AEROPLANE TO AEROPLANO

David J. L'Hoste              by Giorgio Ballario     Santiago, Chile, December 17, 1976 “Damned Pisco Sour,” he thought, tugging the sheet up to shield his face from the sun that filtered through the window. “And damned all that cocaine that I did all night long”. His head was killing him, and he felt his heart pump madly, while the hotel room was spinning like a carnival merry-go-round. With his eyes closed he felt the other side of the bed, but he found nothing. Malusardi jumped up: Isabelita was gone. He opened the drawer of the side table and exhaled a sigh of relief. His wallet was still there, and also the false passport with which he had entered Chile two months ago. The gun was there too. It was the .380 Walther PPK that Raffaele Mannucci had given him. He closed the drawer and let himself drop on the mattress, humid with sweat. The headache was relentless, and he couldn’t even understand if it was morning or a...

Carpita     Dos Gardenias (Part Two).     by Giorgio Ballario      T hey were enemies, Malusardi told himself; and in war one kills as easily as one can get killed. But seen from up close and observing his face printed on the light-reactive photographic paper, inevitably the man lost his status of political adversary and became just another man, who maybe had a woman at home who waited for him and maybe even children. Just a guy who looked at himself in mirror in the morning, shaving, detecting with some regret his new gray hair. Then he had breakfast, he lit the first cigarette and scanned the newspapers titles. From that point of view, the man didn’t seem like an enemy anymore; but in a few minutes Malusardi would put a bullet in his brain.         “I’ve got to do it,” he would have liked to explain to him “but it’s nothing personal.” Even though the filthy newspaper the reporter worked ...

       This work, signed by “Ledesma” in 1768, alludes to the passion of Christ, but without depicting him. The artist was perhaps inspired by some engravings in which the tunic takes the place of Jesus Christ as the protagonist, surrounded by instruments of the passion, and sometimes some characters, such as the one made by Hieronymus Wierix around 1586, as part of a book entitled Passio Domino Nostri Iesu Christi, with twenty-one engravings with the theme of the passion.  These works have been called Arma Christi, or Weapons of Christ, and were common in northern Europe from the 15th century.        The New Spanish painting not only depicts the passion instruments but, around the tunic, arranged in a way that recalls the crucified body, are Mary and John, who accompanied him in that painful moment, God the Father, who will receive him in heaven and some cherubs.       Christ's weapons, or rather the instruments of th...