Chapter 39 Juan Muranha

Over the years, I have often claimed to have grown up in the Palermo district.Now I know that was literary exaggeration; in reality my home was a house with a garden on the other side of a long fence that contained my father's and grandparents' libraries.Around the corner, I was told, was Palermo with knives and guitars; in 1930 I wrote an essay on the suburban poet Carriego.Not long after, a chance meeting brought me to Emilio Trapani.I have business to Moron; Trapani at the window calls my name.Trapani and I were tablemates at Thames Street Primary School, and after so many years I didn't recognize him for a while.Roberto Godel certainly remembered him.

We've never been very close.Time has made us more distant and uncaring for each other.Now I remember that he explained to me the slang cuts of the lower classes at the time.We had nothing to say, chatted about trivial matters, and mentioned a deceased classmate whom I only remembered by name.Suddenly Trapani said to me: "I borrowed one of your books on Carriego. You talk a lot about villains in it; how much do you say you know about villains, Borges?" He looked at me with an expression almost frightened. "I have evidence," I replied. He interrupted me: "Information is empty words. I don't need any information; I know that kind of person."

He paused for a moment, then said to me as if confiding a secret: "I am the nephew of Juan Muranha." At the end of the last century, among the swordsmen in Palermo, Murania was arguably the most famous.Trapani went on to say: "His wife, Florentina, is my aunt. Maybe you're interested in that." He used some rhetorical emphasis and long sentences in his speech, which made me suspect that this was not the first time he had said this. "My mother never wanted her sister to live with Juan Murania; in her eyes, Murania was a desperado; in the eyes of my aunt Florentina, Murania was a real Home. As for my uncle's whereabouts, there are many legends. Some say that he drank too much wine one night, fell off his seat when driving at the corner of Colonel Street, and smashed his head. Others say that he broke the law and was arrested. , then fled to Uruguay. My mother has always looked down on her brother-in-law and never mentioned him to me. I was still young and had no impression of him.

"Around the centenary we lived in a long narrow house on Russell Street. The back door opened onto San Salvador Street and was always locked. My aunt lived on the top floor, she was old and a bit eccentric. She's skinny, tall, or seems tall to me, and doesn't speak much. She's afraid of the wind, never goes out, and doesn't like us in her room, and more than once I've caught her stealing food and hiding Neighbors say that Murania's death or disappearance has stimulated her. I remember her always wearing black clothes and having a habit of talking to herself. "The house we live in is the property of Mr. Lucchesi, the owner of a barbershop in Baragas. My mother is an odd-job tailor, and is very hard-pressed. I often hear her whispering to my aunt about things I don't know at all. You know, judiciary, enforcement, eviction due to rent arrears, etc. My mother couldn't do anything; my aunt said stubbornly upside down: Juan would never allow that gringo to kick us out. She mentioned that we had heard it by heart The thing: A southerner who doesn't know the heights of the sky and the earth doubted her husband's courage. Her husband went all over the city to find him, solved the problem with a knife, and threw him into the creek. I don't know if the story is true; the important thing is that someone Said, and some people believed it.

"I imagined myself sheltering in a doorway on Serrano Street, or begging along the street, or selling peaches with a basket. The last situation attracted me the most, because then I could not go to school. "I don't know how long this anxiety lasted. Your deceased father once told us that money can be measured in cents or pesos, but time cannot be measured in days, because pesos are the same, and Every day and even every hour is different. I didn't understand what he said at the time, but it always stuck in my heart. "One night I had a bad dream. I was with my Uncle Juan. I haven't seen him in person, but I guess he looks like an Indian, solidly built, with a thin beard and long, thick hair. We Walking south among the rocks and weeds, the path full of rocks and weeds seems to be Thames Street. The sun hangs high in the dream. Uncle Juan is wearing black clothes. He is on a plank road that seems to be a pass He stopped at the place where he was standing. He put his hands in his arms, not as if he was about to draw out a weapon, but as if he was going to hide his hands. He said to me in a very sad tone: I have changed too much. He slowly Withdrawing my hand, what I saw was an eagle claw. I woke up screaming in the dark.

"The next day, my mother asked me to go with her to Lu Kexi's residence. I knew it was to ask his mercy; the purpose of taking me was nothing more than to show the creditors how lonely we were. She didn't tell my aunt. , because my aunt would never approve of her humbly begging. I've never been to Baragas; I think it's a place with lots of people, lots of cars, and little open space. We got to the corner of the house we were looking for, and saw There were police and onlookers in front of the house. A resident repeatedly told the onlookers that he was woken up by knocking on the door at around three o'clock in the morning, and heard the sound of the door opening and someone entering. There was no movement of closing the door; Lucchesi lying on the porch, disheveled, with stab wounds all over his body. He lives alone; police have no suspects. No signs of robbery. Some said the deceased had bad eyesight and was nearly blind recently. Another concluded Said: He is doomed. This conclusion and the tone of the speech impressed me deeply; in later years, I found that whenever someone died, there was always such a didactic assertion.

"The watchman invited us in for coffee, and I had a cup. The coffin contained not a corpse but a wax figure. I told my mother; an undertaker laughed and told me that the corpse in black The wax figure was Mr. Lucchesi. I was fascinated. My mother had to drag me away. "It was the only thing people talked about for a few months after that. The crime rate was low; you can imagine how much talk there was about cases like Melerner, Campner and Siletro. The only quiet person in Buenos Aires was Aunt Florentina, who babbled like a dementia: "I told you long ago that Juan wouldn't let that gringo drive us out into the street.

"It rained heavily one day. I couldn't go to school, so I wandered around the house. I climbed to the top floor. My aunt sat there with her arms folded; I don't think she even thought. The room smelled very damp. There was an iron bed in one corner , a rosary hanging from the bedpost, a wooden box for clothes in another corner, a picture of Our Lady of Carmen on a whitewashed wall, and a candlestick on the bedside table. "My aunt said to me without raising her eyes: "I know what you're here for. Your mother told you to come. Juan saved us, she doesn't understand yet.

"Juan?" I said in surprise. Juan died ten years ago. "Juan is here," she said to me. Would you like to meet? ' She opened the drawer of the bedside table and took out a dagger. ' she continued in a soft voice: "Look. I know he'll never abandon me. There's no man like him in the world. He doesn't give that gringo time to breathe. "That's when it dawned on me. That poor delirious woman killed Lucchesi. Driven by hatred, madness, and even love, she slipped out the back door facing south, walked through the streets in the middle of the night, and finally found the house. House, stabbing down with her big bony hand the dagger. The dagger was Murania, the dead man she still adored.

"I don't know if she told my mother about it. She died shortly before the move." This is the end of Trapani's story, and I never saw him again.I seem to see a symbol or many symbols in the story of the lonely woman who confuses her man, her tiger, with the cruel weapon he left behind.Juan Muranha was the man who walked the streets I knew, the man with the thoughts and feelings of a man, who tasted death, became a dagger, is now the memory of the dagger, tomorrow will It is forgetting, ordinary forgetting.