Anagrammatically

Written in 2004 on Sunday the 2nd of May, four months into my year-long trip overseas.

I had to find myself a Greek consulate in Brazil to ask a question about my passport. Not thinking Greece had much to do with Brazil, I was very surprised to discover after a quick squizz on the internet that there are seven Greek consulate offices throughout Brazil. Seven! I found only one Greek restaurant in all of Rio de Janeiro, yet there are seven Greek consulates throughout Brazil! I didn’t think I was going to find even one office for the country of 11 million retsina drinkers, but I suppose all the Greeks in the foreign affairs office-department-thing want to be posted to places like Brazil instead of places like war-torn Angola, where Greece also has a consulate. Setting up more offices in Brazil makes for a greater chance of having some South American fun, and Greeks in the foreign affairs department I’m sure could make up many good and even official-sounding reasons for having such an overstated presence in the country.

So anyway, I headed off to the consulate in the more residential Cariocan suburb of Flamengo to get my question answered. Once there, Stelios, the dude at the front desk, told me that Spiros, the passport man, would be able to see me in about half an hour and answer any of my questions. As there was a good half hour to kill, me and Stelios chewed the fat marinated with a divine mix of lemon, garlic and oregano. Interestingly enough, it turns out Stelios has been living in Rio for the past twenty years after having given England and the USA a go but not finding them up to scratch. For whatever reason, Rio worked for him and he found himself a Brazilian wife with whom he has raised four children with.

Wanting to amuse myself, and knowing Greeks to be a patriotic lot even though most of them don’t live in Greece anymore, I baited him by asking if his wife can cook like his mother, if his family can dance a tsifteteli and if they can speak Greek. I knew what the answers would be, so it came as no surprise to hear that he made sure his wife could cook a decent pastitsio before deciding to marry her, that his family dance the tsifteteli better than anyone in Greece and that his children speak excellent Greek.

But even though I had begun with my own stereotypically patriotic vision of Greek expatriots, it shocked me to discover that he had sent his poor eldest son to serve in the Greek army. Every Greek male has to serve in the army for eighteen months, all of which can be avoided simply by living in another country. His son, who would be a Greek citizen because of his father’s Greek nationality despite his having been born and raised in Brazil, could stay in Greece for as much as six months each year before having to join the army. Most of us Greek citizens born or raised in other countries take advantage of this and avoid military service whilst still enjoying the country every now and again. Stelios, however, sent his son to Greece specifically to serve in the army, because, according to Stelios, that was his son’s duty as a Greek man.

Thinking this was exceptionally odd, even for the most patriotic of Greeks who are usually even prouder of their disrespect for authority and rules, I became very afraid of the kind of person I was speaking to when I did some mental arithmetic. Twenty years ago, when Stelios first landed in Rio, Brazil was being run by a military government that had been in power since 1964. Furthermore, when he left Greece, about twenty-five years ago, Greece had only just become democratic again after having been ruled by a weird-arse military junta that wanted to return Greece back to its ancient glory days. So that meant he left Greece after it was only just starting to emerge from a period of military rule, found the relatively democratic and free countries of England and the USA not to his liking, only to end up settling in Brazil, a country still being run by a military government that liked to repress, kill and torture every once in a while. I took a mental note of this man’s love of the military and decided when telling him the story of my family, not to mention that part of the reason my father came to Australia was so that he could avoid doing his obligatory military service. I also failed to mention that my grandfather was a communist guerrila, and instead babbled on about my mother’s island, Kephallonia, for as long as I could.

Soon enough though, the thirty-minute wait was over and I was directed to Spiros’s office, where a single question that took twenty seconds to answer turned into a thirty minute social chat that served to explain why I had to wait that long to see him in the first place. Within this thirty minutes, Spiros smoked three cigarettes, offering me one each time he opened his packet, and fielded two lengthy personal calls. It was a quintessentially Greek performance, and possibly because we shared an understanding of the undeniable logic of our own culture, our conversation was exceptionally friendly and hit a high note when we landed on the subject of the respective pros and cons of capoeira and thai kick-boxing.

Yes, Spiros, the passport dude at the office of the consulate general in Rio de Janeiro, was a huge fan of thai kick-boxing, and just like any wog cruising down the slow lane on Chapel Street on any Friday night of the year, he wanted to get fit by kicking people’s heads in. I told him that he should start capoeira seeing as he is in Brazil, but he was under the false impression that it would not adequately strengthen what he claimed were his ever-atrophying legs.

That was when I decided to show him the very tiring cadeira position, a position where your thighs are level with your knees and it looks like you’re about to take a shit, just to prove how much capoeira works your legs. He was skeptical at first, but once he got into position and stayed there for a few seconds, he understood. We were two Greek men, looking like we were taking a dump in a small office of the consulate general in Rio de Janeiro, talking martial arts and pretending we were tough. Not surprisingly, we bonded over the experience.

He gave me his phone number once the meeting was deemed over and claimed that he would start watching TV in the cadeira position from then on. I walked out of there quite pleased with myself thinking I may have converted someone to the capoeira cause, but I later slapped myself for having completely forgotten to mention Australia and Greece’s very own Stan “the Man” Longinides, who once was and maybe still is the world kick-boxing title holder. I reckon Spiros would have been mightily impressed by a Greek-Australian holding a kick-boxing title, and I reckon another fifteen minutes would have been needed to adequately cover all the official matters that would have been brought up in our meeting if the feats of Stan had ever been mentioned.

But my exploration of spaces dedicated to the Greek in Rio de Janeiro didn’t stop there. A couple of weeks after my experience with the foreign affairs department, I danced the Zorba at the only Greek restaurant in all of Rio de Janeiro after I took some curious Brazilian friends to see how we hairy-chested people eat, dance and smash plates. Unfortunately, the food was exceptionally ordinary, there was no retsina available and the owner of the restaurant was a boring fuck, but the Brazilians didn’t know any better and they thought the food and ambience was wonderful.

Me and my Brazilian troupe decided to head down to the restaurant on a Friday night on the promise that there was to be some Greek dancing and plate smashing in the land of the samba. Even though I was not expecting anything at all decent, I was still shocked to find two belly dancers from the sizeable Lebanese community in Brazil being passed up as dancing in a traditionally Greek manner, and doing the shaking of their thing to Arabic music. Even Shakira was played for these Lebanese ladies masquerading as Greek dancers to shake their bellies to, and if the ladies weren’t so attractive, I would have demanded the head of the treasonous restaurant owner who was presenting to an unsuspecting Brazilian audience music and dance that was more Turkish than Greek. When real Greek music finally came on and the ladies started dancing shite, I could not withstand the affront to my cultural heritage any longer and stormed onto the middle of the dance floor to lead proceedings and showcase the flair of a Greek man in full flight. I danced a tzamiko and a kalamatiano to showcase for the people of Brazil the culture of Greece, and felt overwhelmingly relieved that the people were not going to be leaving the restaurant thinking some Arabic belly-wobbling was a traditional Greek way to give vent to our passions and desires on the dancefloor.

The plate smashing was also another sorry affair as only a single shitty plate was handed out to each customer in the restaurant that evening. Every person rolled their eyes in tight-arsed disappointment upon receiving their solitary plate, but when the opening didi-didi-ding of the Zorba announced itself from the stereo to end proceedings for the evening, I knew I could make the night memorable for the Brazilians wanting to experience the joy of being Greek.

The people parted as I made my way onto the dancefloor where I knew the time had come to do my duty as a Greek man. I asked the restaurant owner if he was to share the spotlight with me and the damn fine Lebanese ladies in the middle of the dancefloor, but the treacherous bastard refused. After the owner wouldn’t dance the Zorba, I was certain the guy must have been Turkish, maybe Albanian, or quite possibly one of those Yugoslavians who go around pretending they’re Macedonian. A man that does not dance a Zorba with his chest out, his head held high and with the kind of expression that lays bare the torment in his soul is most definitely not Greek, so it was up to me and only me to provide a performance that night that would get the audience understanding how a Greek man dances and how a Greek man lives. With the wailing bouzoukis reaching their climactic crescendo and Zorba’s dance going into overdrive, a room full of Brazilians smashed their plates in unison and caught a glimpse of the emotional epiphanies that electrify each expression of every Eleftherios, Erasmus or Elias the Greek world over. And with that, everyone in the room got an idea of what it means to be Greek, to experience the lows of life and then experience the sweetened joys of the heightened highs that result. And with that, everyone in the room knew they had seen a Greek man dance.

After having led the dancing with a fine round of applause from the crowd, after having brushed my hand over the prickles of my post five o’ clock shadow and after having left the restaurant with a fine Brazilian beauty on my arm, on that fine summer’s night I was certain that I was the most authentic Greek man in all of Rio de Janeiro. That evening, I gave more to my beloved Greece than any eighteen months of obligatory military service ever could, and with a tear in my eye, I vowed to all who cared to listen that I was gonna grow myself a moustache. Nothing came of the moustache and it was the very next day when I was back to my normal self after having been transformed into the über Greek, but for a few fleeting moments there, I was the poster boy for the Greek nation and I was proud.

After perhaps two years of the entire cost of my musical acquisitions being bound up with my monthly broadband connection fee, I’ve finally paid directly for music.

Blessed youtube had the glorious Amália Rodrigues singing Barco Negro, a song I had heard first sung by her musical heir, Mariza, and I just had to get it.

Maybe if more people liked fado, more people would end up actually paying directly for music?

This translating business is becoming less and less a healthy habit and more and more an oddball obsession.

So below we have the original text and another of my own translations of a Borges work, this time The Gospel according to Mark, or El Evangelio según Marcos.

The Gospel according to Mark (translated from the Spanish)

Jorge Luis Borges

These events took place on the Los Álamos ranch, towards the south of the township of Junín, over the last days of March, 1928. The protagonist was a medical student, Baltasar Espinosa. We may describe him for now as no different to any of the many young men of Buenos Aires, with no particular traits worthy of note other than an almost unlimited kindness and an oratorical faculty that had earned him several prizes from the English school in Ramos Mejía. He did not like to argue; he preferred it when his interlocutor was right and not he. Although the vagaries of chance in any game fascinated him, he was a poor player because it did not please him to win. His wide intelligence was undirected; at thirty-three years of age, the completion of one last subject stood in the way of his graduation, despite its being his favourite. His father, who like all gentlemen of his day was a freethinker, had instructed him in the doctrines of Herbert Spencer, but his mother, before setting out on a trip to Montevideo, requested of him that every night he say the Lord’s Prayer and make the sign of the cross. Over the years, not once had he broken this promise.

He did not lack in courage; one morning he had traded, more out of indifference rather than wrath, two or three blows with a group of fellow students who were trying to force him into taking part in a university demonstration. He abounded in questionable opinions, or habits of mind, from a spirit of acquiescence: his country mattered less to him than the risk that in other parts they might believe that we continue to wear feathers like the Indians; he venerated France but despised the French; he had little respect for Americans, but he approved of there being skyscrapers in Buenos Aires; he thought that the gauchos of the plains were better horsemen than those of the hills or mountain ranges. When his cousin Daniel invited him to summer in Los Álamos, he accepted immediately, not so much because he liked the country, but more out of his natural geniality and his not having found a valid reason for saying no.

The ranch’s main house was large and somewhat run-down; the foreman, who was known as Gutre, had his quarters close by. The Gutres were three: the father, the son (who was particularly uncouth) and a girl of uncertain paternity. They were tall, strong and bony, with Indian facial features and hair that tinged red. They hardly spoke. The foreman’s wife had died years ago.

In the country, Espinosa was learning things that he had not known, nor suspected. For example, that one need not gallop when approaching a house, and that no one goes out riding a horse unless there is a job to be done. In time, he would come to distinguish the birds by their calls.

Early on, Daniel had to absent himself and leave for the capital in order to close a deal involving some livestock. In all, the business would take him about a week. Espinosa, who was already a little tired of hearing about his cousin’s good fortune with women and his tireless interest in the variations of men’s fashion, preferred to remain on the ranch with his textbooks. The heat was suffocating and not even the night brought relief. One morning at daybreak, thunder woke him. The wind was rocking the casuarinas. Espinosa heard the first drops of rain and gave thanks to God. All of a sudden, the cold air rolled in. That afternoon, the Salado overflowed.

The next day, as he was looking over the flooded fields from his porch, Baltasar Espinosa thought that the standard metaphor which compared the pampas with the sea was not, at least that morning, completely false, even though Hudson had noted that the sea appears to us much wider because we see it from a ship’s deck and not from horseback or eye level. The rain did not let up; the Gutres, helped or hindered by the city dweller, saved a good part of the livestock, though many animals drowned. The paths that led to the station were four: all were covered in water. On the third day, a leaking roof threatened the foreman’s house and Espinosa gave them a room out back by the toolshed. The move had brought them closer; they ate together in the large dining room. Conversation was difficult; the Gutres, who knew so much about the country, did not know how to explain any of it. One night, Espinosa asked them if people still retained some memory of the Indian raids from when the frontier’s military command was in Junín. They told him that they did, but they would have answered in a similar fashion had the question been about Charles the First’s beheading. Espinosa recalled his father’s saying that almost all the cases of longevity cited from the country are a result of poor memory or a vague notion of dates. The gauchos tended to forget in equal measure the year of their birth and the name of who fathered them.

No reading material was to be found in the entire house other than some issues of the magazine The Farm, a veterinary manual, a deluxe edition of the Uruguayan epic Tabaré, a History of Shorthorn Cattle in Argentina, the odd erotic or detective story and a recent novel, Don Segundo Sombra. In order to liven up in some way the inevitable after-dinner conversation, Espinosa read a couple of the novel’s chapters to the Gutres, who were all illiterate. Unfortunately, like the book’s hero, the foreman had been a cattle drover himself and was not interested in the happenings of another. He said the work was easy, that they took with them a pack mule which carried all that they needed, and that if he had not been a cattle drover, he would never have seen Lake Gómez, he would never have gotten to the town of Bragado, nor would he have visited the Núñez ranch in Chabachuco. In the kitchen was a guitar; before the events I am narrating happened, the labourers would sit in a circle and someone would tune the instrument without ever getting around to playing it. This they called a guitar jam.

Espinosa, who had left his beard to grow, had begun to pause before the mirror to study his changed face, and he smiled at the thought of boring the boys in Buenos Aires with his tale of the Salado’s overflowing. Curiously, he was missing places to which he had never been and would never go: a street corner on Cabrera where a mailbox stood; some cement lions on a porch a few blocks from the Plaza del Once on Jujuy; a barroom with a tiled floor whose exact whereabouts he was not sure of. As for his brothers and his father, through Daniel they would have learnt already that he was isolated — the word, etymologically, was accurate — by the floodwaters.

Looking through the house whilst still hemmed in by the waters, he came across a Bible in English. In its last pages, the Guthries — such was their original name — had left a record of their family history. They were originally from Inverness, had come to the New World, no doubt as labourers, in the early days of the nineteenth century and had intermarried with Indians. The chronicle broke off sometime during the eighteen-seventies when they no longer knew how to write. Within only a few generations, they had forgotten their English; by the time Espinosa met them, even Spanish was troubling them. They had no faith, but in their blood there endured, like a dim current, the harsh fanaticism of the Calvinists and the superstitions of the pampas. Espinosa told them of his find and they barely acknowledged it.

Leafing through the volume, his fingers opened it at the start of the Gospel according to Mark. As an exercise in translation and perhaps to see if the Gutres would understand any of it, he decided to read to them the text after dinner. Their attentive listening and their mute interest surprised him. Maybe the gold letters on the the cover lent the book more authority. ‘It’s in their blood,’ Espinosa thought. It also occurred to him that man has throughout history told and retold two stories: that of a lost ship that searches the seas of the Mediterranean for a dearly loved island, and that of a god who allows himself to be crucified in Golgotha. Remembering his elocution classes in Ramos Mejía, Espinosa rose to his feet to preach the parables.

In the days that followed, the Gutres wolfed down the barbecued meat and sardines so as to arrive sooner at the Gospel.

A little pet lamb that the girl had adorned with a sky-blue ribbon had injured itself on some barbed wire. To staunch the bleeding, the Gutres were wanting to apply cobwebs; Espinosa treated it with some pills instead. The gratitude that this treatment inspired took him aback. At first, he distrusted the Gutres and had hidden in one of his books the two hundred and forty pesos that he had with him; now, with the owner away, he had taken on Daniel’s role and was giving timid orders that were being followed immediately. The Gutres would trail him through the rooms and along the porch as if they were lost without him. Whilst reading to them, he noticed that they would take away with them the crumbs that he had left on the table. One evening, he caught them unawares as they were, in few words, speaking of him respectfully.

Upon finishing the Gospel according to Mark, he wanted to read one of the three remaining gospels; the father, though, asked him to repeat the one he had already read to them so that they could understand it better. Espinosa felt that they were like children, who prefer repetition over variety or novelty. That night he dreamt, not altogether surprisingly, of the Flood and was awoken by the hammering that went into the Ark’s construction, which he supposed he had confused with the thunder. In fact, the rain, after having abated, was getting heavier. The cold was bitter. The Gutres had told him that the storm had damaged the toolshed’s roof and that, once they had repaired the beams, they would show him where. No longer a stranger, they treated him with special attention, almost spoiling him. Not one of them liked coffee, but they always had a little cup for him that they heaped with sugar.

The storm hit on a Tuesday. Thursday night he was awoken by a light knock on the door, which, because of his misgivings, he always kept locked. He got up and opened it: it was the girl. In the darkness he could not make her out, but he could tell from her footsteps that she was barefoot, and later in bed, that she had come naked from the back of the house. She did not embrace him, nor did she speak a single word; she lay beside him and shivered. It was the first time she had lain with a man. When she left, she did not kiss him; Espinosa realised he did not even know her name. For some sentimental reason that he did not attempt to understand, he swore never to tell anyone in Buenos Aires about the incident.

The next day began like the others before, except for the father’s speaking to Espinosa and asking him if Christ had allowed Himself to be killed in order to save all mankind. Espinosa, who was a freethinker but felt obliged to justify what he had read to them, replied, “Yes. To save us all from hell.”

Gutre then asked, “What’s hell?”

“A place undergound where souls burn and burn.”

“And those that drove in the nails were also saved?”

“Yes,” replied Espinosa, whose theology was a little shaky.

He had feared that the foreman would demand an account of what had happened the night before with his daughter. After lunch, they asked him to read the last chapters again.

Espinosa took a long siesta, though his light sleep was interrupted by persistent hammering and vague premonitions. Toward evening he got up and went out to the porch. He said, as if thinking out loud, “The waters are low. It won’t be long now.”

“It won’t be long now,” repeated Gutre like an echo.

The three Gutres had been following him. Kneeling on the floor, they asked for his blessing. Then they cursed him, spat on him and shoved him to the back of the house. The girl was crying. Espinosa knew what to expect on the other side of the door. When they opened it, he saw the heavens. A bird shrieked. ‘A goldfinch,’ he thought. The shed was without a roof; they had torn out the beams to build the cross.

El Evangelio según Marcos

Jorge Luis Borges

El hecho sucedió en la estancia Los Álamos, en el partido de Junín, hacia el sur, en los últimos días del mes de marzo de 1928. Su protagonista fue un estudiante de medicina, Baltasar Espinosa. Podemos definirlo por ahora como uno de tantos muchachos porteños, sin otros rasgos dignos de nota que esa facultad oratoria que le había hecho merecer más de un premio en el colegio inglés de Ramos Mejía y que una casi ilimitada bondad. No le gustaba discutir; prefería que el interlocutor tuviera razón y no él. Aunque los azares del juego le interesaban, era un mal jugador, porque le desagradaba ganar. Su abierta inteligencia era perezosa; a los treinta y tres años le faltaba rendir una materia para graduarse, la que más lo atraía. Su padre, que era librepensador, como todos los señores de su época, lo había instruido en la doctrina de Herbert Spencer, pero su madre, antes de un viaje a Montevideo, le pidió que todas las noches rezara el Padrenuestro e hiciera la señal de la cruz. A lo largo de los años no había quebrado nunca esa promesa. No carecía de coraje; una mañana había cambiado, con más indiferencia que ira, dos o tres puñetazos con un grupo de compañeros que querían forzarlo a participar en una huelga universitaria. Abundaba, por espíritu de aquiescencia, en opiniones o hábitos discutibles: el país le importaba menos que el riesgo de que en otras partes creyeran que usamos plumas; veneraba a Francia pero menospreciaba a los franceses; tenía en poco a los americanos, pero aprobaba el hecho de que hubiera rascacielos en Buenos Aires; creía que los gauchos de la llanura son mejores jinetes que los de las cuchillas o los cerros. Cuando Daniel, su primo, le propuso veranear en Los Álamos, dijo inmediatamente que sí, no porque le gustara el campo sino por natural complacencia y porque no buscó razones válidas para decir que no.

El casco de la estancia era grande y un poco abandonado; las dependencias del capataz, que se llamaba Gutre, estaban muy cerca. Los Gutres eran tres: el padre, el hijo, que era singularmente tosco, y una muchacha de incierta paternidad. Eran altos, fuertes, huesudos, de pelo que tiraba a rojizo y de caras aindiadas. Casi no hablaban. La mujer del capataz había muerto hace años.

Espinosa, en el campo, fue aprendiendo cosas que no sabía y que no sospechaba. Por ejemplo, que no hay que galopar cuando uno se está acercando a las casas y que nadie sale a andar a caballo sino para cumplir con una tarea. Con el tiempo llegaría a distinguir los pájaros por el grito.

A los pocos días, Daniel tuvo que ausentarse a la capital para cerrar una operación de animales. A lo sumo, el negocio le tomaría una semana. Espinosa, que ya estaba un poco harto de las bonnes fortunes de su primo y de su infatigable interés por las variaciones de la sastrería, prefirió quedarse en la estancia, con sus libros de texto. El calor apretaba y ni siquiera la noche traía un alivio. En el alba, los truenos lo despertaron. El viento zamarreaba las casuarinas. Espinosa oyó las primeras gotas y dio gracias a Dios. El aire frío vino de golpe. Esa tarde, el Salado se desbordó.

Al otro día, Baltasar Espinosa, mirando desde la galería los campos anegados, pensó que la metáfora que equipara la pampa con el mar no era, por lo menos esa mañana, del todo falsa, aunque Hudson había dejado escrito que el mar nos parece más grande, porque lo vemos desde la cubierta del barco y no desde el caballo o desde nuestra altura. La lluvia no cejaba; los Gutres, ayudados o incomodados por el pueblero, salvaron buena parte de la hacienda, aunque hubo muchos animales ahogados. Los caminos para llegar a la estancia eran cuatro: a todos los cubrieron las aguas. Al tercer día, una gotera amenazó la casa del capataz; Espinosa les dio una habitación que quedaba en el fondo, al lado del galpón de las herramientas. La mudanza los fue acercando; comían juntos en el gran comedor. El diálogo resultaba difícil; los Gutres, que sabían tantas cosas en materia de campo, no sabían explicarlas. Una noche, Espinosa les preguntó si la gente guardaba algún recuerdo de los malones, cuando la comandancia estaba en Junín. Le dijeron que sí, pero lo mismo hubieran contestado a una pregunta sobre la ejecución de Carlos Primero. Espinosa recordó que su padre solía decir que casi todos los casos de longevidad que se dan en el campo son casos de mala memoria o de un concepto vago de las fechas. Los gauchos suelen ignorar por igual el año en que nacieron y el nombre de quien los engendró.

En toda la casa no había otros libros que una serie de la revista La Chacra, un manual de veterinaria, un ejemplar de lujo del Tabaré, una Historia del Shorthorn en la Argentina, unos cuantos relatos eróticos o policiales y una novela reciente: Don Segundo Sombra. Espinosa, para distraer de algún modo la sobremesa inevitable, leyó un par de capítulos a los Gutres, que eran analfabetos. Desgraciadamente, el capataz había sido tropero y no le podían importar las andanzas de otro. Dijo que ese trabajo era liviano, que llevaban siempre un carguero con todo lo que se precisa y que, de no haber sido tropero, no habría llegado nunca hasta la Laguna de Gómez, hasta el Bragado y hasta los campos de los Núñez, en Chacabuco. En la cocina había una guitarra; los peones, antes de los hechos que narro, se sentaban en rueda; alguien la templaba y no llegaba nunca a tocar. Esto se llamaba una guitarreada.

Espinosa, que se había dejado crecer la barba, solía demorarse ante el espejo para mirar su cara cambiada y sonreía al pensar que en Buenos Aires aburriría a los muchachos con el relato de la inundación del Salado. Curiosamente, extrañaba lugares a los que no iba nunca y no iría: una esquina de la calle Cabrera en la que hay un buzón, unos leones de mampostería en un portón de la calle Jujuy, a unas cuadras del Once, un almacén con piso de baldosa que no sabía muy bien dónde estaba. En cuanto a sus hermanos y a su padre, ya sabrían por Daniel que estaba aislado -la palabra, etimológicamente, era justa- por la creciente.

Explorando la casa, siempre cercada por las aguas, dio con una Biblia en inglés. En las páginas finales los Guthrie -tal era su nombre genuino- habían dejado escrita su historia. Eran oriundos de Inverness, habían arribado a este continente, sin duda como peones, a principios del siglo diecinueve, y se habían cruzado con indios. La crónica cesaba hacia mil ochocientos setenta y tantos; ya no sabían escribir. Al cabo de unas pocas generaciones habían olvidado el inglés; el castellano, cuando Espinosa los conoció, les daba trabajo. Carecían de fe, pero en su sangre perduraban, como rastros oscuros, el duro fanatismo del calvinista y las supersticiones del pampa. Espinosa les habló de su hallazgo y casi no escucharon.

Hojeó el volumen y sus dedos lo abrieron en el comienzo del Evangelio según Marcos. Para ejercitarse en la traducción y acaso para ver si entendían algo, decidió leerles ese texto después de la comida. Le sorprendió que lo escucharan con atención y luego con callado interés. Acaso la presencia de las letras de oro en la tapa le diera más autoridad. Lo llevan en la sangre, pensó. También se le ocurrió que los hombres, a lo largo del tiempo, han repetido siempre dos historias: la de un bajel perdido que busca por los mares mediterráneos una isla querida, y la de un dios que se hace crucificar en el Gólgota. Recordó las clases de elocución en Ramos Mejía y se ponía de pie para predicar las parábolas.

Los Gutres despachaban la carne asada y las sardinas para no demorar el Evangelio.

Una corderita que la muchacha mimaba y adornaba con una cintita celeste se lastimó con un alambrado de púa. Para parar la sangre, querían ponerle una telaraña; Espinosa la curó con unas pastillas. La gratitud que esa curación despertó no dejó de asombrarlo. Al principio, había desconfiado de los Gutres y había escondido en uno de sus libros los doscientos cuarenta pesos que llevaba consigo; ahora, ausente el patrón, él había tomado su lugar y daba órdenes tímidas, que eran inmediatamente acatadas. Los Gutres lo seguían por las piezas y por el corredor, como si anduvieran perdidos. Mientras leía, notó que le retiraban las migas que él había dejado sobre la mesa. Una tarde los sorprendió hablando de él con respeto y pocas palabras. Concluido el Evangelio según Marcos, quiso leer otro de los tres que faltaban; el padre le pidió que repitiera el que ya había leído, para entenderlo bien. Espinosa sintió que eran como niños, a quienes la repetición les agrada más que la variación o la novedad. Una noche soñó con el Diluvio, lo cual no es de extrañar; los martillazos de la fabricación del arca lo despertaron y pensó que acaso eran truenos. En efecto, la lluvia, que había amainado, volvió a recrudecer. El frío era intenso. Le dijeron que el temporal había roto el techo del galpón de las herramientas y que iban a mostrárselo cuando estuvieran arregladas las vigas. Ya no era un forastero y todos lo trataban con atención y casi lo mimaban. A ninguno le gustaba el café, pero había siempre un tacita para él, que colmaban de azúcar.

El temporal ocurrió un martes. El jueves a la noche lo recordó un golpecito suave en la puerta que, por las dudas, él siempre cerraba con llave. Se levantó y abrió: era la muchacha. En la oscuridad no la vio, pero por los pasos notó que estaba descalza y después, en el lecho, que había venido desde el fondo, desnuda. No lo abrazó, no dijo una sola palabra; se tendió junto a él y estaba temblando. Era la primera vez que conocía a un hombre. Cuando se fue, no le dio un beso; Espinosa pensó que ni siquiera sabía cómo se llamaba. Urgido por una íntima razón que no trató de averiguar, juró que en Buenos Aires no le contaría a nadie esa historia.

El día siguiente comenzó como los anteriores, salvo que el padre habló con Espinosa y le preguntó si Cristo se dejó matar para salvar a todos los hombres. Espinosa, que era librepensador pero que se vio obligado a justificar lo que les había leído, le contestó:

-Sí. Para salvar a todos del infierno.

Gutre le dijo entonces:

-¿Qué es el infierno?

-Un lugar bajo tierra donde las ánimas arderán y arderán.

-¿Y también se salvaron los que le clavaron los clavos?

-Sí -replicó Espinosa, cuya teología era incierta.

Había temido que el capataz le exigiera cuentas de lo ocurrido anoche con su hija. Después del almuerzo, le pidieron que releyera los últimos capítulos. Espinosa durmió una siesta larga, un leve sueño interrumpido por persistentes martillos y por vagas premoniciones. Hacia el atardecer se levantó y salió al corredor. Dijo como si pensara en voz alta:

-Las aguas están bajas. Ya falta poco.

-Ya falta poco -repitió Gutrel, como un eco.

Los tres lo habían seguido. Hincados en el piso de piedra le pidieron la bendición. Después lo maldijeron, lo escupieron y lo empujaron hasta el fondo. La muchacha lloraba. Espinosa entendió lo que le esperaba del otro lado de la puerta. Cuando la abrieron, vio el firmamento. Un pájaro gritó; pensó: es un jilguero. El galpón estaba sin techo; habían arrancado las vigas para construir la Cruz.

(noun)

a poem or song of mourning or lamentation.

word’s encounter: as the solution to 7 down, Trendy to contain Head Office split in lament (8), in today’s cryptic crossword in The Age.

word’s use: should one sing a threnody for this fine word’s lack of general use in these ever more philistine times?

The poverty of Andrew Hurley’s translations of Borges’s work will never cease to amaze me. I’ve already attempted once to improve a sorry situation with my translation of Borges Y Yo, and now in a similarly hubristic manner, I issue forth my translation of La Casa de Asterión.

The House of Asterion (translated from the Spanish)

Jorge Luis Borges

And the queen gave birth to a son named Asterion.
Apollodorus, Library, III, I

I know they accuse me of arrogance, perhaps also of misanthropy, perhaps also madness. Such accusations (which I shall castigate in due course) are laughable. It is true that I do not leave my house, but it is also true that its doors (which are infinite* in number) are open day and night to man and animal alike. Anyone who wishes may enter. One will not find feminine extravagance here, nor gallant courtly ritual, just quiet and solitude. Here one will find a house like no other on the face of the Earth. (They who declare that in Egypt exists another similar are lying). Even my detractors admit that there is not a single piece of furniture in the house. Another ridiculous tale claims that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. Need I repeat that there are no closed doors? Should I add that there are no locks? Besides, I did one evening step out onto the street; if I returned home before nightfall, I did so because of the fear that the faces of the hoi polloi, faces discoloured and plain like an open hand, had induced in me. The sun had already set, but the helpless cry of a babe and the coarse supplications of the many signalled that I had been recognised. The people prayed, fled and fell prostrate; some climbed up to the stylobate of the temple of Axes, others gathered stones. Someone, I believe, hid himself under the sea. Not in vain was my mother a queen; I cannot mix with the common people, though my modesty does so desire it.

The fact is that I am unique. What a man can pass unto others does not interest me; like the philosopher, I think nothing is communicated by the art of writing. Annoying and trivial minutiae have no place in my spirit, a spirit which is receptive only to whatsoever is grand. Never have I retained the difference between one letter and another. A certain generous impatience has not consented that I should learn to read. Sometimes I deplore this, for the nights and days are long.

Naturally, I am not without amusement. Like a ram about to charge, I run through the galleries of stone until dizzily I tumble to the ground. I conceal myself in the shadows of a cistern or in the corner of a corridor and pretend that I am being searched for. There are rooftops from which I let myself fall until I bloody myself. At any time I can shut my eyes and pretend that I am asleep, breathing deeply. (Sometimes I really do sleep, sometimes the colour of the day has changed by the time I open my eyes). But of the games I play, the one I prefer is pretending there is another Asterion. I pretend that he has come to visit me and I show him around the house. With great reverence I tell him: Now we return to the previous intersection, or Now we head towards another courtyard, or I knew you would like this drain, or Now you will see a cistern that has filled with sand, or Now you will see how the cellar forks. Sometimes I err and we both laugh heartily.

Not only these games have I imagined; I have also meditated on the house. Each part of the house repeats many times, any particular place is another place. There is not one cistern, courtyard, drinking fountain, manger; there are fourteen (infinite) mangers, drinking fountains, courtyards, cisterns. The house is the size of the world; better said, it is the world. Nevertheless, by dint of exhausting all the dusty galleries of grey stone and the courtyards with their cisterns, I have reached the street and I have seen the temple of Axes and the sea. This I did not understand until a night vision revealed to me that there are also fourteen (infinite) seas and temples. Everything exists many times over, fourteen times, but there are two things in the world that seem to exist only once; above, the intricate Sun; below, Asterion. Perhaps I have created the stars and the Sun and the enormous house, but I do not remember anymore.

Nine men enter the house every nine years so that I may deliver them from all evil. I hear their footsteps or their voices in the depths of the galleries of stone and I run with joy in search of them. The ceremony lasts a few minutes. One after another, they fall to the ground without my having to bloody my hands. Where they fall, they remain, and the cadavers help to distinguish one gallery from another. I know not who they are, but I do know that one of them prophesied, at the moment of his death, that someday my redeemer would come. Since then, the solitude does not pain me because I know that my redeemer lives, and in the end he will rise above the dust. If I could hear all the rumblings of the world, I would detect the sound of his footsteps. Let it be that he take me to a place with fewer galleries and fewer doors.

I wonder: what will my redeemer be like? Will he be a bull or a man? Will he be perhaps a bull with the face of a man? Or will he be like me?

The morning Sun was reflected in the sword of bronze. No trace of blood remained.

“Would you believe it, Ariadne?” said Theseus. “The minotaur hardly put up a fight.”

—

* The original says fourteen, but there is ample reason to infer that in Asterion’s eyes, this adjectival numeral is no different to infinite.

The House of Asterion (in the original Spanish)

Jorge Luis Borges

Y la reina dio a luz un hijo que se llamó Asterión.
Apolodoro, Biblioteca, III, I

Sé que me acusan de soberbia, y tal vez de misantropía, y tal vez de locura. Tales acusaciones (que yo castigaré a su debido tiempo) son irrisorias. Es verdad que no salgo de mi casa, pero también es verdad que sus puertas (cuyo número es infinito) están abiertas día y noche a los hombres y también a los animales. Que entre el que quiera. No hallará pompas mujeriles aquí ni el bizarro aparato de los palacios, pero sí la quietud y la soledad. Asimismo hallará una casa como no hay otra en la faz de la tierra. (Mienten los que declaran que en Egipto hay una parecida.) Hasta mis detractores admiten que no hay un solo mueble en la casa. Otra especie ridícula es que yo, Asterión, soy un prisionero. ¿Repetiré que no hay una puerta cerrada, añadiré que ho hay una cerradura? Por lo demás, algún atardecer he pisado la calle; si antes de la noche volví, lo hice por el temor que me infundieron las caras de la plebe, caras descoloridas y aplanadas, como la mano abierta. Ya se había puesto el sol, pero el desvalido llanto de un niño y las toscas plegarias de la grey dijeron que me habían reconocido. La gente oraba, huía, se prosternaba; unos se encaramaban al estilóbato del templo de las Hachas, otros juntaban piedras. Alguno, cro, se ocultó bajo el mar. No en vano fue una reina mi madra; no puedo confundirme con el vulgo, aunque mi modestia lo quiera.

El hecho es que soy único. No me interesa lo que un hombre pueda trasmitir a otros hombres; como el filósofo, pienso que nada es comunicable por el arte de la escritura. Loas enojosas y triviales minucias no tienen cabida en mi espíritu, que está capacitado para lo grande; jamás he retenido la diferencia entre una letra y otra. Cierta impaciencia generosa no ha consentido que yo aprndiera a leer. A veces lo deploro, porque las noches y los días son largos.

Claro que no me faltan distacciones. Semejante al carnero que va a embestir, corro por las galerías de piedra hasta rodar al suel, mareado. Me agazapo a la sombra de un aljibe o a la vuelta de un corredor y juego a que me buscan. Hay azoteas desde las que me dejo caer, hasta ensangrentarme. A cualquier hora puedo jugar a estar dormido, con los ojos cerrados y la respiración poderosa. (A veces me duermo realmente, a veces ha cambiado el color del día cuando he abierto los ojos.) Pero de tantos juegos el que prefiero es el de otro Asterión. Finjo que viene a visitarme y que yo le muestro la casa. Con grandes reverencias le digo: Ahora volvemos a la encrucijada anterior o Ahora desembocamos en otro patio o Bien decía yo que te gustaría la canaleta o Ahora verás una cisterna que se llenó de arena o Ya verás cómo el sótano se bifurca. A veces me equivoco y nos reímos buenamente los dos.

No sólo he imaginado eso juegos, también he meditado sobre la casa. Todas las partes de la casa están muchas veces, cualquier lugar es otro lugar. No hay un aljibe, un patio, un abrevadero, un pesebre; son catorce [son infinitos] los pesebres, abrevaderos, patios, aljibes, la casa es del tamaño del mundo; mejor dicho, es el mundo. Sin embargo, a fuerza de fatigar patios con un aljibe y polvorientas galerías de piedra gris, he alcanzado la calle y he visto el templo de las Hachas y el mar. Eso no lo entendí hasta que una visión de la noche me reveló que también son catorce [son infinitos] los mares y los templos. Todo está muchas veces, catorce veces, pero dos cosas hay en el mundo que parecen estar una sola vez: arriba, el intrincado sol; abajo, Asterión. Quizá yo he creado las estrellas y el sol y la enorme casa, pero ya no me acuerdo.

Cada nueve años entran en la casa nueve hombres para que yo los libere de todo mal. Oigo sus pasos o su voz en el fondo de las galerías de piedra y corro alegremente a buscarlos. La ceremonia dura pocos minutos. Uno tras otro caen sin que yo me ensantgriente las manos. Donde cayeron, quedan, y los cadáveres ayudan a distinguir una galería de las otras. Ignoro quiénes son, pero sé que uno de ellos profetizó, en la hora de su muerte, que alguna vez llegaría mi redentor, Desde entonces no me duele la soledad, porque sé que vive mi redeentor y al fin se levantará sobre el polvo. Si mi oído alcanzara los rumores del mundo, yo percibiría sus pasos. Ojalá me lleve a un lugar con menos galerías y menos puertas. ¿Cómo será mi redentor?, me pregunto. ¿Será un toro o un hombre? ¿Será tal vez un toro con cara de hombre? ¿O será como yo?

El sol de la mañana reverberó en la espada de bronce. Ya no quedaba ni un vestigio de sangre.

- ¿Lo creerás, Ariadna? - dijo Teseo. - El minotauro apenas se defendió.

—

* El original dice catorce, pero sobran motives para inferir que en boca de Asterión, ese adjetivo numeral vale por infinitos.

As heard on my way to the Gin Palace from the mouth of an unattractive, short and ponytailed man on Little Collins Street:

And that’s why I get all my suits imported from Italy…

(adjective)

1. cowardly or craven.
2. unfaithful, disloyal or traitorous.

(noun)

1. a coward.
2. an apostate, traitor or renegade.

word’s encounter: in quite an interesting article on Soeharto’s legacy by Paul Keating, who lexically enriched Australia on a previous occasion with his describing Mahathir as recalcitrant many years ago.

word’s use: do you think fewer people would be aware of the undesirability of Peter Craven’s surname if it were Recreant instead?

I wanted to re-read online Jorge Luis Borges’ brilliant short piece, Borges and I, but all I found were very ordinary translations of his Spanish into English. I then hunted down my own English translation of the work in book form to get my fix of the master storyteller and discovered, to my horror, what a terrible job Andrew Hurley did of it.

So to rectify the situation in my own hubristic way, I figured I should translate the piece into English and then have someone else in a blog far, far away criticise my own translation of the work.

Anyway, both versions are below, my own in English and the original in Spanish.

Borges and I (translated from the Spanish)

Jorge Luis Borges

It is to that other one, to Borges, that things happen. I walk through Buenos Aires and I pause, one could say mechanically, to gaze at a vestibule’s arch and its inner door; of Borges I receive news in the mail and I see his name in a list of professors or some biographical dictionary. I like hourglasses, maps, eighteenth-century typefaces, etymologies, the taste of coffee and the prose of Stevenson; the other shares these preferences, but in a vain kind of way that turns them into attributes of an actor. It would be an exaggeration to claim that our relationship is hostile; I live, I let myself live so that Borges may write his literature, and this literature justifies me. It poses no great difficulty for me to admit that he has put together some decent passages, yet these passages cannot save me, perhaps because whatsoever is good does not belong to anyone, not even to the other, but to language and tradition. In any case, I am destined to lose all that I am, definitively, and only fleeting moments of myself will be able to live on in the other. Little by little, I continue ceding to him everything, even though I am aware of his perverse tendency to falsify and magnify.

Spinoza understood that all things wish to live on in their own essence; the stone wishes to be eternally a stone and the tiger a tiger. I will endure in Borges, not in myself (if it is that I am someone), but I recognise myself less in his books than in those of many others, or in the well-worn strum of a guitar. Years ago I tried to free myself from him by moving on from the mythologies of the slums to games with time and infinity, but those games are now Borges’ and I will have to conceive of other things. In this way, my life is a retreat and I lose everything and everything is turned over to oblivion, or to the other.

I do not know which of us is writing this piece.

Borges y Yo

Jorge Luis Borges

Al otro, a Borges, es a quien le ocurren las cosas. Yo camino por Buenos Aires y me demoro, acaso ya mecánicamente, para mirar el arco de un zaguán y la puerta cancel; de Borges tengo noticias por el correo y veo su nombre en una terna de profesores o en un diccionario biográfico. Me gustan los relojes de arena, los mapas, la tipografía del siglo XVII, las etimologías, el sabor del café y la prosa de Stevenson; el otro comparte esas preferencias, pero de un modo vanidoso que las convierte en atributos de un actor. Sería exagerado afirmar que nuestra relación es hostil; yo vivo, yo me dejo vivir para que Borges pueda tramar su literatura y esa literatura me justifica. Nada me cuesta confesar que ha logrado ciertas páginas válidas, pero esas páginas no me pueden salvar, quizá porque lo bueno ya no es de nadie, ni siquiera del otro, sino del lenguaje o la tradición. Por lo demás, yo estoy destinado a perderme, definitivamente, y sólo algún instante de mí podrá sobrevivir en el otro. Poco a poco voy cediéndole todo, aunque me consta su perversa costumbre de falsear y magnificar. Spinoza entendió que todas las cosas quieren perseverar en su ser; la piedra eternamente quiere ser piedra y el tigre un tigre. Yo he de quedar en Borges, no en mí (si es que alguien soy), pero me reconozco menos en sus libros que en muchos otros o que en el laborioso rasgueo de una guitarra. Hace años yo traté de librarme de él y pasé de las mitologías del arrabal a los juegos con el tiempo y con lo infinito, pero esos juegos son de Borges ahora y tendré que idear otras cosas. Así mi vida es una fuga y todo lo pierdo y todo es del olvido, o del otro.

No sé cuál de los dos escribe esta página.

The Spanish was found at http://www.patriagrande.net/argentina/jorge.luis.borges/.

Written in 2004 on Wednesday the 10th of March, my second month into my year-long trip overseas.

Carnaval is spelt so many different ways, I’m never quite sure which particular variation I should be using. If someone knows what the correct spelling is when writing in English, please forward the details. But regardless of all things orthographic, the festive happenings of this year’s Carnaval occurred during and surrounding the dates of the 21st to the 24th of February, or the Saturday before Ash Wednesday on the Roman Catholic calendar. The Carnaval was originally a spring festival dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of booze and a good time, although these days, only in Brazil do the festivities ever come close to the heights of the debauched merry-making of ancient times, long before the Catholic church took over the pagan ritual and sanitised it. In Rio, most things shut down just to party, men walk around wearing dresses and the condom campaign, which even manages to get grandmothers wearing condoms around their necks, begins. This year, the slogan for the condom campaign has been “use it, trust it.” I found out later that the peculiar slogan is a result of the church in Brazil starting its own anti-condom campaign, claiming that they don’t work and don’t provide any protection against AIDS. So yet again, the church is meddling with people’s fun, but thankfully this time around, the government of Brazil is backing the free-love movement and handing out free condoms for the horny faithful.

A Carioca is anyone from Rio de Janeiro. The word comes from a Tupi Indian term meaning “house of whites” and was eventually adopted by the Portuguese from Rio de Janeiro who lived in the houses the aborigines of Brazil were referring to. These days, the word has taken on a life of its own and locals are able to spend hours on end debating what makes a definitive Carioca, and, most importantly, why and how Cariocas are far superior from their Paulista cousins from São Paulo.

During Carnaval, the feeling of superiority the Cariocas enjoy over their Paulista rivals is at its highest ebb as São Paulo is ignored whilst the pictures sent to TV screens throughout the world are beamed from the Sambódromo in Rio de Janeiro. At the Sambódromo, the best and most extravagant samba schools from around town shake their asses and compete for the Cariocan samba title. This year, I was there, far, far away from the action, squinting in the rain and eventually giving up on the spectacle behind wet spectacles after not much longer than an hour of samba hijinx. Unless you are willing to pay a decent amount to sit with gringos up nice and close, you can’t dance, you can’t really see, and you’d be better off watching it on TV.

But my big Sambódromo experience was fantastic even if it turned out to be a fizzer once I got there. The parade is done over two days, with seven or eight schools walking the length of the Sambódromo on a single night. Once upon a time, schools would perform a show for over three hours. Now each school has a more palatable ninety minutes of glory to parade, with point deductions if they go over time, meaning only a few thousand people samba down the runway for any one particular school. With seven or eight schools showing off their wares in a single night, that means about 25,000 people parading down the Sambódromo over ten or more hours. So whilst I found it a bore in the stands, it was way cool to be there, taking in the sheer scale of the event dedicated to the two-four samba beat.

Walking to the Sambódromo, you get a sense of how much of a nightmare the event must be to organise. On the nearby streets, floats are assembled with cranes, the participants get their costumes in order and rehearse their steps, and the poor teams of fuckers who push the floats into and through the arena limber up in preparation for their night of shoving (like you, I assumed the floats were motorised too.) People are all over the place, busily organising and scampering about to get things ready for their ninety minutes of fame. The night is the culmination of ten months of preparation beginning from the previous April when the schools choose the theme for their parade and begin financing their show with technically illegal betting games. And when the paraders have finished with their parading, having finally performed after so much build up, they fill the city with their natural highs and in many of the bars or restaurants throughout the city, you can take part in the singing, dancing and table thumping that the still half-costumed stars of the Sambódromo chock-a-block full of energy are still buzzing along to.

Yet the most surprising aspect of Carnaval in Rio is how family it all is. Looking about the place, you notice grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, their children and their grandchildren all together, wiggling their asses in time with the samba beat. Most often you see these families shaking their groove thing at any one of the street parties all over Rio during Carnaval. Anyone can take part in these dance parties, where people samba down the streets along with the drummers and singers and shit-hot costumed samba dancers that make up the less extravagant but friendlier parades throughout the city’s neighbourhoods. Thankfully for foreigners such as myself, there are Brazilians who can’t actually samba, so as you get swept up in the dancing fever, your buttocks don’t feel too guilty about not being able to shake to the rhythm as well as they should and you can relax and enjoy your time amongst the sumptuously free-wheeling asses that surround you. And with the streets alive with the sound of samba, the sin would be not to shake your booty and graciously applaud the finest groovers of the parade among the crowds of young and old who come to celebrate their own music and dance.

I luckily found myself being guided around Rio during Carnaval when, after some minor flirting leading up to the first night of the festival devoted to samba, I started getting it on with a local Carioca. But the overly amorous kissing on the streets of Rio was tragically cut short and the night’s momentum devastated when we encountered my paramour’s ex-boyfriend. She ran to him and I stood there looking completely out of place as I was trying to deflect some very nasty greasers coming my way from the boy. Sadly the night pretty much came to an end after that, but the affair continues and still continues to sporadically continue, albeit secretly. This means no more going out in public because, you see, this ex-boyfriend, who is not really all that ex, tends to pop up by surprise everywhere she goes and calls her incessantly. Some would call it coincidence, others harassment or even stalking, but the end result is that we continue clandestinely the great love affair that I am sure will be the story line of a Brazilian soap opera some time soon.

Members of my family read this, so I would never normally mention any of my affairs with the ladies. But this is Brazil, where people talk openly in broken English about private matters with foreigners who smile a lot, and right now in Rio, there’s a sizable slice of the population that knows all about the gringo messing about with the mulatta. And being that I am in Brazil, trying to be as authentically Brazilian as possible, I feel it’s only right that my secret love affair that started on the first night of Carnaval is known by as many people as possible.

Go spread the word.

Someone somewhere once said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, and what is becoming increasingly apparent in the Australia of today is that the flag is the preferred apparel of drunken louts on this the 26th day of January.

Thankfully, the Union Jack and the Southern Cross on the background of blue clearly mark out the fools in any crowd, and one knows immediately where and whom to avoid. Unfortunately, I was already on the 96 tram to St. Kilda when a rowdy bunch of flag-happy fuckers jumped aboard, so avoiding them was not an option and their inimitable brand of raucous charm and wit had to be endured all the way home.

Happy Australia Day indeed.