I don’t usually go through the Belgrano neighborhood, but the other day an urgent obligation took me there, so I took the opportunity to stop by El Banquete, where I made myself of The essay and criticism (Centro Editor de América Latina, Buenos Aires, 1972 ), the volume of the History of World Literature that, dedicated to the Literature of the XIX century, deals with these subjects. It is a beautiful hardcover bound edition, in a very generous format, which includes texts that are a little higher than mere disclosure and a little lower than specific knowledge. Four of them are written by Beatriz Sarlo (signed as Beatriz Sarlo Sabajanes) and one by Jaime Rest (The currents of Anglo-Saxon criticism), who also carried out the technical supervision of the volume. The imprint does not report the circulation, but we know that CEAL’s were in the thousands; books aimed at a middle class that imagined itself on the rise, with cultural concerns and with the conviction that books and the ideas that circulate in books are a central part of everyday life. Today that would be impossible, and in fact it is: it is impossible. There is no such thing, and books like these seem, at times, remnants of meteorites from another galaxy, from a civilization that no longer exists. They are like objects that travel in time. I was thinking about all this when, when I got home and opened the book, I found a piece of paper inside. I do not quite realize if it is a remittance or an invoice (what makes an editor good and efficient is not the pleasure to choose the authors and books that he publishes, but that he knows about those things. I never could, a situation that, for On the other hand, it doesn’t matter because I was never an editor). In any case, it is an official paper of Centro Editor de América Latina SA (Cangallo 1228. Piso 2 ° D. Ventas y exp .: Rincón 79/87), dated 8/22/73, for one copy (handwritten figure: Qty. 1. Title: Universal TLS) for a net amount of 1,300 (I suppose it will be pesos, we would have to find out how much it would be today). Not only the book, but also that invoice or remittance, had traveled in time, to reach us intact, as a remnant that another life is possible. Or not, who knows.
The next day I went to continue emptying my parents’ apartment, and I found a box with the capicúa tickets that my mother collected. For eventual young readers who may not know it, at that time you had to get a ticket on each bus trip: they were some pieces of paper that were numbered, and when the numbering coincided from front to back and from back to front (for example 87678 ), many people, including my mother, kept them. I found one of line 24 that came out to me in 1981, on a trip from Villa del Parque to La Boca, and that when I returned from the court I gave it to my mother (it is the only line 24 that is in the box so I guess it must be mine). For years, probably until the tickets were replaced, every time he got on a bus the first thing he did was check to see if he was a capicúa.
However, the difference between the memory of the tickets and the memory of the book (which is not really a memory: it was published when I was 5 years old) is immeasurable. One is just an anecdote without more. The other – for many, many reasons – informs us of our misery in the present.
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