Book//mark – Zama | Antonio Di Benedetto, 1956
Antonio Di Benedetto, 1922-1986 / Zama, 1956
“There we were: Ready to go and not going.”
“Nature, as she exists in this country, is most gentle, and for that very reason I’m at pains to keep my distance from her. For she is childlike and might captivate me, and in moments of lassitude when I’m barely half awake she may bring me sudden, treacherous thoughts that persist far too long and give neither satisfaction nor repose. Nature holds up the mirror of external things; were I to submit to her wiles I might recognize myself there.”
“Here was I, in the midst of a vast continent that was invisible to me though I felt it all around, a desolate paradise, far too immense for my legs. America existed for no one if not for me, but it existed only in my needs, my desires, and my fears.”
“Perhaps it was the woman from the dream. Of a certainty it was not. Like that one, this woman moved within me in an unending caress.”
“Every man is greedy for my body. Honorio, my own husband, lives in thrall to the flesh. I despise it and despise all men for their love of possession.”
“I could see she was greatly flattered. She hinted that if I proved deserving, I might find myself enjoying that very affection of which I dreamed. So she conceded two points to me now, when the day before she’d accorded six and promised ten.”
“The episode was an affront to my right to lose myself in love. In any love born of passion, some element of idyllic charm is required.”
“With me went my anger, already yielding to bitter self-reproach. Character! My character! Ha!”
“It is often thus: Those who have some position or fortune to boast of but have had no contact with any university prefer to ignore the studies and diplomas of those who do in fact possess them.”
“The light was sparse, the heavy clouds so low they shielded the ground, not the sky. The palm trees’ green fronds expressed their distress. The sky’s blue offered no resistance to a corrosive infiltration of gray. Heavy with humidity, possessive, the atmosphere suspended all the life within it. Lulled upon the still waters, the boat rocked with a languor devoid of all memory.”
“I was isolated, besieged, defenseless”
“But I feared the end. For, presumably, there was no end.”
“To abandon myself to love, that alone did I underscore in my inventory of rights. Again I imagined the fugitive hand, pale and plump, and made it real by making it Luciana’s, and mine to kiss, a single kiss from a man abandoned to love, and then to rest my cheek upon it and feel its warmth pass into my body.”
“You are mine and I am yours, yours alone, and I would have given you what you’ve never asked of me, if only you had asked.”
“That was why she was strong: Her game was subtler and more polished than mine.”
“She kissed me as if to inflict wounds upon me. She kissed me infinitely. With those kisses, she took all my strength.”
“The truth was that whenever I’d thought about her over the course of the day, I had felt no need to bother myself about her. In my mind she was submissive and surrendering, which dispensed me from further effort.”
“But a man cannot renounce his life for half a day: There is either the rest of eternity or nothing.”
“Never had I imagined I would unveil my apprehensions and the motives for my conduct to a person with whom I was not on intimate terms. Until I did precisely that.”
“A god cannot create gods so he thought to create man so that man could create them.”
“The god’s greatest failure was this: He could see man, but man could not see him, could not gaze back into his eyes, which were suffused with paternal affection.”
“The inclination to write is not a seed that germinates within a fixed period of time. It is a small animal, deep in its cave, that procreates when it is of a mind to, for its season is variable and sometimes it is a dog and other times a ferret, sometimes it is a panther and other times a rabbit. It may do so with or without hunger, on some occasions only if it is very well rested and on others if a wound received from a hunter is causing it pain or if it is returning in excitement from a day of mischief.”
“The sun was docile and so was I.”
“The past was a small notebook, much scribbled-upon, that I had somehow mislaid.”
Antonio Di Benedetto, Zama, 1956
Also:
Book//mark – The Mad Toy | Roberto Arlt, 1926
Book//mark – Op Oloop | Juan Filloy, 1934
Book//mark – The Tunnel | Ernesto Sabato, 1948
