MY FATHER’S: black leather folded and opened so many times over the years that the places it folded were white. The edges were frayed. It was narrow. He was a small man and his narrow black leather one looked small even in his hands. He was small but he seemed big. As a little boy I stood beside him at hardware store checkout counters looking up at him pulling it from his back pocket and opening it for the stranger behind the register. And I remember in those times the weight that came down from him onto me, crushing me who was shy and did not want to see because it was not mine to see—my father showed me nothing of what was inside until the day it all came exploding out in blood and bones and fire. I did not want to see but at the same time I did want to, very much, because he was my father and it was mine to see
Read moreMan Opening His Wallet
MY FATHER’S: black leather folded and opened so many times over the years that the places it folded were white. The edges were frayed. It was narrow. He was a small man and his narrow black leather one looked small even in his hands. He was small but he seemed big. As a little boy I stood beside him at hardware store checkout counters looking up at him pulling it from his back pocket and opening it for the stranger behind the register. And I remember in those times the weight that came down from him onto me, crushing me who was shy and did not want to see because it was not mine to see—my father showed me nothing of what was inside until the day it all came exploding out in blood and bones and fire. I did not want to see but at the same time I did want to, very much, because he was my father and it was mine to see
Read moreBack In Time
I. WHERE MAGDA IS NAMED
Once more the story began, for me, on that day-night of Santa Rosa. Lamas and I were in the beer hall, christened “Munich,” in Lavanda. The place was heating up, filling with impatient customers, smoke and voices. There was the continuous evening clinking of mugs and utensils. It was then that Magda and her life, in bits and pieces, began to emerge and expand.
Santa Rosa was back again and threatening to play a trick on Lavanda and Buenos Aires. September 30: the first day of spring. But one must put up with her as a friend and sweat out, almost gasping, the heat and humidity. The solicitor thought about it, but shook his head.
Now it was Lavanda and one had to wait for the noisy arrival of Rosa, the only nice whore, who figures, naughty girl, in Gregory XIII’s book of saints.
I could not remember having known any woman as flirtatious as her. None with her distant thunder, with her jokes like children playing with fireworks, suddenly to preside, so high up, over our conscious breathing, with thunder rolls that announced the end of the rotten world, to cease abruptly and go off with a distant carnival cackle.
She is known to have descended to Earth only once, in Sirilund, Norway, seduced by Lieutenant Glahn.
Read moreExiles from the Wasteland (Excerpt)
by Silvina Ocampo & Adolfo Bioy Casares
THE CAPTAIN AMIANA! He’d been there for ten years. There were people in the world who had given him up for dead, people who had known him. Not the rest of us. We didn’t know anybody. Amiana used to keep a two-master over in Havana when he was busy hauling illegal immigrants to the United States. Poles, Syrians, Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, Germans, Armenians, Galicians, Portuguese, Jews. From all over. Amiana charged them for hundred dollars a head and then threw them overboard. Overboard, just like that. He knew the coast guard was out there somewhere watching, through gunscopes, and he couldn’t put them ashore. That happened sometimes. Then it was uncovered and Amiana had to take off. He unfurled his sails and disappeared. The papers said the coast guard had nabbed him and they published his picture. And meanwhile….
Ten years before, I mean. A crew went with him and they sailed leeward due west, and came upon the Island. There he folded his wings and never again was a bird’s cry heard on that island. The ship ran aground on the way in and he didn’t realize it was running on land until it beached in the mud, where some little branches, too green and too dry, were growing, spying like vermin, and farther on, the mangroves. The ship was stuck there to the hilt. Amiana gave orders to lower the topmasts and to cut a path inland to the bush. A path to nowhere. Everything was the same there, and there was nowhere to go. It was like cutting paths in the sea. The bush was low there, a little taller than Amiana, very thick and uniform. It wasn’t the jungle, with musical scales, with undulating terrain. It was the sea, a watery tortoise afloat on other water. To walk through that land men had to go by their inner compass, or by the stars. The men who weren’t sailors had to go out moored to a cable like divers, to be able to get back to the beached ship, their only guide. Which is why it all happened. Because the Island was not alive. It was an apparition, like the undead. One felt that beneath it something was fluttering that did not flutter, that did not have a dead life, that saw things through other eyes….
Read moreThose Who Love, Also Hate (Excerpt)
by Silvina Ocampo & Adolfo Bioy Casares
THE CAPTAIN AMIANA! He’d been there for ten years. There were people in the world who had given him up for dead, people who had known him. Not the rest of us. We didn’t know anybody. Amiana used to keep a two-master over in Havana when he was busy hauling illegal immigrants to the United States. Poles, Syrians, Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, Germans, Armenians, Galicians, Portuguese, Jews. From all over. Amiana charged them for hundred dollars a head and then threw them overboard. Overboard, just like that. He knew the coast guard was out there somewhere watching, through gunscopes, and he couldn’t put them ashore. That happened sometimes. Then it was uncovered and Amiana had to take off. He unfurled his sails and disappeared. The papers said the coast guard had nabbed him and they published his picture. And meanwhile….
Ten years before, I mean. A crew went with him and they sailed leeward due west, and came upon the Island. There he folded his wings and never again was a bird’s cry heard on that island. The ship ran aground on the way in and he didn’t realize it was running on land until it beached in the mud, where some little branches, too green and too dry, were growing, spying like vermin, and farther on, the mangroves. The ship was stuck there to the hilt. Amiana gave orders to lower the topmasts and to cut a path inland to the bush. A path to nowhere. Everything was the same there, and there was nowhere to go. It was like cutting paths in the sea. The bush was low there, a little taller than Amiana, very thick and uniform. It wasn’t the jungle, with musical scales, with undulating terrain. It was the sea, a watery tortoise afloat on other water. To walk through that land men had to go by their inner compass, or by the stars. The men who weren’t sailors had to go out moored to a cable like divers, to be able to get back to the beached ship, their only guide. Which is why it all happened. Because the Island was not alive. It was an apparition, like the undead. One felt that beneath it something was fluttering that did not flutter, that did not have a dead life, that saw things through other eyes….
Read moreFaust On The Threshold Of Destiny (Excerpt)
by Adolfo Bioy Casares
ON THAT JUNE night of 1540, Doctor Faust was perusing the shelves of his extensive library in the tower chambers. He paused here and there; he would take up a volume, browse through it nervously, and replace it. Finally he selected Xenophon’s Memorabilia. He placed the book on the lectern and settled down to read. He looked in the direction of the window. Something was shaking outside. Faust said under his breath: A gust of wind in the forest. He arose and abruptly opened the curtains. He saw the night, to which the trees lent a more imposing air.
Under the table, Lord slept. The dog’s innocent breathing, serene and persuasive like dawn, affirmed the reality of the world. Faust thought of Hell.
Twenty-four years earlier, in exchange for an invincible magic power, he had sold his soul to the Devil. The years had passed swiftly. His time was up at midnight. It was, however, not yet eleven.
Faust heard footsteps on the staircase; then three sharp knocks on the door. “Who is it?” he asked. It is I,” answered a voice whose monosyllabic “I” did not give it away. The doctor had recognized it, but he felt somewhat irritated and repeated the question. His servant answered in a bewildered and reproachful tone: “It is I, Wagner.”
Faust opened the door. The servant came in with the tray, the glass of Rhine wine and slices of bread, and cheerfully remarked on how addicted his master was to that refreshment. While Wagner explained, as so many times before, that the place was very lonesome and that those short chats helped him through the night, Faust thought of those agreeable routines that both sweeten and hasten life, drank down a few sips of wine, ate a few bites of bread, and for a moment thought himself safe. He reflected: If I do not stray from Wagner and the dog, I am shielded from danger.
Read moreBaroque Concerto (Excerpt)
by Alejo Carpentier
THE WARDER NUN peered out distrustfully through the grate, pleasure transforming her face when she saw the Red-Head’s countenance: “Oh! Heavenly surprise, Maestro!” The door hinges creaked and the five men entered the Ospedale della Pietà, in complete darkness, the distant sounds of Carnival echoing in its long corridors from time to time as if carried on a frolicking breeze. “Heavenly surprise!” repeated the nun as she lit the lamps along the large music hall which was both monastic and worldly with its marble objects, moldings, and garlands, its many chairs, curtains, and gilt trimmings, its carpets and paintings of biblical themes: it was something like a theater without a stage or a church of few altars, both showy and secretive. They made their way to the rear, where a dome was hollowed out of darkness, candles and lamps stretching the reflections of high organ pipes accompanied by the shorter pipes of the voix celeste. And Montezuma and Filomeno were asking each other why they had come to such a place instead of seeking out wine, women, and song just as two, five, ten, twenty bright figures began emerging from the shadows on the right and on the left, surrounding friar Antonio’s habit with their lively white cambric blouses, dressing gowns, pearl earrings, and lacy nightcaps. And others arrived and still more, sleepy and sluggish as they entered, but soon playful and merry, whirling about the night visitors, testing the weight of Montezuma’s necklaces…
Read moreIn the Shade of the Almond Tree (Excerpt)
by Reindaldo Arenas
“IT’S GOT TO be chopped down,” says one. And I go out to the street. The other two split their sides laughing; they give a snort and applaud. “It’s got to be chopped down,” they repeat, circling around the first. Finally, they leave the dining room and head toward the patio. But I’m already on the street. It’s cool. The brutal September sun has departed and October has settled in the trees. It’s almost pleasant to walk these streets aimlessly. From here I don’t hear their prancing, their intolerable screaming, their constant running back and forth through the house, returning, questioning, wearing the shine off the flagstones of the patio. They just don’t stop for a minute, and when they got it into their heads to cut down the trees (saying that they were shedding their leaves and that they always had to be sweeping), they did it with such zeal that in a week they finished them all off. Only the almond tree at the back of the patio remained standing. Without realizing it, I’m already in the heart of Old Havana. I walk along Obispo, and, even though I’m not at all interested, I glance at all the store windows and I stop in front of a few for a moment, looking without seeing, or reading indifferently the titles of scientific books. I stand for a moment looking at these undesirable books, until I notice that somebody else is looking at them, and, it would seem, with great interest. It’s a gorgeous girl. I look at her from head to toe and feel the urge to touch her. She takes a gigantic comb from her pocketbook; she fixes her hair, looks at me, and starts walking, strutting a bit. Her dress, short and tight, adjusts itself to the rhythm of her body. Yes, I’m sure that she looked at me and that for a second she gave me a signal. Or maybe it’s my imagination….
Read moreThe Night the Dead Rose From the Grave (Excerpt)
by Lino Novás Calvo
THE CAPTAIN AMIANA! He’d been there for ten years. There were people in the world who had given him up for dead, people who had known him. Not the rest of us. We didn’t know anybody. Amiana used to keep a two-master over in Havana when he was busy hauling illegal immigrants to the United States. Poles, Syrians, Russians, Czecho-Slovaks, Germans, Armenians, Galicians, Portuguese, Jews. From all over. Amiana charged them for hundred dollars a head and then threw them overboard. Overboard, just like that. He knew the coast guard was out there somewhere watching, through gunscopes, and he couldn’t put them ashore. That happened sometimes. Then it was uncovered and Amiana had to take off. He unfurled his sails and disappeared. The papers said the coast guard had nabbed him and they published his picture. And meanwhile….
Ten years before, I mean. A crew went with him and they sailed leeward due west, and came upon the Island. There he folded his wings and never again was a bird’s cry heard on that island. The ship ran aground on the way in and he didn’t realize it was running on land until it beached in the mud, where some little branches, too green and too dry, were growing, spying like vermin, and farther on, the mangroves. The ship was stuck there to the hilt. Amiana gave orders to lower the topmasts and to cut a path inland to the bush. A path to nowhere. Everything was the same there, and there was nowhere to go. It was like cutting paths in the sea. The bush was low there, a little taller than Amiana, very thick and uniform. It wasn’t the jungle, with musical scales, with undulating terrain. It was the sea, a watery tortoise afloat on other water. To walk through that land men had to go by their inner compass, or by the stars. The men who weren’t sailors had to go out moored to a cable like divers, to be able to get back to the beached ship, their only guide. Which is why it all happened. Because the Island was not alive. It was an apparition, like the undead. One felt that beneath it something was fluttering that did not flutter, that did not have a dead life, that saw things through other eyes….
Read more