The first novel by the visual director, screenwriter and playwright Virginia Martínez, once always (Metrópolis Libros, 2022), has a plot that surprises and captivates from the first page. “Maybe the fact that a novel has a forceful voice is what most attracts me to begin it”, says the writer Luis Mey on the back cover.
The protagonists are Mela and Luca Jorge, two teenagers who fall in love at the beginning of the ’90s. The writer’s gesture was to give them powerful voices. “ANDHe talks regarding the characters, he builds the world”, says Virginia in dialogue with APU, and this is what the reader perceives from the beginning of the book: the spontaneity and strength of his sayings. From the way she talks regarding her, we know that they belong to different cultural universes: Mela is from Sarandí, raised in the south of the province of Buenos Aires and a fan of cumbia from Santa Fe; Luca is from the Caballito neighborhood, born into a middle-class family and loves rock.
The context is given by the last months of Ricardo Alfonsín’s government and the assumption of Carlos Menem and this is shown with the mentions of inflation, the dollar, the australes, the colimba, the Malvinas, the “picas” among the musical tribes , Alcides, Ricky Maravilla, Madonna, the Palladium bowling alley, the movie The Karate Kidthe TDK cassettes and the disc Thriller.
The novel is structured in three parts and each one abounds in dialogues and scenes. It is a success that the narrative voices of Luca and Mela alternate in the first person, They are two looks that enrich the story and that gradually dose the information for the reader.
The vertigo, the action and the urgency are there from the beginning, this textual body is in tune with those adolescent bodies avid for discoveries and adventures. The protagonists meet in the bathroom of a nightclub in Sarandí and Mela asks Luca for help to run, so the novel opens with an escape and this marks an imprint that runs through the entire work. Later they run in the context of looting. “You better know from now on, Luca Jorge. I have the destiny to run”, shoots Mela when throwing herself from a bus. And Luca’s final run marks another escape. “I infected you with the destiny of running,” launches Mela.
The disruptive elements, humor and poetry create at times an almost dreamlike climate that alleviates the dramatic tension. There is also that drunkenness and the clumsy and urgent eroticism of the first adolescent love: “He told me how strong you are and I was transfixed. With our tongue we revive a bird, we sew a peach and we suck the skin”.
We asked Virginia if there is a common thread in the water: the stream where the protagonists go the day they meet, Luca’s story regarding Swan Lake, the first kiss on the banks of the Riachuelo in Pueyrredón Bridge. Also with the memory of Mela’s childhood in Santa Clara del Mar, on the beach with her father, the song “Playa Girón”, by Silvio Rodríguez. The water from that shower where they find Mela and a scene that has a different register and opens the third part of the novel, which talks regarding the Flooder: “He created lakes, oceans, seas. All the water was his, all the water was born from him and returned to him: from the thaws, from the clouds, from the rivers”.
“I didn’t think of it as a common thread, but yes, it’s an interesting interpretation,” Virginia replies. And she adds: “When you want to know something in depth, you have to immerse yourself in it”. and shows us a fascinating video featuring the work of Jason de Caires Tylora British sculptor who tells us, gave him some ideas during the writing process.
