Artificial Respiration by Ricardo Piglia

Author:Ricardo Piglia [Piglia, Ricardo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780822314141
Google: oHPO9_JmoQIC
Amazon: 0822314142
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 1994-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

2.

The hotel looks to have been built about 1900. It has a facade of black marble with great windows opening onto the square. This way, Tardewski says to me. First we have to go by the front desk. Do you know if Professor Maggi has returned? asks Tardewski. The receptionist says that he just started on his shift, but perhaps someone has come back, he says, because the key is not on the keyboard. Let’s go up, then, says Tardewski. It’s very possible that if he returned we will find him asleep here, he says; perhaps he doesn’t even know that you have arrived. We knock on the door of a room on the fourth floor; because no one answers and the door is unlocked, we enter. The room is empty. It would be funny, Tardewski says to me, if he were looking for us at the club. He says that the best thing is to call on the phone and ask if he is there. The room is of generous size; from the big windows there is a good view of the river, there in the background, by the willows. There is a desk against the wall. A bed. A wardrobe. An armchair. Some books on a shelf. I go over and look at the titles while Tardewski calls the club on the phone and leaves word that if the Professor shows up there they should tell him that we are at his place. In a row on the shelf I read the titles: Irazusta’s Life of Juan Manuel de Rosas through his Correspondence. Ignacio Weiss’s European Background of Pedro de Angelis. Robert Lacour’s Everyday Life in the United States (1830-186o). Mayer’s Alberdi and His Times. José Carlos Chiaromonte’s Nationalism and Liberalism. Jacques Duprey’s Alexandre Dumas, Rosas and Montevideo. Tulio Halperin’s Revolution and War. After that I go up to the desk, which is clean, by which I mean that there is nothing on it except for an empty tin of Mazawattee tea, used to hold pencils, a red felt-tip marker, a ruler, an eraser, a metal clasp; on one side of the table there is a note pad with the following written on it—“Call Angela (Monday)”—and after that something written in pencil and then crossed out with the red marker. I could only make out clearly the word “seminar” and after that another one, almost illegible, that might be “project” or “process” or perhaps “protector.” At the center of the sheet there are various triangles, circles, and other geometric figures drawn in pencil, and an account, or at least a series of numbers, lined up in a column, along the left side of the paper:

6750

12800

17300

8970

22500

I open one of the drawers in the desk. Actually the Professor always worked at the library, Tardewski tells me. At the library or in the provincial archives. In the drawer there are various newspaper clippings, especially news from La Prensa and the Buenos Aires Herald of about five weeks ago, held together by

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