Who Among Us (Penguin Modern Classics) Read online

  Mario Benedetti

  * * *

  WHO AMONG US?

  Translated by Nick Caistor

  Contents

  Part One: MIGUEL Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Part Two: ALICIA

  Part Three: LUCAS Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  About the Author

  Mario Orlando Hamlet Hardy Brenno Benedetti, known as Mario Benedetti, was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet. He is considered one of the most important 20th century Latin American writers, especially in the Spanish-speaking world. A revolutionary and a passionate romantic, Benedetti wrote of love, anger, political resistance and redemption, particularly during the period of his enforced exile from Uruguay, between 1973 and 1985. One of his last poems encapsulated his unquenchable creative urge: “When I’m buried / don’t forget to put a Biro in my coffin.”

  I shall never be

  Different. Love me.

  Auden

  Si tu t’imagines

  xa va xa va xa

  va durer toujours

  Queneau

  Part One

  * * *

  MIGUEL

  I

  Only now, on the fifth day, can I say that I’m not so sure. On Tuesday, when I went down to the port to say goodbye to Alicia, I was convinced it was for the best. To be precise, it was what I’d always wanted: for her to confront the regret she harbours, her unhealthy obsession with what might have been, her longing for a different past and, therefore, for a different present. I don’t feel anger – how could I? – towards her or Lucas. But I do want to live in peace, without that spectre looming over my work, my meals, my rest. At night, after supper, when we chat about the office, the children or the new maid, I know she’s thinking: ‘Instead of this, I could have Lucas here next to me, and there’d be no need for talking.’

  The truth is, the two of them were always so similar, had so much in common – whether they were arguing fiercely, at each other’s throats, or locked in long, prowling silences, ready to pounce – that their behaviour always reflected that unlikely coincidence, with everything else (objects, friends, the whole world) cast out of their magic circle, left at a loss. And yet, there’s no doubt that she and I connect in a different way, and what we need is to talk. For us, the protective cloak of silence doesn’t exist. I’d almost say that the moment we engage in conversation about our own and others’ trivial concerns, our chatter protects us from those ghastly blank interludes when we tend to glance at one another while avoiding each other’s gaze: moments when neither of us knows what to do with the other’s silence. It’s during those pauses that Lucas’s presence becomes unbearable, and all our gestures, even those so common they’ve become tics, like drumming our fingers on the table or cracking our knuckles, become a kind of shorthand. This elliptic manipulation simply ends up emphasizing the idea of Lucas, endowing him with a painfully tangible quality which, heightened by our mood, far exceeds physical presence.

  When I look at Adelita or Martin playing peacefully on the carpet, and she looks at them, too, and sees, as I do, a shadow of brutishness that spoils their otherwise perfect faces, I know she is speculating more or less consciously about the inner glow, the intellectual spark those faces would have if they were Lucas’s children rather than mine. And yet I like my children’s coarseness: I like it that they don’t recite poems they can’t understand and don’t ask questions about things that don’t concern them, that they’re only excited about what’s immediate, that to them things like death or the spirit or sophisticated forms of emotion don’t yet mean anything. At worst, they’ll turn out to be practical, crude (especially Martin) individuals, neither pretentious nor spectacularly original. And that pleases me, even though I do, of course, acknowledge how ham-fisted, how cowardly, this timid, unspoken revenge of mine may be.

  II

  What’s worst of all is that I don’t feel any hatred. That for me would be a kind of salvation, and sometimes I miss it as the antithesis of happiness. But the two of them have behaved so properly, they have established, by some mutual, unconscious agreement, such a sensible code for what they are renouncing that for me to lapse into hate would be the easiest way to turn myself into something irretrievably hateful in their eyes, as irretrievable and hateful as if they came to me all smiles and told me: ‘We’ve cuckolded you.’

  I think I can only hope that if at some point they do sleep together I’ll have been officially sidelined long beforehand; just as they must hope that if at some point I can’t bear them, or myself, any longer, I’ll simply say, ‘It’s over,’ without being so stupid as to argue about it. In the meantime, although it might not appear thus, there’s a sort of equilibrium. Gently, carefully, Alicia offers all the attention and affection the children and I demand of her. But it’s as though this intimacy were somehow manufactured, as if she had adopted us – the children and me – and now has no idea where or with whom to leave us. And since she tries to disguise the effort this routine affection costs her, I thank her for it, and she thanks me for my thanks.

  For his part, Lucas has discreetly withdrawn from the scene; though not so completely as to make his absence seem suspicious. That’s why every fortnight he writes us a letter, in which he details his life as a journalist, his literary projects, his work as a translator. That’s why I write him a fortnightly letter in turn, giving my opinions about politics, complaining about my job and updating him on the progress Martin and Adelita are making at school. These letters always end with a few lines in the margins from Alicia, which include ‘affectionate regards to our good friend Lucas’.

  III

  I’ve often questioned myself in this notebook. The out-and-out truth is that I’ve gradually tempered my ambitions. There was a time when I considered myself intelligent, very intelligent; when I got outstanding marks at secondary school and my parents momentarily suspended their insoluble, relentless conflict to exchange smug looks and hug me, confident I was on the way to becoming a good investment. Then the moment came to finish my studies, to put what I had so brilliantly learned to good use, and I found I was completely incapable of drawing up a balance sheet, opening a double-entry account or creating an offsetting entry. Of course, later on in life I eventually mastered all this, no thanks to my discredited intelligence, but rather to day after day of stubborn, dogged, effortful persistence.

  There was also a time when I thought I was capable of great suffering, of enjoying one of those overwhelming passions that justify an entire existence. I imagined myself to be experiencing this with two or three women – all of whom were older than me, and who, as was only to be expected, treated me like a kid and couldn’t care less about my grand theory of human passion. This made me so furious that I completely withdrew, with the twin aim of attracting and annoying them. Of course, for them this was no big deal; nor was it for me, because I soon forgot them. Only long afterwards did I realize that I had been utterly overwhelmed by this supposed passion long before anything had act
ually happened, before any of the women had demanded it. Even Alicia … but what happened with Alicia is more complicated, so it’s probably better if I try to puzzle that out elsewhere.

  So, having given up any hope in the belief that I am an intelligent or passionate man, I’m left now with the less presumptuous notion that I am, at least, sincere. That’s why I’ve begun to make these notes: here I must punish my mediocrity with my own objective testimony. It’s true the world is full of second-rate people, but not many of those can admit that that’s what they are. I do. I also acknowledge that this absurd sense of pride isn’t getting me anywhere, other than making me embarrassed and annoyed at myself.

  Why do I think I’m so second-rate? Against what or whom am I to measure or compare myself? The fact that I can recognize the mediocrity of my actions, my intentions, even my failings, doesn’t mean my character is intrinsically to blame for them. Most other people – apart from a few ambiguous exceptions – don’t seem to me so brilliant, either. Yes, the whole world seems second-rate to me, but that doesn’t prove anything, apart from the fact that my idea of the sublime, the extraordinary, is not second-rate, because I know it is entirely unattainable. So what, then? So, nothing, I suppose.

  IV

  I fear that this Sunday’s notes will fill more pages than usual. Alicia is still in Buenos Aires, Martin’s at the movies, and Adelita has gone to visit her grandma. The grey, lowering sky outside my window is also mediocre, a godless, sunless sky, of an unrelenting drabness that never impresses me. That other brilliant, luminous sky – the sky of joie de vivre, of Technicolor movies – is an illusion. This is my sky, and I have to make the most of it. I’ll write all evening in this rare solitude, because I’m feeling good, because I always enjoy settling my personal accounts, becoming aware of the most depressing truths, trying to get a better understanding of what I’m really like.

  I sometimes wonder if this need to examine my own reactions doesn’t confirm one of Alicia’s long-held beliefs: that I am an incorrigible egotist. This seems to her so obvious she finds it awkward to tell me so. I’ve always admired her tact, but frankly I don’t know whether I wouldn’t prefer her to insult me openly, shout at me so loudly that it affords her – together with an excuse for tears – freedom from so much reproaching and forgiving. How curious, how completely strange, it would be for us to lead a different sort of life, one of arguments, tears, outbursts. I remember how surprised I was at Alicia’s face when her father died. I had never seen her cry, but at that moment she lost her calm and a kind of desperate acquiescence, a ghastly powerlessness, undermined her usual brittle attitude. She looked just like a helpless little girl, clinging to me, her unkempt hair falling down over her eyes, finally overwhelmed by anguish. Of course, that was no more than a slip; the last five years have seen to it that this has been corrected, have convinced me that it was only a momentary surrender, an inexplicable lapse that has nothing to do with her essential self.

  V

  Thinking it over, this is perhaps a good moment to tell the whole story, this present moment in which my old passions are being revealed to me again and – what’s much worse – my old lack of passion. But where to begin? What in fact are my earliest memories? Maybe all this began a long time ago, when I was a tiny child beyond the reach of memory. I’m profoundly envious of that little boy, stowed away in terrible oblivion, lost for ever, even if I’m shown sweet photos where I’m playing with the dog or stiff in a bright sailor’s suit or clinging tight to a teddy bear, a girl cousin, a chair.

  I think that’s where the secret lies: in that young gaze so completely at odds with the man I am now. It shows (together with its tremendous innocence, or rather, ignorance) another attitude towards the trials of life. What other person might I have been? I know questions like this will get me nowhere, but I sincerely believe, without knowing exactly why, that the only thing more pronounced in me than being second-rate is precisely that other self I might have been, and yet am not.

  The mere possibility of this other self – even if, in my case, it’s now moot – is enough to lend everyday life a different aspect. It’s curious that I should for no particular reason believe I could have been better than I am, and that this belief suffices to make me feel both resentful and content. It’s a kind of belated pleasure to imagine the likely continuation of certain past doubts, and to work out what the present would have been like if on various occasions I had chosen to take another path. But does that other path really exist? In fact, only the path we take exists. What might have been is worthless. No one accepts that currency, and nor do I.

  VI

  In my earliest memories I am a silent witness to my parents’ arguments. My father was a burly man, brutal in gesture and speech, sharp and decisive in business matters. My mother – I’m not sure whether she was really small, or just made to seem so by my father’s character – had a constant nervous energy, which both she and my father regarded as her most patent weakness. Alicia’s attitudes and those of my mother could seem similar in many respects. But I’m not going to commit the crude generalization of saying that all women are alike, held back and repressed, and for ever live camouflaging their most vital inner lives.

  That said, the biggest difference between the two women in my life is so subtle as to make them appear deceptively similar. My mother’s temperament was frail, but she possessed genuine human warmth. Alicia may not be, to put it in sales terms, a top-of-the range item, but she has always displayed admirable stoicism. There’s another, much cruder but equally important difference. My mother was faced with a violent man who knew, or thought he knew, what he wanted; Alicia has me, a man who knows nothing about himself.

  An image from the distant past, perhaps from before I had the use of reason, conjures up my father seated at the table opposite me, his massive fists clenched on the tablecloth. I don’t know what the argument was about, but I can clearly remember my mother’s stiff bearing as she waited for the outburst. Despite my tender years, I could sense the tension in the air, although there was no indication in the after-dinner air that a storm would break. All of a sudden, my father raised his head, and his wild eyes began to pour out curses even before the words came. His hands were still clasped on the tabletop, but two fingers on the right hand rose and fell in unison. I suddenly realized something terrible was about to happen, and a dreadful, paralysing fear took hold of me. The fingers were rising and falling (one of them with an enormous red stone on it) and I felt there was nothing I could do, say, or even think. That ruby peered at me like a bloody eye: it was the only thing that existed. The hand came to a halt, then opened and was raised higher, the red stone glinting in the air, before it descended onto the table, clenched into a fist again, with a tremendous thump. I saw my mother looking as terrified as if the fist had landed on her or me, and it was only then I became aware that he was insulting her, with filthy, brutal words. I’ll never forget that moment, for two reasons: first, the sensation that, right then, I didn’t exist for my father; and second, the certainty, as profound as it was inexplicable, that he was right to be insulting her. My father despised her weakness, the way she simply sat waiting; her passive, almost inert attitude. It was as though my father were attacking her to goad her and arouse her defences, and yet she remained voiceless, lacking any self-awareness, paralysed by terror.

  My entire childhood and part of my adolescence were nothing more than a prolongation of that scene: my father crushing my mother, defeated from the start; I the captive witness neither of them took into account. And yet the real conflict was happening inside me, because I understood and shared with equal intensity my father’s wrathful logic and my mother’s fearful paralysis.

  VII

  Since their deaths I’ve often asked myself how much I loved them, or claimed to do so. It’s never been clear to me. Just as in relationships between men and women, desire and raw sexual energy confuse and distort true affection, so the relations between a child and his parents frequently
become twisted by that awkward feeling of dependence, the inevitable generational gulf in their understanding of the way things are, with self-glorifying experience on one side and no less arrogant naivety on the other.

  As a result I may be mistaken (doubtless I am) in my analysis of this area of my emotions. It’s likely that I loved in them precisely that which I couldn’t share, or at least couldn’t understand. In other words, I loved my father’s ability to seize the advantage in any situation, his unerring ability to take the riskiest decisions; in my mother, her hidden human qualities, her ability to intuit other people’s pleasures. I loved in them what they hid or only revealed despite themselves. But since I was stuck with what they did show outwardly – my mother’s fear and my father’s cruel reasoning – and that, because I had already internalized it, no longer gave me any satisfaction, it always seemed (and so it must have seemed to them) that I didn’t love them. But in them I loved what was lacking in me, I admired all that wasn’t second-rate about them, all that wasn’t part of me.

  The fact is that life – how indecent to call it that, as though it were god given, as though it held some esoteric meaning and wasn’t what we all know it to be: a sterile monotony of dilemmas, faces, desires! – the fact is that, from the outset, life always had a start on me, and I’ve never been able to catch up with it. Witness is a terrible role to be cast in, and I can’t even avoid being witness to my own life, observing just how far I lag behind in the feelings and esteem of those who expected something else from me.