In one essay, she contrasts the spending habits and home décor of three types of families: progressives, Peronists — followers of the populist president Juan Perón — and descendants of communist resistance fighters.
Progressives never flaunt their wealth; conspicuous consumption is considered ill-mannered. The new-money Peronists have no such inhibitions:
If a member of the family has a craving for hot chocolate at four in the morning, or spends all of their savings on meeting Mickey Mouse in Disneyland, or shoots down loquats with a gun, the other family members will not openly disapprove, because they are not inclined to make value judgments — they are not constrained by the Platonic Form of the Good.
The descendants of the resistance fighters are similar, in terms of their understated good taste, to the progressives. I smiled at Uhart’s observation about the way they cling to their grandfather’s old books, not even dusting them because “it would be like feather dusting Grandfather.” Uhart adds: “They flaunt a new book as a Peronist would flaunt a new car.”
A few of these pieces were reported when Uhart was in her 70s. In one, she wrote about taking a bad fall, “catching myself on my wrists, knees and nose, which bled a little, leaving me with a bloody mustache and some other bloody spots on my forehead and below the eye.” She was left with a limp that did not slow her down. She was a floating cork, one that would not be pushed under.
In one late-life essay, she was in the I.C.U. of a small hospital. Beside her, two machines conversed: “One says ‘dum, dum’ and the other ‘piff.’” She was visited by a former student named Coca. Uhart told Coca that she was embarrassed to be seen by her “with my ass to the wind.” The small, earthy moment glows:
“We all have asses, Hebe,” she replied soberly.
It was a Socratic truth, the moment when Socrates grasps for universal consensus before continuing his argument.
Indeed, Socrates, we all have asses.
During one bus trip, she made conversation with the driver and a passenger next to her. She was keen to add to the conviviality. At one point she remarked, in a line that perfectly captured her attitude toward life, “I wanted to feel worthy of my seat.”
A QUESTION OF BELONGING | By Hebe Uhart | Translated by Anna Vilner | Archipelago | 217 pp. | Paperback, $22
