SOURCE: "Plan de evasión: The Loss of Referentiality," in Hispanic Journal, Vol. 4, No. 1, Fall, 1982, pp. 105-11.

[In the following essay, Tamargo contends that A Plan for Escape evades interpretation by withholding the evidence necessary for a single, definitive reading.]

Developing in a tradition in which the very activity of writing is posed as a problem, the contemporary novel offers interesting possibilities regarding the relationship between the text and the reality it describes. The discourse in these texts is not constructed on the appropriation of a referent outside itself; instead it presents itself as the production of its possibilities, limits and forms of articulation. This is what Stephen Heath, in his book on the "nouveau roman," defines as "a shift of emphasis in the novel from a monologistic 'realism' to … the practice of writing." Heath later explains the "practice of writing" in this way:

Its foundation is a profound experience of language and form and the demonstration of that experience in the writing of the novel which, transgressed, is no longer repetition and self-effacement but work and self-presentation as text. Its "realism" is not the mirroring of some reality but an attention to the forms of the intelligibility in which the real is produced, a dramatization of possibilities of language, forms of articulation, limitations of its own horizon. [The Nouveau Roman, 1972]

Bioy Casares' discourse inscribes itself in this tradition, a tradition in which the novel recognizes its autonomy from "reality" and thus, develops parallel to it, without pretending to capture or repeat it. The novel is no longer the repetition on a mirror but rather the repetition through a mirror. It is useful here to cite a passage from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass which describes Alice as she goes through the mirror:

Then she began looking about, and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible. For instance, the pictures on the wall next to the fire seemed to be all alive and the very clock on the chimney piece (you know you can only see the back of it in the Looking Glass) had got the face of a little old man, and grinned at her.

The text's "autonomy" from reality does not imply that it is not the reconstruction of something. For example, Plan de evasión, the novel I will deal with in this essay, is the reconstruction (since the events have already taken place and are being recounted) of Enrique Nevers' adventures on Devil's Island. But this reconstruction cannot be compared to the one which a mirror presents, that is to say a reconstruction that hides its mechanisms. Plan de evasión's discourse reconstructs Nevers' story in such a way that the rules of functioning are made manifest. It is for this reason that it is very difficult to imagine a naive reading of this text, since the novel's self-reflexive gesture points to what Roland Barthes has called [in his 1972 Critical Essays] a "structuralist activity":

The goal of all structuralist activity, whether reflexive or poetic, is to reconstruct an "object" in such a way as to manifest thereby the rules of functioning (the "functions") of this object.

Let me now take a closer look at the text of Plan de Evasión. The novel is narrated by Antoine, the uncle of Enrique Nevers. Antoine receives his nephew's letters and pretends to give the reader an objective look at what has taken place. He often quotes directly from the letters and then proceeds to comment in his own words. The sections of Enrique's letters which we are allowed to read directly present him as a paranoic man who is searching for the truth of a mystery he believes exists on the island. His fears never seem to have justification. As a matter of fact, they are never justified by the explanation he gives. Thus, the reader himself becomes suspicious.

On the other hand, Antoine also explains that, through his discourse, he wants to arrive at true events. One of the ways he tries to be objective in his narration is by acting as a chronicler, that is, by including documentation, for example, the text of Castel's experiments. Dr. Castel, the governor of Devil's Island, is developing a series of experiments through which he tries to better the situation of his prisoners. Through a complicated operation he modifies the sensory system of the prisoners so that they perceive their cells as islands where they gain their freedom. Antoine's intention of objectivity is nevertheless betrayed. He states that he wants to help Nevers, but soon after he makes comments that are obviously damaging to his nephew. The following remark is an example: "Debería saber que es el signo de una idiosincracia que lo distingue, tal vez en la historia de la psicología morbosa."

The dialogue between these two narrators, Enrique Nevers' letters and Antoine's apparent chronicle, integrates the novel. This chronicle has, besides Castel's text, another document: the letter which Xavier Brissac (Enrique's cousin who comes to Devil's Island once Enrique disappears) writes to Antoine. After making several comments that complicate the plot, Xavier Brissac includes a very suggestive paragraph that implicates Antoine in still another complot, underlining once again his unreliability. Brissac writes that he does not hate Nevers, as Antoine insinuates, and that he doesn't want to accuse Antoine:

No esperes que perdone al autor de esta infamia. Sé que no eres tú. Sé que repetiste lo que te han dicho. Sé, también, que descubriré a quien lo dijo: no eran muchos los que me oyeron hablar.

The possibilities of Plan de evasión lie in the tension produced by this plurality of "tramas" in which none is privileged. The two narrators are in search of the true story, the real story, but they both betray themselves, introducing a doubt about their reliablity. They both seem to be hiding something, but that something never appears and the text folds back upon itself, calling attention to its own production, its own readability. It has been pointed out that in this text everything is made relative by the presence of the lie. This lie is not present as the opposite of truth, which would be its affirmation, but rather it presents itself as an empty lie, a lie which does not point to a truth but rather to the process of lying.

We have now seen how this text deconstructs the reconstruction that seems to be its intention. This is accomplished through the superposition and interweaving of different versions which are all rendered relative precisely because of the presence of the other versions. In this way it performs what I have called a "structuralist activity."

The mechanism I have studied with respect to the plurality of "tramas" repeats itself in the use of quotations or of names that refer to historical figures or literary characters. To quote or to use a proper name that points to something outside of the text, that is, to give a symbolic value to a name, is to give depth to the discourse. These references seem to be there in order to give clues to the reader as to how he should interpret the text; that is, they seem to be pointing toward a truth, the true story, or at least the correct version of the story. But they don't point anywhere except at themselves and their own mechanisms.

There are numerous references to this type in the text and any reading of the novel must take them into account. The island where Enrique's adventures take place is none other than Devil's Island in the year 1913. In it he finds a prisoner who goes by the name of Dreyfus. The association is almost too plain. But the relationship with the historical Dreyfus is no more than a confusion, actually a misnaming. The only reason this man is called Dreyfus (we are told this by Antoine who has received the information from Nevers) is because he often talks about Dreyfus even though he does not know anything about the historical figure. This misnaming is made very obvious later on in the novel when Enrique meets another prisoner of the island, a man called Bernheim. Bernheim will tell Enrique: "Yo soy una llaga en la conciencia de Francia" and Enrique replies to Dreyfus: "Entonces a él, y no a usted, habría que llamarlo Dreyfus." Bernheim himself is another reference that misleads the reader. He reminds the reader of the French doctor of the same name who wrote a book entitled Nature and Uses of Hypnotism. The association with hypnotic powers makes Bernheim a very suspicious character since he always seems to be planning something, and follows Nevers around in what the latter interprets as an intention of telling him something that he does not want to hear. Antoine writes: "En la noche del 22 no podía dormir. Insomne, atribuyo importancia a la revelación que no quiso oìrle a Bernheim." In spite of all this Bernheim will not be privileged, that is to say he will function within the text, he will carry the associations attributed to him but they will never be confirmed.

Literary references are also frequent: Rimbaud, Verlaine and Rene Ghill and from the Symbolist movement; a significant quote from William Blake translated into Spanish: "¿Cómo sabes que el pájaro que cruza el aire no es un inmenso mundo de voluptuosidades, vedado a tus cinco sentidos?"; Nevers reads Plutarch's Tratado de Isis y Osiris because: "Este libro me interesa. Trata de símbolos"; the detective plot is mentioned with regard to the Misterio del cuarto amarillo; and finally there is a comparison between Castel and "un anciano debilísimo, con planes para volar la Opera Cómica." As we can see, all these references reinforce the positions of our narrators (and also of the reader) as "decifradores de enigmas," as searchers for a hidden truth. But this mystery, this truth, escapes the text, denies itself, that is, denies its possibility to exist within the text. Nevers will be permitted to say "cualquier cosa es símbolo de cualquier cosa" and Castel will explain in agreement with Blake's quote:

Nuestro mundo es una síntesis que dan los sentidos, el microscopio da otra. Si cambiaran los sentidos cambiaría la imagen. Podemos describir el mundo como un conjunto de símbolos capaces de expresar cualquier cosa.

Rather than symbols, these allusions should be called ciphers, underlining their emptiness. The referent is not important as an end but as a process. What is important is its formulation, its articulation, its functioning. This is not to deny that these references allude to something. They are effective within the text's mechanism precisely because they are obvious references to something specific. It is when these ciphers present themselves, negate themselves and make themselves unreliable, that the reader perceives the game of which he is a part. He perceives the rules of functioning and ceases to be concerned about the content, about the referent of these empty signs. We could now say that Bioy's discourse is a discourse of surface, it takes place on the surface, it lacks depth. It is not the mask of something else that is under it, but rather it is the mask itself.

Thus, the reading of Plan de evasión provokes a frustration which is necessarily the effect of a text that eludes being the representation of anything other than itself. Through a play with certain (empty) allusions, which appear to have the intention of revealing truth, yet at the same time undermine such an intention; and by the constant presence of the possible lie, we see that what actually is uncovered is a mechanism in movement. This same effect is produced with respect to the camouflages that Nevers discovers on the island: "la nefasta verdad se reveló: la isla del Diablo estaba camouflada." In reaction to this discovery Nevers writes to his uncle:

¿Qué significa esto?… ¿Que es un perseguido el gobernador? ¿Un loco? ¿O significa la guerra?… Todavía no he visto a Castel, no pude interpelarlo sobre estos camouflages, no pude oír sus mentiras.

The camouflage is repeated in the cells of the prisoners with whom Castel is doing his experiments. Antoine writes about Nevers' first encounter with the cells: "Confusamente vio en las paredes manchas coloradas, azules, amarillas. Era el famoso 'camouflage' interior." Plan de evasión is a series of camouflages. First, with respect to its symbols, since even possibilities that are eliminated suggest others and, therefore, go on indefinitely, second, with respect to the different versions which are all called into question, and finally with respect to the camouflaged island itself. Nevers, therefore, is faced with a camouflage of a camouflage, while the reader is faced with an open text. Open because it ends with the word "Etcétera" suggesting the existence of certain information that has not been included. Open, also, because it articulates the reader himself in the complot, implicating him and thus not allowing him to solve the mystery, not allowing him to close the text. The question might now be formulated as to whose plan to escape this is: Nevers', Castel's, the novel's? Nevers himself, when speaking to two prisoners of the island, asks the same question: "¿Castel los preparaba para una evasión?" It is not until the end of the novel, however, that the reader finds out that the escape is accomplished precisely by placing the prisoners in the cells that Castel has constructed:

Una de las celdas es interior. Si tuviera que encerrarme en una de ellas—escribe Nevers—elegiría esa. Por lo menos estaría libre del caliente horror de los espejos. Alude, con su habitual dramatismo, a los grandes y baratos espejos que hay en las otras celdas. Cubren, del lado de adentro, todas las paredes que dan al patio.

In his manuscript Castel explains, in more detail, his experiments with human senses:

Si hubiera un cambio en los movimientos de los átomos este lirio sería, quizá, el golpe de agua que derrumba la represa, o una manada de jirafas, o la gloria del atardecer. Un cambio en el ajuste de mis sentidos haría, quizá, de los cuatro muros de esta celda la sombra del manzano del primer huerto.

The camouflaged cells, then, are actually liberty for the prisoners locked within. They are cells covered by mirrors on their interior walls—unfoldings. They are closed space but at the same time opened space because of the possibility of escape. They are a metaphor of the paradox of representation that makes the text possible:

Nuestro mundo es una síntesis que dan los sentidos, el microscopio da otra. Si cambiaran los sentidos cambiaría la imagen. Podemos describir el mundo como un conjunto de símbolos capaces de expresar cualquier cosa; con sólo alterar la graduación de nuestros sentidos, leeremos otra palabra en ese alfabeto natural.

Plan de evasión is a constant changing of the senses, which in this way, avoids the privileged version of the univocal referent.

It is apparent that in the same way that the camouflage of the cells hides nothing, the camouflage of the island does not reveal anything beneath its surface. This repeats Jean-Louis Baudry's comments [in "Ecriture, fiction, ideologie," in Thèorie de'ensemble, 1968,] about the mask as a surface that invites us to believe in a level that hides nothing but itself. Through the reading of the play between the "tramas," and through the mechanism of quoting, Plan de evasión functions as a mask and produces itself on the surface of the text.

What then is the plan to escape? As we can now see, a hint of the answer to this question appears to be revealed in the state of the island's prisons. Just as the camouflaged cells meant freedom for those prisoners enclosed within them, so too, the text gains freedom from the prison of referentiality when it limits itself to the surface, despite the invitation to examine beneath the camouflage of multiple levels. It is in this way that the text gains freedom, for there is no longer any necessity for it to mean anything more than its own production.