Liliana Heker’s polemical novel, El fin de la historia (The End of the Story), published in
Argentina in 1996, deals with betrayal, friendship, patriotism, relationships –
all set against the background of the military dictatorships of the 1970s.
Heker is a very well regarded prose fiction writer who remained in Argentina
during the Dirty War and who was never a political prisoner, two facts that
cause her novel to be looked upon with suspicion by a number of her peers. The
controversial subject matter of the novel also contributes to the rather
passionate reaction this work has generated in Argentina and among Argentine
expatriates abroad. One of the novel’s protagonists is a political prisoner,
Leonora Ordaz, a Montonera who, after being subjected to physical and
psychological torture, defects and becomes not only an agent of the junta, but
also the lover of one of her torturers. While this type of behavior strikes us
as implausible and horrifying, it’s been documented that such things did
occasionally take place at the time. Nevertheless, reading about them, even
several decades later, leaves many readers angry and bewildered. But more
perplexing than understanding why a political prisoner would collaborate with
the enemy is why anyone – particularly an Argentine and self-proclaimed
socialist – would want to write about it, and furthermore, why a North American
would undertake translating something so potentially distasteful.
Adding to the
complication is the fact that the novel is a piece of metafiction with three
narrative voices, making it difficult for the reader to determine whose story
is being told: that of Leonora Ordaz, the idealistic, young Montonera who
becomes an agent of the junta; that of Diana Glass, Leonora’s childhood friend,
an aspiring writer who tries to reconstruct her disappeared friend’s fate in
novelistic form but who fails to make sense of a life that has dramatically
diverged from its original path; or finally the third voice: that of Hertha
Bechofen, an elderly writer and Austrian refugee whose own experiences as a
survivor of totalitarian brutality make her view the entire situation with
cynicism and moral detachment. Diana Glass is myopic, a fact that Heker
emphasizes in order to explain the apparent haziness of the information presented
in telling Leonora’s story. For as we discover, Diana is extremely reluctant to
acknowledge certain facts that seem evident enough (Leonora has turned her back
on her comrades and on the idealism that drove both her and her Diana, as
students, to want to change the world; Leonora has prostituted her principles
in order to save herself and her young daughter; Leonora has become an
instrument of the military; Leonora has betrayed her murdered husband), but
which are rendered implausible in the telling. Again and again, Diana begins to
record her account – on paper napkins,
in yellow-paged ledger books, on the backs of receipts – only to destroy what
she has written because the words are so intolerable. These ephemeral bits of
paper become emblematic of a fractured friendship and a splintered society, at
a point where historia and Historia – story and History – coincide.
I hope those who read The
End of the Story will have some unanswered questions, as well. Among them:
How should we as readers, translators, and citizens of the world, react to the
voice of authority (authorial or otherwise) when we recognize that it can’t be
trusted? Liliana Heker’s fin (finality or purpose) is to challenge us to
re-examine our assumptions and, above all, to avoid facile conclusions.
A great many factors conspired to make the translation of
this book not only an ethical dilemma for me, but also an artistic challenge.
Beginning with the title itself, the novel presents linguistic and moral
ambiguities. As more than one critic has pointed out,* historia means both “story” and “history,” while “fin” denotes “end,” in the sense of
“conclusion” as well as “purpose”. Deciding whether to call it “The End of the
Story,” “The End of History,” “The Purpose of History,” et cetera, was just the beginning of the confusion. Not
incidentally, I was also compelled to think about the word fin as it applied both to the protagonist, Leonora, and to me. Does
the end justify the means? There are two questions here, obviously: Did
Leonora’s desire to save her daughter’s life and that of her aging parents
justify her betrayal; and on the more personal level, did my embracing this
translation because I found– and continue to find – it so compelling justify my
associating my professional reputation with a text that I know has incensed
people whose politics I respect?
The inconclusiveness of the text makes many people
uncomfortable, especially when it deals with such a traumatic period in
Argentine history. When I discussed this translation project with a couple of
Argentine writers I know and with whom I’ve worked, I was astonished at their
reactions. Both were critical of the novel, albeit for entirely different
reasons. One of the writers, herself a former political prisoner of the junta,
later released and forced into exile, was angry with me for undertaking a
project that she felt portrayed her fellow revolutionaries in an unfavorable
light. “Leshace el juego a los milicos” (She’s playing right into the
military’s hands) washer comment about Heker, referring to the fact that
Leonora’s defection occupies such a prominent place in the narrative. When I
argued that the solidarity of the resisters is well represented by another
character, an elderly gay man who is taken away and killed when he refuses to
confess under torture, she replied (correctly) that the nobility of this minor
character is insufficient to counteract the negative impression Leonora, a
major character, gives of the Montoneros as opportunistic, self-serving, and
cowardly, when the majority of the revolutionaries were righteous and should be
depicted as such.
Conversely, another Argentine writer, one who, like Heker,
continued to reside in Argentine throughout the 1970s and 1980s and still lives
there, although a close family member was threatened by the junta and forced to
flee the country, was disappointed in the novel for quite a different reason.
According to her, Heker was unjustified in judging her protagonist so harshly
when she (Heker) herself never experienced the anguish of imprisonment and
torture. This writer, unlike the first one, didn’t suggest that didacticism
should invariably be a part of the chronicles of this national nightmare.
Where did this leave me? I completed the translation, and
I’ve thought about my role in doing so ever since. There are so many questions
that go unanswered. I chose to translate this novel because I was attracted to
its complexity as well as to the originality of Heker’s style. As a
non-Argentine, I can’t expect my reaction to the book’s polemical nature to be
the same as that of a native son or daughter. I don’t agree that the depiction
of one fictional revolutionary as a sellout casts aspersions on the multitudes
of others who upheld their principles to the end, nor do I think such an individual
fictional portrayal reflects badly on the author. To me, as an outsider, a
nuanced depiction of people on both sides of a political divide doesn’t detract
from the esthetic quality of the prose or the ethical qualities of its author.
Yet, at the same time, I strongly identify with the cause of the dissidents and
wouldn’t want readers to think that my translation of what I consider to be a
balanced, thoughtful text identifies me as a supporter or sympathizer with the
monsters who terrorized a nation and destroyed an entire generation.
* See Robert L.Colvin, “Liliana Heker’s Vision of Post-War
Argentina,” http://www.ndsu.edu/RRCWL/V3/colvin.html
