A bystander’s unsettling memory becomes an homage to a city monument in Víctor Hugo Ortega’s “The Most Beautiful Statue,” our pick for this week’s Translation Tuesday. Through a string of digressions that subtly parody the eyewitness voice, our narrator recounts the scene of a minor accident by fixating upon the minutiae leading up to the crash. We’re taken on a meandering sequence of explanations about football history, Channel 13 news, Chilean poets, and the chaotic beauty of Santiago. What results is an amusingly voiced vignette guiding us through a seemingly disconnected set of details and a closely connected set of events. “The Most Beautiful Statue” offers a narrative exercise redolent of Baker’s The Mezzanine or even Wolff’s “Bullet in the Brain” for its dizzying compression of time and recollection.
Only once in my life have I seen a car crash with my own eyes. Luckily, it was nothing very violent or bloody. As I suppose is the case for crashes all over the world, this was out of the blue. I was at the scene of the accident, thinking of what I’d seen just before, and all of a sudden came the collision.
Unfortunately, I remember it often. More than I would like. If I add things up, I think I remember it three times a month, more or less, which doesn’t please me. On the contrary, it frightens me. If you do the maths, I remember it thirty-six times a year. And that’s a lot. I’ve asked myself why. The answer is that sometimes, when I walk through the city centre, I hear a vibration underfoot that distracts me from the purpose of my journey and brings me back to the memory of that deafening sound. It’s a sound that makes me nervous, makes me think that I could be witness to another crash. It’s a very strange thing. The pavement’s vibration serves as a sign of what might come, like an alert to be prepared for a possible collision. It’s like what they say about dogs and their earthquake-predicting behaviour.
Never again have I heard a sound so loud as the one I heard that day. Nor have I smelt that smell of smouldering tar, which made my nose and head ache. But I can’t be reckless. I have to be prepared. Santiago is a noisy city, overpopulated with cars, buses, and trucks, so the risk of seeing another traffic accident recurs day after day. Luckily for me, or for the good of the streets, lately all risks have turned out only to be vibrations.
There’s no doubt, I was affected by the incident. Maybe also a little traumatised. But it is what it is, what can I do. Also, to be honest, it wasn’t just because of the accident, but because of what happened after. Let’s take it bit by bit.
The first thing I should say is that there were no casualties. This makes the memory not so terrible. I don’t even want to imagine what would have become of me if the crash had left someone dead. I was lucky. Sometimes I think that because there were no deaths, I associate what happened before with what happened after, which to me seems marvellous. Although it’s a double-edged sword, because when the bad memory of the crash comes up, so does the good memory of what happened before. And when the good memory of what happened before comes up, so does the bad.
Let’s get into the details. A white truck and a red car played starring roles in the crash. I know nothing about car makes, models or years. I could only say that the truck was too big for the narrow streets of Santiago. Anyway, without being an expert in the matter, I think it made no difference. The cause of the accident was a guy who crossed the street and only looked north and south. He forgot to look east, where cars also turn in from. When he realised, hurried, he quickened his stride. This made the white truck brake unexpectedly, and the red car crashed into the back of it. The woman driving the car hit her head and was left unconscious. She stirred a moment later. Nothing happened to the guy in the truck. He got out quickly and went to help the woman, who was lucky. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. There are days when I start to wonder who was luckier. Him, for having got out unscathed, or me, for having seen what I saw before the accident.
Contrary to what I thought of traffic accidents, before having lived through one, I have to confess that it wasn’t the sight of it that scared me. It was the sound. And I relive it time and time again because it truly was a terrifying sound. I don’t know if the same thing happened to everyone who was walking through the area. I’m aware that I’m sensitive to the sounds of the city, but I’m not exaggerating. The crash was the closest thing to what I think an atomic bomb blast must sound like.
Unfortunately, I have to say that the worst came after. From the noise of the impact between the truck and the car, we moved into the silence that falls whenever shit goes down in the city. Nobody spoke, nobody honked their horn, nobody accelerated. It was quiet for a few minutes and you could hear the hiss of the buses, louder than ever. The silence was as shocking as the crash itself. The drops of gasoline that fell on the ground and the thick, creamy smoke of the busted engines were spine-tingling.
Let’s continue with the details. The collision took place on Calle Matucana, where it meets Compañía, one block from Quinta Normal metro station. Here I could say that what happened was a mere curiosity, but in truth, it’s not. I could also say that it’s a coincidence, but it’s not that either. Why would I play dumb. I always thought that if I ever saw a crash in person, it would be there, on Calle Matucana. Yes, there exactly. The reason was I saw this report from the programme Contact on Canal 13, the episode where they spoke about CCTV recordings in the city. I remember it perfectly. It was called Smile, You’re On Camera. One of its conclusions was that the junction where the crash took place was one of the most dangerous in Santiago. How did they find out? Simple. The camera in that location recorded the most accidents of any kind per year, especially car accidents.
Let’s go on. Despite the stress and my nerves, what happened before the car and truck crashed didn’t pass me by. Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s the only pleasant part of remembering that noisy scene, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I was at the exit of Quinta Normal metro station, waiting for El Korioto, who was bringing me my latest acquisition, an exact replica of the shirt that Roberto Baggio wore in the ’94 World Cup in the US. El Korioto, nicknamed for his resemblance to one of the characters in the series Captain Tsubasa, was a dealer of replica football shirts, and had no physical office. I got in touch and agreed the details online, then fixed a date, place and time, and he would deliver the order himself.
As fifteen minutes had already passed and El Korioto hadn’t shown himself, I sent him a message to find out where he was. He replied almost instantly, apologising for the delay. He would arrive in half an hour. What a nightmare. Despair hit me two-fold. Waiting in a place full of honking cars. And waiting to see how the Baggio shirt turned out.
Here is when the thought surfaces—of something that at first might seem to be a consolation prize, but later turns out to be a revelation. Thinking that, if not for the merch delay, I never would have faced what happened before the crash, which, I maintain, is one of the most marvellous things I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s not for nothing that, despite being a small event I saw in passing, it did not fade from my memory, even after being shaken by the crash.
If I had to sum it up in a single word: poignant. Right there, where I was waiting for the Roberto Baggio shirt, there was a man in a tracksuit, around forty-five years old, next to a group of boys who must have been fifteen or sixteen, also in tracksuits. At first, I thought it was a school group out on a trip. A few minutes later, my gaze lingered on them and I read the embroidery they flaunted on their backs. They were from the Magallanes Sports Club’s football academy, affiliated with Maipú.
The man, who I supposed was their coach, with his long hair in a ponytail, spoke to the boys with an enthusiasm I’d never seen before. The boys, for their part, listened silently and attentively.
I moved closer, without being too intrusive, and I could hear the coach saying, in a measured voice, that this was where you could find the most beautiful statue in Chile. Without pause, he continued with the advice that they should come to Quinta Normal metro station at least twice a year, so they never forgot that here stood the country’s most beautiful statue. I turned my head, and saw the monument he spoke of. It was a statue of Gabriela Mistral.
I was stunned by the scene, and I paid attention to every word the man said. He assured the boys that the statue of Gabriela Mistral had the ideal structure for being out in the open. We can look at her straight on, as if we were about to kiss her, he said with total seriousness. Touched and surprised, I witnessed how the group of boys looked at the statue with devotion and listened to their coach’s story. You have to kiss her, he insisted. Do it respectfully, but kiss her all the same.
Seeing this, I no longer minded waiting for El Korioto. Quite the opposite, now I wanted him to turn up even later. It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the Baggio shirt any more, just that it was the only way to keep listening to the conversation between the coach and his students.
The man got close and placed his right hand on Gabriela Mistral’s hair. He looked at her for a few seconds, while the boys watched closely, and he kissed her on the cheek. See? It’s the most beautiful statue in Santiago, he repeated, and kissed her on the cheek again.
She’s next to the Poor Christ statue, so you can come to see the statue, kiss her, and then leave a few coins for the Poor Christ, he continued. The boys listened to him as if bewitched.
The moment I saw El Korioto approach, on the pavement opposite, one of the boys asked the coach: wait, coach, but why is this statue the most beautiful? Because it is, my boy, because of everything, it being here, where the fries burn, because of everything that it represents. Because putting a statue here is a test for every passer-by, because this is the hottest part of Santiago, it’s a heat that burns, it burns her and Christ too, that’s why it’s the most beautiful. The kid was stunned by the coach’s inspired speech. Something similar happened to me. I could sense the admiration that the boys felt at that moment. The coach wanted to go on, but he was interrupted by another question. And why do we have to kiss her, coach? one of the other boys asked. Because you do, kid, because it’s the only statue that’s not up on a pedestal, she’s facing the public and you can look her in the eyes, he replied.
I greeted El Korioto, who apologised for the delay and quickly started telling me about new shirts that might interest me. I made out as if I was listening and I nodded along to his offers, but in reality, I was keeping an ear out for what happened with the coach, the boys, and the statue of Gabriela Mistral. He gave me the Roberto Baggio shirt, I gave it a sideways glance, and put it in my bag. I paid him with two 20,000 peso notes, but he had no change. He told me to wait for him and went to change it in the metro ticket office. I took advantage of that moment to focus on the statue again. I looked on with pleasure as the coach and the boys took photos smiling next to Gabriela Mistral.
A short while later, the boys started to bid their farewells to the statue one by one, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Then they regrouped and walked towards the taxi rank. The scene was coming to an end. I stayed there, waiting for El Korioto to bring me my change, and then came the crash. The rest has already been told. Noise, smouldering tar, and all the trauma caused by the accident. But it was nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the most beautiful statue.
Translated from the Spanish by Georgina Fooks
Víctor Hugo Ortega C. is a journalist, writer and university professor who lives in Malloco, Chile. He has written four short-story collections and two poetry collections.
“The Most Beautiful Statue” comes from the book Elogio del Maracanazo, a series of stories about football and Latin American popular culture. It has been published in Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay, and is currently being translated into Portuguese and Italian. This translation is the first time his work has been translated into English.
Georgina Fooks is a writer and translator, and is Social Media Manager at Asymptote. She studied French and Spanish literature at Oxford and is currently preparing for postgraduate study, specialising in Argentine poetry. She has lived in Santiago and Paris, and currently works in London.
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