Portrait of Elisa.

Benedetti, Mario

SHE HAD RIDDEN PRESIDENT TAJES'S HORSE; she had lived in a house with fifteen rooms, a coachman, and four black servants; traveled to France when she was twelve, and still had a book bound in human skin that an Argentinean colonel had given her father in February, 1874.

Now she was completely penniless, lived on the ominous charity of her in-laws, wore a black woolen shawl with holes, and her pension of thirty-two pesos was being diminished by two redeemable loans. Nevertheless, the past still remained; to string memories together, become comfortable in the luxury that once existed, and gather strength to hate thoroughly her present misery. Elisa Montes had abhorred that slow succession of suitors with all her energy since her second widowhood. At twenty, she had married an Italian engineer, who gave her four children (two girls and two boys) and died very young, without renewing his license or leaving her a pension. She never loved that first husband very much, now immobile in yellowish photographs, with an offensive beard like Napoleon III, very small, excitable eyes, refined manners, and suffocating money problems.

During those years, she spoke at length about her old coachman, her black servants, and her fifteen rooms, in order to make her husband feel harassed and insignificant in his modest home with a little garden and no living room. He was a quiet man who worked until dawn to feed and dress all of them. He finally couldn't endure it any more and died of typhus.

On that disgraceful occasion, Elisa couldn't appeal to her relatives, because she was at odds with her three brothers and three sisters-in-law; with the women, because they had been seamstresses, part-time employees, general laborers; with her brothers, because they had given their wives their surname. As for the family assets, the deceased father had squandered it on gambling and bad investments a long time ago.

Elisa chose to appeal to her old friends and then to the government, as if both were obliged to protect her, but discovered that they all had (including the government) their own private needs. In this country, the conquered limited themselves to a few loose banknotes and to the humiliation of accepting them.

So that when the illiterate rancher, Don Gumersindo, also widowed, but who was a little over twenty years older, appeared, she had resigned herself to making narrow lace edging which she placed in the largest stores, thanks to a referral from the wife of a ruddy general (under investigation since the last military uprising) with whom she had played badminton and diabolo in a sweet, impossible drowsiness of distant autumns.

Making lace edging was the beginning of the decline, but listening to the crude insinuations and the abdominal guffaws of Don Gumersindo signified complete decadence. This would have been Elisa's opinion about what had happened to one of her few friends, but given that it was about herself, she had to look for an excuse and stubbornly cling to it. The excuse--which became one of the biggest manias of her life--was called: the children. She started to make lace for her children; for her children, she tolerated the rancher.

During their brief courtship, Don Gumersindo Olmedo courted her with the same tenderness he showed his cows, and on the night when, reverting to sound reasoning, he enumerated his assets, she ended up reaching a decision and accepted the round ring. Nevertheless, the males were already somewhat older: Juan Carlos was eighteen years old, had taken three English and two Italian courses, but sold plants at the Sunday marketplace; Anibal Domingo was sixteen and kept the books for a transportation company. The young girls, who were obedient, practical, and good looking, went to the country with their mother and stepfather. That was where the first surprise occurred: Olmedo, in his rudimentary astuteness, had acknowledged the cows, the shepherd fields, and even the bank account, but in no way the three robust sons from his first marriage. From the first day, these three were devouring the two sisters with their eyes, who, although chubby and pretty, still hadn't passed through puberty. On two occasions, Elisa had to intervene in order to prevent the lustful needs of the three sons from being imposed on her young daughters.

Installed on his ranch, the old man wasn't the same harmless boor who had courted Elisa in Montevideo. The girls and their mother quickly discovered that seeing him approach along the rock-covered courtyard, bowlegged, with the tips of his boots pointing outward, was no laughing matter. On his ranch, Olmedo knew how to give orders. Elisa, who had gotten married for her children's sake, resigned herself to the fact that she and the girls would go hungry because Olmedo wouldn't give up a single penny, and she personally took charge of the skimpy grocery shopping. He was obsessed with taking advantage of leisure time, and no matter how much his miserliness might turn out to be amusing to a stranger, the sisters didn't share that opinion when their stepfather had them straightening out nails for hours.

That's when Elisa began her favorite litany, and during the nights of sex and mosquito netting she allowed herself to remind Olmedo of her first husband's finer points. The old man sweated and nothing more. Everything seemed to indicate that he was strong enough to withstand the slander. But five days after their sixth anniversary, he started to feel a pain in his stomach that laid him out, first in bed, and then eight months later, in the family mausoleum.

During those eight months, Elisa took care of him, brought him to Montevideo, and fervently wished that he would violently die once and for all. But here was when Gumersindo set the best of his traps. The three doctors who treated him had been well informed and knew that radiumization could be used in his case. Radiumization was very expensive, and eight months of treatment and sanitarium visits was enough to cause Olmedo to squander his fortune before dying. After the doctors, debts, and the burial fee were paid, and a few disagreements with her stepchildren were settled, approximately four hundred pesos remained for Elisa, an excessively moderate compensation for having given away her luxurious family dignity.

Elisa stayed in Montevideo and tried to resume her lace work. But the ruddy general, whose wife had recommended her in the largest stores, was now consumed with selling stationery at wholesale in an honorable exile in Porto Alegre. It was now impossible to sink any lower.

Farther below the laceworker was the riffraff, and since Elisa had an acute sense of the hierarchies, she put her daughters to work. Josefa and Clarita became military trouser-makers. At least, Elisa thought, at least get close to the Army. As for Elisa, she tenaciously started to harass ministers, office directors, department heads, porters, and even the barbers of the men in authority.

After two years of making herself unbearable in whichever waiting room, Elisa obtained an incredible pension whose benefits no one knew with complete certainty. She then had the good fortune to marry off her daughters in the same year and afterward dedicated herself to her sons-in-law.

Josefa's husband was a tranquil person, a big eater. He had inherited a local hardware store from his father and, without changing the most minor aspect, without adding a single line of merchandise, had continued running the business in the same manner as always. The other son-in-law, Clarita's husband, was a high-spirited artillery lieutenant, who would say good morning with the loudness of "Forward March!" and was writing the second volume of the history of the Great War during his spare time.

Elisa went to live with her unmarried sons, but she would spend the weekends with her married daughters. Her influence wasn't limited to Saturdays or Sundays. Almost all the arguments between the lieutenant and Clarita were based on some innocent statement made by Elisa the Sunday before, between the cold meat dish and ravioli; and almost all Josefa's noisy disputes, which the patient hardware vendor would tolerate, existed because of some gossip slipped into her predisposed ear by her mother-in-law, just when the husband was about to lay down to enjoy his Saturday siesta.

Elisa reproached the lieutenant for his rigidity, his political ideas, his eating manners, his passion for history, his anxiety about traveling, his head colds, his short stature. On the other hand, she chastised the hardware vendor for his gentleness, his conformism, his foolproof health, his political harmlessness, his propensity for shellfish, his annoying laughter, his abundance of rings.

They only gathered around the family table occasionally, but once every six months was enough opportunity for Elisa to engage her sons-in-law in a bitter argument about the Battle of Marne, after which they were enemies forever. The lieutenant (or now the captain, rather) also didn't speak to his two brothers-in-law because Elisa had told him at length about Juan Carlos and Anibal Domingo's flagrant laziness, but she also told Juan Carlos and Anibal Domingo that the captain thought they were a couple of loafers.

In addition, the years brought grandchildren and the grandchildren's unpleasantness. The hardware vendor's two sons--seven and eight years old, respectively--tried to stick the fingers of the captain's daughter in an electrical socket, but they were seen by Elisa, who stopped them and struck the girl. Later on, she convinced Clarita that it was the two boys' fault and even had the courage to secure a beating for them, not from their father but from their military uncle, so that the corrective measure could also serve to cause the brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law to insult each other loudly and cause an outbreak of mistimed jealousies among Josefa and Clarita, with great filial and curiously retrospective difficulties.

Like a confessor, each time Elisa visited her daughters she heard about the current setting of their resentments. She preached sustained tolerance, "unless you're offended in some very sacred respect." Of course, what's more sacred than the mother? In that case, they should each speak their own mind, remind the captain, for example, that his grandfather had been a parish priest; the hardware vendor, that his uncle had committed suicide with a stirrup. If that offended them, better, much better; an agitated man ("you could learn from my suffering with your father and the other one") is always easier to control, catch in contradictions, and compel into making some irreparable idiotic remark. The bad thing was that sometimes they lost their temper and would resort to blows, but there was no reason to become discouraged. Receiving a slap was always a good investment: it signified at least a long semester of concessions and regrets.

But Elisa wasn't bearing sex in mind. It's true that there had been less joy in her two marriages than in a board. But her daughters were better endowed and didn't squander their pleasant evenings. The sons-in-law were defeated in their vigil with the arguments that Elisa placed on her daughters' lips, but they were victorious in bed with the arguments that God would give them. It was--it's true--an uneven dispute. Embarrassed, but without any hesitation, and with the conviction that their most desired pleasure was at stake, Elisa's daughters implored her not to come anymore, that they preferred to go see her from time to time. Josefa, who had been her favorite, never did visit, but sometimes Clarita would write to her or meet her downtown.

Elisa remained alone with Anibal Domingo, who was becoming an alcoholic and not liked by women. Juan Carlos was a traveling salesman and visited for a few hours once every two weeks. But because those were hours of recriminations and suspicions ("who knows which floozies you're running around with now"), he eventually ended up staying in the interior and only went down to Montevideo two or three times a year.

When the pain began, Elisa Montes wasn't able to fool herself. Evidently, it was the same illness that had destroyed Gumersindo. She asked the doctor to tell her the truth, and the doctor gave it to her in detail, as if he were venting his feelings about all the other times he had felt commiseration. Knowing she was lost and hopeless, it didn't occur to Elisa, as it had to many others, to examine her conscience, inquire into her reality. During the times that the morphine relieved her suffering, she pried into the harmless lives that had surrounded her with what pleasure still remained. During the other times, when the horrible, shooting pain became severe, she didn't even feel like pretending, since what was happening was truly atrocious.

Anibal Domingo, timid, passive, and obliging, helped Elisa without fervor and received her insults. Only a withered, insensitive man like that could tolerate that process of death, solitude, and forgetfulness until the end. But even he felt a certain relief when one morning he found her dead, curled up and implacable, as if the final peace had rejected her.

He didn't send out any notices but called his sisters and Juan Carlos as well as his brothers-in-law; he was slow to seek out his old uncles. Nevertheless, they all found out. Even his Uncle Juan, who said afterward that he hadn't received the telegram in time. Only the captain and the hardware vendor came, however.

TRAVELING BEHIND THE MODEST HEARSE, almost unadorned with flowers, was the car transporting the relatives. It had been years since the three men had spoken to one another, and they didn't speak now either. The captain stared out at the street, as if surprised that some woman would cross herself as she passed by the small entourage.

Anibal Domingo was hypnotized, fixated on the chauffeur's red neck, but sometimes he also looked in the rearview mirror where he could see, always at the same distance, the other car sent by the funeral home in which no one wanted to ride. It had occurred to Anibal Domingo that it was the dead woman's fault that he hadn't had girlfriends, and he still hadn't become accustomed to that pleasant revelation.

The new section of the Northern Cemetery was covered by bright sunshine--here and there, the land dug up as if for plowing. The hardware vendor tripped as he was getting out of the car, and the other two grabbed him by the arm to hold him up. He said thanks, and there was less tension.

At one side, a very plain coffin with four handles was placed on the grass. The relatives approached, but the chauffeur had to assist them because they were lacking one person.

They advanced slowly, as if they were leading a very large entourage. Soon, they left the main path and stopped in front of a single grave, just as fifteen or twenty other people had done and who were also now waiting. After a sharp, quick bump, the coffin rested, motionless, at the bottom. The chauffeur blew his nose, folded his handkerchief as if it were clean, and slowly backed away toward the path.

Then, the others looked at each other, inexplicably in solidarity, and nothing impeded them from throwing the handfuls of dirt with which that death became the same as the others.

Montevideo Translation from the Spanish By Harry Morales

MARIO BENEDETTI, one of Latin America's most renowned writers, was born on September 14, 1920, in Paso de los Toros, Uruguay. As a poet, novelist, essayist, critic, journalist, playwright, songwriter, and screenwriter, Benedetti's vast body of work encompasses every genre and has been anthologized worldwide. He has written for magazines, newspapers, and various journals in Uruguay, Argentina, and Mexico and has received numerous literary prizes, most recently the XIX Premio Internacional Menendez Pelayo. He is the author of more than seventy-five books, and his work has been translated into twenty-six languages, including Braille. Since 1985, he has divided his time between Montevideo and Madrid.

HARRY MORALES'S literary translations from the Spanish include the work of Mario Benedetti, Reinaldo Arenas, Eugenio Maria de Hostos, Emir Rodriguez Monegal, Juan Rulfo, Cristina Peri Rossi, Julia de Burgos, and Ilan Stavans. His work has been widely published in numerous anthologies and has appeared in various journals, including Pequod, Quarterly West, Chicago Review, TriQuarterly, the Literary Review, Agni, the Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, ACM: Another Chicago Magazine, Manoa, BOMB, WorldView, Puerto del Sol, the Iowa Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. His English translation of two verse collections by Mario Benedetti, Solo Mientras Tanto: Poemas, 1948-1950 and Poemas de la Oficina: 1953-1956, will be published by Host Publications in spring 2006.

"Retrato de Elisa" (1956), from Montevideanos: Cuentos (Montevideo: Editorial Alfa). Copyright [c] 1959 by Mario Benedetti. Cover illustration (above) by Agustin Alaman. English translation copyright [c] 2000 by Harry Morales.