Free Nazi Literature in the Americas (New Directions Paperbook) by Roberto Bolaño Page A

mankind. The Greek traveling salesman, Yorgos
Karantonis, who learns of the execution in the village and climbs the hill out
of curiosity, simply to kill time, is the incarnation of hope: Karantonis falls
to his knees weeping as Father Joaquín María is riddled with bullets. And,
finally, the children who are playing on the other side of the hill, facing away
from the execution, throwing stones at each other, represent Mexico’s future:
civil war and ignorance.
    “The only political system in which I have complete confidence,” she
told an interviewer from the women’s magazine
Housework
, “is theocracy,
although Generalísimo Franco is doing a pretty good job too.”
    The literati of Mexico, almost without exception, turned their backs
on her.
    In 1953, after another reconciliation with Barreda, who had become a
renowned architect, the couple traveled to the Orient: Hawaii, Japan, the
Philippines and India inspired Irma to write the new poems of
The Virgin of
Asia
, steely sonnets fearlessly probing the open wound of modernity.
The solution, it now seemed to her, was to return to sixteenth-century
Spain.
    In 1955 she was hospitalized with various broken bones and extensive
bruising.
    Barreda, now a self-declared libertarian, had reached the height of
his fame: his reputation as an architect was international and commissions from
all over the world came flooding into his firm. Irma, by contrast, gave up
writing plays and dedicated herself to her house, the social life she led with
her husband, and the painstaking construction of a poetic work that would only
come to light after her death. In 1960 Barreda tried to divorce her for the
first time. Irma refused, using all the resources at her disposal. A year later
Barreda walked away from the marriage, leaving the matter in the hands of his
lawyers, who put pressure on Irma, threatening to cut off the money and create a
public scandal, appealing to her common sense, and her good heart (the woman
with whom Barreda was living in Los Angeles was about to have a child), but to
no avail.
    In 1963, Barreda visited her for the last time. Irma was ill, and it
is not entirely unreasonable to suppose that the architect was moved by pity, or
curiosity, or some such sentiment.
    Irma received him in the lounge, wearing her best suit. Barreda had
come with his two-year-old son; outside, waiting in the car, was his new woman,
a North American twenty years younger than Irma, and six months pregnant. Their
final meeting was tense and, at certain moments, dramatic. Barreda inquired
about Irma’s health, and even about her poetry. Are you still writing? he asked.
Irma replied gravely in the affirmative. Barreda was at first bothered and
inhibited by the presence of his son. Then he recovered his nerve and adopted a
distant tone, which gradually became more ironic and covertly aggressive. When
he mentioned the lawyers and the necessity of obtaining a divorce, Irma looked
him in the eye (him and his son) and flatly refused once again. Barreda did not
insist. I’ve come as a friend, he said. A friend? You? (Irma was regal.) You are
my husband, not my friend, she declared. Barreda smiled. The years had mellowed
him, or he was pretending they had, or perhaps Irma meant so little to him that
he was not even annoyed. The child did not move. Irma took pity on him and
timidly suggested that he go and play on the patio. When they were alone,
Barreda said something about how important it was for children to be raised by a
proper married couple. What would you know, retorted Irma. True, admitted
Barreda, what would I know. They drank. Barreda drank Sauza tequila, and Irma
drank
rompope
. The boy played on the patio. Irma’s servant, who was
almost a child herself, played with him. In the half-light of the lounge,
Barreda sipped his tequila and made banal remarks about the upkeep of the house,
then announced that it was time for him to go. Irma got up first and, quick as a
flash, refilled his glass.