Jorge Etcheverry
Brief selection of short stories in English for a book in preparation
Spontaneous generation
The generation of life, a discovery of a species of cockroach I didn’t
know of and have never seen before, rather long ones lying on the tile of the
bathroom floor, apparently dead, but after a few hours or days, some of them
have changed their positions slightly. This leads me to reflect, rather
guiltily, that I’ve been establishing this trivial fact in the bathroom of my
apartment—actually the second floor of a house in a more-or-less trendy
neighbourhood—instead of following the news that has spread poppies of blood
across the world. Well, you can always resort to tradition, to what has been
established, and I quote: “the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.” With this
excuse that doesn’t fool me, I feel my associations lead me to antiquated,
discredited things like spontaneous generation, which is the possible emergence
of complex plant and animal life, spontaneously, according to Wikipedia.
Triangulation with unknown apex
The squaring of the circle is not out of the question
in the field of psychology. Eggheads are usually also perfect squares. The
problem of the physicist, educated in some renowned North American
university but not foreign to eschatology for family reasons—an ancient lineage
going back to Calvinism— is that by following Einstein and many others, he
saw a divinity behind or around, or at the very core of what is called—and that
we do call— the universe, which having been created this way, surely does
exist and in it we, as the human species, would be more or less at the centre.
This is quite normal and unspectacular. For example, if you work loading and
unloading cargo in any port of entry—-air, land or sea—you would need this kind
of reassurance.: If reality is not real, and I have no way of knowing whether
or not it is, then I’m not getting out of bed today. Or maybe I will,
definitely, because to comply with the natural imperatives that are not at all
disagreeable when you satisfy them, the ultimate meaning of everything is not
actually needed and you just have to get up out of bed. After quite a hard day
of work in the lab the physicist dreamt he was in the center of a triangulation
where the left vertex was the Devil and the right, God, but in the lower
vertex—or perhaps apex— it depends on the point of view, there was an
entity.
The Rats in Mexico City
(As told to me by Sergio Chávez)
I've always been afraid of rats. Wait. Not afraid exactly.
Disturbed. Animals do have their ways. We’d like to think they're stupid,
but if you walk along any old street at night when almost nobody else is
around, you might suddenly feel something scurrying past your leg. Swishshsh. Then you'll
feel another one. Later, by the light of the lamp post or the rosy light
of dawn (I had to work nights sometimes) you'll see a certain movement on the
street and you'll soon realize those moving spots that are a bit darker than
the pavement are rats. They come out of sewers and cracks in the walls and they
run along the streets in droves for the sake of it, it seems. You hurry home or
wherever it is you have to go, almost at a run, because you know it’s happened
before in that polluted city of so many millions that drunkards curled up
asleep on the streets have been eaten up by rats. And I can tell you that in
Chile in poor neighbourhoods the odd baby has been bitten or eaten up by rats,
but it's nothing like it is in Mexico City. I've also heard that wild packs of
dogs in the desert in Chile have accounted for the disappearance of more than
one truck driver. I'm sure you're going to ask why they'd sleep outside on the
ground instead of in the cabin. Don't ask me!
But like I say, in Mexico City things are even worse. Most people don't
even know about it, and they smile or get annoyed if you ask them any
questions. Most Mexicans just ignore it, like they ignore other things. At the time,
I was working as a security guard at a gas station close to the city centre. I
always used to carry my rifle with me and as soon as I saw any movement in the
streets, of animals I mean, I would take aim and shoot. It was a way of keeping
me awake while I was working the night shift. Then I used to hang the bodies of
the rats from a wire, like clothes hung out to dry. When the daytime workers arrived in the morning, they would be surprised. I
shot one or two rats an hour. That
meant between eight to16 a night. In time, I became obsessed. I could see the
small, red eyes looking at me with hatred, and I knew they were following me,
watching me. They say there are 16 rats to every human being but
considering the size of rats, it's not that bad.
One night I remember looking at the small restaurant across the street
and noticing that the door had not been completely closed. It was open about 10
centimeters. The guys on the day shift used to eat breakfast there before they
started work. When my shift was over I ate there too. I hurried across
the street after tightly closing the door behind me and took a lighter out of
my pocket. As soon as I got to the restaurant, I squeezed inside, and
immediately felt sinuous forms running across my shoes and heard a lot of muffled
padding, rubbing and scratching. I was terrified and I stumbled for several
seconds, trying to find the light switch. When I managed to turn the light
on, I saw small, scurrying shapes. They were even inside the fridge,
inside the plastic bags where the food was kept. How they had managed to get
inside there I’ll never know. I felt shivers running down my spine,
and my legs felt like they were made of rubber.
When Don Eusebio, the owner, came to open his restaurant in the morning
I told him what had happened, but he didn't seem to believe me. He
wouldn't even let me finish what I was saying. "The boys always leave
things in such a mess," he said, patting me on the shoulder. I told him
the rats were even inside the fridge. "Come on. How can a rat get inside a
closed fridge?" he asked me. He started to tease me: "You've been
drinking too much, more than usual. What you need is a little chick for
yourself. Young guys go crazy without it."
Later, when his employees arrived, I noticed how carefully they cut off
the pieces of ham, bread and cheese that showed teeth marks. "You can't
use this food, Don Eusebio. People can get sick," I told him. But
everybody ignored me and kept talking. "Don’t leave such a mess tomorrow, niños,"
Don Eusebio told them, half smiling. "Sure boss," the guys
answered, chuckling and looking at me. They were not going to throw out
all that good food just because of some rats. People will do the most
incredible things to make a buck and nobody will say a word or lift a
finger. Afterwards, the guys at the restaurant used to tease me, but we
all knew the score.
About that same time, a lot of stray dogs were being found dead and
badly hurt around the market area. In Mexico City dogs tend to come and
go as they please, but these weren't the usual dog fights, people said.
No way. And it happened just by chance when I was walking that morning
around the market that part of an old wall caved in, and behind it, there was a
sort of cave. People immediately started to gather around to have a look,
and every dog for blocks around came running to the spot. A young guy,
probably from one of the stalls, flicked his lighter and was about to poke his
head inside the hole when he backed away screaming "Madre de Dios." An
enormous rat, or an animal that looked a lot like a rat, came out of the hole,
jumped over a wooden box and stood there, its fur standing up on end, the
little red, rat eyes brilliant with fear and rage. The dogs wouldn't
leave the animal alone, and a woman who was standing just in front of it
couldn't stop screaming, pointing at the animal with a trembling finger.
You probably know that Mexico City is built on top of an old Indian city.
That's why there’s always a good chance of finding caves. People have found
treasures, even dinosaur bones, more than once. But I could tell for sure the
animal wasn't a rat. It was too big. Even the big river rats in El
Salvador are small, almost dwarves, compared to that animal.
There are lots of caves and ancient ruins under the city. Once a
whole section of road caved in, sucking in several cars. Sand filled
the hole and not even one of the cars was ever found, or the people inside.
They even tried excavating and other things, but nothing worked. But let's get
back to the rat. Officials from the National Museum took the animal away
in a cage and put it on display for a while. In the papers they said the animal
was definitely some kind of rodent, but everybody could see that it wasn't a
rat, that it was a new (or old) animal species. And then all of a sudden,
the rat, or whatever it was, was no longer on display. Nobody wanted to
talk about it anymore, and even the people in the market, it seems, forgot
about what had happened. But that's the way people there do things. They act
normally, pretending everything's OK.
Fever
By Jorge Etcheverry
It wasn't altogether new, though it was unexpected: Gustav Meyrink, who
has been unfairly forgotten, though it already doesn't matter anymore, refers
to a similar case in one of his short stories. It has been clearly demonstrated
that the genes of certain people hide more surprises than might be expected.
Take for example l’âge d'or of AIDS that spared some while decimating others.
Anyway, these times are not meant for polemics or lectures. Nowadays what
counts are other, more basic skills: the capacity to build a shelter using
diverse and sparse materials; the ability to digest food well, take advantage
of almost anything organic, and keep teeth strong and healthy. And above all
it’s important to be able to maintain a certain degree of control over the
emotions, to keep the fever from rising.
Claire, who's a woman...and it's not that I think or have ever thought
that women are inferior to men; they’re different, that's true, but.... Claire
can't see or doesn't want to see that the fever rises, for instance, when we
argue and the level of mere words is surpassed, reaching that of imprecations
and threats. And it's not that she's selfish. On the contrary, she's an
emotional and sentimental person. She has a natural tendency to being kindly
disposed toward human beings and is able to share their joys and sorrows. This
for me is an inexhaustible source of spiritual pleasure, but a source of
certain disgrace and suffering to anybody else who's not at a safe distance:
the air starts to get hot, at first almost imperceptibly, and then, before the
casual observer, even an experienced one, is able to discern whether or not it
is merely a natural variation in temperature, the very air seems to catch on
fire, suffocating people and scorching their flesh. One minute more and the
water starts evaporating and herbs and branches, beginning with the dry ones,
begin to burn.
A Cool One is someone whose senses are sufficiently acute and whose mind
is trained enough to make instant connections, draw analogies, etc. and who
knows what he's dealing with even in the first few seconds. He starts running,
head bent, choosing as though by instinct the direction opposite the source of
the heat (us and our incombustible flesh) or he continues minding his own
business while everybody else around flees, terrified. Claire thinks the Cool
Ones have a sort of sixth sense and that a real Cool One can never be mistaken.
That may be true because despite the very strange things that have happened on
the face of the Earth in recent decades, I still don't believe in paranormal
faculties. Crumbling cultures always fall into superstition. But I don't even
attempt to argue with her, as I did before, because it inevitably gets her
excited, causing her temperature to rise. I try instead to change the subject:
"Last night did you see something like a pink light towards the coast?"
But this excites her even more and shortly after, I feel the heat like a lash,
while the familiar threads of smoke start to rise from around her buttocks,
talons, and hands, in brief, those parts of her naked body in contact with the
ground. I don't dare to look at her body for too long because the resulting
excitation brings my own temperature up, the radiation of which combines with
hers, almost literally burning everything in sight, leaving only ashes for who
knows how many kilometres around.
That's why I always look for distant places in which to make love.
Claire complains all the time as we walk towards spots we assume are
uninhabited, to be able to satisfy our urges, places where in the distance, the
pale horizon is only a lifeless line. No more chimneys or planes in sight. I
allow myself to be filled with nostalgia for a moment. Sometimes I imagine that
it's more difficult for me since I've always lived in the city. Then my
temperature increases by at least 500 degrees because emotions connected with
my past are always intense. (There are two kinds of people: the ones who live
in the past and the ones who live in the future. The present doesn’t exist for
them.) Then the smoke starts to billow underneath my feet, among the bushes
beside me. It's a kind of warning I'm sending to others because on this night
both of us feel an intense desire for each other and our temperatures start
rising even before any of the signals of excitation become apparent, the moist
skin and lips, rapid heartbeat and
breathing, a darkening of the nipples, and now it seems we are walking enrobed
in flames. Claire tells me she has a presentiment and looks at me sideways,
then strokes her womb in a strange way. I look at her for a moment, not
understanding; then fear and joy take hold of me. I can see and hear how the
heat generated crashes against something far away, pulverizing it. It's
my own heat, the product of my own fever, this thing that started nobody knows
how and that may or may not end, but that is no longer so important.
All texts translated from Spanish by Jorge Etcheverry and edited by
Sharon A Khan
