SOURCE: Maloof, Judy. “La vida breve: The Death of a Prostitute and Male Authorship in La vida breve.” In Over Her Dead Body: The Construction of Male Subjectivity in Onetti, pp. 57-92. New York: Peter Lang, 1995.

[In the following essay, Maloof argues that male freedom and subjectivity are entirely dependent on the elimination of the female in La vida breve.]

Onetti's fourth novel, La vida breve, is considered by most critics to be his masterpiece. It was published in 1950 after a gestation period of about seven years. This multifaceted and well-crafted work is the first in a series of novels sometimes referred to by Onettian scholars as the Santa María Saga.¹La vida breve recounts the founding of Santa María, the mythical town where most of Onetti's subsequent novels and short stories take place. Although Santa María is an imaginary town, it is representative—geographically and culturally—of the River Plate region.² This novel also tells the story of the creation of Dr. Díaz Grey, one of the principal narrators—as well as confessor and town historian—of this Uruguayan author's fictional universe. La vida breve is divided into two parts of 24 and 17 chapters respectively. The second part is a sort of mirror image of the first in which the original elements are displaced and transfigured throughout the unfolding of the narrative.³

La vida breve displays a more elaborate notion of gendered subjectivity than was represented in El pozo. There is less of an emphasis on the existentialist model of subject-object relations and a sharpening of focus on a decentered subject-in-process.⁴ Contemporary critical theories about subjectivity—especially the Lacanian notion of a split subject-in-process and the Derridean concept of a decentered subject—offer new insights that are useful for interpreting the fragmentation and displacements of the protagonist's identity in this text.⁵

This intricate novel consists of three parallel storylines that are interwoven and mutually dependent upon each other. These three narrative threads correspond to the fragmentation of Juan María Brausen's identity into Arce (a pimp) and Díaz Grey (his fictional double).⁶ (The assonance of the name Arce reinforces the notion that he is Brausen's alter ego.) The process of the displacements of Juan María Brausen's identity by Arce and Díaz Grey forms the principal action of the novel. Brausen is conscious of the interdependence between Díaz Grey and Arce: “Sostenía a Arce por medio de Díaz Grey” [He sustained Arce by means of Díaz Grey] … “Entretanto, yo casi no trabajaba y existía apenas: era Arce en las regulares borracheras con la Queca, en el creciente placer de golpearla, en el asombro de que me fuera fácil y necesario hacerlo; era Díaz Grey, escribiéndolo o pensándolo, asombrado aquí de mi poder y de la riqueza de la vida” (my italics, 187-88) [Meanwhile I was almost not working and scarcely existing; I was Arce at the regular drunken parties with La Queca, in the growing pleasure of beating her, amazed that it was easy and necessary to do it; I was Díaz Grey, writing or thinking about him, astonished by life's richness and my power] (141).⁷ As this citation reveals, the male narrating subject escapes into the realm of the imaginary through the splitting of his self into these fictitious personas. Also, there is a clear link between crime and fiction, and more concretely, between the protagonist's sadistic desire and his emergence as a writing subject. He also acknowledges the sensation of power and omnipotence that he experiences through the act of writing and of imagining.

Like Eladio Linacero, Juan María Brausen seeks refuge from the frustrations and boredom of his everyday life through the cultivation of a rich inner world of fantasy. Brausen, like many potentially gifted writers of fiction, earns his living writing vacuous consumer-oriented slogans and commercial film scripts for “Macleod Publicidad,” [Macleod Publicity Agency] a North American-owned advertising agency.⁸ This isolated male subject suffers not only from a lack of fulfillment in his work but also from the constant threat of unemployment. By the second part of the novel, he has been fired from his job. The protagonist's invented identities provide him with an illusion of wholeness that functions, above all, as a means of coping with his growing social alienation. Brausen's fantasy life also compensates for his insecure “masculinity” and his increasing estrangement from his wife. Lacan's category of the Imaginary Order—the compensatory image of plenitude that opposes and tries to displace the sense of self as alienated, dispersed, and not whole—is useful for analyzing the splitting of the male writing subject in this text.

According to Josefina Ludmer, this novel, “como teoría sobre la constitución de lo imaginario, como modo de pensarlo, escribe a la vez una ideología de la literatura” (1977: 16) [offers a theory about the formation of the imaginary, a way of thinking about it, and also, it provides an ideology of literature].⁹La vida breve is a metafictional book that deals with the creative process, and more specifically, with the connection between sadomasochistic desire and the act of writing.¹⁰ Male authorship is posited in this novel as the only possible solution, albeit an illusory solution, to the problem of the enormous gap between dreams and the possibility of their realization in the “real world.”

The limits between “reality” and fiction in this novel are effaced, inverted, and redrawn through a constant play of signifiers and substitution of identities.¹¹ However, the male/female boundary is never unsettled nor called into question. Why should this one category of difference, in a work that plays with identity and difference, remain unquestioned?

The theoretical foundation for my interpretation of Juan María Brausen's subjectivity-in-progress, like that of the protagonist of El pozo, is grounded on feminist revisions of psychoanalytic theory. Teresa de Lauretis's theory about the link between sadomasochistic desire and narrativity and Elizabeth Bronfen's thesis about the association of feminine death and masculine aesthetics illuminate our understanding of this novel as well as of the novel analyzed in the previous chapter.

The issue of the extreme emotional dependence of the male characters on the figure of Woman is central to La vida breve. Brausen's anguish is compounded by his separation from his wife, Gertrudis, and by a socio-economic situation against which he is powerless. This alienated protagonist's anxiety and rage are rendered visible in his sadomasochistic relationship with a prostitute. The figure of the whore is portrayed in this text as a signifier of abjection and Otherness; she is represented as a socially acceptable scapegoat and as a victim of male aggression and rage. The trope of Woman as a prostitute has a significant function in La vida breve enabling the displacement of Brausen's feelings of estrangement and national impotence, a phenomenon we already observed with respect to Eladio Linacero, the protagonist of Onetti's first novel.

The construction of the male narrating subject on the basis of the death of a woman, a theme that was introduced in El pozo, has become increasingly complex in La vida breve. There is an unquestionable relatedness between sadistic desire and male authorship in this text that brings to mind Teresa de Lauretis's thesis about narrative desire. My principal argument in this chapter on La vida breve is that Juan María Brausen's transformation into the criminal Arce and the fictional character Díaz Grey is brought about through the deaths of Enriqueta Martí (referred to as Queca) and Elena Sala (a fictional character in Brausen's film script). The configuration of the male writing subject in this novel—as well as in El pozo and many of Onetti's texts—is grounded upon the absolute obliteration of feminine subjectivity. Brausen's self-articulation and his birth as a narrator (Díaz Grey) take place over the dead body of a prostitute (Queca).

My analysis is divided into three sections: 1) a discussion of the carnival motif and its connection to Brausen's creation of “brief lives” in the realm of the imaginary; 2) an analysis of the nexus between Gertrudis's scar and male narrativity; and 3) an investigation of Brausen-Arce's “masterpiece”—the murder of a prostitute. A common thread among all three sections is that the category of gender is the one that has never interrogated. The absolute difference between male and female is presented as a given from the narrative perspective of this text, while other categories dealing with issues related to identity are called into question.

I. THE CARNIVAL MOTIF AND BRAUSEN'S BRIEF LIVES

The Bakhtinian theory of the carnivalesque, and in particular, the related concepts of transgression of hierarchies and inversion of conventional thought throw light on Brausen's desire for liberation from oppressive social norms. The protagonist articulates his feelings of self-loathing: “Comprendí lo que había estado sabiendo durante semanas que yo, Juan María Brausen y mi vida no eran otra cosa que moldes vacíos, meras representaciones de un viejo significado mantenido con indolencia, de un ser arrastrado sin fe entre personas, calles y horas de la ciudad, actos de rutina” (my italics, 169-170) [I understood that which I had known for weeks, that I, Juan María Brausen, and my life, were nothing but empty molds, mere representations of an old meaning maintained through indolence, of a being dragged along without faith among people, streets, and hours of the city, routine acts] (126). This passage underscores Brausen's passivity as well as the theatrical hollow aspects of his everyday life. For Brausen, his life consists of empty rituals that are devoid of meaning.

The carnival motif functions on several levels within the novel. First, it has an important architectural role in the structuring of the text. The narrative begins on August 30th, the feast day of Santa Rosa, which is celebrated in the River Plate region with a carnival. This date marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring—a season that is associated with hope and rebirth. La vida breve ends about six months later at the end of summer, some time in mid-February, also during carnival festivities. Thus, the image of carnival establishes the formal limits of this text; it begins and ends with carnival, reinforcing the novel's theme of carnival as a metaphor for life.

The text's circular structure corresponds to the cyclical time of Nature. The death of Brausen's former self and his rebirth as Arce and Díaz Grey reproduce this cyclical view of the world. Fiction and fantasy in La vida breve are related to the timelessness of nature where death gives birth to life and the past returns as the present in an endless process of regeneration. Through Brausen's escape into the subjective world of fantasy, he transgresses the laws of time and space that govern the outside world of necessity and social reality. Nevertheless, this transgression is only illusory; that is to say, it exists merely as an imaginary, fictional construct.

Carnival is a time of social license, masquerade, and playful change of identity. During this period of joyful festivities the characters in this novel give free reign to their repressed desires and pretend to be what they are not. Carnival, as pointed out by Bakhtin, is a “feast of becoming, change, and renewal” (109).¹² The carnival motif is reinforced in the text by the theme of “brief lives” and by Brausen's metamorphosis into Arce and Díaz Grey. The protagonist is explicit about his belief in the possibility of living many brief lives during the span of a single lifetime: “… es que la gente cree que está condenada a una vida, hasta la muerte. Y sólo está condenada a un alma, a una manera de ser. Se puede vivir muchas veces, muchas vidas más o menos largas” (226) [… people believe they're condemned to a single life until death. And they are only condemned to a single soul, to one way of being. One can live many lives, many more or less long lives] (171).

Masquerade, brief lives, and inversion of the social hierarchy—these are all manifestations of the carnivalesque. The carnival motif in La vida breve acts as a metaphor for life. Nevertheless, the possibilities for change and renewal that are provided by carnival, according to the grim perspective inscribed in this novel, prove to be nothing more than an endless multiplying of the self and of the past which oppresses it. This pessimistic view of life is elucidated by Lagos at the end of his escape from Santa María during carnival; he compares the young violinist with his deceased wife, Elena Sala: “Ella es Elena. Nada se interrumpe, nada termina; aunque los miopes se despisten con los cambios y personajes” (385) [It's Elena. Nothing is interrupted, nothing ends; although the short-sighted might get lost in changes of circumstance and character] (289). And, as we the readers know, Elena Sala is really a fictional incarnation of Gertrudis; this displacement of identities confirms the novel's central theme and also suggests that Woman is codified in this text as a signifier whose signified is constantly changing in an endless play of substitution of identities. That is to say, Gertrudis, Elena Sala, the young violinist, and Gertrudis's younger sister, Raquel, are all manifestations of the same Woman, from the point of view of the male desiring subject.

The choice of a costume during carnival has a significant function in this text. It represents the desire to adopt a new identity—an identity that is perhaps antithetical to one's class or social role. This new identity, however, can also allude to repressed unconscious desires. For example, Díaz Grey chooses to become a bullfighter, a stereotypical icon of Iberian masculinity. This semi-ironic choice of a costume might suggest the doctor's vindication of his remote Spanish heritage. It can also be read as Díaz Grey's desire for virility, that is, of course, really a sublimation of Brausen's desire for virility. In other words, it is really Brausen's projection of an idealized masculine image of himself in the film script that he is writing. It is interesting to note that none of the characters play with gender roles during carnival. The carnivalesque here does not allow for this kind of play. Women stay women, men stay men.

The novel's characters become the different masks that their fragmented social interactions require them to put on, take off, and exchange for other masks. In the words of Hugo Verani: “La vida aparece convertida en una fabulosa mascarada y detrás de la máscara o disfraz no hay nada: sólo la multiplicidad y los desdoblamientos del ser, la representación de un papel tras otro” [Life seems to be transformed into a fabulous masquerade and there isn't anything behind the mask or costume: only the multiplicity and doubling of the self, the representation of one role after another] … “Cada máscara desarrolla una posibilidad, una dominante inédita en el yo abolido. La máscara no encubre el yo; es el yo, sirve para realizar la nostalgia de una carencia” (1981: 128-29) [Each mask represents a possibility, a new tendency within the abolished self. The mask doesn't conceal the self; it is the self].¹³ Thus, the adoption of “new identities” is inseparable from the process of the hollowing or the emptying of the self in La vida breve. The discursive male subject in this text is constituted on the basis of a lack, recalling Lacan's theory about the formation of the subject. Also, the idea of the lack of a unified, coherent self is closely associated with the Derridean notion of the decentered subject.¹⁴ Thus, the emphasis on play, textuality, and the substitution of identities.

Josefina Ludmer argues that carnival and costumes are expressions of inversion and of ‘turning the world upside down’, in the Bakhtinian sense of parody of established hierarchies: “El carnaval y el disfraz representan entonces el pasaje en segundo grado (interno a la ficción), el otro rito de iniciación y la otra lógica paródica de la muerte y del renacimiento; la legalidad negativa, duplicidad, el territorio de las contradicciones: el mundo ‘al revés.’ El carnaval y sus ritos constituyen la figuración final y en segundo grado de los procedimientos fundamentales del relato” (1977: 118) [Carnival and disguise represent, then, the passage on a second level (internal to the fiction), the other initiation ritual and the other parodying logic of death and rebirth; the negative legality, duplicity, the realm of contradictions: an ‘upside down’ world]. The carnival spirit, according to Bakhtin, “offers the chance to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things” (34).

However, the meaning of the carnivalesque that is conveyed in La vida breve is that nothing really changes: carnival represents, in spite of apparent inversion and disguise, just more of the same. Carnival is periodic like the seasons and like the cyclical displacements of Brausen's identities. It represents a temporary liberation from an oppressive social order but it doesn't bring about any lasting change in the system. Carnival doesn't transform the world just as the protagonist's flight into fantasy doesn't result in a transformation of the circumstances which oppress him. Brausen's metamorphosis into Arce and Díaz Grey is one of form, not of substance. The root causes of the protagonist's crisis remain unresolved; and the causes of his anxiety are multiple—they are not only psychological, but also social and political.

In the novel's enigmatic final chapter, the fictional Santa María, which Brausen had created and suppressed at will, supplants the “reality” that had prevailed throughout the previous chapters. Having gained total autonomy from his creator, Díaz Grey replaces Brausen as the first-person narrator. He tells of his planned escape from Santa María to Buenos Aires (together with Lagos, Owen, and a young violinist) during carnival. Thus, the final chapter represents an inversion of Brausen's and Ernesto's flight from Buenos Aires to Santa María.

Although the protagonist is arrested, he is able to escape confinement through his imagination. In this way, the novel's elusive and inconclusive ending can be interpreted as what Derrida has called an “affirmative play of substitutions”; Brausen, having fully merged with the identity of the fictional Díaz Grey, achieves—in fantasy—the “resurrection” of the young Gertrudis, incarnated as the violinist. The prisoner's self-proclaimed freedom is, of course, ironic. Brausen's “perfect solitude” and future confinement in jail are paradoxically accompanied by the beginning of an idyllic love affair in the inner, subjective realm of the imaginary. The open-endedness of the novel suggests that the crisis of Brausen's fragmented, decentered subjectivity has been resolved through the creation of a new center in fantasy—implying that the cycle of the multiplying and dispersion of the new narrator, Díaz Grey, will continue ad infinitum.¹⁵

Furthermore, this male narrating subject will continue to define himself in relation to a series of young idealized women, all of whom function for him as a signifier of Woman as Other. The politically sceptical author of this text posits the subject's creation of new selves in fiction as the only means of overcoming social alienation. Nevertheless, this attainment of personal freedom in the realm of fantasy is only a sad parody of the lofty ideal of “freedom”—a dream that Onetti regarded as impossible to realize in Uruguay during the period the novel was written.¹⁶

II. GERTRUDIS'S SCAR AND MALE NARRATIVITY

La vida breve begins the same day that Brausen's wife, Gertrudis, has a mastectomy. Gertrudis's mutilated body is represented in this text as the catalyst that triggers Brausen's imagination and spurs his adventure into the realm of fantasy. The novel's “hero” desires to preserve his memories of his past love for Gertrudis from oblivion through the act of writing a film script that is indirectly about their relationship.

By rewriting significant events in his past, Brausen hopes to liberate himself from the weight of this “baggage” that is crushing his spirit. In the script, “Brausen-Díaz Grey” is seduced by “Gertrudis-Elena Sala,” a young drug addict with very large breasts (clearly an example of Brausen's displaced feelings of anxiety about the loss of Gertrudis's breast): “Tenía el torso desnudo y los grandes pechos continuaban alzados, casi rígidos, con puntas demasiado abultadas” (49) [Her torso was naked, and her full breasts still remained erect, almost rigid, with unusually large nipples] (32). Brausen hopes to create a new beginning in fiction that will help him to regain his lost masculine identity. In this way the male subject tries to undo the past through the act of writing about it.

The representation of Gertrudis's mastectomy in La vida breve has been interpreted in terms of the link between castration and writing. For Lacan, castration is associated with the lack that is a necessary precondition of discursive practice.¹⁷ In other words, for there to be literary production, there must first be a loss, which functions as a motive for writing. As Josefina Ludmer has convincingly argued, the castrated female evokes feelings of anxiety and fear of castration in the male character: “La vida breve se desencadena con la representación del corte en la amputación del pecho de Gertrudis; la instancia de la feminidad como instancia de la castración emerge, pues, con una doble marca: una mujer que ha perdido un pecho, una mujer amputada” (1977: 19) [La vida breve starts out with the representation of the cut with the amputation of Gertrudis's breast; femininity emerges as castration, with a double mark: a woman who has lost a breast and an amputated woman]. She goes on to say that “[E]l sujeto que narra, Brausen, tiene la castración a su lado y ‘habla’ desde ese lugar amenazante … Algo falta en su lugar y debe ser sustituido … [L]a pérdida pone en juego un sistema de transformaciones en todos los órdenes de la representación.” (20-21) [Brausen, the narrating subject, has castration at his side and he speaks from this threatening site … Something is missing in its place and it ought to be substituted … [T]he loss brings into play a system of transformations in all of the levels of the representation]. The amputation of Gertrudis's breast is the event that constitutes the incipit of the narrative; it represents the delineation of a blank space—a space from which writing can emerge.

For this narcissistic male subject, the loss of Gertrudis's breast—an erotic fetish that had brought him sexual satisfaction—is associated with his own loss of virility and a crisis in his sexual identity. For example, the following passage reveals the narrator's bizarre fascination with the thought of the mutilation of his wife's body, and particularly, with the image of the scar that now replaces her left breast:

… Ablación de mama. Una cicatriz puede ser imaginada como un corte irregular practicado en una copa de goma, de paredes gruesas, que contenga una materia inmóvil, sonrosada, con burbujas en la superficie, y que dé la impresión de ser líquida si hacemos oscilar la lámpara que la ilumina. También puede pensarse cómo será quince días, un mes después de la intervención, con una sombra de piel que se le estira encima, traslúcida, tan delgada que nadie se atrevería a detener mucho tiempo sus ojos en ella. Más adelante las arrugas comienzan a insinuarse, se forman y se alternan; ahora sí es posible mirar la cicatriz a escondidas, sorprenderla desnuda alguna noche y prognosticar cuál rugosidad, cuáles dibujos, qué tonos sonrosados y blancos prevalecerán y se harán definitivos.

(my italics, 15)

[… Breast amputation. A scar can be imagined as an irregular cut made on a rubber cup with thick walls, containing a motionless substance, pinkish, with bubbles on the surface, and that may give the impression of being liquid if we make the lamp that illuminates it sway back and forth. Also to be considered is how the scar will look in fifteen days, a month, after the incision, with a thin layer of skin stretched over it, translucent, so fine that no one would dare look at it for more than a moment. Further on a hint of wrinkles begins, changing and taking shape; now it may be possible to look at the scar on the sly, surprise it naked some night and predict what depressions, what configurations, what tones of red and white will prevail and endure.]

(6)

Brausen's anxiety about Gertrudis's mastectomy is inscribed in the above description of the scar that he imagines at different stages throughout the healing process—immediately following the operation, fifteen days later, one month later, and many months after surgery. The first-person narrator's obsession with the graphic grotesque details of his wife's scar betray his misogynous views.

The representation of Gertrudis's mastectomy in this text also functions as a signifier for Brausen's marital crisis. It marks a turning point in the already deteriorated marriage and foreshadows the inevitable death of this relationship. The amputation of Gertrudis's breast, from the perspective of the narcissistic male subject, acts as metaphor for his own emotional pain and deep-rooted anxiety about his insecure masculinity. The loss of a woman's breast is represented exclusively from the vantage of the male protagonist; Brausen is incapable of positing Gertrudis as a subject or of considering her pain.

The male-centeredness of the narrative point of view is illustrated in this passage:

Habría llegado entonces el momento de mi mano derecha, la hora de la farsa de apretar en el aire, exactamente, una forma y una resistencia que no estaban y que no habían sido olvidadas aún por mis dedos. “Mi palma tendrá miedo de ahuecarse exageradamente, mis yemas tendrán que rozar la superficie áspera o resbaladiza, desconocida y sin promesa de intimidad de la cicatriz redonda.”

(15)

[Then the moment for my right hand will have arrived, time for the farce of squeezing in the air, exactly, a form and a resistance that are not there and that have not been forgotten by my fingers, “My palm will be afraid of swelling up abnormally, my fingertips will have to graze the rough or slippery surface, without the promise of intimacy, strangers to the round scar.”]

(6)

The imagined “farce” alludes to the empty ritual of making love after Gertrudis's mastectomy. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the descriptions of Brausen's fearful fingertips and of the scar, “without the promise of intimacy,” point to a displacement of the protagonist's unconscious fear of castration. Also, the use of the word “farce” in the above citation reinforces the notion that Brausen's marriage is nothing more than a farce; it is mere play-acting and masquerade. It is in this manner that the scar functions as a metaphor for the couple's mutilated, scarred relationship.

Brausen's obsession with Gertrudis's breast is displaced onto the fictional character (Elena-Sala) of the film script. Here is just one of several references to Elena-Sala's notably white breasts:

El torso y los pequeños pechos, inmóviles en la marcha, que la mujer mostró a Díaz Grey were excesivamente blancos; sólo en relación a ellos y a su recuerdo de leche y papel satinado resultaba chillona la corbata del médico. Muy blancos, asombrosamente blancos, y contrastando con el color del rostro y el cuello de la mujer.

(my italics, 23)

[The torso that the woman showed Díaz Grey, and the small breasts that did not move when she walked, were excessively white; only in relation to them, and their evocation of milk and glossy paper, did the doctor's tie appear gaudy. Very white, astonishingly white, and contrasting with the color of her face and throat].

(12)

The psychoanalytic connotations of the above description are transparent: the narrator's fixation on the whiteness of Elena Sala's breasts evokes the original lost object, that is to say, the maternal breast. Also, the association of Gertrudis's loss of a breast with Elena Sala's “excessively white” breasts, from the point of view of the male narrating subject, is unquestionable. The leitmotif of women's breasts functions not only to create formal unity and cohesiveness in this text, but even more importantly, it serves to underscore the unconscious undercurrents that form the basis for the constitution of the male writing subject. Some of these undercurrents include Brausen's fear of castration, his unresolved Oedipal issues, and his repressed desire.

La vida breve tells of Brausen's search for individual freedom. This quest for autonomy is inseparable from the narrator's desire to recover what he perceives to have been appropriated by his wife. It is in this way that the protagonist's longing to become an Other (Arce) and to thereby escape from his former self reveals a desire to disentangle his enmeshed ego from that of Gertrudis. In a metaphorical sense, the scar on Gertrudis's left breast signifies a boundary between Brausen and Gertrudis, between the masculine subject and the feminine Other, and in psychoanalytic terms, between the male infant and the Mother.

In the relationship between Brausen and Gertrudis there is an inversion of traditional gender roles. Gertrudis is portrayed as occupying the “masculine” position; she is dominant, assertive, and independent. It is she who first seduced Brausen and who finally makes the decision to leave him. Brausen is in the passive, dependent, “feminine” position in the marriage. It is he who suffers from feelings of abandonment and loss that are often associated with the “subordinate” female after a separation or divorce. The following passage draws attention to Brausen's dependent, “feminine,” object position with regard to his wife, who had first seduced him: “ella me había elegido, ella me había tomado” (92) [she had chosen me, she had possessed me] (66). Moreover, the narrator envies his friend Julio Stein who had had an affair with Gertrudis without having lost his independence and autonomy: “… envidiaba a Stein por haber penetrado en Gertrudis sin haber quedado prisionero” (92) [… I envied Stein for having gotten into Gertrudis without having become a prisoner] (66). From a psychoanalytic perspective, it is possible to read the loss of Gertrudis's breast in terms of the male subject's anxiety about separation from the mother. The infant is consumed by rage due to his inability to possess and control his mother. This happens, according to Lacan, during the mirror stage of development which takes place some time between six and eighteen months, when the child first discovers that the mother is a separate, autonomous being.¹⁸ Feminist psychoanalysts have pointed out how incomplete separation from the mother during infancy can result in a fixation at this early pre-oedipal stage of emotional development.¹⁹ Nancy Chodorow's feminist psychoanalytic theory about gender differentiation sheds light on Brausen's contradictory desires for oneness with and for separation from Gertrudis:

Difference is psychologically salient for men in a way that it is not for women, because of gender differences in early formative developmental processes and the particular unconscious conflicts and defenses these produce. This salience, in turn, has been transmuted into a conscious cultural preoccupation with gender difference. It has also become intertwined with and has helped to produce more general cultural notions, particularly, that individualism, separateness, and distance from others are desirable and requisite to autonomy and human fulfillment. Throughout these processes, it is women, as mothers, who become the objects apart from which separateness, difference, and autonomy are defined.

(1980: 16)

The protagonist's fear of ego engulfment by the mother (that would lead to his loss of identity as a separate male subject) is therefore cause for deep-seated anxiety, an anxiety which must be repressed. From Chodorow's feminist psychoanalytic perspective, Brausen's extreme dependence upon his wife-mother could perhaps suggest an incomplete separation and differentiation from the Mother during the pre-oedipal stage of psychosexual development.

The contours between self and other, between Brausen and Gertrudis, are not clearly defined; on the contrary, they are fuzzy and overlapping. It is this lack of clear and distinct boundaries between them which makes separation so painful for Brausen. The loss of Gertrudis's breast is experienced by Brausen, not only as an ongoing separation from the mother, but also as a loss of his own sense of self. In this regard, the scar on Gertrudis's left breast, from the perspective of the male “anti-hero,” is a signifier for the loss of security provided by a nurturing surrogate mother figure, a loss that exacerbates his own identity crisis.

Several critics have addressed the issue of the extreme dependence of the male protagonist on substitute mother-figures in La vida breve. For example, Linda Maier offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of this novel in her article “A Mirror Game: Diffraction of Identity in La vida breve.” She contends that “a thorough analysis of the salient characteristics of Onetti's male protagonist in each of his three incarnations reveals his childlike dependence on the Woman, in the generic, depersonalized sense of the word … Indeed, the woman provides the means through which her masculine counterpart demonstrates his fundamentally fixated state of development” (223).²⁰

For Brausen, Gertrudis's breasts are more than just a site of erotic pleasure; they are a symbol of maternal security and nurturing. Another Onettian scholar, Hugo Verani, has perceptively observed that the adjective “maternal” is used to refer to all four major feminine characters in this novel.²¹ Brausen's yearning for maternal security is explicit: “Mi mujer, corpulenta, maternal, con las anchas caderas que dan ganas de hundirse entre ellas, de cerrar los puños y los ojos, de juntar las rodillas con el mentón y dormirse sonriendo” (my italics, 26) [My woman, full-bodied, maternal, has wide hips that make me want to sink into them, my eyes and fists closed, my knees drawn up to my chin, and to sleep there with a smile] (14). This passage clearly reveals the male subject's regressive desire to curl up in a fetal position and to return to the safety of his wife-mother's womb.

On the one hand, Brausen wants to resurrect the past, and, in doing so, to recover the young Gertrudis with two breasts. On the other hand, he desires autonomy from her, as expressed in this telling passage in the novel's penultimate chapter: “Esto era lo que yo buscaba desde el principio, desde la muerte del hombre que vivió cinco años con Gertrudis; ser libre, ser irresponsable ante los demás, conquistarme sin esfuerzo en una verdadera soledad” (366) [This is what I was searching for from the beginning, since the death of the man who lived with Gertrudis for five years; to be free, to be irresponsible before others, and to master myself without effort in true solitude] (275).

Brausen's regressive fantasy about resurrecting the young Gertrudis is hinted at in his thwarted attempt to seduce Raquel, Gertrudis's younger sister. The main reason this attempt proves to be futile is because Brausen is as repulsed by Raquel's pregnant body as he was by Gertrudis's scarred chest: “Está tan vieja como Gertrudis; la barriga que le crece equivale al seno que le cortaron a la hermana” (282) [She's as old as Gertrudis; her growing belly is equivalent to the breast they cut from her sister] (211). This passage points to the protagonist's ambivalent feelings towards his wife, which have been transferred to her younger sister. His hostility towards Raquel, because of her reproductive capacity, seems to mask his feelings of desire. The following quote suggests an inversion of Brausen's own unconscious desire-fear of being merged with the mother, and consequently of losing his own identity as a separate being with a separate destiny: “La sensación repugnante y enemiga había estado brotanto de la panza que le habían hecho, del feto que crecía anulándola, que tendía victoriosamente a convertirla en una indistinta mujer preñada, que la condenaba a disolverse en un destino ajeno” (281) [The repugnant sensation and the enmity had issued from the belly someone had given her, from the fetus that was growing larger, negating her, that was expanding victoriously to transform her into an anonymous pregnant woman, that was condemning her to vanish into a strange destiny].²²

The representation of Gertrudis's mastectomy in La vida breve elicits several psychoanalytic interpretations. Although the reading which emphasizes the separation from the mother and that which centers around the fear of castration may at first appear contradictory, I have tried to demonstrate that these two readings are not mutually exclusive, but rather, complementary.²³

III. BRAUSEN'S “MASTERPIECE”: THE MURDER OF THE PROSTITUTE

On the same day that Gertrudis undergoes her mastectomy, a prostitute named Enriqueta Martí (Queca) moves into the vacant apartment next door to Brausen's.²⁴ Queca's lifestyle of clandestine debauchery attracts and even proves exhilarating to the sexually inhibited Brausen, referred to by his friends as “el asceta” [the ascetic]. He longs for liberation from a puritanical middle-class world of “respectability” that enslaves him. In a defiant attempt to free himself of his oppressive past, Brausen adopts a new identity as Arce, a pimp. The culmination of Brausen-Arce's “salvation” is to be attained through the premeditated murder of Queca. This crime has metafictional overtones and is directly associated with male literary practice in this text. Brausen-Arce repeatedly refers to the anticipated murder of Queca as his “masterpiece.”

Brausen's desire to kill Queca is represented in La vida breve as a displaced desire to kill Gertrudis and to consequently bury his past. The displacement of Brausen's ambivalent feelings towards Gertrudis onto Queca is suggested when, upon entering Enriqueta's flat for the first time, Brausen imagines her bed to be an extension of his own matrimonial bed: “La gran cama, igual a la mía, colocada como una prolongación de la cama en que estaba durmiendo Gertrudis” (70) [The big bed, the same as mine, placed like an extension of the bed in which Gertrudis was sleeping] (48). Later in the novel, the narrator reiterates the importance of the continuity of the two beds, separated only by a slender wall: “Me disolvía para permitir el nacimiento de Arce. Sudando en ambas camas, me despedía del hombre prudente, empeñado en construirse un rostro por medio de las limitaciones que le arrimaban los demás” (my italics, 245) [I was dissolving myself in order to permit Arce's birth. Sweating in both beds, I was saying good-by to the prudent, responsible man putting up an appearance based on limitations that others had placed on him] (185). This passage clearly suggests that subjectivity is socially constucted, and that one's identity is shaped by the limits, norms and expectations established by one's particular culture. Brausen is represented as a subject-in-process whose life is in a state of transition. The fact that he is seeking himself in both his own matrimonial bed and in a prostitute's bed points to the splitting of his sexual self into legitimate and illegitimate, middle-class and subaltern, responsible and irresponsible, prudent and reckless parts. This polarization of the self, and particularly, the struggle between these two opposing tendencies define Juan María Brausen's subjectivity.

The feminine icon of the prostitute is represented in La vida breve as an object of male desire and of male repulsion, as both an erotic object and as a denigrated object. Enriqueta Martí is portrayed as a dehumanized victim and as a “socially acceptable” scapegoat in a phallocentric social order. Her objectified body is a public site where the male characters are allowed to deposit their pent up rage, displaced anger, and hostility towards women.²⁵ From Brausen's perspective, a perspective that is representative of the double standard in patriarchal societies, the prostitute is a “fallen woman,” and therefore deserves to be punished, abused, and exploited. As Brausen himself confesses: “… ignoraba cómo perder el respeto a una prostituta” (102) [… he was unable to lose respect for a whore] (74).

The body of the whore is portrayed as a site of intersection between class anxiety and gender anxiety. The middle-class male and the marginal female prostitute form part of the same system of economic exploitation and sexual abuse. The act of buying and selling sex for money makes the prostitution in some way representative of commodity capitalism. Queca is a signifier of Otherness, of subalternity, and of abjection; her public, commodified body is exploited by males of different social classes. For Brausen, she embodies the sordid underworld that is populated by pimps, prostitutes, criminals, and other marginal characters.

Brausen-Arce's desire to become a criminal through his premeditated murder of Queca needs to be situated within the “Western” literary context of the postwar period. In her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Julia Kristeva sheds light on a pervasive fascination with evil and abjection in much contemporary fiction. Against Romantic ideas of art, beauty, and creation for their own sake, she argues that literature about abjection “acknowledges the impossibility of Religion, Morality, and Law—their power play, their necessary and absurd seeming. Like perversion, it takes advantage of them, and makes sport of them … The writer, fascinated by the abject, imagines its logic, projects himself into it, and as a consequence perverts language—style and content … One might thus say that with such a literature there takes place a crossing over of the dichotomous categories of Pure and Impure, Prohibition and Sin, Morality and Immorality” (16).

This violation of limits is exemplified in Brausen's split, decentered subjectivity. He is simultaneously the Puritan Brausen, “el símbolo bípedo de un puritanismo barato hecho de negativas—no al alcohol, no al tabaco, un no equivalente para las mujeres” (67) [the biped symbol of a cheap puritanism, made up of refusals—no to alcohol, no to tobacco, an equivalent no to women] (45) and the criminal Arce—the pimp and potential murderer. These two opposite persons constitute the narrator's internal struggle, a struggle that is represented spatially in the text by his back and forth movement between the two apartments, and more specifically between the two beds. Brausen transformation into the abject Other who resides within his divided, schizoid consciousness is made possible through his physical abuse of Queca. In this case, exploiting the abject, makes the protagonist feel as though he were one with the abject, and thereby has come to transcend his class identity.

It is in this sense that Kristeva speaks of contemporary narrative as a “sublimation of abjection”; she posits that it becomes a “substitute for the role formerly played by the sacred, at the limits of social and subjective identity” (26), adding, “[B]ut we are dealing here with a sublimation without consecration. Forfeited” (26).²⁶ Indeed, Brausen's metamorphosis into Arce through his “masterpiece” is a supreme example of a forfeited, “sublimation without consecration.”

In La vida breve the sordid world of abjection is portrayed as more authentic than the consumer-oriented world that characterizes the Uruguayan middle class.²⁷ In Onetti's fiction, “negative values” such as crime, drunkeness, sadism, etc. are usually represented as subversive of the hegemonic discourse of the established order; marginality, abjection and Otherness are viewed as positive in opposition to Puritanism, utilitarianism, and the Protestant work ethic.²⁸ However, it is necessary to point out that murdering women is not an effective or moral way of obtaining authenticity. This assumption is based on male biases which connect women, especially wives and mothers, with middle-class orthodoxy.

Here Brausen's hatred of the puritanical values that define him as belonging to a particular social class, and his self-loathing due to his lack of passion, are revealed:

Asceta, como se burla Stein, por la imposibilidad de apasionarme y no por el aceptado absurdo de una convicción eventualmente mutilada. Este, yo en el taxímetro, inexistente, mera encarnación de la idea Juan María Brausen …

(67)²⁹

[Ascetic, as Stein says, because of my incapacity for passion and not because of the absurd belief in a conviction that in time becomes mutilated. This person, me, in the taxicab, nonexistent, a mere incarnation of the idea of Juan María Brausen.]

(45)

The protagonist of La vida breve is depicted as a schizoid Subject, divided into his good and bad selves. Arce represents, in Freudian terms, the repressed id—the instinctual, dark side of his psyche, that longs to release its erotic (Eros) and destructive (Thanatos) impulses.³⁰ It is through Brausen's contact with Queca that his hitherto repressed instincts are released, enabling his Other self, Arce, to emerge. The narrator's initial sexual awakening turns into a sadistic desire to kill his victim Queca. At first, he feels sexually aroused by this woman and then, he gradually takes more and more pleasure in the abusive treatment of her.

The discrepancy between Brausen's mental images or fantasies about the prostitute and the flesh-and-blood woman is a source of male anxiety:

Yo fracasaba cada vez que me proponía mezclarla con todo lo que había escuchado a través de la pared. ‘Esta boca hizo y dijo, esos ojos miraron, las manos tocaron’ … Y de la imposibilidad de confundir a la mujer de carne y hueso con la imagen formada por las voces y los ruidos, de la imposibilidad de conseguir la excitación que necesitaba extraer de ella, surgía hasta invadirme un creciente rencor, el deseo de vengar en ella y de una sola vez todos los agravios que me era posible recordar.

(my italics, 102)

[I failed each time that I tried to relate her now, mixing it up with what I had heard through the wall. ‘This mouth did and said, those eyes watched, her hands touched’ … And from the impossibility of separating the woman of flesh and bone from the image formed by voices and sounds, from the impossibility of getting the excitement that I needed from her, a growing rancor swelled up until it overwhelmed me, a desire for revenge on her and at the same time on all of the insults I was able to remember.]

(74)

When Queca's actions fail to correspond to Brausen-Arce's needs, as represented in his male-centered fantasies, the protagonist is filled with uncontrollable rage. This dehumanized prostitute bears the brunt of a variety of indignities and work frustrations that have been inflicted upon Brausen as well as specifically sexual anxieties. He tries to destroy Queca's freedom through physical force and violence.³¹ The emasculated Brausen-Arce's need for total domination and control over the prostitute in order to recover his lost sense of virility is made visible in his desire for revenge. His feelings of exploitation on the job and of “feminization” with regard to his wife Gertrudis are displaced onto his relationship with Queca. The narrator hopes to regain his masculine subject position through a relation of domination with the prostitute. Identifying with his victim, Brausen-Arce also attempts to destroy that which he hates within himself. As Jessica Benjamin has observed, in sadomasochistic relationships there is a blurring of the boundaries between the self and the other. In order for the sadist to get pleasure from inflicting pain, he must have also experienced pain.³²

The protagonist's violence towards his female victim is portrayed in the novel from a misogynous point of view. That is to say, the reader is supposed to agree with the narrator's point of view, rather than to question the abusive exploitation of Queca and her eventual obliteration. Brausen-Arce blames Queca for his own anxiety and frustration: “aceptaba que la falla estaba en la Queca y que era deliberada” (236) [I accepted that the fault was in Queca and that it was deliberate] (178). The murder of the prostitute is seen by Brausen as his only means of liberation and purification. The text seems to celebrate sadistic violence towards a “fallen woman” as a means of masculine self-assertion in a way that is offensive and unsettling. It is as though she deserved to die because of her “profession.” This sadomasochistic subject describes his need, not only to inflict pain upon this “whore,” but also, to be insulted by her:

… la obligaba a emborracharse y a ofenderme, la golpeaba por sorpresa, siempre después de una frase amistosa o de una caricia, cada vez con más gozo, repitiendo con paciencia de aprendiz ángulos y velocidades, sofocando vigorosamente la tentación de la obra maestra, resistiéndome a la promesa de contento definitivo e invariable que me anticipaba la idea de matarla y verla muerta.

(236, italics are mine)

[… I forced her to get drunk and to offend me, I struck out at her without warning, always after a friendly sentence or caress, each time enjoying it more, repeating angles and speeds with the patience of an apprentice, vigorously repressing the temptation of the masterpiece, resisting the promise of the final immutable contentment with which I anticipated killing her and seeing her dead.]

(178)

The literary overtones and metafictional language of the just cited passage are transparent. The protagonist confesses that he gets intense pleasure from repeatedly beating Queca and from fantasizing about “the masterpiece,” that is to say, about the premeditated, cold-blooded murder of his victim. From Brausen-Arce's point of view Queca is not posited as a subject, but rather, as an abstract contruct of Woman as Other. She is the abject object of this male narrating subject's sadomasochistic desire. His plan to murder her—“la obra maestra”—is represented in this text as a symbolic, artistic act. This notion is reinforced by the use of abstract language such as “the promise of contentment” and “the idea of killing her.”

The figure of Woman as a prostitute also functions as an Object of fascination from the vantage point of the male desiring subject. The protagonist repeatedly refers to the atmosphere in Enriqueta's apartment as “the climate of a brief life” (71). Her flat is depicted as removed from reality, as a literary or fictional space:

Empecé a moverme sobre el piso encerrado, sin ruido ni inquietud, sintiendo el contacto con una pequeña alegría a cada lento paso. Calmándome y excitándome cada vez que mis pies tocaban el suelo; creyendo avanzar en el clima de una vida breve en la que el tiempo no podía bastar para comprometerme, arrepentirme o envejecer.

(70-71)

[I began to move around the waxed floor, without noise or anxiety, feeling contact with a small happiness at each slow step. I was calm and excited each time my foot touched the floor, believing that I was moving into the atmosphere of a brief life in which there was not enough time to become involved, to repent, or to age.]

(48)

It is a place which, like fiction, is not subject to the same laws of time and space governing the empirical world; it remains unaffected by the corrosive forces of Time. For Brausen, the prostitute's flat ironically represents an eternal present that offers him the possibility of rebirth and regeneration:

Yo avanzaba buscando la armonía perdida, evocaba el antiguo ordenamiento, la atmósfera de eterno presente donde era posible abandonarse, olvidar las viejas leyes, no envejecer.

(234)

[I kept on searching for the lost harmony, evoking the old order, the atmosphere of eternal present where it was possible to lose one's self, to forget the old laws, to not age.]

(177)

Queca's apartment represents an intersection and an overlapping of the boundaries between imagination and actual experience. It is the real place where Brausen-Arce enacts his fantasies, thereby associating it with theatricality and representation. It is the scenario where the protagonist acts out his personal drama of destruction and rebirth. Like the domains of carnival and fantasy/fiction, Queca's apartment is a space that is linked to the farcical, to disguised identity, and to play-acting. On the other hand, a prostitute is really murdered! This brutal act of violence interrupts the playfulness and the literariness of the text, reminding the reader of the horrific hate crimes committed against women that are a daily occurrence in patriarchal societies.

Also, this crime highlights the notions that in Onetti's metafictional literary universe male sadistic desire is inseparable from narrative activity, and that male subjectivity is grounded on the complete and total denial of feminine subjectivity. We are reminded of de Lauretis's theory about the inscription of male desire in narrative. This feminist theorist has argued that sadistic desire propels narration forward and that, in her words, “sadism demands a story” and “story demands sadism.” Thus, all narrative is structurally oppressive for women, who occupy the position of the feminine obstacle that is to be overcome by the male “hero.”

The most glaring illustration of Arce's reduction of the prostitute's corpse to a pure signifier of feminine Death is found in his contemplation of her recently strangled corpse: “… la Queca estaría más poderosa que los vivos protegiéndome: una pierna doblada, la otra recta, la boca negra, dos curvas húmedas en las pestañas; muerta, definitiva, en una solidez negada a los vivos en que me era posible apoyarme” (320) [… Queca, more powerful than the living, would be protecting me: one leg doubled under, the other extended, the black mouth, two moist curves on the eyelashes; dead, definitive, with a solidity denied to the living and on which I could rely] (240-241). Her corpse becomes the site of the male character's self-articulation and triumph over mortality and over femininity. The ironic representation of the dead prostitute as someone who will “protect” Brausen brings to mind the intercessory role of Catholic saints. This is a prime example of Onetti's parody of religious concepts within a literary work whose referent is a secular world abandoned by God. According to Brausen-Arce, the death of the female prostitute is cause for celebration since it symbolizes the death of his former self, and consequently, his “liberation” from Gertrudis. The narrator's perverse fascination with Queca's corpse betrays his necrophilia.³³ For example, when Arce contemplates the prostitute's lifeless cadaver, he is overcome by a sense of exaltation: “Muerta y de regreso de la muerte, dura y fría como una verdad prematura, absteniéndose de vociferar sus experiencias, sus fracasos, los tesoros conquistados” (298) [Dead and having returned from death, hard and cold as a premature truth, abstaining from voicing her experiences, her failures, the conquered treasures] (224).

Another example of necrophilia can be found in the narrative of the film script. After Elena Sala commits suicide, Díaz Grey discovers her corpse and responds with almost exactly the same words as Brausen did upon discovering Queca's dead body: “Muerta y de regreso de la muerte, dura y fría como una verdad prematura, absteniéndose de vociferar sus experiencias, sus derrotas, el botín conquistado” (273) [Dead and having returned from death, hard and cold as a premature truth, abstaining from voicing her experiences, her defeat, the conquered booty] (205). This use of repetition, with only minor variations such as the use of the word “derrotas” [defeats] for “fracasos” [failures] and “botín” [booty] instead of “tesoros” [treasures] serves several purposes in this text. First, the association of the death of Queca with that of Elena Sala is stressed; secondly, it calls attention to the literary, aesthetic quality of the female corpse seen from the vantage point of the male protagonist. And finally, it emphasizes the necrophilia inherent in the narrative perspective. Only a dead woman “who abstains from voicing her experiences” can be tolerated. If having a voice is the hallmark of subjectivity, then death is the supreme example of the erasure of subjectivity.

Upon entering Queca's apartment, ready to carry out the “perfect crime” that will bring about his “salvation,” the narrator discovers the prostitute's recently strangled corpse. The culprit of this crime is Ernesto—Queca's former lover who, in the first part of the novel, violently attacked Brausen and threw him out of her apartment. Queca, who was once an object of male rivalry between Brausen and Ernesto, is now the object of their complicity. Her death enables these two male characters to join together in a homosocial bond of solidarity, and spurs their flight to “freedom” in the imaginary world of Santa María. Thus, freedom is freedom from women in the ending of this novel. Identifying strongly with the criminal, whom he now considers an accomplice rather than a threat, Brausen-Arce confesses: “… a la vez, otro y parte mía, una acción mía” (292) [… simultaneously, separate and part of me, an action of mine (219)]. The protagonist explains to his double, Ernesto, the reason why he is eager to help him to escape from Buenos Aires to Santa María: “Quise ayudarte porque me parecía injusto que te pudrieras en la cárcel por una cosa que yo mismo hubiera hecho, que me parecía bien hacer” (353) [I wanted to help you because it seemed to me unjust that you could go to jail for something that I myself would have done, and that seemed to me good to do] (266). This passage provides a good example of men bonding over the erasure of feminine Otherness, and suggests, perhaps, that two men are the best kind of couple. The misogyny of this quotation is explicit and thus requires no further comment.

The conclusion that can be drawn from my analysis of La vida breve is that male freedom and male narrativity are contingent upon the total and absolute silencing of Woman in this text. Queca's death is the cornerstone upon which Brausen's identity as a male narrating subject (as Díaz Grey) is constructed. In a novel that is about the substitution of identities and that plays with difference, the category of gender difference remains unsettled and fixed. Women must be eliminated so that men can be free.

Notes

1. In the words of Hugo Verani, “La vida breve es la novela que inicia el periodo de la plena madurez creadora de Onetti, una nueva apertura en las letras hispanoamericanas, culminación y síntesis de las contribuciones verdaderamente significativas de su arte narrativo” (1981: 94) [A Brief Life is the novel that marks the beginning of the period of creative maturity in Onetti's work, a new development in Hispanic American literature, a culmination and synthesis of the truly significant contributions of his narrative art].

2. When asked about the origin of Santa María, Onetti responded by offering this biographical data: “Santa María, sí, podría intentar explicar, sin estar seguro de decir la verdad; que surgió justamente cuando por el gobierno peronista yo no podía venir a Montevideo. Entonces me busqué una ciudad imparcial, digamos, a la que bauticé Santa María y que tiene mucho parecido—geográfico, físico—con la ciudad de Paraná, en Entre Ríos … No olvidemos también que Entre Ríos fue artiguista, ¿no? pertenecía a la confederación de Artigas, junto con Corrientes y no recuerdo con qué otras provincias contábamos en aquel tiempo” (quoted by Curiel, 215-16) [Santa María, yes, I could try to explain, without being certain if I am telling the truth; it emerged during the Peronist period when I couldn't return to Montevideo. Then I looked for an impartial city, the one that I baptized with the name of Santa María and that is very similar—geographically and physically—to the city of Paraná, in Entre Ríos … let's not forget that Entre Ríos was Artiguist; wasn't it? It belonged to the Confederation of Artigas, along with Corrientes and I don't recall what other provinces belonged at that time].

3. Josefina Ludmer's book, Onetti: Los procesos de construcción del relato (1977), offers a rigorous structuralist analysis of the novel, showing how fiction in La vida breve is a representative duplication of elements of reality which have been displaced and inverted. The Argentine critic presents a lucid and insightful account of the parallel motifs—carnival, the visit, the love triangle, the death of the woman, and the final escape from the police—that appear in both the levels of fantasy and of reality in the narrative. She also shows how many apparently insignificant details are carefully worked through in the different storylines that correspond to the realms of the imaginary and to that of lived experience. These details often reappear disguised, transformed, or inverted. Ludmer convincingly argues that the displacement of the subject is a crucial feature in La vida breve.

4. Lacan rejects the notion of an autonomous, fixed Subject; instead, he posits a decentered, split subject. According to Benvenuto, “The subject is no longer, as in traditional psychology, a unified collection of thoughts and feelings, but is ‘decentered,’ marked by an essential split.” In Lacan, there are innumerable references to this new concept of the subject—described as ‘lacking,’ ‘alienated,’ ‘fading,’ ‘split,’ possessed of an ‘empty center,’ etc. (18). In his article “The Mirror Stage” (1936), that reappeared in a revised version in the Ecrits (1966), Lacan suggests that during the period of between six and eighteen months the infant first dicovers his image in the mirror. At this moment, it becomes aware of a gap between the ego and the image of itself. Thus, the mirror stage exemplifies the primary splitting of the self. Lacan's famous claim that the self is the Other has its origin in the mirror image. Jane Gallop asserts that “the mirror stage is a turning point. After it, the subject's relation to himself is always mediated through a totalizing image that has come from the outside” (96).

5. The Derridean and post-structuralist concepts of decentered subjectivity and of a decentered universe in which inherited notions of metaphysics such as Being, Truth, and God are meaningless and everything is reduced to textuality yield interesting new insights into our understanding of this text. Onetti's fictional world is depicted as a fallen, lapsed world that has been abandoned by God. The necessary point of departure for the analysis of the subject in this novel is the recognition that there are no absolute, transcendental values in Onetti's universe. An interesting and insightful reading of the novel is provided by Stephanie Merrim in her article “La vida breve o la nostalgia de los orígenes.” She employs a deconstructionist approach that is based on Derrida's well-known essay “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Merrim warns the reader of her own post-structuralist strategy: “Empezamos con una pequeña advertencia: éste es un estudio tramposo, que se hace para luego deshacerse. Así que la primera parte no es sino una ‘vida breve’” (565) [Let's begin with a small warning: this is a tricky study, that is constructed to then deconstruct itself. Therefore the first part is merely a “brief life”]. In the first part of her article she underscores the decentering of the subject and the free play of substitutions in La vida breve—“Disfraz, desplazamiento, la novela gira en torno a un juego libre de subtituciones hasta cierto punto metafóricas; situaciones, según Brausen, ‘que se repetían y modificaban sin causa’” (567) [Disguise, displacement, the novel revolves around a free play of substitutions that is, to a certain point, metaphoric; situations, according to Brausen, that repeat themselves and are modified for no reason]. Merrim, as part of her strategy, then discredits her previous claims by showing how the decentering in the novel functions, above all, to create a new center in the realm of fiction. I shall use her article as a springboard for my analysis of the affirmative decentering of the Subject, and of the social-historical, philosophical, and textual decentering in the novel.

6. Jaime Concha stresses the dialectical relationship between reality and fantasy in this novel. He explains: “Lo fundamental en esta novela es el proceso singular que se instaura entre la realidad y la fantasía, al alimentar Brausen sus fantasmas con la transformación paulatina de su ser. Las figuras ficticias de su primitivo guión cinematográfico se van delineando, van adquiriendo un perfil autónomo a medida que progresa la desidentificación de Brausen, a medida que se convierte más y más en el Arce de la Queca” (“Una fantasía sedentaria” 56) [That which is fundamental in this novel is the singular process that is established between reality and fantasy, as Brausen feeds his phantoms with the gradual transformation of his being. The fictional figures of his original film script are outlined, and acquire an autonomous profile as Brausen's identification progresses, as he converts more and more into Queca's Arce].

7. This important point—that is, the economic base or infrastructure that allows Brausen to escape into the private, inner world of his daydreams—was first observed by Jaime Concha.

8. Although more implicitly than explicitly, La vida breve denounces dependent capitalism and the marginalization of the artist in modern Latin American societies. For example, Brausen complains: “… el arte está al servicio de la propaganda. Música para la radio; dibujos, pinturas para los avisos, los affiches; literatura para los textos, los booklets. ¿Eh? En Paris y en New York ya se ha hecho propaganda con versos de poetas de primera línea” (200) [… art is at the service of propaganda. Music for the radio, drawings and paintings for advertisements and posters; literature for booklets. Right? In Paris and in New York propaganda has already been made with the verses of first-rate poets].

9. La vida breve represents a self-conscious affirmation of a writer's absolute liberty to create an imaginary universe and to seek refuge in the realm of fiction. In this sense, it represents a continuation of the Romantic tradition—and in particular, an adherence to the basic premise that imagination, creativity, and freedom are the supreme values espoused by the “Artist.” Nevertheless, the novel treats the theme of artistic creation and the worn-out metaphor of the writer as God in a parodic manner, and is self-reflexive and metafictional.

10. Ludmer's exhaustive study of the novel's elaborate structure supports Yuri Lotman's assertion that “the reality of the text is created by its systemic relationships, by its meaningful antithesis, that is, by what enters into the structure of the work” (11). She examines in great detail the process of interaction between reality and fiction in the novel. For an ingenious investigation of the parallel motifs in both realms, in particular, of the arrival, the visit, the formation of the pair, the formation of the triangle, the trip, the death of the woman, carnival, and the police chase which all occur in both reality (Brausen-Arce in Buenos Aires) and in fiction (Díaz Grey in Santa María), see pages 44-60.

11. La vida breve, like El pozo, demonstrates that the interaction between the imaginary and the real forms a unique and complete psychological system; rather than pure evasion, the world of fantasy is inseparable and mutually dependent upon the external world of social reality. In the words of Emir Rodríguez Monegal, Santa María and Díaz Grey are “una transparente estilización de la realidad que oprime a Brausen” (89) [a transparent stylization of the reality that oppresses Brausen].

12. Carnival is deeply rooted in popular, folk culture; and as pointed out by Mikhail Bakhtin in his seminal study Rabelais and his World, carnival represents a liberation from the social constraints imposed by the established order. For Bakhtin, the carnivalesque signifies an inversion of hierarchy and a critique of ‘high culture’: “As opposed to the official feast, one might say that carnival celebrates temporary liberation from the prevailing truth of the established order; it marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change, and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and complete” (109).

13. According to Omar Prego and María Angélica Petit, “El carnaval como posibilidad de fuga equivale aquí a la transformación de Brausen en Arce, que al fin y al cabo es una máscara, y a la creación de la dimensión imaginaria, Santa María” (70) [Here carnival as a possibility of escape is equivalent to the transformation of Brausen into Arce, that in the end is a mask, and the creation of the imaginary dimension, Santa María].

14. For Derrida, the decentering of the subject is closely associated with his critique of the metaphysics of presence. In “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”, Derrida explains what he calls a ‘rupture’ or a crisis in the history of metaphysics: “This was the moment when language invaded the universal problematic, the moment when, in the absence of a center or origin, everything became discourse—provided we can agree on this word—that is to say, a system in which the central signified, the original transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of differences. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely” (249).

15. In this respect, the Derridean and post-structuralist claims that in a decentered universe everything is reduced to textuality and to a play of signifiers can be applied to La vida breve. As the protagonist asserts: “La palabra todo lo puede” (311) [The word can do it all] (235).

16. Although Uruguay enjoyed a high standard of living due to the accelerated industrialization and import substitution during the first part of the 1950's made possible by increased revenues from the export of beef, the country's dependence on agricultural exports contributed to its economic crisis that began in the mid-fifties. As Carlos Rama has indicated in his book Uruguay en crisis: “La causa determinante más inmediata de la crisis uruguaya ha sido la crisis económica … El cierre del mercado estadunidense para la lana uruguaya, la clausura de las fábricas frigoríficas norteamericanas en Montevideo, la inflación, la desvaloración de la moneda nacional, etc., han afectado el alto nivel de vida de las clases medias rurales y urbanas y llevado a la desocupación casi permanente a vastos sectores de trabajadores” (63-64) [The most immediate determinant cause of the Uruguayan crisis has been the economic crisis … The closure of North American refrigerator factories in Montevideo, inflation, the devaluation of the national currency, etc., have affected the high standard of living of the rural and urban middle classes and led to the almost permanent unemployment of vast sectors of the working class].

17. In his lucid commentary on Lacan's article, “The Subversion of the Subject” (1960), Bice Benvenuto writes, “The subject is seen as marked by castration and lack from birth. Language represents the subject, but in so far as it represents what is prohibited, the subject is confronted by the unconscious, which is striving to express what is really forbidden to the speaking subject—jouissance and death. This inevitably creates tensions and splits in the subject, who continues to be decentered, lacking fading. On the one hand, he tries to speak, and on the other he is faced by the impossibility of doing so … out of these tensions the subject comes into being” (182).

18. Jessica Benjamin asserts that “In most Western families the individual acquires a self, or a sense of identity, against the background of such an individual maternal presence. This process of acquiring a self is referred to as differentiation. Differentiation means developing the ability to see ourselves and others as independent and distinct beings” (1983: 281).

19. In addition to psychological explanations for the extreme male dependency of Onetti's male characters on a wife who functions as a surrogate mother, it is important to consider cultural and social factors that contribute to this phenomenon. At the time of the publication of La vida breve, forty years ago, very few women participated in the public domain outside of the home. In patriarchal, traditional Latin American marriages, the wife's “duties” include taking care of her husband's practical needs: she is expected to buy his food, cook his meals, pay the bills, keep the house clean, and buy, wash, and iron his clothes. The husband is often completely dependent (just like a small, helpless child) upon his wife-mother for his basic survival. The wife, in turn, is economically dependent upon her husband. To a great extent, the crisis in Brausen's and Gertrudis' marriage is representative of a more general crisis in traditional gender relations in a society that is gradually changing, as women are gaining more freedom and economic independence outside of the home.

20. I agree with Maier's assertion about Brausen's emotional fixation at an early stage of psychosexual development. However, in my opinion, Maier doesn't substantiate her claims with sufficient textual evidence; and as sometimes happens with psychoanalytic readings of literary texts, she highlights unconscious desires and hidden meanings, while failing to take into account many significant formal aspects, and completely ignores the historical context. In spite of this limitation, Maier's article provides a significant contribution to Onettian scholarship given that it is the first Lacanian reading of La vida breve.

21. Hugo Verani writes that “la regresión más extrema al pasado queda implícita en la caracterización que de las figuras femeninas hacen Brausen, Díaz Grey, Arce, y hasta Stein, los cuatro subrayan la necesidad de un refugio, simbolizado por el mito originario (‘maternal’ es el adjetivo que comparten las mujeres que acompañan a los cuatro personajes mencionados) …” (1981: 110) [The most extreme regression is found in the characterization of the feminine figures by Brausen, Díaz Grey, Arce, and even Stein, all four of them underline their need for a refuge, symbolized by the original myth (“maternal” is the adjective that the four mentioned women characters share].

22. In Onetti's fiction, pregnancy is described in negative terms, reinforcing the misogyny which permeates his entire corpus. Pregnancy not only represents a deformation of the female body from the perspective of the male characters who are terrified by women's reproductive capacity, but it is also symbolic of the loss of innocence and purity of the pre-puberty stage of development. The reader may recall the ending of El astillero (1961).

23. Although the former refers to the pre-oedipal stage of psychosexual development and the later corresponds to the oedipal conflict, unresolved issues from different stages (such as incomplete separation from the mother and fear of castration) can coexist simultaneously. The boundaries between these different stages of psychosexual formation are not rigid; on the contrary, they are frequently overlapping. It is common for there to be a permanence of some aspects of one stage that carry over into the next.

24. Josefina Ludmer suggests that the loss of the breast is compensated for by the filling in of the empty space of the apartment next door. She writes: “Una vez más: es amputado un pecho en el cuerpo de la mujer que vive con el que enuncia (a su lado: Gertrudis es su esposa); ese mismo día el departamento de al lado, contiguo e idéntico al que habitan, deja de estar vacío, se ocupa. De dos pechos iguales, uno al lado del otro, se vacía uno; de dos departamentos iguales, uno al lado del otro, se ocupa el que estaba hasta entonces, vacío” (1977: 20) [Once again; a breast is amputated on the body of the woman who lives with he who enunciates (at his side, Gertrudis is his wife); that same day the apartment next door, contiguous and identical to the one they live in, stops being empty, it is occupied. Of two exact breasts, one next to the other, one is removed; of two like apartments, one next to the other, the one that was until now empty is occupied].

25. In their book, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression, Peter Stallybrass and Allon White discuss the significance of the prostitute as Other in middle-class, male fantasy. The whore has usually been depicted by the bourgeois male as a contradictory figure—as an object of desire and of repulsion. The authors cite Baudelaire as a case in point. They argue that “Points of antagonism, overlap, and intersection between the high and the low, the classical and its ‘Other’, provide some of the richest and most powerful symbolic dissonances in the culture. In mapping some of these spaces we illuminate the discursive sites where social classification and psychological processes are generated as conflictual complexes” (25).

26. Kristeva's valuable insights regarding the pessimism of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit (1934) help to elucidate important aspects of Onetti's pessimism. She writes, for example, that “The site of Céline's scription is always that fascinating crest of decomposition-composition, suffering-music, abomination-ecstasy” (153). Kristeva argues that Céline will become “the apogee of that moral, political, stylistic revulsion that brands our time. A time that seems to have, for a century now, gone into unending labor pains” (23).

27. Sartre's study of Jean Genet's choice of criminality as a form of resistance to bourgeois ethics is also useful for understanding Onetti's ethos as depicted in his literary production. Sartre has argued in Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, Genet's choice to become a criminal is interpreted as a “vocation” and even as a means of “salvation”. He refers to this choice of evil as “an ethical imperative of revolt” against the privileged classes which oppress him (55). By choosing failure, according to Sartre, Genet is able to transform defeat into victory: “He chooses evil because he wants to regain his autonomy. He is a thief who wanted to invent the willing of Evil for evil's sake … evil becomes a means and it is freedom which becomes an end” (160). Sartre goes on to say that “extreme Evil is modeled on Sovereign Good. It will be defined, like Good, by the austere purity of the intention” (162) … “On the imaginary level where Genet made himself the cause of himself, he becomes the cause of his death: to create oneself and to kill oneself come to the same thing. Existence is no longer anything but an interminable death-agony which has been willed. And each crime will have value not so much for the evil it brings to the universe as for its being a willed repetition of the original death” (167). Although I am basically arguing against these Sartrean ideas about choice and about “evil acts being defined through the purity of intention,” nevertheless, I find them illuminating with respect to Onetti's characters' fascination with evil and their obsessive desire to escape from bourgeois ethics.

28. Simone de Beauvoir vindicates permissive Sadean sexual politics as a form of resistance to repressive bourgeois morality in her essay, Must We Burn Sade? This book illuminates some important aspects of existentialist ethos that can help us to understand the axiological inversion represented in this novel. De Beauvoir asserts that Sade's cruelty is complex: “he merges vengeance and transgression and transforms the latter into glory” (41). Murder becomes an act of self-assertion, whose abstract significance is “the demand for unrestrained and fearless freedom” (41). De Beauvoir insists that one of the important moral questions raised by the life and work of Marquis de Sade is: “How can citizens be moral in an immoral state?” (132). She summarizes Sade's ethic in the following statement: “For Sade, too, it is a question of regaining authenticity by an individual decision … Sade must be given a place in the great family of those who want to cut through ‘the banality of everyday life’ to a truth which is immanent in this world. Within this framework, crime becomes a duty: ‘In a criminal society one must be a criminal.’” (25). De Beauvoir fails to address the issue of gender: many of the crimes of the male existentialist protagonists are committed against women, making her ideas about the link between crime and authenticity problematic because of the celebration of the victimization of women.

29. Brausen's disdain towards the middle class recalls Eladio Linacero's attitudes, that he expresses explicitly in El pozo. Linacero writes in his memoirs: “Pero hay en todo el mundo gente que compone tal vez la capa más numerosa de las sociedades. Se les llama ‘clase media’, ‘pequeña burguesia’. Todos los vicios de que pueden despojarse las demás clases son recogidos por ella. No hay nada más despreciable, más inútil” (50) [All over the world there are people who comprise, perhaps the largest group in these societies. They are called the “middle class”, the “petty bourgeoisie”. All of the vices that can be relinquished by the other classes are picked up by them. There is nothing more contemptible, more useless].

30. For a discussion of the nexus between desire and the death wish in La vida breve, see Juan Manuel Molina's La dialéctica de la identidad en la obra de Juan Carlos Onetti (Frankfurt: Verlag Peter Lang, 1982), especially pp. 142-49.

31. Like Sartre's description of the sadist in Being and Nothingness, Arce seeks self-affirmation in the humiliation of his victim. The French philosopher stresses that the sadist “enjoys the possession of the Other's flesh” (518) … “He wants non-reciprocity and to make the Other's consciousness present in pain” (520) … “The sadist treats the Other as an instrument in order to make the Other's flesh appear and to thus appropriate the Other's freedom by means of violence and pain” (522).

32. Likewise, the masochist identifies with her tormentor. Her pleasure comes from a desire to lose herself completely, and to merge with her victimizer. See Benjamin's The Bonds of Love, especially pp. 51-84.

33. Sexual perversions abound in Onetti's fiction. Robert Stoller's book Perversion—The Erotic Form of Hatred (1975) sheds light on the link between gender identity and perversion in Onetti. He explicitly states: “I have recently found myself believing that perversion arises as a way of coping with threats to one's gender identity, that is, one's sense of masculinity and femininity, for that is the case in the patients I treat” (xii).