Fate. Jorge Consiglio

      

      ‘Employing a language that is sharp, concise and visceral, [Consiglio shows] his talent as a natural storyteller, a social chronicler, and as a poet of some refinement.’

      Morning Star

      ‘His stories are told with dispassionate realism while being varnished with a surrealist gloss, creating his own in-between style (…). Poetic turns reminiscent of Pablo Neruda erupt within the narrative.’

      Culture Trip

      ‘[Consiglio] carves out a singular space by focusing on characters who do not quite have a place of their own.’

      Full Stop

      ‘Everyone should write with fury. Everyone should write like Jorge Consiglio.’

      Ricardo Piglia

      ‘Consiglio is a robust writer, a writer who deeply interests me.’

      Beatriz Sarlo

      ‘Fate is a book of beautiful human intensity.’

      Flavia Pitella.

      ‘There is something indescribable in the meticulousness of the patience and beauty that Consiglio brings into play in his writing. Something impossible to put into words and which, therefore, can only be revealed in the fervour of enthusiasm.’

      Eugenia Almeida

      ‘Fate deals with all those things that don’t last, the contrast between the permanence of objects and the things that vanish: a glance from a train, casual sex in a hotel, that word you wanted to say but couldn’t, a musical note; everything that won’t remain in a battle against that which will survive us: the city, the streets, the empty glass of beer.’

      Gabriela Borrelli

      ‘Fate narrates what it’s like to meet someone and to build something from that encounter; what it’s like to leave somebody, to be left by someone and confirm the end of love. (…) Offering a crushing premise – “There are things that start by chance but never come to an end” – Fate narrates the way in which things happen and how each of us experiences that.’

      Martín Kohan

      fate

      Jorge Consiglio

      Fate

      Translated by

      Carolina Orloff & Fionn Petch

      Author's Note

      The key question is: fate or chance? Life presents itself as a series of events, and we will never know if we are fulfilling a pre-established path or if fortuitousness – the accidental in the strictest sense of the word – is the decisive factor. When tragedy strikes, there is always someone who is spared by some tiny detail. As a result, triviality takes on monumental dimensions. A few years ago, there was an accident in the main railway station in Buenos Aires: the brakes failed on a suburban train and fifty-one people died. I heard the account of a woman who missed the train because she slept in. And of someone else who hadn’t caught it because he lost a contact lens on his way to work. Their lives were saved. It’s that simple: they saved their lives. Fate or chance? Science addresses the question through variables and proportions: what is the probability that a given event will actually occur? As we know, quantifying the world brings peace to the soul. But mathematical arguments never satisfy anyone.

      Beyond all the precautions taken, beyond everything we do to protect ourselves in society, beyond personal defence mechanisms, every human being stands face-to-face with the unknown. This is the distinctive and most genuine characteristic of our species. This idea lies at the core of Fate. There are four characters: a taxidermist, a meteorologist, a musician and a child. Their paths cross. They move through a city that seems to force them to take decisions: speed, in this day and age, is a value. The characters deploy infinite tenderness, yet at the same time appear implacable, as if on the very brink of themselves. They are in constant motion. They catch glimpses of beauty and love, and these inklings justify them somehow, spurring them to act. All four unknowingly make their way into the eye of a hurricane. Each of them, with both desperation and enchantment, advances towards a personal understanding of the future.

      The plot of Fate is simple, the prose straightforward. Yet beneath this simplicity, a turbulent ocean swells. In this novel, each action is what it is – and is also something else. Or more precisely, each action is many things at once. Each sentence (the English translation is impeccable and captures every nuance of the original) reverberates, seeks to expand and transform itself into both a proposition and an enigma. When I wrote the book, one of the things I was mulling over was how to capture the intimacy of poetry. I mean the imagery: the meshing of meanings evoked by the opacity of language. That was my idea. I had other intentions, too: I imagined, for example, that the characters would find themselves in a state of solitude, would be defined by it – yet would also fight tirelessly to make that modest leap of exceptionality and intensity.

      I wrote Fate over the course of a single scorching summer. Not a soul was left in Buenos Aires. I spent the evenings, the air conditioning on full blast, watching 1950s noir films, and discovered The Third Man by Carol Reed. I became fascinated by it and watched it three times over. In one scene, the two main characters, played by Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten, are talking inside a Ferris wheel cabin as it climbs into the sky. They say terrible things to each other. Welles is pitiless. I found a certain essence in this dialogue, a particular quality I sought to reproduce in the text. I don’t mean the specific content of the conversation, but rather an atmosphere. I started writing with this detail in mind: in the sequence I discovered the sound that would allow the story to take form. In other words, the scene helped me finish devising the plot. This element may not even be visible on the surface, but it remains the most significant aspect of the text. The image of Cotten and Welles, arguing at the top of the wheel, gave me the tone that I imagined as the ideal acoustics of my story.

      Without question, writing is a blind endeavour. Yet sometimes, when luck is on our side, we chance on signs that are enormously useful in orienting us amid this nebulous universe of possibilities.

      Jorge Consiglio

      Buenos Aires, November 2019

      ‘…understand that this world is not ruled

      by immutable laws; that it is vulnerable,

      uncertain. Understand that fate replaces destiny.’

      Ezequiel Martínez Estrada

      Amer mixed onion, tomato and avocado. He added salt, pepper, oil and lemon. Nothing special. Just a quick snack. A guacamole. He spread it over a piece of toast and ate it slowly. He had reverted to his habit of standing while eating. He took his time to chew. He savoured the acidity while he let his mind catch in a tangle of ideas that, after a few minutes, wove together, generating a kind of atmosphere, something vague yet as vividly present as the taste of onion now dancing in his mouth.

      A light bulb hung above his head. The boiler to the right, the fridge to the left. He hadn’t eaten a thing in six hours. He took a sip of red wine. He hesitated, then added a couple of squirts from the soda siphon. He took a quick inhalation of air through his nose – a sigh in reverse – and in this action, as with everything he did that night, pleasure prevailed. Each occurrence, however small and insignificant, was lit by the gleam of celebration. Everything fastened together in a joyful line. Something unstoppable: a chain of wise choices and well-being.

      He had spent the afternoon working on a brocket deer. It was a small animal and it was in very good shape. Its fur remained unruffled, its snout still pink; only the corneas attested to the final violence. Amer had fulfilled his tasks in strict silence since the age of ten. He blinked rarely, almost never: his tear film was remarkably resilient. What’s more, his everyday work, the toil that paid the bills, justified it; that is, it gave him a reason to live. Amer was delicate: his fingertips were chrysalid-like, as if made of gauze. He