The Author in the Office: Narrative Writing in Twentieth-Century Argentina and Uruguay (Monografías A)

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Colección Támesis SERIE A: MONOGRAFÍAS, 226

THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE NARRATIVE WRITING IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARGENTINA AND URUGUAY Martel’s La bolsa (1891) initiates, and Dorfman’s Reader (1995) concludes, a study of the white-collar citizens of Buenos Aires and Montevideo in their daytime habitat: the office. The literary background is the European literature of bureaucracy: Balzac, Galdós, Gogol, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Kafka; the theoretical approach is through the sociologists Max Weber and C. Wright Mills; the historical context is the twentieth century: the decline of European power and the ascendency of the USA; two world wars; the Wall Street crash; communism and fascism. Through the eyes of Arlt, Benedetti, Campodónico, Cortázar, De Castro, Denevi, Fernández, Marechal, Mariani, Martínez Estrada, Onetti and Ricci, we observe life on the two sides of the Plate, through the decades of the century. In the early years the untroubled egalitarianism of Batllista Uruguay contrasts with the insecurity of Radical Argentina. Later, Peronism emerges from corruption – simultaneously promising, and threatening. Then Argentina stumbles from crisis to crisis, while stagnant neo-Batllista Uruguay pursues its bureaucratic routine. Neither country, apparently, is going anywhere. In reality, however, they share a common destiny: polarisation, repression and, eventually, military dictatorship. This is the twentieth century, viewed by a bewildered, frequently anguished participant: the person at the next desk. PAUL R. JORDAN lectures in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield.


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PAUL R. JORDAN

THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE NARRATIVE WRITING IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ARGENTINA AND URUGUAY

TAMESIS


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© Paul R. Jordan 2006 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Paul R. Jordan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2006 by Tamesis, Woodbridge ISBN 1 85566 126 8

Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by Cambridge University Press


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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................vi 1 Introduction: Writing in and of the Era of the Typewriter .............................................................................................1 2 Office Life in 1920s’ Buenos Aires and Montevideo: Visions of Purgatory .....................................................................................26 3 The 1930s: From Social Criticism to Creative Disillusion ..........................56 4

Mario Benedetti: Uruguay, the Office Republic...........................................81

5 1940s’ Argentina: From Alienation to Bureaucratic Nightmare.................126 6 Argentine Bureaucracy from the 1950s to the 1970s: The Enemy within.......................................................................................165 7 Uruguay from the 1960s: Bureaucracies of the Absurd .............................195 8 Conclusion: Globalisation and the Writer-functionary...............................224 Select Bibliography...........................................................................................229 Index..................................................................................................................233


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge support from: the International Congress of Americanists’ fund, administered by the British Academy, for financing a research trip to Uruguay. the Arts and Humanities Research Board, for subsidising a period of study leave. the University of Sheffield Research Fund, for assistance with publication. I also thank friends and colleagues in Montevideo and Sheffield for their helpful suggestions, and, in particular, Jean, for patiently and critically reading draft chapters.

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Introduction: Writing in and of the Era of the Typewriter This study chronicles the lives of the white-collar workers of the capital cities of two nations, Argentina and Uruguay, through the greater part of the twentieth century: that is to say, during the post-pen, pre-informatic age. In the office, it was the era of the filing cabinet, the rows of desks, the mechanical adding machine and the telephone. Most importantly, in the office itself, and in the narrative that reflects it, this was the era of the typewriter. The present study has no pretensions as a work of social science (although it draws on sociological and historical works), but rather is conceived as a narrative of cultural history; moreover, it is one that emerges through the work of a very particular group of people: creative writers who also experienced the ordinary life of the office. Poised between the creative and the routine, our writers reflect – and reflect on – the fundamental conflict between individual autonomy and the need to survive within the system. For these people the nature of that system is, obviously, broadly speaking bureaucratic. Through the decades the writers respond in different ways to this fundamental conflict. Some address specific economic and political circumstances, while others internalise the bureaucratic present and extrapolate it into a nightmarish future. On the other hand, some seem curiously untouched by bureaucratic routine, but are more interested in, for example, the city; yet others transform office routine into baroque extravagance. One of the underlying realities that inform these varied responses is, of course, the duration of service in an office, and the type of office: a working life processing files inside a bank or a state bureaucracy self-evidently is very different from writing newspaper articles or editing journals. One of the most combative and acute writers in the River Plate in the twentieth century was the Argentine Roberto Arlt (1900–42), who in the prologue to his third novel, Los lanzallamas, launches a call to arms. Referring to his fatigue after what were in fact creative hours at the typewriter, he nevertheless seems to draw his work towards the common white-collar experience, that of his readers. He does so to challenge and give heart to his readers; his message is that the machinery of everyday routine can be harnessed to other ends: ‘El porvenir es triunfalmente nuestro. Nos lo hemos ganado con sudor de tinta y rechinar de dientes, frente a la «Underwood», que


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THE AUTHOR IN THE OFFICE

golpeamos con manos fatigadas, hora tras hora, hora tras hora’ (1931, unnumbered). Arlt’s defiant challenge, it seems to me, remains the central issue: creativity or bureaucracy, conformity or autonomy. It is an issue of profound implications indeed: it is the fundamental question of how individual and society are related. Throughout the century, world-wide, the specific question of artistic and intellectual independence would arise time and again. Indeed, Arlt himself, an independent writer of the left, was in 1932 involved in a clash with the communist party, in the pages of the journal Bandera Roja.1 However, in this study we are not concerned primarily with bureaucratic control of the creative writer, but rather with creative writers’ concerns about human experience in a bureaucratic environment, and specifically in twentieth-century Buenos Aires and Montevideo. In the River Plate literature of the office there are many references to regimentation and alienation, as well as to interactions within the bureaucratic hierarchy. Some works focus on economic conditions, such as the hours of work, salaries and pensions of what are presumed to be typical individuals. However, with the exception of Roberto Mariani’s early stories, there is rarely any sense that these issues are subject to change – and they are certainly not presented as negotiable. Generally speaking, the writers are aware of an immediate national political context, which sometimes is perceived as part of a global process – although this latter is seen as beyond national influence, much less control. In the literature, therefore, the office tends to be either a microcosm of national culture, or the setting for a study of the subjective experience of the white-collar worker, or a combination of both. The River Plate narrative of the office, as we shall see, generally reflects an understanding of the world that is Weberian, binary, in which the white-collar worker is subjugated and effectively powerless. However, other ways have emerged of viewing the relations between the individual as worker and citizen, and the institutions of business and state. Two influential recent thinkers in this area have been Michel Foucault and his disciple, Nikolas Rose.2 Rose, developing Foucault’s ideas about power and subjectivity, traces through the twentieth century the various initiatives and experiments that have been devised to create ever more complex, intrusive systems, whose objective is to manage the morale and productivity of the workforce. The key factor in Rose’s analysis, and in this he follows Foucault, is his rejection of the binary view, consisting of the exercise of, and submission to, power. Instead he sees a complex, open interaction – indeed, collaboration – involving specialised interest groups.

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See: Jordan, 2000: 30–1. The two relevant works are Michel Foucault, Surveiller et Punir (1975) and Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul. The shaping of the private self (1990). 2


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One significant specialist group consists of what Foucault calls the expertintellectuals such as, for example, psychologists. Foucault argues that in the twentieth century these various technical professionals have occupied the territory that previously belonged to independent intellectuals, and particularly writers, who played a critical-visionary interpretive role in society. At this stage it must be reiterated that the present analysis is not based on social science expertise, but rather its perspective on culture is primarily informed by literary concerns. However, I would tentatively propose that while the Foucault–Rose analysis may be directly applicable to Europe or North America, this does not necessarily mean that always, in all respects, it is applicable to River Plate cultures. In many senses these are dependent cultures, a reality that can generate different structures from those of the dominant area, and raise different issues. While Argentina and Uruguay undoubtedly have had their quota of expertintellectuals in their institutions (these countries are renowned for their large numbers of psychoanalysts, for example) it is not the case that the independent – or politically engaged – writers and intellectuals have renounced the role of interpreters and critics of their societies. This is the function that the River Plate writers of the office fulfil – or try to fulfil. Of course, unlike the expert-intellectuals they are rarely part of the decision-making establishment. And yet, especially if the distribution of power is complex, such writers might be considered a special category of expert-intellectuals, in that their reflections derive from a unique kind of field work: direct experience. Before considering the writings of Weber and Wright Mills, and placing the River Plate literature of the office in relation to them, two general issues must be addressed, relating to the scope and content of the literature considered in this study. The first is the question of gender. Although the office in twentiethcentury Argentina and Uruguay was not an exclusively male workplace, the literature has a predominantly masculine perspective. Certainly, there are numerous examples of women playing important or minor roles, in the office or outside it. However, women are never the main protagonists in the office. Indeed, I have only discovered one case where women are considered exclusively as workers, and separately from men: Martínez Estrada’s essay, ‘Gusto’, in La cabeza de Goliat (1947), a brief sketch of how low-paid female employees such as clerks, typists and saleswomen spend their lunchtimes. Neither has any text come to light, written by a woman, which deals directly with bureaucracy and the office as workplace; the short play, La amansadora, by Virginia Carreño, which is set in a ministry waiting room, comes closest.3 There are of course numerous works which, like La amansadora, share some

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Carreño, 1995. The play’s date is uncertain, although not later than 1957, since it is mentioned in Denevi, 1957.


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characteristics of the genre of writing of the office, but do not fall within it. For example, two writers whose work is analysed in this study, Ricci and Martínez Estrada, both wrote stories in which the entire civic reality is converted into a Kafkaesque nightmare. A very different example would be ‘Paloma’, by Carlos Martínez Moreno, one of the Uruguayan ‘generation of 1945’, a story about a bureaucrat’s retirement.

Weber and Wright Mills on bureaucracy and the white-collar condition A fundamental source of insight into the bureaucratic environment, which is contemporary to the period studied, is the writings of the German sociologist Max Weber, particularly the essay ‘Bureaucracy’, a section of his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and Society), which dates from 1922. First, in his exposition of the characteristics of bureaucracy (and he sees full bureaucracy as only realisable under advanced capitalism), Weber notes that there is no essential distinction between public- and private-sector bureaucracies. He goes on to observe that appointments to the highest posts (for example ministers) are usually made without reference to formal qualification. He considers that a bureaucratic structure relies on a developed money economy, and that its permanence and its discipline can only be maintained through a constant income. Finally, he notes that the requirement for order and the development of infrastructure both foment bureaucratisation (policing). Weber considers that, technically, bureaucracy is the best method of social organisation, since it avoids the need for discussion – as happens in a collegiate structure, for example. Further, he observes that capitalism demands an efficient official (that is, bureaucratic) administration, and that the more complex social organisation becomes, the more its external support apparatus needs to be ‘objective’ or expert. In other words, in a successfully developing capitalist system bureaucracy is inevitably present and always expanding its reach. There is, however, one crucial condition: the system requires a constant supply of resources. Interestingly, Weber also sees democracy itself, or rather the modern democracy of the mass, as necessarily entailing the creation of a bureaucracy in order to ensure that the democratic ideal of the levelling of social difference is implemented. (What he does not say, however, is that a government in such a context may also generate a partisan bureaucracy, to secure support and, possibly, re-election.) Thus far, bureaucracy emerges as an instrument, in itself neutral, which may be in the service of different interests. However, in the specific case of the democratic interest the relationship is problematic: Weber considers that specific ends desired by the democratic interest entail bureaucracy – but also that, at the same time, democracy itself by its nature is opposed to bureaucratic rule.


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As to the effects of bureaucracy, Weber sees that it converts the individual, as functionary, into a small cog with a tightly defined place in a complex mechanism. He also observes that once bureaucracy is installed it is almost impossible to challenge it, without causing chaos. Bureaucracy thus promotes continuity and makes revolution increasingly difficult to achieve. Further, bureaucracy tends to be a secretive mechanism, which is averse to criticism. One final characteristic of bureaucratic rule adduced by Weber is, one might argue, anomalous. This is the tendency for the bureaucracy to be influenced by adviser groups, which are usually drawn from economic interest groups (this is the point that Foucault and Rose elaborate). Like bureaucracy itself, one might say that such an arrangement is neutral: these groups could be subject to constitutional control. At the other extreme, they could be powerful interest groups, which in effect controlled the bureaucratic society. In the mid-century, the North American sociologist C. Wright Mills used Weber’s ideas in a comprehensive study of US society. His argument is that the US was undergoing a transformation: ‘the loose-jointed integration of liberal society is being replaced [. . .] by the more managed integration of a corporate-like society’ (1956: 78). In this process of change, where the traditional (ie nineteenth-century) pattern of property ownership is superseded, the professions and institutions are bureaucratised, and a large white-collar class emerges: ‘the occupational structure of the United States is being slowly reshaped as a gigantic corporate group’ (1956: 70). Wright Mills sees the white-collar phenomenon as being so broad, amorphous and alienated, that it is not so much a group or a class, as a human condition: The white-collar people slipped quietly into modern society. Whatever history they have had is a history without events; whatever common interests they have do not lead to unity; whatever future they have will not be of their own making. If they aspire at all it is to a middle course, at a time when no middle course is available, and hence to an illusory course in an imaginary society. Internally, they are split, fragmented; externally, they are dependent on larger forces. Even if they gained the will to act, their actions, being unorganized, would be less a movement than a tangle of unconnected contests. As a group, they do not threaten anyone; as individuals, they do not practice an independent way of life. [. . .] Yet it is to this white-collar world that one must look for much that is characteristic of twentieth-century existence. By their rise to numerical importance, the white-collar people have upset the nineteenth-century expectation that society would be divided between entrepreneurs and wage workers (1956: ix).

This picture is reflected, time and again, in the characters who appear in the River Plate narrative of the office. However, in Argentina, although a similar analysis to Wright Mills’s is present in the literature of the office, there is a crucial difference. Probably because its society has been both polarised and


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of a quasi-colonial nature, there is from the beginning strong critique and political activism. Argentine writers seek to foment awareness of a polarisation that is merely masked, not abolished, by the existence of a large white-collar class. In Uruguay, although it too was quasi-colonial, society was always more equal and consensual, boasting enlightened, progressive social institutions. Consequently, the mask was not perceived as such (or the perception was not reflected in literature) until much later. A telling difference between the US and the River Plate is revealed by Wright Mills’s reference to international trade. He studies in detail patterns of ownership and employment in agriculture as it was being transformed through mechanisation. Inevitably, farming as an occupation – and in the US it has always been a powerful lobby – would undergo a dramatic decline, as what Wright Mills calls the ‘occupational structure’ is reshaped. It must therefore be a process of managed change. One regulatory instrument used to ensure a smooth transition, which Wright Mills (presumably sarcastically) calls ‘less obvious’, is the customs tariff: ‘were Argentine beef allowed to enter duty-free, the number of meat producers here might diminish’ (1956: 70). It is through such details that the nature of the corporatisation process is revealed. Here the US, in splendid isolation, with reference to its internal corporate interest, calculates the balance of factors that must be reconciled in order to ensure continuity and stability. However (and leaving aside extraneous issues, including ethics), in so doing it puts Argentina at risk of breaking Weber’s rule, that smooth modernisation necessitates constant income flow. For the purposes of the present study, some important divergences from Wright Mills’s analysis must be signalled. His conception of a bureaucratised white-collar class is extremely broad. For example, he includes teachers within his typology. It is certainly true that teachers are neither entrepreneurs nor blue-collar workers, and that technically, in some countries, they are functionaries. Further, their work may be tightly defined in terms of a curriculum; and they perform the bureaucratic function of classifying the next generation for the purpose of allocating jobs, status and wealth. However, they do not belong in a study of the narrative of office bureaucracy because, at least in some aspects of their work, individual vocation is important and they do not answer to a bureaucratic hierarchy. The difference (and the conflict) between the condition of bureaucracy and the vocation of education is expressed in the River Plate narrative of the office. For example, in Roberto Mariani’s Cuentos de la oficina (1925), the work that initiates the genre, there are characters who are trained as teachers but, because there are no jobs, cannot exercise their calling, and instead must submit to a life of clerking. This can be correlated with specific economic conditions and government policy – but it need not be. It could be read as a general image of oppression: the teacher cannot teach, but must be a bureaucrat.


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A second writer, the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, the doyen of the River Plate narrative of the office, frequently used office workers as the protagonists of stories, poems and novels, until around 1960 (which is to say, while he saw Uruguayan society as one of stagnant, bureaucratic alienation). However, as society polarised and fragmented during the 1960s, he began to draw on a different type of protagonist: those with a voice outside the bureaucracy, such as students, writers and teachers. It is significant that in his novel Primavera con una esquina rota (1982), his attempts to address the problems of postdictatorship Uruguay are mediated largely through the figure of a semi-retired school teacher. Wright Mills is more equivocal on the status and role of those engaged in higher education and research, as well as artists, writers and other intellectuals. The question of the role of writers and of those who teach about literature is one that goes to the heart of this study. Wright Mills makes the useful distinction between popular and serious (not ‘high’) literature, citing a number of North American works belonging to each category. His perspective is similar to that of British pioneers of cultural studies, such as Raymond Williams and, in particular, Richard Hoggart, who saw the production and study of literature as essential tools for the understanding of society. Hoggart made a sharp distinction between innovative literature and commercial, popular literature, which is at best escapist, at worst a powerful propaganda tool. It is precisely this critique that is made in the work of Arlt and Benedetti (and others) – although the specific popular culture references tend to be to cinema. A different perspective is adopted by Terry Eagleton, who focuses on what he calls ‘high’ culture in education. Like Wright Mills (and, it must be admitted, like Arlt), he considers that the teaching of literature in universities is used to confer access to privileged levels of the system, while contributing to the system nothing of practical use. His characterisation of what he calls the literary humanist discourse is unflattering: Its role was to be marginal: to figure as that ‘excess’, that supplement to social reality which in Derridean style both revealed and concealed a lack, at once appending itself to an apparently replete social order and unmasking an absence at its heart where the stirrings of repressed desire could be faintly detected. This, surely, is the true locus of ‘high culture’ in late monopoly capitalism: neither decorative irrelevance nor indispensable ideology, neither structural nor superfluous, but a properly marginal presence, marking the border where that society both encounters and exiles its own disabling absences (1984: 92).

It is a depressing thought. However, Eagleton is extreme, and perhaps too his remarks are applicable to a part of one culture, at one historical moment: certain British universities, from the 1960s. Indeed, recently Eagleton has shifted his position, notably in The English Novel. An Introduction (2005). And we may be certain that at least one of our writers would emphatically reject his


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views: Martínez Estrada who, among his other roles, was a university teacher of literature.4 The writings that constitute the River Plate literature of the office do not belong in a commercial popular culture; neither (with one or two exceptions) do they belong to high culture in any elitist sense. They are, today just as much as when they were written, the literature of that undefined middle, white-collar ground, as described by Wright Mills; and their function is precisely to problematise and articulate the experience of that middle ground.

River Plate cultures, Europe and North America Argentina and Uruguay have traditionally seen themselves not as typical South American nations, but as being rather close to Europe. Indeed, Uruguay long enjoyed the nickname of the ‘Switzerland of South America’, and the supposedly disdainful attitude of porteños to Latin America is notorious. A major factor in this perception of difference has been the near absence of indigenous peoples, who were all but exterminated in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, both countries in the earlier decades of the twentieth century enjoyed levels of culture and of prosperity that set them apart from the continent, and made them part of the wealthy developed world of North America and Western Europe. The prosperity of the River Plate was built on the exploitation of the vast plains (pampas), which supported agricultural production, for export to Europe. Argentina and Uruguay emerged, of course, from the Viceroyalty of the River Plate, within the Spanish empire. However, from the early/mid nineteenth century other European countries such as France and Britain were deeply involved in the area. Indeed, in the first decade of the century, the British had made desultory attempts at invasion. More significantly, Uruguay in some measure owes its separate political existence to Franco-British intervention: it was created in 1828, as a buffer state between the two antagonists Argentina and Brazil, with the objective of ensuring stable trading conditions. Also, the Falkland Islands were occupied by the British in 1833, this time in collaboration with the US. Later in the century, the infrastructure of Argentina and Uruguay was developed with European capital and technical expertise, the principal source being Britain. Development brought massive immigration, lasting well into the twentieth century, mainly from Southern Europe. These immigrants constituted a labour force, and also brought their customs, as well as new ideas in the political and cultural spheres. There are many ways in which this

4 The strong association between creative and critical writing, university teaching and political activism in Argentina is typified by David Viñas, one example of many from the late twentieth century.


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has been manifest, for example the adoption of French and Italian architectural styles, and the influence of European authors in River Plate literature. Through the twentieth century strong links remained between the River Plate republics and European countries, at the level of family, of institutions such as banks and other corporations, and in many aspects of cultural identity. However, in spite of the strength and multiplicity of the links, the River Plate is not part of the cultural-economic metropolis, which in the twentieth century was North America and Europe. As the cultural critic Beatriz Sarlo has defined it, theirs is a peripheral modernity (1988). In terms of important political developments in Europe and North America through the twentieth century, such as the rise of the dictatorships and the major wars, the River Plate was usually at the margins, although the republics experienced political and economic effects, in different measure. For example, in the Second World War, neutral Uruguay, which was sympathetic to the allied side, seems to have been little affected in the political or military sphere – beyond a spectacular naval battle and the subsequent scuttling of the German battleship Graf Spee in Montevideo harbour. In Argentina the effects were far more important. In the early 1940s, US pressure to obtain continental solidarity undermined a pro-allied government, allowing in the pro-Axis, military-dominated nationalist regime that would later develop into Peronism. Later in the century, of course, Argentina became deeply ensnared in the global ideological battle, culminating in the 1970s’ dirty war whose tragic consequences are all too well known. It should not be forgotten that a central figure of that battle, in the Americas at any rate, Che Guevara, although associated with Cuba, was Argentine. As to economic life, Argentina and Uruguay in the early twentieth century were in effect colonies of Great Britain. However, the absence of formal political association, as there was with other agro-export colonies such as Australia and New Zealand, had a severe effect when world trading conditions slumped as a result of the 1929 Wall Street crash: Britain in economic depression favoured the British-settled countries, destroying River Plate trade in the process. In Argentina, the consequences were catastrophic and far-reaching: an already tottering democracy was overthrown in 1930, leading to decades of political instability. Uruguay, with more robust political institutions, survived, although its democracy too was interrupted. Britain’s importance declined, although it continued to exercise considerable economic control for a further two decades, over financial institutions and infrastructure such as the railways. In one important sector, preparing and packing meat for export, Britain and the US were rivals, although with different agendas: Britain imported the produce, while the US, with its own strong farming sector, merely sought to dominate trade. Interestingly, the Uruguayan government took steps to address this aspect of dependency, creating a nationalised packing plant as early as 1928. The Second World War restored prosperity, the River Plate amassing considerable foreign exchange reserves. However, by now the dollar was the


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dominant currency, and these reserves were in European currencies, which at that time were not fully convertible. With the US unexpectedly blocking participation in the Marshall Plan, and with European economies shattered and unproductive, the currency reserves could not be used as desired, for rational modernisation; instead, a great deal of the funds were used for the nationalisation of foreign-owned assets, such as the British-owned railways. Argentine economic nationalism of the period, associated as it was with the strange political phenomenon of Peronism (a populist–authoritarian regime, which aspired to being a ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism), is often viewed askance. However, to keep a sense of perspective, it should be borne in mind that the creation and consolidation of nationalised infrastructure was prevalent in the post-war period. In Britain, for instance, one only has to think of the creation of the National Health Service – and, as in Argentina, the nationalisation of the railways. Many (but not all) of Argentina’s future problems would lie in the mismanaged attempt at industrialisation that took place over the next few years. The expensive purchase of deteriorating infrastructure such as the railways – in the absence of obvious alternatives – was an important factor. It should of course also be remembered that the deterioration of the railways, while still British-owned, was itself partly brought about by the state’s construction of roads to compete with rail – as well as the disruption of fuel and engineering supplies, and the fomenting of trade union unrest.5 (The trade unions in the 1940s, it should be remembered, were effectively a branch of the Peronist government.) The post-war decades witnessed economic decline in the River Plate, as both Europe and North America became increasingly self-sufficient. This decline eventually led to complete breakdown of social and political order in the 1970s, in both countries. In the Uruguayan case this meant the end of seven decades of stability, dominated by the progressive nationalistic doctrine of Batllismo; for Argentina, meanwhile, it was the most violent episode in a century marked by instability and conflict. Both countries emerged from their nightmare in the 1980s. Uruguay, characteristically, did so through the ballot box (a plebiscite decisively rejected a new constitution proposed by the military), while Argentina did so through violent conflict (the Falklands war). However, the awakening was to a new world: the old order, in which two power blocs competed for dominance was dissolving, and a single hegemonic system was emerging. Protectionism was being replaced by a new, invasive openness – neo-liberal globalism – and the information revolution had begun. The age of the typewriter was over.

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Scalabrini Ortiz’s writings on the subject of the railways are well known: Historia de los ferrocarriles argentinos; Los ferrocarriles deben ser argentinos. A British perspective is provided by Purdom (1977), Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway.


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Origins and evolution of the River Plate literature of the office The River Plate literature of the office traces the history of the greater part of the twentieth century, as it was experienced in an area of the world that is not part of the dominant bloc, and yet which culturally is closely connected to it: the River Plate is not ‘other’, in the way that other countries of its continent are. It may be, in Sarlo’s term, peripheral, but it mirrors the dominant culture, in two ways. First, in the derivative sense (if it will forgive the term) its identity is in many respects a reflection or copy of European/North American society. However, it also returns an image: it reflects on, and to, that society. This dual reflection operates at the level of an infrastructure for export trade, a bureaucracy to run it, and educational and political institutions to maintain it. And it includes ways of thinking about these structures, for example political ideologies and cultural artefacts such as literary works. While it is neither necessary nor possible to know precisely which literary works were known by which Argentine and Uruguayan writers, many European narratives of the bureaucracy were translated into Spanish in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Furthermore, Mariani read – and translated – French and Italian. Manuel de Castro regarded the British minister in Uruguay, Sir Eugen Millington Drake, as a friend, and presumably was involved in English-speaking circles. It is known that classic writers of the bureaucracy, such as Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Balzac were widely read in translation; some commentators also suggest that Maupassant was an influence. Two Spanish writers whose works were obviously available, but who never seem to be mentioned, are Galdós and Larra. Then, from the AngloSaxon world, Dickens’s exploited clerks, as well as the Circumlocution Office (in Little Dorrit) would have been known; it is possible that The Diary of a Nobody (1892), George and Weedon Grossmiths’ story of Mr Pooter, a very comfortable clerk from the city of London, may have been known.6 As will emerge in discussion of individual River Plate writers, specific precursor works can sometimes be identified. However, probably more important is the

6 The profound influence that Dostoyevsky’s novels, in translation, had on the Boedo group, and especially on Arlt, is universally acknowledged. ‘Poor Folk’, for example, was translated into Spanish, in Buenos Aires, in 1912 (see Schanzer, 1972, 59). Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ (1842) was translated in 1898 as ‘El abrigo’ (see Frantz, 1989, 45); although other works such as ‘The Nose’ and ‘Diary of a Madman’ were translated into Spanish relatively late, they were presumably available in English and French. Dickens and Maupassant – and especially Balzac – were widely translated (see the catalogue of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid). Furthermore, if one were to take La gran aldea (1884), by Lucio V. López, as representative, one might conclude that in Buenos Aires of the second half of the nineteenth century, only French and English literature (particularly Dickens) was read.


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simple fact that the nineteenth-century Europeans established the clerk or functionary and his world as a subject for literary enquiry. Dostoyevsky’s Poor Folk, Gogol’s ‘Diary of a Madman’, ‘The Nose’ and ‘The Overcoat’ are tales of impecunious Russian civil servants. The sense of correctness within complicated hierarchies, of respectability, are prominent; the bureaucracy is not seen as exploitative. Indeed, clerks such as Gogol’s Akakievich and Dostoyevsky’s Devushkin identify with their work – in Akakievich’s case so strongly that it is also his hobby at home. Extreme poverty, epitomised by the threadbare overcoat, accompanied by respectability (the Russian clerks are gentlemen), and identification with bureaucratic work at a relatively junior level to a degree that might be regarded as pathological, are all features of the Russian tales that are present in ‘Santana’, one of Mariani’s Cuentos de la oficina. They also inform (directly or indirectly), albeit less starkly, some of Benedetti’s stories from around 1950. Although poverty, real or imagined, is a theme of most nineteenth-century literature of the bureaucracy, as well as that of the twentieth century in the River Plate, nowhere is it as extreme as in the work of the Russians, and of Mariani. Indeed, in Galdós’s Miau (which must rank as the most complete novel of the bureaucracy), in its French equivalent, Balzac’s Les Employés, and in Maupassant’s Les Dimanches d’un bourgeois de Paris, the narrative is set relatively high in the hierarchy. The problem is not survival, but how to climb further in a world that embraces the ministry, the theatre and the salon; moreover, much of the action takes place away from the office. In the case of Miau, it is true, the protagonist is a one-time senior official who has lost his post through political changes, and who engages in an increasingly desperate quest for a billet that will see him through just a few more months, to retirement. These works are about gentlemen civil servants, not clerks; the bureaucracy where they work is closely and personally linked to the centres of political power, and is their natural home. Galdós takes furthest the notion of the civil service as a way of life, having his characters refer to the ministry as home, la casa. Indeed, it is through the constant presence of the protagonist, Villaamil, in the ministry, that the reader is introduced to bureaucratic routine, something that in no other novel or story is given with such detail. The image of a civil service where very little happens, where ex-functionaries still spend their days at the ministry, moving from one office to another to converse with friends – and causing any work that is taking place to stop – is that adopted by Manuel de Castro, in the first Uruguayan (although written by an Argentine) office narrative, Historia de un pequeño funcionario (1928). A recurrent feature of the Western European nineteenth-century narratives is that the menial occupants of the office – if they are mentioned – are of slight, if any, significance. This too is mirrored – indeed taken to the extreme – in nineteenth-century River Plate narrative, for example in Martel’s La bolsa (1891), which is set in Buenos Aires just before the stock market crash of


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1890, and is about a syndicate of speculators. The main characters fall into two groups: foreigners, who are wealthy and evil; and criollos, who are good. At the end of the novel, after the crash, the foreigners escape to Montevideo and thence to Europe; of the ruined criollos, one goes mad, while another emigrates to Brazil to seek better fortune. In one way or another, in other words, the principal actors avoid confronting the economic disaster to which they have contributed. The novel, however, which bears the subtitle ‘Estudio social’ (although it is nothing of the sort) is apparently directed at a different readership: a more modest sector of society that does not enjoy the prosperity brought by speculation (they can only look on, and marvel) – but who do suffer the consequences when the bubble bursts. La bolsa is directed at the whitecollar and trade inhabitants of Buenos Aires: ¡Pobres burgueses! Mozos de tienda, de almacén, empleadillos de todas clases, es inútil que vuestros ojos devoren a las lindas damas que cruzan como hechiceras visiones ante vosotros. Es preciso gastar coche, trampear al sastre, si no hay con qué pagarlo, frecuentar teatros y salones, para que ellas os hagan la gracia de una mirada o una sonrisa. Es preciso ir a la Bolsa, al club, jugar a los títulos, al lansquennet, al baccarat . . . ¡Miradlas cómo pasan sin veros! [. . .] Allá va el doctor Glow – a quien la última jugada de Bolsa ha dejado un millón más de ganancia – [. . .] allá va el buen doctor, como representación viva de la especulación irresponsable. [. . .] Allá va Fouchez, [. . .] el improvisador de ciudades que se desvanecerán mañana como una ilusión entre las manos de los candorosos que hayan creído en su existencia real; allá va el fundador de veinte sociedades anónimas cuyas acciones, ficticiamente valorizadas, recuperarán tarde o temprano su verdadero valor ¡ay! El cero (1975: 174–5).

Martel’s anger is directed at the British and French. He makes this clear directly, and through indirect, if not exactly subtle linguistic play. Some criollos, however, are their accomplices: ‘Allá va Granulillo, el estafador de sus amigos, [. . .] junto a su hermano, junto a su víctima (un hombrón de fisonomía criolla, tostada aún por el aire y el sol de la Pampa), en lo alto de un faetón tirado por dos yeguas anglonormandas’ (1975: 175).7 This colourful crew of pirates rub shoulders at the stock exchange with more modest porteños: ‘el estafador conocido, el aventurero procaz, roza el modesto traje del simple dependiente con los estirados faldones de su levita pretenciosa’ (1975: 57). However, the office subordinate, the clerk, is anonymous, almost faceless. Martel, after describing the luxurious office of the speculator Glow, turns to the clerk’s accommodation: ‘La otra pieza

7

The symbolism of the Argentine fraudster’s carriage powered by horses that are anglonormandas is clear enough. The name Fouchez suggests a combination of two French verbs, ficher and foutre, both of which have negative connotations (see Robert, 1957: 23, 142).


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[. . .] no tenía más muebles que una mesita de pino, pintada de negro, que servía de escritorio a uno de esos dependientillos con cara de fantoche que son los correveidile de todos los bufetes’ (1975: 78). This description is the extent of the clerk’s presence in the novel: he has no separate individual existence. It is strange that in a novel by an author who was clearly concerned with the exploitation of his country and its inhabitants (and especially given that there was already a European tradition of writing about ordinary urban citizens) Martel makes no reference to the clerk’s life, either before or after the stock market crash. The only possible explanation seems to be that Martel identified the clerks, too, as culpable foreigners: ‘esos parásitos de nuestra riqueza que la inmigración trae a nuestras playas’ (1975: 54). The conflict between immigrants and established inhabitants was a major feature of cultural debate in twentieth-century Argentina, and one that is present in Mariani’s work. Since Mariani, a first-generation Argentine, would tend to identify with immigrants, not criollos, it is tempting to interpret his empathetic portraits of wretched, yet in their way noble white-collar lives, as an emphatic rejection of three existing literary visions of the clerk. These are, first, the Franco-Hispanic tradition of complacent gentlemen civil servants; second, the prosperous English clerk in commerce, in a City of London that was doing very well indeed, to a significant degree thanks to trade with the River Plate; third, the parasitic European nonentity, as portrayed by Martel. If we also consider that the Soviet Revolution was in the early 1920s a recent event, one moreover that promised a better future for the ordinary person, be they blue or white collar, then it is not surprising that Mariani finds his model of the impoverished clerk in Russian pre-revolutionary literature: just as this wretched existence was supposedly eliminated by the revolution, so too in Argentina, if reality could be accurately portrayed and recognised, perhaps there would be hope for the future. Through the twentieth century the narrative of the office evolved, in several languages, in countries of Europe and the Americas. Once again, the exact relationship between that of the River Plate and the others would be difficult to establish. The object of this enquiry, in any case, is more modest: it is to study River Plate narrative, to place it at the centre as an interpretation of twentiethcentury reality. There are doubtless many writers whose work could have been read in the River Plate: from the Anglo-Saxon world alone one might cite Orwell, Dos Passos, Fitzgerald and Priestley. However, there are two authors who perhaps merit special mention. First is the Brazilian, Graciliano Ramos, whose novel Angústia was published in 1936. This dense, delirious narrative has little to do with the office as such, although its protagonist-narrator is a bureaucrat. Set in a dusty town of Brazil’s north-east, something of the novel’s atmosphere seems to permeate the desolate universe of Onetti’s Puerto Astillero. Kafka, of course, who deeply affected the twentieth-century psyche, is a major influence, particularly on Martínez Estrada.


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From the 1920s to the 1970s the literature of the office develops, reflecting the experiences of the workers, in the office and in their outside lives, and taking into account the wider socio-political reality. Sometimes specific external factors are adduced; for example, Mariani, writing in Argentina in the early 1920s, attributes the poor working conditions to a rapacious British capitalism, which squeezes maximum output from its workers and repatriates the profits. In a very different way, the Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti, who also spent many years in Argentina, in around 1960 creates a regional literature in which the River Plate is more subtly connected to European history. Finally, at the end of the era of the typewriter, and the dawn of the global information age (which is to say, beyond the main focus of this study), some River Plate writers transform the paradigm of the white-collar worker entirely. As we shall see, in a brief epilogue on Dorfman’s Reader (1995), the distinction between creative writer and bureaucrat dissolves; ordinary life and bureaucracy collapse into a single nightmare; the narrative moves out of the River Plate – and even out of Spanish, into English.

Political history of twentieth-century Uruguay and Argentina Argentina and Uruguay share much of their history, during and after the Spanish empire. The mass European immigration and the development of export agriculture produced striking similarities in their economic activity, and in many aspects of culture such as literature, architecture and cuisine. The shared language, Rioplatense, is a distinctive variant of Spanish that is strongly influenced by other languages, particularly by dialects of Italian, from which it has adopted many words; this has produced a colloquial speech known as lunfardo. The other major distinguishing feature is the voseo.8 As well as the cultural similarities, there have been and there continue to be numerous links. Families may have branches in both countries; there is a long tradition of crossing the Plate to take refuge for political reasons (on the most recent occasion in the 1970s, Uruguayans, tragically, often met police persecution, not asylum, in Buenos Aires); in the twentieth century many Uruguayan writers and artists resided in Buenos Aires. However, the two political cultures are dramatically different. This has had a major effect on people’s lives and attitudes and has strongly influenced the different paths taken by the narrative of the office in the two countries. Uruguay’s political system was characterised by consensus – and complexity – and Uruguayans were justifiably proud of their advanced social

8 The pronoun vos replaces tú; the accompanying verb form resembles the Spanish second-person plural, with one vowel removed. Examples: (ser) sos; (tener) tenés; (hablar) hablás.


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institutions, which were established during the época batllista, the period 1903–30.9 Batllismo was a broad-based, enlightened nationalism, which had entailed a fundamental rethinking and re-establishment of all Uruguay’s economic and social institutions; the words of contemporary historian Juan José Arteaga give a sense of its range and its ethos: [S]er batllista en esos años era ser progresista, avanzado, que defendía al obrero y atacaba el latifundio tradicional, partidario del estatismo económico y de las nacionalizaciones con la intención de que las utilidades favorecieran a los ciudadanos del país. Ser batllista implicaba también enviar a los hijos a la escuela pública y laica, casarse por lo civil y rechazar el matrimonio religioso y aceptar la liberación de la mujer favoreciendo su acceso a los estudios secundarios y universitarios. Ser batllista fue un modo de ser y de vivir, cuyos valores formaron una mentalidad que superó los límites de un partido político y se convirtió durante mucho tiempo en la mentalidad predominante, identificada con el Uruguay moderno (2000: 43).

Uruguay’s political system weathered the turbulent 1930s relatively successfully. Although there was a coup in 1933, followed by a period of authoritarian government, even those regimes that were ideologically opposed to Batllismo were interventionist, fomenting national industry – while not entirely neglecting progressive social legislation.10 Democracy was restored in 1942, and in 1947 the era of Neobatllismo began. It was during this period that the economic foundation of the political consensus began to be undermined. The government embarked on a programme of nationalisation, and of expansion of agro-industry, which entailed a significant increase in the number of public employees (and pensioners).11 Unfortunately, the post-war economic recovery in Europe and the US, and their increased self-sufficiency, reduced the possibilities for trade, and the government was unable to meet its financial commitments to its citizens.

9

This period was dominated by the great Colorado leader José Batlle y Ordóñez (1856–1929), who twice occupied the presidency, 1903–7 and 1911–15. 10 Economic crisis generated pressure for reform of the 1919 (Batllista) constitution. However, this proved politically impossible; finally, in March 1933 the president, Gabriel Terra (1931–8), originally a Batllista, suspended democratic institutions. An amended constitution, giving the president greater powers, was promulgated in 1934. As Nahum observes: ‘[El terrismo: ] no desatendió a los sectores populares, creando el Instituto de Alimentación, el de Viviendas Económicas, reorganizando la Salud Pública y aprobando el Código del Niño, en su defensa. Quiso alejarse ideológicamente del batllismo, pero la crisis mundial lo obligó a recorrer casi el mismo camino: intervencionismo estatal, política de sustitución de importaciones, proteccionismo, control de la moneda y tipos de cambio, etc.’ (1999: 114). 11 There were approximately 57,000 workers in public administration in 1938. By 1955 there were 169,000, and by 1958 194,000 (Arteaga, 2000: 211–12).


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The economic problems brought defeat for the Colorados in the 1958 elections, the end of Batllismo (and of almost a century of Colorado rule). The neo-liberal trade and exchange-rate measures taken by the new Blancodominated coalition government failed to address the country’s economic problems, and there ensued an increasingly acrimonious political, economic and constitutional debate, which produced fractures and realignments within the two main political parties. There was also an upsurge in strikes, deep discontent in the education system and, partly inspired by the success of the Cuban revolution, the emergence of stronger left-wing political forces including, in 1963, the MLN–Tupamaros guerrilla movement. The crisis of the 1960s was of the utmost gravity, challenging Uruguay’s most sacred beliefs and institutions, and eventually led to the abandonment of the long-entrenched tradition of the subordination of the military to civilian political leaders. In 1966 the Colorados regained power, but by now the country no longer functioned as a coherent whole. Ministers came and went, as the political class lost its sense of how to govern. There was widespread disenchantment with the established political process; indeed, as Arteaga observes (2000: 284), the social spectrum from which the Tupamaros guerrillas were drawn was almost as broad as the previous support for Batllismo. At the same time that the guerrillas were active, a new political coalition of the left was emerging: the Frente Amplio, which took part in the 1971 elections. Although Frente Amplio’s arrival marked a significant challenge to the traditional system of two main parties – these in turn being coalitions of distinct factions – it was not strong enough to take power, and in the event received under twenty percent of the vote. The Colorados were once more elected, but this time without an absolute majority in parliament. There followed a number of severe economic measures, popular protests, and a series of clashes between the guerrillas and the military. Finally, on 27 June 1973, President Bordaberry suspended constitutional government, initiating a dictatorship that lasted until 1980, when a proposal for a new constitution was emphatically rejected in a plebiscite. There followed a transition, leading to the restoration of democratic institutions in 1985. Argentina’s political history in the twentieth century, by contrast, was conflictive and turbulent. After much agitation in the late nineteenth century, electoral reform (universal male suffrage; secret ballots) in 1912 finally paved the way for a popular democratic government: in 1916 the Unión Cívica Radical, led by Hipólito Yrigoyen, finally took power. This was at best a loose coalition of broadly middle-class interests; it neither represented the workers nor was it accepted by the conservative elite. Indeed, industrial and agricultural worker uprisings in 1919 and 1921 were brutally suppressed; then, during the second Radical government the UCR itself split; finally, in the face of economic crisis, a coup in 1930 brought first military dictatorship, then a regime known as Concordancia, which was in appearance democratic, but which in fact remained in power through fraudulent elections, corruption and intimidation.


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This regime in turn was overthrown in 1943 by a nationalist military faction, the GOU,12 of which Colonel Perón was a key member. In government, Perón established strong working-class support by expanding and taking control of the trade unions, and by intervening on the workers’ side in many disputes. When Perón was ousted in 1945, such was his popular support that the government was forced to reinstate him. He went on to win the 1946 elections, remaining in power until 1955, when he was overthrown by military coup and forced into exile. Initially the Peronist regime was relatively successful, partly through its industrialisation and wealthredistribution policies, which improved conditions for the urban mass at the expense of the rural elite. Partly, too, it owed its early success to Eva, the president’s powerful, charismatic wife. Indeed, the Peronist party has never lost its mass following and, although frequently proscribed, has remained a key factor in Argentine political life. From 1958 to 1973 the Peronists were proscribed, governments being either military dictatorships or military-supervised Radical regimes. During the post-1966 dictatorship of Onganía the prohibition of political discussion and representation was so severe that in 1969 it provoked a popular uprising, the Cordobazo. This was also the time when Peronist and Maoist guerrilla movements began to be active. With the failure of the latest military project, a return to civilian rule was planned, the Peronists on this occasion being permitted to take part. They won a first election in May 1973, and a second in September when Perón himself, returned from exile, resumed the presidency. However, stability did not return. Perón, who from exile had encouraged left-wing groups within Peronism, including guerrilla movements, now cracked down on the left. Then, when Perón died in 1974, and power passed to his wife Isabel, the government campaign against the left intensified and included the establishment of the AAA (Alianza Argentina Anticomunista) death squads. By 1976 the country was in chaos, with Peronism riven by factional rivalry, and extremist violence from left and right. The military intervened in March 1976, initiating the infamous Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, which involved neo-liberal economic restructuring and a crackdown on so-called subversion. This state-implemented terror entailed the fully-documented disappearance of at least 9,000 citizens, although the true figure is estimated as 30,000. As on previous occasions economic reform was unsuccessful, leading the government to seek other ways to maintain credibility and authority. The result was the decision in 1982 by President Galtieri to invade the Falkland Islands,

12

There are two explanations for the initials, GOU: Grupo Obra de Unificación; Grupo de Oficiales Unidos.


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still a colony of a reluctant Great Britain. In the ensuing war Argentina was defeated, and the disgraced military soon afterwards left power. In 1983 elections were won by the Radicals, one factor in their success being mistrust of the Peronists, who were suspected of having collaborated with the military.

River Plate writers of the office, 1925–81 Chapter 2 focuses on two texts from the 1920s: from Argentina, Roberto Mariani’s Cuentos de la oficina (1925) and from Uruguay, Manuel de Castro’s Historia de un pequeño funcionario (1928). Mariani’s stories, dating to the second Radical government, are set in the administrative offices of an Anglo-Argentine department store in Buenos Aires. They are intense, gloomy, politicised tales of clerks who eke out a miserable existence of long hours of hard work, harsh physical conditions and low pay. They are the victims of British capitalism, who receive scant protection from their government. By contrast, de Castro’s functionaries, who are also badly paid, spend idle hours in a spacious, pleasant ministry in Montevideo, engaging in malicious gossip and waiting for legislation to improve their pensions. Whereas Mariani’s clerks are genuine workers who are very much connected to their politico-economic context (even if they may not understand it, and cannot influence it), de Castro’s functionaries are relatively comfortably ensconced in an inward-looking, apparently parasitic bureaucracy. Money is an important issue for them too, but there is no hint of exploitation. Moreover, de Castro’s functionaries are fully integrated into a stable system of political power and patronage. In contrast to Mariani’s stark vision, which owes much to Dostoyevsky, de Castro’s seems to be inspired by Galdós or Balzac – although unlike them, he never achieves convincing psychological depth to compensate for the melodramatic elements. Chapter 3 contrasts works from the 1930s by two of the River Plate’s preeminent authors, the Argentine Roberto Arlt and the Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti. These are Arlt’s fourth novel, El amor brujo (1932), and the play La isla desierta (1937); Onetti’s texts are the incomplete novel, Tiempo de abrazar (written in 1933 or 1934); two stories, ‘Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo’ (1933) and ‘El posible Baldi’ (1936); the short novel El pozo (1939). El amor brujo, which is set in Buenos Aires in 1929, is a critique of the conservative social attitudes that would contribute to the overthrow of Radical democracy. Arlt’s protagonist, Balder, is a bored office worker who should not (or believes he should not) be one: he is a cynical man with pretension to educational and cultural superiority. Balder has considerable social insight, and at the same time can suspend his scepticism and cynicism and enter his various social roles, almost deluding himself into believing in them. Arlt thus develops what will be a key type: the office worker who would be something


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else. Such figures were present but marginal in nineteenth-century literature; Arlt now uses his protagonist to mount a powerful critique of the white-collar condition. La isla desierta is very different. Set in an upper-floor office in the port of Buenos Aires, it is about characters whose minds have become debilitated by decades in the office. For many years they have been confined to a basement, but in their present office they can now see the outside world. After a carnivalesque rebellion, a management crack-down leads to the employees’ dismissal. Their replacements will be made to work with blanked-out windows. It seems to be a simple political allegory: the employees have moved from a state of ignorance (the basement) to a present where they see but do not understand the world. In the future, technology will be used to maintain discipline and ignorance. As is attested by El amor brujo, Arlt had a strong architectural imagination. Perhaps what he now sees is the windowless skyscraper, a kind of virtual reality in which knowledge is deployed in a highly controlled manner. Onetti’s trajectory in the 1930s is, as he acknowledged, associated with Arlt’s work. In Tiempo de abrazar the protagonist is an office worker, Julio Jason, who is also a student of literature. Unlike that of Arlt’s protagonist, Balder, his office experience is highly lucrative but undemanding. Jason undergoes a dubious reversion to innocence, and proceeds to abandon the corrupt city for the countryside. With ‘Avenida de Mayo’ and ‘El posible Baldi’, Onetti, rather than rejecting the Arltian type of protagonist, develops certain aspects of it. In both stories office workers walk the streets of Buenos Aires. In the first case the protagonist creates film-like fantasies; in the second he meets a woman to whom he tells various tall stories about his life, before reflecting on his real, dull identity. This last element, of telling and then of disillusion, is a motif that was used by Mariani and Arlt; and it foreshadows El pozo, in which a narrator character sits in alienated isolation, reflecting that all narratives, including the story of his life and political ideologies, are meaningless. Onetti, then, appears to reject Arltian cynicism, before returning to explore the possibilities of protagonist-narrators, which Arlt had opened. The major difference between the two writers is that while Arlt maintains concern with social and political reality, with the office and the organisation as a place that has a real effect on his characters, Onetti is from the outset unconcerned with the office as a determining environment, and exclusively preoccupied with what one might term existential-narratological issues. It is interesting to note how different are these two contemporary accounts of Buenos Aires, one from an energetic Argentine deeply involved in the political life of his country, the other from the more contemplative Uruguayan. The focus of the fourth chapter is a single author, the Uruguayan Mario Benedetti, who presents the bureaucratic mentality as paradigmatic of Uruguayan society. Over more than a decade, office workers are protagonists


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in many stories in the collections Esta mañana (1949) and Montevideanos (1959), as well as in Poemas de la oficina (1956). Finally, in 1960 Benedetti published two major works in which a highly bureaucratic Uruguayan culture is presented. In his collection of essays, El país de la cola de paja, he criticises distinct institutions and aspects of Uruguayan society; in the novel La tregua he explores the same issues through his protagonist Martín Santomé, an office manager on the brink of retirement. Benedetti’s is an extensive social realist oeuvre, in which the dramas and problems of ordinary lives are explored. The major theme of these early poems and stories of the office is alienation. In the first sense – alienation as estrangement from the outside world – Benedetti continues the line initiated by Mariani, although, this being a typical Uruguayan narrative, there is no strong political aspect. Another characteristic that Mariani adopted from the Russians, and which Benedetti develops in a major way, in La tregua and elsewhere, is alienation, created and symbolised by bureaucratic language and routine. In La tregua this alienation is explored in detail, and is combined with other observations of a socio-political kind (attitudes to homosexuality, for example). With its time scale of approximately twenty years, La tregua adds historical perspective. A final important feature is the narrative strategy: the novel is in the form of a fictional diary, a method that maintains a strong focus on the protagonist, and which permits reflection of and on the bureaucrat–writer dichotomy from a perspective of normality, rather than, as in Arlt’s and Onetti’s work, of exception. In Chapter 5, three Argentine authors writing in the 1940s are highlighted. Roberto Mariani, the author of Cuentos de la oficina, published a novel, Regreso a Dios (1943). While it lacks the incisiveness of his stories, it reflects two important realities: alienation and intellectual fatigue towards the end of the author’s office-bound life; disenchantment with the direction of Argentine society and deep concern over national identity. (This was still the década infame, the period of corrupt, pseudo-democratic governments.) Mariani, unsurprisingly, has no clear idea of the direction society should take, although there is some indication that he puts faith in part of the old criollo elite. In view of his left-wing identification and immigrant origins this is somewhat puzzling – although there were already some hints of this orientation in ‘Toulet’, one of the Cuentos de la oficina. Ezequiel Martínez Estrada is best known as an essayist, but was also the author of several fictional narratives, including ‘Sábado de Gloria’ which, although published in 1956, was largely written in the mid-1940s; that is to say at the time of Perón’s rise to power. Martínez Estrada was an important thinker about Argentina’s history and identity. In ‘Sábado de Gloria’, a nightmarish, Kafkaesque tale, he writes (from an apparently Radical perspective) about the replacement of Concordancia by Peronist military populism. The most interesting aspect of his vision is the way in which he


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sees the process of increasing military involvement: ‘1930 significa para la república Argentina el paso de un régimen político y económico post-colonial a un régimen político y económico de la nueva historia fascista del mundo’ (1964: 14). Martínez Estrada alludes to an event that is not normally associated with fascism (although 1943 might be); moreover, he writes in 1964, long after the fascist nations were defeated. What he seems to be saying, therefore, is that 1930 initiated a transition from post-colonial status (of Britain, not Spain) to a new world order, which Martínez Estrada chooses, perhaps with exaggeration, to call fascist. If we adopted the term ‘corporate-bureaucratic’ instead, then his vision maps onto that of Weber – who, incidentally, also noted the relatively unbureaucratic nature of the British empire. Interestingly, Weber saw the US, too, as relatively unbureaucratic in the 1920s, but thought that ‘the greater the zones of friction with the outside and the more urgent the needs for administrative unity at home become, the more this character is inevitably and gradually giving way formally to the bureaucratic structure’ (1948: 210–11). In this, Weber perhaps was more perspicacious than his disciple Wright Mills. The last of the three writers, the novelist and poet Leopoldo Marechal, was in his capacity as Peronist intellectual and functionary something of a rarity. He devotes a relatively short section of his masterpiece Adán Buenosayres to the subject of bureaucracy – but it is a section of the last, ninth book of the novel, so it is likely that it was written not long before publication in 1948 (the novel was begun in 1930). Elsewhere Marechal goes to great lengths to justify his affiliation to Peronism (not altogether satisfactorily, in my view). Moreover, as a later interview demonstrates, Marechal clearly saw a conflict between the progressive, socially levelling aspects of Peronism, and its stifling effects on culture. Even more than Mariani in the 1940s, and Onetti in his earlier years, Marechal was inconsistent, perhaps confused: he continued to defend Peronism, and yet he published a critique of bureaucracy, at the height of Peronist power, a regime in which he was a senior functionary. He presents his critique as an attack on the practices of the ancien régime, but unconvincingly. He locates corruption at the top of society, but the source of bureaucratic power he portrays as residing in the machine, as represented by the permanent civil service. It is tempting to conclude that, although politically distanced from Martínez Estrada, like him Marechal sensed something more sinister beneath the rhetoric and show of the military ‘revolutions’. The view of bureaucracy as a monstrous machine growing out of control, becomes firmly established in Argentine literature in the immediate postPeronist period, with Marco Denevi’s play, Los expedientes (1957); and reaches its full, ugly realisation at the height of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, in Cortázar’s short story ‘Segunda vez’ (1977). These, and two other texts, Denevi’s short novel Un pequeño café (1966) and Cortázar’s story, ‘Trabajos de oficina’ (1962), are studied in Chapter 6.


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Denevi’s play is not set in a specific place and time, but has the character of an archetypal government office, albeit one where the idea of public service is replaced by one in which the public provide the pretext for an ever-increasing mountain of files, and the concomitant increase in the number of unproductive bureaucrats. It is essentially a Swiftian satire, a grotesque exaggeration of a vision of the bureaucracy established in de Castro’s Historia de un pequeño funcionario, and Benedetti’s story, ‘El presupuesto’. Another major theme, that of surveillance, is presented as a distortion of Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the panopticon. (It is interesting that Foucault would use the same idea in the 1970s.) Denevi links the surveillance to an exclusively personal and sexual abuse of power. Un pequeño café has many interesting features. Its narrator-protagonist, Pascumo, belongs to the category of clerk-expert, whose other members are Mariani’s Santana (Cuentos de la oficina) and Martínez Estrada’s Nievas (‘Sábado de Gloria’). However, for once work itself is not oppressive: Pascumo, a ministry archivist, is very much in his element. There is some surveillance paranoia, but by and large Pascumo fits in well where he is: his self-perceived limitations as a human being lie in the outside world. There are two related elements here, his cultural and political identity. Culturally, Pascumo lives in a time warp: rejecting modernity, he frequents a Viennese-style café, imagining for himself an identity based on old European high culture. (Indeed, this also provides an outlet for his literary bent, thus avoiding the Arltian and Onettian issue of clerk versus creative writer.) Politically, he sees the world as a confusion of Peronists and Radicals, but has no idea what either represents. The reality of the period, of course, was just such a confusion, with the military as a third element. Denevi brings the cultural and political questions to a head through a civil service strike. The key element here is that, although the strike does not clarify the original political question, it transforms it. The result of the strike is a dissolution of the existing, more or less consensual hierarchy (and people’s identities within it), and its conversion into a simple structure in which the issue of imposing, accepting or challenging authority is played out partly in the institution itself and partly through media propaganda. The ostensible final resolution is a victory for the civil servants (as worker-citizens) over the politicians; the real resolution, however, is rather different: it emerges that the trade union has all along collaborated with the government, and the result is the triumph of a single bureaucracy. Pascumo does not realise this; his epiphany is simply that he must abandon his old cultural identity and learn to live in the present. Thus the dramatically changed political situation is sensed, but the implications are not articulated. Argentina’s reality has, of course, been precisely this confused series of hollow victories: a strange circling of military, Radicals and Peronists – and of whatever lies behind them. Cortázar’s two stories are about bureaucratic control of and through language, but in very different senses. In ‘Trabajos de oficina’ the protagonistic consciousness is a writer – a poet – whose language is policed by the


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ever-watchful bureaucratic eye of his secretary. The story is a hybrid, in that on the one hand it evokes the process of repression and alienation that is documented by Benedetti; on the other it articulates the writer–bureaucrat conflict in a way that seems slightly frivolous: rather as in Onetti’s early work, one senses that the author is secure in his writerly vocation, that he is not really oppressed by the bureaucracy, and that the notion of censorship is simply a writerly conceit. ‘Segunda vez’, however, is very different. Set in Buenos Aires during the Proceso, it is about the transactions between the functionaries of an interrogation centre and their victims. The story highlights the stealthy and abusive extension of the state’s bureaucratic tentacles, a process in which irregular, truly horrific procedures are negotiated through familiar official bureaucratic transactions, ones moreover that are seen, by functionaries and victims alike (although with different levels of knowledge), as routine, even banal. In the final, seventh chapter, the focus returns to Uruguay, with the study of Onetti’s novel, El astillero (1961); the story ‘Despachando con el Viejo’ (1966), by Mario Fernández; three stories by Julio Ricci: ‘La mesita’ (1970), ‘Los domingos no los paso más en casa de mi señora’ (1976), and ‘Viaje a Pocitos’ (1981); and Miguel Angel Campodónico’s ‘El silencio de mi voz’ (1979). Much has already been written on El astillero, one of the region’s and the century’s great masterpieces. It is an Uruguayan work, but at the same time it addresses a broader regional reality. In the present analysis, El astillero is connected with earlier texts such as Onetti’s El pozo and Arlt’s El amor brujo, from whose protagonists Larsen, the main protagonist of El astillero, evolved. El astillero is an extraordinary poetic construction, and one of the principal foci of the discussion is Onetti’s virtuosic creation and juxtaposition of imagery. However, El astillero (in this respect it is a continuation of El pozo) is also a study of how a consciousness tells itself and others stories. Lastly, the novel is viewed as a lucid study of a bureaucratic hierarchy set in an economic, historical and social context whose details are deliberately diffuse, but whose structure is unambiguous. While Onetti’s novel, with its portrayal of a stagnant, post-productive reality – like Benedetti’s La tregua – corresponds with the reality of Uruguay in around 1960, the 1966 publication date of Fernández’s ‘Despachando con el Viejo’ makes his story anachronistic to the point of absurdity. There is a background of dirty office politics, which is remniscent of Historia de un pequeño funcionario, yet there is no hint of a society in crisis – which was the reality of the time. Although there are significant echoes of Benedetti’s ‘El presupuesto’, the ministry portrayed by Fernández (or at least the office in which the story is set) is nothing short of ideal. It is run by Falcón, a welleducated, dedicated career civil servant who insists that the public should be served efficiently and with respect. At the same time he nurtures his staff, maintains a good relationship with other departments in the ministry, and is


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able to cut through red tape when necessary because he always has the ear of the minister. This portrait is dramatically different from any other in the literature of the office. The irony is that while it is (or should be) eminently plausible, sadly it does not reflect the reality of its time. Ricci is another author who clearly was familiar with Benedetti’s fiction. Ostensibly, Ricci is less political, and more focused on the quirks of the individual, rather than on protagonists who represent social types. Indeed, his stories often seem to be dream-like distortions of Benedetti’s, narratives in which a different kind of truth is expressed. ‘La mesita’, for example, is built on the idea of a clerk who is so timid that through his entire working career he never asks for a proper desk, but makes do with a small table. (This conceit of the clerk without a proper desk also, of course, neatly reverses Martel’s desk without a proper clerk.) Ricci’s shadowy, derivative clerk’s life, however, reflects in a delicate, rather Onettian way, economic history from the 1930s to 1966. The second story, ‘Los domingos no los paso más en casa de mi señora’, takes the Benedettian themes of false office friendship, and marital breakdown, pushes them beyond the bounds of the credible, and in so doing captures extremes of pathos and of nastiness that no other writer of the office achieves. In the last story, ‘Viaje a Pocitos’, in a sense nothing at all happens, since the entire narrative takes place in the dreaming imagination of an office worker as he sleeps at his desk. The imaginary action is set in the timeless Montevideo of long, empty bureaucratic afternoons and occasional bus strikes, and consists of the protagonist’s journey on foot through the familiar city streets, to his home in the suburb of Pocitos. It is all so comfortable – or rather, it was, and it would be. But this is pure nostalgia: in reality the Uruguayan office worker’s bureaucratic slumber has ended. ‘Viaje a Pocitos’ was first published in 1981, at the height of the River Plate’s military dictatorship nightmare. And there is a curious symmetry: Ricci’s story, like Onetti’s work in the 1930s, was published in Buenos Aires. Campodónico’s ‘El silencio de mi voz’ contrasts with Cortázar’s ‘Segunda vez’. Here the writer, in the country under dictatorship, portrays society as bureaucracy gone mad (the story is set in an asylum) in which the dissident is not eliminated, but is forced under regular surveillance to express what the system requires: to be a bureaucrat. Campodónico’s portrait, effectively that of an ‘office dictatorship’, also differs dramatically from that of his compatriot Benedetti, for whom Uruguay moves from being an office republic to outright, bloody dictatorship.


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Office Life in 1920s’ Buenos Aires and Montevideo: Visions of Purgatory Roberto Mariani, Cuentos de la oficina ‘Arlt’s anger burns with a white heat; Mariani’s is a cold, blue despair.’ This observation by Christopher Leland (1986: 71) goes to the heart of the matter: the energetic, combative, flamboyant Arlt was never contained by social or literary convention, and until the end of his short life always pressed on, transgressing and inventing. Arlt carved out his personal autonomy, earning a living through creative writing. By contrast, Mariani, sympathetically portrayed by Leland, emerges as a literary figure of some erudition and (as a key member of the Boedo group1) social commitment, who however never achieved the recognition he merited. Possibly Leland’s assessment is overgenerous, since although Cuentos de la oficina is important, little else has endured. Mariani, born in 1893 in the Boca port area of Buenos Aires, to immigrant parents, abandoned studies in engineering in order to devote himself to literature. However, his literary endeavours – writing, translating and editing – were a leisure-time activity: he was a functionary virtually all his life, notably in the Banco de la Nación and the Dirección Nacional de Arquitectura. Little is known about Mariani’s private life, although Leland speculates that ‘he suffered from severe sexual problems during the whole of his adult life’ (1986: 72). Be that as it may, his life seems to have been austere: he lived in lodging houses, and is not known to have formed any close relationships. There seems to be some correlation between Mariani’s stark personal life and his literary development. In Cuentos de la oficina the young author-functionary’s detailed knowledge informs a dramatic denunciation of a system, and exposure of the miserable lot of those caught within it. It is a work with immediate implications, and the writer who analyses the system so cogently probably has three realistic courses of

1 Boedo (after the suburb of that name) was an association of writers and thinkers, of diverse left-wing ideological persuasions, which was associated with the journal, and publishing house, Claridad. They rivalled an elite group, Florida (after an opulent central street), whose journal was Martín Fierro. In reality, the relationship was far more complex, and elusive (see Jordan, 2000: 10–29).


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action before him: to challenge the system; to effect individual transcendence or escape – in reality or in the imagination; to remain, unhappily, inside. This latter course was Mariani’s, and his 1943 novel Regreso a Dios (which is discussed below in Chapter 5) is the result: an embittered, melodramatic work, of psychological interest in documenting the result of a further two decades of bureaucratic and lodging-house existence, but useless in addressing existential dilemmas or the social and political issues of 1940s Argentina. Leónidas Barletta, introducing Cuentos de la oficina, identifies Mariani as a founding figure of Argentine literature. According to Barletta, Mariani did not have recourse to the picturesque or the exceptional, but took as his material ordinary people, and faithfully recorded the details of their lives. In so doing he exposed the hidden reality of an exploited, wretched – and often politically ignorant – class, effectively a white-collar proletariat; at the same time he discovered an intimacy, and portrayed the individual human qualities of members of this colourless mass. Barletta identifies money as the central factor, which both underlies the system and permits Mariani to expose its workings – through the dilemmas and the noble and ignoble impulses of individuals within the system: El dinero le sirve para dar una medida de la tortura moral de los personajes que anima. El dinero para no morir de hambre, el dinero para aparentar la decencia, para cultivarse, el dinero para ‘la compañera que hace contigo el camino’, el dinero para los párvulos que abren sus bocas ávidas de pichones, el dinero que hace soñar en la posibilidad de conocer mundo, de alcanzar sencillos placeres, el dinero que se escurre y que es la máxima posibilidad de repeler la enfermedad y aun de evitar un entierro de tercera. Roberto Mariani [. . .] mete las manos en ese fango del dinero que impide vivir con una conciencia transparente y en él descubre veneros de ternura, vetas de belleza moral, gemas de amor, en fin, todo lo que atesora la criatura humana y está recubierto por el cieno de un sistema que no permite alcanzar la plenitud de la vida (Mariani, 1965: 6).

Money is thus seen as the underlying principle of a social structure and mentality: it is indeed the explicit determining factor in most of the stories. The major part of Cuentos de la oficina consists of six stories set in various administrative departments of an Anglo-Argentine department store, Olmos y Daniels.2 Numerous characters, including customers and members of employees’ families, are mentioned or make brief appearances, but the focus is on a small group of clerical workers. The narration generally emanates from a disembodied observer who witnesses scenes, in the office and elsewhere, and who enters various characters’ minds. There is frequently the sense that the witness is very much an insider, and this focalisation, together

2

Leland suggests that it is modelled on the now-defunct Gath y Chaves store.


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with instances of narration explicitly attributed to one clerk, Lagos, imparts coherence of perspective. The six stories are framed by two other texts. First is ‘Balada de la oficina’, in which the office personified seeks to persuade a young man to abandon the outside world, and turn to ‘her’; it concludes with ‘La ficción’, formally a short play about children’s play-acting, set in an apartment building. It is more properly regarded as narrative, however, since the greater part of the text consists of explanation of the characters’ thoughts, rather than dialogue. These observations on the narrative form raise the question of the aesthetic qualities of Cuentos de la oficina, as opposed to its functionality as a representation of the world. It is an important issue to consider, even – or perhaps especially – when a writer’s work is not usually seen as having primarily aesthetic ends. Leland clearly is fascinated by the enigma of Mariani the man, putting a Freudian interpretation on ‘Balada de la oficina’, and judging the author to be strongly identified with the mentality of the clerk-narrator; secondly, he identifies a strong, coherent symbolism – almost allegory – in the ecclesiastical imagery associated with the office hierarchy; then, he notes Mariani’s engagement with modern high literature, particularly with Proust; and he points out that not only were the stories written over a period of at least four years, but that in some cases the texts appearing in Cuentos de la oficina are significantly changed, indeed are far more polished than earlier published versions. Leland argues that Mariani’s prose is precise and deliberate, and invites reflection on the contrast between Mariani’s measured pages and the lengthy, sensationalised treatment Castelnuovo or Gálvez would have given comparable themes. Barletta, by contrast, promoting a Boedo view of Argentine literature, portrays Mariani as an outstanding man of letters – playwright, journalist and novelist – whose writerly vocation led him into close observation of working life and into solidarity with the workers. He dismisses considerations of style as irrelevant, saying that those who link Mariani to Proust undermine the social impact of his work. For Barletta, Mariani’s prose is ‘acabada, pulida, sin omisiones, sin ornamentación superflua, persuasiva’; and he writes in ‘el estilo adecuado a la finalidad que perseguía su obra de ficción’ (1965: 7). In other words, his writing faithfully reflects his social-realist aims. There is certainly scope for different views on the relative importance of individual and social concerns in Mariani’s writing. What seems clear, however, is that Mariani was not interested in stretching the technical possibilities of narrative; rather, his purpose was didactic, and this could lead him to inelegant writing. One example might be the scene, towards the end of ‘Santana’, in which the eponymous character’s wife, Amelia, waits in a café to learn whether the disgraced clerk will keep his job. A mysterious figure, Castor, who allegedly has ‘seen the world’, tries to cheer her up. Comparing Castor with Santana, Amelia simplistically identifies two models of men: the heroic, fearless, healthy, virile types; and the pessimistic, weak, timorous sort.


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Essentially, what Mariani does in Cuentos de la oficina – and by and large he does so with skill and sensitivity – is to examine the reality of the male office worker and his family in the Buenos Aires of the mid-1920s, which is to say during the second Radical government: that of Alvear. This was a time when retrenchment from the populist policies of the previous president, Yrigoyen, opened a rift within the governing party. There are three main areas of concern in the stories. The first is the examination of working conditions and attitudes to them, and of the workplace as a social structure: a place of hierarchy, competition and solidarity. Second, Mariani explores how the workers perceive their own lives: their aspirations and fears, the balance between work and private life. Finally, there are broader concerns and perspectives, for example, he considers the meaning of the entire span of a clerk’s working life; and he relates the individual lives to contemporary social and political conditions within Argentina, and to Argentina’s place in the world economy. The first view of the office, however, is from outside: in ‘Balada de la oficina’ a young clerk stands in the street, hesitant. In his imagination he divides himself, into a listener, and the voice of the office which, addressing him as ‘tú’, seeks to persuade him to enter.3 It is a meditative monologue, which reveals the uncertainty and conflict of a single mind: at one level the debate centres on the simple, rational exchange of freedom for security; on another level it is less defined, more elemental. One side of the argument is associated with the sensual, and specifically with the tactile qualities of the natural elements, sun, wind and rain. For example, sitting in the sun is likened to drinking a glass of refreshing beer, and the movement of the wind is compared to a new-born creature’s playfulness. However, this vision of contact with nature is not presented entirely as positive and regenerating. A capricious side is represented by the image of the wind rushing around the streets, banging its head on walls and shredding itself on the trees. Moreover, the image of rain falling stupidly and monotonously, for hours on end, suggests dullness and lack of motivation in the clerk. The uncertain value to the clerk of freedom is encapsulated by the image of modern life being like a tangled ball of wool after a kitten has played with it; the image is invoked as the opposite of the order instilled by work discipline, and the inevitable consequence when discipline is lacking.

3 Leland discusses the implications of this use of the ‘tú’ form, instead of the more familiar ‘vos’. He suggests that Mariani either seeks to emphasise the office’s identification with Europe, or that here he tries to write ‘correctly’ (1986: 75). The familiar address is little used in the stories, but when it is, the ‘vos’ form predominates. The only exception, other than ‘Balada de la oficina’, is ‘Uno’, in which the expression ‘qué traes’ occurs once (1965: 66); more surprising is the narrator’s use of ‘creéis’ (1965: 63) to address the readership.


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The office’s side of the argument dismisses enjoyment of the elements as irresponsible, stupidly sentimental, and even humiliating in a young man: it is best left to the elderly retired. Although purporting to be based on an appeal to rational principles, the office’s side of the argument is in reality more capricious than the imaginative side, since it is based on bribery, blackmail and false promises made to the impressionable young man. The first and strongest appeal, with its imagery of womb and breast, is explicitly maternal: the office will protect the clerk against the elements, which are seen as physically threatening, and will provide for him and his family. A sense of immediacy, of provisional, uncertain evaluations, of a consciousness making associations in a spontaneous, haphazard way, emerges through unexpected changes of direction in the series of images. For example, the theme of the office’s maternal nature begins with the invitation to return to a protective womb; yet, immediately afterwards, this inner space is described as most un-womblike: ‘Entra: penetra en mi vientre, que no es oscuro, porque, ¡mira cuántos Osram flechan sus luminosos ojos de azufre encendido como pupilas de gata!’ (1965: 11). The second proposition, which recurs several times, is that work is duty, the very reason for human existence: ‘El hombre ha nacido para trabajar’ (1965: 12). The third element comprises the details of the proposed bargain or relationship between office and employee. The employee must submit fully to discipline, must be diligent in work and meticulous in time-keeping. The reward will be praise, while any deviation from perfection will undermine the enterprise: discipline is the only valuable principle. In relation to the actual conditions, a promised eight-hour day, if true, would not be so unreasonable. Perhaps inviting comparison with the plight of galley slaves, the office conditions are compared to the unproductive, and allegedly dangerous, twelve hours the employee has spent on Sunday, rowing;4 and the voice of the office notes that ‘Nadie se muere trabajando ocho horas diarias’ (1965: 12). The multiple irony of this comparison emerges in the stories. First, in spite of its promise, the office does not provide adequate protection against the elements; second, the working day frequently far exceeds eight hours – and clerks die, as a result of these combined factors. Taking the perspective of the full working life, the office promises the clerk a pension after twenty-five years’ service – always supposing he has not previously succumbed to tuberculosis. Only then will he briefly enjoy pottering in the sun, before expiring. But, at least he will have fulfilled his duty. All in all, the introductory ‘Balada de la oficina’ imparts an impoverished, uncreative view of life, in which a human being’s central duty is to work, as directed; in return for fulfilling this obligation to the letter, one and one’s family will be provided for

4 A popular sport in Buenos Aires, as is evidenced by the numerous, well-appointed boathouses in the suburb of Tigre, on the Paraná Delta.


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materially. However, as Mariani’s stories reveal, the 1920s’ porteño clerk’s lot was in many respects far harsher: it was a life of anguish, privation and exploitation. In ‘Santana’, which at some eight thousand words is by far the longest story in the collection, most of the themes relating to the world of the office, to the family and to society, are present. However, the feature that gives the story unique importance is its portrayal of the clerk’s inner life. Santana is a modest, timid character, married with three children; having been in the company for fourteen years, in his present post for seven, he is an expert, valuable employee. One day, however, he makes a serious error, crediting five thousand pesos to the wrong account.5 The contributory factors are complex, and there are questions about both formal and moral managerial responsibility. In the end Santana pays a heavy price, which he nevertheless gratefully accepts. The story traces the crisis and its resolution, its effects inside the organisation and on Santana individually as a breadwinner. And it also shows from the inside how Santana copes with the situation: his emotions; his reflection on the causes of the error, and assessment of its likely consequences; his self-re-evaluation. The story opens with Santana’s reaction to his error: declaring himself culpable, he makes no excuses, craving only sympathy. He does receive personal sympathy and respect from colleagues at all levels – but this is not the same as fair treatment. The reader quickly learns two important facts. First, the error only threatens serious consequences because the customer to whose account the money was credited in error has already, dishonestly, spent it. Second, the company’s accounting and supervisory procedures are arcane, to say the least. The greater part of the story consists of Santana’s introspection, first as he wanders the busy streets, then as he sits in a café. Mariani uses a number of techniques in an attempt to create the sense of a stream of consciousness: visual stimuli such as newspaper titles are presented directly; similarly, with sounds such as motor horns, or the crash of metal shutters, verbs are omitted. There is also much indirect free narrative, although the narrator intervenes directly from time to time to describe Santana’s mental processes and states, for example: ‘Ausentábase de sí mismo. O se sentía dolorosamente presente y vivo y exageradamente sensible como una herida abierta’ (1965: 31). The first part of Santana’s introspection is detailed reflection on the error. He is expert at his job, a prodigy of organisation and memory: each client’s scrawled signature is instantly visually associated with the sound of the name and the client’s page in the ledger. He repeatedly tests this internalised

5 By comparison, Santana’s monthly salary – and he is relatively well-paid – is 250 pesos, and his life savings 3,000. A fur coat costs 5,000 at Olmos y Daniels.


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accounting system by rerunning transactions until he finds the error: the entry has been made on page 95, not 93. Certainly, this would be an easy mistake to make – but it should not be. There is no mention later in the story of the causes of the error being discussed, and measures taken to avoid its repetition – but an observer might conclude that the system itself is flawed: why is each page not identified by the customer’s name, as well as number? Inevitably, Santana next turns his attention to the customer – a lawyer – who has received the five thousand pesos. Here he moves into the unknown, further from reality, in two senses: ‘Santana caminaba ausentándose cada vez más del mundo exterior y entrando a trancos en las mismas entrañas de la alucinación’ (1965: 35). His distraction almost leads to his being run over in the street, while the hallucination takes the form of an imaginary interlocutor reassuring him that the lawyer is such a grand character that he would not notice a trifling five thousand pesos. However, once his phantom companion has abandoned him, Santana ‘sentía un miedo terrible cuando pensaba en su situación y cuando la veía con cierta claridad’ (1965: 36). His mind is now the arena of a conflict between the wish to understand fully his situation and its likely consequences, and the escapist desire to fantasise about how the lawyer has spent the money. Fantasy wins in his mind, but external reality (collision with another pedestrian) makes him realise that in his distracted state the street is dangerous. Entering a café, Santana embarks on further reflection, although not before agonising over whether to order a brandy with his coffee – which he does. He reasons that if the money is not repaid, then there are two likely outcomes, the first being that he may be asked to make good the loss; this he could do by using his three thousand pesos life savings and borrowing the remainder. The three thousand pesos are extremely significant, however. First, they represent thriftiness, especially over clothing, an example being the extraordinary longevity of an overcoat.6 More than this, the savings are the Santana family’s only defence: they fund periodic abortions to keep the family manageable, and they guard against unforeseen illness; in short, they provide the only security against ‘el terrible y trágico mañana misterioso y tremendo’ (1965: 39). Losing the three thousand pesos would therefore represent a crippling blow. But the second possibility, dismissal, spells immediate disaster. Once again Santana abandons calculation, as his thoughts, fuelled by two further glasses of brandy, range more widely. An element of social commentary appears when Santana wonders why the rich exploit the poor instead of helping them, and he notes that the son of the director, Mr Daniels, receives a monthly allowance of 2,000 pesos to fund a leisured Parisian lifestyle – meanwhile

6 Santana and his ancient coat evoke Akaky Akakievich, the obsessive clerk-protagonist of Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’. By contrast, Santana speculates that the lawyer will have spent the 5,000 pesos on a fur coat for a lady friend.


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Santana has nothing to show for his years of hard work. Worse than this, he is nothing, lacking the skills to survive outside his niche in the accounts section of Olmos y Daniels. His imagination conjures images of his children starving, his wife reduced to taking in washing – but even at such an extreme moment his morality remains: he could never steal. This is the moment of crisis. His head swimming, objects appear distorted, passers-by process, as if in a slowmotion film. Santana decides that he will undergo any degree of humiliation, so long as he can keep his job. While Santana is certainly revealed as a timid individual whose faculties of social analysis and criticism are limited, nevertheless he is not weak; rather, he is rational, honest and loyal, and takes the best decision in the circumstances, in the interest of his family.7 The remainder of the story consists of two main elements: elaboration of Santana’s family circumstances and the resolution of the workplace problem. It emerges that the clerk lives in a dilapidated conventillo. By making it clear that the building is one of the once-grand, early nineteenth-century houses in the barrio sur, Mariani seems to characterise the destiny of the typical Argentine of Santana’s social class as basic survival, in the ruins of the proud edifice of the post-independence state. The bleak personal relationships within the family are neatly summed up by Santana’s wife, who in the evenings feeds the children and then waits for him: ‘Al principio había esperado por amor; ahora esperaba por costumbre’ (1965: 43). As Barletta observed, money is central to Cuentos de la oficina, and the careful resolution of the financial question in ‘Santana’ allows the reader to assess the likely effects of the decision on the various parties. Starting at the top of the hierarchy, the Anglo-Argentine financial establishment, Olmos y Daniels decide to underwrite a loss of 1,950 pesos. This, as we have seen, is less than the monthly allowance for just one of the people who live, without contributing in any way, from the profits of the enterprise – even if this sum were the true net loss, it would be negligible. At the next level are the store’s customers, who represent a client ruling class, in what was a quasi-colonial relationship.8 The wealthy lady whose cheque for 5,000 pesos was wrongly entered, is indemnified – but presumably would not miss such a sum anyway; meanwhile, the mysterious, dishonest lawyer gets away with his 5,000 pesos, minus the 300 his account was in credit. The employee, Santana, is the one who suffers: he is suspended for a month, which will cost him 250 pesos, and will repay 2,500 pesos through monthly salary deductions of twenty-five pesos – a burden he will have to carry almost until retirement. But, there is more: the pattern

7

The nearest Santana comes to dishonesty is telling his manager that his life savings are 2,000 pesos, not 3,000 – and even this mild untruth is carefully justified. 8 The names ‘Irigoyen’ and ‘Anchorena’ appear in a list (1965: 35), evoking the Radical leadership, and the landed oligarchy, respectively.


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throughout Cuentos de la oficina is that in any conflict the company wins. The upward redistribution of wealth will doubtless be increased by the grateful Santana working even harder – and probably losing pay rises. ‘Santana’ – except in its unsubtle contrast of the ‘weak’ Santana and the ‘strong’ Castor, in the second café scene – is a fine story, and can usefully be considered the thematic centre of the collection. Not only is Santana’s the only example of an extended portrayal of a character’s inner life, but he is very much a central, paradigmatic figure: he has a responsible job, and is at the mid-point of his career; he is married, with children; he has views on how society is organised; thirdly, the consequences of his mistake, while serious, are not catastrophic, and do not push him to the margin of society.9 Most of the other stories deal with deviations from this norm: what frustrates the establishment of such a family, or what leads to its destruction, for example. Two stories directly explore the paradigm itself (we have already seen it set out, not entirely positively, in the introductory ‘Balada de la oficina’). The other frame story, ‘La ficción’, uses children’s play to present the life of the ordinary office worker’s family from two conflicting perspectives. First, two ill-dressed children enact scenes from their parents’ everyday life: rising early and hurrying off to work with no breakfast but a quick brew of mate; arriving home on pay day, going straight into earnest conversation on which bills can be paid, which essentials can be sacrificed during the month. Clearly, this represents the reality of a clerk’s life. The second perspective is that of the child of a wealthier family, a visitor who observes the brother and sister, criticising their performance as unrealistic: why does Dad not sit down to breakfast with the family; and why does he not bring gifts on pay day? This second perspective corresponds to the more prosperous image of the family found in the glossy magazines of the period.10 While Santana and his family will probably survive the consequences of his mistake, the margin for error and the ability to survive ‘el terrible y trágico mañana misterioso y tremendo’ (1965: 39) – be it the result of misjudgement or accident – are greatly reduced. In ‘Uno’, by contrast, an accident – slipping on a banana skin11 while hurrying to the office – brings catastrophe: destitution and the destruction of the family.

9 Arlt saw Santana as the archetypal porteño employee. In his aguafuerte ‘La tristeza del sábado inglés’ he draws the touching portrait of a man walking along the street with his young daughter. ‘El hombre caminaba despacio. Triste. Aburrido. Yo vi en él el producto de veinte años de garita con catorce horas de trabajo y un sueldo de hambre, veinte años de privaciones, de sacrificios estúpidos y del sagrado terror de que lo echen a la calle. Vi en él a Santana, el personaje de Roberto Mariani’ (1998: 72). The aguafuerte first appeared in El Mundo, on 9 September 1928. 10 El Hogar, or Mundo Argentino, for example. 11 The text alludes to a ‘cáscara de fruta’, which is most probably a banana skin.


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There are in some of Mariani’s stories striking parallels with those of his Uruguayan contemporary, Horacio Quiroga: the banana skin in ‘Uno’ corresponds to the snake in Quiroga’s ‘A la deriva’, for example; in ‘Toulet’, the clerk Acuña’s death in the stifling heat evokes that of Mister Jones in Quiroga’s ‘La insolación’. A common structure in Quiroga’s stories is the single miscalculation or accident that brings disaster, the agency of doom being the forces of nature. In Mariani’s narrative universe a similar unforgiving principle applies. However, the difference is that the environment in which the mistakes and misfortunes occur, where their causes and results reside, and where their significance is assessed, is – for all that it has the jungle’s implacability – a human construct, a social system. Mariani’s clerks’ lives, in other words, need not be as they are. Certainly the tedium, the repression, the privation – the fear – can be related to an exploitative economic system in which the prosperous proprietors relax in London and Paris, while the wealthproducers of Buenos Aires are kept in order by the company’s martinets, secret detectives and deluded collaborators; and Mariani unhesitatingly points the finger. However, comparison of the beginning of ‘Uno’ and Quiroga’s ‘A la deriva’ shows that Mariani identifies other factors too. Quiroga’s (initially anonymous) protagonist, ‘el hombre’, treads on a yararacusú, a rare but particularly deadly snake. An unlucky incident, certainly, but it is in the nature of provinces such as Misiones for snakes sometimes to be found sleeping on paths in the jungle. ‘El hombre’ is fatally bitten, and he in turn kills the snake, eliminating the danger. By contrast, it is not in the natural order to find banana skins on city pavements: it is the result of negligence, a disregard for one’s fellows. (Mariani’s anonymous protagonist, ‘Uno’, is as negligent as anyone, not even troubling to throw the peel into the gutter after his accident.) This is the concrete jungle, and human thoughtlessness converts the peel into a dangerous predator: ‘Y ahí está, en medio de la vereda, avizora y vigilante, al acecho del transeúnte; aguardando una nueva víctima, la cáscara de fruta’ (1965: 63). While there are significant instances of solidarity in some stories in Cuentos de la oficina, Mariani nevertheless draws attention to a disregard for others. Indeed, the thoughtlessness of management and the puerility of the employees are seen in the story ‘Rillo’, which can be seen as prefiguring Uno’s accident. The story is set in the stationery store, which is located in a rooftop cupola, separated from the lift by thirty metres. On rainy, windy days the employees enjoy watching others struggling and slithering along the slippery flagstones, and one secretary has already taken a tumble. In two stories, ‘Rillo’ and ‘Lacarreguy’, the family life that is epitomised by the Santanas is presented as an aspiration, although in contrasting ways. In both cases the eponymous character is an extremely capable employee; indeed, their intelligence is perhaps a factor in their ill fortune. Rillo, a socialist, has learned all there is to know about the stationery supplies department under a previous manager, Pazos, who took a relaxed attitude. For unspecified reasons the department is now larger and more bureaucratic, and is managed by Torre,


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who enforces military-like discipline, and forbids the clerks to speak while in the office. Rillo expects to marry soon, when his pay rises to two hundred pesos, but his resistence to Torre is punished by his pay being frozen – which sabotages his life plans. The tables are turned when during an unannounced inspection Rillo impresses management with his own knowledge, and exposes Torre’s ignorance. A pay rise ensues and the marriage takes place after all, as Rillo is made acting manager of the section, which he proclaims the republic of the stationery store. Certainly the change benefits the company, and it seems that all is set fair for Rillo. However, there is a sting in the tail: Rillo later joins an unsuccessful strike against the company, and further advancement is blocked. The reader is left to calculate the effects on his family circumstances. Lacarreguy, like Rillo, is no grey clerk; his aspirations are not directly political, however, but artistic: he has trained as an actor. He is a model of efficiency, and as a cashier is presumably relatively well paid. Unusually, he retains an independent outlook, regarding his employment as a simple transaction in which the company purchases his services. However, his Achilles’ heel is his infatuation with an actress whose name, ironically, is Consuelo, and who, faute de mieux, deigns to be kept by him, a modest employee. Deeply in debt because of Consuelo’s extravagance, Lacarreguy wishes he had married ‘una humilde burguesita de barrio pobre’ (1965: 94), and idealises the life he believes his colleagues live: visits to the cinema on Saturday nights with his wife, strolls with the family on Sundays, perhaps in Palermo park.12 In short, an idyllic existence, in which he would be the breadwinner, while ‘Ella haría la comida, lavaría la ropa, educaría a los hijos . . . ¡Hijos lindos y vivos en un hogar contento y sin inquietudes!’ (1965: 94). This falls short of the comfort enjoyed by the family of the boy in the sailor suit, in ‘La ficción’, but equally it bears scant resemblance to the impoverished lives of families of typical Olmos y Daniels employees. Mariani – unlike Castelnuovo, for example – never portrays children in dire poverty; he does however evoke the prospect. As we have seen, for Santana unemployment would mean starving children, and a wife wearing herself out taking in washing. ‘Uno’ dovetails with this vision of the Santana family’s imagined disaster. Uno is an irreproachable character, and the system, as far as it goes, supports him. And yet, the family’s modest savings are soon exhausted, the household is destroyed, and the wife does indeed resort to taking in washing, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to survive. Within the moral limits she sets herself, she is a resourceful character who learns to play the system, to an extent: ironically, it is by simulating the nuclear family – borrowing a baby from a neighbour so that a magistrate will refuse an eviction order – that she averts

12 Palermo, in the wealthier north of the city, contrasts with the barrio sur, where Santana lives.


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disaster for a while. But Mariani places the deepest, bitterest irony in her reflection as she trudges home after unsuccessfully appealing to Olmos y Daniels for some money: ‘ “Menos mal que no tenemos hijos”, pensaba, mientras caminaba a la calle que la conducía a su pocilga vacía . . .’ (1965: 68). Cold, blue despair, indeed. In Cuentos de la oficina, the relationships within a typical family consisting of husband and wife, perhaps with children, are generally presented positively; while they can become burdensome, this is manifestly the consequence of an unequal exchange between individuals and society: the clerks work too hard, for too little money, and when a family is needy, it does not receive adequate support. But there is another sense in which the standard family, and what it represents, is oppressive, which is illustrated by the story ‘Riverita’. Rivera is a uniformed trainee, a cadete, who is surprisingly – and uniquely – unenthusiatic about promotion, because it will mean that he will no longer wear uniform. It gradually emerges that his concern with his appearance is linked to his homosexuality. Since in Olmos y Daniels uniforms always accompany low status, the intelligent Rivera cannot be successful at work, and comfortable with himself. However, there is more to the story than Rivera’s perspective. At the very beginning, the narrator is explicitly but casually marked as present, as one of the employees: ‘Todos, jefes y auxiliares, le llamábamos Julio, Julito o Riverita’ (1965: 51). Then, a picture of Rivera is built up, through descriptive paragraphs that are so closely observed and intimate that they only seem appropriate either to an authorial voice – or to a character who is more than usually interested in Rivera. Subsequently it emerges that the observer is Lagos; and the main events of the story centre on him and Rivera alone together. In the light of this knowledge, the detailed description of Rivera’s tight-fitting, immaculate clothes (1965: 52) acquires clear sexual resonance; and two other observations made at the beginning of the story are suggestive. In the first paragraph the narrator observes of the manager, Torre, that ‘sentía una voluptuosidad casi sensual en dar órdenes de toda especie y ser obedecido con amor o sin él’ (1965: 51). The association of Torre’s disciplinarian obsession with notions of sensuality and voluptuousness suggests unacknowledged sexual tension underlying the power relationships in the office; the problem is locating both the tension itself, and the source of the observation. If Torre is to be understood to obtain gratification through others’ submission, then the question arises whether the narrator is hinting at the proclivities – and perhaps problems – of an individual, or type, or whether he is making a broader observation about social organisations, and perhaps especially hierarchies. In ‘Rillo’, the only story in which Torre takes an active role, the character emerges as insecure, tyrannical, sycophantic and vindictive. But the assumption of Torre’s gratification at the exercise of power, particularly over the handsome youth, is perhaps more plausibly seen as a product of Lagos’s imagination, and as some form of vicarious pleasure. In the context of the


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story’s development, a second comment, which would probably usually be construed as innocent, cannot be taken as such: ‘El señor González habíale prometido “sacarle” el uniforme en agosto o setiembre’ (1965: 51). The comment foreshadows the key episode of the story, when Lagos is alone with Rivera, relaxed, in close proximity – and both with their jackets off. Lagos and Rivera are detailed to carry out a stock-take in the evenings. They work together happily at what is a far less onerous task than their normal daytime work, and have plenty of time to spare. The sensual turn of events is quickly confirmed, with Lagos’s description of Rivera: Julito se puso delante del ventilador, que, soplando groseramente, lo despeinó; los cabellos se levantaban y persistían flotando al aire como en una perpetua actitud de escaparse. Julito sonreía al recibir la caricia del viento. El viento se le entraba entre la ropa y la carne y le hinchaba la camisa haciéndola palpitar como un corazón alegre (1965: 56).

There ensues an account of how Rivera looks after his hair, culminating in his approaching Lagos and inviting him to touch it – which he does, announcing: ‘Sedoso, sí; lindo pelo’ (1965: 57). But it is not yet time: the discussion turns to women, with Rivera confessing his innocence and Lagos relating his experiences; finally, Lagos offers to arrange a visit to a brothel, for Rivera’s sexual initiation. The seduction begins when Rivera says that he is sure a woman will desire him, for his handsome face, attractive body and smooth skin. He invites Lagos to touch his face. Lagos reports that he found all this rather absurd and laughable, but nevertheless, ‘sonriendo ante su insistencia, tuve que pasar las yemas de mis dedos por sus mejillas’ (1965: 61). However, this is no absentminded touch: his attention is on the youth: ‘El sonrió y me miró dulcemente en los ojos, con inocencia, con confianza’. Rivera then, leaning towards Lagos, says ‘– Les va a gustar a las chicas besarme . . .’ (1965: 61), whereupon Lagos’s reaction is to strike Rivera so hard that he falls to the floor. This is not – as it might at first appear – a matter of Lagos simply, hypocritically maintaining that he has only now realised what was happening; the situation is a little more open, as he confesses: ‘Yo no sé qué relámpago cruzó por mi mente’ (1965: 61). He apologises to Rivera, they ask not to work together again – and nothing more is said. As Leland observes: ‘The moment is lost – the seduction aborted, the human connection missed’ (1986: 81). The incident certainly reinforces Rivera’s oppression – but at least he understands his own nature and knows what he is up against. Lagos, by contrast, is alienated and confused, a collaborator in his own emotional and sexual oppression. Mariani’s clerks are presented as leading a life of abject servitude, although in the story ‘Lacarreguy’ the author suggests that there is perhaps some hope of change: Los lunes son los días más difíciles para los empleados; el día domingo [. . .] se ha aproximado al estado ideal del hombre: un ser libre, o con


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evidencias o apariencias de libre. El lunes, inconscientemente, uno se deforma y como líquido se adapta y conforma a un modo violento de vida. Aunque en pocos exista la comprensión inteligente de esta adaptación artificial y dura a una vida de esclavitud, en casi todos, sin embargo, podría descubrirse, en el día lunes, una especie de instintiva rebeldía (1965: 87–8).

As we have already seen, Mariani blames foreign, particularly British capitalism for the clerks’ oppression.13 Lacarreguy reflects that at certain times, notably during the sales, the employees are expected to work even harder than usual, generating more wealth – which then goes straight to London. If Olmos y Daniels is to be taken as a microcosm of the Argentine economy, then the implications are clear. But the financial and cultural penetration goes deeper: for example, Santana, exploited as he is, nevertheless entrusts his savings to the British Nuevo Banco de Londres (1965: 38). The stories are grounded in the routine, the details of the clerical tasks of the employees, and in their financial circumstances – and in events within this context that decisively change their destiny. Another important dimension is the overall relationship between company and employees, which in the introductory ‘Balada de la oficina’ was specified as twenty-five years of obedient service, eight hours a day, in return for security. We have considered three cases, ‘Santana’, ‘Rillo’ and ‘Uno’, in which the employee fails to fulfil all the conditions of obedience, punctuality and meticulous accuracy. Effectively, Santana and Rillo are punished by the maternalistic/paternalistic authority but remain within the fold. Uno is not victimised, but however sympathetic the company may seem to be (he is given two weeks’ extra paid leave – ‘En atención a los doce años de servicio fiel y continuado’ (1965: 65); thereafter his post is held open), nevertheless he fails to keep his side of the bargain, and suffers the consequences. However, in general the company takes more than its due, and gives less than its obligation. For example, the rigid hierarchical system, which allows such excesses as Torre’s rule of silence (in ‘Rillo’) constitutes nothing less than an assault on human nature. The company protects itself with measures which go beyond mere defence, becoming intimidatory and intrusive. Thus, for example, in the accounting for cash receipts (in ‘Lacarreguy’) there are not simply robust auditing procedures, but suspicion of employees and an aggressive system of spot checks, reminiscent of police raids. As well as the visible discipline and

13 During the years 1913–27, British capital held in Argentina increased in absolute terms, although declining slightly from 59 to 58 percent of foreign capital holdings. Other European powers were a second important but declining force; US interests were relatively small, but growing (Rock, 1994: 252).


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checking at work, there is secret surveillance out of office hours: Lacarreguy, for example, knows that he is under observation because in keeping Consuelo he lives beyond his visible means.14 More prosaically, there are several references to the company’s unreasonable demands on the employees’ time. In ‘Rillo’, for example, we learn that the sábado inglés, or half-day, is generally a full day in the stores department (1965: 17); then, we are told in ‘Toulet’ that there is no official leaving time at the end of the day: one leaves when the job is done (1965: 77); third, Santana is frequently late for his eight o’clock supper (1965: 43); fourth, Lacarreguy has on occasions worked until midnight on reconciliation, even if the discrepancy was only a single peso (1965: 87). Finally, there is the question of the physical surroundings, of the provision of a safe working environment. We have already seen that the wind and rain on the flat roof outside the stationery store were a hazard – but, ironically, the fatal factor proves to be the sun. (In ‘Toulet’ the clerk Acuña collapses from the heat, and dies.) In summer the fans in the office have no noticeable cooling effect, and the hot circulating air reminds Toulet of the zonda, the wind that blows in the arid San Juan province; meanwhile, for the porter the heat in the office reminds him of a ship’s boiler room. The conditions are little short of infernal: ‘parecía llover caliente y pesado aire de plomo caliente y pesado sobre los empleados; plomo caliente y pesado que agobiaba a los empleados’ (1965: 75). The perspiring employees try in vain to cool themselves, but even the water from the cold tap is warm. They dream of sitting on the open top deck of a moving tram, ‘donde se recibía tan bien, ¡tan lindo!, los embates eficaces del aire que fabrica en su carrera el tranvía’ (1965: 76). But the reality is that the clerks must remain until their work is done, in this purgatory where time has stopped: ‘El tiempo parecía no correr; en vez de torrentoso río el tiempo era estancado lago artificial, lago de oleografía’ (1965: 76). It is in the evening, working late on one such intolerable day, that Acuña collapses; as his colleague Guerrero observes, ‘Es este calor del infierno. A lo mejor, le viene un ataque de insolación’ (1965: 79). However, Acuña, who is not in the best of health, continues working in the heat, not because he is rash like Mister Jones in Quiroga’s ‘La insolación’ but no doubt because the company will make him suffer if he does not complete his work. And just as in Uno’s case, where colleagues decide to raise a collection when the company does not offer assistance, so here Guerrero helps Acuña to finish his work; but these are small acts of individual solidarity, and are no substitute for organised defence of the employees’ interests. However, Mariani seems even to be sceptical

14 It is interesting to find in Mariani’s work the suggestion of an all-seeing, all-powerful bureaucratic organisation. It is reminiscent – but of course independent – of Kafka’s The Trial, which was also published in 1925.


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about the efficacy of this latter possibility – if the story ‘Rillo’, which ends with an unsuccessful strike, is any guide. Pessimism, despair, seem to dominate Mariani’s world view. Direct reference in Cuentos de la oficina to the socio-political make-up of Argentina, and to the clerks’ awareness of it, is limited but significant. In ‘Uno’, for example, there are references to the provision of social care. The protagonist receives free medical care, but there is no financial provision for his family, either directly or through laying a duty on employers. Indeed, it is suggested that the Radical regime is both inadequate and partisan, as Uno’s wife resorts to pleading with the local district chief to use his influence on her behalf, assuring him that her husband had always been a loyal Radical supporter. ‘Rillo’ contains specific political discussion: the protagonist himself is socialist, and believes that expanding the education system would be a step towards socialism. He also believes that a socialist government would prevent employers exploiting their employees – and is prepared to strike for better conditions. The level of political debate in the office is not very high, however. One clerk, Romeu, is particularly irrational and provocative, ridiculing Rillo’s suggestion that there should be more schools, on the implausible grounds that he and his sister are both trained teachers who have not found posts. He mocks Rillo, calling him a conservative because he believes in the parliamentary road to socialism – and he also makes the cliché observation that all politicians are liars: Frases de elocuencia electorera, de sucia política. La política es el enemigo del que trabaja. Es una engañifa, una mistificación. Es como si al que tiene hambre, se le da un sabroso bombón. Los socialismos son esos bombones (1965: 19).

In ‘Toulet’ the question of political belief and affiliation is presented in the context of Argentine history. The eponymous protagonist, who with a salary of one hundred and fifty pesos is one of the poorest-paid clerks, must struggle very hard to maintain his wife and children. And yet, he staunchly supports the establishment and takes an interest in the minutiae of national and international politics, as reported in the newspapers. Toulet, in other words, has no grasp of (or interest in) his real social and economic position. As his name indicates, Toulet is of French extraction: his great-grandfather emigrated after the Revolution; then, his grandfather was associated with the bloody regime of Juan Manuel de Rosas – a fact of which Toulet, whose family has not otherwise distinguished itself, is proud. The narrator observes of him: Era conservador, no por interés, ni por convencimiento, sino por constitución orgánica y espiritual; nació con la cabeza así aplastada y con el respeto a las instituciones y principios conservadores (1965: 71).

Toulet, then, is a fourth-generation Argentine, representing a mid-point between the long-established creoles and the immigrants whose arrival in large numbers,


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from the late nineteenth century onwards, destabilised national identity. The allegiances of all the clerks, as representatives of the middle social sector, are important in determining the country’s future, and the initial implication in this story is that although Toulet’s position is reactionary and irrational, nevertheless he is fundamentally honourable. As Lagos observes: Lo curioso es esto; yo tengo fe en la honestidad de Toulet. Es honesto, a su manera. Es incapaz de un sacrificio suyo en beneficio de nadie; quiero decir, incapaz de pegarle a uno, o robarle, o hacerle cualquier daño, porque hacer ese daño significa en él un sacrificio de su modo de ser, de sus sentimientos, de sus ideas (1965: 72).

However, Toulet’s principles are not inviolable, as is revealed when he and two others, Acuña and Fernández Guerrero, stay late one evening to complete some work. Acuña collapses in the infernal heat, and, while Fernández Guerrero is out of the office seeking help, Toulet attempts to steal from the dying man. Significantly, while at the beginning of the story it is the familiar observer, Lagos, who makes a generous assessment of Toulet’s character, it is Fernández Guerrero, a member of the creole elite, who realises the truth. Mariani, slightly cumbersomely, establishes a trio of characters in order to reveal more of Toulet. The wealthy Fernández Guerrero shares his cultural frame of reference with another character, Borda Aguirre, ‘que es descendiente de un valeroso y analfabeto general de la Independencia, es pobre, de modo absoluto’ (1965: 74); the two compare notes about the society columns in the newspapers. Toulet, who is outside the charmed circle, shares the same fundamental political beliefs as Guerrero, but there is mutual antipathy, and Toulet is more hardline, disapproving of Guerrero’s sympathy for ‘extremistas y sindicalistas’ (1965: 75) and generally deploring what he sees as his too light-hearted adhesion to the conservative, aristocratic cause. Guerrero’s is a different false consciousness – the inverse of Toulet’s. The scion of a wealthy family who moves in high society, his major living expenses are taken care of, so that his job is little more than a pastime and source of pocket money. His detachment from the reality of the conflict in which his class engages to maintain its wealth explains his liberal attitude; meanwhile, he can have little idea of the reality of his colleagues’ lives. The narrator does not tell us what Toulet’s theft signifies – there are many possible constructions. Clearly, it represents utter betrayal – desecration – of a fellow worker, Acuña; on the other hand, it shows to what extreme measures a person can be driven by a regime such as the one that supports Guerrero in comfort. But for Guerrero the shock is deeper than this, and is presented in terms akin to Macbeth’s nightmare: ‘De repente, en la noche, por ejemplo, un árbol se desprende de su sitio y empieza a avanzar con voluntario movimiento’ (1965: 81). While the image might simply allude to the overthrow of an unjust and corrupt system by the forces of justice, in the context of the confusion in Argentina in the 1920s, which led to the 1930


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coup, it can be seen to presage a more radical dislocation of social identities and loyalties. In conclusion, Mariani’s vision is profoundly pessimistic. Certainly his is a sympathetic view of human nature, but he seems to have little faith in the possibility either of individual autonomy or group solidarity. Above and beyond the clerks’ world he portrays, we glimpse the luxurious life of the rich, the powerful and the dishonest; similarly, we glimpse the awful possibilities awaiting those who fall below. Generally, though, Mariani’s clerks struggle on, in the middle, occasionally dreaming about the first scenario, but probably more often having nightmares about the second. The best they can hope for is to survive, deformed; to avoid being crushed entirely.

Manuel de Castro, Historia de un pequeño funcionario De Castro, even more than Mariani, is a precursor: a writer whose work is little read, although it is included (but not analysed) in each new version of literary history. From the current generation of literary critics, for example, Hugo Verani observes: Manuel de Castro [. . .] en forma paralela a Roberto Mariani en Buenos Aires, [. . .] inicia un análisis realista de las oficinas públicas, de la mediocridad del rutinario mundillo burocrático montevideano. Su carácter de precursor de una línea narrativa que culmina treinta años después en Benedetti no ha sido suficientemente señalado, aun cuando su esfuerzo no alcance calidad estética perdurable (1996: 19–20).

In the 1970s, Fernando Aínsa made a similar judgement to Verani’s (and, providing some details of the novel’s subject matter, suggested a link to nineteenth-century Russian narrative): Manuel de Castro, como luego hizo Mario Benedetti, noveló mezquindades, ambiciones menudas y esperanzas de corta mira [. . .] en una premonitoria novela [. . .]. Es ésta una novela desigual, pero llena de admoniciones sobre nuestro pasado, presente y futuro (1971: 300).

Benedetti himself, in ‘La literatura uruguaya cambia de voz’, which first appeared in 1962, surprisingly does not identify any continuity between his own and de Castro’s work, merely naming him as a writer whose works demonstrate that the novel (not just the short story) is indeed possible in a genuinely Uruguayan narrative: ‘Bastaría la mención de algunos títulos de Manuel de Castro [. . .] para demostrar que tal imposibilidad no existe’ (1969: 34). Englekirk and Ramos, in the most extensive assessment of de Castro’s narrative, accord him considerable importance, affirming that ‘durante la época de euforia nativista [. . .] fue de los pocos que cultivaban la prosa de tema urbano con arte y con éxito’); secondly, they provide a sharper historical focus to Historia de un pequeño funcionario than the later critics do, seeing it as reflecting


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the ‘creciente vida burocrática del país’. In terms of specific qualities, they perceive in Historia de un pequeño funcionario a humorous lyricism and a deep humanism which, further developed in works such as his second novel, El Padre Samuel, anticipate ‘la nueva prosa de compenetración psicológica y evocación melancólica que habían de cultivar con tan honda preocupación filosófico-social los jóvenes abanderados en torno a la mítica Generación del 45’ (1967: 90). As Verani says, Historia de un pequeño funcionario does not have the qualities required for lasting success – although it was republished during the 1960s. A loosely constructed work, its protagonist Don Santiago Piñeyro never acquires convincing psychological depth, and the secondary characters are basically caricatures. Unlike Benedetti, a master of the psychology of tedium and futility, de Castro relies on bizarre, farcical incident as he relates the tragedy of his little man, the government clerk. Nevertheless, he does far more than simply introduce the bureaucratic theme into Uruguayan literature; significant features of the world of his novel such as the bureaucracy’s lack of a public service ethos, the sheer pointlessness of time spent at work, the poor salaries, together with the eternal half-hope that conditions will improve when decisions are taken at a higher level, are all later found in Benedetti’s work, notably in ‘El presupuesto’. However, while continuity within Uruguayan culture is significant, it is also of interest to note the main differences between de Castro’s and Mariani’s images of bureaucracy, which represent the contrasting political and social cultures of the two sides of the River Plate. As we have seen, Mariani locates Cuentos de la oficina in a private firm, Olmos y Daniels; and the role of protagonist is shared by various clerks. Historia de un pequeño funcionario, by contrast, focuses on one central figure, Don Santiago Piñeyro. An ageing, low-ranking clerk in a Montevideo government office, he has previously been dismissed from the post of juez de paz for financial irregularities. A figure of fun, he oscillates between identification with his previous higher status and realisation of his true position. After a modest promotion he is entrusted with the building’s depositary; there, unsupervised, he is able to supplement his income with private legal work. After a dispute with a client, he is reported to the authorities and suspended. During his suspension his son dies, whereupon Don Santiago becomes insane and, instead of returning to the office when his suspension is lifted, is taken to the asylum. In some respects the novel’s time frame and context are well defined. The events date to 1928, as an official’s retirement plans indicate: ‘el 4 de Octubre del año 1929, a las 12 del día, hago abandono de mi cargo. Así, pues, me faltan 423 días para jubilarme’ (1928: 80). It is also established at the beginning of the novel that Don Santiago’s employment in the ministry is connected with the political cycle. Dating from ‘el principio de esta última administración’ (1928: 8), Don Santiago stresses the connection: ‘tengo el compromiso moral de acompañar al primer jefe durante el término de la gestión administrativa’ (1928: 12). Although affirmed many times, frequent narratorial interventions make


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clear that Don Santiago’s relationship with the chief is pure fantasy. Eventually (1928: 97) we learn that Don Santiago has held his post for six years, since 1922. Finally, we discover that the administration is about to end, that elections are imminent: ‘¿No comprende usted que la Ley de Retiro está hecha con propósitos electorales? Verá usted cómo se sanciona antes de Noviembre’ (1928: 68). However, despite this precision, there is here, in contrast to Mariani’s stories, little sense of connectedness to an outside world and to historical time; rather, there is a general sense of an era and ethos: Montevidean bureaucracy in the late 1920s. This sense of the archetypal rather than the particular, which was later adopted by Benedetti, results from the omission of significant details such as the identity of the ministry and the primer jefe’s name. However, there is in the static world of Historia de un pequeño funcionario great preoccupation both with endings and with change; this is exemplified by the bureaucrats’ obsession with retirement and with their keen anticipation of the coming elections. Of course, it really did prove to be the end of an era: José Batlle y Ordóñez, the towering figure of Uruguayan politics, died in 1929; and the after-effects of the great Wall Street crash would disrupt the normal Uruguayan political process. The identification with Batllismo is important in the novel. Don Santiago fought and was wounded in the 1904 revolution (the last conflict before stability was definitively established) and his patriotic credentials are compared favourably to those of another functionary, Venenatti, who was travelling abroad at that time. Venenatti is a protégé of the President, who in 1928 was Juan Campestiguy, a member of the rival Riverista faction of the Colorado party. Indeed, the extent to which the allegiances of national politics affected bureaucratic life is suggested by an argument in which Don Santiago warns a superior not to order him around, since he is ‘ahijado de don José Batlle y Ordóñez, y el mundo da muchas vueltas!’ (1928: 20). Even more blatant tribalism is revealed in the visit to the office of Matías Corbalán, a retired official and friend of Don Santiago, who displays his allegiance: del ojal pendía siempre una soberbia flor roja, [. . . .] Una corbata roja, en cuyo nudo había colocado un prendedor con la efigie de Batlle, daba fe [. . .] de la absoluta confianza que le inspiraban las próximas elecciones (1928: 78).

The complexity of the Uruguayan political system was such that there were national elections of one sort or another most years, to the Presidency, Chamber of Deputies, Senate, or Consejo Nacional de Administración. November 1928 would see elections of all categories except presidential. Some observers, Traversoni and Piotti for example, see these frequent elections as a positive feature of Uruguayan politics: Esta práctica educó al pueblo en materia de sufragio, de valoración de las elecciones, le creó conciencia de participación política, por lo que cada vez acudió en mayor número a las urnas demostrando una politización


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creciente. Es así que surgió una tradición de democracia popular y generó un orgullo nacional (1993: 195–6).

However, another important feature of Uruguayan politics was that the two main parties, Blancos and Colorados, were continually in a state of flux as new schisms and alliances emerged. All these factors, together with the fact that power was distributed among the various organs of government, could lead to a system in which change was always promised but the actual result could as easily be stalemate. The position in 1928 was such a balance: the presidency was held by the Colorado party’s Riverista tendency, while the Consejo Nacional was Batllista. In the Chamber of Deputies, meanwhile, the Blancos were in the majority. There is throughout Historia de un pequeño funcionario strong evidence of political awareness among the funcionaries, together with cynicism about electoral and policy-making processes. As Don Santiago observes: ‘¿No comprende usted que la Ley de Retiro está hecha con propósitos electorales?’ (1928: 68). As well as the sense in Historia de un pequeño funcionario of political inclusion, of full membership of society – in contrast to the precarious, exploited status of Mariani’s clerks – there is a gulf between the poor working conditions in the Argentine firm and the palatial office occupied by de Castro’s functionaries: Es un local amplio, con ricos artesonados en el techo y arañas de bronce que sostienen innumerables luces, simulando pequeños candelabros. Durante el invierno, el ambiente es tibio, caldeado por varias estufas, constantemente encendidas. Seis grandes ventanas dan a la calle, dejando ver los árboles y permitiendo la renovación del aire en tiempo de verano (1928: 23–4).

As has already been observed, the ministry is not named (although it must be the interior ministry); similarly, the bureaucratic tasks have no meaningful function: it is just a question of tedious paperwork. Even the supervisor, Jaime Ventura, a young man who is expected to go far and whose attitude to work accordingly might be expected to be dynamic, merely sees a tedious chore: ‘la aridez de los legajos que íbanse amontonando sobre la mesa’ (1928: 28). Indeed, he encourages his colleagues to indulge in puerile pursuits, such as flicking pellets of paper at Don Santiago – and Ventura attracts no censure for this from his superiors. There is one female employee, a typist, in the office. What she types is a mystery; and she has no connection with the office’s work. Rather, her presence has a social cause (she is in Don Santiago’s office because she does not get on with her section colleagues); and a social effect (in her presence the men curb their bad language). The typist is not unique in this respect: Don Santiago’s own transfer is, at least in part, the result of an absurd incident: after his colleagues’ taunts have gone too far, he threatens them with a revolver, and is moved. The most outrageous case is that of an employee


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called Perfecto Villalba, who gives himself airs but is totally incompetent: he manages to obtain a transfer whenever he feels that his façade has been seen through; eventually he lands the post of receptionist to the primer jefe, a job that permits him (he believes) to impress others with his uniform and dignified bearing – and which often consists of no more than spending all day pasting press cuttings in an album. The office thus is primarily a social environment. Indeed, very little time is spent working. Don Santiago, once he has organised his new office, has nothing to occupy him, and he is not alone in this: no quedábale [. . . .] otra cosa que pasearse solemnemente por el patio, o bien recorrer las demás dependencias donde siempre encontraba a algún funcionario dispuesto a charlar con él (1928: 63).

Alternatively, other employees while away the afternoon hours visiting Don Santiago. ‘Los empleados que holgaban por las demás dependencias, solían acercarse hasta allí, a fin de charlar un rato con don Santiago, mientras llegaba la hora de la retirada’ (1928: 66). And one colleague, Buencristiano, wanders round at any time of day: Con frecuencia abandonaba su oficina y largábase por los corredores, introduciéndose en las demás dependencias, donde explicaba su caso a cuanto empleadillo encontraba en el camino (1928: 74).

Indeed, the regular visits of Matías Corbalán prompt a general downing of pens: ‘los empleados apenas notaron la presencia de don Matías, suspendieron gustosos la tarea de oficina y formando corrillo asediáronle a preguntas’ (1928: 79). When the conversations in that office are exhausted, naturally Jaime Ventura and Don Matías stroll over to visit Don Santiago in his new domain. ‘– Venga usted! Veremos a don Santiago instalado en una perfecta leonera!’ (1928: 83). In the entire novel, there is one reference to the bureacracy’s relationship with the general public, when Don Santiago, lost in thought, observes the office activity; it is like a busy hive – in which two separate species pursue different lives. ‘Los empleados iban y venían, cargados de papeles, mezclándose con el público que recorría las dependencias, en demanda de datos’ (1928: 121). The bureacratic transactions and incidents in the novel (with one exception, which is discussed later) have no relation to business, but are concerned with the establishment of identity and status and the testing of hierarchical authority. The novel opens with the protracted ceremony of Don Santiago signing in: . . . Helo allí, solo, en medio de la espaciosa oficina, sentado frente a su escritorio que rodean, a modo de parapeto, innumerables legajos. Nada de precipitaciones. Don Santiago llega invariablemente a su empleo, con cuarenta y cinco minutos de anticipación al horario general. La primera línea del libro de registro le pertence por derecho de antigüedad, adquirido en el espacio de varios años.


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Allí consta, día a día, su nombre, estampado con letra redonda y menudilla: Santiago Piñeyro. Y luego: Escribiente Adjunto. Hora 12 y 15. Todo esto aparece envuelto en una extraña rúbrica, especie de lazo con muchas vueltas que rematan tres puntos formando triángulo y una cruz colocada en medio de un redondelito. A fe que tal firma tiene cierto prestigio de logia masónica o de simbología teosófica, que la hace inconfundible. Porque Don Santiago siempre concedió suma importancia a eso de firmar, hasta el punto de considerarlo como uno de los actos más trascendentales y solemnes de la vida. De ahí que, antes de echar su rúbrica, se detenga un instante a objeto de prepararse debidamente: enfoca luego la mirada hacia las líneas del libro de registro; levanta un tanto el brazo y, una vez cerciorado de que ningún objeto impide el fácil movimiento de la mano ¡ras! ¡ras! empieza a dibujar velozmente los arabescos que constituyen su rúbrica. Sólo después de esta delicada operación que ejecuta todos los días con invariable celo, don Santiago se decide a entrar en la oficina (1928: 7–8).

Don Santiago’s elaborate procedure is, of course, his attempt to keep up appearances – for himself and others. He tries to maintain his dignity in the office, sitting ‘en actitud grave, con aire de presidir alguna audiencia’ (1928: 10); but it is punctured by the interruption of the section head, enquiring: ‘A ver, ¿de quién es esta letra? ¡Esto está mal! Puf! – irrumpe una voz chillona, ahuecada, desde el fondo de la oficina’ (1928: 10). Don Santiago tries to explain himself, but is put in his place: Basta! Ese oficio está mal y se acabó! – Pero, ¿me negará usted el derecho de hacerle una pequeña observación? replica don Santiago. – Sí señor; se lo niego! Yo no admito observaciones de ningún leguleyo! (1928: 10).

In a later confrontation over a file that is not in order, a senior official, Don Crisóstomo, simply asserts his authority over Don Santiago without reference to facts or argument. ‘– ¡Cállese la boca! ¡Yo no discuto con subalternos! Retírese’ (1928: 19). Don Santiago formally accepts the hierarchical situation, but not without rejoinder: Acato la orden, pero antes debo significar a usted que, si ahora soy subalterno suyo, en otros tiempos fui Juez de Paz de la 8a sección. Y, cuando yo era Juez de Paz usted era lo que soy yo ahora: un simple Escribiente. Como lo oye! Además soy ahijado de don José Batlle y Ordóñez, y el mundo da muchas vueltas! (1928: 19–20).

When Don Santiago is placed in charge of the depositary he sees his chance for self-aggrandisement. ‘El primer día, queriendo darse un poco de tono, había estampado: “Depositario General” ’ (1928: 63). Once again he falls foul of the section head who asks: ‘¿Quiere hacer el favor de explicarme las causas por las cuales usted se adjudica gratuitamente un cargo que no le pertenece? ¿Ignora que ello constituye una verdadera usurpación?’ (1928: 63–4). Don Santiago argues that in effect, if not in title, this is his function, but his argument is dismissed as ‘subterfugios de leguleyo’ (1928: 64), and he is ordered not to use the title. A final exchange between the two arises when a member of the public makes a


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complaint and the official arrives to take Don Santiago’s statement. From the outset confrontation is inevitable, as the official announces himself ‘con cierta soberbia’, while Don Santiago greets him with a look that is ‘llena de altivez’. Indeed, it is a moment the official savours, as he paces the office ‘con ese aire importante que asumen las personas a quienes se les asigna un cometido que nunca soñaron ejercer’. Don Santiago, meanwhile, feels a ‘natural irritación’ (1928: 125) at the official. The confrontation erupts when Don Santiago is asked to put his side of the story. He considers the accusation impertinent, launching into courtroom oratory – while the official insists that Santiago, a mere subordinate, must reply to specific points. After each demands the other’s respect the argument degenerates into open confrontation. As always, Don Santiago invokes a more splendid past. ‘Cuando usted era un vulgar tinterillo, yo estaba a cargo del Juzgado de Paz de la 8a Sección!’ (1928: 130). The official for his part orders Santiago to be silent and threatens him with another charge. In contrast to Mariani’s stories, the social and economic context of de Castro’s clerks is not explored systematically. Nevertheless, questions of adequate remuneration and of the acceptability of methods for obtaining it, are prominent throughout the novel. The fundamental message is that a clerk’s salary is inadequate to live decently. This is suggested at the beginning of the novel when Ventura laughs at Don Santiago’s cloak: ‘Hombre! Con esa capa, parece usted un sargento de Policía rural’ (1928: 8). Don Santiago dismisses appearances as unimportant, but clearly the point is that he cannot afford clothes appropriate to the capital’s civil service. This concern with appearances indicates that de Castro’s work is descended from the FrancoSpanish tradition of bureaucratic writing, of Balzac, Galdós and Maupassant. By contrast, the focus on serviceability, found in Mariani’s story ‘Santana’, identifies the Argentine with the Russian tradition, of Gogol and Dostoyevsky. The theme of poverty continues with Don Santiago’s offer to help colleagues with paperwork relating to retirement, for a small consideration, because ‘su menguado sueldo apenas si le permitía afrontar las necesidades más inmediatas’ (1928: 67). Another lowly functionary, Don Quintín, shares Don Santiago’s view, lamenting ‘veinte años haciendo todos los días lo mismo; siempre postergado en los ascensos, ganando este miserable sueldito de auxiliar’ (1928: 69). The narrator informs us about another official, Buencristiano: A pesar del mote de ‘viejo’ conque se le designaba, su edad no llegaba a los cuarenta años, pero su aspecto representaba, bien a las claras, el de un hombre prematuramente envejecido por el trabajo constante y las infinitas privaciones a que condenábalo la exigüedad de su sueldo (1928: 73).

In the light of what is revealed about the working habits of the government employees, such a worn-out figure seems out of place, and more appropriate to Cuentos de la oficina. Returning to Don Santiago, it is clear that he is a poorly-paid official who seeks to supplement his income. However, this goes beyond helping


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colleagues for a few pesos, and verges on abusive private legal practice: he uses the depositary to ‘recibir allí a su clientela, intimidándola con la aparente importancia de su cargo’ (1928: 62). Surprisingly, this is not frowned on, since on finding Don Santiago with a private client, his superior, Ventura, merely makes a humorous observation: Conque doctor Piñeyro, ¿eh? – dijo Jaime Ventura irónicamente, adelantándose hasta el escritorio del viejo. ¿Por qué no coloca usted una chapa en la leonera, que diga: Santiago Piñeyro. Abogado? ¡Ja! ¡Ja! (1928: 85).

In due course a rumour circulates that Don Santiago has been caught charging for functions that are part of his job – and that large sums are involved. In fact, Don Santiago has openly extorted money from the same client with whom Ventura saw him arguing: money that he feels he is owed (the argument witnessed by Ventura was about payment for services rendered). Don Santiago is suspended without pay. Curiously, his salary is stopped, not because of the alleged offence but because he has broken the rules of hierarchy: insubordination to the investigating official. His colleagues immediately offer support, paying his salary themselves, not as an act of charity, but as his right. ‘Los compañeros de oficina, enterados de la resolución del sumario, han dicho: Ya que el Departamento niega el sueldo a don Santiago, lo daremos nosotros’ (1928: 135–6). While this incident perhaps casts doubt on the overall financial picture de Castro wishes to present (it is difficult to reconcile the supposed grinding poverty of clerks such as Buencristiano with this largesse), the employees’ instinctive solidarity, lack of deference to authority and indifference to the claims of the public, are impressive. The comparison with the response to the destitution of the unfortunate family in Mariani’s story, ‘Uno’, shows how far this Montevidean world differed from fear-driven, individualistic porteño society. The inescapable conclusion is that Don Santiago has done nothing unusual; he has not broken the rules of the tribe, but has simply been unlucky: perhaps the denunciation prospered for reasons of influence, or revenge. And this is not even the first offence; Don Santiago has previously been punished for financial misdeeds, the gravest accusation against him when he was a magistrate ‘consistía en “haber manejado indebidamente los fondos públicos” ’ (1928: 93). Don Santiago freely admits his act, and yet considers punishment unwarranted: ¿Acaso otros funcionarios más acopetados que él – al fin y al cabo era sólo un modesto Juez de Paz – no robaban grandes sumas al Estado, de una manera sistemática, obedeciendo a un plan perfectamente trazado y sin embargo, gozaban del respeto general y hasta alcanzaban la Diputación? (1928: 93).

A second illustration of the pervasive corruption in the government service emerges in a conversation between Quintín and Santiago. The former has previously worked in a remand centre where extortion was so rife that junior officials worked in syndicates in an effort to compete with those of higher rank. Quintín, a man who describes himself as lacking in intelligence, left the


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centre while the going was good, because he was afraid that he would be discovered – but also because by then he had extorted enough money to purchase a plot of land in the countryside. Don Santiago is greatly interested in what Don Quintín has to say; he too aspires to work in the remand centre, although he fears that the case hanging over his head might damage his chances. There thus appears to be open financial corruption throughout the bureaucracy, whose detection and punishment are at best capricious. At the lower levels, the behaviour is justified on two counts: that this is the only way to survive; and that those higher up do the same, but on a grander scale. Another visible form of corruption is favouritism, and specifically nepotism. Venenatti is as a matter of course promoted at every opportunity, and his colleagues attribute this to his being a protégé of the president. As one clerk, Escalera, observes, the Riverista Venenatti has to earn his privilege by marrying one of the president’s family. While questions of promotion and status occupy much of the employees’ time and give some meaning to their existence, the dominant issue is retirement. Each official is anxious to serve the right term at the correct grade in order to obtain the best possible pension. However, the calculations are overshadowed by a proposed law that will significantly enhance provision. This apocryphal law, and its rumoured progress, is the subject of endless discussion; and it paralyses the entire structure, since nobody will retire for fear of losing the anticipated enhanced benefits. The cliché of being promoted to fill dead men’s shoes is never more applicable. Here, as in many instances in the novel, de Castro establishes a paradigm in Uruguayan literature. This picture, of inwardlooking bureaucratic stagnation accompanied by an unrealisable dream, would later be adopted by Benedetti in ‘El presupuesto’, and Onetti in El astillero. The numerous discussions of pensions explain individuals’ motivations, while presenting a picture of a social structure, its ethos, and its flaws. Clearly, pensions – and corruption – contributed significantly to this sprawling, unproductive bureaucracy. Although 1928 does not seem to be particularly significant, important laws enacted in the 1920s are relevant to Historia de un pequeño funcionario.15 The subject of pensions is introduced in Chapter 2, initially through Don Santiago who, as is typical of these civil servants, gives retirement plans special importance: como todo perfecto burócrata, tiene fraguada su plan de jubilación a corto plazo. Sólo espera el famoso Ley de Retiro, especie de panacea burocrática,

15 According to Traversoni and Piotti, in 1920 the Caja de Jubilaciones y Pensiones de empleados y obreros de servicios públicos was created; in 1921 workers who belonged to a pension scheme acquired the right to obtain loans from the Banco Hipotecario, to purchase land or to build a house (1993: 135).


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cuya retención en la Cámara arranca hondos suspiros de desconsuelo entre los innumerables empleados del Departamento (1928: 15).

Next, we are given information about the new law, which would provide for retirement after twenty-five years’ service, as well as details of Don Santiago’s and others officials’ hopes and plans. Essentially, the officials hope that others will retire, leaving vacancies at higher grades, which they could briefly occupy before retiring with an enhanced pension. For various reasons, which gradually emerge – but most obviously because there is no sign of the law being enacted – these plans are revealed as fantasy. Don Santiago’s plans seem to be more fantastical than most, since with only six years’ qualifying service (having forfeited twenty years’ pension rights as a result of his misdemeanour) he has no prospects, even if the law is enacted. One surmises that, if Don Santiago has not altogether lost touch with reality, perhaps he entertains hopes of restoration of his rights after the election. Certainly he considers himself a deserving case: during discussion with Don Quintín about the systematic extortion of released prisoners, he laments his current bleak situation, claiming ‘veinticinco años de honradez administrativa’ (1928: 120). The new law would affect all employees with thirty years’ service, polarising them into two hostile camps: those who would like to retire immediately, and those who would retire shortly after an anticipated promotion. However, the functionaries do not necessarily really believe in the new law, since when a politician is asked about the progress of the law, one official mutters, ‘Será como siempre; después de las elecciones’ (1928: 16). Nevertheless, despite the prevailing cynicism the prospect is too good to resist: retirees under the new law would receive more money in retirement than ‘working’. Everyone therefore is obsessed with retirement, but it is in nobody’s interest to do so – yet. The result will be stasis, ‘un verdadero ejército de vejestorios, podridos en sus puestos [. . .] arrastren todavía la espada, impartan órdenes y esperen la bonificación’ (1928: 17). This is not the whole story, however. In the first place (in Don Santiago’s view), the high-ranking officials who have passed retirement age are not really waiting for the new law, since they ‘tienen su problemita resuelto’. Then, there is a second group of officials who remain at their posts ‘por espíritu de rutina’. These are men who have completely absorbed the bureaucratic mentality, ‘personas activas para quienes el mundo se reduce a una inmensa oficina’ (1928: 17). In this general paralysis, ceremonies are substituted for real events. For example, the occasion of one official’s forty years’ service is honoured, not by a retirement presentation, but in a ceremony.16

16 The party to celebrate forty years’ service has a precedent in Maupassant’s ‘Les Dimanches d’un bourgeois de Paris’.


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In chapter 6 the pensions theme receives detailed treatment, in the form of discussion of the circumstances of two junior and two senior officials. First, however, the subject is introduced as the area of Don Santiago’s expertise; settled in his new office, with nothing to do, he spends his time discussing with colleagues either the projected budget or the new pensions law – on which he is the acknowledged expert – but whose existence is nebulous: ‘cuya discusión iba a promoverse, de un momento a otro, en el Parlamento’ (1928: 66). The first case he considers is that of Quintín, an anxious individual whose main worry is about the ‘tres por cuatro’ provision (three years served count as four for the purposes of calculating pensions). Don Santiago reassures him that this, together with the new provisions, will ensure that Quintín will be able to retire with a pension higher than his salary. Having bought a smallholding, thanks to his extortion in the remand prison, Quintín now wants to retire to the country: ¡Qué lindo es el campo de mañana! Eso se llama vivir! No depender de nadie y tener la paga segura. ¿Puede pedirse una felicidad más completa? Aquí, en cambio, se pudre uno entre papeles. – Y calló haciendo un gesto de repugnancia (1928: 72).

Quintín’s problem is that he has too few years’ service, which he plans to overcome by obtaining early retirement through ill health. (The fact that he does not suffer ill health is not seen as relevant.) The second lowly official is Buencristiano who, being short-sighted, and with one leg shorter than the other, considers himself disabled and entitled to early retirement on these grounds; he is indignant that another official, Ibáñez, who only suffers from short-sightedness, has been so favoured. (Of course, patronage is the likely explanation for this, at least in Don Santiago’s eyes.) The underlying motivation in Buencristiano’s case is the same as in Quintín’s: he has purchased his piece of land, so is ready to retire. Buencristiano eventually succeeds; he starts to absent himself from the office, although he puts in the occasional appearance. ‘Sólo me aparecía de cuando en cuando, tanto para que no me despidiesen por abandono del puesto, perdiendo así la jubilación’ (1928: 141). Eventually a doctor is sent to investigate, and finds Buencristiano up a tree, sawing off branches. Nevertheless, he evidently signed Buencristiano off, because five days later he retired. ‘Ahora, con mi casita y los treinta pesos de jubilación, me río del Departamento . . .’ (1928: 141). The larger-than-life Matías Corbalán is used to draw together many aspects of the retirement and pension theme. A frequent visitor, he is young, and with his generous pension naturally excites envy – and is seen as a role model: representaba a los ojos de todos, el arquetipo del perfecto jubilado, no del achacoso y triste, que alcanza su retiro cuando apenas le restan pocos años de existencia, sino el del hombre que apenas ha traspuesto los cuarenta y cuya reserva vital hállase aún intacta (1928: 77).


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It is a mystery why Corbalán should wish to frequent the office, since most seek to escape from it. He always begins his visits with a ceremonial call at the office of the primer jefe, before proceeding noisily round the establishment, ‘parodiando voces de orden’ and ‘distribuyendo manotones de convenida familiaridad’ (1928: 77). For Corbalán retirement means freedom – to parade around the office where he used to work, displaying his Batllista allegiance. Perfectly contented and without an interest (or a thought), the office continues to be his world. He confesses: Soy el hombre más feliz de la tierra. [. . .] No pienso más que en comer y en pasear. Es decir, me rectifico: ni siquiera pienso en ello; como y paseo simplemente, sin pensar en nada (1928: 80).

The final case to consider is that of the oficial de sección. This pompous hypocrite, ‘tras de cuya mirada, adivinábase una imbecilidad insondable’ (1928: 80), has private means, and should by now have retired – but is awaiting the reform of the Ley de Jubilaciones because this will bring him ‘una apreciable bonificación’. In reality he does nothing but count the days until his retirement, although he asserts that he continues working hard: ‘Estoy en el apogeo de mis facultades! ¡Aún puedo prestar importantes servicios al Estado!’ (1928: 81). The observation that ‘el mundo se reduce a una inmensa oficina’ (1928: 17) is generally applicable throughout Historia de un pequeño funcionario – not just to the officials who resist retirement because they cannot change their routine. While in the last chapter, in connection with the funeral of Don Santiago’s son, there are brief appearances by characters not directly associated with the ministry, their presence does little to locate the story in a broader social reality; even here the main topics of interest are associated with the ministry. In the first place, Don Santiago complains that few colleagues attend the funeral – but why should they? The rest of the episode is dominated by the familiar office characters discussing the usual subject: retirement. And when Don Santiago is finally removed to the asylum, the doctor can only persuade him to accompany him because Don Santiago believes him to be a bureaucratic subordinate, and that they are going to the ministry together. These are indeed one-dimensional lives. There emerges in Historia de un pequeño funcionario the sense of an allencompassing bureacracy. De Castro’s characters have a love–hate relationship with the bureaucracy, seeing, accepting and partaking of its futility and its corruption while maintaining their own sense of values, even of honour. The characters themselves are one-dimensional grotesques whose function is to illustrate the different modes of survival in the bureaucracy; this is as true of Don Santiago as of the minor characters, with his one staring eye, his ridiculous cloak and his habit of peppering his conversation with legal Latin. While this little man’s desperate attempt to bolster his self-worth, to stave off the awful realisation of his poverty and insignificance, is potentially


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tragic, the possibility of portraying this inherently powerful psychological conflict is undermined by a weak narrative recourse that reduces it to the comic: Don Santiago consciously divides his persona into personal and professional aspects, which are kept entirely separate. Don Santiago is not a credible representation of a human being. And yet, in an environment where there is no pressure to achieve and no possibility of so doing; where working conditions are tolerable but the work itself tedious, and the salaries meagre; where a better future lies round the corner – except that nobody believes in it; where it is almost impossible to be dismissed – what is there to do? Nothing, except ponder one’s position and try to assert it, like so many chickens establishing a pecking order. Indeed, this was the image in de Castro’s mind, since the section official is described as behaving like a cockerel when he is angry. As we have already noted, Traversoni and Piotti, with their historians’ perspective, see the Uruguayan public during the 1920s as having a thorough understanding of and commitment to the national political process. However, from the evidence of his novel, this is not Manuel de Castro’s view. He shows a country where the public are at best marginalised, at worst callously exploited by a vast, corrupt, ineffectual, bureaucracy in which there is no purposeful debate or action – only tribal lobbying and squabbling, and downright lethargy. De Castro’s novel, although written after Mariani’s stories, seems oldfashioned for its time: nineteenth-century in tone. By contrast, there is no doubting that Mariani is a writer of the twentieth century, with a postWeberian, almost Kafkaesque conception of power and the individual’s relationship with bureaucracy. In terms of the future development of the River Plate literature of the office, Mariani is clearly the more important, in that his influence is detected in the work of later writers from both countries. At the same time, de Castro’s achievement is not insignificant – there is no doubt that Benedetti, the consummate Uruguayan writer in the genre, owes much to de Castro’s novel. Secondly, de Castro carefully sets his narrative in a recognisable political–bureaucratic context in which, while there is certainly conflict, it is petty and contained, in both psychological and political senses. In this respect the contrast with Mariani’s stark vision could not be greater. De Castro’s writing reflected the peaceful, stable – and by and large progressive – society in which he lived; its greatest significance as a document therefore resides precisely in the contrast it establishes between the ways in which the two closely related cultures, from the opposite banks of the Plate, perceived themselves – and would react to the challenges of the twentieth century.


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3

The 1930s: From Social Criticism to Creative Disillusion In the 1930s two major writers, the Argentine Roberto Arlt and the Uruguayan Juan Carlos Onetti, addressed the theme of the office worker. Although neither saw the office as a microcosm of society in the direct, social-realist way that the 1920s’ writers did, Arlt nevertheless ventured into bureaucratic territory with a strong social and political agenda. Onetti’s focus, meanwhile, is more psychological and existential. What the two share is acute awareness of life as narrative, which they use in exploring the linguistic, visual and social structures that shape identity. There is in Arlt’s writing career a progression from cultural marginality to a more confident, evaluative stance, and this changing status is reflected in his choice of protagonists. Thus, Silvio Astier of El juguete rabioso (1926), is a poor, basically delinquent boy from the suburbs, who turns his hand to various trades, finally becoming a salesman for a paper wholesaler. Remo Erdosain, the protagonist of Los siete locos (1929), and Los lanzallamas (1931), is older and more established: a married man who works for a sugar wholesaler. Although not an office worker, he is a white-collar worker, very much in the mould of Mariani’s clerks. However, in Arlt’s novel (ironically, considering that he, unlike Mariani, was married with a child) there is no grim, responsible resignation, based on the economic needs of the family, but rather an explosion, a delirium. An impoverished and precarious (though respectable) life, a disappointed wife, the impulse to grovel, dreams of a wealthier lifestyle, the threat of tuberculosis, a sense of injustice – all these elements found in the lives of Mariani’s characters are shared by Erdosain. But Erdosain is not destined to be constrained by the grind of everyday reality; rather, he leaves behind the white-collar existence and enters a world of fantasy, introspection and melodrama. Erdosain, like Mariani’s Lacarreguy, steals from his employer, but it is a relatively small, frivolous theft. Thereafter, the double novel – one of the key works of twentieth-century Argentine literature – combines an intense, vivid, anguished exploration of the alienated psyche of the contemporary River Plate urban dweller, with an extravagant tale of political conspiracy. The chaotic exuberance of the work witnesses and reflects the uncertainty in the final years of Radical government.


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THE 1930s: FROM SOCIAL CRITICISM TO CREATIVE DISILLUSION

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Roberto Arlt: El amor brujo In El amor brujo, which was published in 1932, two years after the military–conservative restoration, Arlt returns to the period 1927–9 with a new perspective: calm, lucid disgust. One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the combination of perspectives and techniques that Arlt deploys in order to signal the precariousness, or even unreality of the underpinning of what is effectively a closed situation; this is, after all, the story of an office worker, Estanislao Balder, who has an affair with a music student, Irene Loayza, and then returns to his wife, Elena; and the events take place in a society that had flirted with progressive democracy before returning to a more traditional, authoritarian regime. A fundamental feature that undermines the structure of closure is a single manipulation of the order of the narrated events. Four main chapters are in chronological sequence, but Arlt inserts as a prologue a major episode (Balder’s first interview with Irene’s mother), which chronologically occurs between the third and fourth chapters. This dislocation has two important effects. First, it destroys any expectations the reader might have that the story will follow the pattern of a novela rosa, a popular romance – which the title might suggest. Second, through the portrayal of the cynical Balder and the play-acting señora Loayza, it is clear that the novel will be an exploration of hypocrisy and cynicism in relation to courtship, within a specific milieu of 1920s’ Argentine society. The Loayzas are of limited means but of some pretension. The deceased head of the family was a colonel, while Irene is associated with the conservatoire and the great opera house, the Teatro Colón. I have written elsewhere on the sexual hypocrisy in El amor brujo, and how it is linked by Arlt to other works of art.1 However, for the purposes of the present discussion, suffice it to say that theirs is a suspect, hypocritical morality that invokes an authoritarian discipline (enshrined by the late colonel, and the Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera), and in which what are fundamentally sexual–economic transactions are cloaked by ‘high’ art, which frequently is of an escapist nature.2 A second major contributory feature to uncertainty and openness is the use of elements that reduce the narrator’s authority, namely the extracts from the protagonist’s diary; these are substantial sections, which easily acquire narrative autonomy. In addition to such direct textual dependency on the protagonist, there are occasions in the main narrative when the visible narrator foregrounds his ignorance: for example, he hesitates to interpret 1

Jordan, 2000. A prefatory quote from Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis condemns hypocrisy. Falla’s El amor brujo and the music of Albéniz contribute to the Loayzas’ idealised image of Spain, where they plan to emigrate, in search of an idyllic life. 2


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Balder’s motives purely on the evidence of the diary. The result is that the protagonist is in a sense the narrator, an autonomous consciousness; he is not – as Mariani’s and de Castro’s characters are – constrained within an authoritative narrator’s world. As an office worker, Balder is both representative and critical of, his fellow workers, their spouses and their lovers. His relationship with Irene on one level corresponds to the behaviour he denounces in others: bored with his wife, Balder idolises Irene, only to break the engagement after they have had full sexual relations for the first time, on the (perhaps spurious) grounds that she was not a virgin. Irene, meanwhile, in league with her mother, is apparently engaged on a hunt for a suitable breadwinner, trying to hook Balder with ‘advance instalments’ of sex. The couple’s behaviour is representative, although the ability to be infatuated while simultaneously cynically observing himself and others identifies Balder as an outsider who does not share his fellows’ mentality. Balder works in an office in central Buenos Aires, and has a wife and child; to this extent he represents normality. But his situation is more complex: just as Erdosain’s crazy behaviour puts him outside and beyond the white-collar model, Balder too, is not a full member of that group. He is in the humdrum white-collar world by misfortune; a fully qualified engineer whose business (financed by his wife’s family) has failed, he has taken an ill-remunerated job with a construction company. Balder thus is in the white-collar mainstream, but is (or thinks he is) more sophisticated than his fellows. This seems to give him some authority to make judgements about that world, and perhaps also increases the plausible scope of the character’s thoughts and imagination. In other words, Arlt has found an effective device for anchoring his protagonist in reality, while simultaneously increasing his – and hence the narrative’s – analytical and expressive range.3 It is significant too that in all important respects the novel looks out and away from the office, its life and mentality. The love affair begins in 1927 when Balder is loitering in Buenos Aires’s Retiro station: Irene’s presence, her provocative stare (the reverse of the male discovering gaze) brings him out of his torpor and opens new perspectives. When the interrupted relationship resumes in 1929 the external intervention bringing about transformation is even stronger. On this occasion Balder is in the office engaged in his routine when the telephone rings; it is Irene’s friend Zulema, whose call initiates the rediscovery of Balder. All the factors that lead to the telephone call of rediscovery belong to realms unconnected with the bureaucratic life. Irene’s family has bought some bread, and the newspaper in which it was wrapped, by now some months old, fortuitously contains an article by a journalist friend of Balder’s, 3

Marxist critics such as Masotta, Rivera and Viñas, however, see Arlt’s juxtaposition of the cultural values of different social strata within his protagonists as evidence of confused cultural identity.


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about the protagonist’s vision of a futuristic city. Thus, four elements – pure chance, external initiative, creative qualities not used in his job, and connections to an influential sector of society – are involved. There is, it seems, scant connection between Balder the office worker and Balder the protagonist of his life. Balder interprets these new events in his life as little short of miraculous (he has even been fantasising about a Faustian pact in order to change his life). Such a wish for miraculous transformation – which is common in Arltian protagonists – has been interpreted (notably, by Viñas) as a wish for magical solutions to the dilemmas of the individual, and as a failure on Arlt’s part to engage with socio-cultural reality. However, such criticism seems ill-founded since the transformations do not actually occur; Erdosain commits suicide at the end of Los lanzallamas, while at the end of El amor brujo Balder returns to his starting point. After he breaks off the affair with Irene, once again we find him at his desk: Balder apoya la nuca en el respaldar del sillón giratorio, y tapándose los ojos con la palma de una mano, trata inútilmente de concentrar su atención en el cálculo del costo de una estructura de cemento armado (1980: 191–2).

Moreover, the main argument of Arlt’s novels centres on how individuals are seduced and sustained by fantasies – which the author unequivocally identifies with consumer capitalism: El cine, deliberadamente ñoño con los argumentos de sus películas, y depravado hasta fomentar la masturbación de ambos sexos, [. . .] planteaba como única finalidad de la existencia y cúspide de suma felicidad, el automóvil americano, la cancha de tennis americana, una radio con mueble americano, y un chalet standard americano, con heladera eléctrica también americana. De manera que cualquier mecanógrafa, en vez de pensar en agremiarse para defender sus derechos, pensaba en engatusar con artes de vampiresa a un cretino adinerado que la pavoneara en una voiturette. No concebían el derecho social, se prostituían en cierta medida, y en determinados casos asombraban a sus gerentes del lujo que gastaban, incompatible con el escaso sueldo ganado. Los muchachos no eran menos estúpidos que estas hembras (1980: 63).

A third objection is that, although Balder conjures exactly such a cinematic reverie (his ‘país de las posibilidades’, where at the end of the day he drives home through snow-covered mountains to a chalet, where Irene awaits him at the door), it hardly needs saying that for Balder the fantasy is a game. As a lover Balder casts himself in many guises, for instance as the hound panting at his medieval mistress’s feet, or as the Conquistador about to go into battle; or, inverting the relationship between art and life, Balder, musing as Irene plays on the piano the climactic ‘Danza del fuego’ from Falla’s El amor brujo, evokes a second, sexual character in Irene’s dexterity. Balder is a sophisticated, cynical character who represents not the delusion of externally created fantasies, but lucid emptiness, perhaps even despair.


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The love affair does not represent a new element incorporated in Balder’s real life as an office worker. Rather, it is an abandonment of routine, a breaking out to an alternative life of the imagination. The business of work and the associated constraints of time-keeping disappear from the narrative, as Balder accompanies Irene around the city or spends long hours waiting for her. From one perspective this switch of focus might be seen as a form of evasion or escapism. However, if Arlt’s procedure is contrasted with the domination of characters by the organised working environment that is found in Mariani’s stories, then Arlt’s purpose might be seen as an attempt to point the way out of such domination by emphasising individual creative sensibility. In this context, a striking feature of El amor brujo is the precise, vivid presentation of everyday experience: the views from the window of a commuter train or city tram; the sounds and smells of a busy railway station; the cacophony of passing buses, the flashing neon signs of rush hour. Balder’s internal landscape never acquires the intensity of the anguished, introverted Erdosain’s – but this is because Balder is a more normal character in every way; he is socially integrated, analytical, cynical and self-aware. As has already been observed, in El amor brujo, in contrast to the texts from the 1920s, office life is not the central concern. There is no mention of customers’ demands or of managerial discipline; and the single instance of interaction between the workers, when a porter announces a visitor to Balder, relates to a personal visit. Essentially, the office is a place where Balder sits, alone, ostensibly engaged on calculating quantities and prices of concrete – but usually thinking about other matters. Significantly, these concerns do not even include the relationship between Balder’s employment and the rest of his life. For example, although we are informed early in the novel that Balder’s salary is meagre, there is no follow-up. The contrast with Mariani’s stories could not be greater: for Balder the workplace is a setting from which his imaginative or analytical mind departs into other spheres. The first of these spheres, paradoxically, is the office itself; it is described in vivid chromatic and geometric terms, almost as if it were a stage set or an abstract painting: Balder aparta la mirada fatigado y deja descansar los ojos en el rectángulo de su oficina, un muro con alto zócalo verde mar, cerrado por tres divisorias de madera color caoba, como encristalados de gruesas placas de mica. Estanislao cierra las ventanas. Los contramarcos metálicos reticulan el cielo de agrios mosaicos azules y la rugosa mica de los cristales lo traslada a la profundidad de un acuario (1980: 67).

Even more striking is the view from the office: A ras de un techado negruzco distingue los contrafuertes de un puente de ferrocarril enrejado. Los muros crecen, lienzos de muralla gris superponen


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paredes amarillas perforadas de agujeros cuadrados, el perpendicular zigzag de mampostería se resquebraja en una mancha verde, y la otra ciudad de los rascacielos, con el peñón de sus monoblocs color mostaza, supera la pizarrosa altura de edificios de siete pisos. Tras las terrazas, manchas violetas de nubes se fragmentan y desflecan en doradas crines. A medida que el cielo se comba en la altura, adquiere una azul profundidad de agua de nieve (1980: 67).

The contrast is between the elegant nineteenth-century buildings and the brutal, utilitarian 1920s’ blocks. But Arlt’s vivid imagery, which is strongly evocative of paintings by his contemporary, Xul Solar, also establishes another contrast: that same ugly present, which Balder the employee both endures and helps to create, is contrasted with a more imaginative urban reality, to which Balder the creative designer would contribute and in which he would find fulfilment: Su proyecto consistía en una red de rascacielos en forma de H, en cuyo tramo transversal se pudiera colgar los rieles de un tranvía aéreo. Los ingenieros de Buenos Aires eran unos bestias. El estaba de acuerdo con Wright. Había que sustituir las murallas de los altos edificios por finos muros de cobre, aluminio o cristal. Y entonces, en vez de calcular estructuras de acero para cargas de cinco mil toneladas, pesadas, babilónicas, perfeccionaría el tipo de rascacielo aguja, fino, espiritual, no cartaginés, como tendenciaban los arquitectos de esta ciudad sin personalidad (1980: 51).4 Su obra de ayudante en oficinas técnicas no le satisfacía. El no había nacido para tan insignificantes menesteres. Su destino era realizar creaciones magníficas, edificios monumentales, obeliscos titánicos recorridos internamente de trenes eléctricos. Transformaría la ciudad en un panorama de sueños de hadas con esqueletos de metales duros y cristales policromos (1980: 53).

A final aspect to consider is Arlt’s vision of the bureaucratic life, as it affects individual and society – almost an incipient metaphysics and sociology of bureaucracy. Capturing the essence of a bureaucratic, managerialist capitalism, Balder evaluates his colleagues: Carecían de imaginación, esterilizados por las matemáticas, únicamente aspiraban a ganar dinero, u ocupar un cargo donde las actividades burocráticas substituyeran la iniciativa técnica (1980: 51).

Arlt does not deal with office workers as individuals, as Mariani does, but rather describes the behaviour of an entire class. At the political level, he is 4 The allusion is to the architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Balder’s vision of H-blocks with elevated railways evokes Fritz Lang’s 1927 film, Metropolis.


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scathing and pessimistic about his compatriots; he sees the typical middleclass couple as confused, comparing the unhappiness of ‘una chiquilla respaldada por el petulante decoro de su familia burguesa y un infeliz cuyo ideal arrancaba de una base burocrática’ (1980: 62) with the straightforward outlook on life of manual workers.5 His condemnation goes further: he sees the development of Argentina since 1900 as the creation of a university-educated, but morally undeveloped middle class from the sons and daughters of humbler, but materialistic folk. The parents’ ambitions for their children have been that they ‘ingresaran a robar a la clase media, con el pasaporte de un título universitario’ (1980: 62); and the resulting generation consists of ‘individuos insaciados, groseros, torpes, envidiosos y ansiosos de apurar los placeres que barruntan gozan los ricos’ (1980: 62–3). It is of course true that, while there were principled individuals and groups, Argentine democracy in the early twentieth century was an uneasy coalition of interests; and that, associated with this, the Radical government created large numbers of bureaucratic posts. Arlt’s description of this new middle class, which was formally educated but lacking in the principles necessary for sound judgement, which was alienated from its roots and driven by greed and envy, corresponds closely to the vision of an ascendent utilitarian bourgeoisie, famously put forward in the nineteenth century by Matthew Arnold. Turning to the general conditions of white-collar life, Arlt summarises, with an insulting and provocative tone rather than with empathy, the points that emerge in Mariani’s stories: Los sábados, dichos matrimonios descoloridos (desteñidos hasta en los trajes que compraban por cuotas mensuales) se enquistaban en el cine y el domingo paseaban en alguna granja de suburbio verde. Durante la semana el individuo concurría ocho horas a su oficina, y cada luna nueva preguntaba a su esposa, entre bascas y trasudores: –¿Te ha venido el mes? (1980: 64).

Similarly, again echoing Mariani, Arlt sees office workers’ awareness of the reality of the political and economic system in which they live, as gravely defective: Estas vidas mezquinas y sombrías manoteaban permanentemente en el légamo de una oscuridad mediocre y horrible. Por inexplicable contradicción nuestros criados de cuello duro eran patrioteros, admiradores del ejército y sus charrascas, aprobaban la riqueza y astucia de los patronos que los explotaban, y se envanecían del poderío de las compañías anónimas que en substitución del aguinaldo, les giraban una circular: el remoto Directorio de Londres, Nueva York o Amsterdam ‘agradecía los servicios prestados por la excelente y disciplinada cooperación del personal’ (1980: 64).

5

Benedetti (chapter 4) greatly develops this notion of white-collar confusion.


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It is a condition of unmitigated failure, of sterile personal relationships, of frustration at the office, of lack of belief: El máximum de ambición que descubrían, era parangonable con el de un aventurero. Dar un golpe de suerte o de azar para enriquecerse y ‘pasarla bien’. Respetaban y odiaban a sus jefes, admiraban incondicionalmente a los pilletes audaces que se imponían en la ciudad con su trabajo de extorsión y eran sumamente amargos, escépticos, burlones y joviales (1980: 65).

However, Arlt senses that the system as it stands will be inadequate to ensure continued cooperation of the ‘criados de cuello duro’; rather, belief in good fortune will need to be institutionalised: El tono sería ése: es conveniente que ustedes crean en el milagro. No, no era posible. Sin embargo el Estado debía crear oficinas de personas destinadas a tal trabajo. Y Balder reía despacito, restregándose las manos (1980: 69).

It has always been clear that Arlt’s political sympathies were of the left – although he never espoused a doctrinaire politics, being more of a sceptical than utopian cast of mind. In Los siete locos, where everything was delirious and larger-than-life, he suggested that in future people’s minds might be controlled through false gods and religions. In other words (and prophetically, in relation to Argentina), he places the emphasis on the role of charismatic figures, whether fictitious or real. In El amor brujo, on the other hand, he presents a very different, bureaucratic picture of the future: control can be achieved by making optimism part of official state ideology; this new role for bureaucracy transcends all that has gone before, and will create an entirely new class – indeed, species – of office workers. Arlt is indeed thinking on Weberian lines.

La isla desierta The play, first performed on 30 December 1937, is described as a ‘burlería en un acto’ (1991: 391), and is one of Arlt’s shortest and ostensibly most lighthearted pieces of theatre. Set in an office in Buenos Aires docks, its dramatis personae are eleven office workers, male and female, ranging from the general manager to the messenger, most identified by job title, not by name. Two characters represent the main forces in play: the manager, El Jefe, seeks to enforce discipline; while he is absent from the office, the messenger ‘Cipriano (Mulato)’ appeals to exoticism and wish-fulfilment, and the overthrow of order. Two clerks, Manuel and María, both of whom are castigated by El Jefe at the beginning of the play for unspecified shortcomings, are the most responsive to Cipriano’s incitement, eventually leading the entire office into a rumba dance, with Cipriano beating the rhythm on a typewriter lid. The play ends when El Jefe returns, accompanied by the general manager, who promptly dismisses all the employees.


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The action thus constitutes the overthrow of discipline, its replacement by a carnivalesque atmosphere, and the reimposition of order. In fact, the general manager’s intervention goes beyond mere restoration of order – and is the culmination of a second series of events, with a longer timescale, underlying the action. Just as the carnivalesque, as part of a ritual cycle of disturbance and balance, falls outside linear time, so the beginning of La isla desierta, too, suggests a timeless, ritual space. The initial stage-setting is a description of the office, where a lack of individuality and extreme regimentation are prominent; and the terse, geometric description of the space itself, with the emphasis on primary colours, has an abstract quality: Oficina rectangular blanquísima, con ventanal a todo lo ancho del salón, enmarcando un cielo infinito caldeado en azul. Frente a las mesas escritorios, dispuestos en hilera, como reclutas, trabajan, inclinados sobre las máquinas de escribir, los empleados. En el centro y en el fondo del salón, la mesa del JEFE, emboscado tras unas gafas negras y con el pelo corto como la pelambre de un cepillo. Son las dos de la tarde, y una extrema luminosidad pesa sobre estos desdichados simultáneamente encorvados y recortados en el espacio por la desolada simetría de este salón de un décimo piso (1991: 393).

The action, too, begins repetitively, when successively, and with almost identical dialogue, the two clerks, Manuel and María, are summoned by El Jefe, accused of unspecified errors, apologise and return to their desks. The events of La isla desierta are set against the background of Manuel’s forty years as a clerk, and also in the context of the history of the office where the employees now work. As we have seen, the tenth-floor office is desolately symmetrical and harshly lit; it is an artificial environment, which we might conclude is typical of the alienating modern city in whose construction Balder, the protagonist of El amor brujo, reluctantly participated. The fact that the employees have occupied this office for seven years, and that La isla desierta dates from seven years after a major change of political regime, is unlikely to be coincidental; however, nothing in the play suggests any direct correlation to specific events in Argentina, or elsewhere. Surprisingly, the tenth-floor office – as a location, as distinct from institution – is not associated with alienation but with openness to the world; it is the sight from the window of the ocean-going ships that disturbs the employees, rekindling youthful dreams that the years of routine have extinguished. El Jefe cannot keep this disturbance in check; indeed, once it has developed coherent social expression, the management realise that discipline can never be re-established, and their only course of action is to dismiss the staff. As for the future, the management’s solution is practical and sinister; the general manager decrees that the great picture window must be reglazed with opaque glass. This effectively turns back the clock, recreating


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ignorance, and thus mimicking the state of affairs before the employees moved to the tenth floor from the basement where they had previously been confined. As political allegory it could not be clearer; confinement in a blind tower, a dungeon in the sky, is the stuff of nightmare. The old (pre-modern) days in the basement, of course, were no golden age; the employees remember a tomb-like nether world, where they learned to forget their dreams and to accept office routine as reality. Working in the basement also damaged the clerks’ physical health, particularly their eyesight. The image of El Jefe (he wears dark glasses to protect eyes ruined by years in the basement) is an interesting metaphor. In terms of visual impact, the dark glasses single out El Jefe, giving him a sinister, possibly comic, air. As part of the structure of ideas the dark lenses seem to allude to the character’s mental, not physical vision; notably, the sight of the passing ships does not disturb him, as it does the clerks. The likely implication, that the time working in the basement has permanently damaged El Jefe intellectually and morally – it has not just stifled youthful impulse – is more explicit in the case of the clerk Manuel; when he finally decides to walk out, repudiating forty years of office life, he reveals a secret, that for the last twenty years he has been a management spy. Certainly, he expresses regret about his behaviour, but he believes that before, when they worked in the basement, they lived in ignorance, and such moral considerations were irrelevant: Y en el subsuelo las cosas no se sienten. [. . .] Uno es como una lombriz solitaria en un intestino de cemento. Pasan los días y no se sabe cuándo es de día, cuándo es de noche. Misterio (1991: 400).

This ignominious character is very different from Mariani’s clerks who, while their creativity might have been stifled, while financial pressure might have pushed them over the edge into dishonesty, nevertheless retain coherence – and dignity. Manuel, by contrast, is an abject character – although he and his companions do not realise this; his epiphany, and the decision, incited by Ciprianio, to abandon the bureaucrat’s life in order to live on a desert island, are ludicrous. In the elemental universe of Arlt’s play, no practical principle, rationale – or excuse – is invoked; the employers’ repressive behaviour is not justified as obedience to London, Paris or New York. Their actions simply maintain an archetypal order; when the employees see an alternative to subjection, and challenge order, the management’s reaction is to seek to create a new dark age. By contrast, the employees lack such single-mindedness or clarity since, having accepted the world of the office, they have irrevocably lost touch with their true selves. They exhibit classic white-collar false consciousness, in other words. In El amor brujo, particularly through the complex Balder, Arlt created a narrative universe in which incompatible ideas and perceptions could simultaneously co-exist within individuals and in society, while at the same


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time indicating possible ways in which these different ideas and perceptions might be related to reality. One striking example is the numerous descriptions of urban scenes, as observed from the window of a train or from the office. These vivid descriptions are not specifically related to Balder’s life concerns; nevertheless, they are presented through the protagonist’s mind, suggesting his lively engagement with his surroundings. By contrast, in La isla desierta the subtle interplay between characters and between fantasy and reality is almost non-existent. Although the key notion of the existence of a vivid, vital world – not just utopian ideas or nostalgic dreams – beyond the artificial world of the office, is created in the play very simply (through the window the clerks see the ships’ movements, and hear the sirens), there is no sense of the clerks’ active engagement with the reality of which the ships are part; rather, these stimuli simply produce in the clerks disturbance, mistakes in their work, nostalgia for the dreams of youth. These are debilitated minds. The messenger, Cipriano, in La isla desierta (like the waiter, Castor, in Mariani’s story, ‘Santana’) is a confident character, who is marginal to the bureaucratic world that he influences. He too claims to have travelled the world and seen life, and he has prestige in the eyes of the clerks because of his supposed familiarity with those potent symbols, the ships. Initially, a technical familiarity is adduced – although a messianic streak is visible: Y pensar que yo he subido a casi todos los buques que dan vuelta por los puertos del mundo. [. . .] Sé los pies que calan. En qué astilleros se construyeron. El día que los botaron. Yo, cuando menos, merecía ser ingeniero naval (1991: 396).

Soon the character’s line takes an exotic, adventurous turn: Conozco el mar de las Indias. El Caribe, el Báltico . . . hasta el océano Artico conozco. Las focas, recostadas en los hielos, lo miran a uno como mujeres aburridas, sin moverse . . . (1991: 397).

Then, in the third stage Cipriano personifies the exotic: removing most of his clothes, he reveals spectacular tattoos, which he claims were drawn in various distant countries, such as Madagascar and Malaysia. Once again Cipriano reveals his messianic tendency when, Sancho Panza-like, he declares: ‘Lo menos que merezco es ser capitán de una isla’ (1991: 398); he then regales the clerks with descriptions of idyllic island life: Allá no hay jueces, ni cobradores de impuestos, ni divorcios, ni guardianes de plaza. Cada hombre toma a la mujer que le gusta y cada mujer al hombre que le agrada. Todos viven desnudos entre las flores, con collares de rosas colgantes del cuello y los tobillos adornados de flores. Y se alimentan de ensaladas de magnolias y sopas de violetas (1991: 399).

However, according to Cipriano, on a desert island all is not idleness, but rather a balanced life in which social and physical needs are easily satisfied


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and people work happily and productively. It is this vision that finally prompts Manuel’s declaration that he will abandon the daily grind, the tyranny of numbers and the clock, in order to live the good life. Cipriano, pompously, welcomes his decision: Ved cuán noble es su corazón. Ved cuán responsables son sus palabras. Ved cuán inocentes son sus intenciones. Ruborizáos amanuenses. Llorad lágrimas de tinta. Todos vosotros os pudriréis como asquerosas ratas entre estos malditos libros. Un día os encontraréis con el sacerdote que vendrá a suministraros la extrema unción. Y mientras os unten [. . .] os diréis: ‘Qué he hecho de mi vida? Consagrarla a la teneduría de libros.’ Bestias (1991: 400).

What exactly is the point of this farce? There is, after all, nothing original in the idea of the clerk’s futile life and dreams of something better. What marks out this play is its sheer, cynical nihilism. No positive view of human nature is advanced; Manuel, María and the other clerks are pathetic, credulous creatures, while Cipriano is not even a credible charlatan; he is just a theatrical sham, partly an obsessive with delusions of grandeur, partly an exotic, risqué entertainer. La isla desierta is not an edifying play in any sense; as spectacle it is colourful, and it contains some witty dialogue as well as opportunities for humorous sexual double entendre. Beyond this level of entertainment it presents a sarcastically mocking, exasperated view of office workers. There are some finer points, although these emerge through reading rather than performance. There is for example one voice, Empleado 2°, which stands apart from the collective fantasy of Cipriano, Manuel, María and supporting chorus. At the beginning the character makes some unobtrusive but significant contributions to the conversation, for example confirming that it is seven years since the staff moved offices, remarking on the pleasure of travel and asking colleagues why they have never travelled. His statement in the important discussion of life in the basement office (this occurs immediately before Cipriano’s entrance and his transformation of the scene) is, in its immediate context, simply apposite: ‘Yo perdí la vista allá abajo . . .’ (1991: 396); yet in the context of the entire text, as a reference to the character’s perception it has broader resonance. Empleado 2° is the voice of scepticism, suggesting that, far from having sailed the world, Cipriano has travelled no further than the outer suburbs of Buenos Aires; and what are supposed to be authentic needle tattoos, drawn in the Orient, he dismisses as transfers. Finally, he makes one prophetic observation when the other employees enthuse about going to a desert island. María is keen to go, but the scheme is dependent on the several months’ salary to which she would be entitled under Law 11,729. Empleado 2° points out that the entitlement is dependent on dismissal – which is precisely what happens to them all at the end of the play. Empleado 2°, then, is a foil to the others, a sceptic. However, importantly, he is no clear-sighted figure who stands above the rest; in the end he joins in, and loses his job, just as they do.


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La isla desierta does not achieve the depth of characterisation or social analysis of some of Arlt’s other plays, and his narrative. Viewed from another perspective, we might consider that he has successfully depicted the mundane; maintaining his comedy at a superficial level, he creates no characters who might attract the audience’s sympathy or admiration. Amusement at the characters’ dialogue and silly antics, and revulsion at their superficiality, might be the first reactions. But perhaps La isla desierta presents some truths, starkly. It is obvious that years of meaningless, regimented life in an office do not answer humankind’s desire for fulfilment. And it should also be evident that those who control business will go to great lengths to put business interests before those of their employees. Arlt’s view of the employees themselves is bleak. While he never suggests that they are inherently stupid, he strongly implies that the bureaucratic condition (unlike that of the manual worker, perhaps) entails the renunciation of a healthily independent mind; instead, life becomes a combination of dull routine, and vague fantasies, sometimes accompanied by cynicism. Cipriano, knowingly or otherwise, taps into this vacuity, and the result is the bacchanalian scene in which the employees enact their fantasies. However, the problem – as they imagine birds with bright plumage and dance under the palm trees – is that they are not living their own fantasies, but (as was made explicit in El amor brujo) are acting out the escapist fantasies that have been created for them, and which they consume on Saturday evenings at the cinema. Their lives are colonised more thoroughly than they realise.

Juan Carlos Onetti, Tiempo de abrazar Onetti was Arlt’s great admirer,6 acknowledging Arlt’s influence on his own masterful novels of urban alienation. Of course there are major stylistic differences, as well as a different balance between social and individual concerns, in the two authors’ work. While Onetti’s awareness of world political events and of the associated aesthetic issues is not in doubt (there are references to Hitler and Stalin in El pozo and Tiempo de abrazar) in his narrative of the 1930s the focus is individualistic: any sense that such events, or indeed other forces in society, affect Onetti’s protagonists – beyond irritating them – is minimal. Onetti undoubtedly shared Arlt’s view that many aspects of society and culture have a profoundly deforming effect, and his narrative in the 1930s shows the dissatisfaction of his protagonists and their desire to escape from the typical white-collar urban life. The process can be traced through four works: the incomplete novel Tiempo de abrazar, the

6

This is seen in Onetti’s article, ‘Semblanza de un genio porteño’, which was first published in 1971, and appears in Requiem por Faulkner y otros ensayos (1976).


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stories ‘Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo’ (1933) and ‘El posible Baldi’ (1936), and the short novel El pozo (1939). Tiempo de abrazar was written in 1933 or 1934 (but not published until 1974). It is closely connected to Arlt’s El amor brujo – although the link is not acknowledged.7 The office worker protagonist, Julio Jason, is also a student and something of an intellectual and writer. He seeks to escape his ‘oppressive’, inauthentic urban life by abandoning the office, leaving the city for the countryside, and through abandoning his lover, Cristina, for the sixteen-year-old Virginia Cras. Virginia, a stockbroker’s daughter, like Jason has literary leanings. Jason’s progress represents an explicit, if not wholly successful, rejection of Arlt’s lucid, cynical engagement with the social reality of the city – although Jason’s response to the bureaucratic milieu and the urban environment is by no means uniformly negative, on occasion having a lyrical tone. In the novel’s opening section, Jason, whose job is never clearly described, appears to function competently and without pressure in an office. However, he is dissatisfied with his unfulfilling life, surrounded by mediocrity: Pensó que miles de M. Gigord lo rodeaban diariamente en la oficina, en las playas, en las calles, en los tranvías. Y no era necesario que fueran viejos; todos ellos habían nacido con la imaginación cansada, infinitamente mediocres, ridículos y brutales. Miles de M. Gigord hacían los diarios, dictaban leyes, repartían el bien y el mal. El mundo estaba dirigido por ellos (1974: 153).

The first point to make here is that it is not specifically the bureaucratic life to which Jason objects, but the entire culture: the hidebound Monsieur Gigord is in fact Jason’s literature lecturer in the university. Clearly, the purpose is to establish Jason as intellectually active – not just an ordinary office worker; this is reinforced in the third section, a reunion of friends who meet to discuss issues such as the well-aired question of the conflict between social and aesthetic concerns in art. Monsieur Gigord is complemented by another establishment figure, Virginia’s father, who appears in the novel’s last section. The impeccably dressed, donkey-faced Señor Cras is for Jason the epitome of the ‘mediocracy’ – although Jason’s concern here is entirely with the effect of the father’s values on his blossoming relationship with Virginia: Una cosa tan sutil, tan fresca, tan delicada. Y venía aquel señor que no podía entender, y metía en ella su viejo cerebro endurecido. Las correctas frases 7 In ‘Semblanza’, Onetti recalls showing Arlt the manuscript of a novel (probably Tiempo de abrazar) in 1934. Arlt praised the work, but it was not published – and Onetti suggests that he must have lost it on moving house. Strangely, Arlt’s recent and notorious novel is not mentioned in the list of his works given in ‘Semblanza’. The links with El amor brujo are discussed in Jordan, 1999.


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seguían cayendo sobre sus sentimientos y sus recuerdos como una lluvia helada y sucia (1974: 236).

The interview between the two men terminates when Jason turns on his heel and abandons the office. (This is a symbolic rather than definitive gesture – a point to which we will return.) Virginia represents for Jason youthful vitality, uncorrupted by the petty, dead cultural values that her father and Monsieur Gigord represent. She also represents an untainted sexuality, which Jason can only approach by gradually abandoning the accretions of another, inauthentic experience of sex, which is associated with Cristina. Jason’s abandonment of Cristina, in the antepenultimate section of the novel, anticipates his defiance of Virginia’s father. Then, the final scene of the novel, in the bedroom where Virginia and Jason have just consummated their relationship, marks a new beginning: Jason has found the brecha, as he calls it. However, it must be said that the process of Jason’s search for authenticity – not just the ludicrous reacquisition of sexual innocence in order to be ready for Virginia – is highly problematic. On several occasions Jason expresses disgust about the urban culture in which he lives. One scene, mid-way through the novel in section six, is particularly significant. Jason catches a train out into the countryside, where he launches a tirade against urban civilisation, including the office: Monstruosa mentira la civilización, la falsa y sórdida civilización de los mercaderes. [. . .] Mentira los edificios grotescos con el guiño de los sangrientos letreros luminosos. [. . .] Mentira las fábricas de chimeneas audaces, ensuciando día y noche los arrabales. Mentira las máquinas brillantes, mostrando con impudicia sus entrañas de acero. Mentira las calmas veladas de familia, bajo la dorada araña eléctrica del comedor. Mentira el juego estúpido de los ascensores, rebotando incansables en la planta baja para subir hasta el 9° o 22 y volver a caer. Mentira las ediciones milenarias de los periódicos, con sus groseros titulares retintos. [. . .] Mentira la lluvia metálica de las máquinas de escribir en las oficinas. Mentira la multitud de las calles, [. . .] Toda una canallesca mentira, una farsa hábilmente dirigida (1974: 195–6).

For Jason, authenticity is primitive and rural: ‘Sí; erguirse un amanecer en el campo, desnudo, cobrizo, musculoso, lleno de una sencilla alegría animal explotando en carcajadas’ (1974: 196). There have been many occasions in history when individuals and groups have found the societies they lived in incompatible with their beliefs, and have sought to create new rural ways of life, either in their country of origin, or by emigrating. Equally, it is common for people in their twenties or early thirties (which must be Jason’s age) who have had a few years in work, to become dissatisfied and feel the need to explore other possibilities, perhaps to travel or undertake further studies; on the face of it, Jason belongs in the second category.


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However, while Jason denounces society as mentira, the sincerity of his own journey towards authenticity and self-realisation does not resist scrutiny. The novel’s final section, with the confrontation between Jason and Cras, begins: ‘OPERACIONES DE BOLSA – COMISIONES’ (1974: 233). The office setting is taken as read, in other words. Jason arrives at Cras’s office towards the end of the working day, having been summoned, ostensibly to bring some contracts. He is initially respectful, and Cras’s greeting, while not effusive, shows no antagonism: ‘¿Qué tal? Pase, pase . . .’ (1974: 233). Jason, who knows where the conversation will lead, is not lacking in sensitivity towards Cras. ‘Contempló atentamente la cara vieja y bondadosa que miraba ahora el humo del cigarrillo’ (1974: 234). The conversation is affable, that of two men who share a culture; their disagreement is simply a difference between generations in which the father worries about the consequences of what he sees as his daughter’s overly free behaviour since she has known Jason; the young man, meanwhile, regards Virginia’s father as unable to understand young people. Indeed, Jason seeks the moral high ground, characterising Cras as representing the institutional forces deforming young people, and expressing his own proposed action as rescuing ‘una Virginia a la que limaron, cepillaron, deformándola, haciéndola igual a los miles de muchachas de la ciudad’ (1974: 237). The episode ends when Jason walks away, to a background of everyday sounds of financial transactions, which he is now abandoning. Jason’s abandoning the office seems to be reinforced as an act of defiance, since its immediate sequel is the idyllic post-coital scene, in which he launches his final defiant words, his rejection of the urban multitude and its values. He claims now to be full of a new, pure emotion: an ‘odio profundo y alegre’ (1974: 247). The implication is that Jason has taken an irrevocable step, that in leaving the office and then making love with Virginia, he has definitively rejected the office world and its values. However, there is no evidence either that he has done so, or that Cras is in a position to exact retribution. Furthermore, even supposing that Jason leaves his job, or risks losing it – has he really made a stand against values he despises? The answer is not entirely clear, although we might suspect a certain hypocrisy. The second section of the novel takes place in a dilapidated office belonging to the illkempt Seidel, an associate – rather than colleague – of Jason’s. Seidel, a speculator, plans an insider-dealing coup, which will earn him 20,000 dollars; he needs Jason’s help, and offers him ten percent. Jason agrees, and immediately the image of a rural railway station comes into his head – prefiguring the city versus country tirade, which was quoted above. Jason sees the fraudulent deal as his salvation: Pero esos dos mil dólares [. . .] y la luminosa calle de las sensaciones que iba a conducir hasta ellos, podrían ser la salvación. No importaba que fuera temporaria. La cuestión era cambiar, mezclar la sangre


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empobrecida de su vida con la de unos cuantos días de aventura y dinero y estafa (1974: 158).

There is no further mention of the deal, but neither is there any reason to suppose it did not take place. Jason’s mentira tirade, and his decision for defiance at the end of the novel do not, therefore, represent rejection as much as exploitation of the system. Just as de Castro’s clerks see nothing wrong with the dishonest practices in which they indulge to ensure a comfortable retirement, Onetti’s Jason has no compunction in exploiting the quintessential nature of capitalism, while simultaneously railing against the system. In Tiempo de abrazar the protagonist’s journey appears to take him away from the office and from the values of the society of which it is part; however, as we have seen, Jason’s progress is really escapist, based as it is on a false recapture of innocence through a sexual relationship with a wealthy man’s daughter, and (presumably) on a dishonest financial transaction. Indeed, one might suspect that Jason is well ensconced in a life that consists of the office, the university and literary soirées; that he enjoys his ennui – and that Virginia is his little adventure, as Irene was Balder’s, in El amor brujo. The principal difference is that Balder is honest with himself (if not with the other characters) about his hypocrisy. One major scene in Tiempo de abrazar is set in Jason’s office: it takes place immediately after Jason first meets Virginia at a literary soirée. For Jason, office life apparently does not bring long hours, routine tasks, overbearing superiors, demanding customers or financial worries. The scene opens as the post boy asks Jason’s permission to leave. Judging by his reply, Jason has either been immersed in his work – or daydreaming: ‘Silbó con asombro. Las siete, ya’ (1974: 171). Unlike the post boy, Jason does not leave immediately. Clearly he need not hurry to other reponsibilities; nor does he feel the need to go to a café or take a walk, to relax after the day’s labours. On the contrary, the deserted office is a tranquil place where Jason makes the transition between his diurnal and nocturnal lives. The office is part of a gentle, unhurried urban reality, which seems Montevidean, rather than porteño: El anochecer era tranquilo y calmoso. Más allá de los árboles y las luces del paseo, la mancha oscura del río y el azul del cielo que ennegrecía por momentos. Se apoyó de codos en la ventana, retardando la operación (1974: 171).

Jason remains motionless, attentive to nightfall and to his own sense of being in the world: La noche se acercaba y él era el primer hombre que la veía. Sus ojos cazaron una estrella. Los cerró, respirando con fuerza. El aire fue saliendo en pedacitos. Bien. [. . .] Estaba extraordinariamente alegre, tranquilo, sin pensamientos. Comenzaban a temblar algunas estrellas y la brisa del ventilador


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lo tomaba por la espalda haciendo estremecer a intervalos iguales los flancos de la camisa. De acuerdo. Vagar por el lado este de la ciudad, oír música en los cafetuchos, comer en el sótano del mercado (1974: 171).

Jason lapses into a reverie about his evening – whose main purpose will be to seek a sexual encounter. Like Balder, he meditates on this from a number of perspectives: memories of his present lover, Cristina; evocations of the ideal lady, the rose among thorns; the sordid, euphemistically named casas de huéspedes in the port district, where rooms are rented by the hour. In his fantasy he embellishes what will probably be yet another unsatisfying encounter with Cristina; meanwhile the gentle, poeticised cityscape continues to be the backdrop to his ruminations: Las luces del puerto resaltaban en la oscuridad del cielo. Los árboles eran ya solamente una franja más negra en la penumbra. Miró las dos filas de coches corriendo allá abajo, aplastados como fichas por la distancia. [. . .] Un tranvía hizo una constelación de estrellitas azules. [. . .] En el cielo retinto el palpitar de las estrellas se hacía más misterioso. Un espeso lienzo de aire caliente le cruzó la cara (1974: 172–3).

And still he stays; indeed, he turns away from the city, back into an intimate space, which he treats like a study, or even a living room: Abandonó la ventana y rápidamente la oficina solitaria se apoderó de él. Comprendió que ya estaba iniciado en el misterio y en sus ritos. Fue hasta la llave de la luz y dejó la habitación en una semioscuridad que aumentó su indolencia. [. . .] Luego empujó un sillón junto a la ventana y se sentó, tirado hacia atrás, colocando muy cuidadosamente los pies sobre la mesa. Giraban luces veloces en el cristal de la ventana. El zumbido del ventilador se poetizaba en un remedo de noche campesina. Cruzó las manos sobre el pubis y se aquietó. La oficina comenzó a absorberlo hasta convertirlo en un mueble más. Di-so-lu-ción (1974: 173).

Jason, asleep, is at one with the office; and it is only disturbance from the street outside: ‘Un brusco temblor de vehículos en la calle. Gritos, ruido de campanas, silencio’ (1974: 173), which rouses him – to nostalgic memories of a past love, Clara, whose name seems as symbolic as that of the new love, Virginia. Still, he remains in the office. At last, a combination of events cause Jason, still indecisive, to leave. First, the atmosphere of the office itself arouses his sexual desire: Pero se sintió atraído por las oscilaciones despaciosas del ventilador que iba y venía, con un extraño e indeciso movimiento de oruga. Y de pronto descubrió que en el clima propicio de la soledad y del pesado aire de la noche, el deseo se había elevado como una planta lujuriosa (1974: 175).


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Then, the night-time activity of the world outside reaches into the office, calling him: Todo lo incitaba a ir. La música que le llegaba en recortes desde la puerta del bar. La canasta de flores en el ángulo de la esquina. La marcha ágil de una mujer que pasaba entre los árboles. El quejido de un tranvía al girar la curva lejana. Bajó la ventana con un ademán resuelto; pero quedó todavía un rato haciendo repicar las uñas en el vidrio (1974: 175).

At last, reluctantly, Jason emerges into the night-time world. However, at the first street corner he stops to buy cigarettes; there, prompted by the images of Europe on the covers of some glossy magazines, in his imagination he enters the world they invoke: Abrió la cajilla y encendió un cigarrillo. Las revistas eran pasajes para ultramar. Quieto en la esquina que la noche hacía desierta, se iba, en golpes rápidos como estocadas, hasta Picadilly, [sic] la estatua de Federico el Grande, la Puerta del Sol, las vidrieras de la Rue de la Paix (1974: 176).

Here, leaving the office does not mark a departure of any significance in terms of the development of the character Jason – although as we shall see, such a scene dovetails neatly with the beginning of the story, ‘Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo’. Subsequently, Jason’s attitude to the office is negative – and on each occasion Virginia is the cause. As well as the confrontation with Cras, already discussed, there are two further scenes in which the office figures. In the first, which occurs early in Virginia and Jason’s relationship, the couple stroll in the garden of Virginia’s home, and then enter the house, conversing: – Debe ser horrible eso de pasarse metido en una oficina. Sobre todo en un día como éste. Cruzó frente a él y abrió la ventana. – Sentir que afuera hay sol . . . – Siempre es molesto. También en los días de lluvia. [. . .] Se piensa en lo bien que se estaría metido en casa . . . Sí; nada más que la sensación de estar en casa, aislado del agua y del frío (1974: 188).

While Jason’s response might be made with feeling by Mariani’s characters, from Jason it is mere conventional sentiment, the expression of his ennui. The other scene takes place in the office. A bored Jason is interrupted at a quarter to one by Virginia knocking on the door. Her arrival interrupts nothing in particular: Jason desultorily looks for a document that he thinks the post boy may have taken by accident; he feels hungry; he looks forward to not having to think about work until Monday. Virginia enters and jumps up on to Jason’s desk where she sits, legs swinging to and fro, as the two while away the remaining minutes until lunchtime, smoking, and discussing


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Virginia’s family’s reaction to their friendship. As they leave, they cross the already deserted main offices where the ordinary clerks and secretaries work, passing the rows of desks with typewriters ‘severamente enfundadas en negro’ (1974: 219). Then, emerging into the street, with its ‘alegre sol y las olas de gentes apresuradas’ (1974: 219), the carefree couple compare notes about the time: it is not yet one o’clock. (How different this sábado inglés is from the one which Mariani’s clerks work.) Jason savours the recent minutes in his office, with Virginia ‘tan naturalmente sentada en la mesa, tan íntimamente juntos en el antipático escritorio’ (1974: 219). Clearly, he occupies a privileged position in an organisation that makes no unreasonable demands; he seems to come and go as he pleases, to work when he wishes; he feels so much at home there that he spends entire evenings relaxing there; and he finds that being there, with his girlfriend perched on his desk, is perfectly natural. Jason’s disdain for the office – and his railing against urban culture – is a sham: he is in no significant degree affected by the organisation in which he works, but on the contrary appears to occupy the office on his own terms.

‘Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo’ As we have suggested, the conceptual departure point of the story is the scene in Tiempo de abrazar when Jason finally leaves the office, one evening. As he walks away along the street his mind enters fantasies sparked by the photographs of European capitals on the covers of glossy magazines. In ‘Avenida de Mayo’, the protagonist Víctor Suaid walks along Buenos Aires’s calle Florida, and then back to his office. Returning as evening falls, like Jason he invokes the foreign cities; however, now they are not exotic destinations, but places occupied by identical, hurrying masses: Era la hora del anochecer en todo el mundo. En la Puerta del Sol, en Regent Street, en el Boulevard Montmartre, en Broadway, en Unter den Linden, en todos los sitios más concurridos de todas las ciudades, las multitudes se apretaban, iguales a las de ayer y las de mañana (1994: 32).

The character’s inner thoughts and feelings during his walk have been much more complex. ‘Avenida de Mayo’ is a complex, subtle story in which Suaid, after the model of Arlt’s protagonists, is simultaneously in here-and-now and in fantasy. Thus, facing the cold air and grey sky, Suaid projects himself in his imagination into winter landscapes, first that of Ushuaia, in south Argentina, and then a filmic vision of Alaska and the Yukon – with references to the Mounties, Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. Once he has entered this ludic


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manner of thought, he enriches it with external stimuli; for example, he transforms crossing the street into jousting: En Rivadavia un automóvil quiso detenerlo; pero una maniobra enérgica lo dejó atrás, junto con un ciclista cómplice. Como trofeos del fácil triunfo, llevó dos luces del coche al desolado horizonte de Alaska (1994: 27).

Among the most powerful stimuli are neon advertisements and the moving newscasters: the report of a record-breaking run in a racing car prompts a long fantasy in which Suaid imagines himself as a member of the team. However, central to Suaid’s mental processes is an anxious preoccupation that combines the erotic and the destructive. After the image of Joan Crawford has fed Suaid’s fantasy, a real woman passes him in the street. This brief encounter is presented in an immediate, filmic way: a flash of eyes, a crucifix glimpsed nestling inside the fur coat, the almost intimate brush of elbows; then the lingering perfume; the rising and falling stepping figure retreating into the distance, now lit, now in shadow, as she passes the shop windows. All this evokes in Suaid memories of María Eugenia, the woman who really preoccupies him. As is often the case with Onetti, the image combines innocent girlhood with threatening womanhood: ‘Tan bien disfrazada de colegiala, que los dos puñetazos simultáneos que daban los senos en la tela [. . .] hacían de la niña una mujer madura, escéptica y cansada’ (1994: 29). The key image of the pointed breasts belongs in a chain of twin-point images, which threads through the story. In the first, Suaid contemplates the wideeyed Joan Crawford, with roses in her corsage; then he remembers a dream about a woman with roses in the place of the eyes; the third image is Suaid’s capturing with his eyes the car headlights, and this is followed by the memory of María Eugenia’s breasts – which anguishes him: ‘Tuvo miedo. La angustia comenzaba a subir en su pecho, en golpes cortos, hasta las cercanías de la garganta’ (1994: 29). Suaid’s misery is interrupted by another news bulletin, announcing a disaster in which many have died, but in his preoccupation Suaid’s reaction is of anger and frustration: he merely wishes to escape from María Eugenia. Thereafter, the twin-point images are destructive: two cigarettes proferred in an advertisement become warship cannons, threatening the passers-by. In a final attempt to flee from the image of María Eugenia, Suaid imagines himself taking part in the racing car event – but he cannot sustain the fantasy. Returning to the office, along Florida, he is immersed in vindictive frustration, imagining machine-gun nests at every street corner, massacring the passers-by. This extreme fantasised violence, emerging from deep anxiety about the self and fear of women, is similar to the reaction of Erdosain, the protagonist of Arlt’s Los siete locos. However, in contrast to the mad Erdosain, who operates at the margins of society, Suaid is a mainstream white-collar character, who at the end of his walk simply returns to his office. The office itself, like Jason’s in Tiempo de abrazar, is a relaxed place (the scene depicts the end of the day) where the employees while away the last


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minutes until seven o’clock, as the city outside switches to its nocturnal rhythm: Owen fumaba echado en el sillón. La ventana hacía pasar por debajo del ángulo que formaban sus piernas los guiños de los primeros avisos luminosos, los ruidos amortiguados de la ciudad que se aquietaba y la lividez del cielo (1994: 32).

The concluding paragraphs draw together vividly and explicitly the complexity of Suaid’s thoughts and feelings; he functions competently in society and actively appreciates the textures of the urban environment. Meanwhile, he attempts to deal with difficult emotions, moves in and out of fantasies and memories; finally he maintains awareness of and detachment from all these processes – and some sense of superiority: Nadie sabía en Florida lo extrañamente literaria que era su emoción. Las altas mujeres y el portero del Grand ignoraban igualmente la polifurcación que tomaba en su cerebro el «Ya» de Owen. Porque «Ya» podía ser español o alemán; y de aquí surgían caminos impensados, caminos donde la incomprensible figura de Owen se partía en mil formas distintas, muchas de ellas antagónicas (1994: 32).

Although ‘Avenida de Mayo’ is largely located within fantasy, there is no sense of dissatisfaction, that Suaid wishes to escape his life. Rather, the story is the exhilarating study of a lively mind amid the myriad stimuli of the metropolis of Buenos Aires in the early 1930s. In this respect, the story surely reflects the circumstances of Onetti’s life.

‘El posible Baldi’ In the later story, ‘El posible Baldi’, by contrast, a marked change in the protagonist’s self-image occurs. The lawyer, Baldi, standing on a traffic island by the Congreso in Buenos Aires, appears self-satisfied: Sonrió pensando en sí mismo, barbudo, el sombrero hacia atrás, las manos en los bolsillos del pantalón, una cerrando los dedos contra los honorarios de «Antonio Vergara – Samuel Freider». Decía tener un aire jovial y tranquilo, balanceando el cuerpo sobre las piernas abiertas, mirando plácido el cielo, los árboles del Congreso, los colores de los colectivos. Seguro frente al problema de la noche, ya resuelto por medio de la peluquería, la comida, la función de cinematógrafo con Nené. Y lleno de confianza en su poder – la mano apretando los billetes – porque una mujer rubia y extraña, parada a su lado, lo rozaba de vez en vez con sus claros ojos. Y si él quisiera. . . . (1994: 47).

Baldi, intrigued by the German-looking woman, sees off another man who seems to be propositioning her. The woman flatters him, claiming to detect


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inner strength, praising his distinguished beard, and contrasting him with other men: ‘Tan distinto a los otros. . . . Empleados, señores, jefes de las oficinas’ (1994: 50). She asks him to tell her about his extraordinary life. Baldi is captivated; his evening date with Nené recedes from his mind as the listening woman allows him to launch into fantasy. He has a low opinion of her and tries to shock her with tales of drug running, of killing escaping workers in South African mines, and of joining the Foreign Legion. Suddenly, however, Baldi realises what he is doing: Comparaba al mentido Baldi con él mismo, con este hombre tranquilo e inofensivo que contaba historias a las Bovary de plaza Congreso. Con el Baldi que tenía una novia, un estudio de abogado, la sonrisa respetuosa del portero, [. . .] Una lenta vida idiota, como todo el mundo. Fumaba rápidamente, lleno de amargura, los ojos fijos en el cuadrilátero de un cantero. [. . .] Porque no se había animado a aceptar que la vida es otra cosa, que la vida es lo que no puede hacerse en compañía de mujeres fieles, ni hombres sensatos. Porque había cerrado los ojos y estaba entregado, como todos. Empleados, señores, jefes de las oficinas (1994: 53–4).

This is a key moment of disillusion: whereas Suaid maintained intellectual autonomy as he functioned in the bureaucratic world, for Baldi there is fundamental incompatibility between the regulated, sensible world of office jobs and stable relationships, and liberty and authenticity. The fact that this more authentic mode of being is envisioned with images no less clichéd than those of Arlt’s clerks in La isla desierta does not alter the basic dichotomy of imagination versus routine. This is no petulant protest like Jason’s, but seems to be a moment of real self-disgust, and a turning point in Onetti’s narrative.

El pozo Onetti’s short novel does not fit into the genre of writing about the office – yet it is strongly connected to it, since it repudiates the office and all it stands for. El pozo is a meticulously crafted text, but it is in no sense a retreat into artistic self-indulgence; rather it displays all-pervasive uncertainty and scepticism: about writing, about political ideas, about culture, and about the value of the individual human being. El pozo is the culmination of a decade’s endeavour (building on Arlt’s work) to answer the question: what can the writer do about the way society works, and about how the individual feels about existence? The overt answer, given repeatedly in El pozo, is: nothing. And yet, the real answer, in this meticulous artefact, with its systematic debunking of any sense of value or purpose – and its careful combining of fantasies, memories, narratives – is that the crafter of narrative, the creator of images of consciousness in the world, does a great deal indeed. As far as can be determined, the narrator-protagonist of El pozo, Eladio Linacero, has no job, although he has in the past worked for a newspaper. He


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sees work in wholly negative terms, associating it with the desire for material possessions and with the institution of the married couple – although he is careful not to set up his opinions as authoritative: No trato de justificarme; [. . .] Toda la culpa es mía: no me interesa ganar dinero ni tener una casa confortable, con radio, heladera, vajilla y un watercló impecable. El trabajo me parece una estupidez odiosa a la que es difícil escapar (1990: 43).

Linacero also continues – and magnifies – the association of dysfunctional sexual–emotional relationships with disillusion at white-collar life, which typifies Arlt’s protagonists Erdosain and Balder, as well as Onetti’s Jason. Linacero has four such relationships: adolescent memories of Ana María; his ex-wife Cecilia; a lover, Hanka; a prostitute, Ester. A second strong pattern, which recapitulates elements from earlier works by Arlt and Onetti, is the weaving of fantasies: sometimes these are film-like adventure scenes; sometimes they are sexual. The association, in El pozo, of both types of fantasy with snow, and particularly with Alaska, strongly evokes both Balder’s imagined ‘país de las posibilidades’ (El amor brujo) and Suaid’s fantasies (‘Avenida de Mayo’). Linacero believes neither in work, nor love, nor the imagination. And he also dismisses, through casual references, other important notions such as friendship, national tradition, a concern with international politics and political philosophies. He is of course aware of Hitler’s ascendency in Germany – but makes no comment on Nazism; rather, he uses Hitler to compare a country where such a figure might answer a historical cultural need, and one such as Uruguay where (in his view) nothing can ever be achieved, and which lacks significant history: ‘Detrás de nosotros no hay nada. Un gaucho, dos gauchos, treinta y tres gauchos’ (1990: 57). Of course Linacero denounces the illusions of Hollywood, and bourgeois vices, but he also attacks the Soviet Union in a conversation with a communist friend whom he seems to despise: ‘Este es el momento oportuno para hablarle del lujo asiático en que viven los comisarios en el Kremlin y de la inclinación inmoral del gran camarada Stalin por las niñitas tiernitas’ (1990: 52). As regards himself and his own writing, Onetti seems to question their value, through Linacero, in two ways. First, it is suggested that his narratorprotagonist’s writing is worthless; this emerges when Linacero relates his fantasies to Ester, and to a friend, Cordes: both are baffled and hostile. Second, Linacero explicitly questions the value and purpose of what he has written, when in the second section of the novel he launches what amounts to a manifesto: Pero ahora quiero hacer algo distinto. Algo mejor que la historia de las cosas que me sucedieron. Me gustaría escribir la historia de un alma, de ella sola, sin los sucesos en que tuvo que mezclarse, queriendo o no (1990: 13).


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And yet, this manifesto is undermined when he dismisses the idea that his experience is in any way valuable, or special: ‘Lo curioso es que, si alguien dijera de mí que soy «un soñador», me daría fastidio. Es absurdo. He vivido como cualquiera o más’ (1990: 13). In conclusion, Onetti’s writing in the 1930s seems individualistic and inward-looking – even escapist – especially compared with Arlt’s strident, socially projected (although not precisely ‘committed’) work of the period. Indeed, Ruffinelli sees Onetti as wholly detached from what is considered to be the real world: In reality, he seemed to belong to his own fictional world, because the characters of his invention were also daytime dreamers, used to sharing reality with imaginative endeavors, and imagining for themselves lives different from those they were living (1997: 596).

However, as we have seen, Onetti’s narrative of this period reflects an evolution; and when it is seen in the context of the condition and aspirations of the ordinary urban white-collar worker in Montevideo, Buenos Aires – or any other city – then a different picture emerges. Just as Arlt built on Mariani’s work from the 1920s, so Onetti first contests, and then takes further Arlt’s work. In El pozo Onetti finally affirms unequivocally the fundamental incompatibility between respect for the established patterns and routines of society, and serious creative writing. But at the same time as he does this, he also abandons the superior, untouchable, almost precious pose, which characterised his earlier protagonists such as Jason; and he proposes for himself as a writer no special insight, or role, such as that of missionary, educator or social commentator. El pozo marks a very significant point in Onetti’s development: it is a sober, sceptical reflection on what it means to be a writer – and one that provides no easy answers.


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4

Mario Benedetti: Uruguay, the Office Republic Over a period of some sixty years, Mario Benedetti’s writing output has been extremely varied in terms of genre. At the same time there is consistency: a frequent theme is the everyday experience of ordinary folk. For example, they might argue over a modest inheritance; or witness their divorcing parents’ acrimonious arguments; they seek their first sexual experiences; they struggle to make ends meet and to find time for their family. Certainly, in later works Benedetti’s characters may experience dramatically different circumstances such as imprisonment or exile. However, extreme as these experiences are, they would become the lot of ordinary people as the stagnant, bureaucratic neo-Batllista Uruguay of the 1940s and 1950s crumbled, leading to political polarisation, military takeover, mass imprisonment and exile. In that first period, Benedetti – as the title of this chapter suggests – saw the bureaucratic mentality as paradigmatic of Uruguayan society. This is reflected in several short stories from two early collections, Esta mañana (1949) and Montevideanos (1959); in Poemas de la oficina (1956); the novel La tregua (1960); and essays in El país de la cola de paja (1960). Although dating from 1960, El país de la cola de paja is a useful starting point, since in it Benedetti expounds his ideas. The discussion will then move to the short stories and poems, which are snapshots of aspects of clerks’ home and office lives, and of different stages of life. Finally, I consider La tregua, in which the arguments expounded in El país de la cola de paja are brought to life through the fictional context, and where themes and figures sketched in the stories and poems are further developed. There are two further important features of La tregua: historical perspective; psychological study of the protagonist. There is no doubt that Benedetti’s novel is the most ambitious exploration of the urban-bureaucratic condition in River Plate literature.

El país de la cola de paja This collection of eleven essays criticises various aspects and institutions of Uruguayan society. In one, ‘Rebelión de los amanuenses’, Benedetti, with an almost Onettian bitter humour, describes the behaviour of the bureaucracy, the class he identifies as being at the heart of Uruguayan society; and yet,


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because the members of this group do not prosper, they simultaneously corrupt and undermine society in the attempted furtherance of their interests. In ‘Rebelión’ Benedetti makes a social critique, incorporating and contextualising many observations that the earlier River Plate writers, whose work we have already explored, made more subjectively or anecdotally. Benedetti’s initial premise is that Uruguayan society is inherently bureaucratic: Si mi atención fuera dar a este capítulo un color satírico, tendría que empezar diciendo que el Uruguay es la única oficina del mundo que ha alcanzado la categoría de república. Pero no sé hasta qué punto sería lícito tomar a la chacota uno de los aspectos más oscuramente dramáticos de nuestra vida nacional. Digámoslo pues en serio: el Uruguay es un país de oficinistas. No importa que haya también algunos mozos de café, algunos changadores del puerto, algunos tímidos contrabandistas. Lo que verdaderamente importa es el estilo mental del uruguayo, y ese estilo es de oficinista (1961: 57).

He then makes two points, which suggest a stronger link to Arlt and Mariani than to de Castro and Onetti: although Benedetti portrays the same gentle Uruguayan complacency that his compatriots see, he also brings a sharpness of social analysis. First, he points to an important development in the condition of the middle social strata: he notes that mothers’ aspirations for their daughters are associated with keyboards – although not, as in previous decades, with the Steinway in the salon, but with the Olivetti or Underwood in the office.1 Second, Benedetti’s use of the terms gloria and infierno, in connection with the office, evokes the cruel contrast between the promises made to Mariani’s clerks (in ‘Balada de la oficina’), and the real conditions as revealed in the stories. At the same time, Benedetti connects the bureaucratic and manual-working social strata more coherently than Mariani does in Cuentos de la oficina: Antes de conseguir el puesto en la oficina, la gloria es la oficina; después de conseguido, la gloria se convierte en el infierno, pero no todas las veces el oficinista tiene plena conciencia de esa transformación. Por eso, no importa que haya todavía uruguayos no oficinistas; [. . .] el mozo de café mirará con envidia a los muchachos que vienen a las siete a desahogarse contra el jefe; el peón de estancia pensará en la palabra oficina con el mismo admirativo embarazo que experimentaba Dante al pensar en su Beatriz; el changador del puerto anhelará para sus hijos un paraíso oficinesco (1961: 57–8).

1

The importance of the piano in 1920s’ porteño society is noted by Arlt. It is especially prominent in El amor brujo: Irene Loayza is a student of piano at the conservatoire, which lends the family prestige. More modestly, Balder’s wife, Elena, ‘hacía un poco de ruido en el piano’ (1980: 56).


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Benedetti goes on to explore the contradictions in the bureaucratic condition, noting that Uruguayan electoral politics are focused on the middle sector of society. In this context, the creation of public-sector posts for electoral advantage is portrayed as a major element in the corruption of the national political process. Of course, large-scale creation of public-sector administrative posts for electoral purposes is hardly unique to Uruguay. The Radical government in Argentina (1916–22) did the same, in an attempt to create a stable centrist constituency within a polarised society; Peronist Argentina, meanwhile, in the 1940s, like Uruguay built a public bureaucracy to administer recently nationalised industries and to further specific social ends. However, in Batllista and neo-Batllista Uruguay, which was a consensual society, the sharing out of political posts and the provision of public-sector employment to supporters of the main political parties on a proportional basis were enduring features. Next, Benedetti contrasts such public-sector jobs, which offer security and short hours, with the harsher conditions in private enterprises; he concludes that a large state bureaucracy is inevitable, as it is in the interest both of the political parties running the state and of individual citizens. While Benedetti is critical of an absurd, unproductive state system, he of course no more advocates private sector tyranny than Arlt or Mariani did. For example, he notes that the strident criticism of the supposedly easy, unproductive life of working people comes, as is so often the case, from the least productive of all: the wealthy residents of Punta del Este. The remainder of ‘Rebelión’, which explores the behaviour and attitudes of white-collar workers, is a study of false consciousness. One aspect is the further exploration of the relationship between white- and blue-collar attitudes, which Arlt and Onetti broached (In El amor brujo and El pozo, respectively) but did not pursue. Benedetti describes a relationship fraught with inconsistencies. Having already noted (1961: 58, quoted above) that manual workers envy office workers, he remarks that empleados, often with reason, believe obreros to be better off financially; yet, the manual worker too is trapped in false consciousness, repeating the anti-bourgeois slogans of the union leaders, while in reality ‘en el fondo de sus aspiraciones, el canto de sirena que más lo excita y conmueve, tiene las suaves cadencias del confort burgués’ (1961: 60). However, contradicting himself, Benedetti also proposes that manual workers, through cultural and economic marginalisation from mainstream Uruguayan society, derive a sound sense of their identity. Thus, they are strangers in central Montevideo, ‘el dominio natural del oficinista’, preferring to return to ‘su Gardel, su mate, sus zapatillas’ (1961: 64); and the manual worker has no illusions, being willing to defend jobs, through strikes if necessary: ‘reconoce sus límites, sabe su credo, defiende su trabajo, aspira a mejorar pero no pretende ser más de lo que es’ (1961: 65). The main focus of ‘Rebelión’ is the thorough-going bureaucratisation of the Uruguayan mind. First (1961: 58) he points out that although office life is


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supposed to occupy perhaps eight hours a day, in fact in different ways far more of life revolves around the office: mealtimes, travel, ablutions. Perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek he notes that cafés are in effect annexes of the office, since work is the main topic of conversation there. What is interesting about all this, from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, is how unsurprising these conditions seem: colonisation by work is regarded as normal. Benedetti also postulates thorough corruption of the personality, through office life. More subtle, and deeper than the alienation observed by Mariani, it is a sapping and hollowing of the individual’s self-motivation and autonomy. In the first place, on entering the world of the office the young worker finds that workplace camaraderie replaces the more natural relationships centred on their barrio. It is noteworthy that where Argentine writers see bureacracies as overbearing institutions that engulf and exploit the individual, Benedetti, in the characteristically Uruguayan way, identifies a more egalitarian assimilation, an initiation into ways of wasting time, for example making conversations about football appear to be about work. On the other hand, Benedetti observes that, generally speaking, functionaries tend to work to a minimum acceptable standard; they do so, because if they are working, time passes more quickly and they are less likely to experience the anxiety that commonly afflicts the under-employed, alienated office worker: ‘Hay una poderosa razón para estimular ese pasable standard de cumplimiento: si se trabaja, el horario pasa más rápido y se padece menos la claustrofobia’ (1961: 61). On the relationship between public and private employment, Benedetti notes that public employees receive meagre salaries, which they supplement with other work; they accordingly do as little as they can at the ministry, in order to conserve their energy for their second job. However, Benedetti has noticed that the Uruguayan civil service is not quite as bad as Larra’s Madrid bureaucrats or Dickens’s Circumlocution Office: public offices do in fact function, after a fashion; he produces a second hypothesis to explain this: Naturalmente, en cada oficina ha de existir un eficiente empleado que es sobre quien recae el peso de la sección, pero que no siempre participa en los ascensos. A veces, es considerado por los demás como un perfecto imbécil, y el mejor sentimiento colectivo a que puede aspirar, es a la piedad. Sin embargo, es gracias a ellos que la Administración Pública no se ha convertido aún en el santo sepulcro del expediente (1961: 63).

Since no measurable financial profit derives from public administration, there is no reward for efficiency; output and reward therefore are low. Public employees hence must seek other mechanisms to improve their economic situation. Benedetti observes that, with certain exceptions such as bank employees, white-collar workers lack manual workers’ conciencia gremial, and reject strikes, which ‘golpean en una tradición que no las admitía’ (1961: 65).


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The functionary declines to take a stand on principles, but instead adopts a different way of improving his position: ‘una manera que consiste, por lo general, en imitar el estilo deshonesto de los jerarcas’ (1961: 66). The way of the bureaucrat, then, is that of individual progress through corruption, and Benedetti identifies three distinct methods, all of which are familiar from de Castro’s Historia de un pequeño funcionario. First, authorised absence from the office permits receipt of salary without working; alternatively, salaries are supplemented through coima: bribes or extorted payments from the public; finally, many obtain better posts through personal contacts: muñeca. Together, the essays of El país de la cola de paja present a society whose democracy is sham, and where intellectual, moral and financial corruption reach all social strata and institutions2; it is a country that has become estranged from the ideals of Artigas, and has lost sight of any sense of values or direction. Benedetti does not quite go so far as to attribute all Uruguay’s ills to the bureaucratic mentality; however, the fact that ‘Rebelión de los amanuenses’ occupies the central point of the book underlines its significance.

Esta mañana In relation to the office theme, two stories from this early collection stand out: ‘Esta mañana’, which dates from 1947, and ‘No tenía lunares’, written in 1951.3 Both are about sexual infidelity or jealousy, which is strongly associated with the office context. Both narratives use flashbacks and interleavings; the reader must piece together the narrative as it proceeds – and yet is still confronted finally with unexpected, melodramatic turns of events. In ‘Esta mañana’ the question is whether a clerk, Jorge Ayolas, faced with a personal dilemma, will continue to follow routine, or will explode. Surprisingly, it is the latter: the story ends as Jorge guns down his boss, Gálvez, who has been sleeping with Celeste, Jorge’s ex-girlfriend. Three key elements, whose importance emerges in the dénouement, appear and reappear as fragmentary irruptions in the narrative. These are, first, the idea of writing letters with no intention to send them; second, the fact that something

2 ‘La otra crisis’ explores professional corruption: coima; ‘Del miedo a la cobardía’ denounces the unrepresentative, corrupt Colorado–Blanco political establishment; ‘El subsuelo de la calma’ describes Uruguayan democracy as a husk, beneath which all is rotten; ‘Ya sabemos leer’ criticises the press; ‘La cultura es pocos votos’ signals government hostility to cultural and educational institutions. 3 The original Esta mañana, comprising ten stories, was published in 1949. Later editions comprise six of these, plus two from 1951, and one from 1958.


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occurred in the office two days previously – and Jorge did not go to the office the previous day; third, the event in question is associated with Gálvez. These important fragments pass through Jorge’s mind while he pursues at one level his daily routine of waking, breakfasting and leaving for work – and at another his journey towards the fateful encounter. The question of the two options for the day – routine or an outburst – emerges at the most tranquil point in the story, as Jorge enjoys his breakfast. The description of his profound, simple pleasure is very Nerudan, anticipating the Odas elementales: Desde que desayuna con té-con-leche siente el placer fácil de contemplar la taza blanca, rodeada de platillos con manteca, queso, dulce, pan tostado. Es un momento de intimidad, de soledad provechosa y desnuda. Se trata de algo simplemente creador, esto de acomodar la manteca en la rebanada, esto de dejar penetrar lentamente en el líquido los terrones de azúcar que sostiene la cucharilla. Ahora, con la taza a la altura de la boca y a través de su aureola humeante, puede verse la ventana del cielo, puede verse la ventana de nubes. Uno tiene en las manos el color de su día: rutina o estallido (1994: 22–3).

The critical moment – both in terms of determining whether Jorge’s day will follow routine or lead to an outburst, and of the reader’s connecting the disparate memory fragments in Jorge’s mind – occurs during his walk from the bus stop to the office. As he walks along the street, Jorge repeats to himself that Gálvez has spent two nights with Celeste, and also remembers that Gálvez, who usually sits in the office with his back to him, has left a desk drawer unlocked – and that the drawer contains a revolver; suddenly he notices a young woman walking in front of him, her sky-blue suit immediately making him think of Celeste. As Jorge compares the two women the connection is made: we learn that he has in the past pursued Celeste; and he is revealed as an intense, idealistic, confused character who has rejected what he sees as the conventional romantic aspects of a relationship: he wanted Celeste to be different from how she is, receptive to a direct sexuality that is free of social contamination: Había esperado hacerla menos deseable, para desearla. Había querido aligerarla de un lastre inútil, de un inútil sobrante de sexualidad. En rigor, había querido dejarle su sexo a solas, un sexo puro sobre el que levantar el sentimiento. Había esperado amarla en lo que creía creer que era, y nada más. Que ella no inventara, que ella no agregara algo – pensando que era sexo – su sexo a secas. La quería sin suburbios, sin sexo de pensamiento, sin sexo de imaginación, con su sexo a secas (1994: 25).

Two other important elements occur in this scene, although they are not yet explicitly connected to the action: a second reference to the idea of writing letters without the intention of sending them – which the reader no doubt associates with Jorge’s feelings about Celeste, and Gálvez; and Jorge’s strange affirmation


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about himself, which is twice repeated, without any meaningful context: ‘Ahora camina por Sarandí. «Soy otro», dice. Y lo es’; and ‘naturalmente, tonto. «Soy otro», dice. Y lo es (. . . sin pasar la llave . . .)’ (1994: 24). When it finally occurs, the shooting is presented indirectly, embedded in a series of Jorge’s obsessive thoughts, including a final reference to the letter that was written without any intention of sending it; indeed, it is not until a reference to blood that the reader is sure that Gálvez has fallen, that this is not simply something Jorge imagined as he dropped the letter into the post box: Uno piensa en lo que uno pensó, en lo que uno pensaba. [. . .] Que la religión es útil cuando no puede hallarse la conciencia, cuando es un sucedáneo de la conciencia. Esto . . . abrir el cajón . . . esto Esto ESTO ¿es la conciencia? (Gálvez.) ¿Hay Dios? (Cayó.) ¿Es la conciencia? (Cayó de espaldas.) ¿Hay Dios? (. . . «y entonces ha oido como caía en el buzón») . . . ¿Es la conciencia? (Sangra. Naturalmente, sangra.) ¿Dios? (Las piernas no están ya firmes ni separadas.) ¿La conciencia? (Bueno.) (1994: 26).

Jorge’s actions on this day, the idea of the letter written without the intention of sending it – and doubtless much more – have a literary source: ‘La estancia vacía, de Morgan’ (1994: 21). As with Arlt’s characters in La isla desierta, Jorge’s sense of reality has become distorted, leaving him prey to fantasies; however, Benedetti’s protagonist is more imaginatively active than Arlt’s clerks. While Benedetti does not overplay the social and bureaucratic dimensions, he nevertheless locates the story firmly within Montevidean routine. The scene in which Jorge’s betrayal first emerges is set in the bureaucratic environment: against the background of rows of desks, the employees act out the players’ moves in a recent football match; this produces no censure from the manager, Gálvez, when he enters the office. Then, as Jorge’s crisis intensifies, the employees, avoiding the urgent human realities of the situation, discuss a forthcoming transport strike. Of course, no work is done: ‘Los expedientes llegan pero no se trabaja con los expedientes. Hay temas, hay asunto, hay comidilla’ (1994: 25). Significantly, the mechanism that sets in train the tragedy is the thorough-going social–bureaucratic corruption. Gálvez has two assistants who vie for favour: one procures him women – including Celeste; the other’s role is unclear, but it is connected with financial deals, which prosper thanks to pay-offs to government ministers: [E]l ministro aceptaba la modificación del artículo tercero, exigiendo solamente la participación de un inesperadamente módico treinta-por-ciento de los beneficios que el cambio proporcionaría a Gálvez. El [. . .] Ministro hacía mal en pedir ahora un porcentaje tan por debajo del tácito arancel, pero la verdad era que el Ministro «no quería comprometerse demasiado» (1994: 23).

Jorge’s actions are of course extreme; and yet the final implication is that even murder is insufficient to enable him to break through, to cease being


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a grey man. At the end of the story his colleagues rush in, Celeste denounces him as a murderer; Jorge stands, distraught: Así nadie se da cuenta que uno está llorando, que uno no se da cuenta que uno está llorando. «Soy otro», dice. Pero no lo es (1994: 26).

Benedetti maintains this notion of the extreme act of violence, as social protest and as revenge for betrayal in love, in ‘No tenía lunares’. The story opens as the protagonist, Rafael, wakes to the new day. Realising that a colleague and his wife, Aurora, are having an affair, he feels revulsion towards her. However, for now, routine prevails, as Aurora wakes, calls him ‘querido’ and initiates sex – which he cannot avoid since it is too early to leave for the office. The rest of the story consists of his coming to terms with his situation, devising and carrying out plans to get rid of Aurora herself, and of his desire for her. This is achieved when, on leaving Aurora at her mother’s house, he no longer sees the moles on his wife’s neck, the lunares, which previously had excited him. The story divides into nine sections, which fall into three groups of three. In the first series Rafael reflects on his betrayal, how and when it has come about – while the last three chronicle the cool execution of his plan. The central three sections have a number of interesting features. First, Rafael’s reflection on his dilemma, as well as his initial steps to resolve it, are enclosed within the protocols and routines of the office. Second, through a sub-plot and its protagonist, Valverde, the idea of the absurd, purifying, violent act is introduced. In this context, the information that Rafael has a gun sets the reader on the wrong track as regards the protagonist’s thought processes – and these false expectations are maintained almost to the end of the story. The main product of the interaction between Rafael and Valverde is greater depth and lucidity in Rafael, than in Jorge Ayolas, of ‘Esta mañana’. The story’s fourth section consists of Rafael’s impeccably drafted report to the manager, detailing Valverde’s misconduct (he has stolen a cheque) and the subsequent events. Words relating to the organisation, such as Oficina, always have a capital letter, and the tone of the report is formal in the extreme. Benedetti highlights this humorously by the inclusion of direct speech of a very different tone: Para mejor comprensión de la incidencia por parte del señor Director, el suscrito deja constancia que el señor Valverde padre, al ser interrogado sobre el proceder de su hijo, manifestó textualmente: ‘Siempre ha sido una porquería. Hagan con él lo que quieran. Si prefieren mandarlo a la cárcel mejor. Lo que es a mí, me tiene lleno.’ El suscrito comparte este criterio (1994: 60–1).

This formal, impersonal language and the mentality it represents, contains or frames other elements; indeed it dominates them. Rafael has been shaped by


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the bureaucratic organisation, rather as Mariani’s Santana was. As in Santana’s case bureaucratic concerns override personal considerations: his superiors, indifferent to his predicament (although they have been aware of the infidelity for longer than he has) increase demands on him by bringing forward the deadline for his report. A second set of intercalations in the bureaucratic discourse consist of Rafael’s anguished but lucid reflection. Like Santana he feels inadequate, and yet at the same time, as in Santana’s case, indications emerge of moral strength. First, Rafael’s main concern is to protect his young son, Carlitos; second, he decides that he must acknowledge the betrayal – while rejecting any temptation to avenge himself by intervening in the marriage of Francisco, his wife’s lover. However, this is also the moment when he decides to buy a revolver, an action that belies his calm reflection. Surprisingly, given the negativity of his report, the next section is a conversation between Rafael and Valverde, which is set in a café. Here the mismatch of discourses is almost Pinteresque. In reply to the report to management, which Rafael has read to him, Valverde offers an impassioned defence; Rafael meanwhile sits, indifferent – perhaps preoccupied – doodling. Rafael seguía haciendo infantiles cabezas de gatos sobre la copia del informe que había leído al otro. [. . .] «Oiga, Valverde», dijo Rafael al concluir las primeras ciento veinte cabezas de gato, «alguna vez su mujer le puso cuernos?» (1994: 61).

Valverde’s is a curious case. On the one hand his urge to commit an absurd act in order to regain a sense of self (he contemplates shooting someone – perhaps Rafael – and then committing suicide) resembles the thought pattern of Erdosain, the protagonist of Arlt’s Los siete locos–Los lanzallamas.4 On the other hand, he lacks Arltian anguish, and his ‘resentimiento contra la sociedad’ is ambiguous, amounting to the sense that ‘me sentía comprendido en un engaño solidario’ (1994: 61). He even regards his theft as a failure, a feeble attempt at the absurd act. Indeed, since his father has repaid the money, the theft is merely a transaction, contained within the bureaucratic system. In fact, Valverde’s assimilation is even more thorough-going, into an allembracing system: whereas Erdosain’s theft brings about instant dismissal and the threat of prosecution, Valverde’s dismissal is expected to take take at least a year. Meanwhile the system will provide for him, while he tries again to summon the courage to defy it by killing himself. He appreciates perfectly

4 Erdosain commits an absurd theft from his employers, whereupon he moves from a miserable white-collar existence to society’s lunatic fringe. Eventually he murders his lover, before committing suicide.


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his position. His is a kind of insanity, no doubt, but his exasperation at the embrace is understandable. Rafael too is deeply assimilated, and not a little mad – but his strategy is impeccable, given the circumstances. His plan to deal with Aurora and Francisco does not disturb the office rules: ‘A las tres Rafael pidió autorización para salir’ (1994: 62). He then sits in a café, sadly taking stock of his life: childhood without a father, his mother’s death, a wild youth of tangos and brothels; he reflects that being a good husband is the same as being a fool – and he regrets carrying a gun, which he regards as in poor taste. He also reflects bitterly on the days sacrificed to the office for his family’s sake: Extrañaba este sol todavía alto que no conocía, este sol de los ociosos, de los burgueses, de los estudiantes, de la mujer que uno deja en casa y de los amigos que faltan sin aviso (1994: 62).

Rafael, like Mariani’s clerks, has turned his back on the world of freedom and irresponsibility, he has entered the office, has conscientiously played his part in society – and he too has been betrayed, in his case at home as well as at the office. Throughout the final scene Rafael remains perfectly calm, and connected to his sense of orderly routine. As he arrives home to confront the lovers, he hears a tram passing – identifying it as the route number ten, which passes at twenty-five minutes past the hour. Then, as the couple get dressed, Rafael notes Francisco’s slovenly demeanour, which contrasts with his own meticulous habits: ‘El se cepillaba los dientes tres veces al día, renovaba diariamente sus calcetines y su camisa, la ropa interior cada tres días’ (1994: 63). During the taxi ride to his mother-in-law’s house, he reflects how civilised their behaviour is: ‘tan comprensivos y modernos como en una buena película inglesa’ (1994: 63). The theme of the English or British way continues when Rafael tells Francisco to send Carlitos to the British School – or risk a bullet in the head. Finally, the business concluded, Rafael notes that he just has time to catch the bus that leaves at ten minutes to the hour, presumably back to the office. Rafael is a fracasado, obsessively ordered almost to the point of madness; yet he is lucid and realises that the disappearance of his obligations signifies not freedom, but chaos: Rafael estaba pensando que nada de aquello (la infancia, el café, las prostitutas) era recuperable, ni como presente decisivo, ni como sucedáneo de otros buenos recuerdos, desmentidos recuerdos (1994: 64).

Rafael’s life has been shaped, his thinking channelled irrevocably; consequently his life has no further meaning. And yet, in certain respects he is not a hollowed shell but a sensitive, humane man who in his own eccentric way understands the rules, and within them coolly plays a bold game, in order to ensure his family’s stability.


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Montevideanos Benedetti’s best-known collection of short fiction contains several stories in which office life is significant; notably the first story, ‘El presupuesto’ (1949), in which the office is both the setting and the subject.5 The story is set in a small, anonymous government office, presumably in Montevideo, although as Patricia Odber points out (1995: 552–3), there is no specific identification of location, and indeed scant reference to any urban context beyond the office. Odber’s discussion is important for her careful exposition of Benedetti’s technical subtlety. She also adduces links to other authors who wrote about petty functionaries: Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Maupassant as the principal precursors – and, in passing, Manuel de Castro. The similarities between Historia de un pequeño funcionario and Benedetti’s story are many. Both are set in unidentified government offices, and in both the ministry is the central fact of the employees’ life; both offices are distanced from and unconcerned with the public, who are simply the source of meaningless expedientes; finally, bureaucratic stasis, the hours spent waiting to see superiors (and years waiting for them to die) are found in both works. Odber links ‘El presupuesto’ to Gogol’s ‘The Overcoat’ and to Dostoyevsky’s Poor Folk, as well as suggesting that the atmosphere of Benedetti’s story approaches the Kafkaesque. The affinity with the Russian writers is of course shared with Benedetti’s Argentine precursor-colleagues, Mariani and Arlt. As to the question of the echoes of Kafka, ‘El presupuesto’ is certainly about all-encompassing bureaucracy; however, while an allegorical or symbolic dimension may be suggested, the bureaucracy portrayed is gently and convincingly Uruguayan, and lacks the nightmarish quality found in the work of Kafka – or indeed in that of Benedetti’s Argentine contemporary, Ezekiel Martínez Estrada, whose ‘Sábado de Gloria’ is discussed in the next chapter. The key to Benedetti’s story is expressed in the sentence, ‘Un nuevo presupuesto es la ambición máxima de una oficina pública’ (1994: 77). The ever-present hope for a new budget, and the clerks’ straitened circumstances in its absence, dominates office routine. Then, the rumour of a new budget fires the clerks’ imaginations, raising their expectations as consumers, while making them less prudent; it also focuses group behaviour even more strongly on what they receive from the system, and causes them to abandon altogether their already limited sense of being in the office to provide a service.

5

Montevideanos was first published in 1959, and comprised eleven stories, written between 1954 and 1958. Eight more stories were later added, including ‘Sábado de Gloria’ (1950), and ‘El presupuesto’, which was previously in Esta mañana (Englekirk and Ramos, 1967: 122–3).


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The story is a microcosm of the helpless circularity that Uruguayan life can be: the characters are sceptical and even cynical – but do not see the connection between their own idle passivity and the abysmal service that they in turn receive. It is a vicious spiral of decline, and in ‘El presupuesto’ the connections are obvious. The story opens with stasis: the office has not had a new budget for many years – since the 1920s in fact. Next, the relationship to work is established (references are always to stopping or leaving work): ‘cuando el trabajo disminuía [el Jefe] se sentaba familiarmente sobre uno de nuestros escritorios’ (1994: 77). The manager’s familiar action introduces the ethos of social cohesion and solidarity, certainly within the bureaucracy, although the use of job titles, never names, firmly limits intimacy. The manager’s role is that of a storyteller narrating, time and again, the story of a Golden Age when he was young, and one day his manager had announced, ‘«Muchacho, tenemos presupuesto nuevo»’ (1994: 77). A third key element introdued in the initial paragraphs is the clerks’ concept of their predicament. They see themselves as Robinson Crusoes, abandoned and helpless on their ‘pequeña isla administrativa’ (1994: 77). This sense of abandonment on the periphery, in helpless dependence, is to some extent applicable to Uruguay in general. Indeed, the allusion to English literature is appropriate, since at the time when the story was written, Britain’s economic withdrawal from Uruguay was taking place. The internal workings of the office initially seem a model of cooperation and social justice: each member makes the appropriate contribution to the office’s economy. The problem is that this cooperation has nothing to do with work, but has three goals: to provide daily refreshment (mate and tea); to maintain cultural connectedness (newspapers and films); to while away the time (chess and draughts). The second reference to work, like the first, follows the same pattern of movement away from it: work is what happens before the afternoon chess games, and in itself has no meaning: Jugábamos de cinco a seis, cuando ya era imposible que llegaran nuevos expedientes, ya que el letrero de la ventanilla advertía que después de las cinco no se recibían «asuntos». A veces alguien venía y preguntaba el número de su «asuntos». Nosotros le dábamos el del expediente y el hombre se iba satisfecho (1994: 78).

The pattern is reinforced in the third allusion to work. One afternoon, momentous news stops all activity; the relative importance of their activities is clear: ‘suspendimos la partida de ajedrez, el mate y el trámite administrativo’ (1994: 79). The news is that, four months after the death of the ministry’s head of finance, a new director has been appointed, with the consequence that a proposal for a new budget for the office might be processed. Months later, as the rumour circulates that the minister has asked for a report on the budget,


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the clerks are surprised that their unofficial contact cannot obtain details of the report, on grounds of confidentiality: Nosotros queríamos saber qué decía el informe, pero el tío no pudo averiguarlo porque era «estrictamente confidencial». Pensamos que eso era sencillamente una estupidez, porque nosotros, a todos aquellos expedientes que traían una tarjeta en el ángulo superior con leyendas tales como «muy urgente», «trámite preferencial» o «estrictamente reservado», los tratábamos en igualdad de condiciones que a los otros (1994: 80).

Finally, as their desperation grows, the main activity every afternoon is rehearsing an appeal for a new budget, which they hope to present to the minister in person; then, on the appointed day, the entire staff except for the doorman and one typist, abandon the office and make their way to the ministry. Clearly, anyone expecting business to be transacted by this office will wait a long time. There is no clue as to where the office fits in the hierarchy or sequence of administrative procedures: it is just another cell in a machinery, which, for all we know, may be a closed circuit like one of Escher’s drawings. And the clerks themselves find that their own asunto of the budget is subject to the same endless procrastination and vague information. The second theme of the story is individual aspiration; when the first rumour of a new budget circulates each clerk suddenly discovers material ambition. As Odber observes, they ‘feel less like a member of a collectivity and more like an individual’, although their aspirations are ‘lacklustre, almost paltry dreams about possessing banal material objects’ (1995: 550–1). She goes further, suggesting that most of the items cannot be shared, which implies selfishness, and that they enhance the status of the owner, which implies vanity. (While it is true that the narrator’s silver-topped fountain pen is in its modest way a luxury item, the objects of desire are perfectly justifiable: shoes to replace a worn-out pair; a handbag to replace one five years old; a bicycle; a winter overcoat; moreover, there is no reason to suppose that the Auxiliar Segundo would refuse to lend his colleagues his new books.) The two main points about the coveted items are, first, that in the absence of the expected new budget and pay rise, the purchases worsen the already difficult economic circumstances of the clerks; second, scant material benefit is derived, since the items are of poor quality. There is a certain symmetry to the system: although the clerks are poorly paid, they at least have secure jobs – and they know that the reason for this security is not a question of policy; rather, it is the result of the system’s inertia: La seguridad de que no nos dejarían cesantes. Para que ello pudiera acontecer, era preciso que se reuniesen los senadores, y nosotros sabíamos que los senadores apenas si se reunían cuando tenían que interpelar a un ministro. [. . .] La Seguridad existía. Claro que también existía la otra seguridad, la de


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que nunca tendríamos un aumento que nos permitiera comprar un sobretodo al contado (1994: 78).

The clerks are part of a system in which even important matters are left unattended. As insiders they are aware of this and exploit it: they are not victims but accomplices. One might reasonably ask why they allow themselves to believe in the new budget, why they decide they need items that they had not needed before, and why they allow themselves to fall into debt as a result. Perhaps the answer is that in their grey security of numberless, meaningless empty bureaucratic days, they need to believe in something, and that (apart from working) anything that varies the tedious, unproductive routine, will do. While ‘El presupuesto’ is the archetypal office narrative, in other stories from Montevideanos, office routine and bureaucratic matters are significant, in dramatically varied ways. Two stories reveal the ugly dealings in which, for one reason or another, office people find themselves enmeshed. One, ‘Tan amigos’, exemplifies Benedetti’s statement in ‘Rebelión de los amanuenses’ that the café is effectively an annexe of the office. In this story, two colleagues who are also supposedly friends meet for coffee. One of them, referred to as el otro, has been associated with the discovery of a compromising document, and has defended himself by pointing out that he was not the first person in the office on the day in question. However, in defending himself he has (he says unintentionally) implicated his colleague, el de azul. El otro knows that el de azul has information and contacts that he can use to take revenge by having him dismissed. Distraught, el otro professes his loyalty to his supposed friend, appealing to him to remember that he, unlike el de azul, desperately needs his job to support his family. After the wretched el otro leaves, thinking that he is safe, el de azul coolly steps across the road to the telegraph office, doubtless to denounce his friend. The dialogue is dense and terse, and because the offence is not specified in detail, it is initially difficult to follow. Nevertheless, el de azul emerges as a cold, predatory character, who is well ensconced within the system, while el otro gains our sympathy, to the extent that we probably conclude that he is in essence innocent: perhaps he has made an error that has been covered up, or perhaps under pressure he has done something wrong – or, indeed, perhaps he has simply been framed. Whatever the case, we feel an encompassing web of corruption. In ‘Aquí se respira bien’ the same issue emerges from a different perspective. A young boy, Gustavo, has his illusions about the office and of his father’s place in it rudely shattered. He looks up to his father and idealises the office: – ¿Te gustaría estar con el Viejo, eh? Gustavo recoge como un premio el tono de camaradería. Una bocanada de ternura lo obliga a decir algo, cualquier cosa.


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¿Qué hacés en la oficina? – Y . . . trabajo. – Pero . . . ¿en qué trabajás? – Informo expedientes, firmo resoluciones. Por un instante, Gustavo imagina a su padre trepado en un alto pupitre, firmando resoluciones, informando expedientes, todos voluminosos como la Historia Sagrada. Pero en seguida acomoda la imagen en su modesta realidad. – Entonces . . . ¿sos un jefe? – Claro (1994: 104).

The conversation then turns to Gustavo’s future. Lying, he says that his favourite school subject is history, to which the father replies that this will not lead to a professional job. In that case, replies Gustavo, he will work in the office. The father, while pleased at the intelligence of Gustavo’s manoeuvre, nevertheless thinks that his son should pursue his genuine talent, for mathematics: – Así que historia, ¿eh . . . ? Si no supiera que multiplicás y dividís como una maquinita . . . Gustavo se pone colorado. No le hace gracia el elogio. El quiere entrar en la oficina, colocarse junto al enorme pupitre del padre, alcanzarle los expedientes para que los autorice y pasar el secante sobre la firma. – No te recomiendo la oficina – dice el Viejo (1994: 105).

The father’s words have no effect on the boy. Reality intrudes, however, in the form of a tramp, who stops to talk to the father. – Mire qué casualidad encontrarlo aquí . . . ¿Está de licencia? – Sí. [. . .] – ¿Y cuándo vuelve? – Mañana. – Bueno, entonces iré a verlo. [. . .] – Tengo que llevarle un regalito . . . ¿eh . . .? Para que camine aquella orden de pago. [. . .] – Si no recuerdo mal, es un papelito de cien . . ., ¿qué le parece? – Mañana hablamos. Mañana. Gustavo nota que el padre ha envejecido diez años (1994: 106).

Gustavo begins to perceive the corrupt unpleasantness of the world with which his father is involved. There is no explanation, but the father brings Gustavo into a different kind of sharing than the one which he imagined: guilty complicity. – Mejor no le digas a tu madre que encontramos a éste . . . – No – dice Gustavo (1994: 106).

He is leaving his confident childhood innocence, and entering solitude. Previously, Gustavo’s mother (who will now in a sense be the family innocent) has often gently mocked him for still wanting to walk hand-in-hand with mother or father. Now, not quite understanding what is happening, but


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perhaps remembering again his schoolfriend’s calling his father a buena pieza, Gustavo detaches his hand from his father’s and ‘la mete en el bolsillo del pantalón y se muerde el labio hasta hacerlo sangrar’ (1994: 107). Two stories, ‘Sábado de Gloria’ and ‘Familia Iriarte’, are about couples whose relationships are destroyed. The first, which is about an established couple, comprises two distinct halves; the first deals with the day-to-day life of a couple, one working in a shop, the other in an office – rushing around, trying to survive financially and to maintain their personal relationships; the second half is the sudden illness and death in hospital of the woman, and the man’s desolate reflection on his bereavement. In the opening scene the man wakes after his Saturday siesta; however, such is the pressure of his life that he assumes that it is early on a working day: ‘Primero pensé que serían las seis y cuarto de la mañana y debía ir a la oficina’ (1994: 82). There follow three dense paragraphs in which, from the perspective of the provisional liberty of the weekend, the character reflects on the pressure of working days: Saber que puedo disponer del tiempo como si fuera libre, como si no tuviera que correr dos cuadras, cuatro de cada seis mañanas, para ganarle al reloj en que debo registrar mi llegada. [. . .] Durante la semana no tengo tiempo. Cuando llego a la oficina me esperan cincuenta o sesenta asuntos a los que debo convertir en asuntos contables, estamparles el sello de contabilizado en fecha y poner mis iniciales con tinta verde. A las doce tengo liquidados aproximadamente la mitad y corro cuatro cuadras para poder introducirme en la plataforma del ómnibus (1994: 82).

After a twenty-five minute lunch at home – alone because Gloria has already left for work – he runs for the bus again, and his afternoon’s work begins: Cuando llego a las dos, escrituro las veinte o treinta operaciones que quedaron pendientes y a eso de las cinco acudo con mi libreta al timbrazo puntual del vicepresidente que me dicta las cinco o seis cartas de rigor que debo entregar, antes de las siete, traducidas al inglés o al alemán (1994: 82).

Twice a week the couple go out in the evening, usually to the cinema, while on the other days he goes to his second job, then returns home, exhausted: Los otros días [. . .] yo atiendo la contabilidad de dos panaderías, cuyos propietarios – dos gallegos y un mallorquín – ganan lo suficiente fabricando bizcochos con huevos podridos, pero más aun regentando las amuebladas más concurridas de la zona sur. De modo que cuando regreso a casa, ella está durmiendo o – cuando volvemos juntos – cenamos y nos acostamos en seguida, cansados como animales. Muy pocas noches nos queda cuerda para el consumo conyugal (1994: 83).

This is not a straightforward story. The impression is of a helter-skelter existence in which personal life suffers. Clearly, we must accept that the character gets up very early in order to get to the office by clocking-in time.


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We must also take his word that he needs a second job, even though he seems to be a well qualified private-sector worker. However, he only works four days a week in his main job. He gives the impression that processing sixty or so transactions each day is a great deal of work – but we know little about these transactions, how much work they represent. Lunchtime is presented as a whirlwind – and yet he has a two-hour break: time for his four courses, and to read the newspaper. He must therefore spend an inordinate amount of time on buses. Then we know that he has two hours at the end of the day to translate five or six letters into English or German. The overt message seems to be that here is a highly educated man working under pressure. But it is quite likely that these are standard business letters, easily typed in twenty minutes each. The second job raises other issues. The character is resentful and xenophobic: according to him the foreigners prosper dishonestly, and at their customers’ risk, in their main business (baking with rotten eggs). A number of implications can be read into their second source of wealth, the amuebladas.6 Clearly, there is some suggestion of moral repugnance, at the alleged greed itself, and at the notion of deriving income from transient sex. Further, it is clear that the protagonist believes that the time he spends working for these people directly reduces his conjugal sexual happiness. Perhaps, too, Benedetti prompts us to reflect on the social significance of the existence of amuebladas – a veritable institution in River Plate cities. ‘Sábado de Gloria’ is not quite what it at first seems to be. We are presented with a couple whose opportunities for relaxation and togetherness are perceived as very limited. We learn that they have had a tiff the previous evening, and that the anonymous narrator eagerly anticipates their reconciliation during the weekend – which does not happen, because of Gloria’s sudden, fatal illness. It is certainly tragic, and it is tempting to conclude that the apparently demanding weekday schedule is in some way responsible. The connection is real, but it seems to be mainly the product of the protagonist’s habits of thought, his unnecessary commuting, and his conviction that he works hard – rather than of unreasonable external demands. It seems to be another case of false consciousness in the bureaucratised mind. In ‘Familia Iriarte’ the introjection of the office into the emotional life of the protagonist is taken to the extreme: it is responsible for creating and eventually undermining a relationship – albeit in bizarre circumstances. The story hinges on secrecy, on unspoken understanding – and misunderstanding. In the first phase of the story we are presented with a situation that is abnormal and pathetic, but plausible. A group of clerk-receptionists in a stockbroking office understand that certain regular telephone calls into the office are from the boss’s five programas (mistresses) – although each caller is always identified, to give the appearance of business, as ‘familia’. The

6

Hotels where rooms are rented by the hour, for sexual encounters.


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clerks speculate – indeed, sexually fantasise – about the various women, often differing in their imaginings. However, all agree that ‘Familia Iriarte’ is above the rest: ‘todos coincidíamos en que era divina, más aún, todos habíamos construido la misma imagen a partir de su voz’ (1994: 131). The image, as expressed by the main protagonist, is of an ideal: Pero la única que tenía voz de mujer ideal era la familia Iriarte. Ni gorda ni flaca, con las curvas suficientes para bendecir el don del tacto que nos da natura; ni demasiado terca ni demasiado dócil, una verdadera mujer, eso es: un carácter. Así la imaginaba. Conocía su risa franca y contagiosa y desde allí inventaba su gesto. Conocía sus silencios y sobre ellos creaba sus ojos. Negros, melancólicos. Conocía su tono amable, acogedor, y desde allí inventaba su ternura (1994: 131).

It is plausible that in individual fantasy and collective banter a group of clerks in an office should speculate thus. However, the boss’s dominance and the clerks’ subordination have an archetypal air: the office structure is perhaps like a harem, with patriarch and eunuchs; or a primitive society with an alpha male and his subordinates; alternatively, the boss may be understood as a paternalistic symbol, of an establishment that monopolises resources. The story charts a failure to transcend these structures of dominance and subordination. The irony is that the opportunity is missed, in great measure because of the main protagonists’ inability to speak their minds, to bridge the gulf between reality and fantasy; in other words, the failure depends on complicity in secrecy. The other element is the clerks’ (and especially the main male protagonist’s) erroneous conviction that they will recognise ‘Familia Iriarte’ if she walks into the office: they will recognise the ideal woman when they see her: Estábamos seguros de que si un día llegaba a abrir la puerta de la oficina y simplemente sonreía, aunque no pronunciase palabra, igual la íbamos a reconocer a coro, porque todos habíamos creado la misma sonrisa inconfundible (1994: 131).

Two parallel elements set the plot in motion. First, the anonymous receptionist plucks up the courage to speak to ‘Familia Iriarte’, who replies courteously, eventually recognising his voice and greeting him with the phrase, ‘«¿Qué tal, secretario?»’ (1994: 132). Simultaneously the protagonist reveals his own emotional make-up, as a creature of some complexity and contradiction. He sees himself as irredeemably sentimental, a seeker after the ideal woman – a trait of which he is critical: ‘A veces me lo reprocho’ (1994: 132). He also realises that the culture he consumes in his leisure time is defective: Voy al cine, me trago una de esas cursilerías mejicanas, [. . .] comprendo sin lugar a dudas que es idiota, y sin embargo no puedo evitar que se me haga un nudo en la garganta (1994: 132).


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His active searching for women has always taken place while on holiday at Punta del Este, on the grounds that the women of Montevideo are harassed and sad. (He overlooks the fact that the women at the resort would be Montevideans on holiday, just like him.) [L]as pobres están siempre cansadas. Los zapatos estrechos, las escaleras, los autobuses, las dejan amargadas y sudorosas. En la ciudad uno ignora prácticamente cómo es la alegría de una mujer (1994: 132).

The plot does indeed develop in the special surroundings of the resort; one night the protagonist is losing money in the casino when he hears behind him a voice, ‘casi como un teléfono’. His fantasy becomes real: Me di vuelta, tranquilo, seguro de lo que iba a hallar, y la familia Iriarte que estaba junto a mí era tan deliciosa como la que yo y los otros habíamos inventado a partir de su voz (1994: 133).

From this point the protagonist has the opportunity of engaging in a relationship with a real woman, called Doris Freire. However, what he does is to pursue through Doris the fantasy relationship with ‘Familia Iriarte’ – which is overshadowed by the figure of El Jefe. Thus, the protagonist’s initial reactions are, first, lack of surprise that Doris’s real name is not Iriarte; and second, the realisation of his jealousy because he imagines that he is sharing her with his boss. (This jealousy never disappears, even when he is sure that Doris is loyal to him: he can only see her affectionate caresses as due to her supposed previous sexual initiation by El Jefe.) Then, one morning he greets Doris with the counterpart of ‘Familia Iriarte’s’ telephone greeting, ‘¿«Qué tal, secretaria?»’ (1994: 134). His interpretation of her response is strange, to say the least. Although Doris takes the greeting humorously, he thinks that he detects disquiet; first he wonders whether she suspects that he is the telephone receptionist; then he thinks that in reponse to his discretion she has made up her mind to break with El Jefe. What is behind this? It is curious that while for the protagonist the adventure is based on his recognising ‘Familia Iriarte’s’ voice in Doris’s, at the same time he does not want or expect Doris/Iriarte to recognise his voice as being that of the receptionist. This raises the possibility that he has been pretending to be other than he is. Doris, it transpires, is far from being a humble receptionist: Ella trabajaba en el Poder Judicial, tenía buen sueldo, era la funcionaria clave de su oficina y todos la apreciaban (1994: 134).

A key element of the story is Doris’s failure to question the protagonist, and in particular her acquiescence with his request that she should never telephone the office. Indeed, the absence of Doris’s perspective from the narrative also raises a different set of questions about her possible motivations in the relationship.


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The protagonist, it would seem, has with Doris – a Montevidean – the possibility of a better life. But he does not realise this since he is trapped, his human feelings perverted; he can only relate to Doris indirectly, through his bureaucratic fantasy: A veces no podía evitar cierta sórdida complacencia en saber que había conseguido (para mi uso, para mi deleite) una de esas mujeres inalcanzables que sólo gastan los ministros, los hombres públicos, los funcionarios de importancia. Yo: un auxiliar de secretaría (1994: 135).

The dénouement, fittingly, occurs in the office, when fantasy and reality collide. Doris arrives, to find the protagonist alone and idle (they plan to live together, and she brings details of an apartment). The telephone rings, and for the first time since he has known Doris, it is the voice of ‘Familia Iriarte’. His desire for Doris disappears, as he asks himself how he could possibly confuse the two voices. The story concludes with the protagonist’s declaration: puse punto final a este malentendido. Porque, en realidad, yo estoy enamorado de la familia Iriarte (1994: 136).

We might, however, draw different conclusions, namely that a chance combination of circumstances gave the protagonist an opportunity to grow in real life: Doris, within the context of this narrative, however she might have been, was at least real. The clerk, however, prefers to remain, unfulfilled but secure, in the bureaucratic shadowland, fantasising about a woman he has never met, who he presumes is the mistress of his bureaucratic superior.

Poemas de la oficina These are twenty short meditations on the office worker’s lot. The main themes are boredom and disorientation, resentment, numbing routine, and the wish to be elsewhere. Above all, there is a sense of time – hours and years – lost. In the first poem, ‘Sueldo’, a melancholy clerk from the provinces reflects on the modest ambition he has started out with: ‘Aquella esperanza que cabía en un dedal, / aquella alta vereda junto al barro’ (1998a: 7–8). The journey to the city has been of high hopes, both real and in fantasy: ‘aquel horóscopo de un larguísimo viaje / y el larguísimo viaje con adioses y gente / y países de nieve y corazones / donde cada kilómetro es un cielo distinto’. The real journey across Uruguay’s rolling plains is juxtaposed with the familiar Arltian and Onettian motif of the romantic mountainscape – although here there is no fantasy, but simply resignation: ‘ese aquel que uno hubiera podido ser / con otro ritmo y alguna lotería’. Finally, the mood turns to bitterness, disgust and futility, as the clerk, contemplating his pay packet, reflects that his modest hope, ‘evidentemente no cabe en este sobre / con sucios papeles de tantas manos sucias / que me pagan, es lógico, en cada / veintinueve / por tener los


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libros rubricados al día / y dejar que la vida transcurra, / gotee siempre / como un aceite rancio’. Nostalgic memories are important in ‘Dactilógrafo’ (1998a: 25–6), in which a clerk remembers scenes of childhood as he sits writing a business letter. Here, as in the story ‘No tenía lunares’, the formulaic lines of a letter frame the clerk’s personal thoughts. The thrice-repeated description of Montevideo as ‘absolutamente verde y con tranvías’ is associated with boyish exhilaration – gliding along the streets in a tram, the scents of eucalyptus trees, the scrunch of dry leaves in the pleasant El Prado district. His second memory is of his bed-time story, then the nightmares of his active imagination and his mother coming in to reassure him. This poem has none of the disappointment found in ‘Sueldo’; rather, its mood is of futility and stasis: the impersonal letter is simply the conventional ornamentation of a financial transaction. The clerk’s private thoughts do not develop, but return time and again to the dream-like memory of boyhood. He is suspended between two unrealities: an alienated present and a lost past. In ‘Cosas de uno’ (1998a: 23), the sense of alienation is constructed differently. Now it is in the hand that writes columns of figures, applies the blotter and turns the pages; the writing hand itself, which ‘verdaderamente pertenece a otros’, is observed and denounced by the clerk, who remains lucid and detached: ‘¿qué carajo / tiene que ver conmigo?’ Some poems deal specifically with the passage of time. ‘El nuevo’ (1998a: 11–13), for example, is a diptych whose first section describes the keen young clerk with his smile and smart suit, who happily immerses himself in his work: ‘Agacha la cabeza / escribe sin borrones / escribe escribe / hasta / las siete menos cinco. / Sólo entonces / suspira / y es un lindo suspiro / de modorra feliz / de cansancio tranquilo.’ The second half, twenty years later, reveals a sullen timeserver with an aching back: ‘No dirá / sí señor / dirá viejo podrido / rezará palabrotas / despacito / y dos veces al año/ pensará / convencido / sin creer su nostalgia / ni culpar el destino / que todo / todo ha sido / demasiado / sencillo.’ Meanwhile, in ‘Después’ (1998a: 29–30), the clerk contemplates retirement, when he will enjoy the world of outdoors – even if his senses are by then dulled. He anticipates his release from office routine, but realises that when that day arrives it will be too late: ‘pero el cielo de veras que no es éste de ahora / ese cielo de cuando me jubile / habrá llegado demasiado tarde.’ The denial, postponement or reduction of anticipated pleasure throughout a clerk’s life is a major theme. In ‘Verano’ (1998a: 14–15), for instance, just before the summer break, the clerk stops working and begins to daydream: ‘la cabeza remota / tengo los ojos llenos / de sueños / veo sólo paredes / se acabó / no trabajo’. But he is not yet free; the telephone rings, and he replies, ‘sí señor enseguida / comonó cuandoquiera’. Dealing with the beginning of the week, with freedom a distant prospect, ‘Lunes’ (1998a: 19–20) is an intense narrative of short lines in which punctuation is only used in a group of five lines in the middle of the


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poem – when the clerk’s head swims as he adds a series of numbers. Other elements that increase the rhythmic intensity are repetitions of identical or very similar phrases, such as ‘pucha qué triste’, and ‘me meto en el atraso’, and the concatenation, hastacuandodiosmío. The clerk’s intense, anguished concentration is framed by the ironic statement, ‘Volvió el noble trabajo’, which opens both the poem, and the final stanza – which then continues, ‘aleluya / qué peste / faltan para el domingo / como siete semanas’. However, Sunday, the day of rest, when it finally comes, does not always bring respite, as we discover in the even bleaker ‘Elegía extra’ (1998a: 32–4). The poem begins on what it seems will be a typical Sunday, ‘uno de esos / que Dios ha reservado / para el mate / la radio despacito / para el amor / repetido en los parques / para el descanso / el vino / y el Estadio’. But it is not to be, since the clerk must spend this Sunday in the hated office: ‘debo abrir puertas / de silencio horrible / debo juntarme / con mi aburrimiento / debo enfrentar mi mesa / empecinada / asquerosa de tinta / y de papeles’. Outside, the sun pursues its course, people enjoy themselves, the music of Gardel is heard; meanwhile, the clerk sits alone: ‘y yo como un intruso / y yo como una pieza / dislocada / yo frente al miedo / de la Ciudad Vieja’, faced with an inexhaustible supply of files: ‘y quedan más planillas / más planillas / más inmundas planillas / todas / con siete copias’. In the last poem, ‘Licencia’ (1998a: 42–4), the clerk’s well-earned twoweek holiday finally comes round, and is greeted with optimism. ‘Aquí empieza el descanso. / En mi conciencia y en el almanaque / junto a mi nombre y cargo en la planilla / aquí empieza el descanso. / Dos semanas.’ The next four verses, which describe the holiday, unsurprisingly contain many images connected to the typical stay on the coast east of Montevideo: the sea and its rollers; the sky and horizon; the grass, crickets, the moon; the sun, sunset, pine trees. However, throughout, time’s ominous passage is sensed. At the beginning the clerk hurries to re-establish contact with the world: ‘Debo apurarme porque hay tantas cosas / recuperar el mar / eso primero.’ Almost immediately the sense of its impossibility emerges, as he must ‘hallar toda la vida en cuatro olas’. And indeed time has changed, jaded the elements: the waves are ‘tristes como sueños’, the sky is sterile, the horizon foreshortened, the grass less green. Nevertheless, gradually he relaxes and the fifth verse is tranquilly philosophical: ‘Pero nadie se asusta / nadie quiere / pensar que se ha nacido para esto / pensar que alcanza y sobra / con los pinos / y la mujer / y el libro / y el crepúsculo.’ Dusk leads to night, however, and night to morning – with its early alarm call; the last two, short, verses, resuming the rhythm and vocabulary of the first, see the return to work: ‘Aquí empieza el trabajo. / En mi cabeza y en el almanaque / junto a mi nombre y cargo en la planilla. / / Aquí empieza el trabajo. / Mansamente. / Son / cincuenta semanas.’ ‘Licencia’ is unique in its serenity; and while the dulling effect of the working year is evident, there is no sense of the workplace being oppressive – and the holiday does provide the needed respite. Clearly, the imagery during the second, third


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and fourth stanzas, of the brevity of leisure time and of the years’ dulling of the appreciation of the natural elements, is negative, and perhaps could be in some degree anxiety-producing. But the overall effect is almost of timelessness, of comfortable, endlessly repeated routine. Of those poems set in the office, two are particularly sad and reflective. First, in ‘Angelus’ (1998a: 37), the clerk looks out of the window of a citycentre office, at the wall of the building opposite, then down on the roofs of buses, which pass, shiny-wet like fish, along the rainy street; he notes the melancholy note of sounding horns and reflects, ‘Aquí no hay cielo, / aquí no hay horizonte.’ This, together with the phrases ‘el techo de los ómnibus brillantes como peces / y esa melancolía que impregna las bocinas’ are key elements of a description that is typical, while quintessentially Montevidean: gloomy, drawn-in, wet autumn days; uninspiring architecture; dull grey Leyland ómnibus chugging quietly round the gloomy city in small flotillas, like browsing fish. Rather like Euston Road on a November afternoon, in other words – and most unlike the roaring, colourful, Mercedes-Benzpowered, hurtling chaos of Buenos Aires and the Brazilian metropoli. The focus then switches from the streetscape to the interior of the office, and to the clerk. Desolation: Hay una mesa grande para todos los brazos y una silla que gira cuando quiero escaparme. Otro día se acaba y el destino era esto. Es raro que uno tenga tiempo de verse triste: siempre suena un orden, un teléfono, un timbre, y, claro, está prohibido llorar sobre los libros porque no queda bien que la tinta se corra.

In the next poem, ‘Amor de tarde’ (1998a: 38–9), a clerk briefly interrupts his labours at four, five and six o’clock, to think about his love: ‘Es una lástima que no estés conmigo.’ In the first stanza he completes a file, then describes routine actions such as stretching his legs. In the second, however, he reflects on the impersonal nature of his life in the office; he is ‘una manija que calcula intereses’; ‘dos manos que saltan sobre cuarenta teclas’; ‘un oído que escucha cómo ladra el teléfono’; and ‘un tipo que hace números’. As time wears on and six o’clock strikes, he dreams of his two worlds coming together. ‘Podrías acercarte de sorpresa / y decirme «¿Qué tal?» y quedaríamos / yo con la mancha roja de tus labios / tú con el tizne azul de mi carbónico.’ It is a modest ambition: the humanising of the office represented by a kiss’s lipstick trace; and by the hired, copy carbon-stained hands for once expressive of their real owner. There are two main ideas that we can take from this poem. First, it confirms the relative comfort of the Uruguayan bureaucratic experience. Certainly, the telephone is presented as aggressive: ‘ladra’; but by and large there is little


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sense of pressure, and the Uruguayan clerk has plenty of time to contemplate his existence. However, at the same time the poem marks very clearly the contrasting bureaucratic visions of Onetti and Benedetti. While Benedetti’s subservient clerk wistfully daydreams about his love entering his world of dull routine and bringing him to life, Jason, the autonomous office-worker protagonist of Onetti’s Tiempo de abrazar, is visited by his Virginia, who perches on his desk, smoking and chatting for a while, until lunchtime. Several poems allude to the economic and hierarchical position of the clerks, and to their individual and collective response to these. In ‘Cuenta corriente’ (1998a: 16), for example, the impoverished clerk mentally addresses his prosperous employer, ‘usted que firma con mi pluma fuente’, asking how, in contrast to himself, the latter feels each night, ‘¿cómo hace noche a noche / para cerrar los ojos / sin una sola deuda / sin una sola deuda / sin una sola sola sola deuda?’ Meanwhile, in ‘Aguinaldo’ (1998a: 17–18), the clerk calculates that, even with his bonus he still cannot settle his debts: ‘no le pago a nadie’. He enumerates the tradesmen who will not be paid, such as the tailor and the grocer, before repeating, ‘no le pago a nadie’. He will not be celebrating, but rather, ‘iré por Dieciocho / silbando un tango amargo’. Finally, two poems explore the clerk’s repressed state and damaged sense of identity. The first of these, ‘Ellos’ (1998a: 9–10), is the definitive statement of Benedetti’s clerk’s insignificance and powerlessness. Each of the four stanzas begins with the same tedious line, ‘Ellos saben si soy o si no soy.’ Ellos, the bosses, carry out various actions that affect the clerk’s life. For example, they ‘abren la puerta y dicen: «Pase»’; ‘por detrás de los dientes dicen: «Hola»’; ‘miran al cielo y dicen «¿Cuánto?»’. The request presumably refused, the poem then concludes bitterly, with the clerk’s voice – or rather lack of voice: ‘pero yo, como ellos me instruyeron, no digo ni caramba ni ahí te pudras’. Meanwhile, ‘Oración’ (1998a: 31), is a short supplication in which the clerk pleads not to be abandoned in his hour of need – the hour in question being ten minutes to seven in the evening, when he finishes for the day. Foreshadowing the feelings of Santomé, the protagonist of La tregua, who fears retirement because then his life will be meaningless, this clerk, who has become hollowed out and dependent on a daily routine that he knows to be false, fears the emptiness that comes at the end of the office day: ‘no me dejes / depués de las siete/ menos diez / Señor / cuando esta niebla de ficción / se esfume’.

La tregua The novel opens as Martín Santomé, an office manager, counts the remaining days until his retirement, at fifty. He leads an alienated existence, hating work; and, although a family man, he is a widower of many years and is not close to his three children. Retirement will release him from bureaucratic


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tedium, but only into a new form of meaningless solitude: empty leisure. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with a new employee at the office, Laura Avellaneda, a young woman of twenty-four, and through her rediscovers emotional life. Their relationship is cut short by her sudden death; it was no more than a tregua, a respite. The novel ends as Santomé again faces a bleak, lonely retirement. Benedetti’s novel marks the high point of the River Plate narrative of the office. Remaining firmly within the bounds of mainstream social and psychological realism, Benedetti provides a convincing portrait of Montevidean life in the late 1950s. In Santomé he creates a protagonist who epitomises mediocrity, and yet is very much a tragic figure. La tregua can be uncomfortable to read, as the author firmly maintains the gaze on the hereand-now, on the limitations, the sordid and petty behaviours of individual characters and social groups. There is little hope of transformation: the pervasive pessimism, the despair at dishonesty, the sense of closure are even more marked than in Arlt’s stark novel, El amor brujo. And indeed, this is to be expected: La tregua is the culmination of many years’ writing on the theme of bureaucratic life; and it reflects a society that had been stable and relatively prosperous for decades, but which was now succumbing to inertia and corruption. Despite the pervasive pessimism and the personal and social limitations, La tregua is in certain respects an ambitious novel, in which Benedetti takes the genre of office narrative as a serious, realist exercise, to its limits. In relation to this exploitation of the genre’s possibilities, there are a number of clearly identifiable features through which the narrative achieves maximum expressiveness; and other features simultaneously indicate arrival at the genre’s expressive limits, and point beyond them. The key structural feature of the novel is its first-person narrative, specifically the diary form, which (conventionally) permits unmediated access to the protagonist’s private thoughts. The diary form also allows flexibility, for example, in that although La tregua is a work in a realist mode, the author is not bound by temporal continuity since the narrative purports to be a document ‘as found’. Santomé’s diary covers directly a period of slightly more than a year (11 February 1957 to 28 February 1958); the entries vary in length from a few words to four pages, most being either a few lines, or roughly one page in length. The number of entries per week varies considerably, the highest frequency being the daily entries during the five weeks of the flowering of Santomé’s and Avellaneda’s relationship, immediately before her death; by contrast, after her death for almost four months there are no entries. The changing frequency and length of entries (in other words the variable temporal density) is a major factor in overcoming what is arguably one of the novel’s least plausible aspects, namely the great psychological, emotional and political development achieved in a very short time. Avellaneda’s first


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appearance as a new employee, and her death, are only separated by seven months; the duration of the personal relationship between the two characters is little more than four months; its full flowering lasts less than three months. A different kind of temporal flexibility, the juxtaposition of present, past and future, is achieved through the insertion of the diarist-narrator’s memories and anticipations, the principal example being Santomé’s frequent reflection on his past life with his late wife, Isabel. These memories are used to amplify and enrich the character’s emotional development throughout the novel: effectively his progress is simultaneously measured in relation to two timescales. Occasionally Santomé’s memories are prompted, and given more substance, by other texts. The first such case occurs when the account ledgers kept by Santomé are inspected; on observing how his script has developed over the years, he is prompted to reflect more broadly on his life. The second example is a letter from Isabel, written in 1935, when she was pregnant with the couple’s third child, Jaime. The letter is important, since it provides a measure of comparison of the protagonist’s relative maturity – as a self-reflective individual and as a member of a couple – and, as we shall see, it links to other major concerns in the novel such as Santomé’s relationships with his children; and two important themes: death, and attitudes towards homosexuality. The third element of temporal flexibility derives from Santomé’s explicit presence in the text, both as the interpreter and chronicler of his experience and as reader of his own text: his occasional references to previous diary entries, by alluding to different moments, provide another useful link mechanism for the development of the novel’s themes. The flexibility provided by these three methods permits the author to reconcile in Santomé what are effectively different personalities – or, at least, disparate emotional outlooks. They thus contribute to the resolution of the major challenge, which is how to create a convincing – but not in itself monotonous – portrayal of monotony and limitation, from within, while simultaneously providing incisive commentary on the circumstances informing this monotony. Santomé, after all, is by no means unintelligent or unsuccessful; neither is he marginal in society – either through good or ill fortune, or through any special personal attribute. In reality, however, the novel is underpinned by a kind of marginalisation, since both Santomé’s initial position as a widowed father, and his lucid isolation at the end, while undoubtedly marking him as of the mainstream in terms of character, nevertheless also make him atypical. Attention is diverted from the atypicality or marginalisation, in two ways. First, the two models of marriage with which Santomé’s circumstances are compared are aberrant: the situation of Vignale, a childhood acquaintance whom Santomé meets again, is presented as sordidly sexual, while Avellaneda’s parents’ relationship, by contrast, appears to be purely Platonic. As to future possibilities with Avellaneda, Santomé wants the relationship to break two established patterns: an uncommitted, casual sexual relationship; conventional courtship. The first


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corresponds to his current experience, the second to his past, in around 1930. In the context of this early experience, Santomé evokes the tyrannical figure of a prospective mother-in-law, who is very much in the mould of Susana Loayza, the equivalent figure in Arlt’s El amor brujo. In La tregua the lady appears twice. On the first occasion, Santomé reflects on the miserable courtship he and Isabel endured – and then remembers that he has recently seen his mother-in-law. She too, and the attitudes she represents, endure: ‘El otro día la vi por Sarandí, espigada, resuelta, inacabable, acompañando a la menor de sus seis muchachas y a un desgraciado con cara de novio en custodia. La chica y el candidato no iban del brazo’ (1998b: 142). This is exactly Arlt’s vision; however, the two authors present it quite differently. Arlt obtains a double perspective, of being both caught within the context and observing it from outside, by having his quasi-authorial protagonist voluntarily but cynically submit to the mother-in-law’s tyranny – essentially as a kind of game – and then record his experience. His version is flamboyant, and Quevedan. Benedetti’s quasi-authorial protagonist, by contrast, merely observes soberly from outside, and remembers. Benedetti’s treatment of the topic does not end there, however. First, Avellaneda’s analysis of the importance of virginity (which is discussed later) might be seen as a development of the thinking of Arlt’s Irene Loayza. Second, the mother-inlaw makes another appearance; this time Avellaneda and Santomé pass her on Montevideo’s main street, Dieciocho de Julio. Although now aged fifty, Santomé still finds the sight of her disturbing: Es increíble: han pasado años y años por mi rostro y por el suyo, y sin embargo, cuando la veo, el corazón me sigue dando un vuelco; en realidad, algo más que un vuelco, un brinco de rabia e impotencia. Una mujer invencible, tan admirablemente invencible que uno no puede menos que sacarse el sombrero (1998b: 238).

Indeed, in further reflection she emerges as a nightmarish archetype: «Mi suegra», dije. Y es cierto: mi primera y única suegra. Porque aun en el caso de que yo me casara con Avellaneda, aun en el caso de que yo nunca hubiera sido el marido de Isabel, esta altísima, potente, decisiva matrona de setenta años, habría sido siempre y hasta siempre mi Suegra Universal, inevitable, destinada, mi Suegra que procede directamente de ese Dios de terror que ojalá no exista (1998b: 238).

The relationship between Avellaneda and Santomé does not finally bring fulfilment, for reasons of literary genre not of psychology. Only a tregua is possible, because the successful continuation of a relationship that is unconstrained by established custom – and in this single sense is marginal – might be expected to bring one of two results. Either the couple would settle into a negative form of a normal routine – which would undermine the plausibility of the psychological and emotional growth on which the novel is


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based; or they would adopt a more creative way of life. If this more creative relationship were within mainstream society it would constitute an admission of the possibility of social change – and hence would challenge the fundamental pessimism of the novel; if on the other hand the relationship were outside mainstream society, it would be escapist: breaking the link between the characters and the restricting social conditions that formed them, it would destroy the novel’s basic premise. In fact, from a heterosexual perspective – although not from a homosexual one – Santomé’s understanding of himself and others develops dramatically throughout the novel; this progressive realisation is primarily due to his relationship with Avellaneda, with further insights provided by two other characters: his daughter Blanca, and an old friend, Aníbal. At the beginning of the novel Santomé is portrayed as having been emotionally dead for many years, his wife Isabel being no more than a faint memory. An episode on 28 February illustrates this sterility and also marks the tentative beginning of Santomé’s journey towards emotional understanding. Sitting after dinner on that night Blanca tearfully observes that she wants a meaningful life, that she does not want to resemble her father: ‘A veces (no te enojes, papá) también te miro a vos y pienso que no quisiera llegar a los cincuenta años y tener tu temple, tu equilibrio, sencillamente porque los encuentro chatos, gastados’ (1998b: 94). Her appeal awakens something in them both, and the scene ends as they embrace, Santomé reflecting, erroneously: ‘Es una chiquilina todavía’ (1998b: 94). Meanwhile, Santomé’s sexual activity is no more than the mechanical satisfaction of desire; he relies on chance meetings with women in shops or on the bus (the diary entry for 22 March relates one such liaison) and goes with them to an amueblada. These liaisons, or programas, are single episodes; he never meets the same woman twice. Indeed, so routine and impersonal is this behaviour that a woman has once actually remarked to him: ‘«Vos hacés el amor con cara de empleado»’ (1998b: 139). The invasion of Santomé’s sexual and emotional life by bureaucratic routine and tedium is epitomised by the way that he spends his leisure time: he sits for long, bleak Sunday afternoons in city centre cafés, observing the women who walk by. One occasion, 17 March, is particularly revealing: En un lapso de una hora y cuarto, pasaron exactamente treinta y cinco mujeres de interés. Para entretenerme hice una estadística sobre qué me gustaba más en cada una de ellas. Lo apunté en la servilleta de papel. Este es el resultado. De dos, me gustó la cara; de cuatro, el pelo; de seis, el busto; de ocho, las piernas; de quince, el trasero. Amplia victoria de los traseros (1998b: 101).

Perhaps there is self-mockery here, perhaps not; certainly, Santomé’s bureaucratic nihilism produces a comic effect – intentionally or otherwise. And yet, on another level Benedetti here takes another significant step beyond Arlt and Onetti. For example, in El amor brujo Balder observes with disgust


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the amatory behaviour of his office colleagues; meanwhile, in spite of his cynicism, he nevertheless rejects his present position, and continues to pursue dreams in both personal and professional spheres of his miserable life. Santomé, too, views with distaste the sexual behaviour of his old acquaintance Vignale, and is scathing about the way in which his colleague Suárez prospers at the office by virtue of his liaison with the daughter of a senior company figure. But Santomé’s is a life in which he acts reasonably, has a responsible but boring job and keeps a dysfunctional family together; he harbours no dream; he is resigned to his own nothingness. If it is not a contradiction in terms, Santomé represents the pinnacle of mediocrity. As he reflects: Estuve frente al espejo y no pude evitar un poco de piedad, un poco de conmiseración hacia ese tipo arrugado, de ojos con fatiga, que nunca llegó ni llegará a nada. Lo más trágico no es ser mediocre pero inconsciente de esa mediocridad; lo más trágico es ser mediocre y saber que se es así y no conformarse con ese destino que, por otra parte (eso es lo peor) es de estricta justicia (1998b: 236–7).

The relationship between Avellaneda and Santomé (surnames are used throughout) is a maturation that has both social and inner aspects. In relation to the social aspect, the most significant fact is that while the extent of knowledge and acceptance of the relationship in the protagonists’ individual social contexts varies, in the shared workplace the relationship remains secret. This is ironic, since the couple first meet in the workplace and continue working together after they have become lovers. (The significance of the office and the mentality it engenders – as well as the fact that, despite Santomé’s critical attitude to it, the organisation still exerts the power of taboo – are questions which are explored later.) In essence, the developing relationship challenges a series of conventional attitudes in the protagonists and in their social contexts. The hierarchical workplace relationship and the age difference are the first two obstacles to overcome. Once the relationship becomes possible, the question of its nature arises. Both protagonists quickly move beyond their accustomed experiences (Avellaneda has just broken a conventional courtship, while Santomé is accustomed to programas): ‘El plan trazado es la absoluta libertad. Conocernos y ver qué pasa, dejar que corra el tiempo y revisar. No hay trabas. No hay compromisos. Ella es espléndida’ (1998b: 152). However, despite Santomé’s optimism, the age difference raises questions about the relationship’s nature and duration. Of course, because of Avellaneda’s death these remain hypothetical – although one issue, that of Avellaneda’s relationship with Santomé’s children, who are her age, is resolved; indeed, Avellaneda and Blanca become friends. There is also an important conversation with Aníbal, in which Santomé’s old friend helps him towards two important realisations. First, he comes to understand that his reluctance to contemplate marriage, which is rationalised as protective of Avellaneda, is


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in fact motivated by his own jealousies and fears. The second realisation is more transcendent. It is that he does not actually know Avellaneda’s thinking about the nature of their commitment; he has not yet learned that she is an adult, and his equal. In the end, fittingly, this last important question is explored through Avellaneda’s perspective. Two major points arise. The first issue is sex, and specifically the questions of marriage and of the negotiation of virginity, as social transactions. The fact that Santomé has mentioned marriage (although he has not formally proposed it) is interpreted by Avellaneda as demonstrating his good faith, and she decides to lose her virginity with him. Her reasoning is precisely the completion of Arlt’s analysis, made thirty years previously in El amor brujo: Antes de que viniéramos aquí, [. . .] yo me di cuenta que a vos te resultaba penoso pronunciar esa palabra [matrimonio]. Un día la dijiste, [. . .] y por haberla dicho tenés toda mi gratitud. Sirvió para que yo me decidiera a creer en vos, en tu cariño. Pero no podía aceptarla, porque hubiera sido una base falsa para este presente, que era futuro entonces. De aceptarla, hubiera tenido que aceptar también que vos te doblegaras, que te obligaras a una decisión para la que no estabas maduro. Me doblegué yo, en cambio, pero [. . .] puedo estar más segura de mis reacciones que de las tuyas. Yo sabía que, aun doblegándome, no te guardaría rencor; si te forzaba a doblegarte, en cambio, no sabía si vos no me guardarías un poco de rencor. Ahora todo pasó. Ya caí. Hay algo atávico en la mujer que la lleva a defender la virginidad, a exigir y exigirse las máximas garantías para rodear su pérdida. Después, cuando una ya cayó, entonces se da cuenta que todo era un mito, una vieja leyenda para cazar maridos (1998b: 195).

She goes on to see their relationship as a matter of individual, personal commitment, independent of social formality: Lo importante es que estemos unidos por algo: ese algo existe, ¿verdad que sí? Ahora bien, ¿no te parece más poderoso, más fuerte, más lindo, que lo que nos una sea eso que verdaderamente existe, y no un simple trámite, el discurso ritual de un juez apurado y panzón? (1998b: 195–6).

Santomé too, in parallel to his developing understanding of the social nature of the couple, undertakes a journey of inner exploration. In effect this consists of two simultaneous relationships. Avellaneda re-awakens Santomé’s physical desire. He then relives in memory the strongly sensual relationship with Isabel; the more psychological, less physical relationship with Avellaneda meanwhile proceeds, both in the present and in anticipation. The two relationships converge: as Santomé compares them; as Avellaneda finds out about Santomé’s past; and as the two protagonists approach emotional and physical intimacy. Isabel appears in the narrative before Avellaneda, as the mother vaguely remembered by one of Santomé’s three children. Santomé himself has strong


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tactile memories of their nights together – when they made love in the dark – but little else. He attributes the lack of visual, daytime memory to their never having had any time together, in a life dominated by work and financial worries. It evokes the circumstances of the protagonists of ‘Sábado de Gloria’, in Montevideanos, but with the added burden of children: Llegaba a casa cansado, lleno de problemas, tal vez rabioso con la injusticia de esa semana, de ese mes. A veces hacíamos cuentas. Nunca alcanzaba. Acaso mirábamos demasiado los números, las sumas, las restas, y no teníamos tiempo de mirarnos nosotros (1998b: 92).

The next evocation of Isabel is associated with Avellaneda. When she has worked in the office for six weeks, Santomé is acutely aware of her presence but is as yet unconscious of any desire for her. Suddenly, in the diary entry for 6 April he records a dream in which they have made love. The next day’s entry is among the longest in the novel. In it Santomé once more remembers his relationship with Isabel, in which they were united by an intensely physical love, which was powerful enough to ensure harmony in their relations, and which has left a strong tactile memory. He goes on to reflect, wondering what would have happened to his desire – and hence to the relationship – as Isabel’s body aged (he does not wonder how she might have reacted as he aged), concluding that perhaps in a sense her early death was not such a tragedy. Perhaps the most important element in Santomé’s reflection is his identification of the happiness, in his early life and his marriage, with his own positive attitudes then. Isabel’s death has been very significant, of course, but it is not responsible for his current state – and neither would her continued survival have been. What is certain is that Santomé has had sufficient money, and time, to raise his children successfully – alone; actually, he has led a comfortable life: Lo peor de todo es que no han acaecido terribles cosas que me cercaran (bueno, la muerte de Isabel es algo fuerte, pero no puedo llamarla terrible; después de todo, ¿existe algo más natural que irse de este mundo?), que frenaran mis mejores impulsos, que impidieran mi desarrollo, que me ataran a una rutina aletargante. Yo mismo he fabricado mi rutina, pero por la vía más simple: la acumulación. La seguridad de saberme capaz para algo mejor, me puso en las manos la postergación, que al fin de cuentas es un arma terrible y suicida. De ahí que mi rutina no haya tenido nunca carácter ni definición; siempre ha sido provisoria, siempre ha constituido un rumbo precario, a seguir nada más que mientras duraba la postergación, nada más que para aguantar el deber de la jornada durante ese período de preparación que al parecer yo consideraba imprescindible, antes de lanzarme definitivamente hacia el cobro de mi destino. Qué pavada, ¿no? (1998b: 122).

Once Avellaneda and Santomé are established as a couple, Santomé pursues his reflection on the past relationship with Isabel, and compares it


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with the present one. The key factor is that both women are almost the same age. Once again (other than the purely physical details) we might question the contrast Santomé draws between the two women, perhaps attributing it to the protagonist’s ageing, and changed circumstances; this is, after all, a character who has maintained an active sex life, and yet has somehow avoided any meaningful contact with women. The amply proportioned Isabel is sensual, almost elemental: ‘Isabel tenía en su desnudez una fuerza inspiradora, yo la contemplaba e inmediatamente todo mi ser era sexo’ (1998b: 189). The slender Avellaneda is more complex: ‘Tener en mis brazos la concreta delgadez de Avellaneda, significa abrazar además de su sonrisa, su mirada, su modo de decir, el repertorio de su ternura, su reticiencia a entregarse por completo y las disculpas por su reticiencia’ (1998b: 190). The comparison of the two women leads to a critical consideration of his own deteriorating physique. However, the episode ends on a positive note when he decides that on balance he is better with Avellaneda: ‘Hay una compensación quizá: mi cabeza, mi corazón, en fin, yo como ente espiritual, quizá sea hoy un poco mejor que en los días y las noches de Isabel. Sólo un poco mejor, tampoco conviene ilusionarse demasiado’ (1998b: 190). Eventually Santomé achieves with Avellaneda a pinnacle of sexual happiness. Notwithstanding the complex combination of elements contributing to this new happiness, his language is hyperbolic and somewhat religious in tone. His experience seems to be the realisation of the ideal of Jorge Ayolas, the protagonist of ‘Esta mañana’: Hasta el deseo se vuelve puro, hasta el acto más definitivamente consagrado al sexo se vuelve casi inmaculado. Pero esa pureza no es mojigatería, no es afectación, no es pretender que sólo apunto al alma. Esa pureza es querer cada centímetro de su piel, es aspirar su olor, es recorrer su vientre, poro a poro. Es llevar el deseo hasta a cumbre (1998b: 231).

At the same time, this physical and psychological plenitude represents a new sense of integration. Santomé has recuperated his earlier vitality and, understanding it, can move on. Of course, it was only the beginning, and when Avellaneda dies his newly rediscovered life is lost again. Certainly, this is how the character himself understands what has happened to him: as he once more takes up his diary, four months after Avellaneda’s death, his reflection acquires an almost archetypal clarity. Avellaneda has been a spirit of resurrection; and Isabel, and all she represents in Santomé’s life, is his Euridice: Mientras estuvo Avellaneda, comprendí mejor la época de Isabel, comprendí mejor a Isabel misma. Pero ahora ella no está, e Isabel ha desaparecido detrás de un [. . .] oscuro telón de abatimiento (1998b: 247).

Although the exploration of the themes of the couple and of individual emotional fulfilment is primarily centred on, and limited by, Santomé’s roles


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as protagonist and narrator, other views (although presented indirectly) are significant: particularly those of Avellaneda and Blanca. As the novel progresses and mutual trust deepens, Avellaneda becomes Santomé’s confidante, and also expresses her own fears, hopes and ideas for and about their relationship. Her speech about virginity, which was discussed above, marks her full intellectual, emotional and physical commitment to the relationship. There is still some time for further development. For example, the entry for 8 August describes a scene of sad–happy togetherness; this is the first occasion when Avellaneda expresses her love directly. Then, on 11 September, poetically and modestly, to mark his fiftieth birthday, she gives Santomé a seashell, a treasured object, which seems to represent Avellaneda herself: Después, con un poco de vergüenza, abrió una cajita y mostró el otro obsequio: un caracolito alargado, de líneas perfectas: «Lo recogí en La Paloma, el día en que cumplí nueve años. Vino una ola y lo dejó a mis pies, como una atención del mar. Creo que fue el momento más feliz de mi infancia. Por lo menos, es el objeto material que más quiero, que más admiro. Quiero que lo tengas, que lo lleves contigo. ¿Te parece ridículo?» (1998b: 234).

In contrast to her present directness, at the beginning of the narrative, before Santomé realised his attraction to Avellaneda and declared it, there could be no question of direct presentation of her thoughts and feelings, since the novel is the first-person narrative of a man who, while intelligent, is not emotionally perceptive. Moreover, he holds strong, and in some respects narrow views about propriety. In relation to Avellaneda, he initially regards her as unavailable to him, on two counts: she is the same age as his daughter; she is an office subordinate. Benedetti turns this limitation to advantage by using Santomé as an ingénu who, failing to realise his interest in Avellaneda, reports but misreads her reactions to him. From the beginning, Santomé is well disposed to Avellaneda because she learns quickly; at the same time he makes what he believes to be a disinterested appraisal of her appearance as a woman. However, as the time spent working together extends, he finds that he is observing her closely – for example, carefully counting the moles on her arm. Avellaneda is embarrassed at his attention and at the occasional personal (but not consciously sexual) remarks he makes; for example, his impertinent suggestion that she should have a particular mole removed because it might become cancerous. Santomé always rationalises Avellaneda’s reactions – such as her intense embarrassment on this occasion – as due to innate shyness and to timidity caused by their different status in the office. However, although we never directly see Avellaneda’s perspective, very early in the narrative (in fact later in the same episode) her role as an active protagonist is established, as the two continue their work: ‘En un determinado instante, tuve conciencia de que algo raro estaba pasando y levanté la vista en mitad de una cifra. Ella estaba mirándome la mano’ (1998b: 103).


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This makes explicit that Avellaneda’s gaze and attention are drawn to Santomé; and by implication – if he can sense a gaze – that she too, presumably, senses and is affected by his attention. With Avellaneda’s protagonism thus established (although only Santomé’s perspective can be portrayed directly) some sense of a parallel process in Avellaneda is inferred. For example, as Santomé begins to accept his attraction, he decides that he must approach Avellaneda – outside the office; consequently, he watches her movements in order to stage a chance encounter. In the event, Avellaneda surprises him as he sits in a café; we infer that she has watched Santomé’s movements, pondering her own feelings, perhaps looking for just such an opportunity for an unplanned encounter. Similarly, after the couple kiss for the first time, Santomé immediately adopts the tuteo/voseo with Avellaneda; she, by contrast, is more hesitant, clearly perceiving more obstacles to overcome before accepting equality. Isabel is central to Santomé’s development, but is of course presented through his memory. There is one significant exception to this: the longest diary entry, that of 4 August, incorporates a letter to Santomé, written by Isabel in 1935. As a psychological document it does little more than confirm what we already know about their relationship. However, as has already been observed, it brings together the major thematic concerns of homosexuality, and death; and through Santomé’s reflection on the letter, it provides a measure of the protagonist’s emotional progress, albeit this is somewhat equivocal. In relation to homosexuality, Isabel announces that she is expecting a child, and that ‘Va a ser varón y se llamará Jaime, y tendrá una cara larga como la tuya y será muy feo y tendrá mucho éxito con las mujeres’ (1998b: 207). (In reality Jaime will have his mother’s looks and will be homosexual.) The portrait of Isabel that emerges, through the letter and through Santomé’s commentary, is of a relatively unsophisticated, spontaneous young woman. This is typified by the sentence quoted above, with its series of short clauses linked by ‘y’, which suggests immediate transcription of thoughts as they occur, rather than reflection. One unexpected element that arises from Isabel’s letter is her terror of loneliness, her need for Santomé’s presence and her fearful expectation of death. Santomé never mentions these traits – an omission or a lack of mediation that brings Isabel’s voice more actively into the text. At the conscious level, Santomé’s reading of the letter marks his definitive transcendence of his relationship with Isabel. The diary entry concludes: Ahora, con Avellaneda, el sexo es (para mí) un ingrediente menos importante, menos vital; mucho más importantes, más vitales, son nuestras conversaciones, nuestras afinidades. Pero no me encandilo. Tengo bien presente que ahora tengo 49 años y cuando murió Isabel tenía 28. Es más que seguro que si ahora apareciese Isabel, la misma Isabel de 1935 que escribió su carta desde Tacuarembó, una Isabel de pelo negro, de ojos buscadores, de caderas tangibles, de piernas perfectas, es más que seguro que yo diría: «Qué lástima» y me iría a buscar a Avellaneda (1998b: 209).


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However, in another sense the letter marks Isabel’s re-emergence, and signals her power. As Santomé reflects, ‘Es curioso que con la relectura de esta carta haya vuelto a encontrar el rostro de Isabel, ese rostro que, a pesar de todos mi olvidos, estaba en mi memoria’ (1998b: 207). The principal irony of the novel is centred on death, specifically on the fact that while Santomé broods on his own ageing, and speculates on Avellaneda’s future feelings about him after his death, it is Avellaneda who dies. Two striking characteristics of Isabel are revealed in her letter. A young woman still, she is already preoccupied with death, to the point where she has a premonition that she will die giving birth to her next child – which is what happens. Secondly, the way in which waking and dreaming are for her almost indistinguishable is significant. She describes her nightmares: Sólo consisten en soñar que estoy sola en la cama, sin ti. Y cuando me despierto y ahuyento la pesadilla, resulta que efectivamente estoy sola en la cama, sin ti. La única diferencia es que en el sueño no puedo llorar y, en cambio, cuando me despierto, lloro (1998b: 206).

Indeed, life and death do not seem to be completely separate for her. First she expresses jealousy of the woman whom she expects Santomé will quickly find, after her death: ‘ya estoy espantosamente celosa de ella’ (1998b: 206); and her desire for his presence will not fade: ‘Ni siquiera como alma en pena podría dejar de extrañarte’ (1998b: 207). Isabel’s intervention from beyond the grave makes more stark Santomé’s final isolation; and it adds an archetypal, quest-like dimension to the novel. Ostensibly Santomé matures emotionally as the novel progresses; and yet at the end he is returned to his starting point – which undermines the novel’s realism. At another level of the narrative, Avellaneda as an individual is both Isabel’s agent and her rival; while together the two women through their early deaths represent an elusive principle of connectedness that is offered, tasted, and then lost. The subject matter of La tregua is not limited to the emotional development of its main protagonists; social analysis and commentary, too, are significant. The principal issues are homosexuality, the individual in relation to the bureaucracy, and the general institutional and intellectual corruption of Uruguayan society. Once again, the inherent characteristics of the genre of office narrative present problems in that the protagonist, who is – however reluctantly – well integrated into society, is inevitably limited in his purview. He is in essence a conformist, and cannot also be a critic, rebel or subversive. Benedetti uses a number of techniques – not necessarily always successfully – to overcome the problem, and thus to allow La tregua to be a novel of social criticism. Santomé is presented as conventionally homophobic. The theme of homosexuality is developed in the office (although there are early hints about Santomé’s son, Jaime), before finally becoming an important family matter. The first mention is indirect, but clear. A new employee, Santini, approaches


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Santomé’s desk to talk to him. Santomé is quite clear that he dislikes any form of intimacy in the office, but feels that in spite of this, somehow he inspires a confidence in others that draws them to him: No sé qué tendrá mi cara que siempre invita a la confidencia. Me miran, me sonríen, algunos llegan hasta a hacer la mueca que precede al sollozo; después se dedican a abrir el corazón. Y, francamente, hay corazones que no me atraen (1998b: 99–100).

Clearly, Santini is one such, since when he attempts to confide in Santomé the latter rebuffs him mockingly. Santomé also makes two significant observations about Santini’s appearance and demeanour: he smiles dulcemente, and he wears a decorative gold chain on his wrist. A month later, when Santini tries to confide a second time, Santomé is perfectly aware of the direction of the conversation; indeed, he provokes the specific confession. ‘Entonces me resigné a hacerle la pregunta que él estaba buscando desde hacía tiempo: «Y los hombres, ¿te gustan?». Sacudió otra vez la cadenita de oro y la medalla. Dijo: «Pero eso es inmoral, señor», me hizo un guiño’ (1998b: 129). Santomé shoves the clerk away roughly, and punishes him by setting him some particularly tedious work before reflecting, ‘Eso es lo que me faltaba: un marica en la sección’ (1998b: 129). The third episode consists of Santomé observing and comparing the hands of his four subordinates: Allí están la mano de Muñoz, larga, rugosa, con uñas tipo garra; la mano de Robledo, corta, casi cuadrada; la mano de Santini, de dedos finos, con dos anillos; y al lado, la de ella, con dedos parecidos a los de Santini, sólo que femeninos en vez de afeminados (1998b: 153).

Santomé’s views on masculinity and femininity – and their reflection in physique, dress and body language – are clear. He also, unsurprisingly, interprets his own feelings and expresses his sexuality according to these codes. Hence, Avellaneda’s hands are the object of his worship: ‘Ya le avisé que, cada vez que se acerca con los otros, y extiende su mano, yo deposito (mentalmente, claro) un beso de caballero sobre sus nudillos afilados, sensibles’ (1998b: 153). Santomé’s attitude and behaviour contrast markedly with those of Lagos in Mariani’s story, ‘Riverita’, which was discussed in Chapter 2. In this story there is a certain erotic charge throughout, and a scene in which Rivera, a young homosexual, attempts to seduce an older colleague, Lagos. Lagos’s rejection of the overtures is uncontrolled: there is the sense that the character violently internalises an external discipline, in order to repress what he cannot understand or allow himself to express. At least he is alive: there is a struggle. Santomé by contrast is a model of control – of himself and of his subordinates. The various references to hands constitute one of several instances that reveal his tendency to catalogue, distance – and control – people. Through his strict maintenance of the bureaucratic mentality,


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particularly within the office, Santomé dehumanises himself and denies the humanity of others – even of Avellaneda. For example, even as he dreams of planting a gentlemanly kiss on Avellaneda’s hands, he allows nothing of this to show, there is not an instant of communication of feeling: ‘Ella dice que eso no se nota en mi cara de piedra’ (1998b: 153). Probing deeper into the character, the question of hands becomes more problematic. Does Santomé find Avellaneda’s hands attractive, arousing even? If so, does he find Santini’s very similar hands, in isolation, attractive? Is his visual imagination, in which the hands are firmly associated with Avellaneda, and in which they do not caress, but passively receive an imaginary chaste kiss, part of Santomé’s apparatus of repression? In this context, it is significant that Santomé’s erotic memories (with Isabel) are associated with darkness and the tactile – with hands – and not with the visual. In contrast to Lagos’s case, here there is no suggestion that Santomé represses his true sexual orientation; what Santomé does is more transcendent: in his acceptance of office life, which is simultaneously reluctant and whole-hearted, he represses himself and others. Avellaneda’s hands speak to him, evoke feelings in the present – and in a sense he acknowledges this possibility; yet he permits no modification or humanisation of the hierarchical relationship, instead remitting human contact to an idealised version of the sphere beyond work. The reader does not know what really passes between Santomé and Santini, since Santomé forecloses any possibilities. He portrays himself as reluctantly cast in the role of agony aunt, emphasising his lack of sympathy for those who approach him, and in particular, his distaste for Santini. It may be that Santini, for whatever motive, attempts seduction; or perhaps he seeks a friend in the older man; or, he may be confused, and not realise what he is doing, what signals he sends out to others. Whatever the case, Santomé does not seek to engage with him as an individual; he simply reads from Santini’s physique, demeanour and dress, that he is a marica, a category of person that disgusts him. In view of Santomé’s ease in reading Santini’s homosexuality, it is strange that he has no inkling that his son Jaime, too, is homosexual. When he is eventually told, he reacts with incredulity and incomprehension: he cannot understand how his son can be similar to the despised Santini; he wonders where he went wrong as a parent, and speculates that the boy’s lacking a mother may have been a formative factor in his sexual orientation. There is no confrontation between father and son, although there is between the younger family members, and consequently Jaime feels the need to withdraw from the family. It is a bleak picture. With individual reflection and interpersonal dialogue eliminated as immediate possibilities for pursuing this major theme, Benedetti once more uses a letter to provide a different perspective. However, the letter, described as ‘rencorosa, violenta’, is simply an expression of anger and defiance, the following being the message for Santomé: ‘«Decile al viejo que todos mis amores fueron platónicos, así que,


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cuando tenga pesadillas en las que aparezca mi inmunda persona, puede darse vuelta y respirar tranquilo. Por ahora.»’ (1998b: 226). In La tregua, questions of progress, of change versus stasis, as well as of improvement and deterioration – at the levels of the individual, of the group or institution, and of society as a whole – are fundamental, if equivocal. As we have seen, Santomé’s sensibility develops dramatically throughout the novel. While Avellaneda’s death seems to mark closure, nevertheless, Jaime’s letter – or rather Santomé’s reaction to it – perhaps hints at future understanding. In the light of Benedetti’s frequent deployment of ‘set pieces’ to make social observations, and of the importance of homosexuality as a theme in La tregua, it is surprising that Jaime’s letter advances no justificatory, progressive argument; nevertheless there is a glimmer of hope for future rapprochement in Santomé’s reaction: ‘Es demasiado odio junto para que sea verdadero. Al final voy a pensar que este hijo me quiere un poco’ (1998b: 227). The idea that the new generation might bring changed attitudes is also raised through Santomé’s other two children. Blanca, as we have seen, expressed the wish for a more meaningful life than her father’s; her insistence – and reassurance – to her father on her right to be alone with her fiancé, Diego, points to the change in sexual mores, in Uruguay and elsewhere, since the 1930s, the time of Santomé’s and Isabel’s courtship. (It must be said, however, that there is no sign of acceptance of homosexuality in the younger generation: Diego, and Santomé’s other son, Esteban, both quarrel with Jaime.) Perhaps more importantly, Benedetti uses the voices of the younger generation to focus on more political, specifically Uruguayan, matters. For example, the diary entry for 12 September is devoted to Santomé’s reflection on the views of his daughter and prospective son-in-law: Benedetti’s angry manifesto. Certain aspects of Uruguayan institutions and the national character are denounced: ‘apatía’; ‘carencia de impulso social’; ‘democrática tolerancia hacia el fraude’; ‘reacción guaranga e inocua ante la mistificación’ (1998b: 235). Repeating the observation made in ‘Rebelión de los amanuensis’, Diego denounces the hypocrisy of wealthy, idle writers who from comfortable Punta del Este inveigh against the supposed work-shyness of the mass of the people. However, there is no programme, no sense of where to begin; there is simply a deep preoccupation with the current state of society, and a strong, inchoate, desire for change: ‘Su preocupación es el país, su propia generación [. . .] Diego quisiera hacer algo rebelde, positivo, estimulante, renovador; no sabe bien qué’ (1998b: 235). This account of Diego’s views on society in general and on the press in particular, seems to indicate the author’s thorough pessimism; it contrasts with another episode (on 26 July) in which Santomé sits in a café, enumerating the negative qualities of the major newspapers (‘Hay días en que los compro todos’ (1998b: 199)). One wonders whether Santomé at fifty is the model for Diego, twenty years hence. After all, Santomé too started out energetic and enthusiastic.


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In La tregua the theme of increasing institutional corruption, which was analysed in ‘Rebelión’, is pervasive: in Santomé’s workplace (a private-sector office), among his family and acquaintance, and in his own dealings with officialdom. It is conveniently focused in the question of his retirement and pension; the novel’s opening statement is Santomé’s anticipation of retirement (he can retire at fifty, and expect generous provision). Thereafter, for some time the subject receives no more than the occasional passing reference; and no immediate connection is made when, in the entry for 25 March, Santomé records that his son Esteban, through political contacts, has obtained a highly desirable post in the public service: Empleo público para Esteban. Es el resultado de su trabajo en el club. No sé si alegrarme con ese nombramiento de jefe. El, que viene de afuera, pasa por encima de todos los que ahora serán sus subordinados. Me imagino que le harán la vida imposible. Y con razón (1998b: 108).

The entry for 28 March provides Santomé’s more considered reflection on his son’s appointment, and illustrates clearly a change in practices and moral values, within and between generations: Hablé largamente con Esteban. Le expuse mis dudas sobre la justicia de su nombramiento. No pretendía que renunciara; por Dios, sé que eso ya no se estila. Simplemente, me hubiera gustado oírle decir que se sentía incómodo. De ningún modo. «No hay caso, viejo, vos seguís viviendo en otra época.» Así me dijo. «Ahora nadie se ofende si viene un tipo cualquiera y lo pasa en el escalafón. ¿Y sabés por qué nadie se ofende? Porque todos harían lo mismo si la ocasión se les pusiera a tiro. Estoy seguro de que a mí no me van a mirar con bronca sino con envidia» (1998b: 110).

The connection between Esteban’s job and Santomé’s pension is established rapidly, if unobtrusively; Jaime’s enquiry elicits Santomé’s reply, ‘Le dije que Esteban le había hablado a un amigo para que la apurara. Pero tampoco puede apurarla demasiado’ (1998b: 116). Clearly, Santomé now accepts how things work. Initially there is no suggestion of corruption – rather, one feels that someone has telephoned a contact in an office similar to that described in ‘El presupuesto’, and asked them, as a personal favour, to interrupt their tea and biscuits. However, when the pension issue next arises, on 17 April, the need for a bribe is evident. Santomé has reservations, although he regretfully accepts Esteban’s pragmatic argument that one’s actions must be adjusted to the prevailing system. He makes the classic choice of practical interest over principle, albeit with self-disgust: ‘Ayudar a moverla quizá signifique untarle la mano a alguien. No me gustaría. Sé que el más indigno es el otro, pero yo tampoco sería inocente’ (1998b: 126). Santomé’s view, that the person receiving the bribe is necessarily more guilty than others involved in the transaction, is understandable but superficial; before progressing the transaction further, Benedetti develops


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Santomé’s conceptual framework. This he does through the character Aníbal, Santomé’s old friend, who has always been interested in politics and who has recently returned from abroad. The first general lesson that Santomé learns is that he himself is lazy because he does not think politically: Me di cuenta de que esos temitas que uno a veces baraja en charlas de oficina o de café, o sobre los cuales vagamente piensa de refilón cuando lee el diario durante el desayuno, me di cuenta de que sobre esos temas yo no tenía una verdadera opinión formada (1998b: 137).7

Aníbal concentrates Santomé’s mind by forcing him to substantiate his vague feeling that the situation has deteriorated during the previous five years. He identifies increasing corruption of individual and institution. Previously, there was some corruption, which was tolerated; now citizens are resigned to universal bribery: ‘«No se puede hacer nada», dice la gente. Antes sólo daba su coima el que quería conseguir algo ilícito. Vaya y pase. Ahora también da coima el que quiere conseguir algo lícito. Y esto quiere decir relajo total’ (1998b: 137).8 However, it is not simply a question of resignation, and Santomé’s indictment of the run-of-the-mill functionary’s collaboration, hypocrisy – and continued resentment – is devastating: Fue un ex resignado quien pronunció la célebre frase: «Si tragan los de arriba, yo también». Naturalmente, el ex resignado tiene una disculpa para su deshonestidad: es la única forma de que los demás no le saquen ventaja. Dice que se vio obligado a entrar en el juego, porque de lo contrario su plata cada vez valía menos y eran más los caminos rectos que se le cerraban. Sigue manteniendo un odio vengativo y latente contra aquellos pioneros que lo obligaron a seguir esa ruta. Quizá sea, después de todo, el más hipócrita, ya que no hace nada por zafarse. Quizá sea también el más ladrón, porque sabe perfectamente que nadie se muere de honestidad (1998: 137–8).

When it becomes specifically a question of Santomé’s pension the issue is further complicated. Santomé is promised that his pension will be ready on the due date, in exchange for a (presumably standard) fee of half his premio retiro, a one-off payment. Santomé describes his acceptance as succumbing to temptation. There is however a refinement, based on perverted notions of solidarity and kinship: the dishonest functionary reduces his fee because Santomé is Esteban’s father; and the functionary regards Esteban almost as a brother, on the grounds that they used to play billiards together. Santomé, like it or not, is inside the web of corruption. 7

This echoes Mariani’s story, ‘Toulet’, where the characters discuss the news, and even politics, but without any consistency of approach, or any sense of how these relate to their own experience in society. 8 Perhaps the 1950s witnessed such a change; however, functionaries already charged for supposedly free state services in the 1920s, if Historia de un pequeño funcionario is any guide.


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The theme ends with a conversation between Santomé and Esteban, in which the progress of the pension is mentioned briefly, before the question of the difference between public and private bureaucracies is pursued. Santomé asks whether Esteban actually works at his office, provoking the furious reply: ‘«¿Qué querés decir? ¿Que los empleados públicos somos todos unos vagos? ¿Eso querés decir? Claro, solamente ustedes, los notables empleados de comercio, tienen el privilegio de ser eficaces y trabajadores»’ (1998b: 174). Esteban, ill in bed, is beginning to be disillusioned with his occupation. Santomé, however, is utterly insensitive, compounding his insult by suggesting that Esteban should not contemplate leaving the public service just yet, because it is easier for a functionary to obtain the long-term sick leave that he needs. Once again, Esteban rebuts this: ‘«A vos, cuando tuviste el tifus, ¿te echaron? ¿Verdad que no? Y faltaste como seis meses»’ (1998b: 174–5). Clearly, Esteban’s words challenge a commonly held prejudice against the public sector; moreover, they underline the essential similarity of the bureaucratic experience and mentality, particularly in Uruguay, his ‘office republic’, and perhaps more generally. Finally, Esteban’s attitude hints at the possibility of – or at least the desire for – change, in the next generation. Esteban’s initial position was to accept corruption as simply the mechanical functioning of the system – and he regarded his father as old-fashioned for not realising this. At this juncture, Santomé collaborates in the highly visible, systemic corruption, for specific personal ends, while failing to understand how deeply he has been immersed in it all along. Meanwhile, Esteban, after a short time working inside the system, now perceives public–private bureaucracy as of a piece, and has become critical and rebellious. Perhaps Santomé was right to identify a process of softening: from rebellion, to apathetic acceptance, to corrupt participation; and yet, as Benedetti presumably proposes through Esteban, it is not a simple linear development. The cycle can begin anew. The office itself performs many functions in La tregua. Most importantly and obviously, it brings Avellaneda and Santomé together and keeps them together long enough for their relationship to develop. That Santomé sees the relationship as emerging in spite of the office – which he regards as repressive – is a subjective judgement, presumably a function of the bureaucratised mind that Benedetti wishes to show us. Once the relationship has begun, the office is then cast in the role of inhibitor. Santomé and Avellaneda avoid being out together, in the city’s streets and cafés, in case someone from the office sees them; then, when Santomé rents a flat for the couple, it just so happens that for four successive days he has to work late, postponing the consummation of the relationship. Santomé sees the office, and the company, as inhuman and dehumanising: he despises his superiors and subordinates and he is scornful of the way that reward and punishment relate not to merit, but to personal contacts and influence. He comments on the rise and fall of his colleague Suárez, the lover


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and then ex-lover of the daughter of a senior company figure: ‘Puede parecer insólito, pero el clima de esta empresa comercial depende, en gran parte, de un orgasmo privado’ (1998b: 168). To Santomé’s mind, the office is a place of mean motives where (before Avellaneda) meaningful human contact is impossible. He rebuffs Santini’s overtures, he refrains from commiserating with Suárez in his disgrace – and with the even more unfortunate Menéndez, who loses his job as a result of a practical joke that backfired. The reality is that Santomé has an easy life and thoroughly understands office politics; he is a cynic, who plays the game with ease, and in so doing has lost touch with himself. His view of bureaucratic life mirrors that outlined in ‘Rebelión de los amanuensis’, a stark prospect of false, meaningless relationships: En las oficinas no hay amigos; hay tipos que se ven todos los días, que rabian juntos o separados, que hacen chistes y se los festejan, que se intercambian sus quejas y se transmiten sus rencores, que murmuran del Directorio en general y adulan a cada director en particular. Esto se llama convivencia, pero sólo por espejismo la convivencia puede llegar a parecerse a la amistad (1998b: 181).

Santomé appears to lack specific grounds for complaint, and yet the meaninglessness of his bureaucratic days produces anxiety attacks: A las cuatro de la tarde me sentí de pronto insoportablemente vacío. Tuve que colgar el saco de lustrina y avisar en Personal que debía pasar por el Banco República para arreglar aquel asunto del giro. Mentira. Lo que no soportaba más era la pared frente a mi escritorio, la horrible pared absorbida por ese tremendo almanaque con un febrero consagrado a Goya. [. . .] No sé qué habría pasado si me hubiera quedado mirando el almanaque como un imbécil. Quizá hubiera gritado o hubiera iniciado una de mis habituales series de estornudos alérgicos o simplemente me hubiera sumergido en las páginas pulcras del Mayor. Porque ya he aprendido que mis estados de preestallido no siempre conducen al estallido. A veces terminan en una lúcida humillación, en una aceptación irremediable de las circunstancias y sus diversas y agraviantes presiones. Me gusta, sin embargo, convencerme de que no debo permitirme estallidos, de que debo frenarlos radicalmente so pena de perder mi equilibrio. Salgo entonces como salí hoy, en una encarnizada búsqueda del aire libre, del horizonte, de quién sabe cuántas cosas más. Bueno, a veces no llego al horizonte y me conformo con acomodarme en la ventana de un café y registrar el pasaje de algunas buenas piernas (1998b: 85).

The behaviour is that of the perfect manager. Santomé, an intelligent man who knows that he has betrayed his true self, suffers anxiety as a consequence. Furthermore, he has learned to calibrate his feelings and take the appropriate action, always within the system. Sometimes he banishes anxiety by immersing himself in the detail of a ledger. When he simply cannot tolerate being in the office he has a repertoire of suitable pretexts that


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allow him to leave. The language is that of an urgent search, for air and space; and there is the sense of quest, for as yet undefined meaning. However, everything is in reality under control; these sorties change nothing. Santomé acknowledges this with his final remark, that in fact he goes to one of his favourite cafés to watch women walking past. Indeed, the reference to watching women links his little escapes and his casual sexual encounters: both are simply safety valves, mechanisms that relieve pressure. Santomé never confronts the central fact of his life, namely that he is too comfortable. The relationship with Avellaneda certainly quickens him again, in some senses, but it has no effect on his bureaucratic life; rather, it serves to accentuate his detachment from it. He is able to abandon his office self as something alien and distasteful. His move towards retirement is a parallel process of distancing, of being able to abandon the alien existence. Significantly, on retirement Santomé walks away with his comfortable pension, and he marks his rejection of the false camaraderie by refusing any farewell celebration with colleagues; and he takes with him a record card with a photograph of Avellaneda, which he finds when he clears his desk. Although Santomé never confronts the contradictions in his life, there are occasions when he reflects on how he has become who he is; it is a question that is connected with writing, in several senses. In this context, the most important element is his diary: the record of his becoming and a means of reflection on his life. But he also reflects on the diary itself, on why he writes it, on its place in his life. Early on (22 February) he reflects on the diary; clearly it has been important for some considerable time – but he sees no role for it once he retires. Probably, he reflects, after retirement rather less will happen in his life, and consequently, ‘me va a resultar insoportable sentirme tan vacío y además dejar de ello una constancia escrita’ (1998b: 87). Santomé, in other words, feels unable to confront emptiness in the way that Eladio Linacero, the protagonist of Onetti’s El pozo, can. He sees instead modorra: drowsy inactivity, a relaxation in preparation for death; but from time to time he entertains a different vision: ‘Hay momentos en que tengo y mantengo la lujosa esperanza de que el ocio sea algo pleno, rico, la última oportunidad de encontrarme a mí mismo’ (1998b: 87). He would write about this fulfilled life: ‘Y eso sí valdría la pena anotarlo’ (1998b: 87). Indeed, on 18 May, when the prospects with Avellaneda look bright, he is aware of enacting and narrating a romantic plot: Si este diario tuviera un lector que no fuera yo mismo, tendría que cerrar el día en el estilo de las novelas por entrega: «Si quiere saber cuáles son las respuestas a estas acuciantes preguntas, lea nuestro próximo número» (1998b: 149).

In fact, the question of writing as a main activity is raised in the very first diary entry. Wondering how to occupy his days after retirement, Santomé


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dismisses the standard possibilities of gardening or taking up a musical instrument, before quickly thinking of writing. He knows that he has a certain style: ‘Quizá no lo hiciera mal, por lo menos la gente suele disfrutar con mis cartas’ (1998b: 81). But two factors deter him. First, he finds the idea of polite critical reception distasteful: ‘Imagino una notita bibliográfica sobre «los atendibles valores de este novel autor que roza la cincuentena» y la mera posibilidad me causa repugnancia’ (1998b: 81). More importantly (and this could be either personal modesty, or criticism of others) Santomé exhibits pudency: ‘Que yo me sienta, todavía hoy, ingenuo e inmaduro [. . .] no significa que tenga el derecho de exhibir esa ingenuidad y esa inmadurez’ (1998b: 81). Santomé, then, is conscious on the one hand of a possible talent, and on the other of a certain immaturity. We have already observed, in the short stories and poems, that Benedetti often uses business letters, reports and accounts as elements that frame – usually restrictively – his protagonists’ lives. This is Santomé’s case: as early as the second diary entry (on 15 February) he reflects on his bureaucratic writing. Echoing the protagonist of Historia de un pequeño funcionario, who signs his name with a flourish, Santomé takes pride in his script: La redonda es uno de mis mejores prestigios como funcionario. Además, debo confesarlo, me provoca placer el trazado de algunas letras como la M mayúscula o la b minúscula, en las que me he permitido algunas innovaciones (1998b: 82).

He goes on to reflect that what he most enjoys about his work are routine tasks, because he performs these without thinking, allowing his mind to wander freely. He goes so far as to identify in himself two completely different people: uno que sabe de memoria su trabajo, que domina al máximo sus variantes y recovecos, que está seguro de dónde pisa, y otro soñador y febril, frustradamente apasionado [. . .] un distraído a quien no le importa por dónde corre la pluma ni qué cosas escribe la tinta azul que a los ocho meses quedará negra (1998b: 83).

What he resents are unexpected or urgent demands, which oblige him to engage his full attention to work. The entry for 18 April, about an inspection of the ledgers, gives a historical perspective on Santomé’s office writing. As the ledgers are presented, stretching back to 1929, once again literary vocation is evoked as Santomé reflects, grandly, that he is the company’s historian, a Herodotus. However, the truth of his development as a writer is more prosaic. In 1929 he notes the indiscipline in his script, as the letters lean in any direction; he uses a picturesque simile to describe this: ‘como si no hubiera soplado para todas el mismo viento’ (1998b: 127). He then comments on stylistic changes, as the


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letters are first lightly traced; then bold and curvaceous, spectacularly and uselessly ornate; finally they become neat, regular and precise. Interestingly, he sees this final style as unrepresentative of his true self, as deceptive: ‘Lo que sólo prueba que soy un simulador, ya que yo mismo me he vuelto complicado, desparejo, caótico, impuro’ (1998b: 128). Finally, encountering his script from 1930, he reflects that this is the one that he used for his letters to Isabel, then his fiancée – which, unsurprisingly, causes memories to flood back. Evidently, these in turn prompt further reflection on the course of his life, since the next diary entry, two days later, is the laconic ‘¿Estaré reseco? Sentimentalmente, digo’ (1998b: 128). Writing, then, in its different aspects, is a metaphor for Santomé’s life. First, the non-realised writing, which is hinted at, represents his creative potential, not only literally as a writer, but as a human being living his life fully and authentically: writing his own story. In a sense the account of his twenty-five years’ writing in the company’s ledgers is a parody of a writer’s stylistic development; at the same time it is a literal account of how a person might indeed spend a lifetime in the office: he has used language for ends other than his own and has adhered to a rigid, externally imposed format. This almost robotic writing has constrained his development, alienating him from his true self. His pride in his script is a false – indeed pathetic – pride, in which he attempts to salvage self-respect by perceiving his personal touch. But his identification with his work is a lie, as spurious as the office camaraderie that passes for friendship. Finally, writing the diary is therapy: Santomé’s continued attempt to stay in touch with himself, to understand his life. After Avellaneda dies, Santomé abandons his diary for four months; then, when he resumes it, he is on the brink of his retirement, on 28 February. Three days earlier, he records his decision to abandon the diary: ‘A partir del primero de marzo, no llevaré más esta libreta. El mundo ha perdido su interés. No seré yo quien registre ese hecho. Hay un solo tema del que podría escribir. Pero no quiero’ (1998b: 254). He means, of course, Avellaneda, whose absence hurts him more than the absence of God. But he is wrong, and has learned nothing in his life. The unique theme that he can write is not Avellaneda, but himself. However, Santomé is a bureaucrat, who has lived so long inside his false world of routine acquiescence and dream that he has forgotten that life is real, and to be made from the inside – affected, certainly, by others – but not dependent on them. Santomé is aware of what he has done, and become: ‘Lo más trágico no es ser mediocre pero inconsciente de esa mediocridad; lo más trágico es ser mediocre y saber que se es así y no conformarse con ese destino que, por otra parte (eso es lo peor) es de estricta justicia’ (1998b: 236–7).


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5

1940s’ Argentina: From Alienation to Bureaucratic Nightmare The 1930 military coup, which had overthrown Argentina’s Radical government, reinstalled the old oligarchy in power. The restored ancien régime was corrupt, and by the early 1940s the country was again ripe for change; this time events would culminate in the Peronist revolution: a populist nationalist movement, headed by a charismatic leader, in which an alliance of the trade unions and sectors of the armed forces once more supplanted the land-owning oligarchy and established a corporate state.1 In this chapter we consider the work of three writers of the 1940s: Roberto Mariani, Ezequiel Martínez Estrada and Leopoldo Marechal. Unlike in the 1920s, when his writing engaged with current issues, Mariani now seems out of touch as he seeks to understand 1940s’ Argentine society in terms of the past. By contrast, the work of the other two authors – from different perspectives – reflects the advent of Peronism.

Roberto Mariani, Regreso a Dios Mariani’s novel was published in 1943, just before these momentous changes in the political landscape. However, there is no sense of anticipation; rather, it is a gloomy meditation on a nation that has lost its way. The novel begins in an unspecified present, as an elderly civil servant, Pablo Aguilar witnesses an emotional scene in a Buenos Aires café.2 Aguilar leads a bleak existence, ruefully characterised as ‘su actual estado de soltería vacía en el desamparo de una indiferente pieza de pensión [. . .] frente al espejo, un hombre de cabellos grises cosiendo con torpes dedos rígidos un botón de ropa interior’ (1943: 15). The scene in the café sets Aguilar

1 In 1930 the democratic regime succumbed to the effects of the 1929 Wall Street crash, while in the early 1940s pressure from Washington produced – perversely – the replacement of a pro-allied regime by one sympathetic to the Axis. Washington’s further interference in the 1946 elections consolidated nationalism and support for the Peronists. 2 A man sits, impatiently waiting. Another man arrives and gives him some news, which produces great agitation. To avoid a scene the second man drags the first out into the street, away from the curious gaze of the people in the café.


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reflecting on his own life, which has been unfulfilled, since he has not followed his true instincts; he is ‘Este hombre de cabellos grises que añoró el desviado curso de su existencia’ (1943: 15). On leaving the café, Aguilar revisits in his memory events of long ago; retelling these events, which happened to Aguilar himself and to various characters associated with him, constitutes the main body of the novel. There is a lack of precision about this earlier temporal setting (we do not know Aguilar’s current age): ‘Tenía entonces, en aquel entonces tan remoto, treinta años de edad’ (1943: 17). The vagueness of the time frame is heightened by the absence from the novel of reference to identifiable events, within Argentina or beyond; neither is there any hint – either in the first chapter, which is set in the present, or in the main time of the narrative – of any recent or impending social or political tensions or changes. There are allusions to the Argentine social context, but these are of a general nature and applicable to the early century as a whole. For example, there is reference to the construction of new districts on the periphery of the expanding metropolis; second, immigration is a prominent theme; third, there is mention of women’s progress in Argentine society. There are just two significant political references – although these are not readily identified with a specific moment in Argentine history. First, Aguilar sees the earlier time, that of the remembered events, as one when Argentines had abandoned God; second, there is discussion of the power of established provincial families in local and national politics. The so-called remote past, when the grey-haired Aguilar was thirty, presumably corresponds to the second or early third decade of the century: the end of the previous period of rule by the oligarchy, and/or the early years of the Radical governments. Mariani’s vagueness here is at first sight surprising, in light of Argentina’s turbulent early twentieth-century history, especially given the political awareness revealed in Cuentos de la oficina. The lack of clarity about the time frame suggests that Mariani’s intention is to conflate the distinct decades, perhaps reflecting loss of belief in progressive historical processes. Certainly, the novel’s title suggests that the search for truth, meaning and justice is no longer to be pursued through political reflection and social action, but rather through tradition and individual spirituality. Although there is no reliable external account of Mariani’s views, it is evident that in Regreso a Dios, unlike in Cuentos de la oficina, he analyses Argentine society in an archetypal rather than historical way. Most characters in Regreso a Dios are functionaries who know each other socially through the office. The office itself is frequently mentioned and described – and important interactions between characters take place there. For Aguilar, through whom the narrative is mediated, the office is the fundamental reference point of his life, in the present and in the remembered past. However, Aguilar’s office-bounded mentality excepted, little of what happens in the novel is closely connected to the bureaucratic world. Rather,


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the office is a stage set where the characters’ concerns are observed and discussed. The novel is episodic, and through melodramatic, sensationalist material addresses issues of national, and perhaps universal significance. The events are portrayed directly, as if they were happening rather than being remembered. Nevertheless, they occur at an indeterminate distance: apparently directly observed but through a lens blurred by time. Mariani’s vision in Regreso a Dios could not be more different from the sharp immediacy of Cuentos de la oficina. Aguilar provides a measure of continuity in the narrative. He presents the dayto-day tedium of the office as well as providing information about the way the hierarchy works. More importantly, as the witness to the conversations and actions of other characters, he is the means of introducing them into the narrative. Then, as the focus leaves Aguilar, and follows these other characters’ lives, the events are still to some extent mediated through Aguilar: because of his concern for the other character, or because the character’s attitudes, actions and dilemmas contrast meaningfully with Aguilar’s. This mediation is particularly significant in relation to Aguilar’s colleague Eduardo Borzani, effectively Aguilar’s alter ego. A main concern for Mariani is a perceived absence from the Argentine psyche of spiritual resilience. The desperate, unsuccessful struggle to find such spiritual strength is the story of Borzani, the novel’s second protagonist. However, in spite of the ostensible clarity of the novel’s title, the theme of spirituality, particularly its dénouement, indicates the author’s ambivalence. Indeed, there is no substantial evidence that Mariani held religious beliefs throughout his life. What is probable – extrapolating from his characters, and especially from Pablo Aguilar – is that in later years, in the face of political disappointment (and perhaps, too, of the starkness of his personal circumstances), Mariani’s thought in relation to the human condition centred increasingingly on spiritual and moral qualities and less on socio-economic factors. Whatever the case, in Regreso a Dios Mariani connects the question of religious belief and tradition with issues of political power and legitimacy, of the places and values of criollos and immigrants, and of the sense of belonging to, or being excluded from, society. From the beginning Aguilar is an outsider, an observer of life: a sad, lonely individual growing old in the discomfort and anonymity of a lodging house. And yet at the same time he is a member of mainstream society; and, as an office worker and civil servant, a member of the paradigmatic social group. This centrality of the white-collar condition is signalled clearly, albeit indirectly, on at least two occasions. On the first, after the death of Aguilar’s sister Clotilde (which he learned of at the office) the neighbours keep him company: ‘Las vecinas no dejaban a Pablo estar solo. Después de las seis comenzaron a entrar también algunos hombres, vueltos de sus oficinas’ (1943: 227). The men return specifically from the office: it is the norm. The second occasion is even more striking. After Borzani’s suicide the office


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colleagues attend his wake – indeed, it is through the initiative of one of them, Héctor García Ibáñez, that the wake takes place at all, so isolated has Borzani become from his family. As the death is discussed, Borzani’s uncle, Don Pedro, declares that he understands the source of his nephew’s problems (the absence of God) and that he could have saved him. As we have already observed, the dénouement is ambivalent: the office workers are united in their bored, contemptuous (unspoken) rejection of Don Pedro’s certainty. Aguilar frequently expresses empathy with Borzani; it is as though the crisis of values played out in Borzani’s life, and his tragic, untimely death, also belong to Aguilar: they are questions that he should have faced. Aguilar, though, as is made explicit in the novel’s first chapter, has not been true to himself but has led a life of acquiescence, resignation and, finally, alienation. His personal life outside the office is nebulous, lonely and disconnected. He was orphaned at a young age and is a bachelor who, at the beginning of the narrative, lives with his mad sister Clotilde, and her husband. On Clotilde’s death, Aguilar refuses the offer of living with the brother-in-law, his longterm mistress (who will become his wife), and their children. Although Aguilar has great affection for the family, he remains outside the circle, preferring to maintain a more distant relationship. As regards relationships with women, there have been two chances. First, as a youth, Aguilar had loved a girl called María Mercedes Antoni. However, her parents, harbouring grander aspirations, opposed the match, and the couple acquiesced without protest. Aguilar’s second affair, which occurs during the main time frame of the novel, when he is around thirty, is a placid friendship leading to love, with Isolina, the sister of a colleague, Silvio Antuña. Isolina dies suddenly, definitively closing Aguilar’s emotional life. Both episodes are linked – unnecessarily – to the office. In the first, the effect of the relationship’s ending is expressed in terms of the office: Aguilar must find a new route home, avoiding María Mercedes’s street. In the second, the emotions surrounding the bereavement are actually played out in the office. Aguilar is greeted one morning by a sombre Antuña, who tells him of Isolina’s illness. Later in the day, tears are noted running down Antuña’s cheeks, and he asks his colleagues not to talk to him. Throughout the day Aguilar and Antuña exchange sorrowful glances; then, the office scene ends as the narrator observes Antuña exploring his feelings, and realising how important his sister is to him. The episode continues with the death vigil in the Antuña household where Aguilar, reflecting on his friend, notes: ‘Silvio estaba – en su casa – más sereno que en la oficina’ (1943: 208). Mariani’s Aguilar, then, seems to be a normal, sensitive man, albeit somewhat passive, and unlucky in relationships. The consequence is that his life is increasingly focused on the office. There is a certain irony here, however. The single chance he has as an adult to form a close relationship outside the office, with Isolina Antuña, is directly generated through the office when Isolina’s brother, Silvio, persuades Aguilar to attend a dance. Even this


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choice, it transpires, is in reality another instance of Aguilar moving away from his natural interests, towards alienation: his attendance at the dance leads to his abandoning his previous custom, which was to spend Sundays in a café, discussing politics. Aguilar, then, is a thoughtful figure who is in some sense the main protagonist of Regreso a Dios. And yet, he is estranged or disengaged from politics: matters of some importance in the novel. In contrast to Aguilar, with Borzani the problem of personal role, identity and behaviour is inextricably bound up with questions of social attitudes and political power. There are three main constituent parts of Borzani’s nature, and of his problem. The son of a provincial cacique, he was expected to inherit his father’s power and corrupt practices. However, through two incidents he realises the corruption, and with revulsion turns his back on his native world: the establishment, in which he has power. Borzani moves to the capital, where he makes his living as a civil servant – a new life, which is as alien to him as was the first. Borzani, however, unlike Aguilar and the majority of his colleagues, is not resigned to his bureaucratic situation. Neither does he engage directly with the system, like García Ibáñez, the colleague whose background (but not attitudes) is closest to his own. As has already been observed, Borzani is in effect Aguilar’s alter ego. Aguilar empathises with him, identifying in him qualities that he lacks; while Aguilar’s conformity and disengagement bring loss of vitality and grey alienation, Borzani criticises, protests and refuses to conform. However, Borzani’s path, like Aguilar’s, leads to failure: one that is more tragic, since the character has high moral standards and is correct in his denunciation of the system. His problem is that he lacks the conceptual framework to find a way forward. The link between the two characters is articulated on many occasions. For example, when news of Borzani’s suicide breaks, Aguilar is described thus: ‘Solo, soltero, flaco, aburrido y callado, en su pensión de la calle Perú, Pablo Aguilar envejecía a solas consigo mismo’ (1943: 327). Then, on hearing of Borzani’s death, he reflects: El hecho de la notica reciente estaba ahora acompañado por la figura de Borzani, por la vivacidad en el recuerdo de las tardes en la oficina, de él mismo, Aguilar, y su propio corazón palpitando, y hasta su propia historia. La noticia, era, ahora, suya también. No se trataba, solamente, de Borzani; cierto que el amigo le acababa de decir que Borzani había cumplido una conducta determinada, él, Borzani. Pero esa conducta, ese hecho, Aguilar ahora lo sentía suyo también. Siempre Aguilar se sintió un poco Borzani (1943: 328).

Borzani is important as a positive contrast to Aguilar’s apathetic normality. His presence (and later, his problems and absences) dominates the life of the office, and his personal and political dilemmas occupy much of the narrative. Borzani is a larger-than-life figure who is used to explore major individual


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and socio-political preoccupations, and to attempt to connect these with everyday life. These questions are: whether God exists, and the individual’s relationship to him; the problem of Argentine identity; relationships between women and men; political corruption. Borzani has one particularly poignant and important characteristic, which is referred to on many occasions, namely his commitment to literature and the visual arts. This has distinct aspects. First, Borzani’s colourful use of language is seen as expressive or expressionistic, rather than analytical; indeed he aspires to be a painter. Second, in relation to his creative efforts, two significant points emerge: they are flawed; they are drawings, not paintings. This is because the office deprives him of time to develop his work. There are here grounds for suspecting that the self-doubt about creative ability, together with resentment at time lost to the office, might, like Aguilar’s lonely frustration, reflect Mariani’s feelings about his own life. Certainly, for all the narrator’s explicit condemnation of Borzani’s madness and general wrong-headedness, the character is portrayed sympathetically in his dilemmas, and is used as the author’s mouthpiece for condemning political corruption, as well as urban small-mindedness. Borzani is linked in a different way to a third character, Héctor García Ibáñez, the well-connected nephew of a senator. Initially the characters are mutually antagonistic as García Ibáñez is presented, through Borzani’s eyes, as the personification of the system’s corruption and nepotism. In an early argument Borzani calls him ‘la estatua representativa de la Injusticia Sempiterna’ (1943: 54). Gradually, however, the relationship changes, as Borzani’s ideas are revealed as increasingly crazy – and his family background is found to resemble García Ibáñez’s. Finally, García Ibáñez emerges as a capable, responsible individual. Indeed, the relationship between the two ultimately is of class solidarity and personal esteem. As Borzani loses touch with his roots and fails in his attempt to find God, his criollo compatriot reaches out to him – in contrast to those whose only link with Borzani is through the office. There are complications and ambiguities, of course, both in García Ibáñez’s personal circumstances and in his relationship to Borzani’s family and political milieu. For example, García Ibáñez’s absence from Borzani’s wake (which he had organised) is highly significant: it is remarked upon by the clerks, but is unexplained. The emergence of García Ibáñez recalls that of Fernández Guerrero, in the story ‘Toulet’ from Cuentos de la oficina; both are privileged characters from longestablished families and both initially are presented negatively. At the end, however, these characters are chosen to provide a stable perspective through which Mariani reflects on major ideological breakdown. In a work as rambling as Regreso a Dios, unsurprisingly, there are inconsistencies, such as the suggestion that García Ibáñez may have caught Borzani’s ‘disease’, that is, the need to be the office orator. Nevertheless, the narrator unequivocally views García Ibáñez and the tradition he represents as


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best placed to understand Argentina’s culture and needs. This emerges strongly in chapter 20, which is set in the office. The scene opens with a description of the activity – or rather inactivity – in the office. In general the employees ‘estaban [. . .] dispersos y cada uno independizado en sus distracciones más que en sus ocupaciones’. Concretely, Ludovici is falling asleep, after a late night at a dance; Antuña and Gómez are chatting; García Ibáñez is closeted with the manager, Peralta; Borzani is yet to appear. Aguilar ‘tenía delante de sus ojos y entre sus manos nuevos expedientes que era menester caratular y él se atardaba’ (1943: 251). When García Ibáñez returns the conversation becomes general, the subject being boredom, in Borzani’s absence. Borzani and his colleagues are then taken as representative of a problematic Argentine identity and sensibility, which are discussed partly through the narrator and partly through García Ibáñez. First, the narrator describes the Argentina in which the office workers live as an amorphous semi-utopia, where conflicts are resolved and all there is to look forward to is material progress (this would be during the Radical years, 1916–30): La sensibilidad argentina empezaba a constituirse a base de algunos elementos principales: ironía, tolerancia, un poco de indiferencia, un malestar soportable, una alegría algo exagerada y una tristeza disfrazada . . . El pueblo argentino, como colectividad, o comunidad mejor dicho, había terminado sus procesos históricos y ya no tenía grandes pasiones a las cuales entregarse. Ahora empezaba una época distinta. Ni revoluciones, ni crisis económicas, ni transformaciones ideológicas. Sino abundancia, trabajos a elección voluntaria, créditos fáciles, solidaridad ideológica en los principios esenciales del vivir: aquello de progreso indefinido que resolverá todo y la humanidad será feliz. Dios, no existía, ni falta que hacía (1943: 253–4).

This materialistic age, however, is also one of rootlessness, of alienation from surroundings and from history.3 Y si se considera que el hombre argentino, aquí, había cortado sus ataduras con la tradición, – la tradición biológica, no la del gaucho pintoresco ni la del indio extraño –, nos queda esto: Un hombre . . . suelto, solo, arrancado de su tradición (la había dejado allá, en Europa) sin historia (eran descendientes en su mayor parte de extranjeros inmigrantes), sin paisaje (no les decía nada) (1943: 254).

The suggestion is that the average Argentine in times of crisis has nowhere to turn in order to find strength, or to comprehend events. This reasoning is invoked to explain why Borzani could not save himself through his art, and why Aguilar passively accepted losing beloved women. The question of what

3

Mariani repeatedly describes characters as ‘solo y suelto’, which evokes the title – and content – of Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz’s collection of essays, El hombre que está solo y espera (1931).


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will happen to the younger generation, for example Antuña and Gómez, in their hour of crisis, is also raised. There are many problems here, not least the very existence of this artificial essay, two-thirds through the novel, which presumably is intended to clarify the strange events of these two main protagonists’ lives (Borzani’s is particularly tortuous). In fact, such theorising is an inadequate explanation, and is not even consistent with the facts of their lives. However grotesquely implausible it may be in some respects, Borzani’s life is nevertheless a search for authentic Argentine meaning; he uses the work of various European artists in this search; he also attempts to reconnect to what he calls God, through his genuine European cultural tradition (he is a second-generation Argentine, with Italian grandparents). It is certainly true that Borzani has lost God – but this loss has occurred in adulthood. It is also the case that while Aguilar and Borzani are both finally failures, each in his way is a thoughtful, sensitive character. As to the underlying question, there is some validity in the view that a largely immigrant society might have a precarious cultural identity. In the Argentine case there is no doubt that the way in which immigration and settlement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were handled (by the elite), is a major factor in the country’s identity crisis – and in its whole political process.4 Moreover, considering the other side of the argument, and reflecting on Europe, one might observe that traditions can certainly confer some stability of identity; however, in both time frames of Regreso a Dios, the middle of the Second World War, and during or soon after the First World War, to propose that such traditions provided Europeans with emotional, intellectual and spiritual comfort and security is absurd. In the specific cases of Aguilar and Borzani, one might reflect that their ability, and that of the women with whom they are associated, to see beyond a narrow morality based on religion or custom represented progressive humanism. Indeed, an important contributory factor to Borzani’s final isolation and descent into madness is that his lover, Esther, feels that it is precisely his obsession with the search for God that has taken him away from her, from the real human world, into another, unreal world. The typical Argentine, then, who is probably an inhabitant of Buenos Aires and of recent European descent, has a precarious cultural identity. By contrast, García Ibáñez and his ilk, whose families have been in the country for generations, have security and stability: García Ibáñez, en cambio, sí estaba atado a sus antepasados, y estaba atado a Dios. Descendía de un conquistador, tenía su familia un predio en una 4 Development was mainly export-driven, based on speculation, large landholdings and hired (mainly male) labour, as opposed to settlements based on families, with the emphasis on the internal development of communities.


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ciudad del interior que pasaba de generación en generación desde remotos tiempos, conocía la historia de sus ascendientes desde la conquista, y era el quinto Héctor de su clan, y las gentes de su clan hacían dinero ciertamente pero también ‘hacían’ su tradición; querían enriquecer su apellido con un nuevo diputado, no por impulsos de arribismo práctico, sino para prolongar la historia de los García Ibáñez legisladores. Y tenían a Dios (1943: 256–7).

In essence, García Ibáñez’s family have security because they are wealthy landowners. As to their presence in national politics, Mariani’s narrator says that this is not motivated by ambition – it is simply that they wish to retain legislative power. Therein lies the problem for the average Argentine: land, money, power. It was of course under the government of the elite Roca clique that Argentina saw its worst financial crisis (the 1890 crash), which was largely caused by land speculation; and this in turn gave impetus to urbanbased moves towards democracy, notably to the foundation of the Unión Cívica, from which Radical government was born. The remainder of the chapter consists of García Ibáñez’s self-promotion and his denigration of Borzani, with the narrator signalling agreement and sympathy for the character: ‘García Ibáñez no era lo que de él decía Borzani. La realidad de este muchacho era muy distinta [. . .]. Nada tonto; al contrario; y muy inteligente, y digno’ (1943: 257–8). First, García Ibáñez argues that while he works efficiently, Borzani never finishes processing a file. He considers that Borzani does not really want his job, but would rather be painting in a luxurious studio, with a servant to attend to his needs. Then he notes that Borzani habitually denounces injustice, for example the fact that García Ibáñez has two jobs and is regularly promoted. García Ibáñez defends himself, saying that his circumstances are justified because he works hard; injustice, in his view is not that he has two jobs, but that others have none. He ends his oration, during which the whole office is assembled, ‘todos alrededor de la mesa grande donde se depositaban los expedientes y la papelería para distribuirse después a cada uno’ (1943: 261) with the arrogant assertion that here, in the office, he is more useful, not only than Borzani – but than Echeverría, San Martín and Belgrano. It is true that Borzani is neither a natural nor an efficient office worker; there are specific reasons for why he is a functionary, and for why he finds it difficult – and it is Borzani’s circumstances, and what they represent, that the next section of the analysis addresses. (It should be noted that García Ibáñez, too, is an exceptional figure, and by no means bound or bounded by the office: he is deeply entrenched in the system, as will become clear in the discussion of the representation of the office.) Borzani’s real, and especially imagined behaviour, in the office and out of it, is bizarre in the extreme and has almost no relation to bureaucratic routine. His fantasies and his delirium – of omnipotence and humiliation – are possibly inspired by those of Remo Erdosain, the protagonist of Arlt’s Los siete locos. But Regreso a Dios is a faint echo, lacking the imaginative


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brilliance of Arlt’s writing. The main problem is that whereas Arlt challenges what went before, finding innovative ways of expressing a new, chaotic, urban experience, Mariani here looks back: he tries to control his narrative, to explain. While little is gained by analysing the greater part of Borzani’s psychological or spiritual trajectory, the story of his origins, which informs his passionate belief in justice – as well as his criticisms of García Ibáñez – is revealing. As Borzani explains to Aguilar, his youth in the countryside has been idyllic, and privileged: ‘. . . Yo vivía en Cañada Baja, [. . .] y todo era muy lindo, y yo tenía delante de mí toda la vida, y la vida había sido hecha por Dios para mi persona. Yo estaba contento. Contento conmigo mismo, contento con Dios, con mi familia, con mis amigos, con la gente, con los árboles, con mi futuro de pintor seguramente glorioso. Yo no debía sino vivir, nada más. [. . .] Mi padre era el cacique de Chañares, el caudillo, el dueño, intendente perpetuo y diputado sin término. [. . .] Mi padre era algo así como [. . .] un señor de la Edad Media, con algunos derechos exactamente iguales’ (1943: 136–7).

The detail of the political system does not emerge until later; here the remainder of his confession relates a single incident that initiates Borzani’s estrangement from his milieu, and establishes a first link with government offices. A woman asks Borzani to speak to his father on her behalf, ‘porque necesitaba mover un expediente en Buenos Aires’ (1943: 138). Clearly, in order to transact business with officialdom strings need to be pulled. Soon it emerges that the woman is offering him sex, either with herself or with her daughter – who Borzani judges to be no more than fifteen – ‘en el caso de servirlas en ese bendito expediente que había que hacerlo correr de unas oficinas a otras’ (1943: 139). Borzani agrees, and an assignation is made with the daughter. During the encounter it emerges that both women have already had sex with Borzani’s father in an unsuccessful attempt to progress their business. Borzani’s reaction is ‘una mezcla extraña de asco, sensación de incesto indirecto, rabia contra algo que no sabía qué era, una vergüenza de mí mismo, un miedo de algo también ignorado [. . .] era mi conciencia que acababa de despertarse’ (1943: 143). An intriguing side issue is that the girl, La Coca, has noticed that she interests one Don Pedro: ‘un viejo como de cincuenta años, envejecido además por su vida anterior. [. . .] Que la estaba siempre mirando fijamente y por algo ha de ser, y que todavía Don Pedro no la habló, pero que veía que en cualquier momento la paraba y le proponía casamiento’ (1943: 139–40). Is this the same Don Pedro who at Borzani’s wake piously exclaims that he could have saved his nephew, and helped him to find God? Borzani’s definitive break with the past occurs when, after his father’s death, he is expected to inherit his political power: todo un departamento de la provincia, todos los subcaudillos, los presupuestos, la influencia, los dineros! . . . Una ciudad, seis pueblos,


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numerosas villas, todo era mío. Yo era un verdadero barón feudal. [. . .] La Intendencia, la policía, lo demás . . . El partido gobernante, que era de propiedad de mi padre, pasaba a serlo mío. Mi padre era hábil, inteligente, tenaz, dúctil, con infinitos escrúpulos para las apariencias y con mucha habilidad para cubrir cada pellejería con mantos sagrados: Patria, Honor, Familia, Paz, Orden . . . (1943: 193–4).

Borzani’s first task is to liquidate his father’s debts. In the absence of personal assets, these would be settled through various fraudulent operations involving public funds: unos rubros más o menos misteriosos del presupuesto municipal, unas quitas al Comisario que a su vez, encantado, quitaba en otras partes, un arreglo del camino a Pozo Hondo, alguna suscripción para sufragar elecciones, solamente utilizada ante algún hotelero rico, dándole la posibilidad de dejarle jugar al monte con puerta durante tantos meses . . . (1943: 194–5).

Of course, Borzani’s power would need formal legitimisation, which entails dissolving the local administration and calling elections, with Borzani naturally heading the list of candidates. His competing sub-caudillos set about discussing the list, as well as funding, proposing to make the local brothel owners increase their donations. The most striking feature of this provincial political arrangement is the permanence and broad social acceptance of corruption: Todo el mundo me empujaba a la política, al comité, a la amistad con indecorosos caudillejos de villas, a la solidaridad con el intendente interino, orador y ladrón, con el comisario asesino y prevaricador, con toda la ralea sucia o higiénica que se abalanza contra los dineros públicos. Había que recoger la herencia de mi padre, me la estaban ofreciendo en bandeja; había que tomar posesión del departamento [. . .].Y el pueblo, el pobre pueblo, miraba y aguardaba. Eso sí: me quería a mí. [. . .] yo era para el pueblo un jovencito que sabía hablar, que sabía escribir, que estudiaba derecho en Buenos Aires, y que era un artista pintor llamado a grandes triunfos. La masa popular contra lo que se cree generalmente, es desinteresada y buena; esa masa popular, me quería. Y los tres aventajados aprendices de ladrones públicos, lo sabían muy bien. Me adulaban (1943: 197).

Such is the status quo: complacency in which people are blind to reality. Borzani reflects that even his sisters, who are ‘muchachas honestas, fervorosas creyentes en el dios católico’ (1943: 198), urge him to steal public funds, because that is what their father did, and it enabled them to live in luxury. Borzani’s refusal, his decision to turn his back on his world, strikes fear into everyone: he is threatening a system, a way of life. It would be rash to extrapolate directly from fictitious material; and yet, the text portrays corrupt provincial politics and it indicates some of the links


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between provincial politicians and the national administration. Whatever else we may deduce about Borzani, it is clear that he has some understanding of the mechanisms of power, accompanied by a principled revulsion that leads him to renounce – and denounce – privilege, and to become an office worker. The sacrifice of Borzani’s vocation as an artist is an important aspect of this decision, although it is not an entirely straightforward matter. As García Ibáñez waspishly suggests, it is the life of a gentleman-artist, a dilettante, that Borzani has lost. Such a suggestion echoes the question, current in Argentina in the 1920s, under the guise of the Florida–Boedo debate, about the relative merits of a refined art, which tended to be produced by people of means, and a more socially committed or iconoclastic art. However, a different issue may have been in Mariani’s mind. García Ibáñez is the supreme organisation man, the fixer, the devotee of efficiency who has no time for culture. Borzani, for all his shortcomings, looks to the arts and humanities for self-understanding and for self-expression. The fundamental contrast in values emerging from these two characters enables us to read Borzani’s failure as an artist – and his suicide – more broadly. His work is described thus: ‘Dibujos, porque para pintura las horas de sol se las robaba la oficina’ (1943: 156). As an individual, Borzani may be the son of a provincial caudillo, who had artistic pretensions – but he is also Everyman, just another office worker whose self-realisation, whose autonomous self-expression, has been sacrificed to routine. The specific reference to the loss to the office of the daylight hours recalls Mariani’s earlier work, for example ‘Balada de la oficina’, and numerous works by Benedetti, written in the 1940s and 1950s. The bureaucratic experience of the civil servants of Regreso a Dios, and that of the commercial clerks of Cuentos de la oficina are very different. One might infer that the difference reflects the contrasting working conditions in the state and private sectors; the same contrast is observed, although less sharply, in Benedetti’s studies of Uruguayan bureaucracies. For example, many poems in Poemas de la oficina express resentment at the alienating tasks, the unwillingly worked weekend shifts, of the private sector; by contrast, in the story ‘El presupuesto’, from Montevideanos, which is set in a government office, no work ever appears to be done. However, there are two qualifying points that might also have some bearing on Mariani’s work. First, the issue of mutual resentment, the suspicion that ‘the others’ lead an easy life, is scotched by Benedetti in La tregua; second, ‘El presupuesto’ and other stories are not primarily about the working life of the office, but about the bureaucratic condition in a broader sense. Such a distinction may also be drawn between Mariani’s two works, which, additionally, are separated by two decades. Cuentos de la oficina addresses the conditions of typical clerks in a specific economic and political context: an economy largely controlled by British capital, during the regime of the Unión Cívica Radical. In Regreso a Dios, by contrast, the temporal setting is vague, and the office worker is used as a paradigmatic national figure.


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We have seen that Regreso a Dios is used to explore a number of issues relating to contemporary Argentines, and have suggested that the link to dayto-day office reality is tenuous. In many chapters there is only a token link between bureaucracy and the substance of the narrative, such as a brief reference to entering or leaving the office. Occasionally, however, office routine is used as the setting, into which is introduced the real business: private meditation, or public conversation about the world outside the office. The opening of chapter 5, in which Aguilar is the protagonist, is typical: En la oficina, con su letra clara, gruesa y lenta, rotulaba expedientes, carátulas de expedientes. Fichaba expedientes, anotaba los viajes de los expedientes por todas las secciones del Ministerio y sus regresos y sus estadías. De vez en cuando volvía a pensar en aquella muchacha y en aquel amor (1943: 31).

The rest of the chapter consists of Aguilar’s reflection on his unhappiness at his failed love affair with María Mercedes. Occasionally, there is a brief return to the office – to the background bureaucratic task, or to a reflection on Aguilar’s social insertion in the office: Sus compañeros de oficina no descubrieron en Pablo Aguilar el drama que casi le desquiciaba. No sospecharon nada, no adivinaban nada. Ahora él pensaba en esto. Acabadas las letras claras y precisas de una carátula, porque no había premura, volvió a escribir otra vez en otra carátula, lo mismo; y después se dió a pensar que pasa la tragedia al lado de estos hombres y ni la ven ni la sospechan (1943: 32).

And so it continues, Aguilar physically in the office, desultorily working at his desk, whiling away his life, his mind wandering: ‘Las horas oficinescas más o menos aburridas, cuando debía estar en la mesa de Entradas, cuando faltaba Borzani, las llenaba Pablo Aguilar meditando o imaginando estas cosas’ (1943: 34). The chapter is rounded off as the manager enters, and introduces a new employee: ‘– Amílcar Gómez, nuevo empleado; enséñele el trabajo de Mesa de Entradas’ (1943: 37). The next chapter – or episode – is public discussion in the office, centred on Gómez. Returning to Borzani, certainly the office has taken from him long hours that he might have employed differently. However, bureaucratic routine itself has impinged little on him, since his time at the office is spent entertaining his colleagues. Within Regreso a Dios, his case contrasts markedly with the representative bureaucratic experience typified by Aguilar’s. There is even greater contrast with the eponymous protagonist of the story ‘Santana’, in Cuentos de la oficina, and with certain of Benedetti’s characters. Unlike these, Borzani has internalised neither his role at the office nor its bureaucratic language. The case is the reverse: he brings into the office


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imagination, social conscience and extravagant rhetoric; and he makes office life bearable for his ordinary colleagues by disrupting bureaucratic routine. As Ludovici observes, ‘– Si esta tarde no viene Borzani, nos vamos a aburrir . . .’ (1943: 252). Further, again in contrast to the Benedettian characters, whose reflection on personal dilemmas is frequently framed or enclosed by alien business language, even Borzani’s official letter requesting leave of absence disregards the bureaucratic norm. He writes: ‘Aquí, en Buenos Aires, ciudad de niños encantadores y políticos arribistas, . . . Envío esta carta para pedir quince días de licencia para atender o no atender asuntos particulares o secretos o públicos o cualesquiera, míos o ajenos, y ahora saludo y firmo . . .’ (1943: 267).

His action causes consternation – the manager does not know how to deal with the situation. However, after much time has been wasted, in the end Borzani cheerfully sets about writing a more appropriate letter: ‘Tomó el pliego de manos de Aguilar, lo leyó, se rió, levantó la vista y miró a su amigo sin decir nada, y se sentó a escribirla en el burocrático estilo’ (1943: 269). Bureaucratic language is just another literary style, which he adopts when it suits. One final aspect of bureaucratic life explored in Regreso a Dios is the question of political connections and their effects on relations within the hierarchy. Early in the novel the practice of favouritism is mentioned, in relation to two employees, Gómez and García Ibáñez. Gómez is a youth of twenty who has just entered the civil service, immediately drawing the same salary as Aguilar and Borzani, who have five, and eight years’ service, respectively. Gómez’s privilege is never explained, although the narrator pronounces it unfair: ‘Las continuas alusiones y referencias a la injusticia y a los ascensos tenían su razón de ser en los casos concretos de Gómez y de García Ibáñez’ (1943: 52). Gómez is simply a naive, good-natured youth, whose initial good fortune soon ceases to be resented by his older colleagues. García Ibáñez, by contrast, is an apparatchik, an unashamed exploiter of his connections in the elite. The nephew of a senator, the narrator calls him ‘un caso clavado de insolencia política’ (1943: 52). García Ibáñez is promoted every six months, has a second job in the municipal administration, enjoys numerous holidays and absents himself frequently from the office. His power is demonstrated later in the novel, when Borzani’s erratic behaviour causes problems that the office manager cannot deal with. The manager, Peralta, is an ineffectual type who, ‘sin ser maligno realmente, tenía formas exteriores de maligno por ser hombre miedoso y cobarde’ (1943: 123). He fulfils his role in the hierarchy, as long as everybody else understands and accepts theirs. Thus, he is stern with Aguilar when he needs a few days off to care for his sick sister; meanwhile, he encourages García Ibáñez to take as much time off as he wishes, without even asking for a reason. Peralta is characterised as the epitome of the dehumanised bureaucrat: ‘ya se había mecanizado en una determinada conducta para


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defender su empleo: sonreía y era amable con los superiores y poderosos, y no tenía ningún interés en las demás gentes, y a sus inferiores debía hacerles sentir su autoridad’ (1943: 123). Borzani’s strange letter requesting leave challenges hierarchical respect, and poses a problem for Peralta, since it has to be acted on. The manager is paralysed by fear: ‘El señor Peralta tenía miedo en su empleo. Miedo. Miedo de perderlo, miedo de ser observado por sus superiores, miedo entonces de cualquier posibilidad de entrar en relación directa con sus superiores’ (1943: 267). He casts around for solutions: perhaps Aguilar can persuade Borzani to write a new letter; his second plan is to write a new letter and forge Borzani’s signature. However, he dare not act alone, seeking the complicity of García Ibáñez, technically his subordinate but a useful ally. This is where the difference between the grey bureaucrat and the apparatchik emerges. Peralta, concerned to avoid notice because it means trouble, is fixated on formalities; whether these be accomplished correctly or fraudently is not an issue. García Ibáñez, by contrast, sees issues and seeks solutions; he suggests that, rather than follow procedures, they simply keep Borzani’s letter and a few days later tell him that his leave has been granted. Later, when Borzani begins absenting himself from the office and ignoring managerial requests for an explanation, Peralta’s sole concern is to prevent the matter from coming to the attention of his superiors: ‘sólo meditaba cómo resolver esto del mejor modo posible sin llamar la atención del Señor Director General, del Señor Sub Secretario del Ministerio . . .’ (1943: 310–11); immediately, he entrusts the matter to García Ibáñez. Before considering García Ibáñez’s generous offer to Borzani, it is interesting briefly to identify where he stands morally; this is revealed through his attitude to Peralta: ‘García Ibáñez le trataba con discreción y procuraba no exigirle ninguna claudicación. Le bastaba con faltar a la oficina y no le arrancaba ninguna otra ventaja’ (1943: 311). Borzani was right: García Ibáñez does not simply use his contacts intelligently, but through absenteeism – and perhaps in other ways – systematically exploits his privileged position. García Ibáñez’s power is considerable. He proposes that Borzani should go to the country for a three-month rest; there he can stay with one of García Ibáñez’s cousins. García Ibáñez’s family – or a branch of it – is in the same part of the country as Borzani’s, and is therefore presumably part of the same corrupt local power structure that Borzani left for his life as a Buenos Aires office worker. The scene is analogous to Christ’s temptation in the desert, as García Ibáñez offers Borzani a return to the world of his childhood: ‘Usted estará allá como en su casa. Vida natural, árboles, un arroyo, caballos . . .’. Moreover, García Ibáñez can arrange something else that is at least as important, paid leave: ‘– Mire, Borzani, el lunes iré a comer con otro primo mío. Hablaré con su esposa y por intermedio de ella le consigo del ministro tres meses de licencia con goce de sueldo . . .’ (1943: 317).


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The escape to a rural idyll no doubt appeals as strongly as a return to unquestioned religious belief. However, the way back to these nostalgic narratives of wholeness is barred to the protagonists of Regreso a Dios. For Mariani, Argentina in the mid-twentieth century has lost its way. In the wasteland of the Concordancia years the reality of his urban characters, the clerks, is alienation within a corrupt system.

Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, ‘Sábado de Gloria’ Martínez Estrada (1895–1964) is a key twentieth-century thinker, best known for his essay, Radiografía de la pampa (1933), which the author considered fundamental to his own development as a writer: Es natural [. . .] que me refiera a Radiografía de la Pampa como a la obra fundamental de mis estudios históricos, sociales y de psicología colectiva [. . .]. Después de ese libro he escrito decenas de otros, orientados en la misma dirección del esclarecimiento honrado de nuestra realidad (1964: 14).

Martínez Estrada was disturbed by developments in Argentina since 1930, in particular signalling the sinister importance of the military: Para mí, el derrocamiento de Yrigoyen fue el advenimiento de una camarilla o casta militar al poder, la revelación que debajo de la cubertura y la apariencia de una nación en grado de alta cultura, permanecía latente la estructura de una nación de tipo colonizado, de plantación y de trata; [. . .] Esa revelación de que la revolución militar de Uriburu, mejor dicho su golpe de estado, la asunción del poder ilegítimo por una casta que siempre había sido privilegiada y monitora de los destinos de la nación, para mí fue un fenómeno revelador de la realidad profunda (1964: 12–13).

Although Martínez Estrada does not explicitly include his works of fiction in the general historical view that is informed by Radiografía de la pampa, there is strong continuity between the essayist’s vision and that of the imaginative narrator. Specifically, in ‘Sábado de Gloria’, there is a strong military presence and the sense of movement towards capricious military totalitarianism. Moreover, in the story the author draws attention to the habitual use by the military of the term ‘revolution’ to describe their coups. Politically and intellectually, Martínez Estrada is identified by Argentine critics with the conservative wing of liberalism.5 From a European perspective, he emerges as a complex figure who in some senses seems to be an outsider (he was a solitary figure, spending much time at his farmstead); yet his engagement with Argentine cultural questions is deep, at time almost to the point of entrapment within them. 5

See Goldar, 1971: 145; Avellaneda, 1983: 157; Borello, 1991: 166–7.


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Martínez Estrada was much influenced by writers such as Kafka, Nietzsche and Spengler. As a young man he is believed to have had little contact with political parties, or with the literary vanguard movements of his time, Florida or Boedo. Rather, his closest early associations were with Lugones and Quiroga, writers of an earlier generation. Martínez Estrada’s lack of affiliation did not, of course, mean that he was oblivious to the arguments that lay behind the existence of such groups as Boedo and Florida. Indeed, in ‘La gran aldea’, in Radiografía de la pampa, he discusses the various zones and frontiers of Buenos Aires, contrasting especially the Boedo and Florida districts: Boedo pretende ser la Florida de desierto urbano. Posee en campesino lo que Florida posee en parisisense; [. . .] Y, sin embargo, se comprende que Boedo es más Buenos Aires que Florida, y lo que allí ocurre y transcurre se comprende más fácilmente que lo demás, y es más lógico aunque no más sincero. [. . .] Florida no resistirá con los años el avance de esas legiones que se incuban en los barrios-fronteras; quedará en pie, reluciendo en focos y letreros, pero más falsa que esto que se apresta a recuperar una ciudad perdida. En la letra de tango, en la novela infame, en la crítica de cachiporra, en el desprecio por lo universal y lo bello, se está proveyendo de instrumentos de asalto (1968: 209–10).

There is evidently tension here, an ambivalence: Boedo, while threatening, represents the nation’s living, authentic force; Florida, meanwhile, for all its sophistication, is fragile and cannot represent the future. This tension is expressed time and again in Radiografía de la pampa, and also in a second series of essays, La cabeza de Goliat (1947). Martínez Estrada’s view of Argentina is strongly informed by the civilización y barbarie question. In terms of culture he expresses strong admiration for Europeans, while lamenting what he perceives as Argentina’s failure to produce good writers. And yet, as we have seen, he identified a vital cultural force in Boedo, and would later be associated with its Teatro del Pueblo (Maharg, 1977: 19). He also occasionally quotes from that epitome of Florida writers, Borges. In spite of his explicit identification with European high culture, and an anxious ambivalence about what might emerge in Argentina, in terms of the civilización versus barbarie question Martínez Estrada is no follower of Sarmiento, but is his critic. In essence, he sees the European occupation of the River Plate as a series of barbaric and regressive acts; and he makes the same judgement of the modernisation that took place during the nineteenth century. The development during this latter period he regards as simply the construction of an infrastructure to drain the country’s wealth away to Europe. The accompanying rise of the capital city and a civic culture he presents as the realisation of a bureaucratic administrative apparatus to serve external interests. There is, then, ambivalence in Martínez Estrada’s views on


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culture. At the same time there is consistency in his anti-capitalist, anticolonialist cast of thought, which informs early works and is confirmed in his later relationship with the Castro regime in Cuba.6 Although best known for his essays, Martínez Estrada wrote poetry, narrative, theatre and literary criticism. He was also a university teacher of literature whose career ended, like that of many others, with the advent of Peronism. Finally, and of direct relevance to ‘Sábado de Gloria’, Martínez Estrada was for thirty years a Post Office functionary. In ‘Sábado de Gloria’ the clerk’s Kafkaesque nightmare has the quality of being lived at first hand, and at the mercy of well-understood external forces. It is a bleak vision, which reveals Martínez Estrada first and foremost as a thinker and writer; the experience of the bureaucratic condition, rather than being the reality that determines thought (as was perhaps Mariani’s case), appears as an uncomfortable aspect of life, which is examined pitilessly, perhaps even masochistically. As Earle puts it, ‘One wonders to what extent Martínez Estrada enjoyed or suffered his vocation. The reader senses that authorship for him was both an indulgence and a torture’ (1997: 526). Before embarking on the analysis of ‘Sábado de Gloria’, the question of its date requires clarification. Earle proposes 1944, firmly within Martínez Estrada’s main period of narrative production, from 1943 to 1949 (1971: 158, 228; and 1997: 526). Meanwhile Yahni, the editor of Martínez Estrada’s collected narrative fiction, gives 1944 as the date of completion of the definitive version, and 1956 for publication (Martínez Estrada, 1975: 29). Maharg dismisses the earlier date of writing, preferring 1956 (1977: 20).7 The evidence from within the story suggests that different elements were written at different times. The narrative perspective is distinctly of the present, and is that of a long-serving clerk. Since Martínez Estrada joined the Post Office in 1916 and retired in 1946, this reflects his own situation in the mid-1940s. A second factor is the importance of public transport in the story. First, at the beginning of the story the protagonist Julio Nievas almost arrives late at his office, because all the buses are full. Second, a major plot element is that Nievas must leave the office by a certain time in order to meet his family, to catch a train to the seaside resort of Mar del Plata. In this context, Earle informs us that commuting by rail between Buenos Aires and nearby La Plata was, until his retirement from the Post Office, the reality of Martínez Estrada’s busy life: he taught at La Plata university in the mornings, and worked at the Post Office in Buenos Aires in the afternoons (1971: 29).

6 Martínez Estrada lived in Cuba from 1960 to 1962 where, with government support, he carried out research on José Martí. His Martí revolucionario was published posthumously, in 1967. 7 Avellaneda (1983) and Borello (1991) identify references in the text to events that took place after 1944.


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Although only circumstantial, the frequent references to the train timetable more readily reflect a commuter’s life than a retired person’s. In relation to historical concerns, the first documented publication of the story, in 1956, was one year after the fall of Perón, while the generally favoured date of writing, around 1944, corresponds to the rise of the GOU group of military officers, of which Perón was a member. Thematically, the story seems to be located in this earlier period: a military coup has just occurred, terminating a period of pseudo-democratic governance, which has acquired legitimacy of sorts, but which itself was the product of a coup. Further, the real power behind the events is said to be not the visible protagonists, but one Colonel Asmodeo, who will soon be a general. This description correlates with the GOU coup against Concordancia, on 4 June 1943, which put General Farrell in power, and in which Colonel Perón was instrumental. However, there are indications of a later date. There is a long, delirious section, a collage of different accounts of Buenos Aires being invaded by various historical and mythic armies and generals. As well as references to Federales, Colorados, to López and Mitre, and to Valle Inclán’s Tirano Banderas, the delirium is also in the present: in a modern world where there is an air force, and in the modern city with motor traffic. There is even a clear historical reference: ‘Hacía muy poco que había terminado la Segunda Guerra Mundial y estaban sobreexcitados los ánimos por la derrota infligida a nuestros aliados, Alemania, Italia y Japón’ (1975: 53). Moreover, the occupation of the city arouses conflicting emotions in the population, who look on, ‘unos espantados y otros con júbilo’ (1975: 53). This must be 17 October 1945, when Peronist crowds marched on the Casa Rosada to demand Perón’s release from prison and his reinstatement in the government. The delirium section ends with a probable allusion to 1955, the end of Perón’s regime: ‘Después pegaron fuego a las iglesias’ (1975: 56).8 It would seem likely therefore that much of ‘Sábado de Gloria’ was written in the early/mid1940s, and that the story was later amended before publication in 1956.9 ‘Sábado de Gloria’, at some twenty-three thousand words, is Martínez Estrada’s longest fictional narrative. It chronicles a day in the life of Julio Nievas, a long-established, relatively junior civil servant. The plan is that he should go to his office to tidy up a few matters, then discharge some other errands before meeting his wife and daughter at lunchtime at Constitución station, to catch a train to Mar del Plata for a holiday. However, it is not to 8 For most of the Peronist period the Catholic church was the government’s ally. In 1955, however, ideological differences emerged, eventually leading to a confrontation on 16 June, in which Peronist militants sacked and set fire to nine Buenos Aires churches (Crawley, 1984: 158). 9 Avellaneda identifies the origin of the 1944 date, as follows: ‘Juan Carlos Ghiani puso en circulación una cronología que le fuera indicada por el autor, según la cual los textos se ordenan como sigue: [. . .] “Sábado de gloria” (1944)’ (1983: 132).


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be: the day becomes a never-ending bureaucratic nightmare in which, as one obstacle is overcome, another appears. The context at first sight seems historically and psychologically plausible, if somewhat extreme: Nievas’s leave authorisation, although approved in principle, has not been finalised because of the administrative upheaval caused by the military coup. Although inactive politically, Nievas nevertheless is involved in a social and administrative network that is strongly infiltrated by factions involved with the military. As the story unfolds, the factional intrigue becomes more pervasive, and events and transactions become more complicated and absurd. The fictional world undergoes a distortion that seems to place it in the realm of the fantastic. However, on reflection the initial situation appears less plausible. Would a government office be a hive of activity on a Saturday morning? Would such a clerk, with his generous holiday entitlement, work on the day when he is supposed to be going on holiday? And why would his arrangements be so definite – and yet at the same time so unorganised? (Nievas still has no leave authorisation, train tickets or hotel reservations. He needs to go to the bank for spending-money, and to the utilities to arrange mail-forwarding, and suspension of the telephone service.) This unlikely state of affairs is, however, presented as normality; and it is this ‘normality’ that is abruptly displaced, producing a change: in the world itself; in how Nievas perceives the world; and in how he understands himself. As to the nature of this new world, it is at once sinister and absurd. In this context, it is important to note that, while there are elements of repetition that undermine the perception of linear time, there are also indications that the events on this particular occasion really do mark significant change. It is not, then, a straightforward case of migration within the story from the familiar world to a fantastic one. One way of interpreting the story – with its initial air of foreboding, then the often-repeated sense of locations that are familiar yet changed, and with the circling back to the same transactions and similar conversations – is that the narrative represents a dream. Indeed, Nievas’s circumstances might plausibly produce anxiety dreams. His career is a failure, his marriage unhappy; the political and administrative situation – and consequently his security of employment – is uncertain. We might conclude that, while the story’s events reflect real concerns in the protagonist’s life, they themselves are imaginary. However, this simple model does not seem to have been in Martínez Estrada’s mind when he created Julio Nievas’s world. His thinking is revealed in a series of essays in the posthumous collection En torno a Kafka. In ‘Lo real y el realismo’ Martínez Estrada makes two important assertions. First, he says that Kafka’s portrayal of reality ‘como algo declaradamente absurdo’ (1967: 18) is closer to the truth than the work of writers in a more realistic mode, such as Zola or Gorki. Then, he specifically mentions Kafka’s The Trial (the story of a functionary trapped in a hostile bureaucracy), observing that the protagonist’s execution at the end of the novel – and indeed, perhaps the entire


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trial – is unimportant; what is important is the underlying possibility of people enduring an endless, life-long ‘situación de procesadas’ (1967: 20). This is exactly the case with ‘Sábado de Gloria’ which, although ostensibly focusing on a single day, is in fact endless and inconclusive; moreover, the fictional bureaucratic world is progressively revealed as a series of incomprehensible processes in which all functionaries are in a ‘situación de procesadas’, of continuous investigation: ‘No solamente está en comisión todo el personal de la administración pública, sino que el de este Departamento se encuentra predetenido en preaveriguación’ (1975: 86). In the second essay, ‘Acepción literal del mito en Kafka’, Martínez Estrada observes that, while Kafka’s characters often appear to inhabit a dream, in fact they live in the real world, which cannot be expressed rationally, analytically or descriptively, but only through myth. They stand apart from the unreal world of the majority, who are ‘muy contentos con cualquier rutina que los libere de la angustia y la responsabilidad de pensar’ (1967: 34). The connection is clear: Julio Nievas’s experiences are an awakening from routine existence into stronger realisation of his own life. As to the nature of that personal reality, in ‘Apocalipsis de Kafka’ Martínez Estrada states that through Kafka he has acquired new understanding of the mind, which informs his narrative: Confieso que le debo muchísimo – el haber pasado de una credulidad ingenua a una certeza fenomenológica de que las leyes del mundo del espíritu son las del laberinto [. . .] y creo que su influencia es evidente en mis obras de imaginación: ‘Sábado de Gloria’, [. . .]. Quede hecha esta declaración de deuda (1967: 37–8).

Two important implications derive from these assertions. First, Nievas’s narrated experience is not a dreamlike, distorted perspective on his world, but is its realisation or incarnation. Second, if the individual mind is labyrinthine, and associative rather than rational, then it is likely that the collective mind – society – is, too. Nievas’s day at the office, then, is not a (single) day, but perhaps the day – one that embraces his twenty-five years at the ministry. The reason why he cannot complete his paperwork, collect his leave authorisation and depart for his holiday is, simply, that this is not a single day, or a dream about a day, but the essence of his bureaucratic condition: he is continually engaged processing files; when one is finished he begins the next, and nothing is achieved. In this respect, perhaps Martínez Estrada’s portrait of a clerk transcends historical moments – such as the advent of Peronism – and points to a more enduring reality, that of the false, futile, bureaucratic nature of Argentina’s administrative establishment.10 10

He frequently describes the administrative, ecclesiastic and educational establishments in this way, most notably in La cabeza de Goliat.


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As is frequently the case with the narrative of the office, the eternal futility of bureaucratic activity is emphasised by the absence of any meaningful connection between the office and the external world. Julio Nievas’s bureaucratic context epitomises complex self-referentiality: he works in the ‘salón de redacción, compaginación y proyectos preliminares de resoluciones’ of the unnamed ministry’s ‘Despacho de los Sumarios Preventivos’ (1975: 33; 45); and he is entrusted with cataloguing the entire staff: a massive project, which already runs to sixteen volumes. As the day progresses, so questions concerning who should carry out such a task, who should be investigated, dismissed or reinstated, become ever more complicated; moreover, the distinction between investigator and investigated, informant and spy, becomes impossible to make. Indeed, the individual’s separate existence as a citizen, rather than simply as an employee, disappears. For example, Nievas’s quest for his holiday entitlement to be honoured becomes a disciplinary matter, as it is progressively entwined with unreasonable and unexpected demands to complete work on an important file. Even the bank treats him more as a state employee than as a private citizen. The day-labyrinth of ‘Sábado de Gloria’ is a dynamic structure, where there is both significant change in the present and progressive revelation of previous change. Nievas is a long-serving bureaucrat, having worked in the ministry for some twenty-five years – which is to say (like Martínez Estrada) since the early years of the Radical governments. While the few references to historical figures (including one to Yrigoyen, the symbol of Radicalism) occur in the series of descriptions of invasions of Buenos Aires, there is clear allusion to two stages in the abandonment of democracy. As has already been observed, Nievas’s day-labyrinth coincides with a coup that has toppled a regime that came to power by the same means six months earlier, but which had settled down, and was generally accepted as constitutional. Reference to two coups on the first page of the story might be taken as suggesting threat and instability, but in fact the sense is that until the most recent events there has been no serious disturbance to the status quo. Politically unconnected, Nievas has simply pursued his routine, at ease with the notion that advancement comes through personal connections with the military. (An example of such a connection is that of Nievas’s boss, once his equal, and with whom he remains on good terms, who has been promoted because he is the cousin of an artillery captain.) The abrupt transformation of routine that occurs in ‘Sábado de Gloria’, then, is simply the disturbance of what passed for normality – but was in reality aberrant. The monstrously absurd events of the story are merely the intensification, not the antithesis, of normality. The story opens with notice of the disturbance of Nievas’s world. After the new military coup, the official who has agreed his leave request is under arrest. Immediately Nievas is in a situation of uncertainty, where he does not understand the rules. Officially the position now is that his application needs the signature of the departmental secretary, an army major; yet he is also told


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that he will be free to go, in the absence of specific orders to the contrary. On expressing anxiety that leaving without written permission might incur his superiors’ displeasure, he is informed that his work is insignificant, that he is beneath the notice of such exalted individuals. And yet, matters are not so simple: the remainder of his day will be spent seeking his leave authorisation, working on the increasingly complicated bureaucratic tasks that are set as preconditions of his leave – and realising that in fact he is very visible indeed to the all-seeing bureaucracy. The familiar world quickly metamorphoses into an unfamiliar one. On arrival at the office, Nievas discovers that his boss, unusually, has arrived early; that the Director-General’s visit is imminent; and that there are more pending files on his desk than on the previous day. His desk is in its usual place but the atmosphere of the office has changed: there are more clerks, and all the files must now be finalised within a week. Also, a major reorganisation is expected, and Nievas’s previously affable boss has completely changed character. The nightmare intensifies, as the files on his desk become ever more numerous, until they represent three months’ work; the number of clerks in the office also increases, until there are sixty-two11; the desks are increasingly closely packed and obstructive, until finally the office becomes a labyrinth. The new atmosphere is presented as menacing – or paranoiainducing – as is illustrated by Nievas’s reaction to the discovery that his ink bottle is missing: he imagines that his desk has been searched for evidence of guilt; he dare not report the loss, as this would unleash a complicated bureaucratic process of denunciation and investigation. And besides, there are surely spies in the office. The new clerks certainly represent a threat to Nievas and his colleagues, although it is clear that they are as likely to be subjects of surveillance as its agents. The fact that the new employees use notebooks is presented as suspicious, and their presence is first represented as threatening and disruptive. There are now two antagonistic groups, the established clerks blaming the newcomers for slowing their work, and the latter complaining of the disorder they have discovered. Indeed, Nievas suspects that the new clerks are there, not to help clear the backlog of files but on a witch-hunt. Briefly, a more balanced – or rather contradictory – view of the new employees is taken. On the one hand, since they have come from elsewhere in the bureaucracy, they must understand the system; on the other, since they have been transferred between offices, they are likely to be feeling defensive. There is thus a pervasive insecurity in which ‘cada cual trataba de salvar su empleo’ (1975: 38). However, even if all employees are, or feel

11

The number sixty-two suggests reference to the 62 bloc of hard-line Peronist unions, which would resist the military-led post-Peronist government.


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themselves to be, under suspicion, in the present case the newcomers have the upper hand: La más terrible arma que descubrieron, cada cual por sí, sin haberse pasado la consigna, era amenazar a los empleados viejos con que si no podían salir adelante con la nueva tarea y los nuevos métodos del trabajo, no tendrían más remedio que llevar la denuncia al juez instructor administrativo. Porque era inconcebible que esa oficina tuviera paralizados los asuntos por más de un año y que el personal hubiese permanecido impasible. Lo que quiere decir que de no haber ocurrido la última revolución las cosas seguirían como antes. No atribuían al jefe toda la responsabilidad, sino al mismo personal falto del más elemental sentido del deber y del sacrificio (1975: 39).

This is the classic threat to those who do not obediently embrace change – and perhaps even to those who do. There are two other interesting aspects. First, no new philosophy is expounded: the existing employees must simply adapt to the new ways and attitudes – whatever these might be. Second, nobody is identified as reponsible for the command; the newcomers seem to intuit that simply being on the side of change is the key to survival. In parallel to the developing nightmare, a picture of the status quo ante emerges, in which Nievas is embittered, but secure. His failure to gain promotion has brought problems with his wife. Nievas in turn blames his boss for the lack of promotion, and plans to tackle him about it – once the immediate panic is over. (In fact, it subsequently emerges that Nievas’s failure to be promoted is his wife’s fault: the all-seeing, all-recording bureaucracy has long known that she was the author of an anonymous letter of complaint.) Nievas also feels confident that in spite of the office’s sudden, urgent, massive workload, he will be able to take time out to attend to his personal business. These affairs, which involve Nievas dealing with various institutions as a private citizen will, unsurprisingly, prove to be part of the same bureaucratic nightmare. The system to which Nievas belongs is a paradoxical mixture of complex, time-consuming procedures that must be followed to the letter, and chaos. In relation to the first, each file must first be drafted, then typed up – with five copies – and scrutinised by the subencargado, the subjefe and finally the jefe before it can be signed off. However, the way the system actually runs, with personnel and policy changing on political whim, means that nothing is ever achieved. The office managers never sign off the files, simply putting them aside. Then, whenever the regime changes, they are hastily brought out for reprocessing according to the new policy. However, this is difficult, because the change of regime and policy is always accompanied by a change of personnel. The new managers need time to grasp the detail of cases and to learn how the office functions – which they rarely do before they are either moved to another post, or dismissed. Nievas’s new colleagues are no better: ‘La mayoría de los empleados sumariantes eran nuevos e incompetentes, traídos de otras oficinas, a menudo por recomendaciones y con carta blanca


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para no hacer nada, bajo pretexto de estar adquiriendo conocimientos’ (1975: 40). The work therefore falls to a small established group, including Nievas. This then is the setting: there is a sudden loss of security, a feeling of paranoia, in the reaction of Nievas and his colleagues to the new situation; at the same time, it seems that capricious change is all too familiar. Nievas, as functionary and citizen, is an Everyman who, competent and alienated, works away year after year, at futile tasks within the bureaucracy. The abstract nature of his work which, moreover, is in the ministry’s investigation section, contributes to the image of an inward-looking bureaucracy that is not really an administration, but more a mechanism of control. While this aspect of the story surely is potentially universally applicable, at the same time the frequent, capricious and far-reaching changes in the ministry’s personnel and policy, as well as the military presence, do reflect a specifically Argentine reality through the first half of the twentieth century. Whether the day presented in the story – in which, to follow Martínez Estrada’s reading of Kafka, Nievas sees the absurd, labyrinthine reality of his life – is intended specifically to represent Peronism as inaugurating a new phase in the relationship between the individual and the state, is uncertain. It is clear, however, that Nievas has long been accustomed to a culture in which political affiliation influences employment prospects and advancement throughout the bureaucracy – although until now he believes he has remained aloof from this politicisation. Now, however, he finds that abstention is impossible, that there is no neutral ground. The system has extended its influence, politicising him by defining all his activity in the office as indicating loyalty or disloyalty to the regime.12 The portrayal of the military is both comic and sinister. While their actions are buffoonish and repetitive, nevertheless there is a sense that beneath the show, at a deeper level of the labyrinth, invisible forces are active. The first appearance of the military, the visit of the interim director-general, is an extravagantly comic scene, although there is a potentially nightmarish edge. The official approaches along the corridor, accompanied by a troupe of uniformed, solemnly marching bureaucrats, and preceded by a herald whose trumpet fanfare causes the twenty-storey building to shake. Indeed, the furniture, the walls – and the files – are still resonating when the directorgeneral extracts from his pocket the folded paper on which is printed the ludicrous but threatening speech, which he has already read in office after office: – Bueno. Ya tendrán informes oficiales de los propósitos del nuevo gobierno y que estamos dispuestos a castigar todos los que muestren mala voluntad y empacadura. La exoneración será la pena menos leve y a mí no me vengan con súplicas ni recomendaciones. Caiga el que caiga. Bueno. Hay que 12

Politicisation by default also occurs in later stories by Benedetti, such as ‘La vecina orilla’, in Con y sin nostalgia (1977).


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trabajar sin mirar el reloj; se sabe a la hora que se dentra pero no a la hora que se salirá. Hasta que haiga trabajo hay que pegarle duro y parejo, como ya también lo haré, que soy el superior de todos. El trabajo dignifica y el que trabaja honra la patria. Sientensén, y a trabajar, muchachos (1975: 45).

Nievas witnesses the scene from outside, since at the critical moment he has left the office, and cannot make his way back to his desk through the crush.13 Although Nievas is outside the office when the director-general calls, the sensation of the claustrophobia within is presented: ‘El personal intentó ponerse de pie, pero estaba tan apiñado que muchos quedaron en cuclillas y otros ni siquiera se movieron’ (1975: 44). The ridiculousness of the occasion is heightened by the image of the clerks surreptitiously covering their ears at the trumpet blast, and then by the explanation that such ceremonies were frequent, and the speech generally the same. It was recorded in the official Boletín on the first occasion, and since then secretaries have given it to each new director: ‘Formaba parte del ritual administrativo’ (1975: 45). On the other hand, Nievas is duly awed, and as soon as the director has disappeared the encargado principal sets about distributing yet more files to the clerks. It is the beginning of the next level of the bureaucratic labyrinth. Among the documents given to Nievas is the Campana file, a complex case, which cannot be transferred to another clerk, and which requires considerable work. Work on the file, which concerns three officials who have been suspended on a serious, but abstract charge of ‘obstrucción voluntaria de servicios’ (1975: 46), leads Nievas deep into the labyrinth, indeed into a position where he becomes vulnerable to a similar charge. First, his leave request increasingly is interpreted as a refusal to carry out his duties, as he is assigned more files for urgent processing; second, the Campana file is only the first of a series that he has previously meticulously processed, but must reopen. This new work necessitates visiting various archives, on different floors of the building. It also leads Nievas closer to the reality of the bureaucracy: reopening the files is a politically motivated act – as perhaps was their raising in the first place; some of the officials concerned are secret police spies; and Nievas’s earlier judgements are now considered incorrect, and possibly culpable.

13 This classic dream motif of being under restraint, and unable to get to where one wishes to be, returns, exaggerated, at the end of the story. Nievas, whose intention throughout has been to meet his wife and daughter at the railway station, finally obtains permission to leave. As he does so, a door opens, through which he thinks he glimpses his family in a waiting room. He then finds that the door is locked. The scene moves to a grand salon where a party is taking place. Nievas’s daughter enters, and dances on the table. He cannot reach her because in the crush he is pinned against the wall. Finally, he can neither reach his family nor leave the building: he is called back to the office – and the telephone – by the subsecretario.


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This process, whereby everything loses its established meaning, acquires nightmarish intensity when Nievas accompanies a dismissed employee, Berdier, to the archive. Berdier explains to the official in charge that he requires his file, so that Nievas can arrive at the new, correct conclusion, namely that the file was previously handled precipitately, and with insufficient evidence; Berdier must now be reinstated. When Nievas protests, he is informed that the file was a secret-police fabrication. However, there is more. Nievas is accused of attempting to make the file disappear – which he contests, saying that he only sent an enquiry about the file’s date of archiving, so that his boss could submit the proper written requisition. Now, however, the boss is under arrest, and the entire section is under investigation. As Nievas’s entire life comes under suspicion, a bizarre, unannounced visit to the office of a mysterious dwarf (who, it transpires, is Nievas’s aged uncle) is interpreted as a meeting with a secret agent. Nievas’s visits to the bank and the telegraph office – and the fact that he has given his uncle money – are seen as suspicious, as are the incessant telephone calls from his wife. Nievas decides that he must have lost consciousness, and that he must be in Hell. Suddenly, however, the complications vanish: he need only cancel the charges against Berdier, then he can leave for his holiday. On returning to the office, however, the mood once again changes; the office itself is transformed: ‘El salón no le pareció el mismo, sino muchísimo más amplio, un lugar hostil, que apenas conservaba algunos vestigios de lo que fuera durante veinticinco años’ (1975: 87–8). A similar pattern applies in the other two areas of concern: the pursuit of the signed leave authorisation and the visit to the bank. There are unexpected obstacles, offices inexplicably relocated or altered, bizarre revelations of connections between work and private life – and sudden, magical resolutions of the problems. It is certainly the logic of dream; and yet at the same time the grotesque events are not always wholly implausible. The initial scene as Nievas arrives at the bank is chaotic: outside, businesses lower their shutters, and there is a triple queue of at least five hundred people anxious to withdraw their savings, stretching from the cashiers’ windows, through the great hall and into the street. Employees with whistles and rattles try to maintain order, while individuals try every trick to jump the queue. The inside of the building is obstructed by gangs of painters, suspended in scaffolding cradles. Nievas remembers that a change in bank policy has been announced, and suspects that this might involve seizing or freezing people’s accounts, in return for bonds.14 Nievas’s reaction is comic, and paranoid: Acaso todo ese complicado aparato de trapecios, cuerdas, escaleras volantes, andamios, por donde subían y bajaban como arañas los pintores, 14

While the details of the pandemonium are grotesque, major financial upheavals of this kind are a feature of Argentine life. The most recent event was the 2002 corralito.


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fuera un ardid para dificultar la entrada de los depositantes que en este caso iban a retirar sus depósitos (1975: 57).

His next idea seems outrageous, but actually articulates a common belief: A Nievas se le ocurrió que podría ser gente traída del interior para simular que tuvieran que hacer operaciones en el Banco, y dificultar así el acceso de los verdaderos interesados, frustrándoles el intentar de retirar su dinero. Pues había muchas mujeres de aspecto humilde y criaturas (1975: 58).

The suggestion is that the new government was flooding the city with poor people from the provinces, to disrupt the city-dwellers’ enjoyment of their wealth. It is the case that the rise of Peronism in general, as well as specific events such as the march of 17 October 1945, brought large numbers of poorer people into the city; these events also brought them into mainstream politics and into a share of national wealth. These were deliberate sectarian acts, and were viewed as such. As Crawley observes, alluding to October 1945, ‘Very many urbanites, still caught in the illusion of living in a European enclave, were aghast at the sight of this wave of browner-faced Argentines, cabecitas negras or pelos duros [. . .] they were assumed to be simpleminded, little more than children, uneducated, unacquainted with the sophistication of “civilised ways” ’ (1984: 98). However, the sudden rise of a new class was hardly unique to the Peronist era: thirty years previously the accession of the Radicals, marking the arrival of the middle classes, had brought a massive, deliberate bureaucratic invasion of institutions – and had been viewed with suspicion. Crawley continues: ‘Just as the middle classes led by Yrigoyen had been considered too uncouth to cope with the complexities of political power, the new internal migrant who made up the bulk of Argentina’s working class in the 1940s was deemed unprepared to understand the reponsibilities and duties that went with the exercise of democratic rights’ (1984: 98–9). The scene becomes increasingly carnivalesque15 – children run back and forth; people take out picnic lunches; balloons and whistles are on sale. However, real change has occurred: the ‘Sección Créditos a Empleados Públicos’, where Nievas must go, has moved from the banking hall to a first floor office. As was the case with the reopened files, Nievas’s personal business, too, leads to a labyrinth and an unexpected epiphany. The initial sequence of events seems to oscillate between the waking nightmare of bureaucratic reality, and dream. First, in order to complete his transaction, Nievas needs the counter-signatory who, of course, is not to be

15 Interestingly, Crawley evokes the carnivalesque: ‘Many analysts have described 17 October 1945 as more a carnival than a revolution. Indeed, in its naivety, its procedures resembled those of a carnival, but its effects were undoubtedly those of a revolution’ (1984: 99).


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found. Then, he must find the ‘Sección Créditos a Empleados Públicos’. He is disorientated, and cannot find the lifts or staircase in a building that retains some familiar features, such as the great cupola – and yet is transformed, unrecognisable. Eventually he pushes his way through the crowds, finds that the lifts are out of order, and climbs to the first floor where he learns that this is the right place – but that the entrance is in a different street. Leaving the bank, he is forced to walk in the road, avoiding the rushing traffic, since the pavement is blocked by a four-deep queue, which appears to him like a giant tapeworm. Sure enough, he finds the entrance, but, unable to cross the tight-packed queue, has to go right to the end and then squeeze along between the queue and the wall. Passing through the door and up the stairs, Nievas leaves the overcrowded public space and enters an inner world of solitude. At the top of the grand staircase he enters a broad corridor, which is guarded by a marble statue and an equally inert elderly uniformed employee, and lined by statues of Greek gods; then he walks along a long, narrow corridor, until he reaches his destination. As with the scenes in public space, the events in this interior world initially occupy an elusive zone, which seems part normality, part paranoid imagination – and part outrageous, yet plausible. As Nievas arrives at his destination, he is courteously received by a friendly official who tells him that thus far his business has proceeded smoothly. (Of course, there are further stages in the process before he can obtain his money: he must retrace his steps through the crowds; then find his co-signatory; finally he must stand in the cacophonous hall, waiting to be summoned by one of several competing loudspeakers.) At this point, there is a strange, surreal detail. As Nievas approaches, he hears the familiar sound of typing, and sees the official working away with an adding machine; but instead of processing cheques, he is turning the pages of a book of reproductions of paintings. The bizarre explanation given is that all new employees are given such a book, so that they can study the building in which they work. Thus far the bank scene has been dream-like, with Nievas as actor and spectator. However, as occurred with his quest to process the files, it moves into an inward-looking phase where Nievas himself becomes the focus. Nievas suddenly recognises the official as Alcañaz, the brother of a woman whom he had light-heartedly courted many years previously. The recognition triggers reflection on Nievas’s life: Alcañaz reminds him how patronising and exploitative he had been to the family, and that he in turn he was duped by the woman who has become his wife, and persecutor. Nievas reflects: ‘Es como si hubiese oído a mi propia conciencia. Mil veces me he arrepentido de todo; de haber sido antes un canalla y después un infeliz’ (1975: 69).16

16

A second instance of use of a figure from the past to represent Nievas’s acknowledgement of his move from arrogance to wretchedness occurs when, on returning to the office, he finds the grotesque dwarf-beggar, his uncle, sitting on his desk – and remembers his pride on the first visit to the office of his then elegant relative, twenty years previously.


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The trajectory of Nievas’s life has been simple: he comes from an indeterminate sector of the middle classes (this seems to be represented by his lack of political affiliation), and he has had a certain level of expectation as to his future, and an accompanying arrogance. Over the years his expectations have been unrealised; yet his fundamental self-image, and his cultural expectations, are unchanged: he writes a little poetry and pays for his daughter to take lessons in classical dance. It appears that on his salary he could not really afford the proposed seaside holiday – which is justified on the grounds of the daughter’s health – were it not for the help of his wife’s aunt, which (unknown to Nievas) will ‘reforzar los gastos de playa, sin necesidad de hacer la vida de miserables empleados’ (1975: 32). Quite where he fits on the social scale is unclear, although he might be compared with characters such as Mariani’s Toulet (Cuentos de la oficina), or Arlt’s Loayza family (El amor brujo). Alcañaz’s observations, like those of Nievas’s colleague in the archive, are contradictory, and yet they contain uncanny insight that reveals to the clerk hitherto unsuspected perspectives on his own position in society and on the reality of the current ‘revolution’. Alcañaz claims to be a newly qualified accountant, who has just joined the bank – hence the book of pictures that he studies. And yet, he understands the system well. He explains that his appointment is very recent, having been formalised on the very day that the bank’s board of directors were removed; and he assures Nievas that this is through luck, and not political connections: ‘pero yo no pertenezco a la milicia de infiltración, por si lo había supuesto’ (1975: 62). Alcañaz also suggests that Nievas too is lucky, since soon the bank will suspend lending. There is perhaps nothing exceptional about such commentary. However, Alcañaz proceeds to some surprising revelations. First, he and his family now live comfortably and in apparent security – since his sister Magdalena married colonel Asmodeo. He goes on to say that before the marriage took place, Asmodeo required to be told all the details of Nievas’s previous contact with the family; moreover, since then the family has followed Nievas’s progress, through Asmodeo. Alcañaz can thus tell Nievas that his future is uncertain, that there will probably be a mass purge of functionaries. To Nievas’s protest, that he has avoided politics, Alcañaz retorts that Nievas’s career has been damaged, because of an anonymous letter sent by his wife, Ema, to the minister eight years previously. This information is in Nievas’s file, and could cause problems if the personnel files are reviewed – which, of course, is precisely what is happening. Finally, Alcañaz reveals that Asmodeo is the real power behind the present ‘revolution’. The metamorphosis of Alcañaz, and the juxtaposition of past and present, reflect the logic of dream. In the conversation, two elements are of especial interest, the first being the notion that Nievas’s failure to be promoted is due to his wife’s intervention. This may simply articulate a previously unacknowledged suspicion, or perhaps simply a feeling of resentment;


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however, it might also reveal a further dimension to the bureaucratic web in which Nievas is enmeshed: he has all along been politically connected, albeit unwittingly. Irrespective of the truth – or even plausibility – of the allegation about the letter, the insight contributes to a better apprehension of personal reality, in the sense argued by Martínez Estrada in ‘Acepción literal del mito en Kafka’. The second element reinforces the first, adding sharper political insight. Nievas belongs to the middle class, an identity and identification that are confirmed by his own blood family (his uncle) and his marriage (he has chosen Ema, and has rejected Magdalena – a name, moreover, which carries associations of humility and redemption).17 In the current political climate Nievas’s class is not flourishing – indeed, its future appears precarious. Alcañaz’s family, by contrast, in the past suffered straitened circumstances, and yet still belonged – on demeaning terms – within Nievas’s social world. Since it has been betrayed by the society represented by Nievas’s social group, the family’s allegiance has moved to Asmodeo’s group, (Peronism), which appears to offer prosperity and security. (As we shall see, this is the self-justificatory line advanced by Marechal.) In ‘Sábado de Gloria’ Martínez Estrada portrays an absurd, frightening world, where individual freedom is eroded as society evolves into a totalitarian, military-backed bureaucracy. He associated Peronism with such a process which, as we saw at the beginning of the discussion, had begun in 1930. Furthermore, at the end of his life he identified developments in Argentina with a broader process of change in which government mutated from being the administration of the common weal to being a totalitarian control of the individual: ‘1930 significa para la república Argentina el paso de un régimen político y económico post-colonial a un régimen político y económico de la nueva historia fascista del mundo’ (1964: 12).

Leopoldo Marechal, Adán Buenosayres Marechal (1900–70) is unusual among Argentine intellectuals in that, as well as being a devout Catholic, he was an early convert to Peronism, playing an active part in the regime’s cultural administration until being forced to resign on Perón’s fall in 1955. By then he had qualified for his education service pension, and was able to retire, to an obscurity that was deepened by ostracism by the literary establishment. His disgrace mirrors that of writers such as Martínez Estrada, who had suffered a decade previously, with the advent of Peronism. 17 Redemption, here by a saviour whose name carries diabolic associations. If Asmodeo is Perón, then, as Avellaneda suggests (1983: 156), Magdalena represents Eva Perón, and Alcañaz her brother, Juan Duarte.


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In his younger years, Marechal wrote poetry, and was associated with the Martín Fierro group, whose best-known member was Borges. He also, through travelling in Europe, had links to Spanish poets. In later years his work included theatre, and three novels, of which one, the Buenos Aires Odyssey, Adán Buenosayres, is a landmark of twentieth-century River Plate narrative. One aspect of this complex novel is the playful revisiting (and apparently repudiation) of Marechal’s Martinfierrista past. The setting is the 1920s; many of the characters are modelled on Marechal’s Martinfierrista colleagues of those earlier years18; the protagonist, Adán, is an alter ego of the author; the novel concludes with the protagonist’s death and descent into the underworld. Many years later, Marechal, always a Peronist, still seems to have seen the early Martinfierrista years as aberrant, and needing explanation. This certainly is the impression derived from an interview that he gave in 1968. In it Marechal emphasised the mutual esteem between himself and Roberto Arlt, and – surprisingly – called Arlt a Martinfierrista (Andrés, 1968: 28–31). Arlt, who is frequently viewed, with some justification, as the literary antithesis of Borges, had died in 1942, and could make no comment on an association whose purpose seems to be to reinforce Marechal’s credentials as a writer of the people. In social terms, Marechal portrays himself as belonging to a hard-working, innovative – indeed revolutionary – working class, of recent immigrant stock. He pays tribute to his paternal grandfather, an exiled member of the Paris Commune movement, who ‘me dejó como herencia el gusto por la lectura, el fervor revolucionario y el paso corto y rápido de la infantería francesa’ (Andrés, 1968: 11). His parents, too, are admired; his father ‘era un mecánico vocacional, y no por la escuela, un autodidacto rico en técnicas que le permitían sustentar su casa holgadamente’ (1968: 12); his mother, meanwhile, was ‘Una mujer dulce, callada y heroica’, who understood her son’s poetic vocation, ‘gracias a una intuición y un afinamiento de alma naturales’ (1968: 13). As to his political allegiance, Marechal attributes this to the early death of his father, a victim of the 1918 Spanish influenza, which, however, would not have been fatal ‘si una exigencia patronal del aserradero donde trabajaba no lo hubiese obligado a salir prematuramente de su convalecencia’. He goes on: ‘Entonces no había legislaciones obreras: ¿comprende ahora por qué fui socialista y luego peronista?’ (1968: 12–13). Progressive labour legislation was of course a major Peronist achievement.

18

According to Barcia’s introduction to the novel, the tertulia at the Amundsens’ house corresponds to the regular meetings at the Lange residence. Luis Pereda is said to represent Borges; el Petizo Bernini is Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz; Samuel Tesler is Jacobo Fijman; the astrologer Schultze is the painter Xul Solar (Marechal, 1994: 40).


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There is some contradiction in Marechal’s account of his early life. When the interviewer suggests that his family background seems to be middle class, Marechal firmly rejects this: ‘Era una familia de trabajadores, y la mentalidad burguesa nunca se reveló en sus pensamientos ni en sus actos’ (1968: 13). And yet he also claims to have been utterly ignorant of politics during his early years: ‘Justo es decir que ‘lo político’ no entraba todavía en mi órbita: eso vino después, cuando el acento de lo político social recayó en todas las instancias del país y del mundo’ (1968: 18). Indeed, asked where he spent his time, presumably in the early 1920s, he names some august establishments: ‘Por las tardes el Richmond de la calle Florida, y por las noches el sótano del Royal Keller’ (1968: 20). While no clear ideological development emerges from Marechal’s account of his past, there are nevertheless interesting indications. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the emergence of many popular and leftwing political organisations, including a socialist party. None, however, commanded sufficient support to challenge the old oligarchy. When democratic government finally arrived in 1916, it represented a loose coalition of interests, dominated by the middle classes: the Unión Cívica Radical. Now, while Marechal is evasive about his early political beliefs, he seems in the interview to exploit the death of his father – which occurred two years after the Radicals’ accession to power – to suggest two elements in his own journey to political awareness. First, he can ignore what was basically a progressive political regime, on the grounds that it failed to protect his father, a worker; second, he uses his father’s death to confirm his working-class identity, and simultaneously to claim that at the time the political climate did not favour his ideals. These would remain unrealised until a propitious time – which of course was the dawn of Peronism in the 1940s. Marechal identifies his definitive conversion to Peronism, as 17 October 1945, when he says he was inspired by the great popular march to Plaza de Mayo: ‘Decidí entonces, con mis hechos y palabras, declarar públicamente mi adhesión al movimiento, y respaldarlo con mi prestigio intelectual, que ya era mucho en el país’ (1968: 43). In fact, his connection to Peronism dates to the 1943 GOU revolution, immediately after which he was made president of the General Education Council of the province of Santa Fe. Although he describes this office as ‘mi primera y última “experiencia del poder” ’ (1968: 41), he went on to hold other senior posts in the Peronist administration.19 While Marechal strongly affirms his continued commitment to Perón and to Justicialismo, at the same time (and as is suggested by the disclaimer, that his

19 1944: director general de Cultura Estética; 1945: director general de Cultura; 1949: director nacional de Enseñanza Artística (1994: 10–11).


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1943 post was the only one in which he exercised power), although he does not directly criticise the regime, he distances himself from its cultural policies: El movimiento me ignoró. Y lo justifico, porque estaba sobre todo preocupado por solucionar problemas económicos más perentorios. No creo, desde luego, que se deba hacer eso; una revolución debe solucionar todos los problemas paralelamente. Y se produjo un hecho muy curioso: la intelectualidad argentina, antiperonista en su mayoría, y que me conocía bien, personalmente, me excluyó de su seno. Por otro lado, los peronistas prácticamente ignoraron mi existencia: ponía el acento sobre los aspectos populistas de la cultura. Así, produjeron factores irritantes que había de evitar. Yo no creo, por ejemplo, que la orquesta del Colón debió emplearse para tocar tangos; o el escenario del Colón para representar El conventillo de la paloma (1968: 68).20

Adán Buenosayres was begun in 1930 but was not completed and published until 1948. This was the high point of Peronism, when Marechal was a senior figure in the administration. It is a massive work, divided into seven ‘books’, drawing on many sources, including Homer, Dante, Joyce, Rabelais and Gracián. It is in the seventh book, ‘Viaje a la oscura ciudad de Cacodelfia’, in which Adán, in company with the astrologer Schultze, descends to the underworld, that the bureaucratic theme emerges. In the ninth section of the book the pair arrive at the fifth circle of the Inferno, whose entrance is a revolving door, ‘igual a la que usan en invierno las grandes casas de negocio’ (1994: 791), guarded by a none-too-fierce dragon. The two friends eventually manage to bore the dragon to sleep by reading the telephone directory to it (selections from literatura nacional have produced no effect, while Adán’s poetry has only made the creature’s eyelids droop – once), and enter the fifth circle of the Inferno, that of sloth. Here they discover tethered characters, in the form of balloons, kites and feathers, all mercilessly buffeted by the four winds, which pass through the chamber in the form of allegorical figures. The first two characters Adán and Schultze meet are kites called Barroso and Calandria, who are functionaries – or in Schultze’s pejorative terms, ‘Dos presupuestívoros de Obras Públicas’ (1994: 795). To Schultze’s allegation that the two functionaries are rarely at the office, but are more likely to be at the races or a football match, or hanging round dance halls hoping to obtain free admission, Barroso replies: ‘¿qué harías vos con ciento noventa pesos mensuales?’ (1994: 796). Schultze ignores him, and denounces their lack of energy: – Nuestro envidiado país – le contestó Schultze – está esperando las energías nuevas, los ánimos varoniles, los músculos vigorosos de su juventud, para 20 His denunciation of philistinism evokes Cortázar’s famous story on the same subject, ‘La banda’.


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entregarles el oro mineral de sus cordilleras, el oro vegetal de sus trigales, el oro animal de sus rebaños, el oro . . . (1994: 796).

The bureaucrats defend themselves by blaming the school system, established by Sarmiento, through which they have passed, emerging with neat handwriting, spotless overalls and a smattering of learning; in short, ‘Éramos ya el tipo inconfundible del Empleado Nacional!’ (1994: 796). Schultze finally denounces the two, saying that both could have followed their fathers’ manual trades, to which they reply that with their knowledge (of electrolysis and Pythagoras’s theorem) such occupations are impossible. Schultze reproaches Adán for his part in this mis-education (he is, as Marechal himself was, a schoolmaster). Schultze’s criticism, that the education system has heretofore induced a false sense of self in individuals, and as a consequence has not served the country well, reflects a Peronist outlook. However, such sentiments relating to the dignity of labour are not new, and emanate from a much broader spectrum of opinion. Martínez Estrada, for example, roundly denounced what he saw as a parasitic bureaucracy, while Arlt deplored the airs and graces adopted by the offspring of humble parents, once they had received a liberal education. A final aspect of Barroso’s and Calandria’s employment is the manner in which they have obtained their posts, namely through ‘pork barrel’ politics. They approach a district political committee, and offer to paste up posters for the candidate. After the election, in which the candidate is successful, they go to see him: A los pocos días fuimos a ver al Senador, y le dije: ‘Correligionario, éste y yo tenemos que ser empleados nacionales.’ Me contestó: ‘Ni una palabra más, correligionario; usted y el otro correligionario son desde ya ciento noventa pesos mensuales en Obras Públicas.’ ¡Estábamos bien pegados al Senador: había demasiado engrudo entre nosotros! (1994: 797).

After the two lowly bureaucrats, the next character to appear is a senior official, ‘el Personaje’, a deflated balloon. The symbolism is clear: the character, who has been director-general in a ministry, is nothing but a hollow form, devoid of substance. However, in spite of his present condition, the character tells an interesting story about the reasons for his emptiness. As in the case of the two lowly officials, Marechal locates ‘el Personaje’s’ tale in a past decade: the character is a scion of a patrician family. (In fact, as the tale progresses, elements emerge that suggest that Marechal might also be expressing, in disguise, his personal experiences, and fears about the present.) ‘El Personaje’s’ family represents the history of independent Argentina: his great-grandfather was a hero of independence, fighting alongside San Martín; his grandfather had taken part in the mid-nineteenth-century desert campaign of southward expansion; his father had been a successful, innovative rancher and cultivator, a cultured man of the Arts and a proponent of large-scale settlement of the interior. Thus far, the image of the patrician family is


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positive. However, as the story moves into the twentieth century, there is a change: because of the concentration of power in the capital, the family abandons its home (with strong political resonance, it is called La Rosada) and moves to Buenos Aires. Henceforth the family become parasites on their country: absentee landlords, and political administrators and lawyers working for foreign interests. ‘El Personaje’, however, is a less straightforward figure than his two brothers, who become pillars of the legal and political establishment. He has aspirations as a writer – although no significant talent – and for twenty-five years leads the idle life of the rich dilettante, in Paris. When he returns to Argentina he nostalgically toys with the idea of living on the estancia, before settling in Buenos Aires, once more to a life without serious occupation. Paradoxically, his realisation of his parasitic futility as an individual leads to a measure of possible renewal and redemption, through the next generation. First, discovering that his nephew is a gifted and socially critical writer, he sells his land and uses the money to send the young man to Europe to pursue his vocation; then, discovering that his niece wishes to marry an agronomist, in defiance of a domineering mother (a literary ancestor of García Márquez’s matriarch, Ursula Iguarán de Buendía) he gives the young couple the old ranch house of La Rosada. Having thus provided for the country’s intellectual and economic progress, as demanded by Schultze, Marechal returns the focus to the bureaucracy. ‘El Personaje’, needing an income, becomes a bureaucrat, through the influence of his brothers. While it is the case that the time of the novel is the 1920s, and that ‘el Personaje’ is identified as a member of the old oligarchy, there is some sense that this may be a disguise. The bureaucratic second half of ‘el Personaje’s’ life could reflect Marechal’s own experience, and be the means of expressing more general, contemporary concerns about bureaucratic processes and characters. Marechal, like ‘el Personaje’, was unexpectedly brought into the government service at the level of director-general. And, as we have seen, the 1968 interview reveals a reticence about his own bureaucratic activity, as well as misgivings about his government’s cultural policies. There is an almost Swiftian tone to Marechal’s account of bureaucratic characters and processes in Adán Buenosayres, and at the same time there are hints of deeper existential and social concerns. ‘El Personaje’s’ entry to the government service is through simple nepotism: his brothers obtain for him the post of director-general in a ministry, a much-sought-after job, for which he is not qualified. His installation takes place at a grand, ridiculous ceremony, where the minister makes a presentation speech, to which ‘el Personaje’ listens, ‘lleno de reverencia, por tratarse de un verdadero camposanto de lugares comunes’ (1994: 816). It is a strangely unreal scene, ‘un rito sin misterio, [. . .] una pantomima de fantasmas, [. . .] un ballet de títeres insonoros’ (1994: 817). ‘El Personaje’ must of course reply. At first he inwardly rebels, contemplates denouncing the nonsensical scene,


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but finally assumes the appropriate mask and makes his speech: ‘Y hablé al fin: hablé de la Dirección General Z y de sus problemas fundamentales, abundando en citas clásicas y modernas, en paradojas y metáforas que ni yo entendía ni entendió nadie, por ser ininteligibles de naturaleza’ (1994: 817). While the tone is more refined than the equivalent scene in Martínez Estrada’s ‘Sábado de Gloria’ and the hierarchical perspective is inverted, nevertheless the basic structure is the same: for no logical reason the powers-that-be impose a new boss in the office, one moreover who is ignorant of the office’s function and ways of working. In Martínez Estrada’s version, we observe clearly the effects of bureaucratic power emanating from above – and yet the sinister pantomime brutishness of those exerting power leaves problematic the question of the ultimate source of that power. Doubtless, we may and should speculate on the greater process of power Martínez Estrada portrays, but the only certainty is that the source lies beyond the bureaucracy in which Nievas works. In this context, it is valuable to recall a narrative that genuinely dates from the 1920s. In Mariani’s story ‘Rillo’, in Cuentos de la oficina, there is an example of the imposition of a new supervisor who attempts to compensate for his ignorance by using bureaucratic bullying. However, in contrast to Martínez Estrada’s vagueness, Mariani is in no doubt about the ultimate source of the bureaucratic power: British capitalism. Marechal’s account is more equivocal than those of Mariani and Martínez Estrada. This may provisionally be attributed to two factors. In the first place, although the episode is ostensibly set in the 1920s, it reflects the concerns, and the world, of the late 1940s. Secondly, the fact of Marechal’s high bureaucratic position in the Peronist establishment, and his instincts as a creative writer, are in conflict. ‘El Personaje’ was placed in the ministry through personal influence at the top level of society. And yet, although he is no less a figure than the director-general, it quickly becomes apparent that he has no power. On arrival at the office, he is greeted by a distinctly diabolic secretary, who explains his job: Cuando lo interrogué acerca de mis funciones, el maldito me llevó al escritorio, me señaló un anotador y me puso en la mano dos lápices, uno azul y colorado el otro; luego, por una mirilla secreta, me hizo atisbar la antesala de mi despacho, desbordante ya de hombres y mujeres en expectativa. Con su voz agria y monótona [. . .] el Secretario me recitó la lección: cada uno de aquellos hombres y mujeres era un ‘postulante’ y traía una carta; mi función consistía en recibir la carta, en leerla y pasársela inmediatamente a él, bajo cuya indicación yo escribiría luego el nombre del postulante, ya con lápiz azul en la columna de los elegidos, ya con lápiz rojo en la columna de los réprobos. Al oír su lección abominable, que me convertía en un fantoche accionado por sus dedos amarillos de fumador, le clavé una mirada tan dura, que mi hombre, aunque parezca increíble, me dirigió una sonrisa o mueca (1994: 818–19).


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‘El Personaje’, then, is a puppet of this man who initially explains that each case is decided according to ‘ “las conveniencias políticas” y “el imperativo electoral” ’ (1994: 819), the implication being that the secretary acts on behalf of the governing caste, of which ‘el Personaje’ is a member, albeit a defective one.21 Later, however, whenever ‘el Personaje’ rebels against his assimilation, the secretary delights in killing each spark of sensitivity ‘con el veneno cáustico de sus Digestos, Reglamentaciones y Conveniencias’ (1994: 820). Indeed, the final example of conflict between the two is very revealing. ‘El Personaje’ is moved by the case of an old man who closely resembles a peón on the old family ranch, ‘La Rosada’, who had taught him to lasso sheep; he decides that he must be given a job. The secretary objects: ‘ “La Dirección General no admitirá peones de más de cuarenta años.” Cerró el Digesto, y vi en sus ojos algo así como una luz de triunfo’ (1994: 821). It is interesting that ‘el Personaje’s’ natural instincts prompt active compassion (and, it will be recalled, wise investment in the next generation), and that the inhuman force of repression (presumably Marechal sees this as the case, irrespective of who is nominally or actively in power) is presented as located within the bureaucracy and its mentality. The change experienced and observed by ‘el Personaje’ is more than assimilation; the system promotes – and requires – dehumanisation. As in the case of Benedetti’s well-known story ‘El presupuesto’, the bureaucratic episode in Adán Buenosayres is set in a government office, which deals directly with members of the public, as private citizens, not as business people. In ‘El presupuesto’ there is a degree of dehumanisation of the clientele, but it is by default rather than systematic: members of the public and their business are simply treated as of no account, as numbered files that may or may not be processed at some future time. The clerks themselves, although they are anonymous and identified only by their positions in the hierarchy, are not dehumanised. In Marechal’s office, by contrast, the system seems to be set up with maximum dehumanisation in mind. The members of the public are spied on as they wait to be seen – when their cases will be decided on arbitrary criteria that have nothing to do with need, or with justice. And before they are seen, they are made to wait in a series of reception rooms, a process calculated systematically to sap their sense of self. Interestingly, Marechal adopts the same ecclesiastical language and imagery in respect of the government institution as Mariani does with the commercial emporium, in Cuentos de la oficina: La mía [‘amansadora’] consistía en tres recintos comunicados entre sí, los cuales correspondían a tres grados diferentes de ‘iniciación’ que debía realizar el catecúmeno antes de ser admitido a la Presencia: en el primero el postulante, renunciando gradualmente a la naturaleza humana, destruía

21 While it is true that from 1922 the president, Alvear, was from an old land-owning family, nevertheless it was a Radical, not elite, government.


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su voluntad, anonaba su memoria y deponía su entendimiento, hasta descender al reino animal, cuyas formas elementales cumplía en el segundo recinto; [. . .] luego el postulante descendía, como en sueños, al estado vegetal que realizaba en el recinto número tres: allí sólo debía sentir las vagas sensaciones del mundo vegetativo, quizás el hambre y la sed, el crecimiento de sus uñas, la circulación de su linfa. Cuando al fin entraba en mi sancta sanctorum, el postulante ya tenía la naturaleza mineral (1994: 819).

The counterpart to the systematic reduction and humiliation of the members of the public is that the aspiring bureaucrat, too, must be thoroughly dehumanised. ‘El Personaje’ goes through a number of stages, such as acquiring the gift of empty oratory, assuming an impassive mask, and abiding by the regulations as relayed to him by the secretary, before finally arriving at the perfect state where he can regard the members of the public simply as cases, not as people. He describes his final conversion into a mere part of the bureaucratic mechanism: Sólo recuerdo que, gradualmente, me fui entregando al mecanismo de la Dirección, cuya fascinadora regularidad logró subyugarme poco a poco hasta la hipnosis definitiva. Si al principio en el rostro de cada postulante yo leía un problema vital, [. . .] pude luego hacer abstracción de todo lastre sentimental, hasta no ver en aquel hombre sino ‘una cara’. Después, no interesado ya ni siquiera en los rostros, cada postulante fue para mí ‘un brazo’ en el extremo del cual venía una carta. Finalmente, ya no vi ni el brazo conductor, sino ‘la carta’ sola, independiente de su fantasmagórico mensajero (1994: 822).

Conclusion In the 1940s a strong focus develops on the emergence of a bureaucracy that is no longer merely an administration – or way of life – but a powerful and imperfectly understood force, which exerted a major influence on society and which could dictate individual lives. (In this context, Mariani is anachronistic: his portrait of the bureaucracy is closer to the nineteenth-century ethos, typified by Galdós, Balzac and de Castro, than even to his own work of the 1920s.) Marechal, like Martínez Estrada, (as well as Benedetti in Uruguay) focuses strongly on the dehumanising aspects of bureaucracy. Like Martínez Estrada (but in contrast to Benedetti) Marechal adduces a strong political aspect, with totalitarian overtones. Martínez Estrada, an important intellectual, but marginal to the power structure, perceived bureaucratic power as emanating from a military-infiltrated establishment, of which Peronism was the latest incarnation. Marechal, by contrast, placed as he was high in the establishment, saw the same processes, but could only express his anxieties indirectly: he does not acknowledge the current centre of power as the source of bureaucratisation. Instead, he displaces it: back to the erstwhile ruling class, and down to the professional civil service.


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Argentine Bureaucracy from the 1950s to the 1970s: The Enemy within Marco Denevi, Los expedientes There is no doubt that bureaucracy is a matter of general concern, and one that is well established in literature. As we have seen, in the River Plate bureaucracy is first identified as a major problem and a future determining force in society in the early 1940s by Martínez Estrada. However, it was in the 1950s that the subject really emerged: with his publication of ‘Sábado de Gloria’, with Benedetti’s stories and poems, and with Denevi’s play, Los expedientes. Like Benedetti and Martínez Estrada, Denevi was very much an insider, and he used his experience as a functionary in two very different works that explore the public bureaucracy of the post-Perón era.1 Denevi’s play, Los expedientes, opened on 20 September 1957, in the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, Buenos Aires. Press notices were favourable, identifying Denevi’s choice of the bureaucratic theme as particularly apposite. The correspondent of La Nación, for example, saw the ‘irremisible sumisión de la criaturas humanas al creciente tamborileo posesivo de los expedientes’ as Denevi’s ‘mayor acierto satírico’; meanwhile, in Clarín bureaucracy was characterised thus: ‘Tema universal, pero muy nuestro’ (Denevi, 1957, unnumbered). A later commentator, Agustín del Saz, echoes the view of Clarín, praising a play that he sees as breaking new ground: ‘La expresión de la burocracia y la sátira contra ella ha sido siempre un tema muy repetido en la literatura. Pero una visión plástica del burócrata y de sus medios profesionales que son los expedientes no se nos había dado en escena’ (1967: 141). The author’s preface to Los expedientes indicates his basic perspective, which is that bureaucracy itself, incarnated in files, is an evil, dehumanising force: En esta obra se intenta [. . .] convertir en situaciones teatrales algunos de los problemas propios de la burocracia: su falsedad, su vaciedad, su automaticidad, y el trastrueque ético que a veces opera en el espíritu de quienes

1

He worked in the Caja Nacional de Ahorro Postal (Yates, 1967: 141).


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la sirven. Los conflictos puramente humanos le resultan pues, ajenos como asunto dramático. Y por ello los verdaderos protagonistas de la obra son, como lo sugiere el título, los expedientes, esa malévola invención que resume los males de la burocracia (1957: 6).

The office in Los expedientes is the claims department of an unnamed ministry; indeed, there is little to indicate that the office is located in Argentina; the time frame, too, is unspecified, the references to office equipment and fittings being simply typically twentieth century. Perhaps, as del Saz says, it is the archetypal office: the critic considers that the main protagonist, el jefe, ‘pudiera ser cualquier hombre de cualquier ciudad y de cualquier posición social’ (1967: 143). The press reviewers noted that the plot is somewhat disjointed; and it is also the case that the play relies on farcical dialogues between caricatured characters, and that it owes much of its effect to the use of bizarre tyrannical machinery, in a way that is reminiscent of films such as Chaplin’s Modern Times. In Los expedientes the apparatus, which is oppressive, and comically absurd, is the surveillance panel that el jefe uses to monitor the employees who sit in the main office, out of his sight: VISITANTE. – (Señala el tablero.) ¿Y eso qué es? JEFE. – Ah, un invento de Gogó. (Junto al tablero. Pedagógico.) Cada lamparita está conectada al asiento de los empleados de la oficina. Si el empleado está sentado, la luz se enciende. Si el empleado se pone de pie, la luz se apaga. VISITANTE. – ¿Y para qué sirve? JEFE. – (Perplejo.) ¿Cómo, para qué sirve? VISITANTE – Sí, ¿para qué le vigilan el trasero a los empleados? (EL OBRERO se echa a reír.) JEFE. – (Después de mirar severamente al OBRERO. Herido.) Cómo se ve que usted es un profano en las cosas de la administración pública. (Otra vez pedagógico.) Todas las tareas de la administración pública deben cumplirse en posición sentado. No hay ninguna que exija estar de pie. Luego: luz encendida, empleado sentado, cumplimiento del deber. Luz apagada, empleado de pie, sabotaje. VISITANTE. – Pero usted tiene que pasarse el día mirando las lamparitas. Y por lo que veo, (señalando el tablero) sus empleados se han declarado en huelga. JEFE. – Sin embargo, los oye trabajar. (Más bajo, para que el OBRERO no oiga.) No debe hacerse funcionar el tablero sin interrupción. Haría gastar mucha electricidad y yo no podría ocuparme en otra cosa. Los jefes lo usamos por momentos, sorpresivamente, de modo que los empleados nunca sepan cuándo se los vigila y cuándo no (1957: 17–18).

There are of course potentially sinister implications. However, in the context of the play, el visitante’s amusing observation that ‘le vigilan el trasero a los empleados’ captures the double truth: el jefe uses the apparatus


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to keep a libidinous eye on the secretary; and the single goal of everybody who works in this particular office is to cover their backs, to avoid the discovery being made that they do no work. Denevi’s vision of bureaucracy is extremely bleak. However, he remains at the level of the farcically grotesque, revealing little of the inner lives of his characters. (At least two characters, la secretaria and el recurrente, could easily have been developed, to give the play a human dimension.) The absence of such a dimension is not necessarily a weakness of the individual play, however, but rather may reflect the perceived limitations of the bureaucracy as a setting: mass-media portrayals of bureaucratic life are usually comic. A Spanish play of the period, Miguel Mihura’s Sublime decisión (1955), is a case in point. More recently, BBC series such as Yes Minister or The Office, or the film American Splendor are prime examples in English-speaking culture, while the Quino cartoons are well known in the River Plate.2 Denevi’s government office is the first example in the literature where the office is inherently, rather than just effectively, a bogus institution with no role in the administration. The office depends directly on the minister, having been established ostensibly to process claims arising from an earthquake in his provincial constituency. As the play opens, five years have passed without a single claimant having come forward. The question of maintaining the appearance of work is el jefe’s great obsession; it is made explicit at the beginning, when el jefe arrives at the office early and is angered to discover the employees talking, not working. He thinks that the office’s guilty secret will be discovered. However, the oficial mayor reassures him with two cynical observations, namely that there is no danger of any managers arriving early enough to surprise the idle clerks; furthermore, if the clerks were found working in the absence of their manager, this would itself arouse suspicion. It is not just the manager and his assistant who carefully keep up appearances: the entire staff – and it is made clear that they are motivated by the desire to keep their meagre salaries – collude in the deception. The most elaborate charade is in Act 1, when el jefe receives el visitante. Although el jefe has no work to do, he first delays the interview; then, when his visitor enters, he feigns absorption in urgent, complicated documents. The interview is interrupted by pre-arranged telephone calls and by clerks rushing in with documents for signature. A second feature of Denevi’s office is an almost Swiftian or Dickensian reversal of roles: the office is not there to serve the public; rather, the public

2 Films of classic bureaucratic nightmare novels, such as Kafka’s The Trial or Orwell’s 1984 are not about office life, but about the individual mind. The recent film, Secretary, although set in an office, is about private sexual–psychological concerns.


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is viewed as a tiresome necessity, as the raw material from which to generate bureaucratic processes. In Los expedientes there is just one member of the public, who is first mentioned at the end of the Act 1, when his arrival to lodge the first claim ever received unleashes a whirlwind of bureaucratic activity. Act 2 opens six months later, with el jefe dictating a letter on the case, in florid, empty bureaucratic style: . . . y a fin de completar esta visión . . . que constituye una aproximación . . . para hurgar en la riqueza de la concepción [. . .] de la dignidad humana . . . agregaré un análisis casado [. . .] en la confrontación . . . de una apreciación . . . que involucra la verificación . . . (Corriendo triunfalmente hacia el final del párrafo) que es objeto de nuestra encarnizada persecución (1957: 24).

The talk is now of the need for a larger office (it will need to increase its eighty staff), and in conversation with el consejero (this is el visitante from Act 1, who has bluffed his way into a job) el jefe discovers that the fiscal aspect alone of the office’s single case has already generated twenty eightvolume files. The claimant himself is now referred to as el recurrente, because of his repeated requests for an interview with el jefe. Interrupted in the composition of his letter, el jefe indignantly denounces el recurrente for presuming to seek an interview with such a high official, a mere six months after lodging his claim – he surely cannot yet have exhausted the process of appeal to the thirty-six junior officials. Indeed, el recurrente is regarded as a nuisance whose behaviour is little short of criminal: ¡Ha venido muchas veces! (Crecientemente colérico.) ¿Y por qué le permite que venga muchas veces? Su presencia distrae a los empleados. Una vez puesto en marcha el trámite de los expedientes, a él no lo necesitamos. Vaya y dígaselo (1957: 25).

El recurrente finally appears, and meets el jefe, in the second half of Act 3; it is set in the main office, and takes place after the fall of the minister, an event that jeopardises the office’s future. Both characters hope to meet the new minister. El jefe, patronising el recurrente, explains to him how he would be impotent without the thousands of civil servants who work on his behalf: ‘Y nosotros, en esta oficina, somos los que estamos convirtiendo su modesto papelito en planchas de hierro que prevalecerán sobre las puertas del Gran Despacho’ (1957: 45). It finally emerges that el recurrente is there, as he always is, to ask for his claim to be returned – he lodged it in the wrong office. (In fact so much time has elapsed that he cannot remember what the claim was about, and needs it to jog his memory.) El jefe’s response is threefold – and bureaucratically self-serving. First, he says that it would probably be impossible to locate the original claim; and it would require a large number of clerks. Then, becoming angry, he says that el recurrente should be imprisoned, as punishment for the quantities of paper and ink wasted on his


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account. Finally, el jefe, whose career has been built on the files generated by el recurrente’s case, reflects that nobody will ever discover the truth in the mountain of paperwork. Accordingly, it would be advantageous for el recurrente to press his case to the new minister, and it will also justify the continued existence of el jefe’s office. El recurrente is thus brought into the web of corruption – although only temporarily: once the new minister has found a new role for the office, and guaranteed its survival and el jefe’s continued prosperity, el recurrente returns to the bottom of the heap: JEFE. – (Autoritario.) ¿Y usted qué espera? RECURRENTE. – (Humildemente, resignadamente.) Nada, señor. Quería entregar este pedido al Ministro. (Y muestra un papel que extrae de un bolsillo.) JEFE. – Llévelo a Mesa de Entradas y hágalo caratular como expediente. (Y se va.) (1957: 49).

Denevi does not associate surveillance and bureaucratic power with totalitarianism, but rather – like Benedetti – with corrupt personal ends: as we have seen, El jefe’s panel of lights is used to further his sexual designs on the secretary, Beatriz. He also manipulates regulations for the same purpose. For example, he says that it is forbidden to socialise outside the office (which means that Beatriz cannot date a colleague, Gómez), but then says that rule does not apply to managers. Free of his rival, el jefe’s pursuit of her is successful, and by Act 2 the two characters address each other as ‘tú’. Just as el jefe monitors the clerks with his light panel, he too is potentially under surveillance; there is in the wall of his office a spyhole, which, bizarrely, will light up to warn him that he is under observation. This has never occurred previously, but in Act 2 the window lights up, announcing the minister’s imminent arrival. The visit is the most farcical of all the play’s scenes: the minister is portrayed as clumsy and inarticulate, ‘un gran animal torpe y adormilado al que la luz deslumbra’, controlled by a private secretary, who ‘lo guía, lo lleva, lo trae, lo atrapa cuando se aleja, lo hace volver, se inclina para informarlo. Traduce sus estertores’ (1957: 32). It transpires that the spyhole has never before lit up because the minister has forgotten the office’s existence. The visit is not managerial, but is part of a tour of the ministry’s offices to seek out a new secretary and mistress. There is a certain symmetry with el jefe’s treatment of el recurrente: el jefe agrees to relinquish the unwilling Beatriz, in return for the promise of promotion, ‘de jefe de décimo-octava categoría, sub-rubro cuatro, a jefe de décimo-séptima categoría, sub-rubro cinco’ (1957: 37). Then, when Beatriz moves to the minister’s office, the jefe de personal tears up the notification of promotion. The relationship between the minister and the male private secretary, of puppet to puppetmaster, echoes Balzac’s Les Employés and Marechal’s Adán Buenosayres (and anticipates Yes, Minister) suggesting that politicians and


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political appointees are the pawns of a bureaucracy that represents the real continuity of the establishment, and also is frequently the true power-broker. That this is indeed Denevi’s analysis seems to be confirmed in Act 3, when rumours of the minister’s fall circulate, prompting the various departmental heads to reflect on their position. El jefe, of course, since he heads a bogus department, is concerned – although not unduly worried: the minister’s fall is something that ‘no nos conviene’. He considers the inconvenient possibility that a new minister might dare to abolish the department, before reflecting that of course their position is secure, because of the sheer quantity of files they hold. He never questions whether his department ought to exist: Viene un nuevo Ministro, se le antoja no seguir adelante con la inundación, y de un plumazo disuelve la oficina. (Otro tono.) Pero no, qué va a disolver. Tenemos cincuenta mil expedientes en trámite, veinticinco mil archivados y doce mil de refresco. No hay Ministro que se atreva contra tanto papel (1957: 39).

Initially, el jefe seems to be mistaken. When the new minister makes his tour of inspection, he scornfully condemns el jefe’s section as an example of corruption, which he is determined to correct: He aquí otra prueba del desorden que vengo a corregir. Las facultades del Poder Político, los recursos del Estado, la maquinaria de la administración pública, al servicio de mezquinos intereses personales. No, señores. Yo entiendo en otra forma la función de gobierno: remediar los males, reparar las injusticias, promover el bienestar general (1957: 48).

Nothing will change, however. The same speech continues: Y en cumplimiento de tan altos propósitos, inauguro mi gestión con esta solemne promesa: ayer mi pueblo natal sufrió las consecuencias de un terremoto. Indemnizaremos a las víctimas de la catástrofe, y aquí, aprovechando las instalaciones de esta oficina, incluidos jefes y empleados, se atenderán las solicitudes de los recurrentes (1957: 48).

The sense is that, as with the speech by the new director-general in Martínez Estrada’s ‘Sábado de Gloria’, this rhetoric has been heard many times. However, whereas in Martínez Estrada’s story the ordinary civil servant is the Everyman-victim, in the present case the politician quickly enters into complicity with the bureaucrats. That the pattern is indeed of politicians bending to the bureaucratic establishment is confirmed by the ironic description of the new minister. The new minister is, literally, the same as the old one: Entran el NUEVO MINISTRO y sus amigos, entre éstos el OFICIAL MAYOR y los JEFES I, II y III. El papel de NUEVO MINISTRO será desempeñado por el mismo actor que en el 2⬚ acto hizo de MINISTRO. Pero ahora aparenta veinte años menos, y respira ambición, incorruptibilidad y grandes ideales (1957: 48).


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Among his many vices, el jefe epitomises the depersonalisation, almost the dehumanisation, of the bureaucrat. The first explicit instance occurs in Act 1, when he is informed that Beatriz and Gómez are standing at the window, and indignantly denounces their behaviour: ‘Y desde cuándo [. . .] aquí está permitido usar las ventanas para mirar? Vaya y dígales a esos dos que las ventanas de una oficina pública han sido colocadas para que entre la luz, no para que ellos se asomen’ (1957: 18). His fuming doubtless raises a laugh in the audience; yet his sentiments are not so far-fetched. Such a mentality, which combines lack of consideration of a human dimension to office life with a fanatical suspicion that official resources might be diverted to improper use, seems little different from the one that decided that every sheet of toilet paper provided in British civil service offices should bear the legend, ‘government property’. The prohibition on employees looking out of windows, with their association with freedom, almost amounts to cliché. Yet it is a powerful motif in society and, naturally, in literature. From the first day in school we are exhorted not to look out of the window, but to pay attention to our studies; an institutionalised opposition is established between freedom and the acquisition of learning and, eventually, money. The question of isolation from the outside world is a persistent theme in the River Plate narrative of the office: in particular it pervades Mariani’s Cuentos de la oficina, and their echo, Benedetti’s Poemas de la oficina; and it acquires sinister political overtones in Arlt’s La isla desierta. El jefe’s disregard for the authentically human, in favour of a bureaucratic nature, goes far beyond forbidding clerks to look out of the window: in Act 2 it is revealed as a philosophy of life. When his wife, paying an unwelcome visit, observes that he seems almost a different person from the man she knows at home, el jefe replies that he is a different person: Dices que aquí parezco otro. No parezco otro. SOY otro. (Vivo.) En casa soy un hombre [. . .]. Pero cuando entro aquí muchas cosas de ese hombre quedan fuera. Aquí me esquematizo. (Busca la palabra.) Me reduzco. (La encuentra.) Me espiritualizo. (Un tiempo.) Y sobre ese esquema purificado en el que me convierto, la administración pública coloca, todavía, el ropaje de sus atributos (1957: 28).

The rituals of administrative existence truly override other considerations, as is illustrated by his reaction when his wife reproaches him for drinking coffee, against doctor’s orders: El médico me prohibió que tome en casa una determinada bebida. Pero no puede prohibirme que ejerza aquí mis funciones. Aquí sólo les sirven café a los jefes. No adivinas ni remotamente el prestigio que da el simple hecho de que te vean bebiendo café. Y quieres que yo, por razones de conveniencia personal, me rebaje hasta ese punto. ¡Se hace gustoso el sacrificio! (1957: 30).


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Del Saz sees the dynamic between el jefe and his wife, and the balance between home and office life, quite differently. For the critic, the office is the place of asylum to which the man escapes from the tyranny of home, and where he rediscovers his true self: ‘Este es el hombre doméstico de nuestra burguesía. Sometido a su casa y a su mujer. [. . .] La casa lo oprime y lo deprime. Desaparece su personalidad. En cambio, al llegar a la oficina, se siente importante. Recobra su personalidad’ (1967: 143). As we saw in Chapter 4, Benedetti explores at length, in La tregua and elsewhere, the question of contrasting, conflicting personalities as a major aspect of the bureaucratic condition. Although in Benedetti’s work the interrelation of the different institutions in society is not always entirely clearcut, nevertheless the office, rather than the home, is portrayed as perverted and perverting. Similarly, in the passage cited above, about el jefe’s reasons for taking coffee, the bureaucratic mentality is clearly – albeit comically and grotesquely – associated with attitudes that border on insanity. In fact, in Los expedientes the association of bureaucracy with illness goes deeper: it is the fundamental image. This begins to emerge in the stage directions for Act 2, where the office is seen as a decaying structure that harbours incipient unnatural organic growth: El mismo decorado, pero en colores más oscuros, como si un polvo, un humo, un desgaste, una vejez, un ajetreo lo empañase todo. Sobre el escritorio, sobre alguna mesita, hasta en un sillón, se verán montones de expedientes. Incluso a un costado del proscenio comenzará a formarse la larva de una de las columnas que aparecerán en el tercer acto (1957: 24).

Then, as Act 3 begins, the decay and growth are well advanced, and there are specific references to disease: El mismo decorado, pero ahora completamente ennegrecido, opaco, percudido, viejo, manchado. El Despacho rebosa de expedientes. Parecerá una gran cueva negra en la que se han formado extrañas estalagmitas. Los legajos, en montones informes, lo cubren todo, como una lepra. Al foro, por encima de la mampara, asoman colosales columnas de más expedientes (1957: 38).

El jefe, however, although now grey-haired and exhausted, megalomaniac that he is, exults in the ever-proliferating files: Crece el monstruo, ¿eh? Crece, crece. Vea, ya no hay sitio donde ponerlos. No se puede dar un paso sin tropezarse con un expediente. A veces, cuando ustedes se van y esto queda silencioso, me parece oírlos proliferar, por allí, por los rincones. Me parece oír un gorgoteo, un hervor, y pienso: son mis expedientes, son mis expedientes que se multiplican, que pululan como un cardumen vivo. (Admirado.) ¡Ah, qué invención el expediente! Basta que haya uno, uno solo, el primero. Después no hay más que esperar. Y al poco tiempo, cientos, miles, columnas, montañas, océanos, universos de expedientes (1957: 38).


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Act 3, uniquely, has a scene change, the second scene taking place in the main office: a vast, disordered space where there are ‘por todas partes las monstruosas, las increíbles, las inverosímiles columnas de expedientes’ (1957: 43). And it is in this final scene, as el recurrente asks el jefe to return his claim form, that el jefe explains the true nature of the bureaucracy: Una hojita en la que usted había garabateado cinco líneas, un miserable papelito que a lo mejor, suelto, se le perdía en el ómnibus o se lo hacía volar el viento, ahora, registrado como expediente (aclara, con una reverencia) gracias a mí, (sigue en el tono de antes) engorda, engorda con nuevos papeles que se le van agregando. [. . .] Y engorda, engorda, no deja un segundo de engordar. Hasta que rebasa los límites del expediente. Entonces estalla y da a luz a un nuevo expediente, y éste luego a otro, y a otro, y a otro, y así sucesivamente (1957: 45).

El jefe is proud of his creation, seeing it as a great army, which on el recurrente’s behalf will advance, triumphant, on the doors of government. But the imagery (and the plot) tells a different story: the growing and multiplying files do not denote a disciplined and purposeful administration, but a monstruous, spreading, formless mass of ever-dividing cells, which is nourished by society but serves nothing but itself. The bureaucracy is, quite simply, a cancer. In Los expedientes there is no connection to a political world outside the bureaucracy, beyond reference to the succession of ministers who make empty gestures towards representing their constituents’ interests. The sense is of a stable, apparently democratic politics, linked to a purposeless, growing bureaucracy. However, the reality of the time was very different: Argentina had just lived through the decade of charismatic Peronism, when an expanded bureaucracy had been deployed with a strong nationalist social agenda. Eventually the project had foundered, leading to widespread social conflict, to Perón’s overthrow in 1955, and to military rule, which lasted until 1958. Los expedientes, then, belongs to but does not reflect, one of the most traumatic moments of Argentina’s turbulent twentieth-century history.

Un pequeño café Un pequeño café, by contrast, a short novel, which was published in 1966, belongs in what might be termed the great no-man’s-land, in which Argentina stumbled through the rest of the century, through successive crises, as military, conservatives, Radicals and Peronists, alone and in various combinations, failed to address the country’s problems. Specifically, Un pequeño café belongs to the end of a period in which Radicals (Frondizi and then Illia) occupied the presidency, but on the sufferance of the military, who excluded the Peronists from the political process. The military again assumed power in 1966.


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Although in Un pequeño café Denevi does not engage politically in an analytical or partisan way, nevertheless, his protagonist Adalberto Pascumo reflects (and occasionally, reflects on) the political uncertainty of the times. However, this is overshadowed by other concerns and conceits. First, Denevi devotes considerable space to the presentation of the bureaucratic world: its inhabitants, attitudes and procedures; second, he is interested both in the Argentine cultural self-image and in associated issues of pretension and hypocrisy. These in turn are linked to an exploration of the relationship between creativity, routine and fantasy. In relation to this last aspect, on occasion Denevi’s vision strongly evokes the writing of Arlt, Borges and Onetti. Indeed, echoes of many River Plate writers of the office are found in Un pequeño café. This is not surprising, since the novel, uniquely, is presented as contributing to and correcting an established narrative of the office. As the protagonist observes early on, having informed the reader that he has worked in the bureaucracy for twenty years: ‘El jefe autoritario, gritón, ensoberbecido, que aparece en todos los retratos de la burocracia, quizá sea un convencionalismo de los escritores’ (1980: 424–5). In fact, while such autocratic managers exist in the literature, they do not predominate. While Pascumo’s case is presented as a question of individual psychology rather than national politics, from the beginning he can be seen to represent a disorientated Argentine white-collar class. The novel opens with the protagonist’s self-assessment as ‘un hombre sin carácter’ (1980: 415), and he goes on to compare himself to a weather vane, a passive object, which simply reflects the wind’s direction. However, there is a further dimension, namely that, although his behaviour might be infinitely manipulable, he considers that his inner self remains untouchable: Ah, pero eso sí: yo soy una veleta con rebeliones interiores. ¿Y para qué le sirven a una veleta las rebeliones interiores? Para nada. Para que cada vuelta que dé se le convierta en una humillación, en un castigo. Pero lo mismo obedecerá (1980: 415).

This device, of a divided, alienated – but unbowed – character who narrates his own story, opens a range of possibilities of introspection, as well as of hypocrisy and cynicism in social interaction; these are exploited in a way that is reminiscent of Balder, the protagonist of Arlt’s El amor brujo. However, at this juncture we are interested in Pascumo as a typical white-collar employee in the 1960s. Evidently, he feels neither connection to any system of ideas or principles, nor engagement with the socio-political process. He reveals an attitude that is at once totally plausible and extremely dangerous: he is a Peronist among Peronists, and a Radical among Radicals: Yo, habituado a plegarme a la realidad de los demás, podía, como un actor, [. . .] representar cualquier papel, el que los otros me reservaban o el que yo, para pasar inadvertido, me elegía a mí mismo. [. . .] Subía a un taxi. El


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conductor [. . .] [e]ra, por ejemplo, un peronista. Y yo en seguida me convertía en un peronista, bramaba contra el gobierno, me calzaba instantáneamente los modales y el léxico de un descamisado, y terminaba entonando a dúo con el chofer un himno en loor de Perón. Y a lo mejor descendía de ese automóvil y subía a otro y en este otro el taximetrista me resultaba un fanático del Gobierno, y entonces yo me volvía tan fanático como él, sacaba a relucir todas las virtudes del oficialismo, todas las maldades y los errores de sus contrarios [. . .]. Y lo peor, o lo mejor, no sé, es que, mientras representaba cada una de esas comedias, no me parecía que mentía. Me sentía sincero, estaba casi casi convencido de que decía la verdad (1980: 419–20).

A third political stance is introduced through Próspero Lacolla, Pascumo’s prospective father-in-law, a retired soldier who is impatient with the political process, nostalgic for ‘discipline’ and who, unsurprisingly, will gradually be revealed as a supporter of the military. As always, Pascumo bends to the wind, when the two characters first discuss politics: El viejo, desde el dormitorio, seguía desgañitándose: – Jefe, ¿qué opina de la situación política? – Yo, con el gesto de quien es víctima de una indiscreción, peroraba: – Le diré, esto no marcha. Así no se puede seguir. – ¿Usted cree que va a pasar algo? – Algo sí. Y muy pronto. Un vibrante cacareo de gallo al amanecer: – ¿Una revolución? Y yo, secamente: – No me pregunte más. He prometido guardar el secreto (1980: 478).

As the novel progresses, and particularly after a strike is declared, Pascumo finds himself adopting increasingly extreme attitudes; always passively, however, and largely as a result of mistaken identity. His association with the Lacolla family begins when he allows them to believe that he has expedited Lacolla’s pension, and that he is the head of the ministry’s archive: that he is well paid, in other words. Lacolla’s belief in Pascumo’s position inspires his determination that he shall be his son-in-law, and at the same time defines in his eyes the position that the younger man should adopt in the dispute between management and workforce. The irony is that the strike, by closing the office, initially seems to offer Pascumo an escape from the threat of his unmasking as a mere clerk, since it prevents the impending visit by Lacolla to his office. In fact Lacolla intercepts Pascumo, as the striking workers abandon the office en masse, and compels him to return and fulfil his ‘duty’. Pascumo’s motivation, meanwhile, is complex. First, he submits to Lacolla, and to being bled financially by the family, essentially as part of a game. Pascumo, like Arlt’s Balder before him, feels alienated, and derives his sense of self through acting a role in which he simultaneously demonstrates his


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superiority and allows himself to be a dupe.3 Second – and here he differs from Balder – he to some extent believes in the bureaucratic system: with the illness of the head of the archive, Pascumo is made encargado; later, with the same jefe’s death, as well as his own strike-breaking, there is the prospect of promotion. On the first day of the strike, several conflicting elements emerge. Pascumo joins unhesitatingly, not because he believes in it (indeed, we never discover the causes, or the justice or otherwise, of the strike) but simply because he accepts the collective decision: ‘Yo, como usted comprenderá, había adherido dócilmente a la decisión de mis compañeros’ (1980: 494). However, the antistrike faction, in which he accidentally finds himself, is clear, if unanalytic about its stance. Lacolla calls the strikers anarquistas (1980: 494), then comunistas (1980: 495). Later, the head of personnel, addressing the strike-breakers ‘en nombre de la Superioridad’ condemns the strikers as comunistas, and peronistas (1980: 500). Pascumo is uncomfortable among the strike-breakers, who are all older employees who would risk losing imminent pensions; however, he does not think through the realities of the situation, but simply yearns for refuge in the timeless, untroubled escapism of his pequeño café. In the tenth chapter of the novel Pascumo’s political zigzag becomes more pronounced – and at the same time the depth of the political crisis begins to be apparent. On the first full day of the strike Pascumo, vacillating as always, loiters in the street just before clocking-in time to see what will happen. On the stroke of midday, a marching mass of at least a thousand strikers emerges. Pascumo is caught up within the demonstration, which, however, he describes with detachment, noting that it is a phenomenon of youth – and barbarism: Ahora contorneaban la plaza. Ya los huelguistas no silbaban ni coreaban estribillos. Ahora golpeaban las manos. Sí, aquel sonsonete: ¡Huel-ga, huel-ga, huel-gá! barbarizándose todavía más, ahora omitía las palabras, descendía a un nivel del todo misterioso, se convertía en un puro repiqueteo de instrumentos primitivos, [. . .] que anunciaban un duelo, una muerte, un sacrificio, [. . .] como si la silbatina hubiese sido un ultimátum y la indiferencia de la torre del Ministerio su rechazo y ahora [. . .] nos preparásemos, mediante este nuevo ejercicio, al último acto ritual, a la inmolación de los contrarios (1980: 509).

Pascumo then compares the demonstration unfavourably with the workers’ marches (these would be pro-Perón) on Plaza de Mayo that took place at the time of the military ‘revolution’ of 1955. However, his account of his participation in the present demonstration is ambivalent. He acknowledges

3

The similarities are numerous: the characters’ association with vulgar, conservative families, who live in the suburbs, and have connections to the military; the scheming prospective mother-in-law; sexual excitement with regard to, but intellectual disdain of, the prospective mate; cultural superiority based on comparison of European and Argentine tastes.


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that he has shouted, whistled and clapped his hands as loudly as anybody, and is surprised that a person of his solitary, undemonstrative nature should behave like this. He explains his behaviour as a kind of drunkenness, at once exciting and daunting, a merging of himself into the mass – something he does not understand, and of which he disapproves. And yet, for the first time he discovers solidarity – and the desire to challenge the system: Por primera vez saboreaba el goce de la participación. Cientos de gemelos míos me rodeaban, mellizos míos que me defendían de cualquier ataque, que me incorporaban a una musculatura común en la que cada uno debía ajustar sus movimientos a un movimiento único que así se volvía invulnerable y nos levantaba por encima de nuestras propias fuerzas. Y por eso grité, yo también, y silbé (yo, Adalberto Pascumo, silbé frente al sacrosanto templo de la burocracia) y golpeé las manos (1980: 511).

The authorities’ response – to a peaceful demonstration by civil servants – is ferocious. Confronted by riot police launching tear-gas grenades, the strikers flee, chorusing, ‘–¡Gestapo! ¡Gestapo! ¡Gestapo!’ (1980: 514). In the final phase of the chapter Pascumo is found sitting in his pequeño café, away from, denying, the disturbing reality of the present: Y yo bebía mi café y saboreaba mi wiener strudel. Todo se mantenía igual. Nada se había alterado. No existían huelgas. No se conocían motines, carros de asalto, bombas lacrimógenas. Las imágenes confusas de la manifestación se me antojaron ilusorias como el sueño. No, yo no había participado de ninguna manifestación. No me había alzado contra el orden público (1980: 515–16).

There is no escape, however: the arrival of Lacolla and his daughter returns Pascumo to the conflict, and reveals further, disturbing details of a very serious state of affairs. First, Lacolla’s opinions are revealed as ever more virulent and ill-informed. He accuses Pascumo, whom he has seen at the demonstration, of consorting with terroristas (1980: 517), before going on to rail against comunistas, masones and imperialismo (1980: 520). Indeed, the old man attributes the troubles in Argentina to a coordinated strategy of the USA and USSR. The second disturbing element is the manipulation of information. Lacolla produces a pro-government newspaper, which reports that a small group of strikers have caused a disturbance, while the great majority of ministry staff have remained at their desks. Meanwhile, in a handbill put out by the strike committee Pascumo is denounced as a traitor. It gradually emerges that this is an extremely serious, far-reaching confrontation. The ministry is paralysed, the only work carried out being the issue of dismissal notices to the strikers. (Pascumo knows this, because he types the lists of dismissals.) However, the question of what is happening beyond the ministry’s four walls is more problematic. There is mention of clashes with the police, of strikers imprisoned, of a bomb exploding at the minister’s house, and of the head of personnel’s car being set on fire. Pascumo


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is sceptical: ‘Pero todo esto yo lo sabía por los periódicos o por boca de los anti-huelguistas’ (1980: 536). As far as he is concerned, it is impossible to learn the truth from the conflicting reports; his only certainty is that the strike, like a plague, has emptied the ministry offices. Pascumo articulates what many must have felt: ‘Y lo más penoso consistía precisamente en no saber, en no estar nunca seguro de nada, en alimentarse de versiones, de rumores de terceros’ (1980: 536–7). The extent to which the strike is part of a more generalised social conflict is indicated by a second set of rumours that Pascumo hears: ‘Se hablaba de [meetings in] bares que, para despistar a la policía, eran cada día distintos. Se hablaba de toda una organización con mensajeros, con santos y señas, con agentes de enlace’ (1980: 537). On a personal level, Pascumo’s position is, to say the least, ambivalent. On the one hand he is glad not to be on strike, enjoys the cosy intimacy of the small group of strike-breakers and feels loyalty towards the bosses. And yet, he realises that he instinctively calls the minority of returnees desertores: ‘¿se da cuenta? espontáneamente, inconscientemente, llamo desertores a los que abandonaban la fila de los huelguistas’ (1980: 537). The personal dilemma sharpens when he is forced secretly to copy the dismissal lists, and provide the information to a union spy. Thus, while Pascumo wishes that the problem would disappear so that he would not have to take sides, he actually ends up more compromised than anybody, working as a double agent. Pascumo, then, is deeply involved – albeit unwillingly – in the covert political struggle. Meanwhile, the visible conflict is evidenced by the government’s silence, by furious debate in Congress, and by more generalised trade union activity, in the form of solidarity declarations by other unions, and the CGT’s4 threat to call general strikes (1980: 546). The dénouement maintains the uncertainty and ambiguity that have characterised the whole novel. The strikers eventually win the dispute, the minister resigns and is replaced. Things return to normal, in other words: the system has resolved its conflict. Although there is party-political reference in the novel, there is no obvious specific political analysis; consequently, there is no reason why Denevi should portray these events as part of a historical process defining the future – and he does not do so. What he does, however, very strongly, is to suggest that people’s sense of who they are and how society functions, is anachronistic. He conveys this message through two characters. One is Pascumo; the other is the union representative to whom he has passed information, and through whom he learns that the strike is over. It is clear that Pascumo’s colleague is a sincere trade unionist who has worked hard on behalf of his colleagues to win the strike, all the while struggling to support himself by selling off his possessions. He now realises that the conflict has been a sham: that the real business has

4

Confederación General de Trabajo: the national confederation of trade unions.


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been conducted behind the scenes, and that union and government are aspects of a single bureaucracy. He and Pascumo have been dupes: –¿Pero vos sabés lo que fue esta huelga? [. . .] ¿Y que fuimos cuatro locos, cuatro quijotes, los que salíamos a la calle a pelear? ¡Y si te cuento que ha habido tipos, compañeros nuestros, que aprovecharon la mishiadura general para prestar plata a intereses usuarios! ¡Y entretanto yo, y un grupito de idiotas como yo, hablábamos de reivindicaciones sociales! ¡Y te obligábamos a hacernos de alcahuete! ¡Y nos jugábamos el pellejo contra la taquería, todas las noches! Pero ellos no. Ellos estaban en los comités, comían con los políticos, andaban en qué sé yo qué conciliábulos. Y la huelga, y el gremio, y las demandas sindicales, y todas esas milongas que a mí me engolosinaban la boca, a ellos, bah, a ellos se les importa un corno. ¿Ellos? ¿Ellos? ¿Quiénes eran ellos? – Ya los vas a conocer, Pascumo, ya los vas a conocer. Son los que mañana se atribuirán el triunfo, y coronados de laureles se pondrán al frente del cortejo. Y el rebaño los seguirá, como a sus salvadores, a ellos, que se pasaron estos tres meses viajando en auto y cenando en restoranes de lujo (1980: 562–3).

For the union official, disillusion is total. His renunciation of his previous ideology, in favour of belief in the goodness (or badness) of humanity is presented as revelation: ‘Ahora sé que ninguna idea es buena o mala por sí misma. Que son los buenos los que hacen bueno el mundo, y los malos los que vuelven mala cualquier cosa, hasta las buenas ideas’ (1980: 564). However, this merely disguises a strong choice: he has abandoned collectivism and the public service, and has embraced individualism by throwing in his lot with business: ‘Pero ahora conseguí un empleo de corredor de seguros’ (1980: 561). It is all very neat: the official believes he can wash his hands of, and personally escape, what are most certainly shared problems. Pascumo, too, finds himself in a new situation. Having tried to please all parties, he now finds that he is shunned by colleagues, that charges of disloyalty are brought against him by management; and he is dropped by Lacolla, who has discovered that he is only a clerk. Like the union official, Pascumo suddenly awakes from his previous existence. At this late juncture, it emerges that Pascumo has been knocked down in the street by a car, and the entire narrative has been addressed to the driver. Whether Pascumo is compos mentis is a moot point. Certainly, however, the accident has caused a sudden detachment from his previous reality. He sees the people who previously intimidated him reduced to mere insects: Miro a mi alrededor, y ya nadie me apabulla, nadie me parece esa montaña que yo evitaba con largos rodeos, esa fatalidad de la que era imposible librarse. [. . .] Hormigas, éso [sic] es lo que ahora se me figuran. Pobres insectos invertebrados que se defienden como pueden, erizando sus púas, moviéndose como tarántulas, atacando, mordiendo, escondiéndose. Pero si se los contempla fríamente, a cierta distancia, si se los estudia [. . .] entonces se los ven tan débiles, tan indefensos que dan lástima (1980: 567–8).


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The other element of his awakening is to the falsity of his personal life. He peers into his refuge, the pequeño café, and realises that all the characters there, including Isabel Lacolla, are like ghosts, living in the past. The realisation prompts him to abandon a fiction based in the past, the prestigiously exotic and the distant, and to embrace the present: No, ya no podría entrar en el pequeño café. No quiero gozar de extraterritorialidad, como un diplomático extranjero. No quiero sentirme un pasajero que añora, en el cuarto de un hotel, su casa lejana. Basta de hojear viejos álbumes desvanecidos. Basta de fabricarme, con palabritas en francés, la nacionalidad del apátrida. Me guste o no me guste, Buenos Aires es mi ciudad, este tiempo es mi tiempo. Me despido de Ein Kleines Kaffee. Otros lugares me aguardan. Lugares donde la gente ríe, habla en alta voz, se pelea, hace bien o mal su propia historia. En una palabra, vive. Allí viviré (1980: 570).

As a critique of cultural identity, the character’s observations are entirely understandable.5 However, as was the case with the union official, Pascumo’s epiphany is also in a sense an abdication, an escape. He thinks he can find the solution through the eyes of an eight-year-old street boy: ‘Obsérvelo: ese sí no ve fantasmas. Ese sí que mira de frente la realidad. Y tiene apenas ocho años. ¿Sabe? Me voy con él’ (1980: 571). Pascumo’s resolution, made in a context that is evidently highly politicised, takes no account of that reality, but rather constitutes a turning away from the fantasy identity he has developed through his pequeño café. The first important point about this fantasy identity, and its world, is that it stands in diametric contrast to Pascumo’s mundane office existence. In his clerical role, Pascumo has scant opportunity to express his creativity and individuality: he is an institutionalised character. We have already seen the debilitating effects of his alienation on his political identity: he is like a weather vane. However – and unlike many Benedettian characters, for example – he is not fully colonised by the bureaucratic mentality, but retains his imaginative powers. Certainly, in the pequeño café he retreats from a reality that is at first humdrum and later problematic; but he uses his private world imaginatively, as a narrator and as an actor. In relation to this question, we have already remarked that Denevi’s narrative is explicitly placed within a genre of writing of the office (Pascumo seeks to correct the existing image of bureaucracy purveyed by writers). Interestingly, Denevi saw the distinction between the autonomous creative writer and the scribe as largely circumstantial: No creo que hubiese podido llegar a ser escritor sin el favor de las circunstancias o por lo menos con su oposición. [. . .] Quién sabe cuántos 5 The assumption or retention of a parental European identity can still be strong. An anglophile example in café society would be the tweed-jacketed ladies and gentlemen still seen in Marechal’s (and Borges’s) favourite café: the Richmond, on Florida.


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escritores, por culpa del destino (ese azar) viven sub specie de oficinistas o de comerciantes (1980: 11).

The fifth chapter of the novel, which is set in the pequeño café, reveals the disinterested quasi-literary nature of Pascumo’s imagination. The café is in the style of the Viennese coffee houses that Pascumo has read about. In its oldworld, exotic atmosphere, Pascumo is supremely comfortable, and his imagination quickly takes flight. First, he wishes that the newspapers in the café would be those of the late nineteenth century, the belle époque. (Foreign words and references abound in the sections of the novel set in the café.) Then, Pascumo notes that the proprietress has the demeanour of an exiled aristocrat, and the waiter that of a butler. Observing the interaction between these two, and one of the regular customers, an elegantly dressed old lady, Pascumo mentally converts them into exotic characters: now the proprietess is a baroness, the old lady is a deposed empress, and the waiter, wordlessly anticipating her order, is a royal servant carrying out an established protocol. Later, identifying two women as an ex-opera singer and her mother, he invents for them their present: every day they wait for a young man who has promised to come, but never does, before leaving and returning to their pensión alemana (1980: 452). Finally, we learn that Pascumo, too, has an exotic identity: he speaks French in the café, and believes that he has ‘la [categoría] de un sire en el exilio’ (1980: 453). Within his imaginary identity, he imagines conversations in the silent café, in which the habitués tell each other about their pasts, Pascumo illustrating his own imaginary narrative with a photograph album of his now-dead family. The Argentina Pascumo wishes to live in is based on nostalgia for a prestigious, but mythical European past. On one level Pascumo, in reality a humble clerk, spends his time caught in a fantasy which, although it compensates for the sterility of his real life, is unproductive and, arguably, irrelevant to him. However, it should not be forgotten that Pascumo is the narrator of his own story, a member of that cohort identified by Denevi, of writers who are stuck in offices. Indeed, the character writes well, his tour de force being his meditation on another of the habitués, a crippled young man who remains aloof from the others (1980: 450–1), and whom Pascumo identifies and elaborates as a detached, critical figure. There is also an actively dishonest side to Pascumo’s fictive identity; this relates to his social life, and specifically to his relationship with Isabel Lacolla and her parents. In the sixth chapter, Isabel’s first visit to the café, when the two initiate courtship, is described; then, the seventh is about Pascumo’s first visit to the Lacolla home. Pascumo, like Arlt’s Balder before him, is a well-read, intelligent character whose sense of alienation drives him to play games that involve domination and humiliation. Pascumo regards Isabel as gauche and inferior – and he wastes no opportunity of showing his superiority. He dazzles her with his knowledge of Europe, pretending that he has been a frequent visitor there,


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although in reality his knowledge is second-hand: ‘Eché mano de todas mis lecturas. Saqueé todos mis libros de arte, mis catálogos de museos, hasta las guías turísticas’ (1980: 463). As well as the exploration of contrasting attitudes towards European and Argentine cultures, Arlt’s and Denevi’s texts share many key features, the most important being that the relationship is, for all concerned, a comedia. Isabel and Adalberto (Pascumo) must enact formulae to become novios; whereupon the focus immediately switches to the question of marriage and finding a suitable home. On Pascumo’s side, as with Balder, genuine physical desire is mixed with intellectual distaste, as well as with a fascination with the game. Interestingly, just as Balder had initiated the sexual topic obliquely, invoking the courtly-love image of a hound at its mistress’s feet, Pascumo, too, chooses a medieval sexual image: he likens his retrieval of Isabel’s handbag from the floor to Edward III of England retrieving lady Salisbury’s garter. Although the circumstances of the end of the affair are very different, there is one strong parallel. Balder, having discovered that Irene was not a virgin, breaks off the engagement; however, an inner voice tells him ‘ya volverás’. Whether this should be interpreted as specifically relating to Irene, or to his general behaviour pattern, the meaning is basically the same: he is unchanged. Pascumo, it will be recalled, looks into his pequeño café where, in spite of her father’s prohibition, Isabel sits waiting for him – before deciding to turn his back on it, and to seek reality through the eyes of the eight-year-old street boy. The reader may be unconvinced. From the Lacolla side the predictable, and not unreasonable goal is to find a good (that is, well-paid) husband for Isabel. Although in this case there is not the same explicit sense of dishonest intrigue that is found in Arlt’s novel, the many similarities invite comparison. In El amor brujo, the relationship between Irene and Balder is ostensibly clandestine – yet Irene’s mother almost certainly knows about it. Similarly, although Isabel and Pascumo have been in contact for some time, over the arrangements for her father’s pension, there has been no suggestion of a relationship. And yet, when the first meeting at the pequeño café results in a declaration of love, Isabel is prepared, and is ready with an invitation to dinner, on behalf of her parents. Like the Loayza family in El amor brujo, the Lacollas live in a run-down house in the suburbs; like Balder, Pascumo notes the presence of cheap ornaments. In the negative presentation of the parents, however, Pascumo far exceeds Balder. Isabel’s mother is a plantígrada, a person who instead of pronouncing words, ‘Las baboseaba’. But in Pascumo’s eyes, hers is a calculating subservience: Me seguía dedicando aquella sonrisa de prostíbulo, pero sus ojos, medio enterrados entre los párpados, eran fríos y calculadores. Temí a la vieja. Ahora se mostraba obsequiosa hasta la pornografía, pero, llegado el caso, sería una enemiga implacable, estaba seguro (1980: 471–2).


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The contrast in the depiction of the fathers is even more extreme; in El amor brujo the father, a colonel, was dead, but present as a photograph on the piano. He seemed to represent stability and (sexual/moral) values that were explicitly, and in Balder’s view hypocritically invoked by his widow, and flagrantly subverted by Irene and Balder, who mutually masturbated on the sofa, in full view of the photograph. Lacolla, by contrast, is a caricature, a raucous loudmouth who in Pascumo’s eyes resembles a cockerel: ¡Dios mío, por algo había cacareado! Tenía verdaderamente la figura de un gallo de riña. Flaquito, puro piel y hueso, la cara del color de la barba del pavo, ojos saltones y celestes, una cresta de pelos hirsutos plantada sobre el cráneo, la nariz en forma de pico, las manos como haces de espolones. Y para completarla lo habían enfundado en un piyama azul con lunares rojos que le servía de plumaje. – Choque esos cinco, jefe (1980: 472–3).

Lacolla, however, is unwell, and confined to bed, and so is absent from the family circle at the dinner table. In the corresponding scene in El amor brujo Balder, almost with enthusiasm, plays the role of future son-in-law, allowing himself to be gently bullied, and fattened up with second helpings of ñoquis. He certainly adopts a critical stance, viewing the scene as representing an unsophisticated national Argentine culture, but only through his distaste at the ‘national’ music on the radio. Pascumo, by contrast, is aggressively patronising. As the family finishes its main course, he embarrasses them by discussing French cuisine in a manner that highlights the supposed inferiority of Argentine food, as well as emphasising his own good taste: –Dígame, señora, ¿le gusta la cocina europea? La mujer pareció desafiarme un minuto con la mirada. Sí. Sí . . . me gusta . . . Pero en seguida capituló: Nosotros . . . Se dirigió a Isabel: –¿No es cierto, nena? Nosotros . . . Pero como Isabel se mantuvo silenciosa, no supo cómo continuar y se calló. Entonces, con una sonrisa que jugueteaba entre mis labios [. . .] le clavé el puñal: –Para mí no hay ninguna que pueda comparársele. Especialmente la cocina francesa. Y le decía esto sobre los restos del locro, de la humita y las empanadas que me habían servido. Proseguí: –Y aun dentro de la cocina francesa, prefiero las especialidades del Limousin, o de Auvergne . . . ¿Usted no ha probado nunca la truite de la Vallée de la Sioule aux amandes? La vieja miraba el Delice de Rois [sic] que, en el centro de la mesa, hacía causa conmigo y parecía inflar de orgullo sus merengues.


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–No –dijo, distraída– No . . . Pensaría tal vez en el postre que había preparado. Y ese postre, estaba seguro, era mazamorra (1980: 479).

Turning to consider the image of state bureaucracy in Un pequeño café, it is reminiscent of that presented by Martínez Estrada in ‘Sábado de Gloria’. In both works the focus is on a long-serving, junior official; moreover, both writers contrast the customary clerical routine with a new, transformed routine, which is the direct result of political instability and change; and both accounts are intense and hyperbolic. One of the principal differences between them is the tone: Martínez Estrada’s narrative is intense, gloomy and nightmarish, and provides a vivid inner portrait of an individual who is exploited by and trapped within the bureaucracy. Denevi’s protagonist, with his twenty years’ toil on a pitiful salary, in a ministry’s basement archive, is not only directly comparable to Martínez Estrada’s functionary (and to Mariani’s commercial clerks) but is likely to have been modelled on them. And yet, although Pascumo’s predicament is comparable to theirs, he belongs with the group of protagonists, most notably Arlt’s Balder, who evidence a strong, writerly sense of irony and detachment. The first three chapters of Un pequeño café provide a portrait of the bureaucracy in its normal state, as perceived by Pascumo. In the first chapter, the subject is the importance of files; as Pascumo observes, ‘Recuerde que un expediente es un objeto poco menos que sagrado en la administración pública’ (1980: 420). This predictable, sarcastic remark is set within an anecdote of hyperbolic absurdity, which develops from a minor accident: Pascumo accidentally burns a hole through a file with a cigarette. Terrified at the likely consequences (Pascumo sees damaging a file as even worse than losing one, as a crime comparable to homicide), he stays up all night, going from office to office, retyping each damaged sheet with a different typewriter. This done, he forges the signatures of the various functionaries who have processed the file. He is afraid that he will be discovered, especially since he knows that an office messenger, who has found him at his desk several hours before the usual time, is suspicious. Finally, however, all is well: for a year the file circulates through the twenty-five floors, the three hundred offices, the fifty-or-so directorates of the ministry building, without the forgery being detected. This account might be seen as a development of the basic conceit of Los expedientes, in which the bureaucracy is portrayed as a purposeless proliferation of files. While this anecdote is a personal fantasy that is presented as though it were real, the second chapter provides a broader description of bureaucratic life which, although in some respects exaggerated and caricatured, remains more plausibly grounded in reality. The first element is the working environment. Pascumo’s archive is the sub-basement of a twenty-five-storey block, which is accessed by stairs, since the lifts do not reach this deep. Obviously it only has artificial light, and is a dank, airless place, plagued by cockroaches and visited by the occasional rat. Predictably, it is nicknamed las catacumbas. There are


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five clerks’ desks, a manager’s cubicle – and an impressive filing system, ‘algo así como un ordenado laberinto geométrico, como una ciudad en miniatura’ (1980: 424). It is perhaps not the most exciting or comfortable workplace – but neither is it hell-on-earth. Indeed, Pascumo is respected for, and derives pride from, his detailed knowledge of this labyrinth, where ‘era el único que dominaba las tareas a la perfección, el único que conocía todos los precedentes, las reglamentaciones, los plazos de archivos, los vencimientos de las reservas, la ubicación de cada legajo, de cada papel’ (1980: 424). Pascumo, with his expertise acquired over many years, is the exact equivalent of Martínez Estrada’s Nievas: the backbone of the office, the motor that keeps the wheels of the bureaucracy turning – while managers come and go, never grasping the business of the office. Pascumo’s explanation for their incompetence is twofold. First, managers are only briefly assigned to the archive: as a fleeting posting on their way to greater things; as a punishment; or as a pre-retirement sinecure. Secondly, Pascumo sees managers as being a different category of person from the empleados: their only skills lie in obtaining promotion and fringe benefits such as cheap theatre tickets (1980: 425). It is on the basis of this combination of bureaucratic incompetence and good interpersonal skills that Pascumo challenges the notion of the tyrannical manager as ‘un convencionalismo de los escritores’ (1980: 425). He asserts that managers of course behave correctly towards their subordinates: they realise their ignorance, their reliance on their subordinates – and fear them.6 However, while managers may act with consideration towards their subordinates, they are indifferent to the needs of the public. Indeed, according to Denevi, indifference – even hostility – towards the public is typical of public servants as a class. In the third chapter, Pascumo imagines (but narrates as if it were fact) Isabel Lacolla’s arrival at the archive, and uses it to provide a portrait of his colleagues, one of whom, he imagines, will have simply passed her on to him: Después siguieron hablando entre ellos, [. . .] como si una pobre señorita tímida y azorada no siguiera allí, mirándolos sin saber qué hacer, malditos empleados públicos para los que, de pronto, un recurrente, un postulante deja de ser una persona viva y se convierte en un fantasma, en una cosa, en nada. Y en realidad no es así, no es que lo olviden ni dejen de verlo: lo ven, y muy bien, pero fingiendo ignorarlo, continuando en su charla o bebiendo su café parsimoniosamente mientras el otro suda de impaciencia, creen,

6

While managers may be ignorant and insecure, the conclusion that they must therefore act in a civilised manner towards their subordinates, is nonsense, as Martínez Estrada and Mariani document. Reacting to pressure from above, Julio Nievas’s boss, in ‘Sábado de Gloria’, changes from an easy-going friend to a tyrant. Mariani’s story, ‘Rillo’, meanwhile, is built around the contrast between a previous, easy-going, competent manager and his incompetent, tyrannical successor.


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esos miserables, ejercer la cuota de poder que les corresponde, así, como los reyes permanecían sentados mientras tenían a todo el mundo de pie durante largas horas (1980: 428).

While the idleness of the (generally poorly paid) civil servant is legendary, it is only in Denevi’s two works that they are presented as positively malign. A more complex and interesting attitude to bureaucracy emerges in the third chapter; it highlights, but does not resolve, the inferior/superior, routine/creative contradictions in Pascumo’s character. (It also calls into question Pascumo’s general characterisation of public servants.) When Isabel Lacolla asks about her father’s file, he answers her query immediately, before reflecting that he not only has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the archive, but is emotionally identified with it: ‘Siempre decía así: yo. Yo significaba: Archivo. Quería tanto mis expedientes, me sentía tan identificado con ellos, que esa era mi expresión habitual: los tengo yo, no los tengo yo’ (1980: 431). There is no resentment in this realisation: Pascumo, like Mariani’s Santana, but in contrast to the protagonists of Benedetti’s Poemas de la oficina, for example, identifies with his bureaucratic role. However, there is a further dimension to this bureaucratic dedication. The events of the strike, and his courtship with Isabel – which is to say the entire episode of the disturbance of the bureaucratic routine – comes about precisely because of his extreme dedication. Pascumo is working in the manager’s cubicle when Isabel arrives (as was the case with Balder, in El amor brujo, the woman actively enters the routine world of the man, and changes it). Pascumo sees Isabel as an older version of the actress Norma Shearer, whereupon he treats her with extreme courtesy, and is assumed by her to be the manager. There are some obvious ironies here, in relation to Isabel’s perception of him as a manager, his subsequent pretence to be one, and the chaotic results of these. However, the most interesting aspect is the reason why Pascumo was in the manager’s office in the first place. As the most experienced person in the office, he has been asked to report on a proposal to destroy all the documents that have been accumulating for over thirty years. It almost goes without saying that for Pascumo this is sacriligious, and its proponent a criminal lunatic: ¿Cómo íbamos a desprendernos de aquellas preciosas reliquias que yo a menudo me entretenía en hojear, nada más que para ver las firmas de ministros que hoy eran próceres ya muertos y con una estatua en alguna plaza, o para descubrir que Fulano, que ahora ocupaba el cargo de Director General, en el año 32 había sido subjefe de Archivo? (1980: 430).

Pascumo’s mastery of the location of all the files in the archive already to some extent challenged the image that he promoted, that of the clerk who would be something else. Now, the ease with which frivolous personal curiosity blends into a serious cultural concern shows us what Pascumo really is: he is a genuine archivist, a historian who, moreover, can exercise his calling right where he is. Before moving on to consider the image of the bureaucracy, as it is transformed by the strike, there is one further observation to make on its


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normal state. In Pascumo’s vision there are three categories of employee in the visible bureaucratic hierarchy: the jefes, the experienced empleados, and the auxiliares, whose functions repectively are to be the visible flower, the nourishing root, and superfluous foliage of the bureaucratic plant (1980: 425–6). Then, there is a fourth class of employee, the ordenanzas; these, whose ostensible function is to provide cups of coffee and carry messages and documents, inspire fear in Pascumo: ‘Le digo que son temibles’ (1980: 434). He notes that they are outside the bureaucratic hierarchy, but have access to all the offices; clearly, he suspects that they constitute a spy network. The strike, as well as disrupting everyday routine, reveals unsuspected dimensions in the bureaucracy, while at the same time undermining the boundaries between the various roles. First, and as was the case in Martínez Estrada’s ‘Sábado de Gloria’, with political/managerial crises the ‘top brass’ become visible. Pascumo’s account of a ministerial visit, like Martínez Estrada’s description of the arrival of the director-general, is ambivalent. Pascumo appears genuinely impressed by the majestic presence of the minister, with his retinue of impeccably suited secretaries. But he goes on to reflect that these are beings from another world, who simply pass through the world of mere mortals, never making real contact: ¿Usted se fijó? No sé cómo serán entre sus pares. Pero cuando condescienden a reunirse con nosotros, los hombres comunes, se diría que atraviesan nuestro tiempo y nuestro espacio desplazándose según una órbita propia. Bloqueados en el punto de intersección afectan estrecharnos la mano, hablarnos, oírnos. Pero usted mírelos bien. Con el rabillo del ojo están buscando la huella de aquella curva por la que deben seguir moviéndose y que los rescatará de entre nosotros para conducirlos de vuelta a su mundo. No nos escuchan (1980: 538–9).

Pascumo is unimpressed by the minister’s oratory: ‘Después nos arengó. En realidad no dijo nada.’ And from a lofty perspective, his assessment of the politician’s probable cultural level is scathing: ‘Ese monigote no sabría distinguir un Brueghel de un Bosch, ignoraría quién era Scarlatti, en su vida habría leído a Rimbaud. En el Colón, durante las funciones de gala, seguramente se dormía’ (1980: 540). The appearance of the minister in the world of the routine bureaucracy is mirrored by Pascumo’s discovery of the side of the ministry he would never normally see. Taking a wrong turn, he finds himself in an oak-panelled world of marble statues, plush carpets, leather armchairs and polished oval tables. Pascumo is disturbed by what he sees, would rather not know this alien world because it makes him reflect uncomfortably on his own place in the scheme of things: Mi angustia crecía. Hubiese preferido no conocer esa ala del Ministerio, ignorar que mientras yo trabajaba en un subsuelo húmedo y oscuro, minado de ratas, en otra parte había salones lujosos y que en estos salones se desarrollaba un infinito convite (1980: 549).


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We have already observed the political confusion produced in Pascumo, as a result of the strike. This confusion is paralleled by dramatic disturbance of his bureaucratic role and identity. He has imagined himself as a jefe, and indeed must keep up the appearances of the role in front of Lacolla. Secondly, by not joining the strike Pascumo has identified himself with the management, a process that is encouraged by his being made the archive encargado during his boss’s illness, and then, on the manager’s death, by the promise that his loyalty during the strike will ensure promotion. However, he is not, and never will be, a jefe. During the strike all the usual processes are suspended, and the ministry becomes the place where the jefes while away their days chatting, reading and playing cards – like the empleados in Benedetti’s ‘El presupuesto’; also, its business becomes the conflict between management and employees. In relation to the first, Pascumo becomes an ordenanza, in both senses: he makes the coffee for the jefes, and he listens to conversations, spying for the union. In relation to the second, Pascumo continues to be the workhorse empleado, the one who transacts the business, which is to type the lists of employees dismissed. This too is corrupted, in that effectively, by copying his work for the union, he spies on himself. Pascumo feels confused, alienated, and imprisoned. He describes his working days: Y cuando no estaba sirviéndoles café me quedaba en la oficina que me habían asignado, una especie de celda donde [. . .] no hacía nada. Ni siquiera pensar. Una inercia, qué sé yo, una indiferencia, una morbosa postración de convaleciente me impedía interesarme en alguna cosa, llegó incluso a matar mi afición por la lectura [. . .]. Hacía dibujitos. Eso era lo único que hacía. Dibujitos. Garabatos sin ton ni son con los que cubría hojas y más hojas de papel que en seguida arrojaba al canasto. Creo que estaba enfermo (1980: 550–1).

Denevi’s initial view of bureaucracy, in Los expedientes, was of a monstruous, parasitic state apparatus. It was not especially oppressive, either towards the idle nonentities within it, or towards the citizens whom it was supposed to serve. It was a simple caricature. In Un pequeño café by contrast, a more complex attitude is revealed: there is a major conflict between the instinct to preserve what has been carefully built over time, and the desire to sweep away what no longer serves its purpose. Through his portrayal of an individual, in his capacities as bureaucrat and citizen, Denevi depicts an Argentine cultural identity and political process in crisis. He does not pretend to a clear diagnosis, much less does he propose solutions. Indeed, as the final quotation indicates, the collapse of the established order induces in his protagonist a deep lethargy. However, as the more extreme events in the novel reveal, Denevi knew well that aspiring to what is effectively a Montevidean, Benedettian alienation is in the Argentine context no more than desperate, wishful thinking.


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Julio Cortázar, ‘Trabajos de oficina’ Cortázar’s two office stories reflect very different moments in his thinking. ‘Trabajos de oficina’ first appeared in the collection Historias de cronopios y de famas (1962), which is to say at the height of Cortázar’s period of experimental writing, epitomised by the novel Rayuela (1963). Indeed, the language and imagery of the story are very reminiscent of the novel. ‘Trabajos de oficina’ is less than a page in length, and consists of an introductory sentence-paragraph, and a longer paragraph, both beginning with ‘Mi fiel secretaria’ (1996: 440), a term that appears for a third time in the recapitulation. The relationship between secretary and functionary is expressed from the beginning as hostility and struggle. However, the accustomed terms of the Cortázarian universe are in one sense reversed: the other, which is to say the secretary, represents the principle of repression, rather than the emergence of what has been repressed. And yet, at the same time, the secretary’s strict fulfilment of her duties is encroachment, invasion: ‘significa pasarse al otro lado, invadir territorios’. There follows a description of the office day as being ‘una cordial batalla de jurisdicciones’. However, this is not (or not only) the semi-comic, quasifamilial conflict that occurs between manager and assistant, or between professional workers and support staff. It is another instance of the familiar conceit of the functionary who is not ‘really’ a bureaucrat, but a creative writer. The secretary represents the bureaucratic structuring of language (and hence reality) by means of maintaining it frozen, unchanged; and the story in its entirety is the playful rendering of the conflict between bureaucratic and creative uses of language. Cortázar introduces the theme of language through contrasting images of the two protagonists’ activities. First, the secretary carefully orders and prepares the words to fulfil their routine role: ‘no hay día en que no las lustre, las cepille, las ponga en su justo estante, las prepare y acicale para sus obligaciones cotidianas’. The writer, meanwhile, is the oral medium through which the occasional unnecessary word, ‘un adjetivo prescindible’, emerges. Such a word never reaches the page, however, since the secretary catches and destroys it: ‘está ella lápiz en mano atrapándolo y matándolo sin darle tiempo a soldarse al resto de la frase y sobrevivir’. And if, by oversight, such a word did occasionally succeed in being written down, the secretary, furious, would immediately throw the letter into the waste-paper basket. The control extends further: the protagonist sees the secretary as a determined character, ‘resuelta a que yo viva una vida ordenada’, who keeps a constant sharp eye on him. He sometimes manages to ‘llenar algunas hojitas [. . .] con las palabras que me gustan, con sus juegos y sus brincos y sus rabiosas querellas’: he can write poetry, by pretending to be working on a report. However, just as his words are like playful puppies, so his secretary is


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an ever-vigilant guard dog, ‘toda orejas, toda rabo parado’, who prowls the office. And sometimes she catches him writing a verse, ‘que nacía tan contento, el pobre’. The writer’s pencil then guiltily crosses out the offending words, and order is restored: mi lápiz vuelve al galope hacia las palabras vedadas, las tacha presuroso, ordena el desorden, fija, limpia y da esplendor, y lo que queda está probablemente muy bien, pero esta tristeza, este gusto a traición en la lengua, esta cara de jefe con su secretaria.

‘Trabajos de oficina’ is a somewhat self-indulgent story, especially in comparison with works by more obviously socially committed writers in the genre, such as Benedetti. And yet, it shares the same fundamental theme, bureaucratic repression of language, and through language. Furthermore, with its notion of active assault on liberty of expression by bureaucratic forces, it foreshadows ‘Segunda vez’.

‘Segunda vez’ ‘Segunda vez’ is in the collection Alguien que anda por allí, which was published in 1977, and which reflects the author’s greater political concern. Indeed, the context of this story is the increasingly violent politics of Argentina, and South America in general. Alguien que anda por allí belongs to the era of state terror in Argentina in the 1970s, first by a violent, disreputable Peronist government, then, after the 1976 coup, by the military. The subject of ‘Segunda vez’ is the treatment of citizens at the hands of a secretive, menacing bureaucracy. There are two facts about ‘Segunda vez’ that initially might be surprising in a story with such a subject. First, its structure and technique are reminiscent of the classic fantastic stories of Cortázar’s early period. On reflection, however, perhaps we should not be surprised, since social reality had by then taken on some of the nightmarish characteristics of the Cortázarian universe of the 1950s. The main protagonist of ‘Segunda vez’, María Elena, lives in a social structure that has been invaded by hidden, destructive forces; she is, unawares, witnessing a ‘disappearance’, and she too is presumably following her own unseen path to disappearance. The story opens with the perspective and routine of anonymous office workers, who break from work to drink coffee and exchange gossip: cada uno tenía su fecha y su hora, pero eso sí, sin apuro, fumando despacio, de cuando en cuando el negro López venía con café y entonces dejábamos de trabajar y comentábamos las novedades, casi siempre lo mismo, la visita del jefe, los cambios de arriba (1995: 134).

However, as is hinted at by the opening phrase, ‘cada uno tenía su fecha y hora’, this is not the relatively innocuous Benedettian bureaucratic world


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that it superficially resembles, but something altogether more sinister. It is not made explicit, and yet it soon dawns on the reader that these are state functionaries, and that those awaiting their appointments are not just impersonal files; they are members of the public, who do not know that they are on a list to be summoned, and who when they are summoned will not realise why. There is perhaps a sense of higher knowledge, of preordained destiny in that first reference to the office’s clientele. However, later in the paragraph the true – shabby, capricious – nature of the bureaucratic context becomes clear: Ellos, claro, no podían saber que los estábamos esperando, lo que se dice esperando, esas cosas tienen que pasar sin escombro, ustedes proceden tranquilos, palabra de jefe, cada tanto lo repetía por las dudas, ustedes la van piano piano, total era fácil, si algo patinaba no se la iban a tomar con nosotros, los responsables estaban arriba y el jefe era de ley, ustedes tranquilos, muchachos, si hay lío aquí la cara la doy yo, lo único que les pido es que no se me vayan a equivocar de sujeto, primero la averiguación para no meter la pata y después pueden proceder nomás (1995: 134).

In the second paragraph the matter-of-fact description of the work resumes. The anonymous narrator reports that suitable offices have been chosen so that the business can be transacted properly: ‘para que no se amontonaran, y nosotros los recibíamos de a uno como corresponde, con todo el tiempo necesario’ (1995: 134). The working day itself and its routine business are presented casually. ‘Así que todos los días lo mismo, llegábamos con los diarios, el negro López traía el primer café y al rato empezaban a caer para el trámite’ (1995: 134). In this sentence, the expression ‘caer para el trámite’ is particularly significant. On the one hand, ‘caer’ seems to be used by the narrator quite casually: people simply calling in, turning up. And yet, the term has more sinister meanings, as an extract from a Benedetti story, of the same date, illustrates: ‘Cayó y no lo podía creer. No había militado. En realidad, no lo habían dejado militar. Hace como veinte días que cayó, o quizás sean dos meses, o cuatro días. Bajo la capucha es difícil calcular el tiempo’ (1994: 304).7 The term ‘trámite’, meanwhile, is the key item in the communication between the police and its victims. Members of the public are summoned to attend to an unspecified trámite; and indeed, throughout the story, for all the members of the public summoned to the office, whose words and thoughts are presented, the trámite remains at this level of a miscellaneous – and unthreatening – item of business that they are required to transact. By contrast, the narrator’s understanding of the term is very different, and perhaps consists of three main elements. First, he is aware of the term’s use in the general public way: ‘La convocatoria decía eso, trámite que le concierne’ (1995: 134).

7

From ‘Pequebú’, in Con y sin nostalgia (1977).


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Second, he of course knows the real nature of the process into which the victims are drawn. Third – and this is revealed in the banal expression ‘caer para el trámite’ – is the impersonal attitude, the bureaucratisation of evil. The second paragraph is also where the narrative focus switches, midsentence, from the anonymous functionary to the protagonist, María Elena, who has been summoned to the office: ‘Ahora que eso sí, aunque venga en papel amarillo una convocatoria siempre tiene un aire serio; por eso María Elena la había mirado muchas veces en su casa’ (1995: 135). Thereafter, except for the story’s last sentence, when the focus reverts to the anonymous functionaries, the narrative chronicles María Elena’s experience of a visit to the ministry office, which is some kind of initial interrogation centre. Through María Elena, and the other characters she meets in the waiting room, we receive the public perception of the social reality. This perception is shown as at variance with the true state of affairs, which is revealed through the anonymous functionary. As the functionary knows, the arrival of the letter is unexpected; and this is confirmed, since María Elena has looked at it again and again. However, there is no indication of anything untoward in the document, with its official stamp and illegible signature. She is surprised at the office’s location, but accepts her sister’s explanation: ‘estaban instalando oficinas en cualquier parte porque los ministerios ya resultaban chicos’ (1995: 134). There is, then, uncritical public awareness of government offices multiplying, and appearing in unexpected places. There is still no marked sense of the unusual, as María Elena gets off the bus at her destination, finding the street unremarkable: it has a mix of residential and small commercial properties, and a few trees.8 While it is not the obvious location for this type of office, she reflects that perhaps it will be identified with a flag, in the way that embassies, which are often sited in residential districts, are. When she sees no national flag at the address, this still does not perturb her; she simply asks a newspaper vendor if this is the right place. For the reader, however, the absence of the flag probably marks the office quite strongly: the government office has identified itself privately to María Elena, and the newspaper vendor knows it is there – why would he not, since he is there every day? But it is not publicly acknowledged. There is one unequivocal feature of Maza, however. There is little pedestrian or vehicular traffic, although there is one zone where the pattern is different: ‘Los pocos autos estaban estacionados a la altura de la Dirección, casi todos

8 The office is in calle Maza, a little way out of the centre, at about 3,500 on Rivadavia. The maza (mace) was a type of bludgeon used in medieval warfare: an appropriate symbol of police-state brutality. Interestingly, Maza is between Boedo and Virrey Liniers, two streets whose names are strongly associated with populism; furthermore, the 700 block of Maza, where the office is located, appears to be between Independencia and Estados Unidos. The fact that María Elena journeys from the district of Constitución adds to the symbolism.


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con alguien en el volante leyendo el diario o fumando’ (1995: 135). This is the kind of naïve reporting that typified the character Madame Francine, in ‘Los buenos servicios’,9 a rare example in Cortázar’s early writing, of a story with strong social analysis. To the reader, however, the sinister significance of the (presumably) unmarked, waiting vehicles – perhaps the infamous Ford Falcons – is all too clear. Throughout the main body of the story, there is a double process of development. On the one hand, the office itself and the events that take place in it become increasingly irregular or strange. The reader, whose privileged position straddles the private (official) and public realities, draws clear inferences from the strangeness. The members of the public, however, are almost in complicity with the bureaucrats, stubbornly accepting as normal what manifestly is irregular: functionaries and public cooperate in a bureaucratic game. The office is, frankly, a seedy joint: María Elena enters a narrow passage, to an inner courtyard where a dirty, half-obscured identification plate directs her to the third floor. Ascending the stairs (there is no lift) she arrives at an unmarked door with no bell, which opens onto a narrow, smoke-filled waiting room. She knows that this is all strange, but accepts it. Inside the room, the occupants converse, maintaining the typical grudging resignation of any group of people waiting in a queue. Cada uno tenía su tema, como siempre, el señor calvo la lentitud de los trámites, si esto es así la primera vez qué se puede esperar, dígame un poco, más de media hora para total qué, a lo mejor cuatro preguntas y chau, por lo menos supongo (1995: 136).

The sense of routine is maintained by frequent references to trámites, the filling of forms, pieces of paper. Indeed, when María Elena’s turn comes, she is asked to complete the usual details: ‘Eran las pavadas de siempre, nombre y apellido, edad, sexo, domicilio’ (1995: 138). Although the functionaries are presented unobtrusively, carrying out normal actions such as showing people in or out, asking them to fill in forms, on closer inspection more is revealed. María Elena is apparently treated courteously, although impersonally. The functionary who deals with her never meets her eye, and yet she looks up from her form-filling, to find that she is being scrutinised. In fact, although she reports it casually, after she has completed her form she is crossquestioned: El resto fueron preguntas, algunas inútiles porque ella ya las había contestado en la planilla, pero también sobre la familia, los cambios de domicilio en los últimos años, los seguros, si viajaba con frecuencia y adónde, si había sacado pasaporte o pensaba sacarlo (1995: 138). 9

In Las armas secretas (1959).


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Finally, she is told to return three days later (this time there is no official written summons) for her segunda vez. As she leaves, María Elena seems oblivious to what is happening; and yet she should not be. Before she was called into the office, she talked to a young man, Carlos, who is attending the office for the second time, and who, ominously, knows that sometimes the trámites take longer than the quick session imagined by the bald gentleman. In fact, by the time they are called, María Elena and Carlos have become friendly, and she has learned where he lives, and where he works. As she leaves the office she decides to wait a while to see if Carlos will emerge. She knows, or thinks she knows that he is still in there, because he has not left through the only exit. The inexplicable disappearance of the flesh-and-blood Carlos through an invisible door in the government office echoes the emergence of the non-existent baby’s crying, through the walled-up door of a Montevideo hotel, in ‘La puerta condenada’.10 Here, however, there is no mystery. María Elena is the witness to a disappearance. If she had sufficient time, and if she understood the significance of what she has seen (or rather not seen) she could now, or at some point in the future, pass on the information. But she does not understand; neither, it seems, does she have time: Antes de irse [. . .] pensó que el jueves tendría que volver. Capaz que entonces las cosas cambiaban y que la hacían salir por otro lado aunque no supiera por dónde ni por qué. Ella no, claro, pero nosotros sí lo sabíamos, nosotros la estaríamos esperando a ella y a los otros, fumando despacito y charlando mientras el negro López preparaba otro de los tantos cafés de la mañana (1995: 139).

‘Segunda vez’ marks one of the logical, inevitable end-points of the genre of writing of the office. The bureaucracy now includes and transcends everybody, functionaries and public alike; it has usurped independent thought and installed itself as the natural medium of state oppression. Such a moral vacuum is a frightening and brutal reality. While the stages of its development are clearly reflected in the Argentine literature of the office, Martínez Estrada is probably the only writer who makes a serious attempt to look into the future. Denevi, in Un pequeño café, belatedly realises that a fundamental structural change has taken place – but cannot imagine its repercussions. Cortázar, finally, sees and images the reality clearly. Too late.

10

In Final del juego (1956).


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7

Uruguay from the 1960s: Bureaucracies of the Absurd Juan Carlos Onetti, El astillero There has been much discussion of Larsen, the protagonist of Onetti’s El astillero, which was published in 1961. Claudio Canaparo, for example, identifies Larsen as a very specific type of failure as a human being: ‘Larsen’s artistic failure is the result of an excess of understanding, pity and compassion; he is too clearheaded to be creative’ (1997: 599). He goes on to suggest that Larsen’s self-image is based not on how the character feels or believes himself to be, but rather on what he knows he is not and cannot be. In Larsen there is a divide between on the one hand, a genuine sensitivity, and on the other, the fundamental sense of self: he does not have the inner force of an artist, who ‘would have been able to oscillate between the belief in an image and the certainty of a condition’ (1997: 599). Before exploring the implications of these characteristics, it is useful to consider what Larsen actually is, the role he plays in the world – rather than what he might be. El astillero is centred on the office where Larsen works, which belongs to the defunct shipyard of Jeremías Petrus, S.A., and is located in Puerto Astillero, outside the city of Santa María. Larsen is an office worker, albeit one who, as we shall see, dreams of better things. That he is a dreamer is amplified in Juntacadáveres when Barthé’s project to set up a brothel, using as manager Larsen, a white-collar employee of a provincial newspaper, finally becomes a real prospect: Tal vez se hubiera acostumbrado con exceso a esperar el momento de triunfo encorvado sobre los libros de contabilidad, en el alto escritorio del diario; y a solas en su habitación encima del Berna; y a solas apoyado con naturalidad en la admiración de Vázquez, en el mostrador del Berna. Era como si él mismo y todos sus móviles se hubieran convertido en aquella espera y le fuera imposible ahora rebasarla (1983: 61).1

In terms of the developing genre of narrative of the office, there is a clear connection between Larsen, and Onetti’s and Arlt’s protagonists from the 1

Juntacadáveres, which was published in 1964, is the ‘prequel’ of El astillero.


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1930s. In ‘Avenida de Mayo’ and ‘El posible Baldi’, two early stories by Onetti set in Buenos Aires, the protagonists Suaid and Baldi both invent fantasy alternatives to the bureaucratic routine of their lives. Meanwhile Balder, the protagonist of Arlt’s El amor brujo, although a more complicated creature, essentially is from the same mould: he indulges in both romantic and creative fantasies, suffers from demotivation, and plays out social roles with a mixture of self-delusion and scepticism. There is also a strong current of negative socio-political criticism in Balder who, in the final analysis, remains what he really is: an office worker doing a job he does not believe in. Later, in Onetti’s short novel, El pozo, the disillusion is taken a stage further. Eladio Linacero, the protagonist, arrives at a negative lucidity in which, while he accepts that society is unjust, he cannot believe in the ideologies of progress for the masses; this disillusion with shared narratives is amplified by his own failed attempts to be a narrator, or to establish meaningful personal relationships. This personal emptiness is echoed by the nondescript urban space he occupies. Balder and Linacero, then, are key ancestors. Through Balder, Arlt investigates and confronts the immediate reality, the dilemmas of the 1930s’ Argentine office worker. However, the novel ends inconclusively, in angry stalemate between the need to conform and the desire to be different. The cycle will doubtless be repeated. By contrast, with Linacero Onetti seems to conclude that there is nothing to be done, there is no obvious way in which everyday routine and personal creativity can meaningfully be interrelated. In Juntacadáveres Onetti looks back to that dull routine world, of submission: Era todavía también el tiempo de las oficinas, de los empleos de cien o ciento veinte pesos, de horarios de ocho horas [. . .]. Era el tiempo de la corta, rápida sonrisa torcida ante patrones, contadores y gerentes [. . .]. Era necesario firmar el reloj de entrada, avanzar saludando con la boca torcida, el cuerpo un poco doblado para que la humildad desbaratara curiosidades y atenciones, entre una doble fila de hombres inclinados, de hombres que colgaban sacos de las perchas (1983: 110–11).

In the absence of a direct way to resolve the dilemma, Onetti moves his thought to another level. At this juncture we can return to Canaparo’s observations about Larsen’s lucidity and lack of self-belief – and explore the nature of the universe that the office worker Larsen inhabits. As we shall see, although Larsen’s dreams and actions are prosaic, the world in which he lives is not. This is part of Onetti’s solution to the dilemma of creativity and routine: to establish an alternative world, in which routine is transformed by its surroundings. The first point to make is that the world in which the events of El astillero take place, and the events themselves, are far removed from reality. The shipyard, and the associated locations of la casilla and la glorieta, are


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distanced even from the imaginary world of Santa María. Furthermore, while many scenes consist of dialogue, or events as experienced directly by Larsen, a significant proportion of the novel is presented as hearsay. For example, on Larsen’s second visit to Santa María, in ‘Santa María II’, the character is only perhaps seen by the petrol-pump attendant. The glimpse is described thus: ‘La hora en que Hagen tuvo su dudosa visión de Larsen’ (1993: 129). The next section, ‘Santa María III’, begins with equal uncertainty: ‘Si tomamos en cuenta las opiniones y pronósticos de quienes conocieron personalmente a Larsen y creen saber de él, todo indica que después de la entrevista con Petrus buscó y obtuvo el medio más rápido para volver al astillero’ (1993: 148). In addition to the physical distance of the shipyard from Santa María and the narrative distance of events from the assumed narrator (who seems to be an inhabitant of the city), there is also the sense that the shipyard is not quite located in normal twentieth-century time. It is some years since it ceased operations, and it continues to exist only in the limbo of bankruptcy; its employees work without salary, surviving on theft and scavenging. Even its past is not remembered by the characters, but is presented indirectly, for example through tender documents for ships that may or may not have called in for repair. Furthermore, even when there is real activity, it does not connect properly with the modern world. In the section ‘El astillero – VI’, for example, the technical director Kunz is found at work, seeking to improve a drilling machine’s performance from 100 holes per minute to 150 – in the full knowledge that modern machines already work at speeds far in excess of this figure. Santa María is, however, tangentially attached to history, and this is revealed through references to transport infrastructure, for example, the statement in the first section, ‘Santa María I’, that a new road has just been opened, connecting the city with el Rosario and the north. This correlates with the construction of roads for freight, and the consequent decline of the railways (in Argentina) that took place in the 1940s. In this context, it is noteworthy that there are railway tracks in Puerto Astillero, although the railway was never operational. The clearest temporal reference is to the events around 1930. As is well known, the 1929 Wall Street crash had far-reaching economic consequences in the River Plate (one being the decline in the export trade with Britain), which led to major political changes, particularly in Argentina. Both El astillero and Juntacadáveres are set against this background. In relation to the political aspect, there are several references to a coup. For example, in Juntacadáveres, Dr Díaz Grey recalls a night, soon after his fortieth birthday, when the city was filled with the scent of jasmine: ‘Era allá por el tiempo del golpe de Estado’ (1983: 88). More significantly, it was at that time: ‘cuando la crisis del 30’ (1993: 155), that Petrus renounced his more grandiose dreams, and settled in Puerto Astillero. In relation to the lost connection with Britain, in ‘La casilla – I’, Larsen inspects the documentation relating to the


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possible repair of a British grain-carrier, the Tiba, which seven years previously may or may not have put in to the shipyard, which may have sunk in the Atlantic, or which may have reached London safely. This then is the historical time of Santa María and Puerto Astillero: the era after the loss of the pre-1930 world. As well as the novels’ socio-historical context, there is what might be termed the narrative-historical context. There is one further significant connection to be made with Onetti’s work written in the 1930s – and specifically with El pozo, which is mediated by a single consciousness, the forty-year-old Linacero. In El astillero, by contrast, there are several consciousnesses, the three most important being the protagonist Larsen, an anonymous observer who takes a poetic joy in descriptive imagery, and the analytical and reflective doctor Díaz Grey. In Juntacadáveres the doctor is unmistakably associated with the earlier protagonist, Linacero: ‘Saber quién soy. Nada, cero, una compañía irrevocable, una presencia para los demás. Para mí, nada. Cuarenta años, vida perdida’ (1983: 88). The third contextual question concerns the nature and location of Santa María. The general view is that it is an archetypal River Plate city. Rodríguez Monegal, for example, describes Santa María’s reality thus: ‘Juan Carlos Onetti ha incrustado en la realidad del mundo rioplatense un territorio artístico que tiene coordinadas claras y se compone de fragmentos argentinos y uruguayos’ (1974: 105). As Rodríguez Monegal observes, Santa María’s cultural identity is rioplatense. Its geographic location, however (certainly in these two novels), is in Argentina. For example, in El astillero, when Petrus is said to travel to the capital to try to resolve the shipyard’s finances, the city in question is Buenos Aires. The political structure, too, is Argentine: in Juntacadáveres there is reference to Radical and Conservative factions on the city council (in Uruguay the parties would be Blanco and Colorado), and the administrative structure is provincial, not departmental (1983: 18, 21). Indeed, one of the characters, Hansen, is the governor’s secretary. Gustavo San Román, who has studied the geography of Santa María and its region, notes that there are many references that link Santa María to Uruguay; one such is the existence of an Avenida Artigas. The evocation of the founder, Artigas, is significant – although Argentine cities too have streets named after him. 2 The second strong link adduced by San Román is the existence to the east of Santa María of a Colonia suiza, a name strongly associated with the Plate coast west of Montevideo – and which, as San Román points out, evokes Uruguay’s nickname as the ‘Switzerland of South America’. In the end, however, San Román concludes that Santa María’s geography is based on the

2

Larsen lodges in the Hotel Belgrano, named after the porteño general who was Artigas’s contemporary (and, briefly, ally).


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Argentine city of Paraná, which is on the eastern bank of the River Paraná (2000: 107–21). Such a location can be seen as a neutral point between Argentina and Uruguay: Paraná, the one-time capital of the Federation, is a highly appropriate, symbolic halfway house of River Plate culture, between the rival, polarised identities. Paraná’s geographical location, in Entre Ríos – which is to say neither in the main part of Argentina nor in the Banda Oriental del Uruguay – expresses this neutrality perfectly. And in a sense it may reflect the cultural identity of a writer who, after all, lived and worked for many years in both Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and in this sense was a citizen of a regional, River Plate, culture. El astillero, as office narrative, has much the same quality of timelessness, of self-sufficient threadbare absurdity, as Benedetti’s short story ‘El presupuesto’. Indeed, its isolation, whereby ships are nothing but a distant memory, echoes the image in ‘El presupuesto’ where the clerks see themselves as marooned Robinson Crusoes, on a ‘pequeña isla administrativa’. And there are further parallels, in that in both offices there is an atmosphere of friendly complicity, a sense of simply whiling away the time, combined with a respect for formality in which the workers always address each other using their official titles. However, in El astillero there are many more dimensions (and locations) in the transactions between the characters, as well as in their sense of individual and group identity; it is also significant that the shipyard is – albeit sketchily – linked to broader economic and historical considerations. The most important difference from Benedetti’s work is the extremity of the socio-economic situation in which the characters of El astillero find themselves: questions that are usually camouflaged are posed with the utmost clarity. In El astillero the characters’ physical survival, and membership of and trust in society’s institutions have to be recognised as mutually exclusive. It is this basic issue that is played out, principally through Larsen, and also through his subordinates, Gálvez and Kunz. In most respects the situation in the shipyard is stark: the winter weather is inclement, the workplace open to the elements, the meaningless work produces no money (nobody can ever draw their salary). And yet, there is still hope. In the first place, there is potentially a strong social solidarity, which is seen most clearly in the relationship outside the shipyard between the three shipyard employees and a fourth character, Gálvez’s wife. There is a sense of warmth and security among them, as they all contribute to the shared asado, sit for hours chatting over a glass of wine, to a background of tangos on the radio. Secondly, there is a resigned recognition of absurdity, and an ability to salvage something of use. Petrus has promised housing for the employees but has not provided it. Kunz has simply billeted himself in a vacant office; meanwhile Gálvez and his wife have built a shack using materials from the shipyard; the office furniture and railway sleepers provide the fire for warmth


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and for cooking. The three employees survive financially by gradually selling off the shipyard equipment. Thirdly, and this resides entirely in Onetti as narrator rather than in the characters, there is a Quixotic determination, which, through both humour and a sensual attachment to words, transforms a bleak reality into a construct of poetic beauty. From the outset, as Larsen leaves the relative normality of Santa María for Puerto Astillero, it is clear that he is entering an abandoned world: Calles de tierra o barro, sin huellas de vehículos, fragmentadas por las promesas de luz de las flamantes columnas del alumbrado; y a su espalda el incomprensible edificio de cemento, la rampa vacía de barcos, de obreros, las grúas de hierro viejo que habrían de chirriar y quebrarse en cuanto alguien quisiera ponerlas en movimiento (1993: 64).

The shipyard is a three-tiered hierarchy: Petrus the entrepreneur, who is connected to the world of big business through the shadowy creditors; the rootless intermediary Larsen, the manager; the white-collar workers: Kunz and Gálvez. There are no manual workers. Throughout the novel, the partners in the two hierarchical pairings, Larsen–Petrus, and Larsen–Gálvez/Kunz, behave with respectful formality to each other – as if the enterprise were functioning. However, the interests of Petrus and Gálvez/Kunz are distinct; Larsen vacillates as he tries to fathom which alliance best serves his interests. There are three Petrus–Larsen meetings in the narrative, but the owner only appears in the shipyard once, in ‘El astillero – II’, Larsen’s first visit. On this occasion Petrus and the two workers behave correctly towards each other, discussing the progress of the shipyard’s inventory. However, the underlying reality of the office, its non-functionality and the senseless drudgery of its routines, is also presented: Larsen volvió a mirar la hostilidad y la burla en las caras inmóviles de los dos hombres que aguardaban. Enfrentar y retribuir el odio podía ser un sentido de la vida, una costumbre, un goce; casi cualquier cosa era preferible al techo de chapas agujereadas, a los escritorios polvorientos y cojos, a las montañas de carpetas y biblioratos alzadas contra las paredes, a los yuyos punzantes que crecían enredados en los hierros del ventanal desguarnecido, a la exasperante, histérica comedia de trabajo, de empresa, de prosperidad que decoraban los muebles (derrotados por el uso y la polilla, apresurándose a exhibir su calidad de leña), los documentos, sucios de lluvia, sol y pisotones, mezclados en el piso de cemento, los rollos de planos blanquiazules reunidos en pirámide o desplegados y rotos en las paredes (1993: 75).

The reality is the mocking resentment of the alienated office workers, the comic sham that is the business – and the desolate scene: a heap of trampled papers, a collection of broken furniture, in a room with unglazed windows, a leaking roof, and with weeds pushing through the cracks. And yet, the manner of description is exuberantly baroque. Although he does so in a highly stylised manner, Onetti


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here presents very clearly a recognisable physical, social and economic reality. He may be sceptical of any positive certainties about that reality, but he unhesitatingly engages with it, using it to create a powerful aesthetic. The office workers, by contrast, cannot do this, but merely repeat the same old mocking parody of the equally tired clichés of their leaders: Sin volverse, [Larsen] oyó que Gálvez o Kunz decía en voz alta: – El gran viejo del astillero. El hombre que se hizo a sí mismo. Y que Gálvez o Kunz contestaba, con la voz de Jeremías Petrus, ritual y apático: –Soy un pionero, señores accionistas (1993: 76).

A tripartite structure, which combines strict adherence to bureaucratic formalities, comments about the farcicality of procedures and exuberant descriptions of desolation, is repeated several times through the novel. For example, later in the same chapter, ‘El astillero – II’, the negotiations over Larsen’s function and salary are immediately followed by a description of him walking carefully round the deserted office, avoiding treading on documents, reflecting that the windows were once glazed (1993: 78). Then, in ‘El astillero – III’ there is a formal exchange between Larsen and his two subordinates. Kunz comes to Larsen’s office: –Permiso –dijo Kunz, y se inclinó, golpeó un carcomido taco contra el otro. –El señor Administrador pide al señor Gerente General una entrevista. La gracia de una entrevista. El señor Administrador se considera en condiciones de documentar, esa es la palabra justa, la verdad de ciertas afirmaciones verbales (1993: 108).

While Larsen waits for Gálvez, the narrator delicately sketches the scene: ‘El viento susurraba en los papeles caídos en el piso, se revolvía en cortas vueltas contra los altos techos.’ Gálvez presents himself formally: ‘–Me anunció el señor Gerente Técnico . . .’ (1993: 108). This interview, however, introduces an unexpected dimension to the reality of the shipyard’s business. While Larsen sits in his office, attempting to run the enterprise, on the one hand Petrus has been conducting major financial swindles (Gálvez has brought a forged share certificate to show Larsen); on the other, it emerges that Gálvez and Kunz are surviving not on salaries – which are never paid – but by selling off the shipyard’s equipment. The entire enterprise is thus nothing more than an exercise in gradual, systematic looting, in which the entrepreneur and the office workers tacitly collude. Larsen is now made aware of the arrangements, and finds himself having to mediate, and find his place in, this strange symbiosis. Having agreed to allow the sell-off to continue, Larsen pauses to reflect; once again the desolate scene is described, this time with a vivid, almost joyous touch: ‘Por los agujeros de las ventanas el viento traía ahora gotas heladas de llovizna que salpicaban con breve alegría las hojas de papel de seda, desordenadas en la mesa, de un informe sobre metalización’ (1993: 110).


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By ‘El astillero – IV’ matters have developed considerably, not least in terms of the relationship outside the office between the three employees. And yet, as Gálvez fails to report for work one morning, Larsen enquires of Kunz whether his colleague has sent a medical certificate. This time however, the situation has changed dramatically: Gálvez’s absence represents the beginning of the character’s withdrawal from the charade, which threatens the end of the collusion and of the shipyard itself. Larsen, realising this, visits Gálvez in his shack and, using language strongly reminiscent of Petrus’s rhetoric, seeks to persuade Gálvez to continue to believe in the future: –Estamos en las vísperas; estoy autorizado para decírselo. Unos días más y nos pondremos nuevamente en marcha. No sólo tendremos el permiso legal sino también el dinero necesario. Millones de pesos. Tal vez sea necesario modificar el nombre de la empresa [. . .]. No vale la pena que le hable de los sueldos atrasados; el nuevo Directorio los reconoce y los paga. Ni Petrus ni yo hubiéramos aceptado otra solución (1993: 123).

However, despite these words, Larsen knows that there is no hope. The ‘histérica comedia de trabajo, de empresa, de prosperidad’ (1993: 75) that he has seen in others has turned his own life into a tragic farce: frente a la indiferencia del Gerente Administrativo, Larsen sintió el espanto de la lucidez. Fuera de la farsa que había aceptado literalmente como un empleo, no había más que el invierno, la vejez, el no tener dónde ir, la misma posibilidad de la muerte (1993: 123).

The circumstances are different, but Larsen’s sentiments are similar to those of his contemporary, Martín Santomé, of Benedetti’s La tregua. The last formal bureaucratic scene in the office occurs in ‘El astillero – VI’, when a letter arrives, addressed to the Señor Gerente General de Petrus, Sociedad Anónima. Puerto Astillero. Although the letter is for Larsen, it is received by Kunz, and prompts a sketch of the character’s hopes and disappointments since he has been at the shipyard. The enterprise is presented as a religion, in which he was initiated as technical director, and in which he believed, not because there was any activity, but because from time to time letters would arrive – even though the only action required was to forward them to the creditors in the capital. When letters stopped arriving, Kunz lost his faith, and the shipyard office became ‘el templo desertado de una religión extinta’ (1993: 198); the prophecies of resurrection issued by Petrus and passed on by Larsen have failed to rekindle his belief. Now, the arrival of a letter is for him incontrovertible proof of the shipyard’s existence, and he seeks to share his joy with Larsen. Of course, the irony is that the letter, which is from Gálvez, is proof of precisely the opposite of what Kunz believed. The letter begins, observing the bureaucratic protocols: ‘Señor Gerente General de Jeremías Petrus, Sociedad Anónima: De mi consideración. Me tomo la libertad de distraerlo de sus preocupaciones para hacerle llegar mi renuncia al


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cargo de Gerente Administrativo’ (1993: 199). However, this time the subversion of the false bureaucratic world comes from within, from the document. Adopting a sarcastic tone, Gálvez formally renounces his claim to arrears of salary, which ‘por descuido no cobré’ (1993: 199), as well as his share of the proceeds of the monthly sale of the shipyard’s equipment. He then announces that he has reported Petrus to the authorities, before concluding with a parting thrust (he is of course dead by the time the letter arrives) at Larsen: Me dicen en Santa María que usted no es persona grata para esta ciudad. Lo lamento porque tenía la esperanza de que viniera a convencerme de que cometí un error y explicarme en detalle el maravilloso porvenir que disfrutaremos desde mañana o pasado. Nos hubiéramos divertido. A. Gálvez (1993: 200).

The issue of how Larsen perceives himself, particularly in relation to his actual and desired social roles and status associated with the shipyard, is a central thread throughout the narrative. It has already been noted that the fantasy bureaucratic transactions between characters are frequently followed by descriptions of the desolate office, and that the desolation is presented by the narrator in a vivid, poeticised form. Larsen, too, transforms the scenes in his imagination, but in terms of the enterprise and his place in it. Thus, in ‘El astillero – II’, immediately after Petrus offers Larsen the job of manager, Larsen paces the derelict office which, in his imagination, is transformed into a hive of activity. On this occasion the scene is, as it were, brought to life by the switch from the pluperfect to the imperfect tense: Las ventanas habían tenido vidrios, cada pareja de cables rotos enchufaba con un teléfono, veinte o treinta hombres se inclinaban sobre los escritorios, una muchacha metía y sacaba sin errores las fichas del conmutador («Petrus, Sociedad Anónima, buenos días»), otras muchachas se movían meneándose hasta los ficheros metálicos. [. . .] Trescientas cartas por día, lo menos, despachaban los chicos de la Sección Expedición (1993: 78).

The following section, ‘La glorieta – II’, details the office routine. Gálvez, every twenty-fifth of the month, types out, with several copies, the list of nonexistent salaries. Larsen, although aware of the reality, plays the game of manager to the full. He arrives at the office every morning at eight, and settles down to study the files that he has selected the previous evening. Just as Gálvez’s book-keeping is unconnected to finance, Larsen’s office is unconnected with the outside world, such as potential customers – or, rather, it is disconnected, since the telephones remain out of order. Nevertheless, Larsen has set in place the trappings and procedures of the organisational hierarchy: he has painted his title on his office door, and has repaired the electric bell with which he can summon his subordinates. He is thus able to interrupt ‘el aburrimiento de los azules «muy señores nuestros» precedidos


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siempre por una fecha cinco o diez años atras’, and play the manager, enjoying ‘el placer demente de hacer preguntas y obtener respuestas sobre temas de sonido prestigioso y que muy probablemente no aludieran a nada’ (1993: 87). Sometimes, as he conducts the sham consultations, he imagines himself as the top man, Petrus. However, his games in the office and his aspiration to be the boss (which he hopes to achieve by marrying Petrus’s daughter) are insufficient to sustain him. ‘La casilla – I’ brings the first crisis, and the first adjustment to reality. Larsen sits in his office, alone, reading the Tiba file. In reality, however, the dominant fact is that he is hungry: for some days he has not had a proper meal – only the social courtesy of tea and cakes with Petrus’s daughter. He wonders what the outcome of the Tiba case was, but in the end decides that it does not much matter: perhaps he will find more papers the next Monday: ‘En todo caso, disponía de centenares de historias semejantes, con o sin final; de meses y años de lectura inútil. Cerró la carpeta y dibujó sus iniciales en la tapa para saber que ya la había leído’ (1993: 92–3). It is by now lunch time, and hunger is uppermost in Larsen’s mind: the physical need for sustenance, as well as the psychological yearning for a meal in company. Pretexting an enquiry about the Tiba file, he goes to the shack, where he finds Gálvez and his wife, and Kunz; they are sipping mate and listening to tangos on the radio, while the asado cooks over the fire. From this point there is a change, whereby Larsen lives a double life, in which he continues with his aspirations in relation to Petrus y Compañía, but eats at the shack and spends his evenings there with his new friends. Gálvez and Kunz accept the new situation: Ellos, por su parte, soportaron desde el primer día, sin humillarse, sin burla, el doble juego de Larsen: la Gerencia de 8 a 12, de 3 a 6, las desapariciones de Larsen hasta la cena, sus silencios cuando se hablaba del viejo Petrus o se insinuaba la existencia de su hija (1993: 97).

In ‘La glorieta – III’ once more there is a return to office routine. Larsen reads the ‘carpetas de sucesos muertos’, while his two subordinates undertake their usual occupations: ‘Gálvez sobre los enormes libros de contabilidad, el alemán entre los cándidos azules de los planos’ (1993: 99). Larsen tries to immerse himself in some brochures, but finds himself drawn back to thinking about his colleagues. In a moment of lucidity he sees that Gálvez and Kunz have no belief in the shipyard, that they politely (if inwardly mockingly) tolerate his and Petrus’s speeches about prosperous futures. And yet, like him, irrationally, they continue to play the game, a fact with far-reaching implications: Pero trepan cada día la escalera de hierro y vienen a jugar a las siete horas de trabajo y sienten que el juego es más verdadero que las arañas, las goteras, las ratas, la esponja de las maderas podridas. Y si ellos están locos, es forzoso que yo esté loco. Porque yo podía jugar a mi juego porque lo


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estaba haciendo en soledad; pero si ellos, otros, me acompañan, el juego es lo serio, se transforma en lo real. Aceptarlo así –yo, que lo jugaba porque era juego-, es aceptar la locura (1993: 100–1).

In ‘El astillero – III’ reality threatens to overwhelm fantasy, when Gálvez reveals Petrus’s fraudulent share dealing and explains to Larsen that the employees only survive by selling off each month two thousand pesos’ worth of equipment. The revelations disconcert Larsen, as he sits in his windowless office, watching the freezing raindrops landing on his desk. The document he is reading, about a metal-coating process to prevent corrosion, almost seems like a desperate prayer, or a lucky charm brandished to defend him against the crumbling, damp reality. However, he then weighs up the real situation, which is that they can survive adequately by selling off equipment, and perhaps even improve their income. However, he does not know how to deal with the serious threat of Petrus being exposed as a fraudster. Moving on, a similarity to the pattern found in ‘El astillero – II’ emerges. First, there is a return to the language of promises (in this case the offer, in a brochure, of various advanced materials for shipbuilding); next, there is a lengthy description of the desolate reality of the office; finally, Larsen conjures a vision, based on past glories: Volvió a bravuconear en mediodía, con las piernas separadas, desprendido el sobretodo, en la enorme oficina desierta; miró las mesas de Gálvez y Kunz, los escritorios que no habían sido convertidos aún en leña, los ficheros abollados, las inútiles, incomprensibles máqinas arrumbradas. El viento inflaba los papeles amarillos que habían protegido al piso de las goteras del techo; próxima, una canaleta rota dejaba caer un chorro de agua sobre latas. Casi alegre, inquieto, abrochándose, con una diminuta expresión de venganza, Larsen imaginó el ruido laborioso de la oficina cinco o diez años atrás (1993: 111–12).

By ‘El astillero – IV’ Larsen’s morale has sunk; he arrives late at the office, finds Kunz occupied with his stamp album, and Gálvez absent. He tries to go through the motions of work, but even this is impossible: Cambió un montón de carpetas por otro y trató de leer hasta las once, mientras la repentina llovizna rebotaba en los filos de los vidrios rotos de la ventana. «Sólo debo preocuparme por mí, no hay otra cosa; yo, triste y aterido en este escritorio, acorralado por el mal tiempo, la mala suerte, la mugre [. . .]» (1993: 118–19).

He then makes a half-hearted effort to discuss an insurance case, the Tampico, with Kunz, but neither of them is interested. There is then a lengthy sequence of three episodes set in Santa María, before the next shipyard episode, ‘El astillero – V’. In Santa María Larsen has two important conversations, with Díaz Grey and with Petrus. The doctor


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voices his scepticism about the shipyard – and by extension about much human activity – but at the same time recognises that humans are incapable of living without their games. Effectively, it develops Larsen’s realisation about Gálvez and Kunz, in ‘La glorieta – III’, as well as echoing the views of Linacero, the protagonist of El pozo: Usted y ellos. Todos sabiendo que nuestra manera de vivir es una farsa, capaces de admitirlo, pero no haciéndolo porque cada uno necesita, además, proteger su farsa personal. También yo, claro. Petrus es un farsante cuando le ofrece la Gerencia General y usted otro cuando acepta. Es un juego, y usted y él saben que el otro está jugando. Pero se callan y disimulan. Petrus necesita un gerente para poder chicanear probando que no se interrumpió el funcionamiento del astillero. Usted quiere ir acumulando sueldos por si algún día viene el milagro y el asunto se arregla y se pueda exigir el pago. Supongo (1993: 138).

On visiting Petrus, Larsen encounters another philosopher. The old man is utterly unflappable, conceding that the false share certificate might cause some inconvenience, but not that it could constitute a serious setback on the way to his imminent triumph. Larsen knows that to Petrus he is of no account: ‘No le importa nada de nadie, yo no soy yo, ni siquiera el cuerpo número 30 ó 40 que está ocupando esta noche el invariable Gerente General del astillero. Yo soy, apenas, una desconfianza’ (1993: 144). He recognises the truth of the doctor’s observations, but nevertheless he aligns himself with Petrus, and wishes to emulate him: El viejo y yo queremos dinero, y mucho, y también nos parecemos en la falla de quererlo, en el fondo, porque ésa es la medida con que se mide un hombre. Pero él juega distinto y no sólo por el tamaño y el montón de las fichas. Con menos desesperación que yo, para empezar [. . .]; y [. . .] me lleva la otra ventaja de que, sinceramente, lo único que le importa es el juego y no lo que pueda ganar. También yo; es mi hermano mayor, mi padre, y lo saludo (1993: 145).

On his return to Puerto Astillero, Larsen, in his office again, assesses his situation: Con las manos en la nuca y el sombrero negro caído sobre un ojo, enumeraba las pequeñas tareas que había cumplido durante aquel invierno, como para convencer a un indiferente testigo, de que la desguarnecida habitación podía confundirse con el despacho de un Gerente General de una empresa millonaria y viva. Las bisagras y las letras en la puerta, los cartones en las ventanas, los remiendos en el linóleo, el orden alfabético en el archivo, la desnudez desempolvada del escritorio, los infalibles timbres para llamar al personal. Y, aparte de lo visible y demostrable, aunque no menos necesarias, las horas de trabajo y ávida meditación que había pasado en la oficina, su mantenida voluntad de suponer un centenar fantasma de obreros y empleados (1993: 165).


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Essentially, he reflects that, even though nothing constructive happens, nevertheless, through creating a semblance of bureaucratic order and maintaining belief in the future by invocation of the past, Larsen has survived. It is a reflection that can be taken as broadly or as narrowly as desired. Certainly it would be applicable to the individual alienated mind; it also functions as a metaphor for an entire system that has ceased to be productive, and which is reduced to bureaucratic mechanisms – such as Uruguay at the end of the 1950s. Larsen then goes on to reflect on another achievement, one which appears completely to contradict the foregoing: he alludes to the regular arrival of a lorry at the shipyard, and the selling-off of materials. Although the sales are described in detail, there is no narratorial evaluation. At the most fundamental level, it can simply represent physical survival as an achievement. More equivocally – in view of Larsen’s ideological uncertainty – it suggests the cooperation, if not solidarity, between the three employees. Third (and if we discount, on the grounds that they are not paid for their labours, the judgement that their conduct is technically theft), then, the transaction can be seen simply as a metaphor, albeit highly caricatured, for social behaviour in a given system. The simple fact is that the employee/citizens are dishonestly induced to maintain a social order, on the basis of a future return to the prosperity that was enjoyed in the past. However, the reality is that the productive machine has become fatally damaged some time in the past, and the best that can be done is to maintain the appearance of purposeful activity, while actually surviving by the gradual disposal of assets. The citizen/employees play the game by working, and they are entitled to survive. While the problem is easily diagnosed and described, moving beyond such a stalemate is more problematic – as the violent history of the 1960s and 1970s would show. Onetti, of course, does not propose solutions. Larsen summons his two subordinates, and makes the inevitable absurd, motivating speech, in which nobody believes: Cuando oyó que llegaban, a las nueve, en la fría mañana de buen tiempo, se quitó el sombrero y el sobretodo, esperó a que hicieran ruidos y se sosegaran, y los llamó con los timbrazos inconfundibles. Primero a nadie y después a nadie; primero al Gerente Técnico y después al Gerente Administrativo. Les explicó, sin invitarlos a sentarse, con premeditada lentitud, exagerando las miradas, los entusiasmos y los silencios, que Petrus estaba en Santa María, que el juez había levantado la intervención en el astillero y que los anunciados o presentidos días de poderío y triunfo acababan de empezar. Supo que no le creían y no le importó, o tal vez buscara eso (1993: 168).

Larsen’s next action suggests that, in spite of his words, he thinks that the end is fast approaching, that he must get out: he steals an ammeter, using the proceeds to settle his hotel bill. However, once more the pendulum swings, as Larsen sets out to locate the forged share certificate, in order to avert disaster.


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In the final scene actually set in the shipyard, ‘El astillero – VI’,3 it is stated that the two remaining employees, Kunz and Larsen, know that the shipyard is finished. Yet still they cling to routine. The narrator presents Kunz: ‘monosilábico y apático, que tomaba mate mientras iba estirando con descuido antiguos planos azules de obras y maquinarias que nunca fueron construidos, o cambiaba de lugar las estampillas del álbum’ (1993: 196). Larsen, meanwhile, tries to relieve the boredom and apathy by reading yet more files: Aprovechaba con escepticismo las pocas energías matinales y lograba casi siempre distraerse unas horas, sin entender del todo, sin que esto le importara, con alguna historia de salvamento, de reparaciones, de deudas y pleitos. La luz gris y fría de la ventana iluminaba su resolución de mantenerse inclinado sobre aquellas historias de difuntos (1993: 196).

Although events finally take a drastic, definitive turn, still Larsen vacillates. After the revelation that Gálvez has reported Petrus to the authorities, in ‘Santa María – V’, Larsen visits his employer in the Santa María gaol, where Petrus discusses business as if the shipyard were functioning normally. Larsen, too, clings to the pretence, although the immediate question of money becomes increasingly prominent. First, Larsen observes: ‘El funcionamiento del astillero es la base de todo. Tomaré sin vacilar todas las medidas necesarias. Ya arreglaremos eso de los sueldos. Pero le repito que para mí es muy importante tener alguna seguridad para el día de mañana’ (1993: 213). This question of financial security becomes more explicit a few lines later: ‘–Alguna seguridad, un contrato, un documento –rió suavemente, dócil y consolador’ (1993: 213). Finally it is precise: No quiero apurarme para no arrepentirme. Primero, confirmar por contrato, cinco años de duración está bien; no me conviene atarme. En cuanto al sueldo . . . Usted comprenderá que el puesto de Gerente General obliga a cierto nivel de vida (1993: 214).

After the interview, Larsen, apparently believing that something can still be salvaged, sets about finding Gálvez. In the end, however, all he can do is to identify Gálvez’s body in the police morgue. And yet, even this momentous discovery does not banish his dream: ‘Acababa de decidir que Gálvez no había muerto, que él no caería en una trampa tan infantil, que volvería al amanecer a Puerto Astillero, al mundo inmutable, mensajero de ninguna noticia’ (1993: 222).

3 Although the last chapter is labelled ‘El astillero – VII La glorieta – V La casa – I La casilla – VII’, Larsen does not visit the shipyard.


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Then, on his return to Puerto Astillero, Larsen finds a note from Petrus’s daughter, Angélica Inés, finally inviting him to supper in the house, something to which he has long aspired. However, he is intercepted at the gate by Josefina, the servant, who explains that the note is several days old, and that Angélica Inés is indisposed. Josefina persuades Larsen to spend the night with her; at last, at the threshold of her bedroom, he seems to arrive at a realisation of who he is: ‘Larsen sonrió en la penumbra. «Nosotros los pobres», pensó con placidez’ (1993: 229). Later, his identity is confirmed: No quiso enterarse de la mujer que dormía en el piso de arriba, en la tierra que él se había prometido. Se hizo desnudar y continuó exigiendo el silencio durante toda la noche, mientras reconocía la hermandad de la carne y de la sencillez ansiosa de la mujer (1993: 231).

However, the resolution is not definitive. It could not be, since this would raise difficult issues, in exactly the same way that Laura Avellaneda’s survival at the end of La tregua would have. Instead, the protagonist effectively dissolves: Ya no era, en aquella hora, en aquella circunstancia, Larsen ni nadie. Estar con la mujer había sido una visita al pasado, una entrevista lograda en una sesión de espiritismo, una sonrisa, un consuelo, una niebla que cualquier otro podría haber conocido en su lugar (1993: 231).

Indeed, the narrative itself, rather than concluding, finally disperses in two alternative endings. In both versions Larsen leaves Puerto Astillero by launch, and imagines the shipyard crumbling away into a ruin. One version ends with this image; the second continues for two more sentences, concluding with the report of Larsen’s death in el Rosario.

Mario C. Fernández, ‘Despachando con el Viejo’ The mid-1960s were perhaps less traumatic in Uruguay than in Argentina; nevertheless, it was a time when, as Benjamín Nahum observed, the country was out of control, and nobody knew the remedy: En 1963 la comisión de Inversiones y Desarrollo Económico (CIDE) presentó su informe exponiendo las causas del estancamiento de la economía nacional y proponiendo medidas para superarlo. También se realizó un Censo de Población, ¡medio siglo después del anterior! (1908). Ambas fueron medidas elaboradas por los mejores técnicos nacionales y destinadas a conocer el país para actuar eficientemente sobre su realidad. El diagnóstico se hizo; no se llevaron a la práctica los remedios (1999: 150).

The economy was stagnant, inflation rampant. A catastrophic drought in 1965, which caused a scarcity of foodstuffs, exacerbated social tensions.


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Meanwhile, financial institutions pursued irresponsible speculation, provoking a banking crisis and a major currency devaluation. All political institutions were in crisis: not only the Blanco and Colorado parties, but the socialist and communist parties, too, were fragmenting. As another historian, Juan José Arteaga, observes, the crisis went far beyond economics, and called into question the very identity of Uruguayan society: La crisis económica provocó también una crisis espiritual, que se evidenció de múltiples formas en un desasosiego y en un descontento radicado fundamentalmente en la juventud y en los intelectuales (2000: 264).

One product of this crisis was the Tupamaros guerrilla movement, which became active in 1963, and the associated Movimiento 26 de marzo, with which Mario Benedetti was closely involved. As Arteaga notes, the Tupamaros were no hard-left insurgency; the breadth of their support indicates how thoroughly destroyed was the system’s credibility: La base social del MLN [Tupamaros] se reclutaba en todos los niveles de las clases medias, incluyendo profesionales universitarios, empleados bancarios (sector privilegiado entre los trabajadores), estudiantes hijos de la burguesía, empresarios, funcionarios del Estado y docentes, a los que se sumaron algunos proletarios urbanos y rurales (2000: 284).

Such was the context of ‘Despachando con el Viejo’, one of the stories in the collection Industria nacional, which was published in 1966 – although the reader receives no inkling from the story itself. Told from the perspective of an anonymous functionary, the story chronicles two days of the bureaucratic life in a ministry in Montevideo. The narration is densely textured, almost cinematic: there is a large cast of characters, who are never explicitly introduced; there are also numerous snatches of conversations in colloquial speech, as well as brief, present-tense allusions to various arcane office transactions, in which the specifically bureaucratic jargon is not differentiated from the more general communicative language. Finally, there are the thoughts of the protagonist himself, reflecting on what he has seen and heard. Fernández’s story in two important respects sits squarely within the Uruguayan tradition of office narrative: the image is presented of poorly paid functionaries, in a world of seamless bureaucratic continuity. This image, when it was found in the work of de Castro and Benedetti, reflected the reality of Uruguay’s inward-looking, stable political system. Now, at the moment when the entire system was breaking up, Fernández presents an image of a permanent, humane bureaucracy that is at ease with its work, under a succession of political masters. Falcón, the manager, represents this continuity; he runs his office according to his own principles, and if he wants


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to achieve something that is technically beyond his power, he can count on the support of whoever happens to be minister at the time: ‘Si la cosa se repite después de la primera advertencia, sin barullos ni escándalos, sin sumario ni sanción, Falcón consigue del Viejo de turno (todos los ministros son para Falcón “El Viejo”) el traslado que pide’ (1966: 50). A second major aspect of the story is its detailed portrayal of the working practices and social climate of the ministry. The atmosphere within Falcón’s office is cooperative and friendly, somewhat reminiscent of the office described in Benedetti’s ‘El presupuesto’. Falcón, as presented through the eyes of the protagonist, is a benevolent, avuncular figure who, like Benedetti’s manager, sometimes sits casually at a desk, and talks to his subordinates: ‘Mira lo que estoy escribiendo. Me pide un cigarrillo, lo prende. Se sienta en la mesa porque Saúl en este momento no está’ (1966: 51). There is another significant parallel between the two stories. In Benedetti’s office, it will be recalled, the clerks while away their time playing chess and draughts; Fernández’s clerks, too, are partial to a game of draughts: ‘Miro el reloj. Son las cuatro. Lo veo a Andrés remoloneando. Saco el tablero de un cajón. Me voy a jugarle una partidita’ (1966: 57). However, there are important differences between the cartoon-like office existence in ‘El presupuesto’ and that of ‘Despachando con el Viejo’. First, Falcón’s visits to his subordinates’ desks, while friendly, are primarily to check progress; moreover, he only tolerates the games of draughts because he is satisfied with their work: ‘Falcón no dice nada si todas las cosas están al día. Nunca juega, pero a veces se acerca y por un rato se queda mirando’ (1966: 57). Second, in Fernández’s office the bureaucrats generally refer to each other by name, not by title. There is one characteristic of this office that is unique in the River Plate narrative of the bureaucracy: its usefulness. It is a place where work, the public, and the employees are all important; it is a civilised, purposeful place; and Falcón, a keen reader of Bertrand Russell, is the epitome of the welleducated, dedicated career public servant. As the protagonist observes at the beginning of the story: ‘Todo marcha perfecto en nuestra oficina’ (1966: 50). As far as the public is concerned, Falcón categorically asserts that the office is there to serve them. ‘– Cuando vengan los pajueranos quiero que esté todo arreglado. Se vienen desde Piedras y no tenemos derecho a hacerlos esperar. Además tienen toda la razón del mundo, ¡qué embromar!’ (1966: 50). At the same time, Falcón is patient with inexperienced colleagues. The protagonist watches his boss, ‘tratando de corregir, con una sonrisa, la décima tentativa de la nueva de hacer una nota como la gente’ (1966: 51). Later, in a more complex example, he is observed teaching a subordinate the niceties of bureaucratic procedure; he uses mockery of the system, not of the clerk, to put his lesson across: – M’hija, si le ponés a una chupatinta de una oficinita del Interior De Mi Más Alta Consideración, ¿qué dejás para cuando el Viejo le mande una nota


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a otro Ministro? Pero está, está, no lo corrijas. Total lo firmo yo y este Tan Considerado se hincha un poco y a lo mejor, hace las cosas bien. Eso sí, entendelo para cuando haya que llevárselo al Viejo . . . (1966: 52).

The protagonist seems to be an astute observer of Falcón, being both susceptible to and approving of his boss’s management style, as is revealed in his reflection on a brief exchange: – Está muy lindo ese informe. Lo agarraste justo. Se ve que ya entraste en las cosas que hacemos acá. Me lo dice para dejarme contento pero me quedo contento y no lo puedo negar. Esa es otra virtud que hay que reconocerle a Falcón jefe: no esconder nada del trabajo, no ser egoísta, enseñar los pequeños trucos y nunca decir que enseñó algo o que quiere enseñarlo (1966: 51).

The fact that Falcón carefully makes allowances for errors, and maintains good relations beyond the office, is also evident. – No ganamos nada con hacer un lío. Dicen que se traspapeló; bueno, se traspapeló. Lo mejor es que llames a Ferreyra, el que está en la Secretaría del Directorio, la peñarolense tiene el teléfono, y le pedís que nos mande un falso expediente. Decile que no le hablé yo mismo porque el Viejo me llamó y no te olvides de darle las gracias por la gauchada. Vas a ver que no manda nada (1966: 55).

There is, however, a negative side to the life of this office. Fernández’s ministry – unlike Benedetti’s, but like de Castro’s – is characterised by competition and back-biting. How such negative behaviour contrasts with Falcón’s – and how it affects him – is one of the story’s main threads. From the beginning, the emerging and consolidating picture of Falcón as a humane, diplomatic civil servant (as directly observed by the protagonist) is counterbalanced by a series of negative remarks about him, which the protagonist remembers. The first is a strong attack on his character: A mí, en cuanto entré, ya me lo dijeron: A vos también te engrupió, como a los otros. Son todos una manga de belilunes. No saben lo vivo que es. Serrucho fino, oíme bien, serrucho fino. Viene, te corta las patas, se va y hasta el aserrín te lleva (1966: 50).

It is probably the case that the reader (like the protagonist, who has only recently transferred into the office) is alerted against Falcón; initially they might adopt a cautiously sceptical attitude, and anticipate that at some point unpleasant hidden depths to Falcón’s character may emerge. However, in effect the opposite occurs: Falcón is revealed as a man of urbanity and, apparently, magnanimity – and the source of the negative commentaries is identified as Brizuela, a long-standing colleague who was once Falcón’s


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friend. The enmity has arisen since the death of the Director de Secciones, and Brizuela’s appointment as acting director. It is never made entirely clear, but the problem appears to lie with Brizuela, who perhaps feels threatened by Falcón’s confident manner, as well as his contacts in high places. The reality of the situation begins to emerge relatively early in the story, as the positive view of Falcón is reinforced outside the office: at the end of the first day, the protagonist’s wife reminds him of how understanding Falcón was when their daughter was ill. This is immediately followed, at the beginning of the second section, by various negative rumours about Falcón; thereafter, Falcón on several occasions makes allowances for Brizuela, even to the extent of blaming himself, in front of the minister, for their misunderstanding. At the end of the story, the reader is not entirely sure what has happened in the office. It is however clear that the protagonist now unequivocally supports his boss. Whether or not it is wishful thinking, he believes that Falcón has triumphed: ‘Yo lo miro a Falcón, al Director de Secciones Falcón, cuando de despedida hace una venia al milico de guardia’ (1966: 62). ‘Despachando con el Viejo’ is unique in its proposition, namely that the civil service as an institution is both civilised and useful. Why it should appear at this particular moment in history is an enigma: perhaps we should conclude that, faced with the all too obviously approaching chaos, Fernández, like his protagonist, fervently wishes for a happy ending, for the continuation of stability and civilisation.

Julio Ricci, selected stories Ricci (1920–1995) was an academic linguist, as well as the author of eight collections of stories, which were published between 1970 and 1994. While bureaucracy and office life are not the predominant themes of his work, they are the subject of a number of stories, which together trace the evolution of the author’s vision through the decades. We shall explore three stories, whose publication dates range from 1970 to 1981. In his first collection, Los maniáticos, the stories are set in mid-twentiethcentury Montevideo; many give accounts of modest, although by no means colourless individuals. One immediate point of comparison might be the poems and stories written in the 1950s by Ricci’s exact contemporary, Mario Benedetti. Ricci, however, tends to focus primarily on an idiosyncratic personal experience, often with a grotesque, exaggerated aspect – rather than producing more broadly applicable, recognisable images of social structures and conflicts, as Benedetti customarily does. Ricci’s stories, however (unlike Benedetti’s), are often set in a definite historical context, and precisely located in relation to Montevideo’s geography.


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‘La mesita’ is a case in point. It is a sad little tale about a clerk who in essence never grows up, never asserts himself – in fact never really lives. The narrative covers the years from 1928 to 1966, from his first joining the office to his retirement. The two principal elements that symbolise the clerk’s lack of dynamism are, first, that he is called by the diminutive, Juancito, throughout his life; second, that he spends his entire office career working at a makeshift little table in a dark corner, never summoning the courage to demand the proper writing desk to which he aspires. The story of Juancito’s office life starts realistically enough, when at sixteen he joins the invoicing section of a firm that deals in vehicle parts. His extreme shyness is plausible, although in retrospect his dependence on his widowed mother is more reminiscent of a child starting school than someone setting out on his adult career. Going home for lunch on his first day, he tells his mother of his disappointment at not being given a proper desk, and she consoles him: ‘Sos joven. Por ahora hacer facturas en una mesita hecha con madera de cajón de querosén no es un pecado’ (1970: 31). In the event, Juancito settles in well, satisfies his employers and receives a pay rise. The first mention of the outside world is a reference to the crisis that resulted from the 1929 Wall Street crash: ‘Corría el 30 y la depresión mundial amenazaba a toda la incipiente industria y el magro comercio’ (1970: 32). Although Uruguay did not suffer the same degree of disturbance as its neighbours Argentina and Brazil, nevertheless its planned development was stopped in its tracks, and there was political disruption through the 1930s. The overall climate in Uruguay during this period is represented in the story, first, by Juancito’s employer dismissing a number of staff; and second, by Juancito’s fear of dismissal – because of which he continues to accept working without a proper desk. During this time, although he does not dare raise the issue through formal channels, he tries to discuss it with his two remaining colleagues in the section, both of whom have proper desks. The first, an elderly, rather deaf clerk called Gorostizaga, does not hear what Juancito has to say, and simply carries on talking about his beloved Peñarol football team. The second, a Brazilian woman whose name we never discover, bluntly observes: ‘– Mirá pibe, a vos lo que te hace falta es una mujer, no un escritorio’ (1970: 32). With the Second World War the situation deteriorates further; the personnel in the office is reduced to Juancito alone, and the two desks are replaced with filing cabinets, leaving Juancito at his makeshift table, as before. The war years correspond to Juancito’s full adulthood (in 1940 he is thirty): years of tedious routine, of gradual realisation of his emptiness and, above all, of allowing himself to be ignored. In the work sphere, he asks about a new desk, but the manager takes no notice. In his personal life he is no more fortunate: he is attracted to a woman who travels to work on the same bus – but never plucks up the courage to speak to her. Finally, his personal life seems to be


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summed up by two photographs he inherited when his colleague Gorostizaga died: one of Carlos Gardel, the other of Peñarol.4 The description of the clerk’s near-sterile routine of life, in the city centre and the suburb, is poignantly true to life: Fueron años de monotonía, de desolación casi. La vida era una eterna rutina que el pobre sobrellevaba sin darse cuenta y sin rebelarse. Los domingos de primavera y de verano no eran más que el paseo junto al lago del Parque Rodó y el retorno a casa tempranito. Los domingos de otoño e invierno no eran otra cosa que la transmisión del partido de fútbol y la lectura del diario. Y en el medio, entre domingo y domingo, la semana, la inevitable semana de facturas y más facturas, el ineluctable levantarse a las 7, el consuetudinario lavarse la cara, los dientes, los pies o lo que fuera, y el ineludible desayunar. Y siempre, día tras día, el mismo viaje en tranvía y la infaltable topografía: la calle Rivera, la calle Colonia, la estrechez escuálida de la oficina, el gris hermético de la pared, la calle Mercedes, la calle Rivera, la vuelta a casa, la noche y el descanso (1970: 32–3).5

After the war the situation initially remains problematic for the firm, and there is no question of investing in new equipment. Juancito works harder than ever, and still does not dare to ask for a desk. However, when change finally comes in 1949 and the enterprise expands, Juancito still does not benefit. First, a new head is brought into the section, and then a second clerk. These two both have desks – but Juancito keeps his makeshift table. The years of bitterness now begin as Juancito, nearing fifty, still in his dark corner, must work ever faster as the firm sells more goods – and harder, since instead of simply writing each invoice on a single sheet he has to press hard to produce quadruplicate carbon copies. This actually causes him physical injury: ‘tenía el dedo mayor derecho deforme y hecho un enorme callo’ (1970: 35). In his first years Juancito was socially isolated because of shyness. Then, in his prime he worked in solitude. Now he reverts to an isolation in which he looks towards the past. He ignores his present colleagues, comparing them unfavourably with Gorostizaga and the Brazilian woman, from the 1930s. He finally resolves to ask the manager for a new desk – but it is too late: the man is sick, and on the point of retirement. Juancito never dares to approach the new manager, and when he in turn leaves the firm, taking a large quantity of money with him, Juancito is in a sense relieved: he has definitively escaped the need to be assertive. The final phase of his life now begins. At the office 4 Opinions differ about the origins of the great tango singer Carlos Gardel, who is strongly associated with Buenos Aires. All Uruguayans say he was born in Tacuarembó, a small city in the interior. Peñarol is one of Montevideo’s two important teams; the other is Nacional. 5 Colonia and Mercedes are parallel to the main street, Dieciocho de Julio; Rivera is a principal artery, served by many bus routes to the suburbs; Parque Rodó overlooks the sea, close to the centre.


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he pursues what is effectively vegetative routine; and on his mother’s death, his personal life is similarly empty: Juancito continuó haciendo la vida de siempre. Del trabajo a la casa, de la casa al trabajo, y así sin solución de continuidad. A mediodía comía en un bar de 18 y de noche en un boliche de Rivera, a una cuadra de la estación Pocitos. En la casa poco era lo que podía hacer como no fuera detenerse, mirar los objetos que había mirado su madre y pensar en ella. Ya casi se había olvidado del cambio de la mesita por un escritorio (1970: 36–7).

Finally, in 1966, after thirty-eight years, one of the sons of the firm’s founder, himself an old man of eighty, suggests that it must be most uncomfortable and inconvenient for Juancito to work as he does, at the cramped, makeshift table; but Juancito’s minimal nod is taken as a sign of indifference. Finally, as cataracts cloud his eyes, the new management find fault with his work, and suggest he retire. Returning to the office to collect some documents, the day after retirement, Juancito finds that already an adolescent has been engaged in his place – but with better conditions. ‘Era como había sido él casi 40 años atrás. Sólo que estaba instalado en un regio escritorio de roble’ (1970: 37). His table has gone, to be chopped up for firewood. It is a powerful story: Juan, like his little table, has served through the decades, has been strongly affected by history, but has never been sufficiently connected to the world to be a protagonist. He has been brought into the world and nurtured, but has never created anything new or reached out for his desires; he has simply lived out his years in the comforting shadow of what previous generations created. And at the end, after he has played his modest, routine part: writing invoices, catching the bus, walking in the park, sitting in the Estadio Centenario, he is discarded. In the collection, El Grongo, which was published in 1976, Ricci’s fictional Montevideo becomes increasingly grotesque and exaggerated. In one story, ‘Los domingos no los paso más en casa de mi señora’, a clerk, Rafael, gives through a series of diary-like fragments an account of his pitiful existence. The central preoccupation is the relationship with his wife and daughter. In the first two narrative fragments he tells how his wife has ejected him from the family home, before reflecting on his own passive, timid nature. The rest of the narrative takes place five years later, when his wife permits him to visit on Sundays. Throughout, Rafael remains utterly devoted – besotted even – in his mind transforming this limited contact into the fantasy that he has a fulfilling family life. As in the case of Juancito in ‘La mesita’, the character’s social and cultural links are tenuous: he frequents a certain bar, a solitary figure. The last reference to the bar, at the end of the story, captures his lonely existence: ‘De noche fui al café de Ellauri y me tomé un té con leche. Estuve hasta casi las


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12 y luego pagué. Manolo, el mozo de Pontevedra, no me dijo nada’ (1976: 18). Beyond this, he is haunted by the words of two tangos, loiters in the vicinity of his wife’s house, and occasionally goes for a walk on Avenida Dieciocho de Julio after work. At the beginning of the story, Rafael, recently ejected from the family home, reflects accurately on his complete lack of dynamism, but fails to understand why his wife is bored with him: Confieso que me faltaba iniciativa, que me faltaba quizá agresividad. Pero era un hombre correcto. A casa siempre llevaba el sueldo íntegro, le daba el sobre como un buen galés a Marujita y no pedía nada. Porque vicios no tenía [. . .]. Era lo que se dice un marido modelo. [. . .] Por eso no comprendo cómo Marujita se disgustó tanto conmigo (1976: 11).

We learn little about his work, beyond the fact that it is in an office in the centre – although the office is at the centre of Rafael’s identity, and his drama. He has one colleague, Pedrito Sierranueva, who Rafael feels understands him and to whom he has told something of his life. He decides that Pedrito should accompany him on one of his Sunday family visits. His first motivation, while pathetic, is at least personal, and invites sympathy: ‘Quiero que vea que yo también he tenido y tengo una mujer que me aprecia y me entiende. Quiero que conozca mi hogar y mi hija y que vea todo lo que soy’ (1976: 13). However, he also invites his colleague for reasons of social status, which he measures in terms of the office: ‘Y [Pedrito] sentirá respeto por mí y hasta les hablará de mí a los otros empleados’ (1976: 13). As the reader might suspect, the situation develops along lines that Rafael had not foreseen: one week after introducing Pedrito to his family, Rafael is told by his daughter that he is no longer welcome on Sundays, as Marujita, her mother, has other visitors. Rafael soon discovers that the visitor is Pedrito and, understandably, is upset. Henceforth, the friendship between the two colleagues, which always remains defined in terms of the office, gradually disappears. First, Rafael’s confidences are replaced by Pedrito’s silence: ‘En la oficina no pude preguntarle nada’ (1976: 15). The next stage concerns the planned marriage of Marujita and Pedrito. Once again, Rafael learns about it unofficially through his daughter, although the formal notification comes at the office: ‘Hoy alguien me ha dejado sobre el escritorio la invitación para la iglesia. Debe de haber sido Pedrito’ (1976: 16). Rafael makes allowances for Pedrito, interpreting his silence as due to awkwardness, and the invitation itself as evidence of good will. With the return of Pedrito to the office after the honeymoon, the lack of communication continues, Rafael as ever making allowances: La semana pasada volvió Pedrito a la oficina. Yo lo miré desde mi escritorio para saludarlo, pero él se hizo el desentendido. El pobre debe de temer enfrentarse conmigo. Alguna pena debe de quemarle el alma. Yo quisiera ayudarlo, pero él me rehúye (1976: 17).


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(There is some truth in Rafael’s speculation that Pedrito might indeed fear confrontation – although he never realises the cause.) He spends most of the morning pursuing his usual obsession: Hoy he estado muy distraído y he pasado mucho tiempo mirando por la ventana. Mucho no he podido ver pero lo que he percibido me ha bastado para divagar. Desde el lado izquierdo he visto los barcos surtos en el puerto. [. . .] La fresca brisa de noviembre me ha hecho revivir y me he sentido mejor. He pensado que Marujita todavía me aprecia y he decidido enviarle un ramo de rosas para el primer mes del casamiento (1976: 17–18).

The final scene follows the established pattern, in the sense that a visit from Rafael’s daughter provides further news of Pedrito’s activities within the family, and once more prompts Rafael to reflect that he must speak to his office colleague. The problem is that, such is the character’s naivety, he does not grasp the seriousness of the message his daughter brings: Hoy vino la nena y lloró mucho. Al final me dijo que estaba encinta, pero no quiso decir de quién. Sólo agregó que Pedrito era un sinvergüenza y que no me podía contar más y salió disparando. Yo, la verdad, no comprendo a la gente. Voy a tener que animarme a hablarle a Pedrito. El quizá me ayude a descubrir al bribón (1976: 18).

In this desolate story Ricci juxtaposes unpleasant, sordid human characteristics, with a rectitude that is naïve, and pathetic. We might here make a contrast with Benedetti who, for example in a comparable story such as ‘No tenía lunares’ (whose protagonist is also Rafael), endows his honourable victim-protagonist with a compensating intelligence which, while it does not solve his problems, nevertheless preserves his integrity. Reading Ricci’s story against ‘No tenía lunares’, the impression is of viewing a grotesque inversion, a horrible image in a distorting mirror. However, on further consideration, we might well come to regard Ricci’s as the more plausible image. If there is an aspect that fails to convince, it is the extreme diffidence and the failure to talk, which characterises Rafael (as well as Juancito, the protagonist of ‘La mesita’). Ironically, this too is shared with Benedetti, whose story ‘Familia Iriarte’ is based on precisely the same premise. The story ‘Viaje a Pocitos’, which was first published in 1981, pushes the notion of the indolent futility of the life of the Montevidean office worker to the extreme. There is no action at all, the entire story being set in the imagination of the protagonist Juan, dozing at his desk at the end of a day in the office. An hour before it is time to go home, Juan learns that there is a bus strike (a frequent occurrence in Montevideo); he imagines walking home from his office in the Ciudad Vieja to Pocitos, a distance of some four miles – not a pleasant prospect in the summer heat. Juan imagines his progress


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along the main streets: Soriano, San José, Constituyentes and Bulevar España, and his refreshment stops at various bars along the way, and finally under the ancient ombú in Bulevar España. As he progresses, he imagines his increasing discomfort and tiredness, as well as conversations with interlocutors. The most important subject of his thoughts, however, is his disastrous marriage. Juan’s married life is in some ways even more grim than Rafael’s, in ‘Los domingos no los paso más en casa de mi señora’. Juan has long been exiled from the marriage bed to the lumber room, his wife ignores his food preferences, and is forever exhorting him not to sit down, or touch the furniture, in case he should make it dirty. In relation to the food, Juan reflects that stuffed courgettes and roast meat are the only remaining pleasures after twenty-five years of marriage, before going on to visualise a veritable banquet, which is laid out at the second of his rest stops on his imaginary journey: Entrevería las mesas repletas de platitos de algo-para-picar, veinte o treinta platitos de manjares enloquecedores, de choricitos piquantes, de rabiolitos con tuco, de quesitos piquantes, de empanadillas de carne, de sandwichitos especiales, de croquetitas, de pizzitas, de aceitunas negras, y de Dios sabe cuántas otras cosas que más que algo-para-picar eran mucho para llenarse (1987: 22–3).

As regards the furnishings, Juan imagines his wife dusting the furniture and waxing the floor; he compares her harsh treatment of him with her indulgence of the dog, which escapes reproach, even when it defecates on the carpet. This last is the aspect that is taken furthest in the character’s fantasy: towards the story’s end he imagines himself pretending to be a dog, and being pointed to as mad by a passer-by, before finally being overcome with fatigue, and fainting. Then, in the final section of the story, Juan has at last found the way to his wife’s heart: by behaving like the dog, he has induced her to attend lovingly to his every need. In some ways, this is all very Arltian: the imaginary journey through the city, the sterile marriage in which the wife has become house-proud and uncaring. Even the idea of becoming a lapdog in order to gain affection is a version of the humiliation that Arltian protagonists crave. And yet, there is a lack of anguish, a sense that by and large Juan is comfortable in the city, and in his culture. His imagined progress is along the most familiar of the city’s thoroughfares, he stops at well-known bars on the way, and then finally under the venerable ombú. His two imaginary conversations, too, identify him as securely placed in the middle of society. In the first bar, he imagines his indifference to the stereotypical harangue of an immigrant shopkeeper, berating the strikers, the loss of trade, and the general idleness of Montevideans; later, as he approaches the Intendencia, he imagines meeting an old schoolfellow, whose greater success in life is represented by his casual indifference to buying a house in Punta del Este,


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preferring the one he has in another resort, Atlántida. Juan himself lives in Pocitos, an eminently respectable beach-side neighbourhood, which is conveniently close to the city centre. As to his home life, he eats well, contrasting the reality of roast meat and courgettes with a veritable banquet; and, while he may be banished from the bedroom, he can sit in his armchair in his little room, sipping his whisky of an evening. In fact, the main source of resentment seems to be that the dog receives all his wife’s affection, while he is the one who has to walk the animal every night. This is very far from Arlt’s anxiety-ridden inhabitants of cheap pensiones, desperately clinging on, at the edge of society. Juan has no money worries; he is simply a typical, complacent Montevidean office worker – as his calm, bored acceptance of the immigrant shopkeeper’s complaint about Montevidean idleness confirms. Here, essentially, is the irony: Juan’s imaginary journey home is the most strenuous activity he has undertaken all day. As he describes it, his office day has been pleasantly idle: Había pasado el día bien, había leído los diarios apoltronado en su butaca de cuero gris, había fumado sus veinte cigarrillos de rutina y, lógicamente, había escrito un par de cartas. Al entrar en la oficina, antes de entregarse al descanso burocrático y al dulce aburrimiento amodorrado de la tarde, se había preguntado por qué debían estar allí horas y horas, él y sus compañeros, sin hacer nada, como condenados por ley a la holgazanería (1987: 19).

Later, he reflects on the difference in attitudes to work between the Japanese and the Uruguayans: Si las costumbres del país por lo menos hubieran sido como las de los japoneses, que se quedaban a dormir en la oficina los días de huelga, vaya y pase, pero allí no era el Japón y los empleados no eran tan cornudos ni exagerados como los nipones (1987: 19).

Finally, Juan rouses himself from his meditation, and prepares to leave for home: ‘Sin fuerza casi, los dedos temblequeándole, encendió un nuevo cigarrillo, sorbió el resto del té que le quedaba en la tacita de porcelana rústica y volvió a recalentarse con el pensamiento del viaje a pie’ (1987: 20). The complete absence of anything remotely resembling work in the office, and the general sense of comfort and stability, make this story seem almost a parody of Benedetti’s early office stories and poems. However, ‘Viaje a pocitos’ does not belong to that complacent neo-Batllista period: it was originally published not in Uruguay, but in Argentina: in 1981, at a moment when the two Plate countries were undergoing the period of greatest political disruption in their entire history. Perhaps this story, too, works when it is read against the premises informing the earlier stories. ‘Viaje a Pocitos’ is the dream of a man who is asleep in his office: a well-paid man who lives comfortably, who looks forward to his dinner, but who feels jealous because his wife is nice to their


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dog. In reality, on the day of a bus strike, such a man, on awaking from his office slumber would not undertake what he evidently sees as a nightmare journey. He would surely head for his favourite bar, stay there until the rush hour ended, and then take a taxi home. We might, therefore, simply attribute Juan’s strenuous fantasy journey to the need to give his brain a little light exercise, after his ‘descanso burocrático’. As we have seen throughout this study (and these last two chapters strongly confirm the pattern) there is an essential difference between the Argentine and Uruguayan narratives of the office: in the former the vision is of a nightmarish socio-political dynamic, which is fully realised in the years of the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional, and expressed in Cortázar’s story, ‘Segunda vez’. In Uruguay, meanwhile, the predominant sense through the decades is of existence within a consensual cocoon: Benedetti identified the country as an office republic, while Ricci points to bureaucratic slumber. There is, in short, a sense of detachment from reality, which in turn generated what I have called bureaucracies of the absurd. Juan, the protagonist of ‘Viaje a Pocitos’, is the archetypal Uruguayan office worker, although – like Fernández’s Falcón – he appears to be an anachronism. However, looked at from another perspective, the figure begins to make sense. Juan’s journey home is a nostalgic dream: of the complacent neo-Batllista world, which is so familiar from Benedetti’s work. But the bureaucratic slumber is over, the office republic is a dictatorship – and Juan’s world has become an incomprehensible nightmare.

Miguel Angel Campodónico, ‘El silencio de mi voz’ The new reality does find expression, however, in Campodónico’s (b. 1937) story, which was published in 1979. A delirious, dense narrative, it is about an anonymous functionary, who has worked in the Sector Cuarto, and who now addresses an appeal to the institution’s authorities, ‘a fin de que no inicien contra mí el Juicio por Espíritu Desadministrativo, lo que supondría que Las Voces se pondrían en marcha para ubicarme con el propósito de llevarme al Sector Cero, en el que se conversan los casos desadministrativados’ (1979: 9). The story’s atmosphere is that of a psychiatric hospital – indeed the character is accused of trying to commit suicide. Much of the narrative is set in the institution’s lavatories, its café, and in the offices of an insurance company – all of which makes it difficult to decipher. Presumably the text’s obfuscation was an anti-censorship strategy, since the story was published during Uruguay’s military dictatorship. The nub of the story is that the protagonist is located within a bureaucratic environment, where he feels unable to express what he perceives: las cosas ocurrieron [. . .] de un modo que fue fielmente registrado por mi cerebro, siendo de lamentar que me sea imposible trasladar aquella actividad


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mental espontánea, sin palabras – ya fenecida – a este presente provocado, dibujado en hojas prudentemente silenciosas (1979: 9).

The hostile environment is sketched by repeated references to the Sectores, the Segundo Censor, to expedientes, resoluciones, funcionarios and formularios, as well as to distracting, surrounding noise, which prevents him from thinking, and which decides him to abandon his attempts at selfexpression. However, there is another current: amid the cacophony and the restriction he is in fact writing, defiantly: ‘Sé muy bien que no entenderán lo que escribo y aún así sigo jugando con el fuego de la escritura’ (1979: 22). Later, he suggests that there remains in him something expressive that will not be tamed: ‘Sin embargo hay algo que todavía no he podido controlar. Si lo menciono es porque me inquieta pensar que no podré adaptarme a las reglas de este mundo nuevo’ (1979: 23). Finally, he launches a half hopeful, half desperate appeal to a readership: No quiero releerlo para no descubrir que se trata de una pobrísima imitación de todo lo que sucedió sin palabras. Y al final me permito pensar intensamente en la esperanza, para que mi actividad mental les llegue a quienes todavía luchan por escapar del ruido (1979: 24).

The protagonist’s narrative concludes, and is followed by a series of paragraphs, each beginning with ‘y’, which constitute a report on him. He has been found guilty of misrepresenting the reality of the Sectores, with a view to propagating the ‘espíritu desadministrativo’ (1979: 27). Further, he has sought to discredit accurate records, a charge that can be proven by consulting the relevant computers. Finally, it has been discovered that the ‘desadministrativo frustrado’, while claiming to be unable to express himself (in his job in the Sector Cuarto) merely hates his posting, and is capable of expression, as is proved by the discovery of a manuscript extending to 8,994 words. He is therefore sentenced to continue working in the Sector Cuarto until he is eighty-five years old, he must communicate with his superiors every thirty minutes, on themes that will be determined on a weekly basis by the Sector Cero. Certainly, the story can be read as relating to censorship and repression at a particular moment in Uruguayan history, and even as reflecting the experience of a writer who was briefly imprisoned, and dismissed from his post, under the dictatorship.6 More broadly – and rightly or wrongly – it continues to reflect a fundamental difference between Argentine and

6

‘Fui destituido de mi cargo público y estuve preso tres días, pero no por escribir’ (1992: 1181).


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Uruguayan thought. Writing from outside his country, Cortázar in ‘Segunda vez’ takes to its logical conclusion the predator–victim model of bureaucracy, which was initiated by Mariani: the state’s bureaucratic tentacles methodically and surreptitiously reach out to process (tramitar) the citizens, by killing them. Campodónico, from inside his country, sees a machine that strongly discourages autonomous expression. It will be recalled that Benedetti, in the 1970s, unequivocally diagnosed the disappearance of what we might term the ‘consensually coercive’ office republic, and its replacement by outright, violent dictatorship. Campodónico, by contrast, seems to see the 1970s somewhat differently. He suggests that the source of autonomous expression is not eliminated, but instead forced to function to bureaucratic order: he portrays a bureaucratic dictatorship, in which the dissenting voice is, to adapt his term, ‘administrativised’.

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Conclusion: Globalisation and the Writer-functionary Self-evidently, the defining characteristic of the narrative of the office is that it focuses on a broad middle sector of society: one for which literacy and numeracy are the essential skills in earning a living. Indeed, the smooth running of the entire social and economic machinery depends on this group: on their practical skills, and on their acceptance of what is frequently a tedious routine, within societies which, political rhetoric apart, often do not appear to be constructed with their interests in mind. The writers we have considered in this study have in different ways problematised a paradoxical condition, in which the individual is on the one hand required to think rationally in certain contexts, and on the other is denied autonomy, and may be required – even coerced – into accepting what is unjust or absurd, or against their interest or beliefs. In the context of such interests and beliefs, the literature of the office has been generated, not from either social extreme, but from within this crucial middle social sector; the writers we have studied have problematised the bureaucratic condition as a result of direct experience. Before we proceed to our conclusion, there are some important general observations to make. First and foremost, in the River Plate literature of the office, the bureaucratic mentality and condition is generally viewed as unsatisfactory:1 at best office life is presented as tedious, unfulfilling routine; at worst it represents a complete abdication of humanity, in which a clerk can regard the sending of a citizen to illegal torture and death as a bureaucratic ‘transaction’. At either extreme, the bureaucratic mentality and condition are presented as inherently in conflict with autonomy and creativity. Through the decades, the writers of the office address this central dilemma in different ways – both in relation to their own lives, and to their writing about society. However, the end-point is always the same: from within, which is to say focalising through a more or less realistically portrayed white-collar worker – the paradigmatic social type, and the literature’s intended readership – there appears to be no

1

Fernández’s ‘Despachando con el Viejo’ is the exception.


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satisfactory way of simultaneously representing both the bureaucratic mentality and experience, and constructing a convincing, and above all positive critique. Certainly there are cogent critiques, but they are invariably negative and unlikely to inspire confidence in the reader. What hope could the office-worker reader derive from Arlt’s bleak portrayal of what is effectively imprisonment, in La isla desierta? How could Martínez Estrada’s apocalyptic vision, in ‘Sábado de Gloria’, produce anything other than yet more fear and insecurity? Of what relevance is the example of Julio Jason in Onetti’s Tiempo de abrazar, wandering off to the countryside with his ill-gotten money and independence? Two examples will underline the basic difficulty. Mariani, who in life remained a bureaucrat, is a tragic case. As his writing in the 1920s shows, he was once incisively and combatively engaged with a specific socio-economic context. However, it is abundantly clear from his late novel, Regreso a Dios, that bureaucratic life took its toll on him, leaving him intellectually fatigued, and disillusioned: Mariani represents this alienated, impotent state through one of the main protagonists, the grey clerk, Aguilar. He then displaces the conflict about self-realisation on to a very different character, Borzani who, although he works in an office, emphatically is not bureaucratised. In complete contrast, Benedetti, whose work constitutes by far the most thorough exploration of the bureaucratic condition, abandons the bureaucratic protagonist after 1960, and switches focalisation to more critical, less assimilated characters such as students, teachers and journalists. This move out of bureaucracy parallels his own life: Benedetti left bureaucracy, to become an independent writer. It will be recalled from the Introduction that both C. Wright Mills (1956) and Richard Hoggart (1958), writing in the mid-century, emphasised the importance of an independent ‘serious’ literature, whose function was to stimulate and challenge the reader into questioning the world, as opposed to a ‘popular’, or commercial mass literature and culture, a kind of propaganda whose function is to lull the reader into the acceptance of false, controlled images of the world. Hoggart also noted that technological advance produced two further, complementary effects: it tended to loosen social ties and to make individuals more dependent on objects; and it also tended to bring about a centralisation and standardisation of cultural products. Further, it will be recalled that an important principle signalled by Weber in his characterisation of the bureaucracy that would develop under advanced capitalism, is that as society’s institutions became more complex and specialised, so the supporting bureaucracy would expand its reach. We have seen through the greater part of the twentieth century (which we have called the era of the typewriter) in the River Plate, that the writers of the office have been aware of these distinct processes in society, and have maintained a critical stance: they have produced ‘serious’ literature. It is interesting to contemplate the results of further social and technological development. There is certainly a constituency that maintains that modern


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information and communications technology increases the diversity of cultural products in circulation. However, some might perceive quite the opposite process, namely an increasing institutional assimilation (ie bureaucratisation) of intellectuals, including creative writers.

Ariel Dorfman, Reader In this context, although it is primarily a twenty-first-century issue, it is of interest to consider briefly the thinking on the subject revealed in the work of a late-twentieth-century River Plate writer of the office, Ariel Dorfman (b. 1942). Dorfman is a writer who is globalised, in more than one sense. Born in Argentina, he lived for some time in the US, before taking up Chilean residence and citizenship. Exiled after the Pinochet coup – an event that nobody still seriously pretends was an internal matter – he has worked in many countries. As a Latin American, he has been deeply affected by similar processes to those that have informed the work of the writers we have studied, particularly many of those who in the later decades were also to experience exile. Dorfman, however, is explicitly a global, rather than a Latin American writer, in one work, Reader. This is a two-act play, written in English – not Spanish – which was premiered in Edinburgh in 1995. As the author indicates in the preliminary notes, the coordinates of the play are: ‘Time: the near future. Place: everywhere’ (1995, unnumbered). Using overlapping groups of characters, in two time frames, Reader is a play about censorship – and self-censorship. Essentially, the issue is the conflict between acknowledging, telling and writing the truth, and the suppression of truth in the service of a dominant institution. There is an overlapping continuum extending from the controlling Director figure, via two levels of author–censor, through to an independent author. Then, there is a set of relationships between these latter three male figures, and a series of younger male figures (sons), and female figures (secretaries/lovers/disappeared wives–mothers). The same actors are used to play the roles on the different planes; they may move between planes within scenes; and they even on occasion explicitly have two identities. All in all this makes for a multi-level textual reality, in which characters may simultaneously be reading a script as a document, deciding to alter it – and yet be determined by it. In one sense, then, the play expresses the writerly truth, that the roles we play are multiple in their origins: that life is an interweaving of existing narratives whose meaning, however, is not determined. Set against this open, multiple, living truth, there are two more clear-cut ideas, both of them associated with censorship. As we have observed, part of the character continuum consists of two author–censors and one author. In order to obtain their comfortable place in the institution (the Moral Resource Company) the author–censors have, at some time in the past, denounced their wives, who


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have died in what is termed a ‘readjustment centre’ – although they have lied about this to their sons. This in itself seems to bring together a number of elements. The conflict has been caused because the wife has accused the writer of betraying his principles. However, the denunciation and death, together with the idea of a readjustment centre, has strong political resonance: it evokes the disappearance and death of citizens. There is then the clear message that there are some very unpalatable truths about the relatively recent past, which need to be voiced. The present (or the ‘near future, everywhere’) in which the play is set, is not particularly far-fetched. Society is ‘happy’ and ‘democratic’; it is firmly based on the structure of the heterosexual couple, in which the ideal mate is assigned by computer; the younger generation’s conformity in this ensures the (compromised) older generation’s good standing in the institution. The structure is promoted through cultural products such as television programmes (the young are predominantly image- rather than text-focused: ‘Oh you know I don’t read. Not me. Not us, Pops. We’re into screens’ (1995: 5)). In these programmes ‘love’ is promoted, but sex is suppressed. Of course, this ‘brave new world’, with all its talk of morality, and of boundaries that must not be transgressed, is itself built on lies and transgressions (not only about what came before, but about the true sexual morality of the Director). It is also clear that the sexual censorship is a cover for a more thorough-going control of information and representation. What should we learn from Dorfman’s play? The notion of the production of sterotyped works of art in order to produce stereotyped citizens clearly evokes Hoggart’s ideas about the dangers of a commercialised, standardised popular culture. Furthermore, Dorfman’s contrasting of visual and textual literacy remits us to another mid-twentieth-century cultural theorist, Raymond Williams. Williams might cause us to ponder the precariousness – and the limited nature – of literacy itself in the modern world: ‘It is only in our own century that the regular reading even of newspapers has reached a majority of our people, and only in our own generation that the regular reading of books has reached a bare majority’ (1965: 177). (Has it, yet?) Moving finally to the role of the writer, Dorfman presents us with problems, not answers. Setting his play in a censor’s office and making the censor an author who has compromised his calling, Dorfman suggests not that the writer is necessarily a functionary in the literal sense, but rather, indicates that there is no privileged, uncontested, uninscribed space. Certainly, the drama of Reader is about closure, and about the attempted control of language, and through it society; however, in its multi-level structure and its multiple, shifting namings, the play also reaffirms the dialogic, pluralist principles of linguistic constructs. Although the writer might be in the office, language and writing will never be contained.


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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Aínsa Amigues, Fernando, 1971. ‘La narración y el teatro en los años veinte’, in Historia de la literatura uruguaya, vol. 2, ed. Carlos Real de Azúa (Montevideo: Centro Editor de América Latina) Andrés, Alfredo, 1968. Palabras con Leopoldo Marechal (Buenos Aires: Carlos Pérez Editor) Arlt, Roberto, 1931. Los lanzallamas (Buenos Aires: Claridad) ——1980. El amor brujo (Buenos Aires: Losada) [first published 1932] ——1991. La isla desierta [1937], in Obra completa, Tomo III (Buenos Aires: Planeta–Carlos Lohlé) ——1998. Obras, Tomo II, estudio preliminar de David Viñas (Buenos Aires: Losada) Arteaga, Juan José, 2000. Uruguay, breve historia contemporánea (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica) Avellaneda, Andrés, 1983. El habla de la ideología (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana) Benedetti, Mario, 1961. El país de la cola de paja, 2nd edn (Montevideo: Editorial Ciencias) [first published 1960] ——1969. Literatura uruguaya siglo XX, 2nd edn (Montevideo: Alfa) [first published 1963] ——1994. Cuentos completos (Madrid: Alfaguara) ——1998a. Poemas de la oficina (Madrid: Visor) [first published 1956] ——1998b. La tregua, edición de Eduardo Nogareda (Madrid: Cátedra) [first published 1960] Borello, Rodolfo, 1991. El peronismo (1943–1955) en la narrativa argentina (Ottowa: Dovehouse) Campodónico, Miguel Angel, 1979. ‘El silencio de mi voz’, in Campodónico, Carson, de Mattos, Estrázulas, Fornaro, Galmes, Levrero, Loza, Pellegrino, Porzecansky and Somers, Diez relatos y un epílogo (Montevideo: Fundación de Cultura Universitaria) ——1992. ‘Una entrevista más, una entrevista menos’, Revista Iberoamericana, Julio–Diciembre 1992, no. 58, 1179–83 Canaparo, Claudio, 1997. ‘El astillero’, in Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, ed. Verity Smith (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn), pp. 598–9 Carreño, Virginia, 1995. Teatro completo (Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero)


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Cortázar, Julio, 1995. Cuentos completos/2 (1969–1982), 6th edn (Madrid: Alfaguara) ——1996. Cuentos completos/1 (1945–1966), 9th edn (Madrid: Alfaguara) Crawley, Eduardo, 1984. A House Divided: Argentina 1880–1980 (London: Hurst) de Castro, Manuel, 1928. Historia de un pequeño funcionario (Montevideo: Bertani) del Saz, Agustín, 1967. Teatro social hispanoamericano (Barcelona: Editorial Labor) Denevi, Marco, 1957. Los expedientes (Buenos Aires: Talía) ——1980. Un pequeño café, in Obras completas, Tomo 1 (Buenos Aires: Corregidor) [first published 1966] Dorfman, Ariel, 1995. Reader (London: Nick Hern Books) Eagleton, Terry, 1984. The Function of Criticism (London: Verso) Earle, Peter G., 1971. Prophet in the Wilderness: the works of Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (Austin and London: University of Texas Press) ——1997. ‘Ezequiel Martínez Estrada’, in Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, ed. Verity Smith (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn), p. 526 Englekirk, John E. and Margaret M. Ramos, 1967. La narrativa uruguaya: Estudio crítico-bibliográfico (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press) Fernández, Mario C., 1966. Industria nacional (Montevideo: Arca) Frantz, Philip, E., 1989. Gogol. A Bibliography (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis) Goldar, Ernesto, 1971. El peronismo en la literatura argentina (Buenos Aires: Freeland) Hoggart, Richard, 1958. The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth: Penguin) [first published 1957] Jordan, Paul, 1999. ‘ “But my writing has nothing to do with Arlt’s”: Trace and Silence of Arlt in Onetti’, in Onetti and Others, ed. Gustavo San Román (Albany: State University of New York), pp. 65–81 ——2000. Roberto Arlt: a narrative journey (London: King’s College London) Leland, Christopher Towne, 1986. The last Happy Men: The Generation of 1922, Fiction and the Argentine Reality (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press) Maharg James, A., 1977. A Call to Authenticity: the essays of Ezequiel Martínez Estrada (University, Mississippi: Romance Monographs) Marechal, Leopoldo, 1994. Adán Buenosayres, edición de Pedro Luis Barcia (Madrid: Castalia) [first published 1948] Mariani, Roberto, 1943. Regreso a Dios (Buenos Aires: Sociedad Impresora Americana) ——1965. Cuentos de la oficina, presentación por Leónidas Barletta (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires) [first published 1925]


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Martel, Julián, 1975. La bolsa (Buenos Aires: Plus Ultra) [first published 1891] Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel, 1964. Antología (México and Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica) ——1967. En torno a Kafka y otros ensayos (Barcelona: Seix Barral) ——1968. Radiografía de la pampa, 6th edn (Buenos Aires: Losada) [first published 1933] ——1975. Cuentos completos, ed. Roberto Yahni (Madrid: Alianza and Fundación Ezequiel Martínez Estrada) Nahum, Benjamín, 1999. Breve historia del Uruguay independiente (Montevideo: Banda Oriental) Odber de Baubeta, P.A., 1995. ‘The Deceptive Simplicity of Mario Benedetti: Narrative Technique in “El presupuesto” ’, in New Frontiers in Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Scholarship. Como fue el maestro. For Derek W. Lomax in memoriam, ed. Trevor J. Dadson, R.J. Oakley and P.A. Odber de Baubeta (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Edwin Mellen), pp. 547–60 Onetti, Juan Carlos, 1974. Tiempo de abrazar, introduction by Jorge Ruffinelli (Montevideo: Arca) ——1976. ‘Semblanza de un genio porteño’, in Réquiem por Faulkner y otros ensayos, Ed. Jorge Ruffinelli (Buenos Aires: Calicanto) [first published 1971] ——1983. Juntacadáveres, 2nd edn (Madrid: Alianza) [first published 1964] ——1990. El pozo; Para una tumba sin nombre (Madrid: Mondadori) [first published 1939] ——1993. El astillero (edition by Juan-Manuel García Ramos), 3rd edn (Madrid: Cátedra) [first published 1961] ——1994. Cuentos completos (Madrid: Alfaguara) Purdom, D.S., 1977. British Steam on the Pampas: The locomotives of the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway (London and New York: Mechanical Engineering Publications) Ricci, Julio, 1970. Los maniáticos (Montevideo: Alfa) ——1976. El Grongo (Montevideo: Ediciones Geminis) ——1987. Los mareados (Montevideo: Monte Sexto) Robert, Paul, 1957. Dictionnaire Alphabétique et Analogique de la Langue Française, vol. 3 (Casablanca/Paris: Société du Nouveau Littré/Presses Universitaires de France) Rock, David, 1994. Argentina 1516–1987 Desde la colonización española hasta Raúl Alfonsín, 4th edn (Buenos Aires: Alianza) Rodríguez Monegal, Emir, 1974. ‘La fortuna de Onetti’, in Helmy F. Giacoman (ed.), Homenaje a Juan Carlos Onetti (New York: Anaya-Las Américas), pp. 77–107 Ruffinelli, Jorge, 1997. ‘Juan Carlos Onetti’, in Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature, ed. Verity Smith (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn), pp. 596–7 San Román, Gustavo, 2000. ‘La geografía de Santa María en El astillero’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, LXXVII (2000), 107–21


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Sarlo, Beatriz, 1988. Una modernidad periférica: Buenos Aires 1920 y 1930 (Buenos Aires: Nueva Visión) Schanzer, George O., 1972. Russian Literature in the Hispanic World: a bibliography (Toronto: Toronto University Press) Traversoni, Alfredo and Diosma Piotti, 1993. Historia del Uruguay Siglo XX (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Plaza) Verani, Hugo J., 1996. De la vanguardia a la posmodernidad: narrativa uruguaya (1920–1995) (Montevideo: Trilce/Linardi y Risso) Weber, Max, 1948. ‘Bureaucracy’, in Gerth, H.H. and C. Wright Mills (translators and editors), From Max Weber: essays in sociology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 196–244 Williams, Raymond, 1965. The Long Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin) [first published 1961] Wright Mills, C., 1956. White Collar. The American middle classes (New York: Oxford University Press) [first published 1951] Yates, Donald A., 1967. ‘Para una Bibliografía de Marco Denevi’, Revista Iberoamericana, vol. 33 (1967), 141–6

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INDEX Entries in bold denote the main discussion of each author and text. Aínsa, Fernando, 43 Albéniz, Isaac, 57n alienation, 2, 5, 7, 20–1, 24, 38, 56, 62, 64, 68, 84, 101, 104, 123, 125–6, 129–30, 132, 137, 139, 141, 150, 174–5, 180, 188, 200, 207 anarchism, 176 Andrés, Alfredo, 157 anxiety and claustrophobia in the office, 84, 122 Arlt, Roberto, 1–2, 7, 20–1, 23–4, 26, 34n, 56–68, 69, 75, 78–80, 82–3, 82n, 87, 89, 91, 100, 105, 107–8, 110, 134–5, 155, 157, 160, 171, 174–5, 181–4, 195–6, 219–20, 225 El amor brujo, 19–20, 24, 57–63, 64–5, 68–9, 69n, 72, 79, 82n, 83, 105, 107–8, 110, 155, 157, 174, 182–3, 186, 196 La isla desierta, 19–20, 63–8, 78, 87, 171, 225 El juguete rabioso, 56 Los lanzallamas, 1, 56, 59, 89 Los siete locos, 56, 63, 76, 89, 134 ‘La tristeza del sábado inglés’, 34n Arnold, Matthew, 62 Arteaga, Juan José, 16–17, 210 Artigas, José Gervasio, 198, 198n Avellaneda, Andrés, 141n, 143n, 144n, 156n Balzac, Honoré de, 11–12, 19, 49, 164, 169 Les Employés, 12, 169 Barletta, Leónidas, 27–8, 33 Batlle y Ordóñez, José; Batllismo, 10, 16–17, 16n, 45–6, 48, 54, 81, 83 Neobatllismo, 16, 83, 220–1 Belgrano, Manuel, 134, 198n Benedetti, Mario, 7, 12, 20–1, 24–5, 43–5, 51, 55, 81–125, 137–8, 150n, 163, 164–5, 169, 171–2, 180, 186, 188, 190–1, 199, 202, 210–13, 218, 220–1, 223, 225 Con y sin nostalgia, 150n, 191n

‘Pequebú’, 191n ‘La vecina orilla’, 150n Esta mañana, 21, 81, 85–90 ‘Esta mañana’, 85–8, 112 ‘No tenía lunares’, 85, 88–90, 101, 218 Literatura uruguaya siglo XX ‘La literatura uruguaya cambia de voz’, 43 Montevideanos, 21, 81, 91–100, 111, 137 ‘Aquí se respira bien’, 94–6 ‘Familia Iriarte’, 96, 97–100, 218 ‘El presupuesto’, 24, 44, 51, 91–4, 119, 137, 163, 188, 199, 211 ‘Sábado de Gloria’, 91n, 96–7, 111 ‘Tan amigos’, 94 El país de la cola de paja, 21, 81–5 ‘La cultura es pocos votos’, 85n ‘Del miedo a la cobardía’, 85n ‘La otra crisis’, 85n ‘Rebelión de los amanuensis’, 81–5, 94, 119, 122 ‘El subsuelo de la calma’, 85n ‘Ya sabemos leer’, 85n Poemas de la oficina, 21, 81, 100–4, 137, 171, 186 ‘Aguinaldo’, 104 ‘Amor de tarde’, 103–4 ‘Angelus’, 103 ‘Cosas de uno’, 101 ‘Cuenta corriente’, 104 ‘Dactilógrafo’, 101 ‘Después’, 101 ‘Elegía extra’, 102 ‘Ellos’, 104 ‘Licencia’, 102 ‘Lunes’, 101–2 ‘El nuevo’, 101 ‘Oración’, 104 ‘Sueldo’, 100, 101 ‘Verano’, 101 Primavera con una esquina rota, 7 La tregua, 21, 24, 81, 104–25, 137, 172, 202, 209


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Blanco party, 17, 46, 85n, 198, 210 Boedo (calle, Buenos Aires); Boedo group, 11n, 26, 26n, 28, 137, 142, 192 Borello, Rodolfo, 141n, 143n Borges, Jorge Luis, 142, 157, 157n, 174, 180n Florida group, 137, 142 Martín Fierro group, 157 Brazil/Brazilians, 8, 13–14, 103, 214–5 Britain British capitalism, 15, 19, 35, 39, 39n, 137, 162 British School, Montevideo, 90 London, 14, 35, 39, 65, 74–5, 103, 198 19th century influence, 8, 13, 13n 20th century economic influence, 9–11, 22, 92, 197–8 Campodónico, Miguel Angel, 24–5, 221–3 ‘El silencio de mi voz’, 24–5, 221–2 Canaparo, Claudio, 195–6 carnivalesque, 20, 64, 153, 153n Carreño, Virginia: La amansadora, 3 Castelnuovo, Elías, 28, 36 civilisation/barbarism, 142, 153, 176, 211, 213 see also Sarmiento Colorado party, 17, 45–6, 85n, 144, 198, 210 communism, 2, 10, 79, 176–7, 210 Stalin, Joseph, 68, 79 Concordancia, 17, 21, 144 conservatism, 17, 19, 41–2, 57, 173, 176n, 198 corruption in central and local government, 21–2, 42, 87, 126, 130–1, 135–6, 140–1, 160 partisan bureaucracies, 4, 83 pervasiveness of, 50–1, 53–4, 82, 85, 85n, 87, 94–6, 105, 115, 119–21, 140–1 powerful interest groups, 5 Cortázar, Julio, 22–5, 159n, 189–94, 221, 223 Alguien que anda por allí, 190 ‘Segunda vez’, 22, 24–5, 190–4, 221, 223 Las armas secretas, 193n ‘Los buenos servicios’, 193n Final del juego, 194n ‘La banda’, 159n ‘La puerta condenada’, 194

Historias de cronopios y famas, 189 ‘Trabajos de oficina’, 22–3, 189–90 Rayuela, 189 courtship, love/sex, married life, 16, 25, 27–8, 31–7, 41, 56–60, 62, 66, 69–79, 85–6, 88–90, 96–100, 103–18, 121–3, 129, 133, 135, 138, 144–5, 149, 151n, 152, 154–6, 161, 167, 169, 171–2, 175, 181–3, 186, 199, 204, 209, 213–4, 216–21, 226–7 Crawley, Eduardo, 144n, 153 creative versus routine writing, 1–2, 15, 21, 23–4, 26, 78–80, 123–5, 138–9, 162, 180–1, 189–90, 222, 225–7 diaries, 21, 57–8, 105–6, 112, 114, 118, 216 creativity/imagination, 59–61, 64–5, 69, 78, 131, 174, 180–1, 184, 196 criollos, 13–14, 21, 41–2, 128, 131 Cuba, 9, 17, 143, 143n dehumanisation, 121, 139, 163–5, 171 democracy, 4, 9, 16–17, 19, 21, 45–6, 85, 85n, 118, 134, 144, 147, 153, 173, 227 Denevi, Marco, 22–3, 165–88, 194 Los expedientes, 22, 165–73 Un pequeño café, 23, 173–88, 194 De Castro, Manuel, 11, 43–55, 58, 72, 82, 85, 91, 164, 210, 212 Historia de un pequeño funcionario, 12, 19, 23–4, 43–55, 85, 91, 120n, 124 El Padre Samuel, 44 De Falla, Manuel, 57n El amor brujo, 59 Del Saz, Agustín, 165–6, 172 Dickens, Charles, 11, 84, 167 Dieciocho de Julio (Avenida, Montevideo), 104, 107, 215n, 216–7 Dorfman, Ariel: Reader, 15, 226–7 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 11–12, 19, 49, 91 Poor Folk, 11n, 12, 91 dreams/reveries/fantasies/hallucinations, 25, 32, 56, 59, 64, 66–8, 73, 75–9, 98–101, 103–4, 115, 134, 145, 151n, 152–3, 174, 180, 195–6 Eagleton, Terry, 7 Earle, Peter G., 143 education/schoolteachers, 7, 11, 16–17, 19, 36, 41, 45, 156, 160, 210, 225


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higher education, 7–8, 8n, 16, 26, 69, 143, 210 educational establishment, 146n, 158, 158n Englekirk, John E. and Margaret M. Ramos, 43, 91n English language, 96–7, 226 escapism, 7, 27, 32, 57, 60, 68–9, 72, 80, 108, 176, 179–80 Fascism/Nazism, 22, 79, 156 Axis powers, 9, 126n, 156 Hitler, Adolf, 68, 79 see also wars Fernández, Mario C., 24, 209–13, 221, 224n ‘Despachando con el Viejo’, 24, 209–13, 224n film/cinema, 7, 20, 33, 36, 59, 62, 68, 76–7, 79, 90, 92, 98, 210 Chaplin, Charles: Modern Times, 166 Crawford, Joan, 75–6 Gable, Clark, 75 Hollywood, 79 Lang, Fritz: Metropolis, 61n Shearer, Norma, 186 Florida (calle, Buenos Aires), 75–7, 158, 180n see also Borges, Florida group football, 84, 87, 159, 214 Estadio Centenario, 102, 216 Nacional, 215n Peñarol, 214, 215n Foucault, Michel, 2–3, 2n, 5, 23 France 19th century influence, 8, 13, 13n Paris, 32, 35, 65, 74–5, 142, 157, 161 French language, 11, 13n, 180–1 Frente Amplio, 17 gender, 3 see also courtship, love/sex, married life; homosexuality; virginity; women in the workplace Generación del 45, 4, 44 Germany; Germans, 4, 9, 77, 79, 144, 181, 204 Berlin, 74–5 German language, 96–7 Gogol, Nikolai, 11–12, 32n, 49, 91 ‘The Overcoat’, 11n, 12, 32n, 91 Goldar, Ernesto, 141n guerrilla movements

Argentina, 18 Uruguay: Tupamaros, 17, 210 Hoggart, Richard, 7, 225, 227 homosexuality, 21, 37–8, 106, 108, 114, 115–8 homophobia, 115–7 immigrants; immigration, 8, 14–15, 21, 26, 41, 96, 127–8, 132–3, 157, 219–20 Italy, 9, 11, 15, 133, 144 Japan, 144, 220 Jordan, Paul, 2n, 57n, 69n Kafka, Franz, 4, 14, 21, 40n, 55, 91, 142–3, 145–6, 150, 156 The Trial, 40n, 145, 167n Larra, Mariano José de, 11, 84 Leland, Christopher, 26, 27n, 28, 38 López, Lucio V.: La gran aldea, 11n Lunfardo, 15 Maharg, James A., 142–3 managers/superiors role/attitudes to/relations with, 2, 20–1, 31, 35–7, 45–50, 55, 60–5, 91–2, 96, 98–9, 101, 104, 119, 132, 139–40, 147–51, 166–75, 185–8, 200–2, 210–3, 215–6, 226–7 managerial perspective, 104, 122, 166–73, 203–8 Marechal, Leopoldo, 22, 126, 156–64, 169, 180n Adán Buenosayres, 22, 156–64, 169 Mariani, Roberto, 2, 6, 11–12, 14–15, 20–2, 26–43, 44–6, 49–50, 55–8, 60–2, 65–6, 75, 80, 82–4, 89–91, 116, 120n, 126–41, 143, 155, 162–4, 171, 184, 185n, 186, 223, 225 Cuentos de la oficina, 6, 12, 19, 21, 26–43, 44, 49, 82, 127–8, 131, 137–8, 162–3, 171 ‘Balada de la oficina’, 28, 29–31, 34, 39, 82, 137 ‘Lacarreguy’, 35, 38–40, 56 ‘La ficción’, 28, 34, 36 ‘Rillo’, 35–6, 37, 39–41, 162, 185n ‘Riverita’, 37–8, 116 ‘Santana’, 12, 23, 28, 31–4, 35–6, 39–340, 49, 66, 89, 138, 186


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Mariani (cont.) Cuentos de la oficina (cont.) ‘Toulet’, 21, 35, 40, 41–3, 120n, 131, 155 ‘Uno’, 35, 36, 39–41, 50 Regreso a Dios, 21, 27, 126–41, 225 Martel, Julián: La bolsa, 12–14 Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel, 3–4, 8, 14, 21–2, 91, 126, 141–56, 160, 162, 164–5, 170, 184–5, 185nn, 187, 194, 225 En torno a Kafka, 145–6 La cabeza de Goliat, 3, 142, 146n Radiografía de la pampa, 141–2 ‘Sábado de Gloria’, 21, 23, 91, 141–56, 162, 165, 170, 184, 185n, 187, 225 Martínez Moreno, Carlos, 4 Maupassant, Guy de, 11–12, 49, 52n, 91 Les Dimanches d’un bourgeois de Paris, 12, 52n military, the, 9–10, 17–19, 21–2, 25, 36, 57, 62, 81, 126, 141, 144–5, 147, 150–1, 155–6, 164, 173, 175, 176n, 190, 221 coups/“revolutions”, 9, 16–18, 22, 42–3, 126, 141, 144–5, 147, 155, 158, 173, 175–6, 190, 197, 226 dictatorship, 7, 9, 17–18, 25, 57, 173, 221–3 Onganía, General, 18 Proceso de reorganización nacional, 18, 22, 24, 221 money centrality of, 4, 27, 71, 91–3, 95–6 poverty, 12, 14, 19, 41, 49–50, 54, 56, 65, 93 salaries, 2, 41, 44, 49–50, 55, 60, 84, 100, 140, 155 significance at different social levels, 31–7, 104 speculators, 13–14, 71, 134 theft/fraud, 31, 33, 42, 88, 89n, 215, 225 see also pensions/retirement Nahum, Benjamín, 16n, 209 Neruda, Pablo: Odas elementales, 86 Odber de Baubeta, Patricia, 91, 93 Onetti, Juan Carlos, 14–15, 20–5, 51, 56, 68–81, 82–3, 100, 104, 108, 123, 174, 195–209

El astillero, 24, 51, 195–209 ‘Avenida de Mayo – Diagonal – Avenida de Mayo’, 19–20, 69, 74, 75–7, 79, 196 Juntacadáveres, 195–8 ‘El posible Baldi’, 19–20, 69, 77–8, 196 El pozo, 19–20, 24, 78–80, 83, 123, 196, 198, 206 ‘Semblanza de un genio porteño’, 68n, 69n Tiempo de abrazar, 19–20, 68–75, 76, 104, 225 pensions/retirement, 2, 4, 16, 19, 21, 30, 44–6, 51–4, 101, 104–5, 119–20, 123, 175–6, 182, 185, 214, 216 Pérez Galdós, Benito, 11–12, 19, 49, 164 Miau, 12 Perón, Juan; Peronism, 9–10, 18, 21–3, 83, 126, 126n, 143–4, 144n, 146, 148n, 150, 153, 155–60, 156n, 162, 164–5, 173–6, 190 Perón, Eva, 18, 156n Perón, Isabel, 18 GOU, 18, 144, 158 public versus private sector, 4, 44, 46, 49, 83–4, 97, 121, 137, 163 Punta del Este, 83, 99, 118, 219 Quiroga, Horacio, 35, 40, 142 ‘A la deriva’, 35 ‘La insolación’, 35, 40 Radicals see Unión Cívica Radical Ramos, Graciliano: Angústia, 14 religion; religious/ecclesiastical imagery and language, 28, 82, 112, 128, 141, 152, 156n, 163, 202 God, 87, 104, 107, 119, 125, 127, 129, 131–6 Catholicism/church, 16, 144, 144n, 217 Ricci, Julio, 4, 24–5, 213–21 El Grongo, 216 ‘Los domingos no los paso más en casa de mi señora’, 25, 216–8 Los maniáticos, 213 ‘La mesita’, 24–5, 214–6, 218 ‘Viaje a Pocitos’, 25, 218–21 Rodríguez Monegal, Emir, 198 Rose, Nikolas, 2–3, 2n, 5 Ruffinelli, Jorge, 80


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San Román, Gustavo, 198–9 Sarlo, Beatriz, 9, 11 Sarmiento, Domingo F., 142, 160 see also civilisation and barbarism; education Scalabrini Ortiz, Raúl, 10n, 132n, 157n socialism, 35, 41, 157, 210 Solar, Xul, 61, 157n solidarity, 29, 35, 40, 43, 50, 89, 92, 131, 177–8, 199, 207 Spain; Spanish; Spaniards, 14–15, 22, 49, 57, 96, 157, 217 Madrid, 74–5 surveillance, 23, 25, 40, 140, 148–9, 163, 166–7, 169 informers/spies, 35, 65, 147–8, 151–2, 178, 187–8

237

132, 134, 137, 147, 153, 158, 163n, 173–4, 198 See also Yrigoyen United States, 5–6, 16, 22, 192n, 226 20th century influence, 9–10, 39n, 126n, 177 Wall Street crash, 9, 45, 197, 214 New York, 62, 65, 75 Verani, Hugo, 43–4 Viñas, David, 8n, 58n, 59 virginity, 58, 70, 73, 107, 110, 113, 182 voseo, 15, 29n, 114

Tango, 90, 104, 142, 159, 199, 204, 215n, 217 Gardel, Carlos, 83, 102, 215, 215n totalitarianism, 141, 156, 169 trade unions, 10, 18, 23, 42, 59, 83–4, 126, 148n, 178–80 Confederación General de Trabajo, 178, 178n strikes, 17, 23, 25, 36, 41, 83–4, 87, 166, 175–9, 186–8, 218–9, 221 Traversoni, Alfredo and Diosma Piotti, 45–6, 51n, 55

Weber, Max, 2–5, 22, 55, 63, 225 ‘Bureaucracy’, 4–5 Wilde, Oscar: De Profundis, 57n Williams, Raymond, 7, 227 wars, 9 dirty war, 9 Falklands war, 10, 18–19 First World War, 133 Second World War, 9, 133, 144, 214 women in the workplace, 3, 46, 63–4, 67, 74–5, 103–6, 109, 113–4, 116–7, 121, 167, 169, 171, 211, 214–5, 226 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 61n Wright Mills, Charles, 3–8, 22 White Collar, 5–7

Unión Cívica Radical; Radical party/government, 17–19, 21, 23, 29, 33n, 41, 56, 62, 83, 126–7,

Yahni, Roberto, 143 Yrigoyen (Irigoyen), Hipólito, 17, 29, 33n, 141, 147, 153


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The Author in the Office: Narrative Writing in Twentieth-Century Argentina and Uruguay (Monografías A)

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