It’s in the shower that ideas are born, as everyone knows, except the French, who don’t often visit this region from home. (My friend Paul Cabannes, I’m sorry. This is not your case. He, a Parisian, is already completely acculturated, takes two showers a day and even uses — it is said — deodorant). Cortázar, who lived in Paris but, as an Argentinian, took baths, wrote a column dealing with the subject – not the relationship between the French and the bath, but the bath of ideas. According to him, he was soaping himself when the next sentence, or rather the next order, appeared in his head. “Shut up your distant Adberkunkus!”
Cortázar was surprised, as he had no idea what an Adberkunkus was, why it would be inedible, or what he had said should be reprimanded so vehemently – and in English. The writer continued to soap himself, hoping that this inner monologue would continue, perhaps even turn into dialogue, so that the previous questions would be answered, but nothing. “Shut up, inedible Adberkunkus!” That was all his subconscious was sending during this shower, in the best “posto y me voy” style.
This morning, while taking a shower, I experienced a similar situation. Looking at the demilinguido soap in the pond on the soap dish, I forgot about the soap and kept thinking about “demilinguido”. “Demilinguido,” I silently repeated about three times, until the question arose: only “demilinguido” something that used to be “milinguing,” right? The verb “milinguir”, curiously, does not exist in our language. What would its meaning be? So-and-so was sleepy and very lazy, but he went to the gym, took a cold shower, and when he realized it, he was super “attentive.” “Milinguidation”!
Would “Destrambeljar” suffer from the same problem? A denial without affirmation? A sort of “return of those who were not” or, in a Christian vision, something like “the last will be first”? No. Coming out of the shower, I discover in a dictionary that the word comes from “trambelho”, a cylindrical piece of wood surrounded by a small groove, through which wires or ropes pass. The term is most used in navigation. “Distrambelhada” is the rope or thread that has come out of disorder, lost balance, become damaged.
The rope person or “destrambelhada”, mind you, is very different from the “destrambelhada” person. The “demilinguida” is prostrate on the ground, worn out, languid. I’ve seen a lot of “unplugged” garden hoses in yards. However, turn on the faucet and it will start spinning all over the place, all “messed up”. The “destrambelho” contains the vigor, the energy of the crazy, the hydrophobic, the cronopios, the Saci. The “demilinguido” is melancholic, as in the classic engraving by the German Albrecht Dürer.
I spend the rest of the night thinking about the mystery of the “Adberkunkus”. Who would he be? What would he have done to have the voice call him obnoxious or tell him to shut up? We will never know, unless unpublished texts by Cortázar appear to continue the story. The only certainty I have is that, if I had to guess whether this “Adberkunkus” is “unsmiling” or “cluttered”, I would put all my chips on the second option. A prostrate and depressed “Adberkunkus” listening to REM’s “Everybody Hurts”: why would Cortázar scream? Now think of a monster full of energy and out of control, a kind of Stubborn Alf, a mixture of Homer Simpson and Peppa Pig’s father: clumsy characters, causing chaos in the writer’s office, dancing the balalaika, knocking books off the shelves and preventing him from working. So yes, that would totally make sense: “Shut up, you inedible Adberkunkus!”
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