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  • Pøtential LivesAn Extract
  • Camille de Toledo (bio)
    Translated by Ann Jefferson

A far-off place, a fable, and a few adjustments

In an apartment on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, between three old factories, a father and a son sit embracing. The hand belonging to the father pats the son on the back to reassure him, and in return the son pats his father’s shoulder with his own little hand. The son is not old enough to know, or to learn. He is unaware of the schemes being hatched in the world outside, the plots and the intrigues. He presses close against his father, just presses, obliging him to slow down. He takes his father away from life’s demands, obliges him to quiet. No, you won’t go to work, the child seems to say as he clasps him close, I need you, I don’t want you to go. But which of them is comforting the other? It’s a question the father asks himself, then thinks of the hole into which the gestures of love are poured as the years go by. He pats. Pat, pat, pat. His son, snuggled against him, pats him in return. They could remain like this, each pressed against other. They might be a sculpture or, better still, an automaton. They might even turn into a cuckoo clock. They would be the silence. A spell would have freed them from urgency, insult, and toil. They would no longer have to run. They would be covered in dust. When the hour strikes, [End Page 273] instead of the little Tyrolean figure, it would be they who emerged from a miniature chalet. The son would run toward the father, then they would stay pressed against each other for the entire minute that separates the hours. But the father stands up, the day is calling. He shows a certain cunning in dressing his son, pulls on a sock. The son doesn’t notice. He pats. Pat, pat. Then a sweater, trousers. The son objects, the father pauses, hugs his son, then carries on. When he opens the door, closes it behind him, and starts to walk, he does not let go of his son. He holds him tight in his arms and the son says: Where are we going? So as not to give anything away, the father remains silent. He finishes dressing his son in the street, pulling down his sleeves under his coat. Where are we going? the son asks once more, and, apologizing, the father says: I have to go now, you know. As the streets pass, the son realizes what is happening, and again he says: I don’t want you to leave, Papa. Where are you going? Then he also asks: Why do you have to leave? The father replies: I have to, I have to go to work, but he feels like an illusionist, a liar, because he knows that in a few minutes he will knock at doors that will close in his face, and he will go through the motions of courage and determination. I’ll make it, he’ll repeat the words to himself, I’ll get by, but knowing all the while that courage and determination can no longer change a thing. And each time he feels his son’s hand on his shoulder, each time the little hand pats him, he asks himself: which of them, father or son, is comforting the other? He wishes he could no longer hear the insistent voice asking: Why? Why do you have to go? Because he knows that there is no reply, or at least no valid reply. The father will try, and try his hardest, but he is resigned to being fooled by the life he has dreamed. What respect will remain to him when he promises that when he returns, he will have vanquished hunger? Little by little he has entered the land of adjustments, and now the poor man feels trapped. After dropping off his son, he will breathe in the foul, damp air of April in Buenos Aires, then as he breathes out he will try to expel all the...

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