Years ago, some of the participants of the Guadalajara FIL went to a well-known dance hall. Patricia Llosa and Mario Vargas Llosa surprised us with the panache with which they danced. Everything about them was rhythm and celebration. That is why it has not surprised me that now, in I dedicate my silence, the writer of titles like The City and the Dogs dedicates the novel to Creole music, because he participates in the same ambition, and Peru and the neighborhoods of Lima in Lima have a dominant presence. The central theme is the vindication of the Creole waltz, with all the musical, cultural, social and political resonances it may have.
And it is here where we find Mario Vargas Llosa in his purest form, with the lightness that we can read in Pantaleón and the visitors or in Aunt Julia and the writer.
The protagonist, Toño Aspilcueta, finds in Creole music “the deepest veins of Peruvian nationality, that feeling of belonging to a community”, “the proud author of these lines considers it Peru's most sublime contribution to the world”, “ a genuine expression of the Peruvian people", where "the one of the mixtures will be the true Peru. The mestizo and cholo Peru that is behind the little waltz of Peruvian music.”
Also “Creole music is going to integrate this country of ours, bringing people of different races and colors closer together.”
Óscar Avilés, “one of the most conspicuous criollistas of our time” deserves special mention. And with him the great national composer Felipe Pinglo Alva and, of course, Chabuca Granda.
I remember how at my house in London a group of friends met, many of them Peruvian, among them the poets Toño Cisneros and César Calvo, and at the end of the evening everyone started (we started) singing Del Puente a la Alameda, also known like The Cinnamon Flower. A nostalgic anthem, with this paradox of those who flee a country to long for it. And with the Creole waltz, the huachafería, “a way of feeling, thinking and enjoying, expressing oneself and judging others.” In literature, a “notable example is that of Manuel Scorza, in which even the commas and accents seemed like huachafos.”
As I have said, the protagonist is Toño Azpilcueta, “a scholar of Creole music,” “the best connoisseur of Peruvian music that existed in the country,” fifty years old, married to the selfless Matilde and in love with Cecilia Barraza, and who He is so fascinated by discovering Lalo Molfino, “the best guitarist in Peru, perhaps in the world,” that he decides to meet him and write a book about him.
Two types of research thus begin. He begins a tour of the different neighborhoods of Lima, such as the charming Miraflores neighborhood that he visits with his lover, and which here is full of discarded papers and bags, or Puerto Ete, with Reque “a sea of garbage, full of rats and mice ”: “He noticed the wet and disgusting paws all over his body, the skin irritation” that does not leave him and forces him to take medication and confront Dr. Quipe.
Finally he meets Molfino, with his trademark patent leather shoes. They abandoned him at birth in a garbage dump full of rats and cockroaches. Father Molfino rescued him, “who was the one who raised him” and gave him his name. For Azpilcueta it is the greatest musical experience he has ever had. He decides to write a chronicle that will be titled "Silence fell under the bridge." And silence will accompany us throughout the novel. Which is the novel that Toño writes, which is thus confused with Vargas Llosa himself.
It will be commissioned by the editor Antenor Cabada. It will be a great success and he decides to expand it into a second edition. The writing process is another of the great themes here, both the investigations about Molfino and the “work in progress”, accompanied by music and silence. Which is the silence of Vargas Llosa when in the final note he tells us that “now I would like to write an essay about Sartre, who was my teacher when I was young. It will be the last thing I will write.” I don't need Sartre, but I do need Vargas Llosa, a lot.
Mario Vargas Llosa I dedicate my silence Alfaguara 312 pages 20.90 euros
