Trafalgar Read online

  Table of Contents

  By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon

  The Sense of the Circle

  Of Navigators

  The Best Day of the Year [1]

  The González Family’s Fight for a Better World

  Interval with my Aunts

  Trafalgar and Josefina

  End of the Interval

  Mr. Chaos

  Constancia

  Strelitzias, Lagerstroemias, and Gypsophila

  Trafalgar and I

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Trafalgar

  a novel

  Angélica Gorodischer

  Translated by

  Amalia Gladhart

  Work published within the framework of “Sur” Translation Support Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Culture of the Argentine Republic. Obra editada en el marco del Programa “Sur” de Apoyo a las Traducciones del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto de la República Argentina.

  Small Beer Press

  Easthampton, MA

  Trafalgar

  © Angélica Godorischer, 1979

  © Emecé, 2001

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed

  in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Trafalgar copyright © 1979 by Angélica Gorodischer. All rights reserved.

  Translation copyright © 2013 by Amalia Gladhart (amaliagladhart.com). All rights reserved.

  Cover art “Caloris Basin—Mercury” © 2012 by Ron Guyatt (ronguyatt.com). All rights reserved.

  Small Beer Press

  150 Pleasant Street #306

  Easthampton, MA 01027

  www.smallbeerpress.com

  www.weightlessbooks.com

  [email protected]

  Distributed to the trade by Consortium.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gorodischer, Angélica.

  Trafalgar : a novel / Angélica Gorodischer ; translated by Amalia Gladhart. -- 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  isbn 978-1-61873-032-9 (alk. paper) -- isbn 978-1-61873-033-6 (ebook)

  I. Gladhart, Amalia. II. Title.

  pq7798.17.o73t713 2013

  863’.64--dc23

  2012035130

  First edition 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  Text set in Minion.

  Paper edition printed on 50# 30% PCR recycled Natures Natural paper by in the USA.

  To

  Hugo Gorodischer

  Plus loin que le fleuve qui gronde,

  Plus loin que les vaste foreês

  Plus loin que la gorge profonde,

  Je fuirais, je courrais, j’irais’.

  Victor Hugo

  MEDRANO, TRAFALGAR: Born in Rosario, 2 October, 1936. Only child of Doctor Juan José Medrano Sales, the city’s eminent clinician, who was chaired professor of Physiology in the College of Medical Sciences of the Universidad Nacional del Litoral and president of the Medical Society of Rosario, and his wife, Doña Mercedes Lucía Herrera Stone. He received his primary and secondary education at the Marist Brothers’ school. His parents hoped he would study medicine, but after a brief incursion into the university cloisters, the young Medrano chose to dedicate himself to commerce, an activity for which he undoubtedly possessed uncommon gifts, and from which he obtained great satisfaction, not solely in financial terms. The tragic deaths of Dr. Medrano Salles and Doña Mercedes Herrera in an automobile accident will be remembered. At that time (1966), Trafalgar Medrano was thirty years old, he had consolidated the commercial contacts established some time before, and his position in the world of business could be classified as brilliant. Outside of the expansion, perhaps unprecedented, of his business activity, his life is without—as he never ceases to remark—notable occurrences. He is single. He lives in the large home that belonged to his parents, in a residential neighborhood to the north of the city of Rosario, a big house, a little antiquated but which he refuses to modify, aside from having it painted every two years, and which during his repeated and sometimes extended absences is left in the care of his faithful servants Don Rogelio Bellevigne and Doña Crisóstoma Ríos de Bellevigne. His offices operate in the building located at 1253 Córdoba Street, attended amiably and efficiently these last twenty years (when they moved from those on the top floor in the 700 block of Mitre) by doña Elvira Suárez de Romegiali and the accountant Servidio Cicchetti. He is a member of the Rosario Pelota Club, the Jockey Club, of The Circle, of the Argentine Academy of Lunfardo. At the death of his parents, he donated Dr. Medrano’s scientific library to the Medical Society of Rosario. He possesses, however, a very rich and varied library composed of works of narrative, detective stories, and science fiction, whose volumes in some cases originate in unexpected places. He displays extremely simple tastes: fine cuisine, without excesses; fine wines, even more sparingly; cats, music, black coffee, cigarettes, reading (Balzac, Cervantes, Vian, Le Guin, Lafferty, Villon, Borges, Euripides, Métal Hurlant, Corto Maltés, to cite only a few of his favorites); the company of friends, among whom he names with particular affection Ciro Vázquez Leiva; Dr. Hermenegildo Flynn, physician; Sujer and Angélica Gorodischer; Dr. Nicolás Rubino, attorney; Dr. Simeón Páez, also attorney; Miguel Ángel Sánchez; Roberto Brebbia; Carlos Castro; and distinguished poets such as Jorge Isaías, Mirta Rosenberg, Francisco Gandolfo, et cetera. He owns a number of notable works by the visual artists of Rosario, who also figure among his friends. One can admire in his home pictures by Luis Ouvrard, Gustavo Cochet, Juan Grela, Pedro Giacaglia, Hugo Padeletti, Leónidas Gambartes, Francisco García Carrera, Juan Pablo Renzi, Manuel Musto, Augusto Schiavoni, et cetera, and a very beautiful sculpture by Lucio Fontana, the Smiling Girl. He habitually frequents the Burgundy, the well-known establishment that has seen pass through its premises in the 1100 block of Córdoba so many of the city’s leading personalities, and he collects gramophone records with recordings of tangos by his favorite orchestras.

  (Who’s Who in Rosario. Edited by the Subcommittee for Public Relations of the Association of Friends of the City of Rosario. Rosario: La Familia Press, 1977.)

  From here on, dear reader, kind reader, even before you begin to read this book, I must ask you a favor: do not go straight to the index to look for the shortest story or the one that has a title that catches your attention. Since you are going to read them, for which I thank you, read them in order. Not because they follow chronologically, though there is something of that, but because that way you and I will understand each other more easily.

  Thank you.

  A.G.

  By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon

  I was with Trafalgar Medrano yesterday. It’s not easy to find him. He’s always going here and there with that import-export business of his. But now and then he goes from there to here and he likes to sit down and drink coffee and chat with a friend. I was in the Burgundy and when I saw him come in, I almost didn’t recognize him: he had shaved off his mustache.

  The Burgundy is one of those bars of which there aren’t many left, if there are any at all. None of that Formica or any fluorescent lights or Coca-Cola. Gray carpet—a little worn—real wood tables and real wood chairs, a few mirrors against the wood paneling, small windows, a single door and a façade that says nothing. Thanks to all this, inside there’s a lot of silence and anyone can sit down to read the paper or talk with someone else or even do nothing, seated at a table with a cloth, white crockery dishes, and real glass, like civilized people use, and a serious sugar bowl, and without anyone, let alone Marcos, coming to bother them.

  I won’t tell you where it is because one of these days you might have adolescent sons or, worse, adolescent daughters who will find out, an
d good-bye peace and quiet. I’ll give you just one piece of information: it’s downtown, between a shop and a galería, and you surely pass by there every day when you go to the bank and you don’t even see it.

  But Trafalgar came over to me at the table right away. He recognized me, because I still have the appearance—all fine cheviot and Yardley—of a prosperous lawyer, which is exactly what I am. We greeted each other as if we had seen each other a few days before, but I calculated something like six months had passed. I made a sign to Marcos that meant, let’s see that double coffee, and I went on with my sherry.

  “I haven’t seen you in a long time,” I said.

  “Well, yes,” he answered. “Business trips.”

  Marcos brought him his double coffee and a glass of cold water on a little silver plate. That’s what I like about the Burgundy.

  “Also, I got into a mess.”

  “One of these days, you’re going to end up in the slammer,” I told him, “and don’t call me to get you out. I don’t deal with that kind of thing.”

  He tried the coffee and lit a black cigarette. He smokes short ones, unfiltered. He has his little ways, like anyone.

  “A mess with a woman,” he clarified without looking at me. “I think it was a woman.”

  “Traf,” I said, getting very serious, “I hope you haven’t contracted an exquisite inclination for fragile youths with smooth skin and green eyes.”

  “It was like being with a woman when we were in bed.”

  “And what did you do with him or with her in bed?” I asked, trying to prod him a bit.

  “What do you think one does with a woman in bed? Sing Schumann’s Lieder as duets?”

  “Okay, okay, but tell me: what was there between the legs? A thing that stuck out or a hole?

  “A hole. Better put, two, each one in the place where it belonged.”

  “And you took advantage of both.”

  “Well, no.”

  “It was a woman,” I concluded.

  “Hmmm,” he said. “That’s what I thought.”

  And he went back to his black coffee and unfiltered cigarette. Trafalgar won’t be hurried. If you meet him sometime, at the Burgundy or the Jockey Club or anywhere else, and he starts to tell you what happened to him on one of his trips, by God and the whole heavenly host, don’t rush him; you’ll see he has to stretch things out in his own lazy and ironic fashion. So I ordered another sherry and a few savories and Marcos came over and made some remark about the weather and Trafalgar concluded that changes of weather are like kids, if you give them the time of day, it’s all over. Marcos agreed and went back to the bar.

  “It was on Veroboar,” he went on. “It was the second time I’d gone there, but the first time I don’t count because I was there just in passing and I didn’t even have time to get out. It’s on the edge of the galaxy.”

  I have never known if it is true or not that Trafalgar travels to the stars but I have no reason not to believe him. Stranger things happen. What I do know is that he is fabulously rich. And that it doesn’t seem to matter a bit to him.

  “I had been selling reading material in the Seskundrea system, seven clean, shiny little worlds on which visual reading is a luxury. A luxury I introduced, by the way. Texts were listened to or read by touch there. The rabble still does that, but I have sold books and magazines to everyone who thinks they’re somebody. I had to land on Veroboar, which isn’t very far away, to have a single induction screen checked, and I took the opportunity to sell the surplus.” He lit another cigarette. “They were comic books. Don’t make that face—if it hadn’t been for the comic books, I wouldn’t have had to shave my mustache.”

  Marcos brought him another double coffee before he could order it. That Marcos is a marvel: if you drink nothing but dry sherry, well chilled, like me; or orange juice—not strained—with gin, like Salustiano, the youngest of the Carreras; or seven double coffees in a row like Trafalgar Medrano, you can be sure that Marcos will be there to remember it even if it’s been ten years since you went to the Burgundy.

  “This time I didn’t go to Seskundrea, it wouldn’t do for the luxury to become a custom and then I’d have to think up something else, but I was taking aspirin to Belanius III, where aspirin has hallucinogenic effects. Must be a matter of climate or metabolism.”

  “I’m telling you, you’ll end up in the slammer.”

  “Unlikely. I convinced the police chief on Belanius III to try Excedrin. Imagine that!”

  I tried, but I was unable to do so. The police chief of Belanius III abusing himself with Excedrin lies beyond the limits of my modest imagination. And then again, I didn’t make a great effort, because I was intrigued by the bit about the woman who probably wasn’t one and by the thing about the mess.

  “Belanius III is not that close to Veroboar, but once I was there I decided to try with more magazines and a few books, just a few so as not to frighten them. Of course, now I was going to stay a while and I wasn’t going to offer them to the first monkey who might appear so he might sell them and keep my cut, forget it. I parked the clunker, put my clothes and the merchandise in a suitcase, and took a bus headed for Verov, the capital.”

  “And customs?”

  He looked at me condescendingly: “On civilized worlds there aren’t customs, old man. They’re cleverer than we are.”

  He finished the second coffee and looked toward the bar but Marcos was waiting on another table.

  “I was determined to talk to someone strategically situated who could tell me where and how to organize the sale. For a commission.”

  “So, on civilized worlds there aren’t customs, but there are bribes.”

  “Bah, more or less civilized. Don’t be so picky: everyone has their weaknesses. There, for example, I had a big surprise: Veroboar is an aristomatriarchy.”

  “A what?”

  “Just that. A thousand women—I assume they’re women; young—I assume they’re young; gorgeous.”

  “You assume they’re gorgeous.”

  “They are. That you can see from a mile away. Rich. You can see that from a mile away, too. They alone hold in one fist all of Veroboar. And what a fist. You can’t even sneeze without their permission. I’d been in the hotel two minutes when I received a note on letterhead with seals in which I was summoned to the Governor’s office. At 31 hours, 75 minutes on the dot. Which means I had half an hour to bathe, shave, and dress.”

  Marcos arrived with the third double coffee.

  “And unfortunately,” said Trafalgar, “save in the homes of The Thousand, although I did not have time to see them, on Veroboar there are no sophisticated grooming devices like those on Sechus or on Vexvise or on Forendo Lhda. Did I ever tell you that on Drenekuta V they travel in oxcarts but they have high-relief television and these cubicles of compressed air that shave you, give you a peel, massage you, make you up—because on Drenekuta men use makeup and curl their hair and paint their nails—and dress you in seven seconds?”

  “No, I don’t think so. One day you told me about some mute guys that danced instead of talking or something like that.”

  “Please. Anandaha-A. What a lousy world. I could never sell them anything.”

  “And did you arrive in time?”

  “Where?”

  He drank half the cup of coffee.

  “At the Governor’s office, where else?”

  “A magnificent Governor. Blonde, green eyes, very tall, with a pair of legs that if you saw them, you’d have an attack.”

  He’s telling me about splendid women. I married one thirty-seven years ago. I don’t know if Trafalgar Medrano is married or not. I will only add that my wife’s name is Leticia and go on.

  “And two hard little apples that you could see through her blouse and some round hips.” He paused. “She was a viper. She wasted no spit on ceremony. She planted herself in front of me and said: ‘We wondered when you would return to Veroboar, Mr. Medrano.’ I thought we had begun well, and I was wrong lik
e an asshole. I told her it was very flattering that they should remember me and she looked at me as if I were a piece of cow manure the street sweeper had forgotten to pick up, and she let fly—do you know what she said to me?”

  “No idea.”

  “‘We have not looked favorably upon your clandestine activities in the port of Verov.’ What do you say to that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “There’s no need to recite the whole conversation. Besides, I don’t remember it. Those witches had executed the poor guy who tried to sell my comic books,” he drank a little more coffee, “and they had confiscated the material and decided I was a delinquent.”

  “And you took her to bed and convinced her not to execute you, too.”

  “I did not take her to bed,” he explained very patiently.

  “But you told me.”

  “Not that one. After informing me that I had to address her by her title, which was Enlightened Lady in Charge of the Government of Verovsian.”

  “Don’t tell me every time you spoke to her you had to say all that.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. After informing me, she told me I could not leave the hotel without authorization and that of course I must not try to sell anything and that they would advise me when I could return. If I ever could. And that the next day I had to present myself before the members of the Central Government. And that I should retire.”

  “Wow.”

  “I went to the hotel and smoked three packs of cigarettes. I wasn’t liking this at all. I had my food brought to my room. The hotel’s food was disgusting, and this was the best in Verov, and to top it off the bed was too soft and the window didn’t close well.”

  The remaining coffee was surely cold but he drank it anyway. Marcos was reading the racing section in the paper: he knows everything there is to know about horses and a bit more. He has a son who’s a brand-new colleague of mine, and a married daughter who lives in Córdoba. There were no more than two other occupied tables, so the Burgundy was much more peaceful than Veroboar. Trafalgar smoked for a while without speaking and I looked at my empty glass, wondering whether this was a special occasion: I only drink more than two on special occasions.