Kodama is dead Mary KodamaAn important part of the life of Jorge Luis Borges, whom he treasured as if he had all his kinship, also those rare kinships were not yet named and perhaps found him to describe it. He was like immortal, white, afraid of fright, a slender and slender womanWhether he was referring to Borges’ life or his private life with Borges, he also had an inner command that could destroy certainty with a single glance. As the lifesaver of the most important Spanish-language writer of the 20th century, depending on his memory and the authenticity he wanted for his biography, one of the times I was lucky enough to meet him before Borges was already there, I i screwed upand it was forever. Although not right.
It happened for various reasons. Mary Kodama He had made many friends in Spain, Madrid and also in Córdoba. Here’s what went wrong, now, after all these years, I can say, ah, before he gets angry. Borges was in Madrid at the invitation of his publishers. Editorial Alliance. And the publishing house, whose director was Javier Pradera, discovered that the famous blind man did not have a friend to go around the city for dinner, for example. And to Pradera, who is also of high rank Country, He thought I should play this cicerone role.
What about Kodama? I asked the editor. “In Kodama Córdoba”. So I took his place, we took his place, because even my six-year-old daughter accompanied that wonderful man to a restaurant, where also a forbidden dish for a blind person was served: vichyssoise. He was singing Icelandic tunes in the car, asking for each one’s last name (he liked my mom’s Calzadilla, because at one point your own genealogy journey there was one just like him) and of course for whatever came to mind. It was as inappropriate as it was funny, so at one point he even asked me to air out his underwear and shirts so that he would have been thoroughly cleaned when he left the next day.
In any case, it was time for lunch, a dinner that had to be frugal because she couldn’t carry the food. But what he wanted was the riskiest thing for a blind man: Damned vichyssoise. The French dish made from that mohair could only be eaten if there was skill in the spoon, and this would be prevented. So while this chronicler was making that joke, he was interrupting whatever it was. tell about your experiences.
I was still with him the next day, and due to his quality and size, I had the best impression of someone who could send me to leave as soon as I left him in the room. I can’t remember what happened to Mario Vargas Llosa, who I wanted to pee in Lima. (“You will be my captain”) later, to say that since she was talking to him about household matters, he had to be a “real estate agent” as well as a novelist.
There were many anecdotes of those hours with Borges.. And since we journalists are meddlesome, I wanted to tell Kodama about them that day when we met at the Palace in Madrid. I started by saying:
– Once in Córdoba, Borges was alone in Madrid…
It stopped me (in my tracks) and warned:
– I never left Borges alone anywhere.
It was true. these words were true. Before that, she had to decide everything that would end her relationship with Borges, and immediately and forever, I never again told her what had happened to Javier’s very nice, very memorable commission. pradera
Now that he’s dead tough and wonderful woman, he seemed so fragile immortal that I remember him in other happy moments, but he also did not cease to be happy, for Kodama later led me to hours of joy with reasonable confidence. Once, years after his death, he returned to Madrid. Jorge Luis Borgeswas to present a Spanish edition of what seemed like a work of art for a blind man, a graphic record of his balloon ride through the Mexican deserts. There he told me that the previous kings of Spain had told them to be careful because the bandits were there in guerilla form and anything could happen.
“They just don’t want us to go,” Borges told Kodama. “Let’s go the same!,” he continued. brave poet.
He talked to me a lot about Borges on that occasion. I’m highlighting some things. It was funny because it wasn’t scary. I was looking forward to getting on the balloon. He didn’t sleep that night! He asked me if I thought the basket would be made of plastic or wicker. Let’s say wicker, I told him. A carriage followed the route, and there you had to buy a can of champagne for the people of the land you landed on, and a separate bottle to toast to your safe arrival. You had to press the stirrup, and when he was a kid “an excellent rider”. He said to the person helping him get into the stirrup, “You’re too big, you can step on me if I can’t get through.”
I told Kodama this trip represents Borges. He was on the verge of telling the reporter everything, because he was no longer the gossip who kept telling him that Kodama had usurped his existence one day. So he told me what was going through my mind afterwards. The simplest explanation of his love for Borgesbecause you took care of her, because you pampered her, because you didn’t put her in the sun, because you took care of her rights like her soul, because you took care of her soul like her poetry. “He was never interested in other things,” he told me, “except for discoveries or what he had read about, which later became a fact that fascinated him.”
This passion for Borges was similar to that of Borges’s lifetime. For years, I was among those who continued to reject him for being him or her. distant or hostile, this was because he was in charge of a treasure. And that man was a treasure in the stars, with no better guardian than this woman who would continue to watch over Borges, and who would also be vigilant above a paper balloon holding the strings that made him. the most wonderful manThe most beautiful, most empathetic and sensitive imagination of anything made in the century that Borges made it better than it was.
Thanks also to Kodama the decisive part of the goodbyes. This time it’s her turn, and she’s taken over by Borges, encouraged by Borges, her eyes dressed like Borges, I see her shaking her head where she wants to sit because that’s the only place in the world where she can see yellows. Alright.