The Absolute, page 1
The Absolute
a novel
Daniel Guebel
Translated by Jessica Sequeira
Seven Stories Press
NEW YORK • OAKLAND
Copyright © 2016 by Daniel Guebel
English translation © 2022 by Jessica Sequeira
Originally published as El Absoluto by Literatura Random House, Buenos Aires, 2016.
First Seven Stories Press edition April 2022. Published by arrangement with Casanovas & Lynch Literary Agency, Barcelona, Spain.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Guebel, Daniel, 1956- author. | Sequeira, Jessica, translator.
Title: The absolute / Daniel Guebel ; translated by Jessica Sequeira.
Other titles: Absoluto. English
Description: New York : Seven Stories Press, [2022]
Identifiers: LCCN 2021047801 | ISBN 9781644211601 (trade paperback) | ISBN
9781644211618 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
Classification: LCC PQ7798.17.U254 A6313 2022 | DDC 863/.64--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047801
Printed in the USA.
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Pablo Gianera and Luis Mucillo.
For Ana, this novel I dreamed up
while cradling her in my arms.
Who is Scriabin? Who are his ancestors?
—IGOR STRAVINSKY
BOOK 1: FRANTISEK DELIUSKIN
Maybe life is no more than a feverish dream.
So why not take a sleepwalker as a guide?
—MIKA WALTARI, The Wanderer
1
A few months before celebrating its hundredth anniversary, the Scriabin-Deliuskin Circle of Buenos Aires commissioned Américo Rabbione (an artist more prolific than talented) to create a sculpture that paid homage to my uncle and father. On the day of the inauguration, the small size of the cloth draped over it surprised me: according to Rabbione’s original plans for the project, there should have been at least eight meters separating the black marble base from the bronze heads. The final result would have made my father smile. “Most amateurs think that music ended with Wagner,” he once told me. When the Circle’s vice president yanked away the mantle covering the statue that would reunite the brothers, my vision was assaulted by a white-winged flutter, the dull gleam of a commemorative plaque and the gloom of a molded concrete block fusing two crude figures into a single embrace.
“If this cubist eyesore represents them,” I thought, “then the difference between homage and insult no longer exists.”
Within a week, the usual anonymous jokers had improved the monument with a series of slogans and multicolored decorations sprayed in aerosol—filthy remarks, scribbled flowers, jagged stars. And since they pulled off the plaque to sell it for its weight in pesos, there is no longer any sign to exalt the works and lives of Alexander Scriabin and Sebastian Deliuskin.
For the moment, I won’t go into the question of the different last names. Of Alexander Scriabin, my uncle, perhaps more than of any other musician, you could say that in the first half of his life he sought the world. He traveled vast distances, living in a way that was at times bold, at times reckless; if in the first half of his existence, his spirit was wide ranging and easily influenced, in the second, preceding his finale, in a move apparently contradictory but actually of equal intensity, having now explored the world, he drew on his resources in a bid to change it; committed to this dramatic and desperate undertaking, he invented the element that heralded total transformation (the mystic chord), and then, with his famous composition Mysterium, he poured his energy into an attempt to transform the course of the entire Universe. Of Sebastian Deliuskin, my father, you might say that even when he lived at a distance from (and in the shadow of) this musical explosion, owing to a series of unexpected circumstances, he had to spend the remainder of his days trying to catch hold of what the winds of dispersal had sent spinning, trying to put the pieces back together after catastrophe. But it isn’t unusual that this happened to them both, or that the combustion occurred with a particular style.
Alexander Scriabin died too early and was too far away for us to do anything for him; I was just a girl. As for my father, the doctors whom I consulted spoke of a neurophysiological process with degenerative effects on the brain cells; five centuries ago, healers and priests would have made an argument of diabolical possession. The real explanation is simpler: in our family of lunatics, we pay the price of dementia for ascending to the heavens of genius.
If you go back along the genealogical tree of character pathologies, before reaching the original Adam, you’ll come across our true predecessor, my great-great-grandfather Frantisek Deliuskin. His father, Vladimir, a typical representative of the adventurousness that a couple of centuries ago distinguished the Russian soul, was a trader in reindeer hides who seized the opportunity to make a fortune, changed sector, and began to work for the different museums of civilized Europe, selling them mammoth skeletons he acquired through the simple means of tossing loads of dynamite into the depths of lakes on the Siberian steppe (from the Baikal to the Kosovskoye). The violence of the explosion detached the blocks of ancient ice from their rocky bed, where these prehistoric beasts are preserved, in such a way that a series of well-timed attempts could as a result send hurling two, three or even five masses with their contents intact; afterward, without fearing the possible revenge that might come from altering the repose of these monsters visible through glinting blue ice (a quivering eye trembling in agony, a fang over five meters long, bristling hairs), Vladimir would “fish” for the huge blocks with harpoons. Thanks to an ingenious system of levers, ropes and pulleys, he would haul them to shore, letting the base of the ice solidify again over the surface of the lake, then proceed to chisel away at these icebergs to get to their core; he had an advantage over any sculptor (or any real artist) in that with his object, the form was given beforehand. Once the frozen mammoth had lost its sheath, Vladimir removed the flesh until he reached bone. This method of obtaining the skeleton destroyed more mammoths than it rescued for science, of course. But these were periods of abundance, and no one cared about such squander . . .
In those days, the father tried to interest the son in the techniques of subaquatic paleontology, but it was useless. For Frantisek, it was as if the time never passed during those excursions; the landscape seemed to him an infinite monotony, an expanse lacking in nuance. His feet grew cold, and a mammoth was a mammoth was a mammoth, even if it emerged suddenly from the waters like an inebriated bubble, a wobbly diadem of frozen beauty. Permanently distracted, idly lashing his whip of braided leather (knout), which for reasons of elegance he wore pressed against his trouser leg, he sneezed, begged for the saving grace of a flu and dreamed of fleeing to warm, distant lands.
When Vladimir arrived at the unhappy conclusion that his heir wasn’t cut out for either trade or deepwater fishing, he bought him some versts of territory near Vladivostok, which could be accessed only by sailing up the Vistula River, then advancing deeper inland by means of a snaking branch of a tributary. What could be found there? Muzhiks, forest territory, orange plantations, cattle. The place had been occupied for more than a hundred years by a tribe of gypsies, the blackest in India. The average body temperature of this group—higher by over a degree and a half than the rest of humanity—had produced a microclimate, a kind of subtropical refuge. Frantisek immediately succumbed to the charm of the surroundings. Instead of looking after his interests, he devoted his time to reading, contemplating nature and traveling by boat with the gypsies, who would tell his fortune for free or brazenly steal from him, according to their variations in mood. Sometimes he would spend nights at the shops of these friends, listening to drunken conversations and watching their dances. Occasionally he went upriver, following the salmon. Languid, irresponsible, the new landlord let his harvests of oranges rot in the trees and spill over the earth. The radiance of the fruits could be glimpsed from a distance, like the phosphorescence of ghosts. For a time he scandalized the priests of the Orthodox Church of Irkutsk (the town near his property) by singing in a synagogue choir, excited by the curves of the Ashkenazim insinuated beneath their loose clothing.
At the time, the successive defeats of the Russian armies at the hands of some of the country’s historical enemies were destroying the international value of the ruble; since Vladimir charged for the exportation of antediluvian skeletons in European coins of constant value, he grew rich overnight. Frantisek saw his chance; six months before, he had met Volodia Dutchansky, an organist strapped for cash. In the beginning, less out of interest than out of compassion, he hired him to learn some basic ideas about counte
The ruse was a success. Vladimir, surprised by the sudden glorification of the merits of a son who’d always seemed to him useless, with a future that struck him as uncertain, once again felt the pride of blood circulate through his veins, and he took it upon himself to allocate a yearly income.
In honor of my great-great-grandfather, one must say that for a time he did focus on studying the art of composition, even taking up the post of music teacher at the girls’ school in Irkutsk. Quickly he transformed into a precious pawn in the complex chess of the town’s social relations; the rural property owners in the area competed with one another for him and tried to convince him to give harmonium lessons to their wives. This ambition, laughable in subjects who could barely sing “Volga Volga,” can be explained by the mistaken illusion of social climbing that the practice of an art can create. And since these kulaks wanted to refine themselves without effort, it had occurred to them this was a task for their wives; logically, in coming up with the idea—a collective phenomenon—the interested parties themselves oiled the wheels. “We were all delighted by this modest, well-mannered young man. My husband was so quickly convinced of his virtuosity,” one of Frantisek’s first and most charming students said, recommending him to her friend. And she added: “. . . especially because of the chromatic quality of his improvisations, which seem to violate every known law of harmony. I remember entering a trance when the maestro played, and couldn’t help but think: ‘He carries music in his soul.’”
Frantisek’s classes were a success; especially in the bedroom. If these women contrasted the dream against the reality (the dream being the “modest, well-mannered young man,” a precursor to Chopin with his long delicate fingers trained for delight; and the reality, the brief rough poundings given to them by fat greasy-bearded husbands as they lay on their stomachs or backs), then the second term of comparison couldn’t help but vanish away to nothing.
This great triumph, Frantisek’s breathtaking sexual apotheosis—which he had expected less than anyone—was not, as so many lush pages in Russian literature have sung of it, a frivolous event that culminated in disaster (lovemaking, challenge, duel, gunshot). The discretion of the Irkutskian ladies played its part, so no one had to lament any tragedy. Frantisek’s career as a clandestine lover signified a brief awakening. Foolish is he who seeks in the game of flesh the satisfaction of desire rather than an increase in longing. Although from the very moment of his debut in these duties, my great-great-grandfather had shown talent, versatility, resistance, ardor and a capacity for recuperation that far exceeded the average, the truth is his surrender to the pleasure of these covert adventures was not determined by the frenzy of his discovery, but was secretly regulated by a severe, even ascetic, principle of inquiry, one that would later reveal itself to be a criterion for composition. In effect: the variety of beds, duvets, pillows, floors, smells, breaths, skins and bodies he came to know during these excursions led him to embark on the rigorous task of organizing the priorities of his senses afresh.
An account of his concerns during the period can be given by means of the following conversation (or monologue), which took place with Dutchansky onboard his boat, during an excursion along the Vistula. The setting: Dutchansky rows wearily along a still river as the blades of his oars sink into an algae clump, a miniature sea of kelp. Frantisek tans with his shirt open, lying against big pillows, as he takes bites of a red apple. Bees hum, lichens gleam. Sun above, yellow.
“Am I old?” he says. “Or have I reached the ultimate limit of experience?”
The blade of the left oar strikes the densest mass of water hyacinth, bursting the head of a toad.
“Did you say something, Volodia?” he asks. Dutchansky shakes his head, and Frantisek goes on: “I have no will to transform the memory of my first sexual experiences into a kind of paradise lost, but now that I have some knowledge about my lovers’ modulations, I confess the matter has begun to seem a little . . .” Frantisek can’t find the exact word, so Dutchansky chimes in:
“What methods did you use to come to your conclusions?” he asks.
“Oh!” Frantisek languidly drops the apple core. Instead of a “plop” when the skeleton of the fruit hits the water, the digestive “gluck” of an opportune salmon can be heard: “Obviously I’m not that stupid. By repeating a series of techniques of erotic stimulation over the course of my routine of clandestine encounters, I was able to confirm that by engaging in a series of positions and pelvic rhythms of identical tempo, it is possible to produce a series of equivalent responses in each of my partners.”
“. . . a little boring?” Dutchansky completes the phrase. “Have you come to the conclusion that sex is essentially monotonous?”
“That would be the necessary conclusion for a mind unlike my own,” sighs Frantisek, feeling misunderstood yet again: “In my case, this proof helped me accept the evidence that every feminine instrument possesses particular qualities of timbre, which, if analyzed with the utmost care and sympathy, can be read as a ‘theme,’ in the musical sense of the word.”
To conceal the satisfaction given to him by his ex-student’s discovery, Dutchansky takes advantage of the rowing movement to tuck his face under an armpit.
“You look like a fat woman smelling an onion,” smiles Frantisek.
“A theme?” says Dutchansky.
“Yes. All of the reactions perceived during a sexual experience and its preliminaries constitute this theme.”
“And is there no possibility of variation?”
“Obviously there is,” says Frantisek, irritated and already wanting to change the subject. “Under experimental conditions, modifying the antics substantially, it is possible to extract a variation from each one of my companions, but such an effort exceeds the results. The trouble is, working this way, I’d never be able to come up with any musical score at all, much less a composition of great significance!”
Dutchansky, who knows the art of temporarily putting a conversation on hold so a stimulating problem doesn’t deteriorate into idle chatter, lifts his head, looks at some exquisite clouds grouped with casual flair and says:
“What a shame. The first drops are falling.”
A lie, of course.
“Let’s turn back,” jokes Frantisek. “The last thing I need now is to get sick.”
So they returned home, skirting the shore, gliding through a rain of gold coins shaken down by the canopy of willows.
The interruption led to the creation of a style. After the outing, my great-great-grandfather spent a night of feverish insomnia concentrating on his problem. Early in the morning, he’d arrived at the following conclusions, which he jotted down in his diary:
1) Each woman’s body during coitus is the opposite of a blank page. Its sensual manifestations of desire come previously written into it, even its system of combinatorial possibilities.
2) The desired effect of greater melodic and harmonious development, and a richer and more varied orchestral palette, is not to be achieved by means of intense work upon one body in particular. To believe the contrary is the vanity of the novice.
3) A variety of registers can be achieved only in a very primitive and crude way, with the technique employed to this point (an arbitrary and consecutive linkage of one woman after another, in a rapid journey from bed to bed). This is because, engaging with three or four women in a compositionally useful day, the subjacent effects of complementarity or contrast begin to emerge (blondes and brunettes, silent types and screamers, et cetera).
