For this week’s edition of In This Together, we present a fiction text from the award-winning Buenos Aires based author and poet, Jorge Consiglio, whose novel FATE was recently published by Charco Press. Carolina Orloff, Consiglio’s translator and editor at Charco Press, introduces the piece:
It is not new to hear that Argentina is undergoing yet another crisis, be it financial, social, or political. This time, however, it’s different. Not just because the crisis is affecting the entire world, but also because the man running things in the country—Alberto Fernández, who only came into power in December 2019—is miraculously showing that, in the face of these unprecedented times, he is one of the most lucid politicians in the world—certainly more so than Argentina could have hoped for, especially in exceptionally challenging times.
Jorge Consiglio is one of the most talented and sensitive authors (and thinkers) publishing in Argentina today. He is also the master of detail. Perhaps because he is a poet as well as a narrator, his prose style is able to capture a world of philosophical meanings and a whirlwind of emotions and possibilities in a single object, a fleeting gesture, the description of how light enters the room. It is that mastery that makes his literature so engrossing and beautiful, and at the same time, injects his stories with refreshing freedom.
In his text today, written during the first days of a strict lockdown, Consiglio thinks about the resignification of the details around us, of the possibility to reformulate the space that now contains us, inviting us to pause and realise that what may seem irrelevant acts of survival may actually also be heroic deeds.
Confinement
by Jorge Consiglio
The first thing confinement brings about is a paradigm shift. It is no longer possible to circulate freely, and this situation alters our relationship with our surroundings. From this newly cloistered perspective, public space has changed, yet private space has been reshaped too.
Four weeks have passed. I am confined. I head outside every two or three days. I buy provisions, smell the air in the way that deer do, and return home. In Argentina, the lockdown is strict. We are aware that if the virus is not contained, our health system would simply collapse. We are careful; we comply with what is required. It’s about preserving integrity, but also about showing solidarity. We are isolated and we are trying to keep our spirits up. It is a form of resistance; at least that is how a part of the population understands it.
The first few days I had the illusion that I was going to be productive. I’d make the most of this time to read and write. The period of isolation would be fruitful, I thought. I soon confirmed that this idea was a pipe dream. The seclusion—like the cold or the damp—had permeated my body without me realising. It snuck into my brain cells (it was a negative charge on my dendrites) and began to tenderise them—an immediate effect that translated into anxiety and worry. Outside, the virus was wiping out humanity, while I was at home, fighting my demons. I thought about how I was going to survive the pandemic, and about my financial situation, which was looking ricketier every minute. My concern for those close to me was also getting deeper: my loved ones, given the situation, remained far away.
I had to gather my wits. I stopped being the person I’d been up to that point (at least in some respects) and I turned into someone slightly more sombre, less communicative and—forgive the contradiction—more jubilant. I prepared a tough exercise routine, I quit smoking altogether (it’s remarkable: it seems that I can regulate the intensity of this vice), and I tried to not get drunk every night. The benefits came quickly. My mood improved, as did my quality of sleep, and my level of concentration for intellectual activities was renewed. Yet the most important thing, what really matters here I think, is that I managed to sharpen my perception. And thanks to this newfound ability, I singled out certain aspects of confinement which, despite being obvious, had gone unnoticed up to that point.
The first one has to do with the rooms. When you are surrounded by four walls, each centimetre has to yield as much as possible. As a result, people—with all the thrust of their inventiveness—focus on relativising these dimensions. Volumes, spaces, and lengths become more nuanced. Now, the notion of measurement—as an index of subjectivity—depends more on uncertainty than the decimal metric system. Let me offer some examples. Not long ago, a dance company set out to achieve a goal: to create a minute-long sequence in a space no larger than one square metre, and where possible, with the dancer’s bed on one side and bedside table on the other. In the same vein, I saw a video of an athlete who completed an Olympic triathlon without leaving his home. He ran ten kilometres back and forth along a narrow corridor, pedalled for forty more with his biked mounted on rollers, and swam fifteen hundred metres in a paddling pool—seemingly simple movements that, when looked at through the right lens, become heroic deeds. They share a node that veers towards excess like art does in general, and literature in particular. Taking simplification as their starting point, they seek to contend the rigour of physics, and this very gesture, due to its excessiveness, invests them with exuberance. Actions of a hypnotic plurality: they break reality apart through abbreviation. In this, they resemble Borges’ notion of the aleph: fractal entities that evolve towards the infinite. Condensation, movement, dwam: in short, a metaphysics of dimensions.
Another remarkable aspect of confinement has to do with the relationship we establish with objects. The automatism of ordinary life contributes to the vanishing of things. Yet lockdown—the manic attention of the cell—restores their entity, or better, re-signifies them. Each element, the full squad of gadgets that makes existence possible, gains depth in two different senses. On the one hand, the bond with its own history is updated and, on the other, our appreciation of it increases in virtue of its function. I have a plastic hand juicer which I use at breakfast. Before, it was an artefact close to evanescence, almost invisible, what my mother would call a ‘thingummyjig’. Now that it’s been a month since I stepped outside, not only do I recall the afternoon when I bought it (a little after 6:00 p.m., springtime, a thrift store on Cabildo avenue), but I am also susceptible to the striations that the impact of the oranges has caused on the object. This new point of view—fresh, definitely obsessive—redefines the relationship with the juicer (that common device) and its fundamental essence. It is still the same object, but now, its substance, unexpectedly freed from the erosion of habit, is denser, has acquired a greater volume. This fact is no minor detail for life in isolation. In reality, it establishes a key for survival. With this new condition, intimacy can be created. A fertile kind of intimacy that, perhaps, opens up a path towards unexpected doors.
Buenos Aires, April 2020
Translated from the Spanish by Carolina Orloff and Fionn Petch
Interested in submitting work to this Feature? We’re looking for literature in translation—specifically fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—that addresses the current pandemic. Send work under 2,500 words directly to blog@asymptotejournal.com. General submission guidelines apply.
Jorge Consiglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1962. He has published five novels: El bien (The Good, 2003; Award for Emerging Writers, Opera Prima, Spain), Gramática de la sombra (Grammar of the Shadows, 2007; Third Municipal Prize for Novels), Pequeñas intenciones (Small Intentions, 2011; Second National Prize for Novels, First Municipal Prize for Novels, re-published in 2019), Hospital Posadas (2015) and Tres Monedas (2018). They have all been awarded prizes in Argentina and in Spain. He has also published three collections of short stories, including Villa del Parque (2016), published by Charco Press as Southerly (2018), five books of poems, and a book of essays. He is currently writing his sixth novel Sodio (Sodium) to be published later in 2020, an excerpt of which was published by GRANTA and can be read here. Fate (Charco Press, 2020) is his most recent novel to appear in English and the second one after Southerly (Charco Press, 2018).
Originally from Buenos Aires and now based in Edinburgh, Carolina Orloff is an experienced translator and researcher in Latin American literature, who has published extensively on Julio Cortázar as well as on literature, cinema, politics, and translation theory. In 2016, after obtaining her PhD from the University of Edinburgh and working in the academic sector, Carolina co-founded Charco Press where she acts as publishing director. She is also the co-translator of Ariana Harwicz’s Die, My Love, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International 2018, and of its sequel Feebleminded as well as of Jorge Consiglio’s Fate. In its short life, Charco Press has received several awards and nominations, including Creative Edinburgh Start-Up of the Year (2018) and the British Book Award—Scottish Regional Prize (2019). Carolina herself was named Emerging Publisher of the Year (2018) by the Saltire Society.
Fionn Petch was born in Scotland, spent a decade in Mexico City and is now based in Berlin. He translates from Spanish and French, and specialises in books and exhibition catalogues on art and architecture. He has curated multidisciplinary exhibitions and worked for numerous film and literature festivals. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Fionn has also translated The Distance Between Us by Renato Cisneros and Luis Sagasti’s A Musical Offering for Charco Press. In 2018 he was shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize for Fireflies.
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