THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.3 Reinventing the Double The Avatar in Panamatime periods and locations, begins with one and ends with the other. 54The first reality is set in a Roman arena where two gladiators arefighting to the death. The second is a story of infidelity revealed througha telephone conversation that takes place in modern day Europe orLatin America. In the first, after the gladiatorial massacre, burning oilfrom the lamps causes a great conflagration and smoke blurseverything. The second of Cortázar's scenarios has the two loversfalling asleep while smoking. One of the cigarettes causes a tissue tosmolder which then falls onto the carpet next to a pile of clothes. Theydie together after being suffocated by the black smoke. As far removedas these situations are temporally and geographically, they depict asimilar dénouement, one that is also shared with Jaramillo Levi’scharacters in two of his stories belonging to the “Simultaneidades”division.“Libro sin tapas” and “Mientras dormía” both use fire as a lethalweapon and simultaneously distort spatial and temporal boundaries. In“Libro sin tapas”, a succession of readers of a magical book is foundmysteriously burnt alive. The book is initially found in the charred debrisof a fire and the scenario also resonates with Anderson Imbert’s wellknown story “El grimorio”, another one of those stories whose title alsodoubles as the name of the entire collection in which it appears. 55 In“Libro sin tapas”, the external non-fictional reader of Jaramillo Levi'sstory “Libro sin tapas”, and the fictional reader of the coverless book in“Libro sin tapas” instantaneously become the protagonists of thefictional story during the process of reading.In “Mientras dormía”, Carlos awakes from a nightmare about afire. After considering the dream, and with no reason to believe it thewill return, he lights a cigarette and thinks about a past sexualencounter with his girlfriend in a gymnasium. It is at this point that thedimensions of memory (the latter scenario), and of sleep (the present),become integrated in a classic case of dream incorporation: 56 “se vaquedando dormido sobre el banco, [of the gymnasium] sobre la cama54 See Cortázar’s other stories in 2.3 Second Nature: Julio Cortázar, 114.55 In this tale, the protagonist Rabinovich is attracted to a particular book he discoversin a second hand bookshop whose text is composed of Latin letters but contains nospaces or punctuation. The book reads in the language of the lector who by becomingdistracted and by losing concentration must recommence reading from the beginning.In his quest to read ceaselessly, Rabinovich “[s]intió que el libro lo estaba devorando”(155). The reader comes to play two roles: “que con los ojos lo escribía y lo leía almismo tiempo; que él era, al final de cuentas, el protagonista” (157). Rabinovichbelieves he is the magic book’s author: “Cuanto más te esfuerces en leerme máscomprenderás la Historia, la mía y también la tuya.” The book itself appears to supportthis affirmation as its contents are so complex that its repeated reading opens newhorizons and interpretations. Anderson Imbert, “El grimorio”, Cuentos selectos(Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1999) 129-157.56See 2.3, footnote 20, 124.248