Monday, December 26, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 18, 2011
BOOLANYO RULES (EXCERPT: 2666)
A month later, Ansky joined the party. His sponsors were Ivanoc and one of Ivanov's ex-lovers, Margarita Afanasievna, who worked as a biologist at a Moscow institute. In Ansky's papers, the event is likened to a wedding. It was celebrated at the writers' restaurant and then they made the rounds of several Moscow dives, hauling along Afanasievna, who drank like a condemned woman and who very nearly lapsed into an alcoholic coma that night. In one of the dives, as Ivanov and two writers who had joined them sang songs of lost loves, of glances never to be returned again, of silken words never to be heard, Afanasievna awoke and, with her tiny hand, grabbed Ansky's penis and testicles through his trousers.
"Now that you're a Communist," she said, avoiding his eyes, her gaze fixed on an indeterminate spot between his navel and his neck, "you'll need these to be of steel."
"Really?" asked Ansky.
"Don't play the fool,” said Afanasievna’s hoarse voice. “I understand you. From the start, I’ve known who you are.”
“And who am I?” Asked Ansky.
“A Jewish brat who confuses his desires with reality.”
“Reality,” murmured Ansky, “can be pure desire.”
Afanasievna laughed.
“What should I make of that?” she asked.
“Whatever you like, but take care, comrade,” said Ansky. “Consider certain kinds of people, for example.”
“Who?” asked Afanasievna.
“The ill,” said Ansky. “Tuberculosis patients, say. According to their doctors, they’re dying and there’s no arguing with that. But for the patients, especially on some nights, some particularly long evenings, desire is reality and vice versa. Or take people suffering from impotence.”
“What kind of impotence?” asked Afanasievna without letting go of Ansky’s genitals.
“Sexual impotence,” said Ansky. “The impotent are more or less like tuberculosis patients, and they feel desire. A desire that in time not only supplants reality but is imposed on it.”
“Do you think,” asked Afanasievna, “that the dead feel sexual desire?”
“Not the dead,” said Ansky, “but the living dead do. When I was in Siberia I met a hunter whose sexual organs had been torn off.”
“Sexual organs!” said Afanasievna mockingly.
“His penis and testicles,” said Ansky. “He peed through a little straw, sitting or on his knees, crouching.”
“You’ve made yourself clear,” said Afanasievna.
“Well, anyway, once a week, no matter the weather, this man (who wasn’t young, either) went into the forest to look for his penis and testicles. Everyone thought he would die someday, caught in the snow, but the man always came back to the village, sometimes after an absence of months, and always with the same news: he hadn’t found them. One day he decided to stop looking. Suddenly, he seemed to age: one night he looked fifty and the next morning he looked eighty. My detachment left the village. Four months later we passed through again and asked what had happened to the man without attributes. They told us he had married and was leading a happy life. One of my comrades and I wanted to see him: we found him preparing his gear for another long stay in the forest. He looked fifty again, instead of eighty. Or perhaps even forty in certain parts of his face: around the eyes, the lips, the jaw. Two days later, when we left, I believed the hunter had managed to impose his desires on reality, which, in their fashion, had transformed his surroundings, the village, the villagers, the forest, the show, his lost penis and testicles. I imagined him on his knees, pissing, his legs well apart, in the middle of the frozen steppe, northward bound, striding toward the white deserts and blizzards with his knapsack full of traps, utterly oblivious of what we call fate.”
“That’s a pretty story,” said Afanasievna as she let go of Ansky’s genitals. “A pity I’m too old and have seen too much to believe it.”
“It has nothing to do with belief,” said Ansky, “it has everything to do with understanding, and then changing.”
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Monday, December 5, 2011
Sunday, December 4, 2011
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