Urban Chroniclers in Modern Latin America: The Shared Intimacy of Everyday Life

Appendix 5. Long Hair and Short Ideas, by Cube Bonifant

Ido not know if you are aware that Mexico has women writers and who they are. Nor do I know if you happen to be acquainted with a few and even admire others. Since until now I have had the good taste to not read any woman writer (with the exception of a few French women writers that are worth something precisely because they do not write like women) I know nothing of literary ladies; but right now I intend to find out something about them, to tell you all, to the dot, the results of my research. Of course, you should all know I am at a meeting that some of them attend. I am not sure how many they are, and seeing them like this, superficially, they all seem to me rather thick, lacking in that virtue called good taste, and almost old. So, it is a meeting for lonely ladies. I am here, because I suppose they are not going to turn into suffragists, or issue an edict condemning bullfighting. I trust as well that I am not to be expelled for being “daring,” as one of them proposed, I do not remember on what occasion. Given this precedent, you will all understand that I cannot be better. I ruffle my hair a bit, to let time pass, and take out my cigarettes. I light one with the same lack of elegance as men light them. (I have always liked masculine gestures immensely; I think I was born a woman by error.) I take a drag. appendix 5 Long Hair and Short Ideas Cube Bonifant Urban Chroniclers in Modern latin america | 184 The first one who sees me—an ugly lady, she is an author and an actress—says nothing, but she frowns. She quickly passes on the news to the rest, because all of them turn to watch me. I take another long, long drag . . . The matriarch comes to the corner where I am: —What are you doing? —she asks. —Oh! My lady, I smoke and think. Moreover, I remember the great Fradique Méndez when he used to say: to smoke and to think are the same action: to send some little clouds to the wind. —But, don’t you know that smoking bothers the ladies, and besides, that this is not a smoking room? I bow silently and she takes leave. I am alone again, and unable to smoke! All because I have to be a gentleman with these ladies. After long meditating on it, the actress and authoress approaches me exuberant in gaudiness, but kindly. —Come, come here, we are all friends. I stand up and approach the group. They have so little wit that I have no idea what to do. A pretty zarzuela artist, who not long ago published a book, not sure if called handful of thornbushes, or woman’s feeling, decides to play the piano and sing. I, who have listened to her sing on the stage, prepare myself to not listen, because discordant sounds are not always of my taste. If you please, while she sings we shall talk about her. She is in fact beautiful; she looks like an elegant Cybele, the goddess, although she has the fixation of believing she lives in 1830. Yes, this lady writer quite often turns Romantic; sings to “her poor wrecked soul”; tells her heart: “be quiet, these dark times will come to pass,” and engages in so many gaudy things worthy of maudlin girls from the provinces. She is an operetta singer who has been ten years, at least, on the stage, filled with dirt and bawdry, it is clear she has yet to adapt to her environment, and if she shows no special temperament, she abandons it. Yes, it makes sense. This pretty artist is like all women in theater: her talk is only to the flesh. Doesn’t it strike you as curious, then, that she writes prose (never have I read her work, but I can imagine it) for the pleasure of hysterical and dumb girls? But she stops singing and I keep quiet. Everyone here praises her voice. 185 | “long hair and short ideas,” Bonifant They ask another to recite and she accepts. She is tall and slender. She seems to me the least gaudy of them all, although she is a bit of a broken record, because of every actress she interviews she...