Shotgun Blues

In this club, I told Renzi, one can drink and drink without anyone getting upset. Look at the man over there, the fat one with the jacket on: he gets drunk every night, always by himself, and yet preserves a strange dignity. There's a story about him, I tell Renzi, a painful story. While cleaning a shotgun he killed has wife of just three months. I told him that it was doubtless an accident and not a crime, for nobody kills his wife of three months in that fashion, with a shotgun blast in the face, unless he's crazy. And besides, I tell him, the man has been literally broken since the accident. He does nothing but get drunk and says that firearms are the work of the devil. Two glasses of gin, that's right, I tell the waiter. Oh, and please bring a bit more ice. You, I say to Renzi, have no doubt read my compatriot Korzeniowski, the Polish writer who wrote in English. A renegade, to tell the truth, a romantic of the worst sort. He spent his life fascinated by that sort of character. The man has a secret. But which of us does not have a secret? Even the most insignificant person,I say to him, if he had some listeners, could fascinate them with the mystery of life. It's not even necessary to have killed a woman with a shotgun blast. That other fellow - see? - the one over there, next to that column. His name is Iriarte; he has a watch shop, is the classic type of insignificant person, and yet I am sure that when he has had enough to drink he also dreams of the great man he almost became. At some moment in his life he must have witnessed something that he needs to keep hidden. That happens to all of us. Each one of us, I tell him, has his own repertory of extraordinary moments and heroic illusions. Everyone, Renzi says to me; the difference lies in that only some are able to realize those illusions. Illusions? That depends on one's age. After one's thirtieth birthday, I tell him, we are nothing but a sad collection of illusions and of women we have killed with shotgun blasts. Besides, I tell Renzi, what a man thinks of himself is of absolutely no importance.



Ricardo Piglia, Artificial Respiration, trans. Daniel Balderston, Duke University Press: North Carolina, pp.108-9