Экзамен

I wrote The Exam in the mid-1940s in Buenos Aires, where the imagination didn't have to add much to historical reality to get what the reader learns from the book. At that time it was impossible to publish the book, and only a few of my friends read it. Subsequently, being already far from those places, I learned that my friends in some episodes of the book saw a harbinger of the events that marked our 1952 and 1953 years. I didn't feel happy about what I guessed in this obituary lottery of ours. It was too easy: the Argentine future follows so stubbornly from the present that predicting future events does not require special talents from the predictor. I publish this old story because, in spite of everything, I like its free language, the plot without preaching, its special, Buenosairesian, sadness, and also because the nightmare it was born into is still alive and wandering around city streets. Julio Cortazar