Marcelo Birmajer’s new story: Mokusatsu

Elías Borgovo, the professional investigator, would never have imagined that the author of the Comic’s Appearance chapter The inventorhe was a young man of 19 who had just turned.

Lysander, now in his sixties, had created the character towards the end of the age of 18, after avoiding compulsory military service. After a season of weekly pages, including Apparition, it sold out The inventor to the powerful Jalgaro publishing house, which has entrusted it to its classic and famous screenwriters.

Lisandro, collecting the corresponding royalties, finally he devoted himself to real estate. As a sort of Rimbaud of comics, he composed his magnum opera at the age of 19 and gave up on the effort.

Borgovo I had been looking for that chapter for a quarter of a century Lysander, handing him a strangely glossy magazine after 37 years, explained: – I brought him the episode. I believe it is the only surviving specimen. In return, I want you to help me solve a case.

Borgovo recalled a masterful text by García Márquez: after having searched for a tale by Simenon for decades, after having found it, he read it while standing at the place where it was found.

Borgovo, tempted to read in situ that chapter of which he remembered only that The inventor he brought up his father, but he controlled his anxiety and paid attention.

– About seven months ago, shortly before his death, in total delirium, my mother let me know that she had killed my father; very casually, she revealed to me that “with her library of him”.

My father had died a few years earlier, meekly, in his reading chair. Seemingly painless, and in one of the places I loved the most. But that confession from my mother, which may very well be the invention of a deranged woman, hasn’t stopped spinning in my head and soul. My parents’ house will be sold soon. The library is still intact. Does this tell me?

Borgovo accepted the challenge and kept the cartoon.

They talked about it for a long time The inventor and Borgovo machine-gunned Lysander with questions: as always, the authors said much more in their works than they did about them. When Lysander finally left Borgovo’s office on Calle Posadas, the seventy-year-old detective read the chapter standing. Wonderful.

José’s library – as Lisandro’s late father was called -, in the family home of Almagro (Sarmiento and Mario Bravo), contained some of the delicacies coveted by a reader like Borgovo: Morris West, Ira Levin, the complete collection of Reader’s Digest selections 60/70/80; the daring color encyclopedias for children that predict the man of the future, invariably bald (not so wrong), the two volumes of everything Nippur of Lagash; files of the third reich; Toynbee, Aron, Huntington, John Toland’s Hitler biography.

Borgovo reflected, like the alleged victim, reading to his death in that splendid armchair. But dying reading of one’s own volition was not like being killed with one’s library. What did the dying old woman mean?

The luxurious reading offer hindered dedication to chance: Borgovo got lost among the shelves and postponed his mission. He decided to call his distant friend Professor Plones, a weather specialist, as a collaborator. While it wasn’t a specific case for his scholarship, he couldn’t think of a better one: the endless library of a dead man was the closest thing to a time retreat that Borgovo could imagine.

Plon, to whom the high powers had condemned never to live a love story again, he accepted the game. But both friends knew their limitations and those of the human race: they could not stand each other daily in the same space. They agreed to alternately spend the middle shifts browsing and investigating the house: Borgovo one morning, Plone one afternoon and vice versa.

They had lunch together at the cevichería on the corner – but all at their table, because they did not even agree to share that request-, and they exchanged conclusions, at the same table, with coffee. Everyone paid their own. One night Borgovo stayed to sleep. Another, Plones did. Another night Plones asked permission to take a woman; Borgovo passed the request to Lysander, who accepted it.

The next morning – Plones and his occasional visitor had already retired – Borgovo noticed three thick spines of a Reader’s Digest of the Chronicle of the Second World War. The numerical order caught his attention: 1,2,3. Most of the books were grouped in a thematic spectrum, not alphabetically.

Lysander had pointed out that the library was used almost exclusively by his father. Borgovo chose volume 2 and leafed through it: extraordinary. The meeting on a cruise, on the high seas, between Churchill and Roosevelt, told by the son of the American months before Pearl Harbor, stands out. He put it back on the shelf; but he didn’t put it before 3, but 1.

Borgovo told himself that a reader like José would never leave the volumes in numerical order. There was something in that class of readers, like him, like José, like Plones, thats prevented from sticking to the exact order.

At the end of the dinner, while drinking tea with Plones, in the cevichería, Borgovo commented on the detail. Plones – a paradox that the weather expert suggested to the detective – proposed to check the fingerprints. Borgovo assisted with the corresponding equipment and, for the first time together at José’s house, the detective and Plones reviewed the books.

The footsteps of Mary, wife of Joseph, mother of Lysander, appeared only in volume 3 of the Chronicle Reader summary World War II, “From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima”.

-What a spectacular title, praised by Plones: the end of the first half of the 20th century in a row. Borgovo agreed: Reader summarywhatever that means, he replied, it always seemed like one of the most sensible ways of reading life.

Maria had just leafed through that volume. But its traces intensified in some pages of the chapter dedicated to the atomic drama. President Truman – the heroic Roosevelt was already dead, blessed be his memory – announced the ultimatum to Japan: either they would surrender unconditionally, or they would face “swift and utter destruction”.

“The Japanese Council of Ministers, after a long discussion, decided not to respond (“Mokusatsu”, literally: kill him with silence) “.

Borgovo met Plone’s gaze, the weather expert replied with a meaningful gaze. Borgovo closed the book with a decisive click and placed it in front of volume 1.

“Your mother killed your father in silence,” Burgovo handed the copy back to Lysander The inventor; but the author gave it to him: he accepted the verdict, issued in the Borgovo office in via Posadas.

– I don’t know – Borgovo continued -, if they hated each other for something in particular or for the mere fact of living together until death: people in general hate each other much less.

– I don’t think they hated each other – hypothesized Lysander – But I don’t know if they ever loved each other after fifty. They couldn’t even be separated.

“He was silent until his death,” repeated Borgovo. A man can tolerate some degree of female silence; then fission occurs. A woman has other resources. When the Japanese high command, to protect the emperor, thought they were killing the Americans with silence, they signed their sentence. The atomic bomb marked the end of the war: a silent weapon.

“After all,” Lysander consoled himself, “unlike life, that war ended well.”

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