In a waiting room a man pays close attention to a pot-bellied man and his waistcoat in this excerpt from Yesterday, the first novel by the great avant-garde Chilean writer Juan Emar (who died in 1964), now finally published in English.
And we headed off to the waiting room in Chasuble Square.
The following dialogue, more or less, took place between my wife and me:
Me: It strikes me that the day up to now has been quite empty.
Her: No. I’ve found it fairly intense.
Me: In sensations, perhaps. But what conclusions have we drawn from the day?
Her: It’s true. Because after all, what conclusions have we drawn?
Me: Anything?
Her: Anything?
Me: Nothing.
Her: Nothing.
Me: And that’s just not possible.
Her: How shall we fix it?
Me: ‘You’ll see. Let’s both be quiet for a long while. You go wherever you feel like going—in your thoughts, you understand. I, meanwhile, will devote myself to making observations about all that is around us. And you will see just what kinds of things I can conclude.’
Her: ‘Agreed. ’
The waiting room was like every other in the whole world: dull and dusty, especially dusty. We were sitting next to the window. Outside, in Chasuble Square, the daily life of said square went on. Inside, no fewer than twenty people were waiting.
I find people and objects to be of equal interest, especially in waiting rooms, where all the people are identified with the objects because of their waiting. All the same, I started with another human being like myself: the pot-bellied man sitting across from me at the other end of the room.
Yes! Certainly, a pot-bellied man! How simple to observe him! And so I turn to him; to you, anonymous pot-bellied man. Because of the simplicity of a belly clothed in cheap fabric, a belly with short legs and shoes seeping sweat, a belly with a head, and on that head a mustache, and atop it all a bowler hat. I had just witnessed events that, quite rightly, my wife had characterized as intense: I’d seen a fellow man beheaded, heard the hymn sung by thousands of cynocephali captivated by the sun, beheld the exceptional battle between two furious creatures, then the mysteries of the reds and the greens… and yet nothing! I’d drawn no conclusions at all. This means that I am not up to such great events. But now, yes, face to face, just the pot-bellied man and me.
To observe a pot-bellied man… now I think, will it be easier? To draw a conclusion, you understand, to get something out of it. Will it be easier than observing, let’s say, the separation of water from earth on the third day of Creation? Perhaps. Still, as I think back over the vast range of all my reading, as far as I can remember, I know of no man past or present who has ever drawn a conclusion from observing another man who has a pot belly. I don’t even know of any who has tried, who has dared to direct his attention toward a pot-bellied man seated across from him, face to face.
You will say that literature is full, glutted with pot-bellied men, and that every one of them is trailed by a writer weaving hymns of praise or psychological dramas, anecdotes or tragedies around the pot belly of his choice. Yes, that’s true. Yes, but, the belly itself? The belly as absolute fact, incontrovertible, the belly as categorical imperative, where is that? I know, I know! I, too, can weave whatever story I like to go with that belly. I can talk about a gray and hurried life, the outlook of an ox who grazes on homemade rabbit stew and ruminates today over what happened yesterday, only to ruminate tomorrow over what happened today. I can say that his wife no longer loves him and that the pot-bellied man suffers in silence, for he thinks that, although in principle it is unfair, in real life it is fair for a belly like his to go unloved. And, in that case, a belly is an element of tragedy and desolation. Or I can see him as lively, mischievous, not grazing on but savoring a variety of seasoned rabbit dishes, good red and white wines that make him smack his lips. He has fat friends just like him, and his wife laughs with pleasure when another cork is popped and she loves him, she loves him. And instead of chewing over yesterday’s events today—not a chance!—he pondered today’s rabbit yesterday, and today he will ruminate tomorrow’s lion cub. And can I not thus spend my entire life—or two lives, or more—wrapping his belly in as many existences as have ever been, of all the fat men and even the thin ones the Earth’s crust has ever sustained? I can do anything with my pot-bellied man over there: dream, love, swing among celestial bodies or descend, sully myself, and peer into the putrefaction of tombs.
This is all well and good. Yes, but, what about the pot-bellied man across from me? Him, sitting right there. Him, for the fact of being there, of being. Him, for the fact of me observing him. Where is he? It’s not a matter of finding out about his real life, his ideas, his desires. That would only be a return to the same. It’s not even a matter of identifying with him to the extent that one absorbs him and simultaneously lives one’s own life and his. No. This is about the fact that he is there, the fact that a pot-bellied man is, the fact that I exist, the fact that my will has ordered me: ‘Observe him, delimit him, know him.’ It’s about the fact that even as I try to do so, the pot-bellied man dissolves, his contours fade and he becomes hermetically sealed to me, and I sink into the same stupor as when, some time ago on a distracted afternoon, I looked and realized that there, fixed, immobile, alone, an electrical switch was stuck to the wall. And when I wanted to be certain of its reality, the switch separated me from the world, and for a brief moment I understood no more of this life or the other.
But let’s return, get back to the matter at hand. Yesterday in the waiting room I had made a promise. I had promised my wife some conclusions from my observations. And so far, nothing. The waiting room’s clock ticked away lost time.
Observe, my God, observe! Let us go in order. A little calm and serenity. To be sure, I know two methods by which to observe, to become familiar with another being. They are the same ones that can be used with an object, an animal, a book, or anything else. Let us say a book; it’s easiest for me. First method: I open it to the first page, I read the entire thing in order and I don’t stop until I come to the words ‘The End.’ Second method: I buy it, bring it home, look at it from above, from below, from in front, from behind. I put it on my shelf. I take it out at night and flip through it. I leave it on the table. I tell a friend about the existence of the book in my house. I tell two, three friends about it. We read a random sentence on a random page. Another says to me, reaching out his hand: ‘Let me see, let me see.’ He pages through it with his brow furrowed, and I scrutinize his expression. This goes on for several days, weeks. No one reads it, but we live inside its atmosphere. After a month, each of us gives a lecture on the book and its author. This is the second method.
Very well, but no one can deny that the first method is the one invariably employed by ornithologists and such, and that the second one is agreeable, very agreeable indeed, to bad poets.
I make a thorough description of the pot-bellied man from head to toe: his weight, height, and social status, his past, present, and plans for the future, his blood pressure, desires, sufferings, bank account, and all the rest of it!
I become an ornithologist. I make a thorough description of the pot-bellied man from head to toe: his weight, height, and social status, his past, present, and plans for the future, his blood pressure, desires, sufferings, bank account, and all the rest of it! I ponder. Turns out, I’m no good as an ornithologist.
I am a bad poet: I will lurk near him, we’ll exchange a word or two, I’ll spy on his gestures at the café, on the tram, in the street, when he is alone or with friends, with his wife, with his son, when a regiment goes marching past, when a red girl walks by and envelops him in invisible greens in the middle of Avenue Benedict XX. And I will summon up—vaguely, vaguely, there in that indeterminate region between conscious and subconscious—many vague writers from vague ages who also followed pot-bellied men and did it somewhat better than I. Thus will I learn of the fat lives of the good fat people of the great cities. And I will write.
Yes, but, what about the fat man right there? The clock has once again tick-tocked the lost time. And my blessed wife, right beside me in the waiting room, waits.
Oh God, how do men of talent make their observations? In any case, let’s have calm and serenity, and above all, let us take things in order.
Let us begin by delimiting the fat man: to the north, the tip of his bowler; to the south, the tips of his boots; to the east and west, the far edges of hat, ears, neck, shoulders, arms, hips, thighs, legs, feet. Everything: black. On this black: the oily blotch of his face, the white blotch of his shirt, the blotch… (this is deteriorating into ornithology, but, in sum, the pot-bellied man has been delimited). Let us observe. Let us go northwards. The hat. But the hat is not the fat man, the fat man is the fat man. And if I observe the hat, I see that its peak is not the hat; the hat is the hat. Halt! We shall go straight to the fat man: there is the fat man’s face, which is not the fat man, but rather… Not this again.
An overall impression, the man overall, the sum total. The total: In color? In shape? In volume? The true total. All three. That is to say, the environment, the atmosphere in which the fat man lives. Yes, but from here it is but a step to a bad poet’s story. What to do, dear wife of mine?
The belly! The belly on a pot-bellied man, that’s the solution.
It begins at the first button of his jacket, and it ends at the fifth button of his fly; in both places, it spills over slightly. Very good. But let us observe the gut. I see the waistcoat. It’s natural. The belly is inside. One would have to enter through the space between two buttons, between the third and fourth, because there, thanks to the pot-bellied man’s posture, the edge of the waistcoat is visibly raised. Black cloth below, black cloth above, diminished light. But the black cloth above must come to an end soon, and the flash of the white lining must be clearly seen. Moving on. Here we have the edge of the lower black cloth. A jump and a hop and we’re on the shirt. It occurs to me that here one breathes in a dense air, and also that the respiratory movements must be felt with greater intensity: up, down, up, down. And dense air. A certain discomfort, a feeling of dizziness. Good. Now, look for a way through the shirt’s opening, just as we did with the waistcoat. Done. Yes, done, just one point first: is the fat man wearing an undershirt? These days have been fairly warm in San Agustín de Tango and its environs. It isn’t necessary. Although in general, people like this fat man—of his age, his volume, his class—wear undershirts all year round. It’s the young people, with the rise of sports, who have done away with that article of clothing. But in my opinion, it strikes me that the fat man isn’t wearing one. We are, then, on the belly itself, right there on the belly. And beside the belly button. Immense, abyssal, gloomy belly button. A crater of foul-smelling mists, it rises, falls, enlarges, contracts, rises, falls, grows large, grows contracted. And at the bottom, at the bottom… what is there at the bottom of the belly button? Now that I think about it, I have never seen it. There must be little wrinkles entwined with one another. Maybe. I’m going to have a look at it.
To have a look?
To look at it! Oh hell!
And the whole belly of the pot-bellied man? And the pot-bellied man himself?
‘The pot-bellied man as absolute fact, as reality, as categorical imperative…’
And me at the bottom of the bottom of two intertwined wrinkles!
Calm and serenity are essential in these things. Let’s take it part by part:
There is the belly, the whole belly, circular, circular. Good. Yes, but I’m moving my eyes in a circle, I can’t penetrate. I slide, I swing, I turn, and this is atmosphere and in no way the categorical imperative made flesh. This is a beginning for a bad poet. This is impressionism, vagary. I can tell because, as I spin, I see the pot-bellied man’s gold chain that crosses from side to side as if it were out of focus. To really see it, I would have to rest my eyes on it. But then the belly’s edges would go out of focus. What’s more, the far reaches of the chain would also be blurry. I would have to go back to moving my eyes from side to side. If I stop them, I see one link in the chain, no more. Perhaps as I look at that one link, though I don’t feel it, I am still moving my eyes. But no matter. I don’t feel it and that’s good enough. A link. Like all the other links. He has little imagination, my good pot-bellied man. I remember other chains, those of my uncle Diego, for example, that consisted of three kinds of links. But no matter. Here they are all the same. The same? Just a moment.
Every time I see a chain, whatever length it may be, with identical rings or links, I enlarge each one, without modifying them at all, to giant proportions. I give myself over then to watching how, little by little, as they grow, they differentiate themselves to the point that I need only glance around me to know in which of them I find myself, with more certainty than that of an experienced tourist who found himself suddenly and unknowingly in China or Andalusia, in the Congo or in Scotland. Incidentally, in the chain—that of the pot-bellied man, excluding for the moment any others—all is gold and nothing else. In this world, all is earth. That on the Earth there are trees and they vary, and that among the trees there are rocks and beside those, waters, etc., etc., all this I know. The gold chain, increased to planetary size, also holds anything one could want. So, then, I traverse not just five continents in the chain, but as many continents as there are links, with the enormous advantage that, in the end, instead of returning to the starting point as one does on our globe, I end up somewhere totally different, somewhere diametrically opposed, with different matter, other elements, another life, another everything: a silver penknife, for example, which is surely what hangs from the pot-bellied man’s chain. And, once there, I can enjoy the magnificent, soft, cottony spectacle—as on Earth I see the sky, its clouds, suns, and stars—of the fuzzy depths of a shadowy waistcoat pocket.
That’s the thing: the fuzzy depths of a shadowy waistcoat pocket. That’s the thing: this is where all my observations have led. And there they disappear, there they will devour one other, there they will be lain to rest.
Still, I am not discouraged. It’s possible that the mistake lies quite simply in having chosen the wrong method.
I have started with the large—the belly—and fallen into the small—the pocket depths. I’ve tried starting with the immense, the pot-bellied man himself, and I’ve seen that approach, as well, is a downhill slope to the tiny.
I have started with the large—the belly—and fallen into the small—the pocket depths. I’ve tried starting with the immense, the pot-bellied man himself, and I’ve seen that approach, as well, is a downhill slope to the tiny. And now there I am in the extreme minuscule, at the very tip of a fuzz ball in the corner of the pot-bellied man’s waistcoat pocket. I must use the opposite method, and perhaps all will be resolved. From the tiny we move to the large, from the fuzz ball we grow bigger until we reach the pot-bellied man in all his majesty. Little centric ball of fuzz, fuzz-universe, I see it, unique and alone, cast sinuously into space, without consistence and beyond gravity. That’s how I see it, but why can I not conceive of it like that? I cannot isolate it from the tiniest of breezes blowing through the pocket in which it rests. And as I think of the fuzz, I feel, I touch the distance between it and my brain, I feel and touch the distance like a living thing, permanent, like matter joining us together, matter without size or else of a unique size, since, even if I get close enough to hit the fuzz with my head, even if I move as far away as Shanghai, the antipodal city from the pot-bellied man’s fuzz, it is always the same, inalterable. In the negation of that distance, there we are: fuzz, Chile, Shanghai, and I. And they float, that ball of fuzz and others that intertwine with it, forming a fuzz ball of fuzz balls that is in turn thought of by me.
But neither can I think of that on its own. I think of it, as much as it pains me, along with its location in space. Without that location it escapes me, because let’s see, where would I put it? I make the pocket disappear, then the vest, the pot-bellied man, the room, the city, Earth, the constellations. Nothing left but the fuzz ball, no more than that, nothing, nothing. But then, as I think about it, I can feel myself, myself in a place and not in an utter void, because the fuzz ball is out there, and it has to be somewhere in the void and in relation to me. I place it to my left, or to my right, high above me, or far below my feet. No matter where I put it I can feel my head being and the ball of fuzz in relation to it. Better not to make anything disappear; things always come back to the same point. The fuzzball exists because something exists aside from it, be it only a head that thinks of it. It exists because it lies in the depths of the pocket, because the pocket’s two walls rise immensely upward, clinging to the waistcoat that imbues them with existence, the waistcoat that clings to the pot belly that makes waistcoat exist. For, what is a waistcoat without a pot belly? It is the inconceivable. And if not the pot belly, there will be something else just as worthy. A vest alone, singular amid utter negation, quite exceeds us. To conceive of it it must be, and to be, it must be in relation to something. Best for this something to be a pot belly, because that’s what I am looking at there across from me. And so on with the same thing, the same, the same. The pot belly attached to the pot-bellied man. The pot-bellied man attached to this dusty air, attached to the walls, which are attached to the entire building. A building that can only exist because there is a place to exist, and the place exists because the Earth spins right along with the sun, because the sun is in relation to the constellations which exist because they are in relation to the cosmos, which is…
All right, dear wife of mine, a moment ago I fell into a belly button’s abyss, then into the depths of a pocket, and now I am lost in the absolute. I am lost, undone, I’ve filtered through my cranium into an infinite infinity. And the fat man, in all of this? He has slipped away, the swine. The fat man is not.
Excerpted from Yesterday (Peirene Press), by Juan Emar, translated by Megan McDowell
