The Word of the Speechless by Julio Ramón Ribeyro

Author:Julio Ramón Ribeyro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2019-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

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FOR SMOKERS ONLY

FOR SMOKERS ONLY

THOUGH I was not a precocious smoker, at a certain point my story and the story of my cigarettes blend into one. I have no clear memory of my apprenticeship, other than the first cigarette I smoked when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It was a blonde, a Derby, offered to me by a classmate as we were leaving school for the day. I lit it fearfully under the shade of a mulberry tree, and, after taking a few drags, I felt so ill that I spent all afternoon vomiting and vowed I would never repeat the experience.

Futile vow, like so many others that followed, for when I entered university a few years later, it became essential for me to make my entrance into the Patio de Letras with a burning cigarette in hand. A few meters before passing through the portal, I had already struck the match and lit it. At that time they were Chesterfields, whose sweetish aroma I still remember. One pack would last me two or three days, and in order to buy it I had to deprive myself of other luxuries, for at that time I lived on an allowance. When I didn’t have cigarettes or the money to buy them, I’d steal them from my brother. Whenever I had the chance, I’d slip my hand into the pocket of his jacket hanging on the back of a chair and pull out a smoke. I say this without a touch of shame for he did exactly the same with me. It was a tacit agreement between us and, moreover, proof that reprehensible acts, when they are reciprocal and equivalent, create a status quo and allow for harmonious cohabitation.

When the price went up, Chesterfields vanished from my sphere and were replaced by Incas—black and Peruvian. I can still see the yellow and blue pack with its Inca profile on the front. The tobacco must not have been very good, but it was the cheapest on the market. In some grocery stores, they sold them by the half or quarter pack in tissue-paper cornets. I always carried around an empty pack to hold the cigarettes I bought loose. Even so, Incas were a luxury compared to other cigarettes I smoked at the time, when my need for tobacco increased without similar adjustment to my resources. An uncle in the military would bring me “soldier cigarettes,” held together by string as if they were firecrackers; a repulsive product, they contained pieces of cork, wood splinters, hay, and a few strands of tobacco. But they didn’t cost me anything and could be smoked.

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I don’t know if tobacco is an inherited vice. Father was a moderate smoker, and he quit smoking promptly after he realized it was causing him harm. I have no memory of him smoking, except one night—I don’t know on what kind of whim, for it had been years since he had given up tobacco—he took a cigarette out of the

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