Dreams for Kurosawa — almostisland

issue 11: spring 2014

Dreams for Kurosawa

Translated from the Spanish with an Afterword by Anna Deeny Morales

Mi Nombre: Akira Kurosawa

Como una vergüenza que yo tenía comencé a
soñar. La laguna es amarillenta y detrás de los
paredones de sal se ve el océano. La playa se
llama Punta de Lobos y las salinas están al
lado. Recorremos la laguna en un bote guiados
por un remero descalzo y escucho el estallido
de las rompientes a menos de 50 metros.
Durante la dictadura el lugar se hizo conocido
porque Pinochet lo transformó en su sitio de
veraneo y hoy es un paraíso de surfistas. Las
salinas y la laguna ya no existen y las había
olvidado por completo, pero volví a recordarlas
cuando mi abuela murió: el botero remaba
frente a mí y a los lados se veían las paredes
de sal. Tengo cinco años, mi hermana tres y
estamos con mi abuela. Había nacido en Italia,
en Rapallo, y llegó a Chile con mi madre
todavía niña. Ambas quedaron viudas con dos
días de diferencia. Primero mi madre, luego mi
abuela. Fue un veraneo corto. Mi abuela murió
en 1986. Yo sobreviví a una dictadura, pero no a la
vergüenza. Años después, cuando me llegó a
mí el turno, su cara se me vino encima como una
montaña blanca de sal. Quise escribirlo, pero las
palabras, como vísceras humeantes, llegaron
muertas a mis dedos. Mi nombre: Akira Kurosawa.

My Name: Akira Kurosawa

Like shame that possessed me I began to dream.
The lagoon is yellowish and beyond the massive
salt walls that encircle it you can see the ocean.
The beach is called Punta de Lobos and the salt
mines are nearby. We cross the lagoon in a boat
led by a barefooted oarsman and I hear the clamor
of the breakers crashing at least 50 meters away.
During the dictatorship the place became popular
because Pinochet turned it into his summer resort
and now it’s a surfer’s paradise. Neither the mines
nor the lagoon exist anymore and I’d forgotten
them completely, but I remembered them again
when my grandmother died: the boatman rowed in
front of me and beside us you could see the salt walls.
I’m five years old, my sister is three and we’re with
my grandmother. Born in Italy, in Rapallo, she
arrived to Chile with my mother still a child. Both
were widowed two days apart. First my mother,
then my grandmother. It was a short summer
holiday. In 1986 my grandmother died. I survived
a dictatorship, but not the shame. Many years later,
when it was my turn, her face came down upon me
like a white mountain of salt. I wanted to write it,
but the words, like smoldering entrails arrived
dead to my fingers. My name: Akira Kurosawa.

Veo de nuevo los mundos. En el sueño digo “los
mundos”, pero eran todos los países dibujados en
el cielo y vea; yo nunca había soñado tan feliz.
Estaba en una pradera y sentía el pasto bajo mis
pies, pero una voz me dijo que me fuera a la
playa y yo sin pensarlo me largaba a correr hasta
que llegaba. La playa se alargaba perdiéndose y
al frente el mar era negro, encrespado de olas, y
yo sentía una gran angustia, un miedo que me
apretaba el estómago, pero de pronto sus aguas
comenzaron a aclararse, a hacerse cada vez más
luminosas y calmas y al final hasta se podían ver
los granitos de arena del fondo. Entonces sentí el
impulso de alzar la vista y fue como si me dieran
con un mazo en la cabeza: sobre el cielo estaban
todos los países del mundo pintados con distintos
colores, como en el mapamundi que había en la
escuela, cada uno con los tonos más relucientes
y hasta los puntitos de las islas se veían. Eran
todos los países del mundo tendidos en el cielo,
brillando como si los hubieran recién mojados,
con gotitas de agua resbalándoseles encima. Fue
eso. A mí me apresaron los de la brigada Arauco y
antes de morir me acordé de los mundos. Soñé
este sueño para mi padre Akira Kurosawa. Me
apellido Mora, pero todos me conocen por Ziley.

Once again I see the worlds. In the dream I say
“the worlds,” but it was every country drawn
out through the sky and you see; never before
had I been so happy dreaming. I was in a meadow
and felt the grass beneath my feet, but a voice told
me to go toward the shore and without a thought
I made my way as far as arriving. The shore
stretched out vanishing and in the foreground
the sea was black, seething with waves, and I
felt a profound anguish, a fear that gripped my
stomach, but just then the waters grew transparent,
ever more luminous and still and in time I could
even see the grains of sand below. Then I felt the
urge to look up and it was as if someone pounded
my head with a mallet: above the sky each and
every country was distinctly painted, like a world
map at school, each one a hue of such lustrous
colors and I could even make out the small dots
that were islands. They were all the countries of
the world hanging in the sky, surfaces shimmering
as if they’d just been soaked, with droplets of
water all sliding down. This is what I saw. I
was seized by the Arauco brigade and before
dying I remembered the worlds. This dream I
dreamed for my father Akira Kurosawa. My
surname is Mora, but everyone calls me Ziley.

Me reporto. Soy estudiante de Ingeniería Civil
de la Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María.
Valparaíso, Chile. Tengo 23 años y estoy en el
último curso. Entré en marzo del 67 y han pasado
desde entonces siete años. Estoy tendido en la
parte trasera de un camión militar que salta con
los baches del camino. Vamos boca abajo, en filas
cruzadas unas sobre otras como esos lotes de tablas
que se amontonan en las barracas y siento el peso
de los que han quedado encima mío. En cada bache
nuestros cuerpos también saltan. Al amanecer había
niebla, pero ya debe haberse despejado. El taco de
mi zapato está clavado en la cara de uno de los que
están abajo y el peso de los que tengo encima hace
que se lo entierre aún más. Siento que grita, pero
tal vez lo imagino. Es posible que sea alguien que
conozca, pero también puede que no. Hace un año
se instaló una constructora soviética que levanta
edificios prefabricados y quizás trabaja allí.
Imagino sus dientes rotos enterrados contra su
boca y pienso en el coágulo de sangre resbalándose
sobre el taco de mi zapato. En un momento sentí
que giraba su cara como si intentara zafarse. Ya
no. El camión vuelve a saltar y mientras caigo
recuerdo el túnel que forman las rompientes un
segundo antes de reventarse. Hay un desierto y me
escucho rebotar en la arena. El viaje ha terminado.

I check in. I’m a Civil Engineering student at
Federico Santa María Tech, Valparaíso, Chile.
I’m 23 and this is my last year. It’s been seven
years since I began in March, 1967. I’m tied up
at the back of a military truck that jolts each
time it hits a pothole in the road. We’re face
down, crisscrossed one on top of the other like
those board fences stacked up around barracks
and I feel the weight of the ones that ended up
on top of me. At each pothole our bodies jolt
too. It was foggy at dawn, but it’s probably
cleared up by now. The heel of my shoe is
rammed up against the face of someone who
ended up below me and the weight of the ones
on top ends up ramming it in even further. I hear
him scream or maybe I imagine it. Maybe he’s
someone I know, or maybe not. A year ago a
Soviet contractor came to put up prefabricated
buildings and it could be one of the people who
works there. I imagine his teeth broken digging
into his mouth and I think of the drop of blood
sliding down the heel of my shoe. At one point I
felt him turn his head like he was trying to shake
free. Not anymore. The truck jolts again and as I
fall I remember the tunnel that waves form the
moment before they break. There’s a desert and
I hear myself drop on the sand. The journey’s over.

Eran cientos de cascadas como las del Tamasopo y
eran tan padres, sí tan bonitas. Papá me había
dicho que no hiciera caso si las cascadas me
hablaban porque era un sueño. Al despertar
empecé a soñar otro sueño donde una multitud de
mujeres se me acercaban. Juan –me decían-
nosotras somos ahora tu mamá porque la tuya se
ha vuelto loca, pero acordándome de papá les
respondí que estaba soñando. Me di cuenta de
que había cambiado de nombre, también que las
cascadas estaban cerca de Ciudad Valles donde
vivimos antes de que papá cruzara la frontera con
los coyotes. Lo último que se supo es que estaba
de bracero en Chicago. Éramos siete hermanos,
pero sólo quedan dos: el segundo que vive en
Texas y Coral que nunca recuperó el juicio
desde que se le ahogó su único hijo en los saltos
del Tamasopo. Yo era el menor y este sueño es
el único recuerdo que tengo de mi padre Juan
Preciado. Ahora, mientras las cascadas
resplandecían, vi que todas las mujeres que me
rodeaban eran mi hermana Coral y que yo era su
hijo ahogado. Cuando la primera me abrazó sentí
el torrente del agua correr bajo su vestido y luego
el frío. Al abrir los ojos mi cuerpito flotaba en el
fondo de la cascada, y no fue un sueño Kurosawa
porque yo estaba muerto y las aguas me rompían.

They were hundreds of waterfalls like the ones
in Tamasopo and they were awesome, yes so
lovely. Papa had told me to ignore the falls if
they spoke to me because it was a dream. As I
woke up I began to dream another dream in
which a crowd of women gathered around me.
Juan—they’d say—we’re your mother now
because yours has lost her mind, but remembering
papa I told them it was a dream. I realized my name
had changed, what’s more the falls were not far
from Ciudad Valles where we lived before papa
made his way across the border with coyotes.
The last we heard of him he was a day laborer in
Chicago. Of seven siblings, only two are left:
the second who lives in Texas and Coral who
went crazy after her only son drowned in the
falls of Tamasopo. I was the youngest and this
dream is the only memory I have of my father
Juan Preciado. Now, as the waterfalls glistened,
I saw that all the women surrounding me were
my sister Coral and that I was her drowned son.
When the first one embraced me I felt water rush
beneath her dress and then the cold. As I opened
my eyes my small body floated at the base of
the falls, and it wasn’t a dream Kurosawa because
I was dead and the waters were tearing me apart.

Vi las primeras ciudades de agua camino al norte,
en Atacama. Estaban suspendidas en el cielo,
como gigantescos acuarios transparentes, y las
líneas de luz de sus reflejos se mecían sobre el
suelo cubriendo la inmensa planicie ocre. Era el
año 1975, a fines del verano, y por entonces yo
sufría. Fue la primera vez también que conocí un
desierto. No me sorprendió verlas, incluso diría
que me dio una cierta paz. Había abandonado a
mis hijos, el mayor de cuatro, una de tres y el
menor que no cumplía el año, y por primera vez
pude pensar en ellos sin tanta angustia. A lo
lejos se veían los dos volcanes y los reflejos de
la primera de ellas les imprimían a sus cumbres
nevadas un tono verdoso como el del mar. La
segunda la vi al atardecer y parecía más lejana,
más remota e inabarcable. Esa noche volví a
soñar con mis hijos y desperté bajo el frío que
cae en la noche en los desiertos. Me saqué de encima
la frazada que me dieron en el albergue y me
levanté por un café. Las infinitas líneas de luz
seguían entrecruzándose como si la tierra entera
fuese el fondo de una piscina. Al final, ondeando
bajo esos mismos reflejos, los conos blancos de
los volcanes fosforescían en el azul de la noche.
Kurosawa, volví a decirle, entonces yo sufría.

I saw the first cities of water heading north, in
Atacama. They were suspended in the sky, like
gigantic transparent aquariums, and the luminous
reflecting lines swayed on the ground covering
the immense ocher plane. It was 1975, the end of
summer, and I suffered then. It was also the first
time I encountered the desert. It didn’t surprise me
to see them, I would even say it gave me a certain
peace. I had abandoned my children, the eldest
four, a little three-year-old girl and the youngest
who wasn’t even a year old, and for the first time
I could think of them without so much anguish. In
the distance you could see the two volcanoes and
reflections of the first of them imprinted a greenish
hue like the sea upon the snowy peaks. I saw the
second one that afternoon and it seemed further away,
more remote and unreachable. That night I dreamed
again of my children and woke up beneath the cold
desert night. I threw off the blanket they’d given
me in the motel and got up for coffee. The infinite
luminous lines continued crisscrossing themselves as
if the whole earth were the bottom of a pool. At the
end, undulating below those same reflections, were the
white cones of the volcanoes phosphorescing in the blue
night. Kurosawa, I turned to tell him, I suffered then.

Joder venir a soñar con Beethoven en la mitad del
desierto de Atacama. No escuchaba ni una puta
nota ¿me entiende usted? Ni una puta nota.
¿Cómo lo haría el tipo? Tener toda la música
adentro y no oír ni pío. Yo digo que para eso
hay que tener a Dios ¿o si no cómo? A los
muchachos no les gusta esa música, no es que no
les guste, es que no tienen nada adentro o si no
cómo no podría gustarles. Dicen que son cosas de
viejos, pero yo pienso que ellos están equivocados
¿no le parece a usted? No se puede andar por la
vida sin música, eso es lo que yo pienso. Ni una
puta nota ¿cómo lo haría el cabrón? Cómo no
quedó como cabra el muy hijo de puta. Joder
con Beethoven, tenerlo todo allí dentro y no
poder escucharlo. ¿Pero sin Dios cómo? le
pregunto a usted. Yo creo que Dios tiene música,
yo creo que estos cerros tienen música, las
piedras, las nubes, el cielo...
El tipo hablaba y hablaba Kurosawa. Yo estaba
partiendo y había ido a la cocina del albergue por
si me topaba con un café. Allí estaba. Cuando le
contesté algo me di cuenta de que me seguía los
labios porque era sordo, sordo como una tapia.
Atardecía y las ciudades de agua flotaban en el
silencio infinito del cielo. Escuche, siguió aún
diciéndome mientras me alejaba, escuche, escuche...

What the fuck dream of Beethoven in the middle
of the desert of Atacama. He couldn’t hear a fucking
note. Do you understand me? Not a fucking note.
How did the guy do it? Have all that music inside
and not hear shit. You need God to do that is what
I say. If not, then how? The boys don’t like that
music, it’s not that they don’t like it, it’s that they
don’t have anything inside or if they did how could
they not like it? They say it’s for old people, but I
think they’re wrong. What’s your take? You can’t
go through life without music, that’s what I think.
Not a goddamned note. How did the motherfucker
do it? How didn’t he go ape shit that son of a bitch.
Fuck Beethoven, to have it all there and then not
hear it. But without God, how? I ask you. I think
God has music, I think these hills have music, the
rocks, the clouds, the sky...
The guy went on and on Kurosawa. I was
leaving and had made my way to the motel
kitchen to try to find some coffee. There he was.
When I answered him I realized he was reading
my lips because he was deaf, deaf as a post. It
was getting late and the cities of water floated in
the infinite silence of the sky. Listen, he continued
saying to me as I walked away, listen, listen...

Eran toneladas de cuadernillos amontonados sobre
las piedras. Por ahora no hay viento, le dije al
hombre que estaba sentado en un pupitre en medio
del descampado. Los convoyes militares habían
pasado unas horas antes. Las trazas de sus orugas
marcaban la tierra y al fondo se veían los restos
humeantes de la destrucción. Me miró sin
responderme y me pregunté que qué hacía alguien
como él allí. Una leve brisa había empezado a
mover las hojas de los cuadernillos y me acordé de
las últimas lecturas de mi madre. Pensé que sus
gustos se habían vuelto miserables. Volví entonces
a preguntarme que qué podía estar haciendo un tipo
como él allí. El viento se hizo más fuerte batiendo
las páginas. Atrás los muros en ruinas humeaban y
los restos del puente emergían del río como si
fueran las espinas de un pescado. Ya no podré
regresar, le dije a mi madre, pero ella no estaba,
sólo el hombre sentado en el pupitre y los
cuadernillos que volaban ahora por todas partes.
Muchos me golpeaban dándome en la cara y
alcancé a ver algunos. Eran partituras. Montañas
y montañas de partituras encumbrándose como
torbellinos en la furia huracanada del viento. Me
volví a decir entonces que era demasiado cruel,
demasiado desquiciante, demasiado luminoso,
que exactamente alguien como él estuviese allí.

They were tons of booklets mounded over the rocks.
For now there’s no wind, I said to the man sitting at
a desk in the middle of the clearing. The military
convoys had passed some hours before. Traces of its
caterpillars marked the soil and below you could see
fuming remains of the destruction. He looked at me
without responding and I asked myself what
someone like him was doing there. A light breeze had
begun to move the pages in the booklets and
I remembered what my mother had been reading
lately. I thought her taste had become miserable,
and I asked myself again what the hell a guy like
that could be doing there. The wind became stronger
knocking the pages around. Behind the walls in
ruins fumed and the remains of the bridge emerged
from the river like fish bones. I can no longer return,
I said to my mother, but she wasn’t there, only the
man sitting at the desk and booklets that now blew
all over the place. Many hit me striking my face
and I managed to see some of them. They were
musical scores. Mountains and mountains of
scores lifting themselves up like whirlwinds in
the huricaining fury of the wind. I turned around to
say then that it was too cruel, too disturbing, too
luminous, that someone just like him would be there.

La pareja del cuarto del lado paró de gritar y me
di vuelta para encender de nuevo la radio. Estaban
transmitiendo un concierto, pero ahora sólo se
escucha un pitido. Cuando el bus paró era de
noche y di con el motel por casualidad. Allanaron
la casa donde paraba. Yo venía llegando y alcancé
a girar, pero uno me vio. Los eludí cambiando
varias veces de micro y llegué al terminal de
buses. Me subí al que estaba partiendo y al
preguntarme, dije que llegaba al final y pagué.
Debo haber dormido horas porque desperté
cuando todos se estaban bajando. La pareja del
lado llegó al rato y el estrépito de los gritos y
golpes empezó de inmediato. Al parecer ella lo
había dejado y él la obligó a ir. No los sentí
cuando se fueron. Al otro día la puerta de su
pieza estaba abierta y vi la cama deshecha y vacía.
Entré a un boliche por un café y allí me enteré de
que estaba en Copiapó, en pleno desierto. Supe al
instante que los tipos que se recortaron en la
entrada eran de la CNI y me entregué sin resistir.
Más tarde, oí las notas del primer movimiento de
la Quinta y mientras vomitaba mis propios dientes,
recordé que esa última vez la que fue mi mujer
gritaba pidiéndome que no la golpeara. Alcanzo a
darme cuenta de que alguien en la pieza del lado
ha apagado la radio para escuchar los gritos y sé
entonces que la vergüenza habrá de sobrevivirme.

The couple in the room next door stopped yelling
and I shifted to turn the radio back on. They were
broadcasting a concert, but now you could only
hear shrill whistling. When the bus stopped it
was nighttime and by chance I found the motel.
They leveled the house where I used to stay. I
was just getting there and managed to turn back,
but one of them saw me. To avoid them I took
different buses and finally made it to the terminal.
I got on one leaving and when asked, I said I
was going to the last stop and paid. I must’ve
slept for hours because I woke up as everyone
was getting off. The couple next door arrived
soon after and the screaming and banging set
in right away. Apparently she’d broken up with
him and he forced her to go. I didn’t hear them
leave. The next day their door was open and I saw
the unmade and empty bed. I went to a bar for
coffee and found out I was in Copiapó, in the
middle of the desert. I knew right away the guys
blocking off the entrance were from the CNI and
voluntarily turned myself in. Later on, I heard the
first notes of the Fifth symphony, and as I spit up
my own teeth, I remembered the last time the
woman who was my wife asking me not to hit her.
I manage to make out that someone in the room
next door has turned off the radio to listen to the
screams and then I know shame would outlive me.

Como un tajo, la línea de asfalto partía en dos la
llanura interminable y el conductor puso la radio
más fuerte para no quedarse dormido. Me había
recogido a la salida de Iquique, en pleno desierto de
Atacama, y me dijo que a veces tomaba gente que
hacía dedo para evitar la modorra hablando. No
creo haberle servido de mucho porque a pesar del
estruendo de la música en seguida empecé a
cabecear. Cuando abrí los ojos el camión estaba
detenido y me sorprendió estarlo mirando de reojo
desde el suelo. También que estuviera boca abajo.
Los primeros puntapiés me paralogizaron y sentí
mi cara clavarse contra los granos del pavimento.
Tenía las manos en la nuca y cuando a culatazos
me obligaron a ponerme de pie, mis piernas no
me obedecieron. Un último culatazo me dio de
lleno en la boca y mientras escupía un coágulo de
dientes y sangre, vi la interminable planicie ocre
y al fondo los conos nevados de los dos volcanes.
El sonido de los Pink Floyd envolvía ahora por
completo la redondez de la tierra y de pronto sentí
su mano remeciéndome el hombro. ¿Te gusta
Mother? me preguntó. Pero faltan años para que
ese disco salga, traté de decirle, mientras él le
seguía el compás tamborileando sobre el volante.
Al fondo, las delgadas nubes muy altas parecían
peces blancos e imaginé que Kurosawa lo filmaría.

Like a cut, the asphalt line sliced through the endless
plain of the desert and the driver turned up the radio
to stay awake. He had picked me up at the Iquique
exit, right in the middle of the desert of Atacama,
and told me that sometimes he gave rides to
hitchhikers to keep him from falling asleep talking.
I don’t think I was very helpful to him because even
with the music blaring I started dosing off. When
I opened my eyes the truck was detained and it
surprised me to be looking up at it from the ground
through the corner of my eye. Also that I’d be face
down. The first kicks stunned me and I felt my face
shoved against the rough concrete. My hands were
at the nape of my neck and when they forced me to
my feet with butt strokes, my legs wouldn’t comply.
One last blow struck me square in the mouth and
as I spit out a clot of teeth and blood, I saw the
endless ochre plain backed by the snowy cones
of the volcanoes. The sound of Pink Floyd
completely enveloped the earth’s roundness and
soon I felt his hand rubbing my shoulder. Do you
like Mother? he asked. But that record won’t come
out for years, I tried to tell him, as he followed the
beat drumming on the steering wheel. In the
background, the thin high clouds looked like white
fishes and I imagined that Kurosawa would film this.

Como inmensas pirámides de vidrio las montañas
se tendían transparentándose mientras el campo
intensamente rojo que llegaba hasta sus faldeos
tenía la consistencia dudosa de la sangre o del
atardecer. Me di cuenta de que me había quedado
dormido mientras escribía el guión -me ganaba la
vida en eso- y que la imagen no era seguramente
más que una entre las millones que se suceden en
esos cabeceos casi instantáneos. La pantalla del
computador se había ido a negro y al intentar
mover el mouse para reanudar el trabajo advertí
que últimamente los temblores de mi lado derecho
habían recrudecido y que los dedos se negaban a
obedecerme. Nevaba. La deslumbrante blancura
hería mis ojos y el frío hacía que caminara con
torpeza, con pasos muy cortos. Recordaba haber
estado en mi infancia en ese mismo lugar y que la
nieve me había cegado mientras los otros niños
me llamaban para que los alcanzara. De pronto me
sorprendió que nevara en primavera. Al abrir los
ojos vi las montañas transparentes y más acá,
infinidades de flores rojas emergiendo de la nieve
como si fueran vísceras sangrantes. Mis dedos
corrían deslizándose por el teclado. Entendí tus
películas, alcancé todavía a gritarle a Kurosawa,
entendí tus guiones: hay nieve, hay un hombre
con Parkinson que acaba de caer sobre la nieve.

Like immense glass pyramids they hung becoming
transparent as the intensely red countryside that
reached the base of the slope had the uncertain
consistency of blood or dusk. I realized that I’d
fallen asleep while writing the script—that’s how
I earned a living—and that the image was surely
not more than one among millions that happen at
those almost instantaneous moments of nodding off.
The computer screen had gone black and as I tried
to move the mouse to begin working again, I
noticed that lately the tremors on my right side had
worsened and that my fingers wouldn’t obey me. It
snowed. The blinding whiteness stung my eyes and
the cold made me walk awkwardly, with very short
steps. I remembered having been in that same place
during my childhood and that the snow had blinded
me while other children would call out for me to
catch up to them. Suddenly it surprised me that it
snowed for the first time. As I opened my eyes I
saw the transparent mountains and closer yet,
infinite red flowers emerging from the snow as if
they were bloody entrails. My fingers ran letting
themselves go on the keyboard. I understood your
movies, I still managed to cry out to Kurosawa, I
understood your scripts: there’s snow, there’s a
man with Parkinson’s that just fell in the snow.

Las imágenes en blanco y negro muestran un cielo
encapotado, luego a Pinochet avanzando con su
séquito en medio de pobladoras que lo avivan y
abajo, los charcos de agua y barro que se alargan
reflejando las arrasadas casuchas. Los temporales
del 74 han sido especialmente crudos y miro la
televisión entre la somnolencia. Hace meses que
me levanto apenas unas horas. Oigo el estruendo
de la lluvia golpear la ventana e intento dormirme
nuevamente. He logrado conseguir una buena dosis
de pastillas, unos Valium 10 que me tomo apenas
despierto para seguir durmiendo. No siempre da
resultados y entonces me quedo horas inmóvil,
temblando, hasta que nuevamente vuelvo a
sumirme en un sopor pastoso y sin sueños. Mi
madre trabaja como secretaria y sale temprano.
Entra a mi cuarto y me deja un café que es lo
primero que veo cuando abro los ojos. Es un
departamento duplex y las piezas que sobran se
las arrienda a estudiantes. Cuando logro despertar
escudriño las piezas por si encuentro algún
dinero para comprar más pastillas. Salgo. Camino
a trastabillones entre las pozas de agua y las casas
de cartón y plástico se trizan bajo mis zapatos.
Arriba las nubes han comenzado a abrirse. Un
rostro luminoso, muy blanco, me contempla
mientras caigo como si aún fuera posible el amor.

The black and white images show an overcast sky,
then Pinochet coming forward with his entourage
in the midst of a crowd that cheers him on and
below, the puddles of water and mud widen
reflecting the razed shacks. The storms of ‘74
have been especially cruel and I watch television
through the lethargy. For months now I get up for
only a few hours. I hear the racket of rain hitting
the window and try to fall asleep again. I’ve
managed to get a good dose of pills, some Valium
10s that I take as soon as I wake up to keep on
sleeping. It doesn’t always work and then I’m up
motionless, trembling, for hours until again I fall
back into a heavy stupor of pills and without dreams.
My mother works as a secretary and leaves early.
She comes into my room and the cup of coffee she
sets down is what I first see when I open my eyes.
The apartment is a duplex and she rents the extra
rooms to students. When I manage to wake up I
go through them to see if I can find some money
to buy more pills. I go out. I walk stumbling
through the puddles and the plastic and cardboard
houses crush under my shoes. Above the clouds
have begun to break. A luminous face, very white,
contemplates me as I fall as if love were still possible.

12
Papa ha vuelto

La cumbre de la montaña se alejaba perdiéndose
cielo adentro y definitivamente supe que papá iba
a morir. Recordé que hacía mucho tiempo que no
nevaba sobre Santiago y me dije que yo ya había
vivido lo suficiente, que ya era mucho mayor que
él y que estaba bien. Le agradecí que hubiese vuelto
a esperar 50 años porque yo a los 52 podía
entenderlo. Le escogí la ropa y empecé a vestirlo.
Mis camisas le quedaban algo grandes y al
levantarle la cabeza para ponerle la que me pareció
mejor, sentí el primer golpe de las lágrimas detrás
de los párpados pugnando por salir. Me volví a
decir que papá murió el 16 de febrero de 1952, a los
31 años exactamente, y que debe haberme hecho
falta, pero no es algo en lo que hubiese pensado
mucho. No supe en qué instante regresó. Se
instaló en mi pieza y durante los últimos años
alcanzamos a hablar algo. Ahora se había muerto
y yo lo vestía mientras mi madre y mi hermana
esperaban en el living. Al abrir la puerta para
avisarles que ya podían entrar, la furia del viento
y del granizo me azotó aturdiéndome y ciego corrí
a campo traviesa. Kurosawa, le grité entonces, el
volvió para morirse de nuevo conmigo. Cuando
abrí los ojos vi encima mío la blancura delirante
de la cumbre y muy abajo las primeras luces de
la ciudad encendiéndose. Sólo entonces pude llorar

12
Papa Has Returned

The mountain summit retreated vanishing the
sky within and I knew without a doubt that papa
would die. I remembered that for some time it
hadn’t snowed in Santiago and I told myself I’d
already lived enough, that already I was much
older than he and that I was fine. I thanked him for
having waited 50 years to come back because at 52
I could understand him. I picked out his clothes
and began to dress him. My shirts were a little big
for him and as I lifted his head to put on the one
that seemed best I felt the first jolt of tears behind
my eyelids struggling to get out. I told myself
again that papa died the 16th of February, 1952, at
exactly 31 years of age, and that I must have
missed him, but it’s not something I would’ve
thought much about. I didn’t know exactly when he
came back. He moved into my room and for the
last years we’ve been able to speak some. Now he
had died and I dressed him while my mother and
sister waited in the living room. As I opened the
door to tell them they could come in the fury of
the wind and hail thrashed me stunning me and
blind I ran across the field. Kurosawa, I cried out
then, he returned to die again with me. As I opened
my eyes above me I saw the dizzying white of the
summit and much further below the first lights
of the city illuminating. Only then could I cry.

Las lluvias de los días anteriores habían acabado
de despejar el cielo y las montañas habían
amanecido encima, completamente nevadas. Los
termómetros marcaban bajo cero y sentí el golpe
del frío polar al abrir la ventana. Una jauría de
perros salvajes bajaban por la calle escarchada
que se abría hacia el mar y los seguí con la
mirada. Abrí el cuaderno y anoté primero el
número y luego el sueño. Anoté que la calle se
llamaba Almirante algo. Anoté que me recordaba
la calle donde vivía Bruno. Anoté que a Bruno
lo habían sacado de su casa de madrugada y que
desde entonces no se había sabido nunca más de
él. Anoté que su novia y su madre lo habían
buscado desesperadamente, qué habían
golpeado en vano todas las puertas y que en
todas les negaron que hubiese sido detenido. La
jauría de perros trotaba ladrando por el medio
de la calle y el vaho de sus alientos se abría
nublando los colores de las casas del frente, las
cortinas cerradas de los pequeños emporios y más
allá las tiendas de objetos náuticos, los carteles
del cine, las primeras grúas de los malecones.
Atrás las montañas emergían completamente
blancas despejándose de las brumas del amanecer
y adelante la jauría aullaba detenida por el mar.
¿Son frías esas cumbres Bruno? ¿Es frío el mar?

The rainfall of previous days had finally cleared
the sky and the mountains appeared above,
completely snowed over. Thermometers registered
below zero and I felt the shock of bitter cold as
I opened the window. A pack of wild dogs went
down the icy street that led to the sea and I
followed them with my eyes. I opened the
notebook and wrote first the number and then
the dream. I wrote that the street was called
Almirante something. I wrote that I remembered
the street where Bruno lived. I wrote that they’d
taken Bruno from his house in the middle
of the night and that from then on no one had heard
from him. I wrote that his girlfriend and
his mother had looked desperately for him, that
in vain they’d knocked on every door and every
one denied that he’d been detained. The pack of
dogs trotted barking in the middle of the street
and the haze of their breath expanded clouding
the colors of houses out front, the drawn curtains
of small stores and further down nautical shops,
movie posters, the first cranes on the piers.
Behind the mountains emerged completely white
clearing themselves of the morning fog and up
front the pack howled held back by the sea.
Are those peaks cold Bruno? Is the sea cold?

Dejó de quejarse y permaneció inmóvil. Ignoraba
el tiempo que había durado su desvanecimiento.
De súbito advirtió que estaba vivo y que un dolor
violento le partía la cabeza. ¿Dónde está ese cielo
alto que hoy vi por primera vez? Fue lo primero
que pensó. No conocía tampoco ese dolor. Sí,
hasta ahora no sabía nada de nada... Pero ¿dónde
estoy? Se puso entonces a escuchar; primero oyó
el trote de unos caballos aproximándose y luego
las voces de los jinetes hablando en francés. Abrió
los ojos. Arriba estaba de nuevo el cielo, todavía
más alto, entre las huidizas nubes. No giró la
cabeza ni vio a los que se le acercaban...
¡Está vivo! exclamó Napoléon viendo que se
movía, lleven a ese joven a un puesto de socorro.
Se había desmayado nuevamente y al volver a
abrir los ojos vio que atardecía. El carromato
cargaba otros bultos como él. Los saltos en los
baches le retumbaban en la cabeza vendada y
recordó que su abuela leía ese libro. De pronto
los tumbos cesaron y se dio cuenta de que los
caballos que tiraban el carro habían desaparecido.
Mientras lo bajaban a toda velocidad de la
ambulancia alcanzó a ver los inverosímiles
rascacielos y arriba, muy alta, la larga estela del
cazabombardero marcando el cielo. Kurosawa,
le dije entonces: ¿por qué me fue tan difícil vivir?

He stopped complaining and didn’t move anymore.
Overlooking how long he’d been unconscious, he
quickly realized he was alive and that an agonizing
pain split his head. Where is that sky high above that
I saw today for the first time? This was his initial
thought. He didn’t known that pain either. Yes, he
didn’t know a thing until now...But where am I?
Then he began to listen; first he heard the trot
of some horses drawing near and then the voices
of horsemen speaking French. He opened his eyes.
Once more the sky was above, even higher, between
the gauzy clouds. He didn’t turn his head nor did
he notice those getting closer... He’s alive!
shouted Napoleon seeing that he was moving,
take that kid to triage. He’d fainted again and as
he opened his eyes he saw that it was getting late.
The wagon carried other sacks like him. Jolts from
potholes boomed in his bandaged head and he
recalled how his grandmother used to read that
book. All of a sudden the knocking ceased and he
realized that the horses drawing the carriage had
disappeared. Fast they bore him down from the
ambulance as he managed to see unbelievable
skyscrapers and above, soaring, the long smoke trail
of a fighter-bomber marking the sky. Kurosawa,
I said then, why was it so hard for me to live?

Abajo el mar entraba con furia entre los cortes de
las rocas y yo le estiraba la mano para que ella
pudiera subir. Me decía que las aristas le herían
los pies y que volvería por sus zapatos. El
salpique de las olas transparentaban su blusa de
niña y yo temía que se resbalase y cayera. El sol
me hizo apretar los ojos y sentí que el mar se
cerraba. Ella se había ido y abajo las olas seguían
rompiéndose. Me volví entonces a buscarla.
Caminaba por una calle atestada de puestos y
vendedores que ofrecían videos de pornografía
dura a viva voz. Estaba en el DF, a dos cuadras
del Zócalo, y apenas podía avanzar. De pronto
estaba nuevamente frente al roquerío. En la |
fotografía unas morochitas de no más de ocho
años se la chupaban a un gringo y al mirar atrás
vi que ella me seguía. Las rocas le herían los pies y
cuando me estiró su mano para que le ayudara, yo
se la tomé subiéndola hasta mí y luego se la puse
en mi palo ya duro. Al fondo las espumas blancas
estallaban haciéndose añicos contra el negro de las
rocas y arriba su pequeña mano me masturbaba con
prisa. Entonces le empujé la cabeza hacia
abajo y cuando finalmente mi hija tocó con
su boca mi glande el océano se terminó de cerrar
sobre ella. La ciudad de México atardecía y era
un atardecer violeta Kurosawa. Inmenso, infinito.

Down below the sea rushed furious through the
jagged rocks and I extended my hand so she
could step up. She said the sharp ridges hurt
her feet and that she’d go back to get her shoes.
The spraying surf dampened her girlish blouse
and I was afraid she’d slip and fall. The sun
made me squint and I felt the sea closing in.
She’d left and below the waves continued
breaking. Then I went back to look for her.
I walked through a street filled with shops
and vendors blaring their hard porn videos.
I was in the DF, two blocks from Zócalo
Square, and could barely go on. Suddenly I
found myself in front of the boulders again. In
the photograph some little dark girls of no more
than eight years old were sucking some gringo’s
cock and as I looked back I saw she was following
me. The rocks hurt her feet and when she extended
her hand so I could help, I took hold of it lifting
her toward me, then put it on my already hard
dick. Below the white foam thrashed shattering
against the black rocks and above her small
hand jacked me off fast. Then I pushed her head
down and when finally my daughter touched my
glans with her mouth the ocean finished closing
in over her. It was nightfall in Mexico City, a
violet nightfall Kurosawa. Immense, infinite.

Me despierto en la playa con frío y veo que está
amaneciendo. En algún momento debo haberme
metido al mar vestido porque tengo la ropa
empapada. Como si llegasen desde hace miles de
años, recuerdo fragmentos de una vida: cuatro
matrimonios, hijos, nietos ya grandes, y luego los
restos de la noche a la que he llegado (Valparaíso,
una borrachera de estudiantes, una pelea, y de
golpe, al lado mío, el chirrido del mar estallando
en la oscuridad). Me saco los zapatos y empiezo a
cruzar la playa saliendo. Poco a poco la arena se
va rigidizando bajo mis pies y al inclinarme, veo
el pavimento del andén y luego siento la mano de
mamá empujándome hacia mi padre que se ha
bajado de uno de los vagones del tren. Hace un
rato, al cruzar el puente Aioi, su kimono brilló un
instante contra el cielo aún negro, pero al llegar a
la estación había aclarado. La figura de mi padre
acercándose me inspira reverencia y temor. Niña
Yazuhiko, repite saludándome, niña Yazuhiko.
Empiezo a inclinar la cabeza ante él y al terminar,
el pavimento del andén se abre bajo mis ojos e
inmediatamente después estalla desintegrándose
en el resplandor de infinitos soles. Alzo los ojos.
Ha anochecido y en la playa hay viento. Mientras
me alejo un compañero me grita que lo espere.
Hiroshima ha desaparecido de la faz de la tierra.

I wake up on the beach cold and see that it’s
sunrise. At some point I must have gone into the
sea fully dressed because my clothes are soaked.
As if they’d arrived from thousands of years ago,
I remember fragments of a life: four marriages,
children, grandchildren already grown, and then
the rest of this night (Valparaíso, a bunch of drunk
students, a fight, and right then and there, next to
me, the shrill of the sea thrashing in the darkness).
I take off my shoes and make my way across the
beach leaving. Little by little the sand stiffens under
my feet and as I bend over, I see the pavement and
then feel mama’s hand pushing me toward my
father who’s gotten off the train. A while ago,
crossing the Aioi bridge, his kimono shimmered for
an instant against the still black sky, but as he
arrived to the station, it got brighter. My father’s
figure moving closer inspires reverence and fear.
Yazuhiko girl, he goes on greeting me, Yazuhiko
girl. I begin to bow my head before him and as
I finish, the pavement opens wide beneath my
eyes then immediately explodes disintegrating
in the resplendence of infinite suns. I lift my eyes.
It’s gotten dark and the beach is windy. As I
walk away a friend calls out to me to wait for him.
Hiroshima has disappeared from the face of the earth.

Hace un rato paró de nevar y la luz cortante de la
helada ilumina el anuncio de una película que no
alcanzaron a exhibir. Es un pequeño cine donde
daban viejos films en reposición y sus mamparas
abiertas dejan ver un boquerón negro. Meses
atrás vi La Strada y al final, cuando Anthony
Quinn llora arrojado de bruces sobre la playa, me
di cuenta que esa había sido la primera película
que vi en mi vida y que ese fue el primer hombre
que vi llorar. Lo recordé de golpe, tenía cinco
años y es otra historia. Ahora espero. Mi última
pareja pasó a dejarme algunas provisiones y se
ha ido. Tal vez me amó. También amé a otras
tipas o, al menos, lo creí en su minuto. A ratos
siento nostalgia, pero he aprendido a combatirla.
Hasta hace unos días se alzaba al frente la cresta
nevada de la cordillera, pero ahora sólo se ve
un inmenso vacío y arriba un cielo azul intenso
que oscurece por unas pocas horas. El resplandor
del cielo me ciega e intento hablar. Me las apañé
un tiempo vendiendo libros robados, pero me
pillaron y fue una joda. Recordé la ventana de
una pensión de Valparaíso y que yo veía al fondo
el mar, pero ya dije que no puedo ceder a la
nostalgia. Mientras me tomaban se me vino la
escena del llanto sobre la playa. Después se me
congelaron los párpados, vi el azul oscuro del
cielo abrirse encima mío, traté de decírselos y morí.

It stopped snowing a while ago and the cutting light
of ice illuminates the ad of a movie they didn’t
manage to run. It’s a small theater where they show
old films and its open screens lay bare a wide black
hole. Months ago I saw La Strada and at the end,
when Anthony Quinn cries throwing himself on the
beach, I realized that it was the first movie I’d ever
seen and that he was the first man I’d ever seen cry. I
remembered it suddenly, I was five years old but
that’s another story. Now I wait. My last girlfriend
stopped by to leave me some provisions and has
left. Maybe she loved me. I also loved other girls
or at least thought so at the moment. Sometimes
I feel nostalgia, but I’ve learned to resist it. Until a
few days ago the snowy crest of the cordillera rose
up out front, but now you can only see an immense
emptiness and above an intense blue sky that
darkens for a few hours. The resplendence of the
sky blinds me and I try to speak. I got by for a while
selling stolen books, but they caught me and it was
bitch. I remembered the window of a boarding
house in Valparaíso and that in the background I
could see the ocean, but I’ve already said that I
can’t give in to nostalgia. As they took me away
that crying scene on the beach came back to me.
Then my eyelids froze, I saw the dark blue of the
sky open up above me, I tried to tell them and died.

Nieva. Hace ya meses que sólo duermo de día,
en medio de torbellinos de imágenes y sueños
extenuantes de los que despierto con sobresalto.
El enorme farellón de hielo deja ver detrás
infinidades de rostros que mueven los labios
como si cantaran o intentaran decir algo. Uno de
ellos es el cantautor Víctor Jara y me sorprende
verlo allí porque ya se sabe que lo han matado en
un estadio chileno. Cuando despierto, en la radio
están tocando La plegaria del labrador y el
instinto de sobrevivencia hace que me levante
de un salto para apagarla. La canción no viene
de allí porque hace mucho que la radio está
estropeada, pero sigo escuchándola. Me visto de
prisa y salgo a la calle. Ahora la canción parece
surgir de todas partes y al bajar los ojos veo la
cadena de las otras montañas emergiendo entre
la nevada y el atardecer. La voz de Víctor Jara
cubre ahora por completo las cumbres de los
Andes y siento el pujo de las lágrimas tratando
de salir. Estoy tendido en una saliente y, salvo
los labios, el hielo me aprisiona impidiéndome
todo movimiento. Levántate y mírate las manos
comienzo a cantar en susurros mientras poco a
poco la nieve me va sellando la boca. Ya no
siento temor. Muy lejos, se escucha aún el mar.

It snows. For months now I’ve only slept by
day, in the midst of a torrent of images and
exhausting dreams from which I awake startled.
The immense ice precipice reveals infinities of
faces moving their lips as if they were singing
or trying to say something. One of them is the
songwriter Víctor Jara and it surprises me to see
him there because we already know they’ve
killed him in a Chilean stadium. When I awake,
they’re playing La plegaria del labrador on the
radio and my survival instincts make me get up
right away to turn it off. The song doesn’t come
from there because the radio broke a long time
ago, but I keep on hearing it. I dress quickly and
go out. Now the song seems to come forth
from everywhere and as I lower my eyes I see
the chain of other mountains emerging amid the
snow and sunset. The voice of Víctor Jara now
completely covers the summits of the Andes and
I feel the tears trying to get out. I’m dangling
from a ledge and, except for my lips, the ice
imprisons me impeding any movement. Wake up
and look at your hands, I begin to sing softly as
the snow goes on sealing my mouth shut. I am no
longer afraid. Far away, you can still hear the sea.

Ha llegado el fin. Los huecos blancos del horizonte
han comenzado a crecer y al despertar supe que yo
había estado antes en la cordillera. Me preparé
un café y me decidí a esperar. Tiempo atrás
vendí máquinas de escribir de la Olivetti y no
me sorprendió encontrarme con la cuadrilla de
ventas nuevamente. Éramos un grupo de doce y
Dezerega repartía los territorios. Era nuestro jefe.
El que muchos ya se hubieran muerto, incluido
Dezerega tampoco me llamó la atención. Terminé
mi café y recordé que trató de defenderme cuando
me echaron. La sala en que nos reuníamos por la
mañana era como una sala de clases, con unos
escritorios en fila y el de Dezerega al frente. Creo
que llegué a estimar a Dezerega, también a Luis
Cerda, el tipo me tapaba los atrasos y me esperaba
para meternos a un boliche a tomar café. Vi a Luis
Cerda hace poco. Había decenas de máquinas de
escribir arrumbadas en su cuarto, unas Lettera 32
de color gris. Me dijo que habían sobrado y que
no importaba porque ya nadie usa máquinas de
escribir. Hoy ya es tarde. La represión ha sido
feroz y han arrojado los cuerpos sobre el mar y las
montañas. Al levantarme observé que no podía
mover mis brazos encostrados bajo la nieve.
Kurosawa, le dije, yo era un simple vendedor de
máquinas de escribir y ahora estoy muerto y nieva.

The end has come. The white holes have begun to
extend themselves in the horizon and as I awake I
know that I’d been in the cordillera. I made coffee
and decided to wait. Some time ago I sold Olivetti
typewriters and it didn’t surprise me to come across
the sales team again. We were a group of twelve
and Dezerega assigned territories. He was our boss.
The fact that several had already died, including
Dezerega, didn’t surprise me either. I finished my
coffee and remembered how he tried to defend me
when they threw me out. The room where we met in
the mornings was like a classroom, with lined up
desks and Dezerega’s in the front. I think I ended up
respecting Dezerega, also Luis Cerda, when I was
late he covered for me and he’d hang around so we
could head to a bar for coffee. I saw Luis Cerda not
long ago. There were dozens of typewriters dumped
in his room, some gray Lettera 32s. He said they
were leftovers and that it didn’t matter because no
one uses typewriters anymore. Today is already too
late. The repression has been ferocious and they’ve
thrown the bodies over the sea and mountains. As I
got up I noticed I couldn’t move my arms frozen
beneath the snow. Kurosawa, I said, I was just a
typewriter salesman and now I’m dead and it snows.

Hoy ha desaparecido Buenos Aires. En unas horas
más caerán todas las ciudades cordilleranas y antes
de que termine el día el alud de cuerpos blancos
desbordará los Andes y desaparecerá Santiago. Es
inevitable y papá ha vuelto para esperar junto a
nosotros. Su cara tiene las marcas del cansancio y
representa muchos más años de los 31 que debería
tener. Nos dijo que había vuelto y nada más. Unos
días antes habían regresado mis abuelos, los padres
de mi madre. Los he estado observando, no hablan
entre ellos y simplemente han vuelto. A diferencia
de papá, se ven más jóvenes, pero tienen la misma
expresión cansada. Es bueno que se reúna la
familia, nos dijo mamá que ahora se ha apartado
con papá. Siento que llora. Ella o él que ha vuelto,
no lo sé. Mis abuelos también se han apartado y
de tanto en tanto me miran. Mi abuela no es la
misma que recordaba y de mi abuelo no tenía
recuerdos. Lleva puesto un gastado uniforme azul
de aviador de la primera guerra que es el mismo
que mi abuela guardaba en casa. Ha comenzado a
nevar. Desde hace días la televisión sólo muestra
imágenes de multitudes cada vez más grandes
acoplándose sobre las cumbres de los Andes. El fin
es inminente y enciendo la luz del velador. Hace
frío. Alguien me estaba diciendo que Kurosawa
es una palabra escrita con letras de nieve y de fin.

Today Buenos Aires has disappeared. In a few more
hours all the cordillera cities will fall and before the
end of the day the avalanche of white bodies will
overcome the Andes and Santiago will disappear.
It’s inevitable and papa has come back to wait with
us. His face shows signs of fatigue and he looks
much older than he should at 31. He told us he’d
come back and nothing more. Some days earlier,
my grandparents had returned, my mother’s parents.
I’ve been watching them, they don’t talk to one
another and have merely returned. Unlike papa,
they look younger, but have the same tired
expression. It’s good that the family reunites,
mama told us who’s now alone with papa. I hear
her cry. Her or my papa who’s come back, I don’t
know. My grandparents are also alone and once in
a while they look at me. My grandmother isn’t who
I remembered her to be and I have no memories
of my grandfather. He wears a worn blue World
War I aviator uniform and I know it’s the one my
grandmother kept at home. It’s begun to snow. For
many days now the television shows only images
of the multitudes each time greater coupling with
one another over the summits of the Andes. The
end is imminent and I turn on my bedside lamp.
It’s cold. Someone was telling me that Kurosawa
is a word written with letters of snow and of the end.

Era un océano de tipos que llenaban de lado a
lado la Alameda. Miles y miles de fascistas que
bajaban desfilando desde los barrios altos hasta
el Diego Portales, mientras que a unas pocas
cuadras, interminables filas de buses esperaban el
final del acto para llevar de vuelta a los acarreados
desde las poblaciones. Yo me aposté en una vereda
para mirarlos. Me dije que nunca hubiese creído
que los fachos fueran tantos. Tal vez no era el
único que lo pensaba porque cada cierto rato,
otros se quedaban mirando en silencio y luego se
iban. O quizás eran militares de civil rastreando a
los tipos como yo. La idea me hizo temblar. Al
darme vuelta para alejarme, oí el estrépito de las
rompientes y la voz chillona de Pinochet que se
iba apagando en el sonido del mar. Se había
levantado un fuerte viento y los torbellinos de
arena dificultaban la caminata. La marea estaba
subiendo y muy pronto alcanzaría el pie de los
acantilados. Subí de prisa por los escalones
tallados en la piedra y cuando llegué arriba el
pueblo desierto se me abrió como una inmensa
fauce vacía. Traté con desesperación de zafarme
de los brazos que me atenazaban y alcancé a oír
las rompientes. El primer aniversario del golpe
se apaga en la noche. Más allá, todavía el mar.

It was the sort of ocean that would altogether
overrun the Alameda. From their neighborhoods
thousands upon thousands of fascists came
parading down to Diego Portales, while
a couple blocks away endless lines of buses
waited for the act to end, to take those who’d
been rounded up back to their slums. I stopped
on the sidewalk to watch them. I never would’ve
believed there were so many fascists, I thought to
myself. Maybe I wasn’t the only one thinking this
because, once in a while, others would stare at
them in silence then leave. Or maybe they were
military civilians rooting out guys like me.
The thought made me shudder. As I turned to
move away, I heard the pounding breakers and
Pinochet’s shrill voice gradually drowned out
by the ocean sound. A strong wind began to
blow and the whirls of sand made it hard to
walk. Before long the rising tide would reach
the base of the cliffs. I quickly went up the stone
steps, and when I reached the top, the deserted
town opened up to me like a vast empty jaw.
I tried desperately to shake loose from the arms
that restrained me and managed to hear the
breakers. The first anniversary of the coup is put
out in the night. Further away, the sea goes on.

22
¿Eras tú papá?

Después de cinco días esperando que se despejara
la neblina sobre la costa norte pude ver los
acantilados. Kilómetros y kilómetros de paredes
de granito cortándose a pique y mil metros más
abajo el Pacífico. Había imaginado unas frases
escritas sobre esos murallones, veintidós
exactamente, de amor, de locura y de muerte
recortándose sobre ellos. Me las imaginé en un
sueño. La llanura del desierto de Atacama que se
interrumpía de golpe, luego el abismo y al
fondo el mar. Años después morí. Eran millones y
millones de hombres y mujeres arrojándose,
muchedumbres inacabables que se detenían por
un instante en el borde de los paredones y luego
se lanzaban. Algunos lo hacían tomados de la
mano, se miraban a los ojos y daban el último
paso, otros sostenían niños en sus brazos, algunos
lloraban quedamente mientras el viento del
desierto hacía flamear sus ropas. Sentí un brazo
posarse en mi hombro, ¿eras tú papá? y el vacío
se abrió bajo mis pies sin estruendo, igual que
una boca muda y dulce. Al frente, el azul del
inmenso amanecer se iba fundiendo con el
Pacífico y las frases de amor, de locura y de
muerte, se me pegaron en los labios también sin
estruendo, suavemente, como un último silencio.

22
Was It You Papa?

After five days of waiting for the fog to clear
over the northern coast I could see the cliffs.
Kilometers upon kilometers of jagging granite
walls and a thousand meters below, the Pacific.
I had imagined lines written upon those massive
walls, exactly twenty-two of love, of madness
and death incising into them. I imagined them
in a dream. The plain of the desert of Atacama
suddenly interrupted, then the abyss and then to
the bottom of the sea. I died years later. They
were millions upon millions of women and men
throwing themselves, interminable crowds of
people that held back for a moment at the edge
of the vast walls and then cast themselves down.
Some did it holding hands, they looked into
one another’s eyes and took the last step, others
held children in their arms, some cried steadily
while the desert wind flailed their clothes about.
I felt an arm rest on my shoulder. Was it you
papa? and the emptiness opened beneath my
feet without a sound, just like a sweet mute
mouth. Before me, the blue of the immense
sunrise merged with the Pacific and the lines of
love, of madness and death, stuck to my lips also
without a sound, softly, like an irrevocable silence.

Para Kurosawa/ El Mar

Los farellones recortaban abajo la herradura del
mar y en lugar de las casas playeras edificadas
en las terrazas de los acantilados, se erguían arcos
y columnatas de una antigüedad indescifrable que
descendían escalonadamente hasta el comienzo
de la playa. El sol todavía alto le imprimía al mar
una solidez radiante y cuando finalmente llegué
a su orilla, la intensidad de sus tonos se abrió de
golpe inundándome los ojos. Las rompientes se
hacían cada vez más altas, más resplandecientes
y luminosas, y sin emitir un sonido sus resacas
iban y venían cubriendo la arena con infinitas
líneas de colores. Hundí entonces y vi que el
mar eran llanuras y llanuras de cuerpos muertos,
extensiones interminables torsos y espaldas
exánimes, de vientres que ondeaban igual que
paños extendiéndose hasta el horizonte,
mientras más acá, siguiendo la curvatura de las
rompientes, los cadáveres ascendían doblándose
hasta aparecer por un segundo transparentados
en la cumbre de la ola para luego derrumbarse.
Eran millones de millones de caras con las bocas
abiertas, infinidades de caderas, de brazos y
piernas barriendo una y otra vez la playa como
si fueran cuerdas pintadas. Kurosawa, alcancé
aún a gritarle, este no es un sueño, este es el mar.

For Kurosawa/ The Sea

Below the bluffs sliced into the horseshoe bend
of the sea and instead of beach houses built upon
cliff terraces, rising arches and columns of an
indecipherable antiquity descended step by step
down to where the beach begins. Still high, the
sun imprinted a solid radiance upon the sea and
when I finally arrived to its edge, the tonal
intensity opened up suddenly flooding my
eyes. The breakers steadily rising, becoming
more brilliant and luminous, and without a sound
its undertows came and went covering the sand
with infinite lines of color. Then I plunged in
and saw that the sea was endless plains of
torsos and backs exhumed, of stomachs that
waved like rags extending themselves to the
horizon, while further over here, following the
curvature of the breakers, the cadavers rose
folding themselves until appearing for a
second becoming transparent at the peak of the
wave to then break apart. They were millions
upon millions of faces with their mouths open,
infinite hips, arms and legs sweeping again and
again the beach as if painted ropes. Kurosawa, I
managed to cry out, this isn’t a dream, this is the sea.

Love in the First Person

In On Love, Suffering, and the New Millennium, Raúl Zurita suggests not that we speak of the dead, but that we simply speak the dead: “Each one of us is more than an I, each one is a torrent of the deceased that ends in our life just as we end in our descendents. This is what’s meant by a tradition and culture: that all those who have preceded us return to speak when we speak, they return to see when we see, feel when we feel. Each one of us is the resurrection of the dead and that miracle is achieved in each second of our lives.”[1] But what does this mean, for the dead—the absent—to speak when we speak, see when we see, and feel when we feel? How do we return the impossible distance of other voices and senses into the presence that is each one of us? And for Zurita what is the poetic nature of such a return?

An imagined or absent person is voiced into being through the figure of speech called prosopopeia. Paul De Man writes that this figure is “the fiction of an apostrophe to an absent, voiceless entity, which posits the possibility of the latter’s reply and confers upon it the power of speech. Voice assumes mouth, eye, and finally face, a chain that is manifest in the etymology of the tropes name, prosopon poein, to confer a mask or a face (prosopon).”[2] A voice that speaks and addresses requires the imagination of a face that listens. Implicit to that face that listens is the power of speech, of a voice that in turn calls for a face to listen. For De Man, this process levels the living with the dead because it underscores the ultimate absence of the former in an unending process of figuration and disfiguration, the creation of a face and defacement. De Man considers prosopopeia “the master trope of poetic discourse” because it evidences as much that fiction of an apostrophe to the absent as the fiction of any apostrophe.[3] This is a poignant state—“the madness of words”—for De Man because prosopopeia continuously emphasizes and elaborates the illusion of intelligibility.[4]

We attempt to speak, to represent our thoughts and feelings, and if we are heard and understood, we hope to be spoken to in return. We yearn for an unbroken and reciprocal circle of figuration between the self and other. Instead, what we experience is the madness of our everyday attempts to address and understand one another because this back and forth fundamentally impedes any type of stable subjectivity and intelligibility. What De Man suggests is that this process is as creative as it is corrosive because it emphasizes our own death as well as our inability to locate a point of origin for the self. Thus, as we attempt to represent the unbearable distance of the dead through poetry, what we also convey is the equally unbearable distance of the living. While prosopopeia initially directs our gaze to the ability of poetry to figure the voices of the absent, like De Man, Zurita’s attention is paid to the living. He fuses together what the critic had so painfully observed and distilled, namely, prosopopeia as the exemplar of presence.

Dreams for Kurosawa are derived from three separate books—Las ciudades de agua, Zurita / in memoriam—published in Mexico and Chile respectively in 2007, and Zurita, the poet’s most recent poetic tour-de-force of over 600 pages.[5] In Dreams for Kurosawa, Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998), the Japanese film director and his series of short films, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) become a mnemonic, thematic, aesthetic, and personal point of reference for the poet. Zurita explains:

The film Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams was shocking for me, most of all because of the dream of the Japanese soldiers that come out of a tunnel unaware of the fact that they’re still dead. What occurred was an error in perspective. This doesn’t happen to me very often. I thought I’d seen the film around 1973, before the coup d’état in Chile, when in fact the film had been released recently in 1990. I’ve tried to understand the reasons for this error of more than 17 years and can’t. When I began to write Las ciudades de agua . . . in 2006, the memory of that movie came back as something very old, and I wrote the first dreams, they are the ten that appear in the book Las ciudades de agua.[6]

In Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, fantastical memories of childhood experiences coalesce with those of others who freeze beneath the snow or the ghosts of soldiers who—unknowing and then unwilling to accept their own deaths— march through a tunnel to face their surviving commanding officer. Zurita, like Kurosawa, fuses life with art. The poet uses his own name, dreams and experiences throughout his work, and has referred to Kurosawa as a father figure. Both engage the problem of what to do with a collective experience of extraordinary violence, post-war ruins, and, most importantly, the state of the living—what we believe to be the nature of our presence—like the tragically confused soldiers.

In these Dreams for Kurosawa the poetic voice moves us in a thick fluid between the living and the dead, mountain summit and city street, masculine and feminine, temporal moments, geographies and national affiliations. This merge, a trademark of Zurita’s craft, pivots upon the permeability of poetic voice and is signaled by the continuously shifting first person singular. For example, between “My Name: Akira Kurosawa” and poem 19, “Kurosawa” shares the same “I” as Zurita and the typewriter salesman who speaks frozen beneath the snow. “I” is “Kurosawa,” the film director and “I,” the “typewriter salesman.” In other poems the poetic voice addresses “Kurosawa” directly as “Papa,” or identifies, in the third person singular, a “man with Parkinson’s that just fell in the snow.” Zurita himself suffers from this disease. Consider also poem 2 in which the Arauco War is recalled along with Ziley Mora Penroz, the Mapuche writer dedicated to disseminating the Mapuche language and cultural ethos. At once alive with eyes open, at once dismembered by the waterfalls of Tamasopo in Ciudad Valle, Mexico, in poem 4, the permeable voice is not limited to the experience of a nation (Chile) or to a specific historical or chronological moment (the dictatorship), but literally spills out to imagine multiple proximities, affiliations, and points of reference —brother, mother, son, sister, sisters, above, below, man, child, speaking, breaking.

Instead of being something of madness that alerts us to the drag of our own death in language through the fiction of intelligibility, for Zurita prosopopeia holds the possibility of something that is greater than death. Each shifting “I” is a resounding yes to the other—a return to the other that is simultaneously a return to the self—rather than a corrosion of the possibility of fully representing any type of stable subjectivity. Prosopopeia marks the ultimate limit of the self that is death at the same time that it imposes a greater concern for the limit of the other, that is, the other’s death. This concern for the other’s death as greater than one’s own constitutes Zurita’s idea of love in the new millennium. Language holds the infinite capacity—the infinite yes—to sustain and convey the simultaneity and multiplicity of our presence, grounded as much in this that I speak and this that I write as in the body from which I do such miraculous things. Its objective is not completion, or finitude, and it does not pretend to locate an origin in any given moment or body. It is simply an effort of singularity—the singularity of a face—that is infinite.

Anna Deeny Morales
Boston, 2011

[1] Raúl Zurita, “Dos anotaciones sobre el amor, el sufrimiento y el nuevo milenio” in Sobre el amor, el sufrimiento y el nuevo milenio (Editorial Andrés Bello: San<ago de Chile, 2000) 12–13. “Cada uno de nosotros es más que un yo, es un torrente de difuntos que termina en nuestra vida tal como nosotros terminamos en los que nos descienden. Eso es lo que se en<ende por una tradición y una cultura: que todos aquellos seres que nos han precedido vuelven a tomar la palabra cuando nosotros hablamos, vuelven a mirar cuando miramos, vuelven a sen<r cuando sen<mos. Cada uno de nosotros es la resurrección de los muertos y ese milagro se va cumpliendo en cada segundo de nuestras vidas.”

[2] Paul De Man, “Autobiography as De-Facement” MLN, Vol. 94, No. 5, Compara<ve Literature (Dec., 1979) 926.

[3] De Man, The Resistance to Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986) 48.

[4] De Man, The Rhetoric of Roman=cism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984) 122.

[5] Las ciudades de agua was published by Ediciones Era. Zurita / in memoriam was published by Ediciones Tácitas. Zurita was published by Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales in 2011. Sueños para Kurosawa was also published as a collec<on in Spanish in New York City by Pen Press in 2010.

[6] Zurita, e-mail to Anna Deeny. March 15, 2011. “El film Sueños de Akira Kurosawa fue un verdadero golpe, sobre todo el sueño de los soldados japoneses que salen de un túnel y no saben aún que están muertos, se me produjo además un error de perspec<va que no me sucede tan a menudo, creí hasta hace poco que había visto el film a mediados del 73, antes del golpe de estado en Chile, cuando la película se estrenó recién en el 90. He tratado de pensar por qué ese error de más de 17 años y no doy con la razón, cuando comencé a escribir Las ciudades de agua, la serie que lleva ese nombre, el 2006 se me vino el recuerdo de esa película como algo muy an<guo y escribí los primeros sueños, son los diez que aparecen en el libro Las ciudades de agua.”

This bilingual edition of Dreams for Kurosawa was first published in 2012 by Arrow as Aarow Press, Chicago.

Raúl Zurita Canessa (Santiago de Chile, 1950) is one of Latin America’s foremost and celebrated poets. He studied Civil Engineering at the Universidad Santa María de Valparaíso. Along with other artists, in 1979 he founded CADA, Colectivo de Acciones de Arte, an art action group dedicated to the creation of public and political art that would resist the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. His literary works include Purgatorio (1979), Anteparaíso (1982), El paraíso está vacío (1984), Canto a su amor desaparecido (1985), Canto de los ríos que se aman (1993), La vida nueva (1994), Poemas militantes (2000), El día más blanco (2000), INRI (2003), Mi mejilla es el cielo estrellado (2004), Los poemas muertos (2006), Los países muertos (2006), Las ciudades de agua (2007), Poemas de amor (2007), Zurita/ In Memoriam (2007) and Zurita (2011). In 1982 he directed the sky writing of the poem “The New Life” over Queens, New York, and in 1992 he bulldozed “ni pena ni miedo” (“no shame no fear”) into the Desert of Atacama. Zurita has been awarded the Premio Pablo Neruda, the Premio Nacional de Literatura de Chile, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. From 1990-1995, he served as the Chilean cultural attaché to Italy. His works have been translated into English, German, Russian, Italian, Swiss, Chinese, Bengali, Turkish and Hindi. He now lives in Santiago and teaches literature at the Universidad Diego Portales.

Anna Deeny Morales is a dramatist, translator of poetry, and literary critic. Original works for contemporary dance, theater, and opera include La straniera (1997); Tela di Ragno (1999–2002); Cecilia Valdés (2018); and La Paloma at the Wall (2019). Her one-act opera libretto, ¡ZAVALA-ZAVALA!: an opera in v cuts, recently commissioned by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and composer Brian Arreola, will debut in 2021. A 2018 National Endowment for the Arts recipient for the translation of Tala by Gabriela Mistral, Deeny Morales has translated works by Raúl Zurita, Mercedes Roffé, Alejandra Pizarnik, Nicanor Parra, Amanda Berenguer, Malú Urriola, and Marosa di Giorgio, among others. She received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and has taught at Harvard University and Dartmouth College. She currently teaches at Georgetown University, and her book manuscript, Other Solitudes, considers transamerican dialogues on consciousness and poetry throughout the last century.