, freely offered when unsought, will be, upon the asking, promptly withdrawn; that he will object, if not to the match itself, to the manner, or the occasion, or the wording of the request; the which his mind feverishly begins to rehearse, answering objections yet unborn and parrying the thrust of unsheathed swords. He will be made an object of scorn, and mocked out of his suit, thus: Consent? Why certainly, boy. If you have her consent, why would I deny you mine? I can give as freely as she. My only scruple, dear son, is this: having secured her consent, how, pray, shall you sequester it from the rest of the world? For thou must needs consent that whosoever shall consent to thee will consent to any other as well.

WS: Jack . . .

JF: Yes?

WS: You’ve been writing already.

JF: Well, you know, a line here and there. When they come of their own accord . . .

WS: So why not keep going?

JF: Will, dear Will, sweet Will, you know I don’t like working on my own. I tried it but once, and you saw the result.

WS:I didn’t, but I heard about it. How about The Tamer Tamed? I thought Frank had no hand in it.

JF: We rough-hewed it out between the two. But the actual writing fell to me, yes.

WS: No wonder it was any good. And how goes his new venture? Found he his perfect little heiress yet?

JF: He did. Far from perfect, he says, but better than writing for the stage.

WS: I can see his point. The question still remains, why me? I am not one for this twinned writing, as you might know from Tom.

JF: Who, Kyd? I’ve seen his Spanish Tragedy. Was your hand in it?

WS: No. That was Ben. He added some stuff, and probably scanned the whole for faulty lines. Ha! Tom Kyd, that was a one-hit wonder if I ever saw one. Hieronimo, go by, go by! No, I meant Tom Middleton. We worked together on Timon. So to speak. He’s fast, and needs the money.

JF: He needs it too much.

WS: True. Surfeit makes your poet slothful and hunger makes him overhasty. The happy mean is in slender but sufficient means. What about Jack Webster? Or Ben?

JF: Ben. You want me to write with Ben. I’d rather be yoked head to tail with an angry bull. Or lie in bed with the fretful porpentine.

WS: You’ve had stranger bedfellows.

JF: Now don’t you get started. Go to, Will, you know I’ve always wanted to do this with you.

WS: Not when Frank was around.

JF: That’s different.

WS: In what way?

JF: In as many as you can fancy and I not tell.

WS: Very well then, perhaps there is something you can tell.

JF: That being?

WS: Did Dick send you?

JF: To what end?

WS: You know. Good old Will’s lamp is spent. We must pour some fresh oil into his veins. New ink for old.

JF: Will . . .

WS: His pen will not rise to the occasion. We’ve a shotten playwright on our hands.

JF: You do me wrong, Will.

WS: You’re not answering my question.

JF: ’Tis I will reap the fruits of this our joint labour, I well know that. I know you don’t need me, Will. But I need you. Of course I didn’t when I had Francis. I’ll freely grant you that. But I don’t have him now. Help me out this once and I promise I’ll not trouble you again.

WS: So?

JF: So what?

WS: So what did his father say?

JF: Whose father?

WS: The what’s-his-name. The lad’s. Does he have a name?

JF: Cardenio.

WS: I mean the father.

JF: Not in the book. I thought we might call him Camillo. O, but you’ve used that, or do I mistake? Where was it?

WS: The Winter’s Tale.

JF: To be sure. Of course we can change it if you don’t want to repeat yourself.

WS: Let me warn you, Jack. I’m far from won yet.

JF: But you will be, as soon as you hear the rest. It’s an amazing book, Will. You should read it yourself. Ben has a copy in his library.

WS: He gave you a free pass, did he? Lucky you.

JF: It was Francis wrenched it from him. ’Twas not easy.

WS: Thanks for the offer, Jack, but I have not your Spanish.

JF: O no, before sailing for France he purchased the translation, you know, the one by Thomas Shelton, newly published by Blount.

WS: Who is this Shelton, by the way? Irish, is he?

JF: All too Irish. His brother was hanged for a traitor in one of the Tyrone rebellions, I forget which. He fled to Spain, and studied there. Ben claims to have met him in the Low Countries, says he plies both sides. But you know Ben. Shall I fetch you his copy then?

WS: Not for the moment, thank you. I’d rather hear it from your lips. Let’s get back to the lad and his father then. Was it as bad as he anticipated?

JF: Worse. For Cardenio finds him standing, holding a letter, the which he hands to him. This letter is from the Duke of those parts, and bids Cardenio presently repair to his court, that he might be companion to the Duke’s elder son. Dumbstruck and confounded he takes his leave: he well knows that he can as little oppose his father’s will as his father can the Duke’s; and even had he the courage, how would he be granted his suit, after refusing his father’s, and the Duke’s? Sorely troubled with such thoughts, he repairs to his beloved’s. Here I see a pretty parting scene. I was thinking we could place her on the upper stage and have Cardenio climb up to the balcony . . .

WS: I may have seen it done before.

JF: Where?

WS: A forgotten play. Romeo and Juliet, by one William Shakespeare.

JF: Yes, I seem to remember it. Let them meet on the main stage then, where we’ll have us many tears, oaths, and protestations, much kissing and holding of hands through cruel iron grates, and off he goes. Next scene, he is at the Duke’s. But, surprise! It is not the elder but the younger son of the Duke, Don Fernando, who takes to him, and soon they are the closest of friends.

WS: How close?

JF: Close enough to have no secrets: at least on Don Fernando’s side, for by the sacred laws of amity he holds it not lawful to keep anything concealed from his friend. Cardenio agrees, in so far as it comes to lending ear. When it comes to giving tongue, he’s more remiss.

WS: A lad most prudent.

JF: This being his idea of frankness between friends, when one is vassal and the other lord—a narrow street at best, that allows traffic to go but one way. He thus learns that Don Fernando is in love with a very beautiful, discreet, and honest country wench, of parents low in birth but in fortunes wondrous rich.

WS: Always a good combination.

JF: He woos her with all the enticements that wit and lust together can devise, but seeing that none will persuade her to surrender her fortified castle, at last he resolves to ask her hand in marriage. Cardenio does his utmost to dissuade him, but seeing all his entreaties fall on deaf ears, he determines to acquaint the Duke with his son’s purpose.

WS: Some friend.

JF: He’s a lad will stand in awe of authority, ’twould seem. Anyway, Don Fernando prevents this by suggesting they repair to Cardenio’s city, telling his father it is to see and price certain horses, and his friend that he is determined to follow his counsel and forget the wench. In this, at least, he did but speak the truth.

WS: Meaning?

JF: He had already enjoyed her.

WS: I’m beginning to like him. Why not make him the hero of the piece?

JF: Is that an offer?

WS: More like a thought.

JF: It sounded like an offer to me.

WS: When I’m making one, I promise you’ll be the first to know.

JF: Thanks. Vouchsafe me the lighting of this match. Will you have any?

WS: I’m no great lover of tobacco, as you well know.

JF: This is your right Trinidado, it beats your Sancto Domingo and your Nicotian any day of the week.

WS: Very good for choking a man and filling him with soot, I’m sure. Pray proceed.

JF: Cardenio is of course delighted, as this not only offers him a way out of his perplexity but allows him speedy passage back to his beloved. So overjoyed is he, that on the way, and following that very same law of friendship that Don Fernando had previously invoked, he tells him all about his love for Lucinda, dilating on her beauty, wit, and discretion, thereby stirring in Don Fernando a great desire to view a damsel so richly endowed.

WS: I think I begin to see where this is going.

JF: By the light of yond same candle you will.

WS: And what candle might that be?

JF: The same one Cardenio, at his friend’s entreaty, holds to Lucinda’s figure and face, while they converse together at their usual window and Don Fernando, a silent witness to their tryst, hides in her garden and gapes, ravished and beside himself. Henceforward he will let no moment pass without making some mention of Lucinda, begs of Cardenio that he should let him read all missives passing between them, and will not suffer the two lovers to meet unless he be privy to their every word and deed. Perusing one of their letters, Don Fernando learns that Cardenio has not yet secured his father’s consent, and offers to speak for him; to the which offer Cardenio readily consents, near to weeping with joy and relief; so, when Don Fernando asks him to repair to the Duke his father’s to obtain some money for the horses he means to purchase, he is filled with joy at being able to repay with so small a favour his friend’s great boon. Back at the Duke’s, Don Fernando’s elder brother bids Cardenio wait at court until the brother can raise the money for the horses, and still he will obey, and still will not suspect, until, on the fourth or fifth day, a man from his city arrives at the door of his chamber, bearing a letter endorsed in a hand he knows all too well, and it is with badly shaking fingers that he manages to open the letter and discover what the whole playhouse, save himself, has guessed by now: as soon as Cardenio was out of the way, Don Fernando approached Lucinda’s father and demanded the maiden for his wife; and the good man had agreed to his demand, in so good earnest that the wedding was to take place before two days. At this, Cardenio feels entitled to depart without requesting the brother’s permission—

WS: How very daring of him. The mouse has sprouted a lion’s mane.

JF: —and, riding like the wind, he arrives at his own city in time to find Lucinda in her wedding weeds, sitting behind their wonted iron grate. She weeps for joy, for her greatest fear was, she says, to depart this world without ever seeing him again. When he asks her what she means by this, she shows him a poniard she carries about her with which, should all her reasons and persuasions fail, she will, by taking her own life, put an end to Don Fernando’s intent. Then she is called away: the bridegroom awaits. Cardenio manages to steal into the house unseen, and, concealing himself behind a piece of tapestry, he makes ready to be witness to either her treachery or her faith. He watches Don Fernando strut into the hall, in his best array; and then Lucinda walks in, richly decked in carnation and white. Never before had she seemed more beautiful to him than now that he is about to lose her to one of his two rivals, his treacherous friend or death.

WS: And he is actually hoping she will stab herself.

JF: It would seem so.

WS: Interesting. And does she?

JF: He closes his eyes for a second and can actually see, vividly, the swift flash of her blade, her silent collapse into the folds of her crumpled dress. So when he hears her dismayed and languishing “I will,” he at first thinks his ears have deceived him, as well as the eyes that open to see Don Fernando slide onto her willing finger the golden ring. At this she falls, as if struck by a bolt from heaven, and when somebody, let it be her father, or some nurse, unclasps her bosom, out falls a folded paper which Don Fernando seizes on and reads, seemingly indifferent to his wife’s fate. Taking advantage of the uproar, Cardenio adventures to steal away, bearing the resolution, if he were perceived, to do such things as all the world should understand the just indignation of his breast.

WS: Of course he would. Too bad his chance always seems to slip away.

JF: Away he goes, unseen and unheard, recovers his mule, rides out of the city, and travels all night. By dawn he reaches the mountains, through which he travels at random for three days, until his mule falls dead under him, to rid itself, he believes, of so vile and unprofitable a burden as he. And in such solitudes he has dwelt ever since. The shepherds that feed their flocks in the mountains, moved by charity, provide his sustenance and musical accompaniment to his sonnets and songs, which he either sings in a plaintive voice or engraves on the rinds of trees—

WS: Tarry a little. Did I hear rightly? Flocks? Shepherds? Sonnets? You are not thinking of writing another pastoral, are you, Jack?

JF: I would not call it a pastoral, not exactly—

WS: I’m out.

JF: Will, listen, it’s just a couple of scenes—one.

WS: No, you listen to me. And look at me. In the eye. No more sonneteering shepherds, or shepherdesses, faithful or otherwise. No more sheep. Not even a strand of wool.

JF: This by the man who wrote that wonderful scene with Perdita, Autolycus, and—

WS: That’s just it. That was a pastoral scene to end all pastoral scenes. Well, at least it was longer than most—except, of course, whole pastoral plays like yours. When I managed to put an end to it I swore, on my mother’s grave, and on my father’s, and on my brothers’—

JF: I’ll tell you what. I’ll do them.

WS: Jack, why do this to yourself?

JF: I know not what you mean.

WS: Who’s going to write the commendatory verses this time? Ben is away, and Frank appears to have other concerns, and it would not look good if I did, being second father to the piece—that, if you manage to talk me into it, your prospects not appearing to be the best since the bleating began.

Ed Thompson: Master Shakespeare . . .

WS: What now?

Ed Thompson: The players are ready, sir.

WS: What is it to me? It was Dick’s turn today. Is he not here?

Ed Thompson. No, sir.

WS: Why, a pox on him! Where is he?

Ed Thompson: I don’t know, sir.

WS: Jack, let me sort this out, and as soon as I do, let us away from here, somewhere far where I can least be found when I am needed most.

* *

Cardenio, which centers on Shakespeare’s mythical lost work, was written originally in English and then translated into Spanish by the author. The novel was published in 2016 by Editorial Edhasa.

* *

Image: Jorge Macchi, “The Speakers Corner”

Martín Gambarotta Translated by Alexis Almeida

Here, the water is different, the artichoke

leaves are different, everything is

in essence, different,

but he who takes the bottle from the refrigerator

and puts it on the table is

basically the same

*

You who choose

confrontation, you who choose

confrontation, you

who choose confrontation.

You who choose reverberation, you

who choose reverberation, you who

choose reverberation.

You who choose dubitation, you

who choose dubitation, you who choose

dubitation.

You who choose anomaly, you

who choose anomaly, you who choose

anomaly.

You who measure your actions

milimetrically, you who measure

your actions milimetrically, you

who measure you actions milimetrically.

*

Fifteen months, three of those months

to decode the rest of the months

your months, which is to say north of those

months there was nothing.

*

You who are able to materialize, you

who are able to materialize. You who are able

to materialize.

*

You who don’t understand the benefit

of having spent long hours, entire days

with binoculars watching birds and

recording their names ... Read More »]]>

Martín Gambarotta
Translated by Alexis Almeida

Here, the water is different, the artichoke

leaves are different, everything is

in essence, different,

but he who takes the bottle from the refrigerator

and puts it on the table is

basically the same

*

You who choose

confrontation, you who choose

confrontation, you

who choose confrontation.

You who choose reverberation, you

who choose reverberation, you who

choose reverberation.

You who choose dubitation, you

who choose dubitation, you who choose

dubitation.

You who choose anomaly, you

who choose anomaly, you who choose

anomaly.

You who measure your actions

milimetrically, you who measure

your actions milimetrically, you

who measure you actions milimetrically.

*

Fifteen months, three of those months

to decode the rest of the months

your months, which is to say north of those

months there was nothing.

*

You who are able to materialize, you

who are able to materialize. You who are able

to materialize.

*

You who don’t understand the benefit

of having spent long hours, entire days

with binoculars watching birds and

recording their names in a notebook.

*

To know the species

of the bird well

before naming it

is the only honest

way to name

it

so when he saw

what seemed to be

four wild

parrots in a low

flight between the thin

palms in the plaza

in unison: four green

fighter-bombers

in miniature

zig-zagging

as if to write Tel Aviv

together in the air

I couldn’t

digest well

the experience

*

The fugitive chess player in an amusement park.

The trichotomy that distorts sight.

*

It’s not the moment for putting the artichoke

on an immaculate metal table

and it’s not the moment for digressions

about why he didn’t put the artichoke

on the table; it’s not the retractable moment

the regressing moment for everything, the moment

to assign a color to every month

the moment of the flaming black rag

over his head.

*

If you want

your house to be

Babylon

without a visa

you can’t

sing

if you don’t want

to sit in a

plastic chair

if you sing

they won’t give you a

visa.

*

He’s not here

he went to buy

unleavened bread

he’s not here

he went to bathe

in the river

he’s not here

he went to rotate

in the void

he’s not here

he went from the cold

into the cold

Image: Delfina Estrada, “Battlefield”

Anja Kampmann

About the Sea

The horizon is the concern here the

distance applying color the bright crackling

of surfaces of light and the spreading

of the light as it surges the sea

within its broad chest the putrid sludge

of the fishmeal factories the sea of romantic

fires on the gravel beaches travelers

now losing themselves forever

in a distant view the sea in the harbors, the docks

the container areas licking the sea

beneath cranes all heaving the

homesickness nightwards the sea of moray eels

lurking back behind a rock

the sea of the deep with a hidden image

for the dreams of the sea

that vanished in the sea bottomless

the trenches above it all a mosaic of flakes

streaming tough thick field of dirt the sea

that is so well concealed gasping for air within

its broad chest and snatching at

itself.

translation: Wieland Hoban

*

borderland

we had thaws in the brighter hours

we knew no cold only the ladders

led ... Read More »]]>

Anja Kampmann

About the Sea

The horizon is the concern here the

distance applying color the bright crackling

of surfaces of light and the spreading

of the light as it surges the sea

within its broad chest the putrid sludge

of the fishmeal factories the sea of romantic

fires on the gravel beaches travelers

now losing themselves forever

in a distant view the sea in the harbors, the docks

the container areas licking the sea

beneath cranes all heaving the

homesickness nightwards the sea of moray eels

lurking back behind a rock

the sea of the deep with a hidden image

for the dreams of the sea

that vanished in the sea bottomless

the trenches above it all a mosaic of flakes

streaming tough thick field of dirt the sea

that is so well concealed gasping for air within

its broad chest and snatching at

itself.

translation: Wieland Hoban

*

borderland

we had thaws in the brighter hours

we knew no cold only the ladders

led high and higher into the tree where the fruit

hung in groups the leaves scented the thinner branches

only so much was left of the view weariness

in your bones on the scale the hours were

measured the sun lay in all the reddish skin

we collected in the border region only the hollow

bucket full in which memory dwelt a

reddish ground next to the trees like clamor

as the sun finally declined.

translation: Anne Posten

 
*

of kaliningrad you kept

the semolina pudding the tin pot in the morning

at boarding school the dogs the wild ones with broken

tails and finally a ship

that came toward you distant and far later

in the harbor the shadows of caps broke

the view broke behind collars

the weeks out between war and marine

lay miles up sea and halls so narrow

and potatoes so many and only

the screeching of gulls.

translation: Anne Posten

*

Lightly

is summer

distance writes

the letters of your memory

with a light touch

While a certain Ferris wheel

lifts gondola after gondola

into the air

So too is the night

namely the rising

of an approximate language

condensed water

and so are the days

namely more like forgetting

the averted glance when

the early evening soaks into your clothes

the transitions to earlier

which you become

more like. Drifting on this old steamship toward the Atlantic, Cuba

so are the days

lightly –

the gondolas fall

fall like each step

type cases with dried moths

a collection

that fades away like a whipcrack in the dark.

translation: Anne Posten

* *

Read this in German

* *

Images: courtesy of Frank Berendt

Anja Kampmann

Versuch über das Meer

Es soll um den Horizont gehen den

Farbauftrag der Ferne das helle Knistern

der Flächen von Licht und die Verbreitung

des Lichts wie es sich aufbäumt das Meer

in seiner weiten Brust der Faulschlamm

der Fischmehlfabriken das Meer der romantischen

Feuer an den Kiesstränden Reisende

die sich für immer verlieren

in einer Aussicht das Meer in den Häfen, den Docks

den Containerarealen das Meer züngelnd

unter Kränen die nachtwärts

das Heimweh hieven das Meer der Muränen

lauernd hinter einem Stein

das Meer der Tiefe verborgen ein Suchbild

für die Träume vom. Meer

die im Meer verschwunden sind grundlos

die Gräben darüber ein Mosaik aus Flocken

strömendes zähes Feld aus Dreck das Meer

das so gut verborgen ist japsend nach Luft in

seiner weiten Brust nach sich selbst

schnappend.

*

grenzland

wir haben tauwetter für die helleren stunden

wir haben keine kälte gekannt nur die leitern

führten hoch und höher in den baum wo die früchte

in gruppen hingen ... Read More »]]>

Anja Kampmann

Versuch über das Meer

Es soll um den Horizont gehen den

Farbauftrag der Ferne das helle Knistern

der Flächen von Licht und die Verbreitung

des Lichts wie es sich aufbäumt das Meer

in seiner weiten Brust der Faulschlamm

der Fischmehlfabriken das Meer der romantischen

Feuer an den Kiesstränden Reisende

die sich für immer verlieren

in einer Aussicht das Meer in den Häfen, den Docks

den Containerarealen das Meer züngelnd

unter Kränen die nachtwärts

das Heimweh hieven das Meer der Muränen

lauernd hinter einem Stein

das Meer der Tiefe verborgen ein Suchbild

für die Träume vom. Meer

die im Meer verschwunden sind grundlos

die Gräben darüber ein Mosaik aus Flocken

strömendes zähes Feld aus Dreck das Meer

das so gut verborgen ist japsend nach Luft in

seiner weiten Brust nach sich selbst

schnappend.

*

grenzland

wir haben tauwetter für die helleren stunden

wir haben keine kälte gekannt nur die leitern

führten hoch und höher in den baum wo die früchte

in gruppen hingen das laub roch die dünneren zweige

nur so viel blieb von der aussicht dir müdigkeit

in den knochen auf der waage wurden die stunden

vermessen die sonne lag in all der rötlichen schale

wir sammelten in dem grenzgebiet nur die hohlen

eimer voll in denen die erinnerung hauste ein

rötlicher boden neben den bäumen wie gebrüll

als die sonne sich schließlich neigte.

*

du hast von kaliningrad

den grießbrei behalten der blechtopf am morgen

im internat die hunde die wilden mit gebrochenen

schwänzen und schließlich ein schiff

das dir entgegen kam entfernt und weit später

im hafen die schatten der mützen brachen

den blick brachen hinter den kragen

die wochen auf zwischen krieg und marine

lagen meilen auf see und gänge so schmal

und kartoffeln so viele und nur

das geschrei von den möwen.

*

Leichthin

ist der Sommer

Ferne schreibt

die Buchstaben deines Gedächtnisses

mit leichter Hand

Während ein einzelnes Riesenrad

Gondel um Gondel

in die Luft steigen lässt

So ist auch die Nacht

nämlich das Aufsteigen

einer ungefähren Sprache

Kondenswasser

und so sind die Tage

nämlich ähnlicher dem Vergessen

dem Abwenden des Blicks wenn

der frühe Abend die Kleider durchdringt

die Übergänge ins Vorhin

dem du ähnlicher

wirst. Abtreiben auf diesem alten Dampfer in Richtung Atlantik, Cuba

So sind Tage

leichthin -

fallen die Gondeln

fallen wie jeder Schritt

Setzkästen mit getrockneten Faltern

eine Sammlung

die wie ein Schnalzen in der Dunkelheit verklingt.

* *

Go back to the English

* *

Bilder: Frank Berendt

Gabriela Poma

The sleeping pills had finally worn off.

Her left eye opened, a slit, and she remembered to breathe.

Yo no entiendo nada de esto.

The world seemed on its side, wrong, as she viewed it then.  Everything around her was new and nothing really belonged to her and, yet, she had to make it all familiar.

She scanned the room—

a recliner next to the window, the television still on, the armoire, two lamps, the ordinary bedding, the awful green carpet, the silver-streaked wallpaper with silhouettes of sleek bamboo shafts.

She had taken an inventory of all the things in the bedroom and repeated the order back to herself over and over again.  Then, she noticed her rings scattered like rolled dice on one of the bedside tables.  It was all there they way she’d left it the night before.

Her eyes ... Read More »]]>  

Gabriela Poma

The sleeping pills had finally worn off.

Her left eye opened, a slit, and she remembered to breathe.

Yo no entiendo nada de esto.

The world seemed on its side, wrong, as she viewed it then.  Everything around her was new and nothing really belonged to her and, yet, she had to make it all familiar.

She scanned the room—

a recliner next to the window, the television still on, the armoire, two lamps, the ordinary bedding, the awful green carpet, the silver-streaked wallpaper with silhouettes of sleek bamboo shafts.

She had taken an inventory of all the things in the bedroom and repeated the order back to herself over and over again.  Then, she noticed her rings scattered like rolled dice on one of the bedside tables.  It was all there they way she’d left it the night before.

Her eyes finally settled on particles of dust slowly descending from the curtain rails, glistening in the sunlight.

How to face the day, this first day of a new life.

She kept the weekend bag next to the bed, just as she’d kept it next to their bed back home.  It was packed with a change of clothes, a shawl, a bottle of Fidji, some toiletries, the essentials.  It reminded her of the place she’d just left, where she’d waited for news of his release, ready with that bag to leave in an instant, to get him to safety, to nurse him back to health, so that life could continue to be as it was meant to be.

But this was the first day of a new life, and she was alone in a strange place, Florida, with two small children.

She thought of the last note her father-in-law had received from him, and which she had memorized, dated January 25.

Querido papá,

La letra me sale bastante mal porque tengo la mano dormida. Como deseo
que esta nota te llegue hoy la haré breve.  He recibido muy buen trato aunque ya
deseo estar en casa.  Espero que todas las negociaciones vayan viento en popa.
Abrazos cariñosos para todos y para Lucía y mis hijos mil besos.

Roberto

She remembered to breathe again and lifted herself up from the crisp, foreign bedding that held her. She decided to begin.

They kept saying that he had left a wife and two children, a boy and a girl, and oh, what a pity! So young and full of promise.
What would become of them now? 


They would spend their lives looking for a reference.

There was that photograph taken by the press, of the young wife leading her children down the front steps of their house to an idling car. She was pony-tailed and wearing that navy blouse with the pointed collar, a long denim skirt, tall wedges on her manicured feet, no sleep, no make-up, so young, still beautiful, looking down.

The children, too, were looking down, their heads heavy with their honeyed hair, straw- like, just like their mother, in a stupor, eyes creased because of the sun.

Everything in that photograph is pointing down: the eyes, the hair, the mouths, their shoulders, their silence, their hearts closing up slowly, and then tight. Tightly shut and as if recoiled, sealed.

Leave them alone.

Leave them alone forever, the image seems to say.

Their mother smoked long cigarettes.

She’d stare out through the wall of the kitchen into the den, into the dining room, into her bedroom, between the hallway bookshelves, into the bathroom next to the children’s bedrooms, through the window and out into the yard, through the hibiscus bushes, the fence, the neighbor’s pool, around the chimney on the neighbor’s roof and into the vast, open sky.

She’d stare into her thoughts with her large wintry eyes, in silence, one leg crossing the other, kicking out, moving the stale air in the kitchen of their new home, far from the initial apartment where they’d first landed, this constant ticking of impatience and fear, with her feet marking time.

She still waited for something to change, for a phone call, for an end to all of this, for some repose, for permission to go home to the way things were, for a reservation to be made, for a winning number, for the magic wand.

For someone to take care of it!

Y quién soy ahora?

 Was she a widow, a wife? In her mind, she was still married.

The three of them sat around the wooden dining table, eating slowly and in morsels, speaking fragments of sentences, the girl usually silent, the boy nurturing a nascent violence.

Steam would rise up from the teakettle, like the fog in Panchimalco, where they had played and looked for each other as part of a game, pretending to be lost.

To distract themselves, while they waited for news of their father, they would leave San Salvador and go to La Libertad.

At night, the garden by the sea would be full of fireflies.

The children would chase and catch the fireflies with gentle claps and place them in old glass jars with holes on their tin tops. They would try to read by the light of the makeshift lamps, then tell each other made-up stories as the light of dying insects began to fade.

The ocean air was thick with salt and stung their eyes, the salt crusting on their cheeks and arms. The children would make their way to the pool, peeling the paper-like bark of the jiote trees, carefully stepping over any dormant ant hills.

There they stood, together, having reached the best-lit section of the grounds, and they’d let themselves glow beneath the moon and splashes of stars.

The toads suddenly croaked and, fittingly, the children feared their milky poison.

The ocean was strange, what it provoked.

They were easily confused by so much mystery, and they longed for morning, when they thought they had seen him again there, appearing in the thorny patches of grass and amidst the plague of butterflies, or there!

diving

into the stillness of the pool,

or

lying in a hammock,

reading thick books.

They were always going away, the mother and the children, to wait for him somewhere else.

Or so it seemed.

To visit her relatives in Managua.

To a farm for a couple of days.

To a friend’s house in Panchimalco for the weekend, the children playing in the thick fog that rolled from the sides of the volcano, in slow,

deep

breaths.

And then, one day, they went away for good.

Their mother got help to pack everything in the house they had rented while their father was still alive.

They gave their dog away and sent their cuyo to the local zoo. Doors shut, the pool was drained, the curtains drawn, key chains rattled and locks bolted, books were taken down from shelves and put in labeled boxes, their father’s clothing was distributed among various charities.

Certain things were kept and stored in a room: the sports jerseys and the polo mallets, old love letters to their mother carefully separated into tidy bundles tied with ribbons and folded neatly into plastic bags, photographs and trophies, school notebooks with his early penmanship, his shoes, the architectural renderings of the house they had planned to build, a California ranch-style house with bedrooms for more children and a great clearing.

The house would have been next to his brother’s, on a quiet, dimly-lit hill that, at night, rolls towards the bright lights of the sprawling city.

When she wasn’t being quiet, the girl wrote poetry. Innocent haikus about birds in flight and hot-air balloons over faraway prairies.

Always about leaving.

She wrote a short story about time travel that won first prize at the local fair.

Did anyone notice?

How could it be that this child felt so young and so old at once?

And how was it that, when she stood still, she felt the totality of her small life envelop her. The weight of it would wear out her tiny bones, her side would ache with longing, even her ribcage felt the inadequacy of her breathing,

as if it were detached from the rest of her body,

as if it had a life of its own.

While their father was still alive, they escaped the city every weekend and drove west on a narrow, trafficked road that emptied as it widened out and approached the coast.

The road would be level, then suddenly point up, wrapping itself around orange-colored hills that had been carved out of mountains to create these paths- dangerously slim corridors running through a fusion of bare trees and lifeless shrub.

Eventually, their car sped by the Cristo Negro shrine where piles of rocks lay roadside, accumulating from continual landslides during the rainy seasons, and the children eased into their seats as if finishing a rollercoaster ride.

Their father whistled while the radio station went in and out of frequency and he would steer with his knees, no hands, as he popped a piece of gum into his mouth, or rustled his hair with his fingertips, or caressed her kneecap.  He drove through the port town of La Libertad and stopped at a cooperative where their mother bought fresh oysters, a bag of peeled green mango in salted lime juice, lottery tickets, water wings, honey-flavored candy and a homemade kite.

As they traveled over cement bridges, the same river flowed below, dotted with women washing clothes.  Their long, shiny, black hair appeared like mirrors within mirrors, as they turned their heads against the reflecting water. The women’s arms pushed and pulled in swift strokes on the peaked surface of rocks, the scent of musk and moss and earth collecting under pavement, revealing a beguiling other world scooped out for the children to witness, always the same, reliable, beneath the bridges.

First, they lived in a building in the downtown section of Miami. The building was one of four, building B. The others were known as A, C and D- each letter corresponding to the name of an island. Building B, Barbados, became their temporary home, so they thought- a transitional respite meant to soothe them and tend their grief while they waited for a signal to return home.

In the meantime, the children organized parties in a room in the building’s lobby, adult-like parties with bags of ice and extra-large paper cups, strobe lights and slow dancing in the dark. They stole lollipops or guava paste from the downstairs grocer and raced bicycles on a dusty track near the Lutheran church. They wrote foul words on the dirty windows of parked cars with their soft fingertips and pushed the emergency button in elevators to keep them from running. They made crank calls and thought about the many ways they could exit the building in case of a flood or hurricane.

They made friends.

Some days, they would go to the hairdresser’s with their mother to watch over her – a fort, no trespassing, a ring of fire around her and legions of angels. The hairdresser wore roller-skates and had a longhaired dog. Their mother laughed out loud at his whispered jokes, her legs crossing and ticking with anticipation, then coming apart as her mouth opened wide and her head tilted back. Then, her legs would entwine with a sigh, finishing up the laugh a significantly long time after the punch line had been muttered. Their mother surprised the children with her gestures and her laughter, so abrupt and unusual. Her jumping eyes looked here and there in quick spurts, agitated, becoming wet when they settled and emptying as they closed.

Water rushed and drained. The on and off of blowers reminded the children of flickering Christmas tree lights or of Stop! and Go!, Yes! and No!. The drone of the vacuum cleaner echoed through the smell of cigarette ash, coffee creamer, old magazines, dye and cut hair. The children liked all the activity, the buzzing around them: fast, busy, numbing.

Women there marveled at the color of their hair—that threaded gold of childhood. The women asked for coloring like theirs, coveting that glow, the deceptive youthfulness around their faces that, depending on the angle, began to show a fading and give away hints of another time.

The children would leave the hairdresser’s wiping down the fronts of their overalls, pleased at having fulfilled their obligation to keep watch over their mother while trying to erase the trail of strange desires that the place had elicited in them and that had left its imprint on their play clothes.

At night, in the apartment, the children prayed together, looking out the sliding glass door at the brightest star, which they pretended was their father. It was not only the brightest, but also the closest.

They shared a room and the sliding glass door led to a balcony overlooking Biscayne Bay, where they watched planes coming into the city or leaving it. At night, the airplanes looked like gliding stars slowly tracing an invisible line in the sky. During the day, the planes seemed to spray dissolving, white cotton in their wake, against the construction paper blue of midmorning, or the dull gray of some afternoons.

There was a certain hour of the day that the children didn’t care for because it reminded them of having boarded an airplane with their mother, in a rush.

Usually, the children were at school when that hour came, and if they weren’t, they would try to make themselves fall asleep then, unable to withstand the swaying inside that made them shudder. The girl’s fingers would curl into themselves while she rotated her hands together, as if washing them.

The late afternoon would come, then dusk, then night. And the children would be glad for it.

They prayed together before falling asleep. They got ready for bed, taking comfort in each other, in the verses they would swap, in the collective -Amen! – then the reverential nod forward. They would untuck the bedding from beneath the mattresses, peer inside their shared closet, under their beds. Before they turned the lights out, they made sure all the doors were locked, the one leading into their bedroom and the one leading out to the balcony, framing a swollen sky replete with stars and airplanes.

The boy usually woke up in the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep again unless the girl held him, rocked him, even if she didn’t sleep enough, even if, the following morning, she had trouble waking up.

Their mother was readying for a get-together at the apartment.

She stood in front of the marble-topped vanity in the master bath and placed her makeup bag out in front of her; the plastic covered one with tiny bouquets of purple flowers against a white backdrop. The vanity had a mirror that covered the entire wall above it, and the mirror had a straight line of large, round opaque light bulbs on its upper border, like a showgirl’s dressing room. Beneath the light bulbs and the mirror were two sinks; one was never used and at times collected a thin film of translucent dust.

Their mother brought out her brushes and did her eyes.  She was wearing denim tailored pants, a stiff-collared safari style shirt and high-heeled shoes with tortoiseshell buckles at the tips.  She slowly twirled the clasp of a necklace until it was secure, dabbed Fidji on her neck and arms, slid a small brush through her wavy, golden bob, ran her index finger along one thick eyebrow, then the other, took two steps back from the mirror for one last look, puckered her lips to enhance her cheekbones and walked into the living room, with its lacquered block tables, their father’s sculpture of a horse next to a lush fern and silver bowl filled with walnuts.  At the opposite corner of the room, an étagère displayed a figurine of a golden hen and a cigar box, creating balance, drawing in the eye.

She methodically set out bottles and glasses on a bar cart alongside pale blue linen napkins embroidered with elephants, miniature ashtrays, a bucket of ice, wedges of lime. Her fingers then trailed across the records that she kept in an acrylic record holder, choosing one, putting it on, moving to the music, one wrist against the other, ready to clap, her eyes closed, her lips mouthing the words, “I love the night life, I’ve got to boogie…”

* *

Image: Gabriela Poma

Patricia Marechal

The story of Widener Library starts with a tragedy. Widener is not only a place of study and one of the largest reservoirs of books and periodicals in the world, it’s also a memorial. The act of devotion of a mother who lost her son in the Titanic shipwreck. A real Trauerarbeit. Harry Elkins Widener, Harvard class of 1907, loved and collected books. Upon his death, his mother decided to donate his enviable collection, plus a considerable amount of money, to build what today is Harvard’s most impressive library. Widener is both the geographical and symbolic center of Harvard University, and the building that every tourist wants to see. One cannot climb the thirty steps of Widener’s broad front stairs without having to dodge a tourist guide immersed in the act of narrating the tragedy of the ... Read More »]]>

Patricia Marechal

The story of Widener Library starts with a tragedy. Widener is not only a place of study and one of the largest reservoirs of books and periodicals in the world, it’s also a memorial. The act of devotion of a mother who lost her son in the Titanic shipwreck. A real Trauerarbeit. Harry Elkins Widener, Harvard class of 1907, loved and collected books. Upon his death, his mother decided to donate his enviable collection, plus a considerable amount of money, to build what today is Harvard’s most impressive library. Widener is both the geographical and symbolic center of Harvard University, and the building that every tourist wants to see. One cannot climb the thirty steps of Widener’s broad front stairs without having to dodge a tourist guide immersed in the act of narrating the tragedy of the Widener family. It’s hard to blame the overeager undergraduates that officiate as amateur guides for their excitement. How to avoid the temptation of mentioning the story of the library’s birth? It’s simply too good to be true. An aura of personal heroism, or madness, surrounds the building: legend has it that Harry Widener was about to step into a lifeboat when he remembered that he’d left behind a rare copy of Bacon’s Essais that he’d purchased in his travels around the Old Continent. So he went back to recover it, and in that attempt he “lost the boat” and his life. In other words, books killed Harry.

As impressive as the Titanic itself, Widener emerges from the heart of the so-called New Yard, an area adjacent to the old university campus where the first buildings of Harvard College, which date back to 1636, are located. Is Widener Library the most emblematic building of the New England red-brick campus? Perhaps on its best days. The building that stood out to my eyes when I first arrived was Memorial Church, right opposite Widener Library. “Universities here have churches,” I worried. My worries only increased when I came to realize that, while Memorial Church has its doors open to all, accessing Widener Library is not so easy. In fact, it’s almost as difficult to “get in” as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. To access Widener one has to pass a guarded gate wielding a Harvard ID that few possess. Harvard students like to contrast the restrictive access of their library with the democratic “all-welcome” policy of Harvard’s Cambridge cousin, and at times rival, MIT. But this is merely the tip of the iceberg that serves as illustration and summarizes the Harvardian lifestyle.

If you are one of the chosen few, once you get in Widener its imperial style salutes you. Immediately you find yourself in a panoptic hall where you have to choose your own adventure: periodicals at your right, stacks at your left, and majestic marble stairs at the front, leading to a special room with a Gutenberg bible and copies of the first folio of Shakespeare. Like the Titanic, Widener has several levels. Above the ground, the splendor and poshness of the reading rooms and exhibition halls dominate. Two First World War murals by John Singer Sargent stand at the sides of the main exhibition room. Incised below one is the motto “Happy those who with a glowing faith in one embrace clasped Death and Victory.” Below the other, “They crossed the sea crusaders keen to help. The nations battling in a righteous cause.” In both an American eagle spreads its wings. As a scholar, the link between victory and death seems a ghastly prospect. Even more discouraging is the strong suspicion that one’s dissertation is far from being worthy of the label “righteous cause.” All in all, the eagle speaks to me more of Prometheus’ punishment than of glory.

The next level is below the ground. Unbeknownst to those who see it from the outside, there is a subterranean Widener: a labyrinth of tunnels where most of the collection of books is stored. To look for a volume, scholars have to descend deep down and cross narrow paths illuminated by dim artificial lights, impregnated by the rancid smell of moss and enclosed spaces, and transversed by rusty leaking pipes. The infra-world of Widener’s arteries hosts the stacks of books, stored in pliable metallic book-shelves that, to gain space, fold and unfold like an accordion. At the pressing of a button, hundreds of dusty books are revealed and become illuminated by tenuous lights hanging from the roof. I often feel as if I were in some 1940’s archive of a noir film secret police. When the shelves display their fruits, one rejoices by the finding of an eighteenth century copy of Anacreon, or a bilingual edition of Petrarch. Once the coveted issue has been found, one is ready to emerge, treasure in hand, to the luminous, sunlit exuberance of the reading-room paradise. The return from the nerdy Hades comforts and cures momentary claustrophobia: students are once again able to breath clean aristocratic air.

But the reading rooms are not always a recovered paradise for the regulars of Widener Library. For most of its inhabitants, the feeling is of purgatory. Doctoral students populate the large halls, which are lit by lamps with cliché darkened green or golden glass shades. One can smell the anxiety of “dissertating.” Open-ended writings that never seem satisfactory, piles of reserved books that always multiply like the bread and fish, but often offer no nourishment, frantic hands scanning hundreds of pages in vain. Looks of support between students mix with gazes of envy each time someone seems “in the zone.” The scholars form departmental clusters, taking over specific areas of reading rooms. In the Phillips Reading Room, the Romance Language Department gathers. Every now and then, someone asks their colleagues in a whisper if they want to take a break for coffee—not for cigarettes anymore, as the university has recently passed a tobacco ban.

It takes a little while to realize that there is a third floor (maybe paradise, finally) where private libraries are located. A Russian nesting library. The smaller libraries inside Widener belong to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, for short FAS, and are even more secure and demand yet more special permission to gain access. Not any Harvard ID can open their doors. One can only wonder what bibliophile dreams lay inside; their windows occluded by opaque 1950s khaki curtains. Walking through the narrow corridors with high ceilings where the FAS Departmental Libraries are located is like a trip to Widener’s past: the Celtic Seminar Library, the History of Science Library, the Paleography Library, the Sanskrit Library are all flanked by old library index card cabinets. The first time I walked down those corridors, it was impossible not to notice, smirk, and shiver when I glanced at some of the yellow labels indicating the first and last cards archived in each cabinet: “Moscow ~ North,” “Fisheries ~ France,” “Economic ~ English,” “Warsaw ~ World,” “Bhagavadgita ~ Businesswomen,” “Argentina ~ Bhagavadgita,” “A.A.A ~ Argentina.”

Recently, I discovered a Poetry Room. Sadly, I have no access to it.