THE STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH, ITALIAN, AND PORTUGUESE

CELEBRATED AUTHORS, DISTINGUISHED TRANSLATORS, AND ME

CHRISTOPHER ABRAHAM SPRING 2020

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in Spanish and English with honors in Spanish

Reviewed and approved* by the following:

Krista Brune Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Spanish Thesis Supervisor

John Lipski Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish and Linguistics Honors Adviser

* Electronic approvals are on file. i

ABSTRACT

This thesis combines translation practice and translation theory. With regards to practice,

I first selected four short stories from some of the most celebrated Latin American authors of the twentieth century–, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, and Guillermo

Cabrera Infante–and then translated these stories from Spanish into English. For the second half of the project, I performed a short literature review of writings on translation theory and practice.

These readings informed my opening translator’s note that both presents a personal philosophy on translation and also argues for the importance of retranslation.

I consider this thesis to be a creative project that presents four original translations and an analysis that reflects on the practice of translation itself. I designed this project to learn more

Spanish, read more short stories by celebrated Spanish-language authors, and continue to practice translating. By the end of the thesis, I wanted to have gained a better awareness of the translator, the reader, and the craft that comes between the two. While reading and reflecting on the practice of translation, I came across hard questions concerning not only translation itself, but also language and literature more broadly. I have done my best to study the paths of distinguished authors and translators, and I am still trying to figure out how to do business here along the way.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii

Chapter 1 Translator’s Note ...... 1

Chapter 2 “One of These Days”...... 9

Chapter 3 “The Intruder” ...... 12

Chapter 4 “April is the Cruelest Month” ...... 16

Chapter 5 “Stale Cake” ...... 22

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 26

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you, Professor Margaret Blue, for teaching me the fundamentals of translation. I would have never started this project without you. And thank you, Dr. Krista Brune, for taking a chance on someone you had never met before and agreeing to become my supervisor. Over these last two semesters, you have taught me more than I can say, and without your knowledge and guidance, this project would never have benefitted from translation theory. Thank you for the careful feedback on each of these stories, for taking the time to meet with me every other week, and for the many words of encouragement along the way.

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Chapter 1

Translator’s Note

Restaurants, closed. Schools, online. Parks, caution taped. Stadiums, empty.

Anything that gives people space to gather has been shut down because of the pandemic, and any reason for people to come together has been postponed, at the very least. In the year of the coronavirus pandemic, when family members are just as much of a threat to each other as friends, neighbors, and strangers, we are learning how fast the world crumbles when people cannot come together safely. We are learning how much people around the world depend on each other not just for good business, but also for security, happiness, opportunity, and hope. These are not the best circumstances for maintaining relationships, much less starting new ones. When I started writing this first chapter from my parents’ house under official stay-at-home orders, I became aware of perhaps the most important reason that I started this project one year ago.

Lisa Sternlieb, one of my English professors at Penn State, always says that the writer should take the reader on a journey. Sometimes, the journey feels more like a much-needed vacation. Through stories, characters, and words, the author can teach readers about another culture, share emotions, communicate ideas, and demonstrate how people relate to one another. Interestingly enough, these are some of the very things that humans can do just fine when they come together in person. When they cannot, literature can perform as a sort of substitute for the time being. During this time of social distancing, when people are still desperate for social interactions, stories are windows through which the reader can see another person, whether they be fictional characters or the writers themselves. This was my desire when I started this project one year ago: to watch and study the minds of some of the most celebrated authors from recent history. I simply wanted a reason to spend time with Carlos Fuentes, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel

García Márquez, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. I wanted to learn more about not just who they were and 2 who they continue to be for so many readers, but about how they wrote. So, I picked out some of their short stories. I read them and tried my best to understand them. And then I did something that brings the reader closer to the author than anything else can.

I translated them.

Before introducing the stories and the authors themselves, I want to share my understanding of this difficult, mysterious, and ultimately elusive practice called translation. Although most of my thoughts are nothing new to the discipline of translation studies, they represent a patchwork of my own selections and interpretations of readings from other writers and researchers that impacted me throughout this process, helped me figure out what I was thinking myself, and changed how I understand translation. I reflected on the practice after translating the stories themselves; however, this research certainly informed the choices that I made during the stages of rewriting and fine tuning.

Edith Grossman, a celebrated contemporary translator of Don Quijote1 and El amor en los tiempos de cólera2, has influenced my thinking on what translators do more than anyone else. In her book

Why Translation Matters, Grossman maintains that the translator does something very similar to the reader who listens closely enough to hear the author’s voice. She specifically compares the translator to a

“careful reader” (9). Besides understanding the meaning of the words on the page and following along with the story, this “careful reader” picks up on those things that may escape someone who simply reads for pleasure, including sound, nuance, rhythm, and tone. While the more casual reader may notice and feel the effects of these things, the translator takes the further step to consider them separately, and then communicates the whole of these impressions through the translation. Sometimes, this process feels cold and mechanical–a trading away of magic for the chance to see the moving parts underneath. Similar to the dentist preparing his instruments from the story “One of These Days” (see page 9), translators hope that some of the warmth remains once the elements are taken far away from the source of heat.

1 (Grossman, 2005) 2 Love in the Time of Cholera (Grossman, 1989) 3 This image introduces two of the most fundamental questions regarding translation: how much can translators really bring with them to the target language and culture? And what is the difference between originals and translations? Since translators cannot just perform a “simple process of linguistic transfer” (Bassnett 2), there simply has to be some degree of freedom that comes with translating.

Translation studies scholar Susan Bassnett writes that every theory of translation differs on how much freedom the translator should have (6). , an American translator from Spanish and

Portuguese most famous for bringing Cien años de soledad3 to English readers, encourages the translator to remember that languages can only “approach” rather than “reproduce” each other (20). In his celebrated essay “The Translator’s Task,” German writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin advises that originals and translations only share as much in common as a tangent line and a circle (82). The American translator of poetry and leading figure in translation studies Lawrence Venuti acknowledges the misguided Western tendency to simply grade translations based on how “fluently” they pass for the originals themselves (Invisibility 1). Rabassa, Benjamin, and Venuti would agree that translations can never perfectly match the originals, no matter how much readers and critics want them to. When there are no right answers, there can only be choices.

In line with these earlier theorists and translators, I think the translator does create something new. Originals and translations are fundamentally different for the same reason that second sets of footprints are never exactly the same as the first ones. No matter how carefully someone tries to cover his or her tracks, there are always going to be discrepancies of too much, not enough, and sometimes simply impossible. The same goes for translators, who also have the added challenge of wearing an entirely different pair of shoes. If translations were paint-by-numbers, the translator could only hope to color as much of the space as possible. But when the translator does color outside the lines, or perhaps chooses a different paint altogether, critics should be generous. The translator often fights a losing battle.

Sometimes, I simply make decisions based on a feeling.

3 One Hundred Years of Solitude (Rabassa, 2006) 4 Although I was never able to find translations for the Infante and Fuentes stories, the two from

Borges and García Márquez have previously been translated into English4. What reason was there for me to translate them again? Retranslations are actually just as necessary as the first editions. Some retranslations offer another interpretation of the original (Venuti, “Retranslations” 106), thereby competing with other editions on the market and offering something new to readers. Elizabeth Lowe, the retranslator of Euclides da Cunha’s Os sertões, observes that because languages are always changing

(414), retranslations also help the newest generation of readers reconnect with canonical works of literature (413). In other words, this practice becomes necessary over time. The retranslator has the same concerns as the caretaker of a garden, who trims the branches hanging over the paths so that people can continue to enjoy themselves without getting tangled and running into things. Because otherwise, people might stop coming back. Even though my translations are not headed for the publishing house, the reading world truly does need retranslators. Now that I have shared some of my thoughts on translation, the rest of this first chapter will focus on the authors themselves and offer brief comments on the choices I made while translating each of the stories.

Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014) was born in Aracataca, Colombia5. After publishing three short novels over the first seven years of his career, García Márquez released his first collection of short stories, Los funerales de la Mamá Grande (1962). “Un día de éstos” [“One of These Days”] describes a surprise dentist appointment amidst the routines of don Aurelio Escovar’s humble little office. There are only three characters in this story, and the longest line of dialogue measures just twelve words. Similar to a newspaper reporter, the narrator simply relates the events without making comments. For this reason, the verbs are the most important words: the dentist was “pedaling” the drill, the son “shouted” from the other room, and the patient “gripped” the sides of the chair. The story feels uncomfortably dry and direct;

4 See Andrew Hurley’s Collected Fictions (1998) and Gregory Rabassa and J.S. Bernstein’s Collected Stories (1999), respectively. I did not consult them during this project. 5 For more information on each of these authors and their respective publication histories, please see the corresponding entries on Encyclopedia Britannica’s website (García Márquez, Borges, Infante, Fuentes) or visit the Cervantes Institute’s biographies webpage (en español) under the Department of Libraries and Documentation. 5 most of the paragraphs begin with just a short simple sentence (“It was a lower molar.”). Since the reader does not have inside access to the characters, thoughts and feelings must be inferred from actions and descriptions. The reader has to figure out what to make of everything; however, the response depends to some degree on the last words from the mayor (“Same thing.”). The Spanish word “vaina” can mean a simple “inconvenience,” a disorderly “mess,” or the more generic “thing.” Without feeling strong convictions for the first two choices, which are admittedly more nuanced, I chose the word “thing” to communicate the mayor’s indifference. To my judgment, “thing” matches the narrator’s understated tone throughout the story, and hopefully gives the reader more space to make sense of the story themselves.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was a giant of twentieth-century literature from Buenos Aires,

Argentina. Borges was a career writer of poetry, fiction, and essays, publishing for the first time when he was just twenty-four years old and releasing one last book of essays three years before his death. “La intrusa” [“The Intruder”], the first short story from the collection El informe de Brodie (1970), features a much stronger narrator’s voice than “One of These Days.” The history of the Nilsen brothers becomes a tangle of eyewitness accounts (“someone heard it from someone”), commentaries, and interjections from a narrator possessed of a strong “literary temptation.” From the opening sentence, the reader must follow along with a grain of salt. One of the most challenging sentences to translate was the narrator’s stated purpose for finally writing the story: “I write the story now because, if I am not mistaken, it encodes a brief and tragic shard of the essence of the old working-class people.” The Spanish “cristal,” which appears here as “shard,” more generally refers to “glass” and “windows.” Even though the story does offer a “window” through which the reader can watch the story of the brothers, I was drawn to the more nuanced form of the word that refers to a piece of glass. With so many different voices and perspectives across time and space, the story feels fragmentary, and the narrator suggests that these events are only the remains of the “essence.” This was one of those choices first based on a feeling about what would seem most interesting and later on good sense after reflecting on one of the interpretations that the story offers. 6 Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005) was not just an author from Gibara, Cuba. Before publishing a single book, Infante studied medicine, practiced journalism, wrote film criticism under a pseudonym, and served as the director of the Cuban department of culture. One year after Fidel Castro came to power, Infante released a collection of short stories, Así en la paz como en la guerra (1960).

“Abril es el mes más cruel” [“April is the Cruelest Month”] describes the strange relationship between a recently married couple on their honeymoon. The reader feels too uncomfortable to look away, not because of what the characters actually say, but because of what they clearly mean to say. For this reason, nothing matters more than the dialogue. The husband was correct to say that “words always betray you”; the exchanges between the characters uncover the story of a love that barely manages to keep the anger and suffering underneath the surface. The dialogue has to read fast to match with the simple sentences throughout the prose (“He dozed off.”) and approximate regular speech. English contractions are fairly useful for this effect. Class differences throughout the dialogue, on the other hand, were much more difficult to convey. When the manager of the grounds comes to the ask the couple for the rest of the money, he pressures them to make a decision so that he can go watch “boseo” (rather than “boxeo”) on the television, and figures that “Usté sabe.” In both cases, the apostrophe can easily indicate differences of pronunciation. However, “bossin” and “Y’know” may come across as just common speech for the

English reader, not indicators of social class. Going back to the quote from Gregory Rabassa, this was one of those choices where I could only “approach” the meaning of the original.

Although the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) was mostly known for his novels, he actually started his career writing collections of short stories. For some time, Los días enmascarados

(1954) was regarded as the first piece of writing Fuentes ever printed. However, around the year 1973,

Fuentes’ short story “Pastel rancio” [“Stale Cake”] was discovered inside the November 1949 issue of the

Mexican journal Mañana (Reeve 65). Compared to the other stories here, “Stale Cake” was probably the hardest one to simply understand, let alone translate. The story features Brooklyn neighbors Mariza and

Sarah folding clothes and gossiping about other tenants (“You know about Mrs. Krankenwicz, right?”). If 7 Sarah were not so disinterested, nothing would seem out of place. But the more Sarah gives herself completely over to her thoughts, the more the reader becomes aware of a tragic past. Fuentes introduces different social registers, settings, and even languages. The pacing of the story starts to feel uncomfortable; things get even more confusing when the reader stops to think. There are a couple of paragraphs towards the middle of the story where Fuentes references numerous cities and names associated with the Second World War (“They have been at Dachau and Buchenwald, and at leveled

Rotterdam, and…”). I chose not to give the reader footnotes for reasons of pacing. Even though each of these references means something historically, reading the footnotes would have taken away from the wandering, reckless rhythm of the narrator during these sentences. While the careful reader should consult other sources and consider each of these things separately, the casual reader, on the other hand, probably has enough common knowledge to figure out the overarching theme behind these references. I am confident that this gamble gives me the best chances of communicating the desired effect.

There’s something else besides success that characterizes García Márquez, Borges, Infante, and

Fuentes. As much as the reader from the may associate these names with particular countries and one common language, these four authors were citizens of the world. Because his father was a diplomat, Carlos Fuentes grew up moving around the countries of South America, Europe, and the

United States. He was born in Panama. Shortly before the beginning of World War One, Jorge Luis

Borges moved to Switzerland with his family, and then later to Spain. Borges is buried in Geneva. In

1955, Gabriel García Márquez began a tour of Europe that lasted four years. He would spend most of his adult life away from Colombia, living in Venezuela, the United States, Cuba, Spain, France, and Mexico.

As the new director of Fidel Castro’s Cuban department of culture, Guillermo Cabrera Infante left Cuba for Brussels towards the beginning of the sixties. Just a few years later, after sharing criticisms of Castro’s government with an Argentinian magazine, Infante sought asylum in London. He died there in 2005.

Interestingly enough, these short stories here are mostly about people away from home. Sarah and

Mariza from “Pastel Rancio” are exiles from Europe, the main characters from “April is the Cruelest 8 Month” are on their honeymoon, and the narrator of “The Intruder” spends a considerable amount of time traveling before writing the story. Movement matters just as much to the stories as to the authors themselves. During this current time of restricted movement, I encourage the reader to go along for the ride, and to get out of the house for a change.

9 Chapter 2

“One of These Days”

Gabriel García Márquez

Monday dawned lukewarm and without rain. Don Aurelio Escovar, an unlicensed dentist and very much a morning person, opened his office at six o’clock. He took out a set of dentures still mounted on the plaster casting from a glass case and placed a handful of instruments on the table, which he ordered from largest to smallest, as though on display. He wore a striped shirt without a collar, closed at the top with a golden button, and a pair of pants held up with elastic suspenders. He was expressionless and thin, with a face that rarely corresponded with the circumstances, like the face of a deaf person.

Once he had everything ready on the table, he wheeled the drill over to the springy armchair and sat down to polish the dentures. He seemed not to think about what he was doing, but he worked with persistence, pedaling on the drill even when he wasn’t making use of it.

After eight o’clock, he paused to look out the window at the sky, and he saw two great big hens pensively drying themselves in the sun on the neighboring house’s rooftop. He went back to work with the thought that it would rain again before lunchtime. The sharp voice of his eleven-year-old son brought him back to reality.

“Papá.”

“What.”

“The mayor says he needs you to pull a tooth for him.”

“Tell him I’m not here.”

He was polishing a golden tooth. He held it out at arm’s length and examined it with his eyes half-shut. From the little waiting room, his son shouted again.

“He says you’re here because he hears you.”

The dentist went on examining the tooth. It was only after he put it on the table with the other finished pieces that he said, “Even better.” 10 He started to operate the drill again. He took out a bridge with several pieces from a little cardboard box where he kept things to get done and began to polish the gold.

“Papá.”

“What.”

He still hadn’t changed his expression.

“He says if you don’t pull the tooth, he’ll shoot you.”

Without any sense of hurry, and with an exceedingly calm movement, he stopped pedaling on the drill, moved it away from the chair, and pulled out the entire bottom drawer. That was where the revolver was.

“Fine,” he said, “Tell him to come shoot me.”

He spun the chair around until it faced the door, his hand resting on the edge of the drawer. The mayor appeared at the doorway. He had shaved his left cheek, but on the other one, which was swollen and painful, he had a five-day-old beard. The dentist saw many desperate nights in his wilted eyes. He closed the drawer with his fingertips, and said, softly, “Sit.”

“Good morning,” said the mayor.

“Morning,” said the dentist.

While the instruments were boiling, the mayor rested his head on the headrest and felt better. He breathed in an icy smell. It was a poor little office: an old wooden chair, the pedal drill, and a glass cabinet with ceramic knobs. In front of the chair, a window with a cloth screen tall as a man. When he sensed that the dentist was approaching, the mayor planted his heels and opened his mouth.

Don Aurelio Escovar moved the mayor’s face towards the light. After looking carefully at the damaged tooth, he adjusted the jaw with careful pressure from his fingers.

“It has to be without anesthesia,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you have an abscess.” 11 The mayor looked him in the eye.

“Okay,” he said, and tried to smile. The dentist didn’t return one. He carried the saucepan with the boiling instruments to the work table and took them out of the water with a pair of cold pliers, still without any sense of hurry. Afterwards he wheeled over the spittoon with the tip of his shoe and went to wash his hands in the basin. He did everything without looking at the mayor. But the mayor never let don

Aurelio out of his sight.

It was a lower molar. The dentist kneeled and squeezed the tooth with a pair of hot forceps. The mayor gripped the sides of the chair, pushed down on the floor as hard as he could with his feet, and felt a frozen emptiness in his kidneys, but he did not let out a breath. The dentist just moved his wrist. Without resentment, but rather with bitter tenderness, he said, “Here you pay us back twenty deaths, lieutenant.”

The mayor felt the crunch of bones in his jaw and his eyes filled with tears. But he did not breathe until he felt the tooth come out. Then he saw it through the tears. It seemed so unfamiliar and detached from his pain that he could not understand the torture of the past five nights. Bent over the spittoon, sweating, panting, he unbuttoned his jacket and felt for the handkerchief in his pants pocket. The dentist gave him a clean rag.

“Dry your tears,” he said.

The mayor did. He was shaking. While the dentist washed his hands, he saw the warped ceiling and a dusty cobweb with spider eggs and dead insects. The dentist came back drying his hands. “Get some rest,” he said, “and rinse your mouth with salt water.” The mayor got to his feet, said goodbye with a disciplined salute, and made his way towards the door, stretching his legs, without buttoning his jacket.

“Send me the bill,” he said.

“To you, or the municipality?”

The mayor didn’t look at him. He closed the door and spoke through the metal screen.

“Same thing.”

12 Chapter 3

“The Intruder”

Jorge Luis Borges

2 Kings 1:26

They say (which is unlikely) that the story was related by Eduardo, the younger of the Nelsons, at the funeral of Cristián, the older brother, who passed away from natural causes sometime not long after

1890 in the township of Morón. What’s certain is that someone heard it from somebody over the course of that long-lost night, over yerba mates, and repeated it to Santiago Dabove, whom I heard it from. Years later, they told it to me again at Turdera, where it happened. The second version, somewhat more detailed, confirmed Santiago’s version in general with the small variations and discrepancies which are to be expected. I write the story now because, if I am not mistaken, it encodes a brief and tragic shard of the essence of the old working-class people. I will do it with integrity, but I can already tell that I will give in to the literary temptation to accentuate or add some small detail.

In Turdera they called them the Nilsens. The priest told me that his predecessor remembered, not without some surprise, having seen a worn black Bible with Gothic lettering in the house of that people; on the last few pages he could make out handwritten names and dates. It was the only book there was in the house. The fateful Nilsen chronicles, lost just as everything will be lost. The manor house, which no longer exists, was made of unfinished brick; a red tile patio and another of earth could be seen from the foyer. With that being said, few people went inside. The Nilsens protected their privacy. They slept on cots in the unfurnished rooms; their luxuries were the horse, the saddle, the short dagger, the bright

Saturday outfits, and the belligerent alcohol. I know they were tall, with reddish hair. Denmark or Ireland, which you would never hear anyone speak of in those parts, ran through the blood of those two criollos.

The locals feared the Redheads; it’s not impossible that they were responsible for someone’s death. They once fought shoulder to shoulder with the police. People say that the younger brother had an altercation with Juan Iberra and more than held his own, which, according to the experts, says quite a lot. The 13 Nilsens were herdsmen, butchers, bandits, and at one point, card sharks. They had a reputation for being cheap, except for when alcohol and gambling made them generous. Nothing is known about their relatives, not even where they came from. They owned a cart and a yoke of oxen.

The Nilsens differed physically from the brotherhood that gave the Costa Brava its outlaw reputation. Combined with what we don’t know, or perhaps even ignore, this helps to understand how close they were. Crossing one of them was the same as making two enemies.

The Nilsens were partygoers, but until then their romantic affairs had never gotten past the foyer.

For that reason, there was no shortage of comments when Cristián brought Juliana Burgos to live with him. It is true that he gained a servant that way, but it is not any less truthful that he heaped dreadful trinkets upon her and showed her off at the parties. At the humble parties of the tenements, where the tango was prohibited, and where they danced, to this day, with plenty of light. Juliana had a dark complexion and slanted eyes; one look at her was enough to make someone smile. In a modest town where work and indifference wear down the women, this was not seen as a bad thing.

Eduardo went along with them at first. Then he started out on a journey to Arrecifes for I don’t know what reason; when he came back, he brought a young girl to the house, whom he picked up on the way, and in a few days he kicked her out. He became more disagreeable; he got drunk alone at the bodega and didn’t talk to anyone. Eduardo was in love with Cristián’s woman. The town, which perhaps knew it before he did, foresaw the latent rivalry between the two brothers with treacherous joy.

One night, after coming back late from the corner, Eduardo saw Cristián’s dark horse tied to the tethering post. The older brother was waiting for him on the patio in his nice clothes. The woman came and went with yerba mate in her hand. Cristián said to Eduardo, “I’m going to a party somewhere around

Farías. There you have Juliana. If you want, use her.”

The tone was somewhere between commanding and polite. Eduardo sat there looking at him for a long time; he didn’t know what to do. Cristián got up, said goodbye to his brother, not to Juliana, who was a thing, mounted his horse, and set off at an easy trot, not in any hurry. 14 From that night on they shared her. No one can know the details of that sordid union, which offended the decency of the town. The arrangement worked well for a few weeks, but it couldn’t last.

When they were together, the brothers never said Juliana’s name, not even to call for her. But they looked for, and they found, reasons to disagree with each other. They argued over the sale of some animal hides, but they were really arguing about something else. Cristián would usually raise his voice, and Eduardo would go quiet. Without knowing it, they were watching each other. In the hardened outskirts of Buenos

Aires, a man did not say, and nor was it said, that a woman could matter to him beyond desire and possession. But the two were in love. Somehow, this humiliated them.

One afternoon, in the Plaza de las Lomas, Eduardo came across Juan Iberra, who congratulated him on the fine thing he had gotten hold of. It was then, I think, that Eduardo insulted him. Nobody was going to make fun of Cristián to his face.

The woman cared for the two of them with wondrous submission, but she could not hide a preference for the younger brother, who may not have rejected the offer to participate, but at least who had not been the one to offer.

One day, they ordered Juliana to take two chairs out to the front patio and not to appear around there because they needed to talk. She expected a long conversation and went to lie down for a siesta, but soon afterwards they woke her. They made her fill a bag with everything she had, including the glass rosary and the little cross that her mother had left her. Without explaining anything, they hoisted her up on the wagon and embarked on a silent and tedious journey. It had rained. The roads were slow-going, and it must have been eleven o’clock at night when they got to Morón. There they sold her to the madam of a brothel. The deal was already done; Cristián collected the money and then split it with the other.

In Turdera, the Nilsens, lost before then in the tangle (which was also a routine) of that monstrous love, tried to resume their former life of men among men. They went back to their pranks, the cockfighting ring, the occasional parties. Perhaps, at some point, they thought they were saved, but each of them, on both sides, would usually make the same mistake of unjustified or plenty justified absences. 15 Shortly before the end of the year, the younger brother said he had something to do in the Capital.

Cristián went to Morón; on the tethering post of the house that we know about, he recognized Eduardo’s brindle. He entered. The other one was inside, waiting his turn. It seems that Cristián said to him, “If things go on like this, we’ll tire out the good horses. It’d be better if we had her on hand.”

He spoke with the madam, took some coins out from his belt, and took her with them. Juliana went with Cristián; Eduardo spurred the brindle so that he wouldn’t see them.

They came back to what has already been said. The detestable solution had failed; the two had given in to the temptation of trickery. Cain walked there, but the affection between the Nilsens was very strong–who knows what trials and what dangers they had shared!–and they preferred to take out their exasperation on other people. On strangers, on the dogs, and on Juliana, who had brought the discord.

The month of March was almost over and the heat had not ceased. One Sunday (on Sundays the people usually go home early) Eduardo, who was coming back from the bodega, saw that Cristián was yoking the oxen. Cristián said to him, “Come, we have to drop off some hides around Pardo. I already loaded them. Let’s take advantage of the break in the heat.”

The market at Pardo was, I think, more towards the south. They took the Camino de las Tropas, and then a sidepath. The countryside was getting bigger with the night.

They approached the tall grass. Cristián tossed away the cigar he had lit and said without hurry,

“Time to work, brother. The vultures will help us afterwards. Today I killed her. Let her stay here with her fancy clothes. She won’t make any more trouble.”

They hugged each other, almost crying. Now another circle bound them together: the woman sadly sacrificed, and the obligation to forget her.

16 Chapter 4

“April is the Cruelest Month”

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

He couldn’t tell if it was the light coming through the window or the heat that woke him up, or both of those things, or perhaps even the noise she was making in the kitchen preparing breakfast. First, he heard her frying eggs, and later the smell of melted butter came to him. He stretched out on the bed and felt the tepidness of the sheets sliding under his body, and a pleasant pain ran along his spine to the back of his neck. In that moment, she entered the room, and it annoyed him to see her with an apron over top of her shorts. The lamp that had been on the nightstand was no longer there, and she set the plates and the glasses on top of this. Then he let her know that he was awake.

“What d’ya say, sleepyhead?” she asked, joking.

He said good morning with a yawn.

“How do you feel?”

He was going to say great. Then he thought it wasn’t exactly great. He reconsidered.

“Admirably,” he said.

He wasn’t lying. He had never felt better. But he understood that words always betray you.

“Oh, come on!” she said.

They ate breakfast. After she finished washing the dishes, she came back to the room and suggested they go for a swim.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said.

“I saw through the window,” he said.

“Saw?”

“Well, felt. Heard.”

He got up and washed himself and put on his swimming trunks. He threw on the bath robe over top of these, and they left for the beach. 17 “Wait,” he said on the way there, “I forgot the key.”

She took the key out from her pocket and showed it to him. He smiled.

“Do you ever forget anything?”

“Yes,” she said, and she kissed his mouth. “Today I forgot to kiss you. Awake, that is.”

He felt the wind from the sea on his legs and face, and he took a deep breath.

“This is the life,” he said.

She had taken off her sandals and was burying her toes in the sand as she walked. She looked at him and smiled.

“You think so?” she said.

“You don’t?” he asked in turn.

“Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. I’ve never felt better.”

“Me neither. Never in my life,” he said.

They swam. She could swim really well, with long strokes, like the athletes on television. After a little while he went back to the beach and lied down on the sand. He felt the sun drying off the water and the salt crystals clogging his pores, and he knew exactly where he was burning the most, where a blister would form. He liked to get sunburnt. To sit still, stick your face in the sand, and feel the air that shaped and destroyed the little insignificant dunes, and slipped the fine little grains into the nose, the eyes, the mouth, the ears. It looked like a remote desert, immense and mysterious and hostile. He dozed off.

When he woke up, she was brushing herself at his side.

“Want to go back?” she asked.

“Whenever you want.”

She made lunch and they ate without speaking. She had burned, just a little, on her arm. He walked to the drug store that was three blocks away and brought back some aloe. Now they were on the front step, and every once in a while, the cool and sometimes fierce sea breeze that picks up during the evenings in April reached them. 18 He looked at her. He saw her delicate and well-defined ankles, her smooth knees, and her shapely thighs without violence. She was stretched out on the pool chair, relaxed, and on her lips, which were quite full, there was the attempt at a smile.

“How do you feel?” he asked her.

She opened her eyes and squinted from the brightness. Her eyelashes were long and curled.

“Great. What about you?”

“Same here. But, tell me…has it all gone away?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“And…it doesn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. I swear that I’ve never felt better.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“Why?”

“Because it would bother me if I felt this good and you didn’t feel well.”

“But I do feel good.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Really. Please, believe me.”

“I believe you.”

They fell silent and then she spoke.

“How about we go for a walk around the vista?”

“You want to?”

“Sure. When?”

“Whenever you want.”

“No, you decide.”

“Okay, in an hour.”

In an hour they had reached the cliffs. 19 “How far do you think it must be from here to the bottom?” she asked, looking towards the shore, towards the lines of foam on the waves, and the cabañas in the distance.

“About fifty meters. Maybe seventy-five.”

“Not a hundred?”

“I don’t think so.”

She sat down on a rock with the sea to her side. The silhouette of her legs stood out against the blue of the water and the sky.

“Did you already draw me like this?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Promise me you’ll never draw another woman like this here.”

He got upset.

“The things that go through your head sometimes! We’re on our honeymoon, aren’t we?

Like I would be thinking about another woman right now.”

“I’m not saying now. Later. Once you’re tired of me. Once we’re divorced.”

He raised her up and kissed her lips, forcefully.

“You’re being stupid.”

She wrapped her arms around his chest.

“We’ll never get divorced?”

“Never.”

“You’ll always love me?”

“Always.”

They kissed. Almost immediately they heard someone calling.

“It’s for you.”

“I don’t know who that could be.”

They saw an old man coming behind the reeds of Spanish grass. 20 “Ah. It’s the property manager.”

He greeted them.

“Do you folks leave tomorrow?”

“Yes. Early tomorrow morning.”

“Great, in that case I want you to give me the rest now. That okay?”

He looked at her.

“You go with him. I want to stay here a little while longer.”

“Why don’t you come too?”

“No,” she said, “I want to see the sunset.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that I want to see if I’m going to my daughter’s house to watch the bossin’ match on TV. Y’know, she lives out on the main road.”

“Go with him,” she said.

“That’s fine,” he said, and he began walking behind the old man.

“You know where the money is?”

“Yeah,” he responded, turning around.

“Come find me later, okay?”

“Sure. But once it gets dark, we come back down. Don’t forget.”

“Sure,” she said, “Give me a kiss before you go.”

He did. She kissed him hard, with pain.

He felt her tense, sharp on the inside. Before disappearing behind the tide of grass, he waved to her. Her voice came to him through the air, saying I love you. Or maybe she was asking do you love me?

She was watching how the sun was setting. It was a circle filled with fire that the horizon turned into three-quarters of a circle, into a half-circle, into nothing–although a red bubbling remained where it disappeared. Later, the sky was getting more and more violet, purple, and the black of the night began to erase the rest of the twilight. 21 “Will the moon come out tonight?” she asked herself out loud.

She looked down and saw a black hole, and then, further down, the glaze of the white foam, still visible. She changed positions on her seat and swung her legs out, hanging them over the vacuum. Then she gripped the rock and dangled her body, and without the slightest noise, she let herself fall into the deep black well that was the beach, exactly eighty-two meters below.

22 Chapter 5

“Stale Cake”

Carlos Fuentes

“Oh, Sarah Goldbaum, you must be a happy woman!”

The two ladies’ windows were connected by a cord from which they hung their clothes.

The Jewish woman’s face brightened.

“Ja, Mariza, ja…not much longer till he comes, very soon now.”

Unfurling a white camisole with the wind, Mariza continued. “You must already know that it’s the only thing people are talking about in the neighborhood. It’s a social event.”

The Polish woman took out a pin from her apron.

“I’m telling you this goes beyond anything with Mrs. Krankenwicz, I can tell you that much.”

“Yes, Mariza is very happy.”

An air of impatience spread across the wide countenance of the Polish woman’s face. “You know about Mrs. Krankenwicz, right? Ah, it’s scandalous! And to think she’s almost my age…Gott! Every night she shows up at the window after dinner, the fraud, like around seven, and in her nightgown, and she’s yawning, and then she turns off the light…And what do you know, Sarah! Not even an hour later, when there hasn’t even been enough time for the food to settle (and I’ve timed it with my watch), the curtain that hangs across the window lights up, and if the windows are open, you can hear laughing, and murmuring, and glasses clinking, and to think that woman’s my age! What an embarrassment! And of course, us women, her neighbors, try to make this a respectable place to live, “high class,” and we notice.

And who do you bet came to visit her past midnight, Sarah? No, don’t guess, I’ll tell you! It wasn’t the little old man downstairs, or Mr. Harrison, the good old guy from 37, no. It was Mr. Galeotti, that really handsome Italian, the barber, and he could be her son, just imagine, Sarah…Fur de luff…what do they see in her? Ah, and the best part, Sarah, the best part is that our lovely lady, who do you think…” 23 But Sarah wasn’t listening. Mariza could just as well have been talking to the bras hanging precariously from the cord. Sarah heard the tut-tut of the car horns on 14th Street, and the high-pitched sounds of children, and the flat little piano of the alcoholic in 24-C lamenting his exile from Greenwich

Village for this rotten Brooklyn, and the circus’s advertising truck that made its appearance as the mercury was rising in the thermometer, and the disagreements between couples that radiated from the first window of the third floor. And if she heard this, she was thinking about something else. Her son was arriving from Europe this afternoon, she hadn’t seen him for thirteen years, today he was a twenty-two- year-old man. And when Sarah remembered his little frame in a sailor’s uniform and black socks up to the thigh saying goodbye to her from the wharf, and then waving his handkerchief from the boat and shouting, “I’ll come back, schone Sarah, schone Sarah, I’ll come back,” when Sarah remembered, she had to bring the sleeve of her sweaty dress to her Semitic nose, and then Mariza, surprised, shouted as she spilled petticoats and socks all over the place.

“Sarah, Sarah, it’s not so bad…I know all too well that the old hag’s shameful meetings should embarrass us! But I’ll tell you now, Sarah, and this is confidential, because Mrs. d’Angello told me…”

Sarah was at the New York wharf; the boat was going to dock. She thought her heart would burst with the excitement. Sarah had put on her Sunday dress, the only one she had, her felt hat, her only nylon stockings. She wanted her son to see her looking beautiful! Look, Sarah, they’re getting off now. Control your happiness, Sarah, you’re going to see him, after thirteen years; he came back, Sarah, just like he promised you.

The faces that descend the stairs bring, in their cloudy gazes, the pale traces they have not managed to understand, they are the victims of a Mars that today is called Scientific and doesn’t murder soldiers, but rather mothers and children, and old people; they are the sons of Weimar and Sarajevo and

Munich, the beings born among the anguish and collapse, the neurotics, the lesbians, and the inverts who were born when the motto “Order and Progress” died, the men and women who haven’t been able to conceive of Spencer and Comte. 24 The sad eyes and the wrinkled brows are Germans, Jews and Italians, and Dutch and Czech. They have been at Dachau and Buchenwald, and at leveled Rotterdam, and they have robbed and murdered on the dark and pestilent streets of Naples for a piece of bread, but others grew up and lived in Jugend, in the

Myth of the Twentieth Century, and in the hymn of Horst Wessel. It is a long and oppressive march.

There is a happy group among the crowd. It is made of a young blond boy and two girls with their hair down, one of them barefoot, the other obviously pleased with her tall, white high heels. Skirts above the knees and fitted sweaters.

It’s him, Hans, her son!

These are the same blue eyes, the same lips, less pink now, the same cheeks as before, perhaps thinner! It’s Hans! And the Jewish lady runs towards him, among the people and the shouting and the luggage, and she overwhelms him with hugs and kisses, and her Yiddish phrases are tender and sweet.

The girls laugh noticeably and rudely. Hans looks embarrassed and tries to mask this with annoyance.

“What’s going on, ma’am?”

“Hug me, silly! Hug me!”

“Please, get away from me!”

And Sarah doesn’t let go of him, she scratches his arms, she finally falls at his feet, sobbing.

“It’s Sarah. Schone Sarah, Hans!”

Hans laughs loudly.

“You’re mistaken, old woman…Sarah is young and slender, you’re fat and you stink!”

“Hans, Hans, it’s the smell from work, and thirteen years have gone by!”

“Come on now, chubby, stop this and leave me alone.”

And offering his arms to the two young ones, he goes away laughing, and soon his blond hair is nothing more than an imperceptible glitter in the crowd.

“Hansie, you never told us you had a friend in New York. Not to mention, so young and slender as you say…” 25 “Nooo, just a friend from when I was a little kid…she tried to pass for my mom, but she was

Jewish…she must be dead by now…”

Sarah, how ridiculous you look, crying on the wharf. Everyone’s looking at you. Your face is greasy and swollen, and your tears are so very plump. How ridiculous with your flowered dress, stained beneath the armpits, and your felt hat, so childish for a tacky old woman. And you wear nylons, Sarah, as if your flabby legs got anyone’s attention. And that cake box under your arm, Sarah…you bought it for

Hans at Giuseppe’s. You knew the cake was old and dry, but you thought Hans wouldn’t mind. And now that you’re walking towards 14th Street, Sarah, your whole person red with crying, you leave it with

Giuseppe, and you tell him, “Thank you, mister Yu-sepi, but your cake was stale. I want my money back.”

You should have killed yourself on the wharf, Sarah.

“…oh, Sarah, but I’m holding you up. You must need to get ready to go meet him…um…are you going to bring him a gift?”

“Yes, Mariza. A cake.”

“Oh, how splendid!”

Sarah closed her window and took the stale cake out from the china cabinet. She placed the black hat on her head, and when she opened the door to leave her tiny apartment, she was struck with doubt, asking herself, “Are you going to go, Sarah? Don’t you know an ungrateful son when you see one? Go back, Sarah. Leave the old cake with Giuseppe, go back!”

26

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