illiteratus.com

Translated by Justin Loke (November, 2014)

Could it be that because I have been wandering throughout the week, Saturday and Sunday have become the most boring days of my life? I think Sunday is pure old boredom, and English Saturday is a sad day, with sadness characterized by the name of the race.

English Saturday is a colourless and tasteless day; a day “with neither kicks nor pricks” [no corta ni pincha] in the routine of the people. A hybrid day, without character, without gestures.

It is a day for marital brawls to thrive, and for drunkenness more lugubrious than the De Profundis in the twilight of a cloudy day. A grave silence hangs over the city. In England or Puritan countries, that is. The lack of sun, which is surely the natural source of all joy. And when it rains or snows, there is nowhere to go, not even to run. So people stay at home by the fire, and, tired from reading Punch, they browse the Bible.

But for us, the English Saturday is a very modern gift that failed to convince. We already have plenty of Sundays. Without money, nowhere to go, and no desire to go anywhere, why would we want Sunday? Sunday was an institution humanity could live without very comfortably.

Daddy God rested on Sunday because he was tired of having made this complicated thing called ‘world’. But what has been done during the six days, all those slackers out there walking around, to rest on Sunday? Besides, no one has the right to impose a day of idleness. Who asked for it? What for?

Humanity had to impose a day from the week dedicated to doing nothing. And mankind was bored. A ‘lean’ day is suffice. Here comes the British gentleman — what a great idea! Let’s add another day more, on Saturday.

Regardless of the amount of work, one day off per week is more than enough. Two are unbearable in any city in the world. I am, as you see, a sworn enemy of English Saturday.

The necktie used for a week left in the trunk. Suit with ostensible stiffness well-kept. Boots creaking. Glasses with gold frame, for Saturday and Sunday. And this is the self-satisfying aspect that made you want to kill him. Like the kind of boyfriend, one of those couples that bought a house on monthly installment. One of those couples kissing to fixed term.

So carefully polishing his boots when getting out of the car that I did not forget to step on one of his feet. If there had been no people, the man would have killed me.

After this fool, there is another man on Saturday, the sad man, the man who grieves me deeply every time I see him.

I’ve seen him numerous times, and he has always given me the same painful impression.

I was walking down a sidewalk one Saturday, under the shade, by Calle Alsina – the most dismal street of Buenos Aires – when, on the opposite sidewalk, along the path of the sun, I saw a hunchbacked employee walking slowly, carrying a three-year-old child.

The creature exhibited her innocence with one of those little hats with cintajos, already deplorable without being old. A freshly pressed pink dress. Some shoes for the holidays. The girl walked slowly, and the father, even more slowly. And suddenly I had a vision of the room in a lodging house, and the mother of the child, a young woman wrinkled by hardship, ironing the baby’s hat with cintajos.

The man walked slowly. Sad. Bored. In him I saw the product of working twenty years by the sentry box, of fourteen hours a day and with starving wages. Twenty years of deprivation, of stupid sacrifices, and holy terror of being fired and left unemployed in the street. I saw him as Santana, the character by Roberto Mariani.

And the city centre on Saturday afternoon is horrible. When businesses are exposed in hideous nakedness. The metal shutters have aggressive rigidity.

Basements of importing houses vomit the stink of tar, benzol and overseas items. Stores stink of rubber. The hardware stores, of paint. The sky seems so blue, as if it were illuminating an inconspicuous factory in Africa. Taverns for stockbrokers remain empty and dismal. A gatekeeper playing mus with floor cleaners by the edge of a table. Guys procreated by the spontaneous generation of moss-covered benches appear at the door marked “employee entrance” of the cash deposits. And one feels the terror, the awful horror, of thinking that at the same hour, in many countries, people are forced to do nothing and yet are willing to work or die.

Notes:

cintajos: Decorative ribbons or sashes, often sewn onto children’s hats or dresses. A quaint, old-fashioned detail evoking domestic care and modest festivity.

mus: A traditional Spanish card game, typically played in pairs. Popular in taverns and social clubs, especially among older men; more for ritualised banter than for gambling.

Santana: A character from El hombre de la calle by Roberto Mariani, a writer associated with Buenos Aires’ early 20th-century proletarian literature. Santana embodies the quiet desperation of the urban working class: overworked, underpaid, and resigned to an existence of silent suffering.