Memories of the Pandemic: Deaths, Confinements, and Prohibitions in Mercedes Calzado's Novel

A little over five years and three months after the start of Mandatory Preventive Social Isolation (ASPO), decreed due to the arrival of the COVID pandemic , that era seems remote and hazy. However, the traces of individual and social suffering caused by both the disease and some of the measures taken to prevent its spread are overwhelming.

During 2021, pandemic diaries and various fictions amassed in and by the vertigo of that madness were already released. More sedately, the writing of Este verano que empieza otra vez (This Summer May It Begin Again ) by Mercedes Calzado allows us to approach, through fiction, the departure of a father in that context , to review the details of everyday life at that time, intoxicated with fears, excess information and prohibitions, and to see in backlight a family history that, in a certain way, can be everyone's and at the same time unique.

As Peruvian writer Katya Adaui says in the prologue, Calzado's prose—a Conicet researcher, essayist, and professor in the Communication Sciences program at the University of Buenos Aires—is of a "light density."

Without rhetorical rhetoric or high-sounding phrases, but also without the superficiality of many contemporary novels that hide shortcomings and a lack of reading under the umbrella of minimalism, Este verano que empieza otra vez plays, from its title, with the idea of ​​resetting an entire stage that, in a certain way, seems not to have happened.

Or yes, but like a nightmare come true. How else to describe a period filled with deaths, lockdowns, bans on hugs and kisses, and reports about the number of infected people on prime-time television?

The novel, written with a polished and detailed realism , contains several stories in one; on the one hand, there is the reconstruction of the narrator's father's hospitalization due to COVID, already in the last wave of the pandemic; on the other, there is the observation of the inner filigrees of a family; and there is also an asynchronous dialogue between the narrating voice and a high school teacher, Miss Anselmo, who is harsh and distrustful of the narrator's abilities.

The narrator's father appears in two roles : as the protagonist of a final hospitalization, due to Covid. And on the other hand, as a key figure in the narrator's childhood, teaching her to swim, to play paddleball in the middle of June in Buenos Aires, buying her Jack figurines and chocolates, and explaining politics to her.

There's also the description of that role in other, richly meaningful details: the post-heart attack cheese and ham snacks, a diagnosis of diabetes, more heart problems, leukemia, the biologically inevitable erosion of age, no matter how many self-help rhetoric we choose to believe. And always the phrase, "I'm not getting out of this."

Until he was hospitalized for the virus, and, unlike previous cases, he received a reassuring, optimistic message, an "I love you," to his wife. All of this was sent from a cell phone, after sedation and connection to a ventilator.

There are also moments where the Catholic faith appears, whether in the description of an image of the Virgin Mary in a hospital, or in the narrator's reflections, who says that when her father is hospitalized, he is recommended Rivotril, osteopathy, various pills, and Bach flowers. However, she assures us: "No one recommended that I pray. Some pray for me."

Shortly after, a neighbor added her father's name to her WhatsApp prayer chain. As is well known, in dramatic moments, religiosity emerges, and if many feign faith in Gauchito Gil or Difunta Correa, even if they are atheist university students, why not appeal to the Christian God or some saint? In any case, a stainless steel image of Christ, riveted to a coffin, will have an unforeseen fate.

The novel allows us to relive those days where the omnipresent theme was infection and death ; images of Guayaquil or Cochabamba, overwhelmed hospitals in Brazil, absurdly smothering ourselves in hand sanitizer, the daily figures on infections in the country, buying a bottle of water through a hole in a plastic curtain separating kiosks from customers. This kaleidoscope appears throughout the text.

This Summer, Let It Begin Again is a family novel, also in the sense that it's relatable , with anecdotes that reflect different temperaments, mini-sagas between each father and daughter, and recognizable Buenos Aires settings, such as Avenida Belgrano, Plaza Once, Catamarca Street, Deán Funes Street, and La Rioja Street. It's also a family novel because of its middle-class habits (daily newspaper reading, a job in accounting, easy family vacations).

But it can be categorized as a medical novel , with the unique feature that the narration is not carried out by a neurosurgeon, a pediatrician, or an orderly. The voice is embodied by a patient's relative, a role that at times seems annoying to the healthcare system, which usually captures the decisions and timing of both the sick person and their loved ones.

Reading This Summer May It Begin Again allows for a double reconstruction : that of that nightmarish and somewhat buried period , although its echoes beat more strongly than ever in the collective unconscious; and that of a story of family ties, without cruel settling of scores or revealed secrets. The smoothness of the prose accompanies the story, never abrupt, allowing us to assimilate both parts of the recent past and the universal and particular that dwell in every family. And in every loss.

Let this summer begin again, by Mercedes Calzado (Delibooks).