Timote: A Novel

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 The fact that Emilio Ángel Maza has military training is decisive . But in addition to this knowledge, he must be seen as a military man. Fernando is very young. Nevertheless, he has practiced efficiently. It turned out not to be too arduous for him to slip into the skin of a military man. Fernando, and we’ve got to say it once again, is the ideal partner for a woman of the operation. They call her Gaby and she is Norma Arrostito, the Montonero woman. A woman after all, who, using needle and thread, alters Fernando’s uniform, which fits him too loosely. She had been a child, after all, playing with dolls, dressing them and making clothes for them, and altering her own. It’s not likely she has studied sewing like the women of her day. It would be difficult to imagine her doing that. Just look at her now: stitching Fernando’s clothes; she is all of seven years older than he is, and they’ve been together for two. (Hasn’t this already been said?) She likes being older than he is. She admires Fernando’s courage and ardor, her bellicose child. Something more about him: that business about Gaby admiring him, that every now and then his ardor overflows, that is full of passion, are not the only things that distinguish him, that make him unusual, surprising as few men are or nobody is. He has other ardors. He’s wild about film. He met Juan Villemot, his josé pablo feinmann 54 | | French teacher, at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. They talk about film, European film most of all. Fernando is active in the Student Center, and that’s where he started to manage the college’s Microcinema. Villemot gives him a name: Bergman. Fernando proposes he organize a cycle. He begins to watch films. The first was Summer with Monika. What year would that have been? It’s probable that he was in the second or third year of high school. Let’s say it was 1962. Harriet Andersson blows his mind. What a woman and how beautful her body is, how daring, how free—how effortlessly and without shame she displays her body. He always sees The Seventh Seal. He discovers the Middle Ages. He is moved by the intolerable proximity to the divine. How is it possible to be in the presence of God, feeling yourself seen by Him for centuries? Fernando does not want to live under the burden of the gaze of God. He does not want God to judge his acts, whether He accepts them or condemns them. He does not want that sensation of panic. And he does not believe that God should assume this task nor that he deserves it. Death. He knows the eternal lament of men. Why do we die, why do we lose our loved ones? Why does God not defend us from Death, why does He leave us in its hands, why does He abandon us to its power, why did He create for us such a bitter end, one so terrifying, one all our own, one so solitary? He is full of disdain for Catholics who grumble, the cowards. Someone like him, who doesn’t think about it because he is not afraid to die, could hardly complain to God about the existence of Death. He adds Smiles of a Summer Night. Also Night at the Circus. And the one that turns out to be his favorite, Silence. It’s a miracle he can get it. It has just opened and it’s a scandal in Buenos Aires. They ban it for viewers t i m o t e| | 55 under twenty-two. Fernando is fifteen years old. But Villemot speaks to a friend of his who is a film buff. They manage to work something out between them and get hold of a copy. That’s how Fernando sees it clandestinely. While it’s true the film captivates and fascinates him, and while his admiration for Bergman only increases, he does not believe in God’s silence. God listens to us, and it is really only a matter of speaking with Him, of opening up to Him our Christian heart. But He cannot always hear us. We must grant Him his divine right to be distant, immersed in Himself, lost in the abyss of the...