Imagining Argentina

“Cecilia came to work on La Opinión in 1970, six years before I retired. One day she was taking final examinations at the university, the next she walked into a newsroom filled with crusty chauvinists hoping she’d fall on her face. Such attitudes did not dampen their libidinous fantasies—her figure was as good as the best on the beaches of Buenos Aires or Rio, and her dark hair, her lovely blue eyes, and easy smile left them gasping for breath.”

In this excerpt, Martín characterizes Cecilia physically and also introduces the kind of objectifying sexism that Cecilia knows all too well. Here, Cecilia’s male colleagues despise Cecilia for her ambition yet desire her for her beauty. Later, the guards, too, will regard Cecilia with a similar mixture of lust and hatred, censuring her politics but still vying for the chance to rape her.

“The place had become something of a second home, and I settled comfortably into my favorite booth against the wall with the pictures of sports heroes and artists, of Fangio and Borges, which always reminded me of old, less complicated days.”

Martín introduces one of the novel’s primary settings: The Cafe Raphael, a small Italian bistro where Martín and Carlos will enjoy many enlightening conversations. A humble venue, the Cafe is decorated with pictures of icons past, from writer Jorge Luis Borges to professional driver Juan Manuel Fangio. The setting’s artistic allusions reflect The Lasting Impact of Art and Writing. As Martín acknowledges, the Cafe allows the past and the present to co-exist—a kind of impossibility that Martín will similarly confront in Carlos’s garden.

“I hadn’t the slightest doubt that Carlos would find a way to place his gift among the griefs of the city’s people.”

Here, Martín considers thoroughly, after Carlos has explained the origins of his gift. Though Martín tends toward skepticism, notably, he doesn’t “doubt” that Carlos will extend his gift to his community. Carlos’s passionate interest in his community proves a key character trait, developing Shared Tragedy as a Building Block of Community.

“On the grassy knoll sloping to the water a man his own age sat with his hands clasped on his knees, watching the river. Another lit his pipe, rose, and wandered off downstream. […] Every day a body turned up with a bullet in the head. Surely they had all heard of trucks coming to the river at night and the sound of a heavy splash such as a weighted body would make.”

As Carlos walks through Buenos Aires, he notices that for many, life has continued without interruption: Somehow, violence and banality co-exist. However, Carlos credits this violence with a certain pervasiveness, drawing attention to the Paraná River, a major artery in south-central South America. Rivers are symbolically associated with life, their shifting tides and currents reflecting life’s many contingencies. In poisoning the river with corpses, the junta spreads its evil to everyone—even those who don’t know it.

“The instant Carlos saw the telephone lens everything became clear. […] He squeezed Esme’s hand and said, ‘Wait here.’ Twenty minutes later he returned from a stationer’s at the southern end of the Plaza with a square of white pasteboard, a stapler, an ink marker, and a branch he had broken from a tree on the way back. As Esme watched he wrote in large black letters:

I AM CARLOS RUEDA.

THEY HAVE TAKEN MY WIFE.

I CAN HELP.”

This is the beginning of Carlos’s movement, which will eventually blossom to include dozens of Argentinians. Here, Carlos chooses an appropriate starting point, as he joins the mothers in their protest on the Plaza de Mayo. The mothers all carry signs with names of their lost loved ones, and though Carlos joins them with a sign of his own, his tactics prove notably different: Carlos uses his own name on the sign. With the generals watching from the nearby Casa Rosada, this gesture is especially brave.

“It was Cecilia’s garden, I mean she was the one who designed it, potted the plants, tended them. She was almost always working there when I came to visit and that night I was more deeply aware of her than I had been in weeks.”

In staging his sessions in Cecilia’s garden, Carlos suggests her lingering presence; her memory—and the mystery of her fate—never leaves his consciousness. Gardens, too, are common symbols of fertility, representing the persistence of life and growth. In associating Cecilia with gardens, Thornton subtly suggests that, somewhere, Cecilia is alive.

“At the beginning of all of this she once said that the only way Argentina could survive was for writers to tell the truth.”

Carlos here reflects on Cecilia’s motivation to write the article that ultimately precipitated her abduction. Cecilia argues for writing’s close relationship to truth and perpetuity, suggesting The Lasting Impact of Art and Writing. Though at first, Carlos doesn’t concede Cecilia’s point—wishing, instead, that he’d stopped the article—he eventually incorporates her philosophy into his own writing of The Names and his Carnival-centric play.

“Then they raped her. Afterwards she was dragged, weeping and hysterical, into another room and tortured with electric wires while someone asked questions very calmly behind her.”

Prior to this scene, in which Carlos describes Cecilia’s torture, the novel has omitted graphic descriptions of the junta. However, in introducing such chilling imagery, Thornton denies the audience any further comfort from ignorance, noting that the junta’s methods range from sexual assault to electrocution.

“He did not feel the chill as he dove in and found himself walking along a cobblestone street. Flower pots, coffee cans, food jars with geraniums lined the sidewalk, giving off a pungent, earthy smell. A huge black spider clung to the wall beside a grilled window. Closer, the spider became a woman’s shoe with a broken heel hanging from a scrap of leather. A single violet grew in the shoe, and as he reached for it an old woman came out of the doorway with a watering can.”

In this dream, Carlos imagines a broken shoe outside of an old woman’s home, waiting for him. Though Carlos doesn’t fully realize it yet, this shoe belongs to Cecilia and was purposefully discarded after her botched escape in La Boca. Throughout the novel, dreams hold a special power. Though they prove more cryptic than Carlos’s visions, dreams offer their own kind of prescience, reflecting Carlos’s deep-seated fears while also providing him with a map to Cecilia’s return. This dream eventually comes true, as Carlos spies a lone shoe on the streets of La Boca.

“All I’ve been trying to tell you is that there are two Argentinas, Silvio, the regime’s travesty of it, and the one we have in our hearts. […] We have to believe in the power of imagination because it is all we have, and ours is stronger than theirs.”

Carlos introduces the concept of two Argentinas: That which the generals envision, and that which Carlos hopes to protect. In this light, Carlos’s struggle against the regime is an act of patriotism, or a way to preserve Argentina’s national character. Similarly, Carlos posits imagination as the resistance’s most powerful weapon, underscoring Memory and Imagination as Resistance.

“She was remarkably beautiful, but he could not reconcile her beauty with the white caul of a cataract on her right eye. Her presence seemed defined by that single flaw, which gave her an orphic quality. […] Something happened then, though Carlos said he had no idea what it was. The best he could do was to tell me that there was a recognition on their part.”

As Carlos first encounters Sara Sternberg, he notices that a cataract has left her blind in one eye. However, this defect hardly mars Sara’s ability to meaningfully connect with Carlos—on the contrary, Sara can sense Carlos’s pain. Here, Thornton introduces a classic paradox: Sara, although with physically impaired sight, can see Carlos better than anyone. This relationship between inner insight and impaired sight leads back to antiquity: The mythological Tiresias, for instance, is a blind prophet who figures significantly in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

“They knelt, crossed themselves, gathered in front of the pews where they waited silently for the priest, Father Ullmann, to give his blessing. […] Then Maria Deleón got up and held the picture of her three children high above her head so that everyone could see. She reminded the mothers that once they had been too weak to do anything but carry pictures. Now they were growing stronger week by week.”

Here, the mothers and Carlos are gathered in a church, following their procession through Buenos Aires. The church is a significant venue: Often, Martín has compared Carlos to a priest, noting that his method in his garden resembles a religious ritual. Again in a religious setting, with his supporters ever growing, Carlos and the mothers seem like priests, spearheading a holy movement and reflecting Tragedy as a Building Block of Community.

“It was several minutes before Carlos remembered that his dream had given him the traitor.”

After the arrests at the church, Carlos happens upon a meaningful discovery: Gustavo Santos, a newcomer to the movement, is a mole working on behalf of the junta. This revelation arrives during a dream, underscoring dreams’ unique ability to confer revelations in the novel.

“Except for that the room was as pristine as a monk’s cell, could have been such a cell with the simple addition of a cross.”

As mentioned before, Carlos is often likened to a priest, guiding his crowd of followers. Here, Guzman is described similarly as a “monk.” In applying similar characterizations to Carlos and Guzman both, Thornton suggests an unlikely link between them: In some way, Carlos and Guzman are like charismatic religious figures drawing followers to their causes. However, while Carlos attempts to unite people through civil protest and community, Guzman tries to unite them through violence and silence.

“‘My home is in the south,’ he said, ‘and your friends, Amos and Sara, sent me. They say you have the power to make things happen again.’”

Solomon Levy, a friend to Amos and Sara Sternberg, travels to Buenos Aires to seek Carlos’s help. Though Solomon has not been directly affected by the junta—he asks, instead, about relatives lost during the Holocaust—Carlos is able to summon his vision accordingly. It is clear, then, that Carlos’s gift is a meaningful tool in Shared Tragedy as a Building Block of Community.

“[A] girl of about fifteen appeared and started across the lawn toward her father, who was framed in the sight of Carlos’ Mannlicher. Guzman blurred, the gun seemed to waver an instant in Carlos’ hands, then Guzman was in focus again and Carlos had to look up from the sight. Without the magnification Guzman was any father tired at the end of the day and happy to listen to what his daughter had to say.”

When Carlos puts down the rifle’s sight, Guzman appears almost normal, a stand-in for any father after a long workday. This blurring of identity also allows another uncomfortable comparison between Carlos and Guzman: Guzman’s 15-year-old daughter is around Teresa’s age, and their greeting could easily mimic Carlos and Teresa after a similarly long day. However, critically, Guzman’s daughter is waiting at home, while Carlos’s daughter is in the junta’s custody.

“As he played, the old songs evocative of blood and death, of style and tragedy, gave him courage, and made the real Argentina, the one outside the cave, his again.”

Carlos often uses music to encourage his visions, likening his gift to an instrument. However, this affinity for music is hardly unique; instead, as Martín here suggests, music is an essential component of the Argentine character, speaking to The Lasting Impact of Art and Writing. Though Carlos may connect to other cultures and rally a diverse community to his cause, his love for music renders him distinctly, proudly Argentinian.

“He begins his imprisonment this morning willing to say anything, to disgrace himself, if that is necessary, or implicate innocent people. But by the time Silvio is returned to his cell after his second session with the machine he will understand his captors better. […] He will realize that they have never been interested in his information, that the pain they give him is both a punishment and a gift, for its own sake. He will be punished because he happens to be part of the Children’s Theater where The Names was produced, where I work, or worked.”

As Carlos describes Silvio Ayala’s abduction, he notes that Silvio, generally apolitical, is an unlikely victim—even Silvio, at first, wonders if there’s been a mistake. However, as Carlos explains, Silvio is targeted not because of his beliefs, but because of his association with Carlos. Though Carlos strives for freedom, his mission necessarily incurs an element of danger, and friends like Silvio are reduced to collateral damage.

“‘Why are you surprised?’ she said. ‘Every week people confirm your stories.’ ‘There’s something different about this, but I don’t know what it is.’”

Here, Carlos talks to Esme after meeting Avrom Levy, who has recently reunited with Solomon, his grandfather. At Solomon’s behest, Carlos had imagined Avrom and Solomon’s reunion, even envisioning the silversmith workshop where Avrom now plies his trade. As Esme points out, Carlos has already heard tell of his visions’ accuracy, but with Avrom, he experiences such proof directly, rendering it more valuable. Not long after his encounter with Avrom, Carlos spies the broken shoe that has appeared in his dreams—another vision come true, and one which foreshadows his reunion with Cecilia.

“Some construction work was going on in the street west of the plaza and the grating sounds of skiploaders and dump trucks seemed too loud for him to think, but he discovered a rhythm to the work, the surge and fall of engines and hydraulic motors making the heat pulse and ebb, pulse and ebb, and in that congeries of heat and sound Cecilia appeared.”

As mentioned before, Carlos frequently uses music to inspire his visions or to commune with his Argentine identity. As Carlos walks through Buenos Aires, he realizes that the city, too, is inherently musical: Thornton uses words like “sounds,” “rhythm,” and “pulse” to suggest tempo and melody.

“Generals in Argentina, like soldiers everywhere, love meetings, and I have tried to imagine a particular gathering they called after too many disturbing reports had come in regarding Carlos.”

In wondering about the generals’ perception of Carlos, Martín uses the word “imagine,” suggesting an attempt to apply his own version of Carlos’ gift. This marks an interesting character development: Martín, who has always wavered between belief and skepticism, commits himself to the power of Memory and Imagination as Resistance.

“Silence was almost as bad as torture to Cecilia, the same as grief, and she finally understood, not long after being moved to the estancia, that to survive she must go beyond her grief, must find a way to record her pain and outrage. To testify. That was when she began writing in her head.”

Cecilia begins to write an article in her mind, denied pen and paper but still eager to preserve an account of her imprisonment. In using the word “testify,” Cecilia evokes the judicial process—as though she were a witness on the stand–—and suggests writing’s close relationship to justice. This, too, foreshadows the novel’s end, when Cecilia, Carlos, and Martín attend the generals’ much-anticipated trial.

“When she woke the truck was gone and she knew the time had come to decide. She had no idea where she was. She could be hours away from Buenos Aires, or on the border of Patagonia. That was not important. The question was simply whether she could risk going to someone on the street, knocking on the door of one of the houses, enter the office of the granary […] She had no choice. There was no way she could travel during the day.”

When Cecilia escapes her detention, she wanders, lost, in the pampas, feeling vulnerable in her ignorance. Her hesitation to immediately seek shelter at one of the neighboring houses proves rational, as someone might leverage her return for their own advantage. However, faced with another scorching day, Cecilia accepts that she has no choice but to seek the assistance of her fellow man: In the end, it’s impossible for Cecilia to succeed alone, again underscoring the value of a supportive community.