By Silvina Friesen
Autumn fell sad, whistling his requiem, noon where relatives, close friends and a handful of readers "infiltrated "in the Garden of Peace, in Pilar, dismissed Ernesto Sabato. Indelible before our eyes, like a flash of melancholy, flew through the air some yellow leaves, so fragile in their swift journey to the grass. A flag wrapped around the coffin Argentina writer. Mario, his son, Elvira González Fraga, his last companion, accompanied by her two sons and his brother, the economist Javier González Fraga, Julia Constenla, biographer of the writer, Mario "Pacho" O'Donnell, the former prosecutor in the trial of the military junta, Julio César Strassera and the president of the Institute of Culture of the Province of Buenos Aires, Juan Carlos D'Amico, among others, walked slowly, as if trying to postpone the end. The author of On Heroes and Tombs once recalled that during his childhood could not express feelings. And much less mourn. Men was not tenderness. "Here are three of the people I most wanted in my life: my beloved brother (by George), my mother (Matilda) and he is now, "said Mario, surfing with emotion, as he could. It is at peace, fulfilled what he had to do. "" If it's true that can be heard somewhere, "added the son, I want to say, 'You, Dad, you, mom, you, Huey, stay calm . I appreciate that. "Not a word. The rest was silence.
The ceremony was brief. "Ernesto was a great gift to people for the simple and difficult attitude toward the intellectual world," recalled Elvira, his last companion. In recent four years could not leave his house in Holy Places, Sabato was resigning small indulgences that never imagined that he would leave, except for the disease. "I could be without drinking wine, and yet it was OK to eat a meal crushed minimal. I gave her came when no one saw, but it was something he could take. "Elvira, Elvira, as he called the writer" was exhausted. But as a whole. "Ernesto leaves us with a fidelity to a way of being. This world has gone a bit too zapping the spirit, we live in an attitude of zapping, fragmented-raised attitude. If you leave anything it is that, even through their mistakes, always played by what he thought, even if he was wrong. After even apologized. "
The memorial wall would be deployed even more if not for the tiredness. "When Argentina was wrong, Ernesto heard the news crying. Sometimes fell into deep depressions. When you grab a great depression, folded his arms as if there was going to die. I did not know what to say to be glad. Then I went to the kitchen and called the prison Ezeiza, Cristina, a girl who was a prisoner. A while back and said, 'Ernesto, Ernesto, is Cristina from Ezeiza prison. " 'I can not attend no, 'he answered. 'But look who's allowed to talk once a week, so ... please and notice what you do '. "
And the tough nut to crack, depression Sabato, softened. Elvira's strategy worked. "He got up, could not speak, but she did not mind. And while you fill the frame of mind. "
As if the wind galloping encourage intimate evocations, Constenla reviewed, once again, how they met, back in 1949, when she was a 20 year old who had blinded with the tunnel. Sought in the phone and called him. Sabato was proposed that the to see the Holy Places. His biography, Ernesto Sabato. A man (South America), was reissued in these days with a new preface. Sabato was leaving for a long time. He said a sentence of eight years ago, with which I finish my book: "I've said all I had to say, I have written everything I had to write. It's time for me to call silent '. "There is one last memory in silence. "Every Saturday we went to lunch at his house, with one of his daughters, to Lydia, the widow of Huey. It was painful because I had the feeling that I sometimes connected and sometimes not. He told me 'Chiquita, Chiquita', slapped me, I suspect I try to recognize. For distant memories was directed quite well. I told him of his mother and Joseph, his brother, who had been with the circus, "said the biographer.
"I wanted to be Joseph, he said. I wanted to go to the circus. "
As Constenla was very packed and thought he could capitalize on that jerk of enthusiasm, he continued. "What thing, your mother, eleven men, eleven pairs of underpants and one daughter." Sabato was startled and said, "Mom did not have a daughter." The clarity in her hectic still pressed inside. "Of course not," he confirmed had Constenla-but she always thought that Matilda was his daughter. "" Who is Matilda? "Sabato asked, completely baffled.
Oblivion, slowly digging his grave, had suppressed the memory of the author of On Heroes and Tombs Matilde, his first wife, the mother of his children. "It was a long and painful goodbye", he concluded his biographer.
Generosity. Pacho O'Donnell based his umbrella while stressing the gestures that Sabato had with him. "I came back early from my exile in 1980. A year later she had my book, The tigrecito of Mompracen. That was very important to submit for me. In addition to a recognition of my literature, was a cover, because the thing was still very heavy. "O'Donnell generation was strongly influenced, as acknowledged by the writer, On Heroes and Tombs. "Just as Hernandez found the form and substance of the gaucho, Sabato found the back and the shape of half Buenos Aires, their breathing, their neuroses, their difficulties." Death, he added, has to launch a "major" recognition literature. Sabato was one of the first made public his criticism of Stalinism, long before Octavio Paz or Bernard-Henri Lévy, but it won alienated large sectors of the left antipathy continues until today, when no longer blame his lunch with Videla to unusual extremes. "
lunch" But this is reprehensible.
"Yes, it is a mistake, he told me he had been a mistake. But it was easy to make mistakes at the time. If you do not accept an invitation from Videla, it was likely he had to leave. That was the explanation given (René) Favaloro, who has never criticized the fact that they also had lunch with Videla.
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