I met him in mid-1983, while we were waiting to be served at a store in Recoleta. That meeting was favored because I, by some random maneuver, carried a worn copy of “Morel’s Invention”which he watched sideways with an almost childlike delight.
I don’t remember the first words we exchanged, but it didn’t take me long to ask him for an interview for a film publication edited by a friend of mine; the impetus of my 25 years seemed to amuse him. Adolfo Bioy Casares accepted. And we set an appointment for the following afternoon.
We were neighbors; I lived a block away, in a small apartment that could be seen from the window of the mythical fourth floor of the Posadas 1650 street buildingdescribed in so many chronicles.
Bioy, after receiving me, dropped into a rickety chair; From time to time, he leaned his gaze towards the windows to contemplate the Plaza San Martín de Tours, on whose hill some purebred dogs scampered. I turned on the recorder while a maid served two cups of tea.
The homeowner was precise in his answers and, at the same time, expansive; he went from the movies to his favorite writers, jumped in time and ended his sayings with a giggle that lit up his face. He seemed to write everything that came out of his lips.
As if excusing himself, he admitted that when he saw “Oblomov”, the film by Nikita Mijalkov, he fell asleep in his seat; instead, she had enjoyed Louis Malle’s “Pretty Baby.” He confessed that as a young man he used to fall in love with the actresses he saw on the screen; especially, of the already forgotten Louise. Brooks. And he did not hide the panic caused by the writers who tried to adapt his works.
Nor was he kind to literary critics; he then he reviled with notable emphasis a certain Ana María Barrenechea, qualifying her as “less intelligent than nice, and that she had a not very pleasant character.”
At the end of the interview, Bioy glanced at a pocket watch and surprisingly said:
–With Silvina we are going to watch “The Benny Hill Show” on television. I invite you to join us.
In truth, that interview was never published. But from then on, every Thursday night I went to Bioy’s to see Benny Hill. Until November, when the English strip was replaced by a cycle with Graciela Dufau, which not even our incipient friendship justified.
On April 4, 1984, I was having breakfast at La Rambla confectionery, located on the corner of Posadas and Ayacucho, when I noticed that Bioy was passing by the door; he also saw me and then he went in. In those days, the Book Fair was held on a property adjacent to Italpark, so it was not strange that Manuel Mujica Láinez suddenly appeared, who sat with us. And the actor José María Vilches, famous for his play “El Bululú”, also joined.
Two days later, the cover of the newspaper “Crónica” reported on the death of “Manucho” due to cardiac arrest at his stay in Alta Gracia; further down, another title gave an account of the death of Vilches, which occurred in turn in a road accident on the way to Mar del Plata. I was dumbfoundedand I decided to alleviate that impression by having a whiskey in the same place where I had been with those two men for the first and last time.
Coincidentally, halfway through I ran into Bioy, who was also shocked. His only words, before each one went their own way, were:
-You saw how unlucky our table the other day.
Since then we avoided La Rambla as a meeting place and, from time to time, I called him and he invited me to his house or we met one morning in La Biela, which he frequented before lunch at Lola. Once there a man approached him with an exaggeratedly ceremonious salute, which Bioy returned with surprised courtesy; it was Jorge Asíswho by then had already begun to emigrate from La Paz cafe to the bars of Recoleta.
Then, in a confidential tone, Bioy commented:
-A bookseller friend told me that this boy’s material is sold only as a gift.
On the evening of June 14, 1986, the news began to report on the death of Jorge Luis Borges, which occurred in distant Geneva.
Shortly after, “Cachi” arrived at my house. He was a somewhat extravagant psychologist, who for years had been correcting an essay of his on the Eddas. He looked excited. As if passing by, I mentioned Borges with some regret. And that was precisely the reason for his exaltation.
“I just crossed Bioy and told him about it,” he managed to say, choking on the words. “From the look on his face, I realized that the poor guy didn’t know anything.” I was the one who broke the news.
In his “Intimate Diaries”, compiled by Daniel Martino and published in 2001, Bioy refers to such an episode with the following words: “A young individual, with the face of a bird, who I later learned was the author of a study on the Eddas that they sent me a few months ago, he greeted me and said, as if apologizing: ‘Today is a very special day.’ When he said that phrase for the second time, I asked him: ‘Why?’ ‘Because Borges died. This afternoon he died in Geneva.’ I continued on my way, feeling that they were my first steps in a world without Borges”.
Over time, our meetings became more spaced. Bioy no longer invited almost anyone to his home, perhaps out of modesty to exhibit the deterioration of Silvina Ocampo, who He was already suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Bioy himself looked older and stooped.
One night, at the end of 1990, he invited me to lunch with Lola. There, a lady mistook him for the writer Marco Denevi, and that distracted his downcast spirit.
She, despite the heat, ate without having taken off her mink coat, and Bioy confided in my ear:
–This woman makes a militia out of the fur shop.
Later, out of sheer formality, I asked how Silvina was doing.
His response was devastating:
-Sometimes it’s okay. But other times he thinks he’s on a ship. It’s very disgusting…
Then, he paused, before continuing:
-Did you ever read that poem by Walt Wittman, which says: “The movement that articulates a finger manages to surpass the best machine invented by man”? Well, I look at Silvina, I remember that idiotic poem and I think that only God can come up with a machine with bone, blood, meat and fat”
That was the last time I saw him.
Now that he is no longer with us, I think meeting him was a strange and wonderful benefit.
