Milenio

Milenio is the publisher for whom Lucas Pereyra undertakes a book of chronicles, one of two contracted books whose advances give his journey to Uruguay both an immediate financial purpose and a possible route back to sustained writing. The company enters the narrative through the obligations attached to that commission: work to finish, debts to pay, and time that Lucas hopes to reclaim for writing.

Commission and contracted work

Lucas identifies the chronicles as a book for Milenio, while the other contracted book is a novel for Astillero. Together, the two contracts account for the fifteen thousand dollars he travels to collect: eight thousand from Spain and seven thousand from Colombia. The text does not assign either sum to a particular publisher, but makes clear that the advances are payment for books already contracted and not uncommitted income.

By the time Lucas discusses the work, the chronicles are nearly complete. Their remaining task is to find a structure and give the material an order. The novel, by contrast, has not yet been started. That difference makes the Milenio project the closer, more tangible obligation, even as Lucas imagines the second book as the larger creative challenge.

Money and the promise of writing time

The advances carry unusual weight because receiving them in Argentina would mean conversion at the official exchange rate and a deduction for income tax. Lucas instead collects the dollars in Uruguay, planning to bring back more than the permitted amount and exchange them at the unofficial rate. He estimates that the total would convert to about 240,000 pesos at the blue-dollar rate, more than twice what he would retain through a domestic bank. The journey is therefore tied to the value of the contracted labor as well as to the urgent need for cash.

Lucas imagines using the money first to repay his wife for the months the household had lived on her salary, settle overdue bills, make repairs at home, repay his brother, and hire an afternoon babysitter. What remains, he hopes, will support nine or ten months of uninterrupted work. The Milenio book belongs to this practical vision: its advance is not simply money received, but a chance to turn contractual work into time at his desk.

Delivery and later publication

When Lucas later explains the arrangement to Magalí Guerra, he again names the chronicles for Milenio and says the books are due in May. The project is thus framed by a definite deadline, even while the money it represents is imagined as freedom from interruptions. In the account of the same day, he says he still has to organize the chronicles, whereas the novel remains unwritten.

A year later, Lucas reports that the book of chronicles has appeared in Bogotá and offers to pass Guerra a copy, noting that she has already read almost all of it as the articles came out. The commission has therefore moved from advance and unfinished manuscript to a published book. Its completion contrasts with the Brazilian novel, which has dissolved into what he describes as a mental nebulousness, and with his slow progress on other writing. Milenio’s role in the narrative is specific but consequential: it is the named destination of a contracted book, one of the obligations that links precarious household finances to the labor and eventual publication of Lucas’s writing.