The Write Thing

So everything was ready for the flight. Continental 51, from Houston to Buenos Aires, departing at 9.00 pm on a Monday. I had seen them while we were waiting for the attendant to announce which seat numbers were going into the plane first. I knew they were supposed to be sitting next to me, I saw the row number on his boarding pass. I looked at their hand luggage, and it was considerably heavy. I expected them to respect the call. They did not, and went happily to claim their seats way before row 24 was called. I was already angry, as well as tired, as a 10-hour flight makes you before and after boarding.

They had taken the wrong seats, so the man, in his early sixties, was sitting in my place. I asked them to move, politely, and they were really very kind. That calmed me down, and I started to think that maybe they simply had not realized they were not supposed to go on the plane when they did. After a while, as we waited for take-off, he started talking to me, asking if I was also on the plane from Tampa. I said I wasn’t, and he continued to tell me he and his wife — the silent woman sitting next to him — came from there. ‘We had to go because of something so sad,’ he said. I knew it involved death. Maybe a distant relative, some family they had in the US…’No, our daughter died. Her car was crashed as she was going out onto the highway, a man driving drunk. Her car was totally smashed and she did not make it,’ he said. ‘She died instantly.’

I was shocked by the story. It was a terrible tale of what life can be. It would have made a good episode of Six Feet Under, only that this was worse, as it was true. A young thirty-year-old woman killed stupidly and bluntly by someone who should not have been there. I thought of the mythical USA, with its vast beaches and the Florida peace, the big condos and the quality life of dishwashers and large spaces, all synthesized in that fragment of a minute when somebody makes the inevitable decision, the freezing move.

‘My girl, she’s here,’ he said after those seconds when my thoughts simply wandered. He pointed to the floor, between his feet. I looked down, expecting to see a picture of her, a token, a souvenir of her life on earth. He swallowed briefly. ‘She’s in the bag. We cremated her.’

I’ve been away for the past few weeks, visiting exotic places like Costa Rica (well, being a Latin American myself, the adjective sounds stilted at best) and Houston (now, that’s exotic for a Latin girl!). I’ll post more on that later. Today I wanted to revisit the blog and inaugurate a new category I had neglected for quite some time: Theatre (yes, British spelling it is). I have just come back from a play called Ora X: L’Inferno del Dante, which I understand is written, directed and played by Matteo Belli, an Italian actor from Bologna (I may not have gotten that one right, it’s the information I was given). The Internet has been generous enough to include an Italian review of this work, and the link on the name mentioned above will guide you to it, if you are interested. This play was offered at the Teatro Cervantes in Buenos Aires, and the last show was yesterday night, March 16th 2008 (you probably missed it here…). I had not been to the theatre in a long time, but today it simply had to be. It was the effect of an interesting and enthusiastic review of this man’s work at one of the top local newspapers, La Nacion that prompted me to take my car and simply drive to the theatre for the ticket. The show was at 21.30, and I loved it. I’m not very familiar with Dante’s Divine Comedy, so this acted like an introduction and a return to what I once heard or even dared discuss with some literary experts, not that I am one. After all, this hypertextuality business really works, because once you’ve read someone, you’ve really read many other people, backwards and forwards. The power of networking was in the literary world way before the business world discovered its application! In short, I loved the play, this is a tremendous actor who deploys his mastery of comedy, drama, plasticity, voice and timing in a 120-minute show. I salute yet another example of the few accidents that can take place in Buenos Aires — seeing quality shows that are not made to reach the average audience. Yes, some people left the room before the show ended, others complained about the length, and very few people bought the DVD when they were leaving. But perhaps that sadly illustrates the fact that Argentina has decided to lower the bar of expectations and challenges, and that people just want to be spoon-fed whatever could put them to sleep comfortably and easily. And I don’t think Belli is to blame for that; only the people and what they let happen are.