great news comes from Argentina: the publication of The promise, a novel in which the legendary writer Silvina Ocampo Buenos Aires (1903-1994) worked for many years of his life and until now had been hidden the public eye. In a profile entitled A contemporary writer, journalist Hugo Caligaris, said today in the newspaper La Nación, the following:
Silvina Ocampo's work has long been a puzzle to critics who do not know where to locate, if on the shelf of literary rarities in the vagaries in the miscellaneous or the "best kept secrets" of Argentine letters. Always with a little embarrassment, we analyzed the ingredients of their texts: innocence, cruelty, black humor, nonsense, a style that fluctuates sometimes in the same sentence between poetry and prose. At first, only a handful of intelligent observers, Italo Calvino, among them, were able to see the entire show. Today it is easier: Silvina died in 1994, it's been well over fifteen years, and no longer makes sense to think of it as a rarity. The 142 pages of his novel The promise, so far unpublished, will convince any reader that the author is a contemporary writer: for his originality and frankness, without impost for their naturalness and truth of their feelings. This issue includes an appetizer while waiting for the publication of this masterpiece.
This same newspaper today published an excerpt from the novel .
The promise
(Fragment)
(Fragment)
"I have no life of its own, I have feelings. My experiences were not important nor over my life or even on the verge of death, whereas the life of others becomes my "
I am illiterate. How could publish this text! What publisher would receive! I think it would be impossible unless a miracle happens. I believe in miracles.
"I love you and promise to be good," I used to tell her to move her in my childhood and long after when asking a favor, until I knew it was "a lawyer for the impossible." Some people do not understand that you speak to a saint as anyone. If they had known all my prayers would say that is blasphemy and I am not a devotee of Santa Rita.
The statues or figurines typically represent this saint with a wooden book, mysterious, hand resting on his heart. Do not forget the details of this attitude when he made a promise, if you saved me from writing this book and finish it for on my next birthday. Take almost a year to that date. I started to worry me. I thought it would cost a lot of sacrifice to fulfill my promise. Making memories this dictionary sometimes embarrassing, humiliating, would give me any privacy. (Perhaps this concern proved unfounded.)
I have no life of its own, I have feelings. My experiences were not important or over life or even on the verge of death, whereas the life of others becomes mine.
Copy your typed pages, because I do not have money to pay back to a typist, would make an enormous work (I do not have friends disinterested to know typing.) Submit the manuscript to publishers, to any publisher in the world, maybe I would refuse the publication of the book to be inevitably be paid from the sale of objects that appreciation or some sub work, the only one who would be able, would mean sacrificing my love own.
How far are the happy days I ate with my nephews in Palermo, on the swings, slide at the stewards and white chocolate chews, those times when I felt miserable, now I seem happy when my nephews were soiled both hands to play with dirt, that upon returning to my sister's house instead of a bath or going to the movies had to clean the nails with soap capybara as if they had been at the Central Police Department after leaving the fateful fingerprints.
I always felt it was useless to write a book, I am committed to do today to fulfill a sacred promise to me.
I sailed towards Cape Town for three months on the boat Anacreon, to meet with the least tedious of my family, a consul and his wife, cousins \u200b\u200bwho always protected me. Everything looks too bad anxiety is met or not met. Sick, I had to turn when I arrived, because of an unfortunate accident on the outward journey. I fell into the sea. I slipped the cover on the site where the rescue boats when I leaned over the railing to reach a pin that I had fallen and hung on my scarf. How? I do not know. No one saw me fall. Maybe I had a fainting spell. I woke up in the water stunned by the blow. Do not remember me or my name. The boat moved away nonchalantly. I screamed. No one heard me. The boat seemed more vast than the sea. Fortunately I am a good swimmer, but my style is quite deficient. After the first moment of terror cold and slowly slid into the water. The heat, noon, light accompanied me. Almost forgot my plight because I love sports and I tried all the styles in my swimming. At the same time I thought of the dangers in store for me the water: sharks, sea snakes, the running water, waterspouts. I calmed down with the lapping waves. I made the iron swam or eight consecutive hours, waiting for the boat back for me. Sometimes I wonder how I could nurture that hope. Nor do I know. At first I felt no fear left me thinking, then I thought wildly, came to my mind teachers, noodles, motion pictures, prices, theater, writers' names, titles of books, buildings, gardens, a cat, an unhappy love, a chair, a flower whose name he did not remember, perfume, toothpaste, etc. Memory, how much did I suffer! I suspected that he was dying or dead and in the confusion of my memory. Then I noticed, to feel a sharp burning in my eyes due to salt water, which was alive and away from the agony since the drowning, you know, are about to die happy and I was not. After undressing or being undressed by the sea as the sea of \u200b\u200bpeople undressing in love like I have hands, there came a time in the dream or the desire to sleep came over me. To stay awake, I imposed an order to my thoughts, a sort of itinerary that advise now also follow prisoners, the sick who can not move or desperate they are to commit suicide.
I began my journey of memories with the names and biographical and sometimes detailed description of people in my life had known. Of course that came to mind in a chronological order or in order to respect the hierarchy of my affections, came capriciously: the latter were the first and the first last, as if my thoughts are not would obey the dictates of my heart. In my mind some people showed no name, no other age, no other filing date, no other sure that they were people and not ghosts or inventions of my imagination. Some could not remember the eyes of other hands, other hair, height, voice. As King Shahriar Shahrazad somehow told stories of death for me to spare the life of me and my pictures, stories appeared that they would not go on forever. I often laugh at the delusional thinking now order I intended and I felt so bad at the time of practice. Sometimes I was surprised by the vivid presence in my mind made me a single sentence was like a vignette of those which are inserted at the end of the chapter of a book or at the top of the most important pages. Naturally, the order is respected differently in the mind alone that in the paper when writing. Where possible try to rebuild in these pages the order or disorder that I built with such difficulty in my mind, from the moment I found in the water, as through a glass, a sea turtle like the tailor Aldo Bindo, which reminded me of a capricious association of ideas Dongui Marina (behind the glass of a fruit), who, like him, had a mole on his left cheek. I started to list and describe persons:
Marina Dongui
Marina Dongui, the fruit vendor, is the first person who introduced me involuntarily recall. Blonde, white and nervous, looked out the door of the grocery store when I went with my brother, to wink one eye. Her breasts were full like some fruits of his neck and my brother stopped to look at her, but what I say, not her, but not her breasts and navel oranges, which cost very expensive.
"Miss Marina, how much worth oranges? "Said my brother.
"Here is the stated price-tag with his plump hand and taking an orange showed caressing, smiling indeed indecent to bring my brother, who is barbarian.
Beneath the blue skirt guess the mark on the thighs of the belt that girded too. Legs without stockings had a very smooth white skin, red as a freckle-faced when approaching damask shoes, which were always black and pin-thin heels.
"Miss Marina, give me half a dozen oranges.
- Why oranges, if the fruit that we like least? "I protested, feeling the sting of jealousy that caused me the wretched of the Navy.
The humiliation of jealousy is not able to choose the object that inspires them.
Mingo My brother approached the counter, not listening and there, displaying a vein in his forehead that was marked only by emotion, cornered against the drawers, when she took out the account of the role that then wrapped the oranges, he profited to touch. It was a relationship fruit, perhaps the sex symbol. But I get out of the topic that I intend to describe people and not situations and relationships.
my brother's face, I lost it, or the color of his eyes scratched boulders as blue and green glass comes to mind.
recall too blind love, sometimes.
loved But who?
Aldo Bindo
Aldo Bindo was short, stout white. Every Sunday was devoted to riding. His glasses shone on her face as a showcase, had a shock of curly blond hair and a tuft of white hair straight and elongated head. I was not old. With the centimeter position as a decoration on the shoulders, came running from the funds of tailoring when told that I expected. In the mirror, with tailleur I already was wearing, she looked full of pins, kneeling at my feet. Many times I take my steps as though they knew. With a pen that was almost a nail recorded the action in a brown paper that was always in a chair. When taking action on my chest, with satisfaction played some bumps on the flip wisely placed in an indecent manner, but the details of which belonged to his profession, when measured my hips, spinning impatiently centimeter to drop it with disenchanted gesture by releasing one end to the other abarajaba hand to put it back around his neck. His wife, next to the mirror, with a white face and soft as a crumb report, we reached the pins and chalk, sometimes unstitched seam with huge scissors he masterfully took, as a cook a mass, Gender tattered in his hands and pins applied to modify a fold without improvement. Frown, and when was cold, the noise of sneezing was contagious even over the phone. Her hands seemed to prefer the placement of the sleeves, everything around the chest of clients who were not too old, lapels, buttons on the front of the coat. Blowing. Snorted. The ring, however, did suffer. It was not enough to apply it with chalk stripes to feel free of responsibility, measured to the centimeter edges to the ground. Wore shoes that always creaked. Never thought I had feet with nails or fingers stuck in those impenetrable shoes. One day I found on a beach and did not recognize him from afar, but when he sat out his wife bathing in the man shouted: "There is Aldo Bindo" and ran to greet him. Smeared with suntan oil, his face shone with joy, "but the centimeter? How could he be without the centimeter? A few minutes later I saw that in the wet sand with his toe, as he spoke, he drew an inch, spoke highly of Mrs. Cerunda.
In those days I fell in love with the sea as a person, crying I knelt to say goodbye to him, to go to Buenos Aires at the end of the holidays.
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