NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/chile/chilel/1137

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-22 | 6.0 KB

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From: [e-mail] (        Felipe Berho)
Subject: Neruda, bueno pa'l diente
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Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 21:50:36 CST

   Neruda, para mi, no solo fue/es El Poeta pero tambien un gran profeta
de los goces terrenales. Bien podriamos decir que Pablo Neruda hizo suyo
el motto de Marx de 'nothing human is alien to me...'. Bueno para los abrazos,
siempre acompa~nado de amigos, patiperro que recorrio medio mundo, su casa y
su mesa siempre abiertas...Siempre dispuesto a un buen vino y sobretodo a una
buena mesa. Su notoria aficion a la buena cocina puede, en parte, tener rela-
cion con una ninez y juventud con muchas privaciones materiales y especialmente
con sus vivencias, en la capital, de estudiante pobre de provincia viviendo
en pensiones de mala muerte y comiendo, a veces por semanas, solo papas y/o
cebollas y te.

 En el ultimo GRANTA (#41) llegado aqui a la U, aparece un breve relato de
Garcia Marquez en el que aparece Neruda. Les mando solo algunas lineas...
Me imagino que el original, en espa~nol, debe ser mejor pero espero les
guste anyway...

 Before the incident in Havana I met up with Frau Frida once more, in Barcelona,
in an encounter so unexpected that it seemed to me especially mysterious. It
was the day that Pablo Neruda set foot on Spanish soil for the first time since
the Civil War, during a stopover on a long sea journey to Valparaiso in Chile.
He spent the morning with us, big game hunting in the antiquarian bookshops,
buying eventually a faded book with torn covers for which he paid what must have
been the equivalent of two month's salary for the Chilean consulate in Rangoon.
He lumbered along like a rheumatic elephant, showing a childlike interest in the
internal workings of every object he came across. The world always appeared to
him as a giant clockwork toy.
  I have never known anyone who approximated so closely the received idea of a
Renaissance Pope--that mixture of gluttony and refinement--who even against his
will, would dominate and preside over any table. Matilde, his wife, wrapped him
in a bib which looked more like an apron from a barber-shop than a napkin from
a restaurant, but it was the only way to prevent him from being bathed in sauces
That day Neruda ate three lobsters in their entirety, dismembering them with the
precision of a surgeon, while concurrently devouring everyone else's dishes with
his eyes, until
 he was unable to resist picking from each plate, with a relish
and an appetite that everyone found contagious: clams from Galicia, barnacle
geese from Cantabria, prawns from Alicante, swordfish from the Costa Brava. All
the while he was talking, just like the French, about other culinary delights,
especially the prehistoric shellfish of Chile that were his heart's favourite.
And then suddenly he stopped eating, pricked up his ears like the antennae of a
lobster, and whispered to me: 'There's someone behind me who keeps staring at
me.'
  I looked over his shoulder. It was true. Behind him, three tables back, a
woman, unabashed in an old-fashioned felt hat and a purple scarf, was slowly
chewing her food with her eyes fixed on Neruda. I recognized her at once. She
was older and bigger, but it was her, with the ring made in the form of a
serpent on her first finger.
  She had travelled from Naples on the same boat as the Nerudas, but they had
not met on board. We asked her to join us for coffee, and I invited her to talk
about her dreams, if only to entertain the poet. But the poet would have none
of it, declaring outright that he did not believe in the divinations of dreams.
  'Only poetry is clairvoyant,' he said.
.
.
.
.
  At three o'clock we parted in order to accompany Neruda to his sacred siesta,
which he took at our house, following a number of solemn preparatory rituals
that, for some reason, reminded me of the Japanese tea ceremony. Windows had to
be opened, others closed--an exact temperature was essential--and only a certain
kind of light from only a certain direction could be tolerated. And then: an
absolute silence. Neruda fell asleep at once, waking ten minutes later, like
children do, when we expected it the least. He appeared in the living-room,
refreshed, the monogram of the pillow case impressed on his cheek.
   'I dreamt of that woman who dreams,' he said.
   Matilde asked him to tell us about the dream.
   'I dreamt she was dreaming of me,' he said.
   'That sounds like Borges,' I said.
   He looked at me, crestfallen. 'Has he already written it?'
   'If he hasn't, he's bound to write it one day,' I said. 'It'll be one of his
labyrinths.'
  As soon as Neruda was back on board ship at six that afternoon, he said his
farewells to us, went to sit at an out-of-the-way table and began writing verses
with the same pen of green ink that he had been using to draw flowers, fish and
birds in the dedications he signed in his own books. With the first announcement
to disembark, we sought out Frau Frida and found her finally on the tourist deck
just as we were about to give up. She, too, had just woken from a siesta.
    'I dreamt of your poet,' she told us.
    Astonished, I asked her to tell me about the dream.
    'I dreamt he was dreaming about me,' she said, and my look of disbelief
confused her. 'What do you expect? Sometimes among all the dreams there has to
be one that bears no relation to real life.'
  I never saw or thought about her again until I heard about the ring made in
the form of a serpent on the finger of the woman who died in the sea disaster
at the Hotel Riviera, in Havana...
.
.
.
Sacado del GRANTA #41. 'Dreams for hire' Garcia Marquez.

Saludos, felipe (de Seattle)