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SCHOLARS OF
SODOM for Celina
Manzoni I. It's 1972
and I can see V S. Naipaul strolling through the streets of Buenos
Aires. Well,
sometimes he's strolling, but sometimes, when he's on his way to
meetings or
keeping appointments, his gait is quick and his eyes take in only what
he needs
to see in order to reach his destination with a minimum of bother,
whether it's
a private dwelling or, more often, a restaurant or a cafe, since many
of those
who've agreed to meet him have chosen a public place, as if they were
intimidated by this peculiar Englishman, or as if they'd been
disconcerted by
the author of Miguel Street and A House for Mr. Biswas when they met
him in the
flesh and had thought: Well, I didn't think it would be like this, or:
This
isn't the man I'd imagined, or: Nobody told me. So there he is,
Naipaul, and it
seems that all he can notice are outward movements, but in fact he's
noticing
inward movements too, although he interprets them in his own way,
sometimes
arbitrarily, and he's moving through Buenos Aires in the year 1972 and
writing
as he moves or perhaps only wanting to write as his legs move through
that
strange city, and he's still young, forty years old, but he already has
a
considerable body of work behind him, a body of work that doesn't weigh
him
down or prevent him from moving briskly through Buenos Aires when he
has an
appointment to keep-the weight of the work, that's something to which
we shall
have to return, the weight and the pride that he takes in his work, the
weight
and the responsibility, which don't prevent his legs from moving nimbly
or his
hand from rising to hail a taxi, as he acts in character, like the man
he is, a
man who keeps his appointments punctually-but he is weighed down by the
work
when he goes strolling through Buenos Aires without appointments to
exercise
his British punctuality, without any pressing obligations, just walking
along
those strange avenues and streets, through that city in the southern
hemisphere, so like the cities of the northern hemisphere, and yet
nothing like
them at all, a hole, a void that someone has suddenly inflated, a show
that is
strictly for local consumption; that's when he feels the weight of the
work,
and it's tiring to carry that weight as he walks, it exhausts him, it's
irritating and shameful. II. Many years
ago, before V. S. Naipaul-a writer whom I hold in high regard, by the
way-won
the Nobel Prize, I tried to write a story about him, with the title
"Scholars of Sodom." The story began in Buenos Aires, where Naipaul
had gone to write the long article on Eva Peron that was later included
in a
book published in Spain by Seix Barral in 1983. In the story, Naipaul
arrived
in Buenos Aires, I think it was his second visit to the city, and took
a
cab-and that's where I got stuck, which doesn't say much for my powers
of
imagination. I had some other scenes in mind that I didn't get around
to
writing. Mainly meetings and visits. Naipaul at newspaper offices.
Naipaul at
the home of a writer and political activist. Naipaul at the home of an
upper-class literary lady. Naipaul making phone calls, returning to his
hotel
late at night, staying up and diligently making notes. Naipaul
observing
people. Sitting at a table in a
famous cafe trying not to miss a single word. Naipaul visiting Borges.
Naipaul
returning to England and going through his notes. A brief but engaging
account
of the following series of events: the election of Peron's candidate,
Peron's
return, the election of Peron, the first symptoms of conflict within
the
Peronist camp, the right-wing armed groups, the Montoneros, the death
of Peron,
his widow's presidency, the indescribable Lopez Rega, the army's
position,
violence flaring up again between right- and left-wing Peronists, the
coup, the
dirty war, the killings. But I might be getting all mixed up. Maybe
Naipaul's
article stopped before the coup; it probably came out before it was
known how
many had disappeared, before the scale of the atrocities was confirmed.
In my
story, Naipaul
simply walked through the streets of Buenos Aires and somehow had a
presentiment of the hell that would soon engulf the city. In that
respect his
article was prophetic, a modest, minor prophecy, nothing to match
Sabato's
Abbadon the Exterminator,
but with a modicum of good will it could be seen as a
member of the same family, a family of nihilist works paralyzed by
horror. When
I say "paralyzed," I mean it literally, not as a criticism. I'm
thinking of the way some small boys freeze when suddenly confronted by
an
unforeseen horror, unable even to shut their eyes. I'm thinking of the
way some
girls have been known to die from a heart attack before the rapist has
finished
with them. Some literary artists are like those boys and girls. And
that's how
Naipaul was in my story, in spite of
himself. He kept his eyes open and maintained his customary lucidity.
He had
what the Spanish call bad milk, a kind of spleen that immunized him
against
appeals to vulgar sentimentality. But in his nights of wandering around
Buenos
Aires, he, or his antennae, also picked up the static of hell. The
problem was
that he didn't know how to extract the messages from that noise, a
predicament
that certain writers, certain literary artists, find particularly
unsettling.
Naipaul's vision of Argentina could hardly have been less flattering.
As the
days went by, he came to find not only the city but the country as a
whole
insufferably aggravating. His uneasy feeling about the place seemed to
be
intensified by every visit, every new acquaintance he made. If I
remember
rightly, in my story Naipaul had arranged to meet Bioy Casares at a
tennis
club. Bioy didn't play any more, but he still went there to drink
vermouth and chat
with his friends and sit in the sun. The writer and his friends at the
tennis
club struck Naipaul as monuments to feeblemindedness, living
illustrations of
how a whole country could sink into imbecility. His meetings with
journalists
and politicians and union leaders left him with the same impression.
After
those exhausting days, Naipaul dreamed of Buenos Aires and the pampas,
of
Argentina as a whole, and his dreams invariably
turned into nightmares. Argentineans are not especially popular in the
rest of
Latin America, but I can assure you that no Latin American has written
a
critique as devastating as Naipaul's. Not even a Chilean. Once, in a
conversation with Rodrigo Fresan, I asked him what he thought of
Naipaul's
essay. Fresan, whose knowledge of literature in English is
encyclopedic, barely
remembered it, even though Naipaul is one of his favorite authors. But
to get
back to the story: Naipaul listens and notes down his impressions but
mostly he
walks around Buenos Aires. And suddenly, without giving the reader any
sort of
warning, he starts talking about sodomy. Sodomy as an Argentinean
custom. Not
just among homosexuals-in fact, now that I come think of it, I can't
remember
Naipaul mentioning homosexuality at all. He is talking about hetero-
sexual
relationships. You can imagine Naipaul, inconspicuously positioned in a
bar (or
a corner store-why not, since we're imagining), listening to the
conversations
of journalists, who start off by talking about politics, how the
country has
merrily set its course toward the abyss, and then, to cheer themselves
up, they
move on to amorous encounters, sexual conquests and lovers. All of
their faceless
lovers have at some point, Naipaul reminds himself, been sodomized. I
took her
up the ass, he writes. It's an act that in Europe, he reflects, would
be
regarded as shameful, or at least passed over in silence, but in the
bars of
Buenos Aires it's something to brag about, a sign of virility, of
ultimate
possession, since if you haven't fucked your lover or your girlfriend
or your
wife up the ass, you haven't really taken possession of her. And just
as
Naipaul is appalled by violence and thoughtlessness in politics, the
sexual
custom of "taking her up the ass," which he sees as a kind of
violation, fills him ineluctably with disgust and contempt: a contempt
of
Argentineans that intensifies as the article proceeds. No one, it
seems, is
exempt from this pernicious custom. Well, no, there is one person
quoted in the
essay who rejects sodomy, though not with Naipaul's vehemence. The
others, to a
greater or lesser degree, accept and practice it, or have done so at
some
point, which leads Naipaul to conclude that Argentina is an
unrepentantly macho
country (whose machismo is thinly disguised by a dramaturgy of death
and blood)
and that in this hell of unfettered masculinity, Peron is the
supermacho and
Evita is the woman possessed, totally possessed. Roberto Bolano:
The Secret of Evil
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