The Art of Flight. Sergio Pitol
the future, nor do we want to; the only thing that matters to us is the present and the immediate future; to think, for example, about what the coming days offer, how the complex situations that each of us confronts in his personal life will unravel, and with the same intensity, what books we will read in the days to come.
I return to Mexico in mid-1962. I’m excited to get back to my old habits and haunts. Nevertheless, I do everything possible to return to Italy. I do not have steady employment; I manage on a hodgepodge of jobs I do at home. After the absolute freedom I enjoyed in Rome, the idea of going back to an office is difficult for me to accept. During this time, I translate The Monk, the gothic novel by M.G. Lewis, which is published in installments in Salvador Elizondo’s magazine Snob. I do readers’ notes for Joaquín Díez-Canedo. Max Aub has given me small jobs at Radio Universidad: snippets to celebrate the anniversaries of famous writers; I also participate in a book review program, also at Radio, with Rosario Castellanos, José Emilio Pacheco, and Carlos Monsiváis. The Coordination of Cultural Diffusion, which oversees Radio Universidad, is enjoying a golden age under the direction of Jaime García Terrés. To start with, there is no censorship. Rosario Castellanos adds a very informal character to the program; everyone is able to express his or her opinion with no strings attached. We celebrate on the program the release of Carlos Fuentes’s The Death of Artemio Cruz; we dust off the work of Martín Luis Guzmán, which of late the author himself has not even paid much attention to. We discuss the new postwar Spanish narrative, the existence of which has been difficult to accept in Mexico. The prevailing opinion is that since the fall of the Republic it is impossible for anything worthwhile to emerge; that a new literature can only be born with the disappearance of Franco. Discussing, much less praising, new authors like Sánchez Ferlosio, Goytisolo, Martín-Santos, Aldecoa, bothers a lot of people who believe that to do so legitimizes the Franco regime. It’s a nuisance but it’s impossible to compromise with this kind of intolerance.
Since that day in 1957 I described before, many things have happened: there have been shockwaves that have provoked reactions against the government apparatus and its institutions; unexpected social movements have arisen; labor leaders have emerged who question the old codgers immobilizing the social organism. Corruption was condemned in many areas. There were protest marches and strikes nationwide; railway workers, teachers, telephone operators, and other union groups filled the streets and took control of them. There were impressive demonstrations. I remember one organized in support of teachers in which the participation of intellectuals was particularly important; there were not only young people but also those we considered our teachers. In a row ahead of Monsiváis and me were Octavio Paz and Carlos Fuentes, both functionaries of the Foreign Service. We marched in front of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs just as the employees were leaving. Some diplomats applauded when they saw their colleagues in the march; others, horrified, could not believe their eyes.
The response was immediate: a disproportionate crackdown. From 1958 to 1960 riot police seemed to take control of the city, surprised, perhaps, by the obstinacy of students and workers who, in spite of the beatings, arrests, and torture, continued to express their dissatisfaction, handing out fliers, marching in the streets, singing subversive songs, ridiculing the government. The jails filled with political prisoners. Monsiváis, José Emilio, a dozen other writers, and I went on a hunger strike called by José Revueltas, in solidarity with the strike that Siqueiros and other political prisoners had undertaken in Lecumberri. We were living day to day, with a recklessness that could only be attributed to naïveté. We took for granted that nothing would happen to us, and it was senseless to worry beforehand. We did not possess a desire to be martyrs—on the contrary. Personally, the experience helped me to rid myself of a feeling of over-protection that was beginning to hinder me. Somehow we understood that the country needed changes, that the political institutions were rusty, that it was unhealthy for a nation to be perpetually governed by a single party. But we did not expect the violent reaction from the groups in control. They were only able to respond to dialogue with beatings, arrests, and even murder.
Every time I reread La segunda casaca (The Second Turncoat), that remarkable national episode by Benito Pérez Galdós, I’m moved by a statement made by the protagonist Salvador Monsalud:
I have always believed the same thing, and I very much fear, even after victory, that things in my country will continue to seem to me as bad as before. This is such a horrible mixture of ignorance, bad faith, corruption, and weakness that I suspect the evil is too deep for revolutionaries to repair. Among these, one sees everything: there are men of much merit, good heads, and hearts of gold; but there are also unruly ones who seek only noise and chaos; not to mention those filled with good faith yet lacking in intelligence and common sense. I have observed this group they are caught up in, unable to unite the greatness of ideas with the pettiness of their ambitions; I have felt a certain fear for principle; but after pondering it, I have concluded by affirming that the evils that revolution may bring will never be as great as those as absolutism. And if they are—he continued contemptuously—they well deserve it. If all this is to continue to bear the name of nation, everything must be turned upside down, that common sense which has been offended be avenged, drawing and quartering such ridiculous idolatry, such foolishness, and barbarism erected in living institutions; there must be a complete renovation of the patria, no vestiges of the past should remain, and everything must be plowed under with noise, crushing the foolish who insist on carrying an outmoded artifice on their shoulders. And this must be done quickly, violently, because if it is not done this way it will never be done… Here the doors of tyranny must be torn down with ax blows in order to destroy them, because if we open them with their key, they will be left standing and will close again.
This is what Salvador Monsalud proclaimed, the unblemished hero, the character whom Galdós treated with the greatest sympathy, as if he wanted to share the same exploits with him. But, unlike Monsalud, we did not think it was necessary to change everything, to turn everything upside down, rather simply to ensure that the Constitution be followed, that our legislative practice be real, and not a mere pretext that gives rise to oratorical pirouettes and flourishes; that the rights of the citizens be respected, that the corrupt leaders and uncivil rulers disappear, those scourges capable of tarnishing any system, and through momentary disharmony reach social harmony. After the repression began we no longer thought the same; we wished, like Monsalud, for everything to be uprooted so that nothing would ever be the same, and one of the options that we envisioned was socialism, whether democratic socialism like Sweden or Finland, or real socialism like that of Eastern Europe, or even a socialism sui generis like that of China. It was the period of the “Hundred Flowers,” not of the Cultural Revolution; I had just read a couple of very suggestive books: The Long March, by Simone de Beauvoir, and Into China, by the magnificent Claude Roy; both writers portrayed that world as a utopia in progress; an ideal vision built with real elements. In other words, the radical Monsalud, at first a purely literary character, ended up being our contemporary. We were tied to him by a common desire for justice, cleanliness, and decency. We also shared with him his doubts about what could happen after the change, if in fact there was one, and at the same time we were captivated by his adventurous life, not at all stifled by his political activity. We were anti-dogmatic by nature. E.M. Forster’s book Two Cheers for Democracy became my spiritual guide; since then, I always have it by my side.
I can say with confidence that during those three years—1958, 1959, 1960—our lives did not take the same course as those of the positive characters in Soviet literature and film. I would dare to believe that the opposite was true, and the proximity of some closed-minded, rigid, and dogmatic revolutionaries was the best antidote. Our ability to live happily remained intact, even if the spaces had become more limited and enclosed; perhaps that very thing made them more intense. Friendship in those days became almost fraternity. Carlos and I continued to observe the tireless cycle of the human comedy: its glories, its agonies, its tricks, and its tragedies, but also its foolishness, its pettiness, its infinite capacity to embody the grotesque, the pretentious, and the seedy. We did everything possible so that the turmoil in the streets did not overwhelm our readings, and that in the event it did influence our conversations—it was impossible, not to mention undesirable, to avoid