Lovers Hate
Silvina Ocampo and A. Bioy Casares
English Version, B. Renner

I

They dissolve in my mouth, tastelessly, reassuringly, the last globules of arsenic (arsenicum album). To my left, on the work table, I have a copy, in beautiful Bodoni, of the Satyricon of Gaius Petronius. To my right, the fragrant tea tray, with its delicate porcelains and its nutritive flasks. I might well say that the book's pages are spent by innumerable readings; the tea is Chinese; the toast, fragile and thin; the honey made by bees which have sipped acacia flowers, favoritas and lilacs. So, in this limited paradise, I will begin to write my account of the murder at Bosque del Mar.
From my point of view, the initial incident occurs in a dining car on the night train to Salinas. A married couple -- friends of mine, literary dilettantes blessed with livestock -- and an unmarried young lady shared my table. Stimulated by the consommé, I detailed for them my intentions: in search of a delightful and fecund solitude -- in search, that is, of myself -- I turned toward the new spa that we, the most refined enthusiasts of a life conjoined with nature, had found: Bosque del Mar. For a good while I had been pleasuring myself with the thought of my impending getaway, but the exigencies of my practice -- I belong, I must confess it, to the fraternity of Hippocrates -- delayed my vacation. The couple attended with interest to my frank declaration: although I was a respected doctor -- I follow without variation the procedures of Hahnemann -- I was also writing, with varying success, scripts for the cinema. Now Gaucho Film Inc. had commissioned me to produce an adaptation -- set in the present in Argentina -- of Petronius' tumultuous book. Seclusion at the beach was imperative.
We retired to our compartments. A while later, enveloped in thick railway blankets, my spirit still resonated with the gratifying sensation of having been understood. A sudden uncertainty tempered that happiness: had I not behaved recklessly? Had not I myself put into the hands of that clumsy couple all the necessary tools to allow them to steal my ideas? I understood that it was useless now to ponder. My spirit, always tractable, sought an asylum in the longed-for contemplation of the trees near the ocean. Vain effort. Still, I put myself into the twilight of those pine woods. . . Like Betteredge with Robinson Crusoe, I returned to my Petronius. With renewed admiration I read the paragraph --
I believe that our boys are as stupid as they are because they no longer read to them in the schools about actual events, but instead about pirates, lying in wait with chains, on the riverbank; about tyrants preparing edicts which condemn children to decapitate their own parents; about oracles, consulted in times of epidemic, which order the immolation of three or more virgins. . .
The advice is, still today, appropriate. When will we renounce the crime novel, the fantasy, and all that flourishing, varied and ambitious field of literature fed on unrealities? When will we turn our steps to the healthy picaresque and the pleasant novel of manners?
Already the sea air came through the opened vent. I closed it and fell asleep.

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