Epitaph for Sorrows

By Steven E. Sanderson

This remarkable and highly original novel, the mesmerizing tale of Dolores Rivas, begins in an orphanage in 1950s Buenos Aires. A wounded girl, she becomes convinced that her mother is the child mistress of ex-President Juan Perón.



‘Epitaph for Sorrows’ builds on the true-life affair of Perón and fourteen-year-old Nelly Rivas, a scandal contributing to Perón’s overthrow. Dolores fashions a meticulous journal to record her life, entrusting it to a prominent journalist. At great risk, he transforms it into a poignant epitaph indicting a system that embraces death and dismisses Dolores’ life. Her quixotic search for her mother personifies Argentina’s quest for truth in a world of lies and records the human costs of state terror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Conrad Press
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781839783685

Book preview

‘Última carcajada’ [The Last Guffaw],

by Funes, el memorioso. Published in Porvenir, a magazine of culture and politics, Buenos Aires (Vol 2:11 November 2006).

On October 17, 2006, Peronist forces engaged in what one hopes is the last calumnious act to be associated with their late leader. As is well known, the tireless faithful of Peronism have planned for thirty years to move the remains of Juan Domingo Perón from his family crypt in Chacarita to a setting more appropriate to his outsized personality. Thus, the construction of yet another monumentalist crypt for yet another dead defiler of the Argentine Nation. With the expenditure of more than US$ 1 million, the Peronist government of Néstor Kirchner did not hesitate to waste public funds on another round of political necrophilia. Perón’s corpse has been moved three times since his death, which is nothing compared to the peripatetic Eva Perón, who crossed the Atlantic twice and visited Italy and Spain, before taking up permanent residence in the Recoleta Cemetery.

The procession of the remains involved a 30-kilometer trip to San Vicente, a favored estate of Perón during his lifetime. During the preparations and the parade, itself, rival Peronist gangs fought over matters that no one else could understand or care about, but that, nevertheless, have a familiar bloody ring. In a fitting end to such a day, participants engaged with police in stone-throwing, tear gas and rubber bullets. A man was seen firing a handgun into a crowd. More than forty people were injured, and it has been reported that at least two people died, one of whom was a woman uninvolved in the idiocy.

It is this last sadness that provokes my column. I have been on record for more than thirty years as an opponent of the self-destructive politics of Argentina, in which Perón, his enemies and their successors have slaughtered so many Argentines. They say it is about ideas, or social revolution, or national security, or infamously ‘the process’ of national restoration, an honorable sounding name for merciless and arbitrary murders. What none of the perpetrators will admit is that their so-called mission is covered in the blood of bystanders and young people, grandparents, and grandchildren, mainly invisible to the vicious ideologues of political vengeance.

Perón is now reburied. Let his ideas and those of his enemies be buried with him, once and for all.

October 17, 2007

To the reader of the manuscript entitled Epitaph for Sorrows :

Last year at this time I wrote an essay reflecting on the ghoulish gangsters of the Peronist movement on the occasion of the reinterment of Perón’s remains at San Vicente. I reproduce that essay above as a weak herald, an unknowing companion, of a rare gift: a record of a life, written as it happened. As you will see, it’s something of a journal, with aspects of a dream or fantasy. It ends as an epitaph, written uniquely by the person being memorialized, before her death a year ago.

I need add nothing to my original words of outrage, as they have had their sad effect, both to ratify the idiocy named therein and to threaten free expression. The journal Porvenir, ironically named for some prospective Argentine future, no longer exists, having been hounded out of existence by gangsters’ threats and the physical intimidation of its publisher, a fine man of letters who deserves better. I have written for several such magazines through the years, which in the grand tradition of Argentine literary and political magazines, flicker on and off like tiny stars in an implacable darkness. Porvenir has no future. Perhaps, Argentina shares that black fate.

But that is not the point of my work now. The day after I wrote the essay, I received a visit from the police. They had traced me from evidence found on the body of the woman killed at San Vicente that day, which included a large plastic, imitation jute bag full of her belongings. It was one of those cheap woven sacks, crisscrossed in white and blue and red. Hers was frayed at its corners with use, muddied by uncounted rests in the dirt. It was a modest collection, her glory box of experiences and hopes. Inside was a jumble of little scraps of poetry, a badly used diary, and a single unsigned postcard with a picture of the Patagonian coast. A newspaper photo of Nelly Rivas showed her emerging from an elevator with a child. In the diary was the address of the Café Richmond and a printed transit schedule to Del Viso. At the bottom was a pin cushion with three sewing needles and a spool of black thread. Most prominent among the remains of this life were fragments of a disorganized manuscript addressed to me, along with a hand-drawn map to my office.

How she discovered my identity I do not know, and it hardly matters. The manuscript matched earlier fragments I had in my possession, apparently dropped off by her from time to time with no identification. The meaning of her one-sided correspondence only became clear in the course of my combining the memorabilia and writings in her bag with those in my possession and trying to make sense of the whole document. It was a perfect, if sad, job for an investigative reporter.

Happily, the police, in their arrogance, failed to find any interest in my correspondent or her belongings. With the smirk of a callow cadet in the academy of oppression, the young police officer who visited me handed it all over and washed his hands of it. To him, she was as invisible as ever she had been. That, it turns out, is her story and his is the story of Argentine politics – pretending to care for ‘the people,’ while beating and jailing and scaring and killing them from all sides. What my late friend in letters knew was the life of that invisible oppression, which, dear reader, she has recorded in a remarkable way.

I’ve stepped on my lead, which is a sin in journalism. The story I offer is not mine. It belongs to Dolores Rivas, or perhaps Dolores Perón Rivas, whose voice I present to you with affection and high regard, though I never met her in life. Her death is the only proof of her existence. I cannot truly represent her, as she was a woman, and I am not. She was an orphan, and I am not. She saw things that most don’t. She wrote a record of her time that transcends her poverty, through which she became one of those ‘organic intellectuals,’ a troubadour of the streets. She has written a certain kind of history of Argentina in our times.

I have spent the last year trying to make sense of her manuscript, to understand her as a woman, when she has left us only her ghost. ‘Epitaph for Sorrows’ is the result. It has left me with a feeling of kinship with the translators of ancient works, puzzling through the ashes of history, studying texts in search of truth and of life.

My Dolores is a strange ghost. Her obvious intelligence, fluid prose and self-conscious understanding contrast with the upbringing she describes. Certainly, elements of her story are affected by her mental state, which I will leave to her to characterize. She struggles to survive Argentina’s contemporary troubles. She shifts in time, finding herself with the legendary 19th century outlaw Facundo Quiroga, or inhabiting the spirit of folkloric characters like Deolinda Correa. At times, she appears possessed. She spends some long time convinced that she is dead.

Ultimately, though, Dolores seems no more inconsistent than the rest of us, fragmented in our dreams and our daily lives, conflicted by hate and love, crying out for some flicker of hope. Her condition is made more vivid by her isolation, as she appears to have wandered solitary much of her life, seeking, as she says, her Whole Self.

As a journalist and Dolores’s amanuensis, I tried to find her trail and to run her story to ground. I found enough to convince me of elements of her story, but as an effort to authenticate her life, I was a failure. Following Dolores converged with projects of mine from the past, causing me to believe in the story I am conveying to you on her behalf. For me, that’s good enough. You, dear reader, are encouraged to reach your own conclusions, in the process of which I pray you’ll show her generosity.

I have taken the liberty to interweave the poetic and other literary fragments Dolores left behind, as well. They seem to have meant something to her. But, aside from these modest editorial interventions, I have done my very best to leave Dolores’s voice alone.

The question of Dolores’s identity is open. Can this document really have been written by a poor orphan? Maybe the answer is yes, reflecting badly on our bias against the less fortunate and affirming her triumph over the oppression of her everyday life. Knowing who she is means everything, and nothing. She has rescued herself from the anonymity to which she and so much of Argentina have been consigned. To me, she is not who she seems, but that is a condition she shares with the rest of us.

Imagining a future for Dolores, one might consider the old lady in widow’s weeds walking aimlessly along the street, muttering to herself or fingering a rosary. She would be the one seated beneath the English Tower, or beside the Ombú tree in the Plaza San Martín, talking to the sky or feeding stray cats. These ladies, whom we have all seen and ignored, come from somewhere and somehow become invisible to us as they live out their days. For Dolores, of course, a chance to live her life, such as it might have been, was interrupted by a bullet.

This manuscript, then, is the end of Dolores. It also ends the record of Funes, el memorioso. After long years of devotion to the unimpeachable truth of Argentina’s past, Funes has become the latest object of menace for the ultranationalist right, the cartoonish Peronist remainders, and the many other self-regarding stalwarts of ‘official’ history. I have been accused of falsifying the historical record by those who most assiduously guard its lies. Those who would deny the authenticity of Dolores’s personal journey have even alleged that she is a cynical journalistic invention of mine. They may be the same savages who, without conscience, displaced and murdered their enemies as if they had no right to live.

But enough. I am finished. Before he became an oracle of the truth, Borges’ character Ireneo Funes was famous for knowing what time it was. For this Funes, it’s time to go. As I put away the pen, I wish others good luck with the remembrance of our collective past. I no longer believe in an idea of immaculate truth, of a naked record of facts. I can only offer the mostly forgotten words of Turgenev as counsel: ‘[T]ruth is just like a lizard--it leaves its tail in your hand, knowing full well that another will grow in its place.’

Let us return to Dolores, beginning with her letter of commission to me.

Funes, el memorioso

Esteemed Funes,

I attach this letter to the papers delivered to your office, with the commission to attest to their truth and to share them with the world, if they are worthy. You are the only person who might understand my plight.

You bear the name Funes, el memorioso. So, you know your responsibility to the past. You have spent your life faithfully recording, with true purpose in mind, Argentina’s collective memory and its many sins. Yours is a true public service.

I have no such gift, only my story. It’s as disorganized as my life, meandering through these years without family. As you will see, if you read these words, I even spent a long time dead. I cannot vouch for the truth, which I will leave to you. I can only promise the authenticity of these writings, whatever their value.

I also submit this because of your unblemished contempt for Perón. You will see why, as I tell you my tale, to which I now turn. I do not care to add to the debate over peronismo, only to bare the invisible truth. Thank you for accepting my words, which I hope will not be as lost as I. Please share them as you will. I neither expect nor want anything more.

Yours faithfully,

Dolores Perón Rivas

Chapter 1

Sorrows

There is no whole self.

Jorge Luis Borges

I met my mother in a dream. Of course, I had met her at birth, or even before, if one believes in the consciousness of the unborn. I do not, but no matter. From my first moments as a person, I felt her absence. She had given me up. I had shared her blood and I knew I would recognize her when I saw her. I had to find her, the wellspring of my Self, to ask her why she left me. Only when I have that answer will I become whole.

In the dream, she stood over me as I lay in bed, saying nothing, silently combing the unruly hair from my eyes. She was delicate enough to see through and light enough to float in the air. Her kind countenance calmed me. I inhaled her strangely familiar breath and reveled in her thick, impossibly black hair, the color of ink dropped into a well. Her face was shaped into a heart by a widow’s peak. The bed was warm and comfortable, not at all like the wool-covered pallet of the orphanage. Swaddled by the bed, enhaloed by my mother’s face, her dark eyes, her open smile, I felt the rapture of a cherub. In that moment of bliss and revelation, I came to know something of who I am. I am born of her beauty and innocence. Still unrevealed to me was the partnership of that innocence with filth, the liaison of my angelic mother and the man who ravished her.

I did not know who she was or whether I might find her and know her story. I could not imagine why she left me to these nuns, why she left me to dream my dreams in a dormitory full of other orphans, coughing and crying in the night, all of us bereft of a mother’s love. But I will always know her face, her aroma, her breath, her hair.

These dreams of mine can come upon me at any moment, with no warning. They take me to an alternative place to live, for who knows how long. I can dream when asleep or even while awake. I cannot control the onset or the message. Many dreams have rescued me from bad things, delivered me from evil, as the prayer says. Others have sent me halfway to hell.

I’m accustomed to the dreaming, though it has caused me injury and insult. Once, I fell into a dream while crossing the Plaza de Armas and was hit by a bicycle delivery cart, advertising cigarettes. I was almost killed by a pack of Imparciales 100s the size of a wall, all thanks to my dreams. So, I have to watch out.

Some dreams are visions of my life, and others dictate its course. Some just result in being run over by a cart or a nun telling me that I’m cursed by the devil. I don’t really need dreams for that, since the nuns are real, and therefore worse than any nightmare. A person doesn’t wake up from nuns.

In any case, dreams are my most reliable guide and constant companion. They have