After parting ways with the students I headed back home, and on the corner of Nassau Street and Harrison I came across a man dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel jacket who was taking advantage of the avenue’s slow traffic light to spread political propaganda. He was holding up a poster in support of the Republican candidate for the congressional elections in May. Onto it he’d attached a little American flag, a signal that he belonged to the patriotic right. I’d never seen a proselytizing act done by a lone man before. Everything is individualized here, I thought; there are no social or union conflicts, and if they throw an employee out of the post office where he worked for more than twenty years there’s no chance that the others would show solidarity with a strike or a demonstration, and that’s why it’s routine for the one who’s been treated unjustly to go up on the rooftop of the building where he used to work with a machine gun and a couple of hand grenades and kill all of his indifferent compatriots passing by. The United States could use a bit of Peronism, it amused me to think, so as to lower the rate of mass murders carried out by individuals rebelling against the injustices of society.
3
Hudson’s skill for observing animals was an art form in itself. You could make a literary zoo out of all the creatures from La Pampa that appear in his work. Like all good writers, he was patient and knew how to wait, and he could describe the movements and rapid changes in rhythm of the most varied life forms (including human beings). “A more interesting animal is the Ctenomys magellanica, a little less than the rat in size, with a shorter tail, pale gray fur, and red incisors. It is called tuco-tuco from its voice, and oculto from its habits; for it is a dweller underground.… it is found living; not seen, but heard; for all day long and all night sounds its voice, resonant and loud, like a succession of blows from a hammer… first with strong measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and with a swing and rhythm.”
Hudson’s viewpoint is never static, and he has a particular relationship with living beings, neither trying to capture them (Melville, Hemingway) or aspiring to a nature without animals (Conrad) but acting instead as an extreme voyeur, never killing or catching, only observing. But sometimes Hudson describes the way animals look at him. “One, the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that hunts in companies; and when these long-bodied creatures sit up erect, glaring with beady eyes, grinning and chattering at the passer-by, they look like little friars in black robes and gray cowls; but the expression on their round faces is malignant and bloodthirsty beyond anything in nature, and it would perhaps be more decent to liken them to devils rather than to humans.”
We no longer know how to describe animals unless they’re domesticated. That same day, according to the local news on TV, a bear had been seen in the woods, on the edge of a gully, not far from here. It was a blot among the trees, a blur of reddish brown. It wended its way along and turned up in a vacant lot on the side of Mountain Avenue. Rearing up on two legs, irritated by the noise of cars, with a murderous gleam in its eyes, it circled around and finally moved off toward the undergrowth. It reminded me of a bear from a traveling circus that set up camp on an empty piece of land behind my house in Adrogué when I was a boy. I’d watched it for hours from the privet hedge. Tied on a chain, it too moved around in circles and could sometimes be heard growling in the night. The circus ended its program with theatrical performances, shows adapted from costumbrista plays and popular radio dramas. The actors had asked my mother if they could borrow some furniture for their set. When I went to the performance, the pale wooden chairs from the garden of our house that appeared onstage would not allow me to believe in what I was seeing. This bear prowling around the vicinity of the campus has the opposite effect on me: I believe anything could be possible.
The night was freezing, and the windows had fogged over. The pianist who lives opposite, on the other side of the street, was practicing Schubert’s last sonata. He would advance a little, pause, and start over. It gave me a sensation like a sliding window getting caught and taking a while to open. But now I saw him under the yellow light of the streetlamp, standing in front of his car, the hood raised, in a state of repose. From time to time he leaned forward and listened to the sounds of the running engine. Then he would straighten up again and remain there, motionless, in an indecipherable waiting.
What would Orion be doing at this hour? He would already have retired to his chambers, as he says sometimes. He’s forgotten everything and lives in the moment, in the pure present. He suffers from some uncertain defect that alters his sense of time. He’s muddled up in a continuous motion that forces him to think in order to hold confusion at bay. Thinking isn’t the same as remembering; you can
