HEARTBREAK TANGO (MANUEL PUIG) AND PHOTOTROPISM

It happened on an autumn afternoon. The trees that grew along that street in Buenos Aires bowed low. Why? Tall apartment houses on either side of the street blocked off the sun's rays, and the brancKes spread obliquely, as if pleading, toward the middle of the road . . . seeking light. Mabel was on her way to a friend's house for tea, she raised her eyes to the aged treetops, she noticed that the strong trunks bowed, humbly.

Phototropism is the phenomenon that makes vegetables grow and face the Sun, seeking its light. It may seem strange, but all plants do it; the birth and development of any plant is always done looking for the light, usually upwards. When the Sun exposition is irregular, like the situation explained in the text (the tree ‘humiliation’) the deflections from vertical appear

­A remarkable case of phototropism is the sunflower heliotropism. Sometimes, a tree that has fallen down, has got to stand up later thanks to this phenomenon.

In the picture, you can see Manuel Puig with some flowers; we don´t know whether they are heliotropic.

THE GHOST RIDERS OF ORDEBEC (FRED VARGAS), THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT AND CHAOS THEORY

‘No, she’s careful, not a gossip, Danglard. She takes seriously the butterfly wing that moves in New York and causes an explosion in Bangkok.’

‘Did she say that?’

‘No, that was Émeri.’

‘Well, he’s wrong. It’s in Brazil that the butterfly moves its wing, and it causes a hurricane in Texas.’

‘Does that make any difference, Danglard?’

‘Yes. Because once you get away from the original words, the purest of theories just become rumours. Then we don’t know anything. From one approximation to another inaccuracy, the truth unravels and obscurantism takes over.’

Danglard’s mood was improving, as it did every time he had a chance to give a lecture, or better still to contradict someone with his knowledge. The commandant wasn’t a chatterbox, but silence wasn’t good for him either, because it offered too much room for his melancholy to take over. Sometimes it just took a few exchanges to hoist Danglard out of his despondency. Adamsberg was putting off the moment of mentioning Momo the local fire-raiser, and so was Danglard, which was not a good sign.

‘There must be several versions of the butterfly story.’

‘No,’ said Danglard firmly. ‘It’s not a fable, it’s a scientific theory about predictability. It was formulated by Edward Lorenz in 1972 in the version I gave you. The butterfly’s in Brazil and the hurricane’s in Texas, you can’t go altering that.’

I can hardly add something to this text, because the role that I usually play correcting in a fussy way is done by Danglard in the dialogue. Indeed, Lorentz, the man that looks like a kind grandfather in the picture, started creating a mathematic model to study the convection movements of the atmosphere and he came to the conclusions that the text suggests