Sunday, June 5, 2016

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