“Many moons ago”- to put it in the manner of the beginning of Watermark, Joseph Brodsky’s book with its “Venetian notes”-, a young man, at his sixteen years old, already walking along the roads of literature -, he already frequented Cortázar and Vallejo-, one morning in July 1969 in a bookstore in Santiago de Cuba, in a bookstore on Enramada street, he was buying the books for the Casa de las Américas Prize that year, one of them destined to live on not only in the path of the novice reader, determined to write, but also on the map of Latin American narrative: Desnudo en el tejado (Naked on the Roof), by Antonio Skármeta.
Like a hare that jumps into the thicket of memories incited by a sparkle, such an anecdote appears in the shadow of a sad news: on October 15, the writer died in Santiago de Chile, at the age of 84 (he was born in Antofagasta on November 5, 1940). And although his first collection of short stories, El entusiasmo, had come out two years before the award-winning book, it was precisely the latter that would place him on the continental scale, and not only because of the award, but for the very fact of a strong and suggestive disposition of the good storytelling throughout its seven pieces.
Back to reading it with the resonance of the unfortunate novelty, just in the edition of the prince fifty five years ago, the admirable design – the image of a typewriter’s keyboard blurring on a blue background- by the great Umberto Peña (Havana, 1936 – Salamanca, 2023), the architect of the golden age of Casa de las Americas’ graphic image, is a moving and gratifying experience: in just 135 pages, the voice of a narrator who moves through different zones and changes his skin time and again, with impetus and grace that do not dodge cunning and depth: a lesson from a magnificent storyteller.
Six stories and a Monterroso-like micro-story with his famous “Dinosaurio” (Dinosaur) -the one that gives the volume its title and closes it a golden brooch: “And what do you want me to do, live naked on the roof? make the book, as if it had just been written right now, which overflows with grace and daring with an unshakable youthful impetus, a kind of timelessness that
that enlivens the attraction, narratives in which one can see, among others, the traces of Cortázar and Hemingway -the former in “Final del tango”, like a laughing facsimile of “Final del juego”; and the third in “Pajarraco”, dialogues with sparkle without fainting-.
It is worth mentioning the three gems of the book: “El ciclista del San Cristobal” -with that unforgettable beginning: “Besides, it was the day of my birthday, that of the boy who is going to pedal hard to win a competition-; “A las arenas”, a Chilean and a Mexican in the New York Bronx bet on an existential inquiry, both for the transcript of a future reading with Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, Los detectives salvajes by Roberto Bolaño -as I owe to Juan Villoro in a conversation in Havana-; and “Una vuelta en el aire”, a peculiar Chekhovian evocation of Gabriela Mistral and her days in New York.
With the unfolding of vertiginous plots that always point to an unquestionable and appealing resolution, in which there is never lacking a markedly poetic breath -it is worth remembering remembering Octavio Paz’s statement” …when poetry is given as a condensation of chance (…) we face the poetic”-, Skármeta shows his care when it comes to a style that becomes a hallmark of his identity as a storyteller: he dilates from beginning to end the spirals of reality, turns each chink in the story into a surprise that, far from altering the plot thread the argumental thread, he comforts it with prudence.
When it comes to reading him, it is juicy to go to Skármeta for Skármeta, an anthology of his thoughts in hypermedia magazine: “The astonishment led me to read others who were astonished”… And he adds: “the varied luck with which he culminated the enterprise of living (delirium, anguish, love, despair, joy) benefited the Chilean with “the vigorous languages they communicated…”. Then he warns: “My stories take off from everyday life, take off from it, fly to different heights, to see it better and communicate the emotion of it, and return humbly to the starting point humbly return to the starting point, with smoke, pain, irony, sadness…”.
Photo: Taken from Diario de Pontevedra
His third book of the genre, Tiro libre (Siglo XXI Editores, 1973), made up of nine stories, expands some of the scope of action of Desnudo en el tejado, but this time with reminiscences of the masters of Italian neo-realism, the novel Ardiente paciencia (1985), renamed by its author as El cartero de Neruda (Neruda’s Postman), after the famous film by British director Michael Radford in 1994: family intrigues with a deep sentimental imprint, protagonists who oscillate, with tenderness and humor, between the intimacy of the home and public life.
The Mexican Juan Villoro -an avid reader of the Chilean, who has already an anecdote in this regard – notes in the prologue to a selection of Skármeta’s best stories, Los nombres de of Skármeta’s best short stories, Los nombres de las cosas que allí había (Editorial Alfaguara, 2019): “The characters allow themselves to be captivated by a fearful wonder; they love the cracks in their street, but they understand that nothing is worth as much as leaving and they take a leap towards the uncertain, ready to pay the consequences”. And this is how he highlights that “Skármeta reveals the way in which experience becomes the way in which experience becomes imagination, the elusive substance from which literature comes”.
Although his successful career as a novelist, with titles such as Soñé que la nieve ardía (1975), La boda del poeta (1999), La chica del trombón (2001) -the last two of which are rooted in the memory of his ancestors who came from Croatia to northern Chile, with a memorable gallery of characters and stories-, El baile de la victoria (2003) and Un padre de película (2010), unjustly relegated his books of short stories, the truth is that his imprint as an author in this field is one of the highest ceilings in Latin American narrative: there he is with his saddlebag of short stories, a charismatic Antonio Skármeta, a letter carrier on the roof.
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