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Head of State Dr. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Minister for Education
Foreign Office, Trade and Cult
Prof. Alberto Sileoni
Foreign Secretary Héctor Marcos Timerman
Consultants´ Chief of Staff Mr. Jaime Perczyk
Chief of Staff Ambassador Antonio Gustavo Trombetta
Secretary of State for Education Prof. María Inés Abrile de Vollmer
Frankfurt 2010 Organizing Commitee President
Secretary for the Federal Council
Ambassador Magdalena Faillace
for Education Prof. Domingo De Cara Director for the National Reading Program Margarita Eggers Lan
Selection, editing and design
Graphic Design
National Reading Program
Juan Salvador de Tullio Mariana Monteserin
Selection
Elizabeth Sánchez
Graciela Bialet, Ángela Pradelli,
Natalia Volpe
Silvia Contín and Margarita Eggers Lan
Ramiro Reyes Paula Salvatierra
These texts were originally published as a part of the collection Leer la Argentina 2005, Ministry of National Education, Science and Technology NOA, Northwestern Argentina. Contact: planlectura@me.gov.ar plecturamarga@gmail.com Spanish to English translation by Jessica Waizbrot: She attended Film School, studied Theater Writing with renowned author Mauricio Kartún, and took Irene Ickowicz´s screenwriting program. Acted as Head of Translation and Subtitling Department for both BAFICI (Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente), and Mar Del Plata International Film Festival, for seven consecutive years. She currently works as a translator and screenwriter for television, advertising and film.
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FOREWORD
Stories to the South of the World is an anthology that intends to “read” our Argentina from head to toe. In a country of widely diverse cultural identities -as diverse as each region and province containing them- this small selection aims to offer a sample of the valuable productions comprising Argentina’s Cardinal Narrative. The National Reading Program reaches out beyond its natural limits in order to show the world the richness of our words, and to make those having the chance to go through these pages, feel passionate for a good reading, which keeps growing day after day, in every corner of the nation. We hope for these stories, selected for each one of the Program’s coordinators, to meet new eyes and to continue astonishing the world. National Reading Program Ministry of Education of Argentina
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CONTENTS
CATAMARCA
TUCUMÁN
SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO
The Challenge
Out of Line
The Green Snake
Juan Bautista Zalazar
FRAGMENT Elvira Orphée
Jorge W. Ábalos
Pág. 7
Pág. 27
Pág. 15
Partners in Sowing Luis Franco
Pág. 9
Silly Silly Past Perfect FRAGMENT Hugo Foguet
FRAGMENT Clementina Quenel
Pág. 30
Pág. 19
Privets
Repentance
César Noriega
The Shotgun
Julio Carreras (Jr)
Pág. 11
Julio Ardiles Gray
Pág. 33
Pág. 23
Brief love story for a full moon night Celia Sarquí s
Pág. 13
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SALTA
The Circus
JUJUY
The Ankuto Pila
Liliana Bellone
Jorge Accame
Pág. 36
Pág. 44
Bunchi Bunchi Girl
Dreams of mother
César Antonio Alurralde
Carlos Hugo Aparicio
Pág. 38
Pág. 48
The Rising Tide
The circus
Juan Carlos Dá valos
Héctor Tizón
Pág. 41
Pág. 53
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RCA CATAMA
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The Challenge Juan Bautista Zalazar
T
he YOUNG MAN had gone down through the daybreak towards the Hillock of the Souls. At a steady pace he had traveled the four kilometers from town.
He scanned the cactuses, the avocados and the barbadetigres1 in search of the most isolated spot, and there he unfolded his twenty years of age over the ground, as if he wanted to be swallowed by it and disappear from sight. In that position he now awaits for the old Agenor to come. The harsh argument of the previous night at Venancio’s bar had ended up with shouted words. “Tomorrow we shall meet at the Hillock. Then we’ll see” From his position he could look over the whole ground. It was impossible for the old man to arrive without being seen. He could not hesitate even for an instant. The old Agenor Campos had taken the lives of three men already. He thrusts his look into the air, he sniffs, digs it with his ears. The whistling of a partridge spreads over the countryside. He believes to hear a gallop. He seeks; he scans the landscape with his eyes. But it is his heartbeat. He is hearing his own blood. The last stars slowly fade away in the sky. The countryside gradually rejoices to see God’s light coming down. The finger resting on the trigger of his gun begins to hurt. It´s getting more and more tense. His life is at stake. A gentle breeze tries to rise up through the
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cactuses. Every rumor is the menace of a man. The gun absorbs the trembling movement of his hands. He can’t miss the shot. The OLD MAN is taking too long to show up. But he is not scared. He will kill him for sure. He is young and strong. “What are you doing, boy?”, the voice of old Agenor Campos at his back is heard as the trumpet of doom day. “Forget this nonsense. Let’s go home and have some mate2 .” 1. A type of South American tree. 2. Traditional South American infused drink.
JUAN BAUTISTA ZALAZAR
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Was born in 1922 in San Blas de los Sauces, a small town in Catamarca that had previously belonged to the nearby province of La Rioja. He is the most popular writer from Catamarca. Since 1947 he has published poetry books as well as some short stories volumes such as Cuentos a dos voces and Cuentos del Valle Vicioso . “The Challenge” was included in the book La tierra contada. (Colección Ciudad de los Naranjos, Editorial Canguro, La Rioja, 2000.)
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Partners in Sowing Luis Leopoldo Franco
he fox was one of those that come to this world with a vocation for retirement and who would go out of their way just to avoid working. He would spend most of the time lying down somewhere around, on his back, collecting sun for the evening, or he would hang around the local stores and the ranch houses gathering news and wetting more his own throat than his own lands, relying on his wife who saved his money, the poor woman with her queue of little squirts clinging on to her waistband.
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Being fonder of prattle than he was of wit, he would look for friends most of the time, so as to have someone to criticize his enemies with. He had a small farm, which he worked only when he found it impossible to avoid; one day he suggested the armadillo that they should sow it together. He did not seek a partner at random. Very little inclined to leave his house, the armadillo was a true farmhand, an individual who would spend entire days, sometimes even entire nights, weeding the earth. He was a devoted Christian, although he would rather conceal it, and, as far as his conscience is concerned, it was clean as the wheat in the ear. He did know that the fox was always carrying a burden of malice on his back, but it was the fox who did not know him. That was not a minor advantage. “This year, mate”, said the fox, “whichever part of the plant should grow under the earth will be yours, and mine will be whichever might have grown above it. Is it OK with you?”
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“As you please”, condescended the armadillo, and he resolved to sow potatoes. The harvest was better than regular, but the fox only received a heap of shoddy leaves. Come the next season, the Fox changed the playing card. “In this new sowing season, it would be fair that I should get whatever may grow under the earth and you whatever above it, wouldn’t it, mate?” “As you say”, replied the armadillo, agreeing as always to everything his partner suggested. This time he sowed wheat, and by the end of the year he had filled his granary with good grains, while the long-tailed did not know what to do with such a waste of roots. But he did not give in. The third time would be lucky for him. “See, mate”, he told his partner, “this year, if it’s OK with you, you will get whatever may grow in the middle of the plants, and I will be content with whatever may grow under and above the soil.” 10
And he looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Sure, mate”, answered the thick-shelled, shrinking his eyes as he smiled, always pretending not to suspect the concealed intentions of his sharecropper. This time he sowed pumpkins. The treacherous fox did not know what to do with the roots and flowers he was given.
LUIS LEOPOLDO FRANCO (Catamarca, 1898-1988) carried out many different jobs: lumberjack, mason, and farmhand. He studied Law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires; he collaborated with the newspapers La Nación, La Capital, La Prensa. His literary work is vast: Coplas del pueblo, La flauta de caña, El corazón de la guitarra, among others. His compilation of popular poems is very interesting. Partners in Sowing was included in his book El zorro y su vecindario , author’s edition, Buenos Aires, 1987.
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Privets César Noriega
I
was at peace with life, finally overcoming its neglect. I used to spend hours reading and pruning the plants. Nothing would have foretold any other hitch in my life, nothing... Until I received that phone call.
At first I was moved profoundly. Once again I felt the intense emotion of knowing that she was alive. It had been long since I last saw her and it was indeed a big surprise to be given the exact date and hour of her arrival, to be told that she would need to see me. It took longer than usual for the train to come. She must have felt as outraged as me, both thinking about the minutes standing in between us. Finally, she arrived two hours late. While waiting for her to come, I had settled myself on a bench in front of platform 23. It had been a good decision to have brought a thermos loaded with mate water, some hard biscuits and a couple of cigarettes with me, to ease the damned anxiety. There were people coming and leaving, some of them were seen off, some other were welcomed, all of them were hugged. That scene stirred in my imagination the different forms in which we shall hug each other as soon as she should set foot on the platform. She arrived at last. I left everything strewn across the bench and run along the coaches until the train finally stopped. I caught sight of her beautiful, elegant figure, which was about to come down from a first
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class coach; she was wearing a turquoise suit and she had her hair was tied up. I raised my hand over the crowd but she did not see me. The stir caused by the arrival of the train coming from Buenos Aires made it impossible for me to approach. I thought I had lost her when she set foot on firm land. After her, an elegant man in a suit and hat came down. She waited at the foot of the staircase for a few seconds, and then she took him by the arm and they swiftly left on a cab. I stood in the middle of the dark platform that was starting to get deserted. There, trying to get my ideas straight. I went back to the bench; I put away all the stuff into my backpack, seeking the impossible calm. “Damn bastards!”, I shouted but nobody turned around. I went out to the street and took a bus back to my place. Her place. I went to the hut at the end of the house, and I grasped tightly the pruning scissors. I entered the kitchen, turned on the radio at full blast, put the kettle on the burner, the hosepipe in the plants and resumed the pruning of the privets. 12
CÉSAR NORIEGA Was born in La Merced, Catamarca, in 1960. He taught at elementary and secondary schools, and he currently works as a bookseller and trainer at the Provincial Centre for the Promotion of Reading and Writing at the Ministry of Education of his province. Some of his works were included in the anthology Lapacho Florido y otros cuentos (2000). His book Caricatura del tiempo was published by the UNCa. The unpublished short story Privets was provided by the author to be included in the present compilation.
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Brief love story for a full moon night Celia Sarquis
T
he door had been left ajar. By entering so late at night, he was risking to be mistaken for a burglar. He took the risk and, tiptoeing, he got to the bedroom where she was sleeping.
After some soft strokes, he talked to her as if he was trying to wake up a child: “It’s me; I’ve come to steal your heart.”
Young pigeon’s heart, full moon’s heart, that night... from that night I´ve felt my heartbeat distant and I´ve had the dream of a burglar.
CELIA SARQUÍS Was born in Catamarca in 1966. She teaches Music and Literature, and she is currently the Head of Catamarca’s Historical Documentary Heritage Management Department. Poet and storyteller, she coordinates creative writing workshops. She has published some books of poetry such as La voz del río (1989) and Y le tira la lengua a la memoria (1994). This unpublished text was provided by the author to be included in the present compilation.
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N TUCUMÁ
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Out of Line FRAGMENT Elvira Orphée
I
t never rains in our village. During Eastern, the Stations of the Cross are made out of flowers, and the figures of Christ and the saints look like drawings, with faces and everything. And they stay that way, nice and new the whole year round because the air dries the flowers with their colors and figures exactly the way they were when they were made. But when the rain gets moody, it takes everything along with it, visible and invisible, be it above or below ground. Five days ago, before my father-in-law came back; I was walking around the square and more exactly, along Mr. Arimayo’s sidewalk. He comes from Bolivia to his beautiful house here; it has an iron lamp in the front that not even the ones in postcards can compare to. I’d gone there to sell him some Nativity figures my husband made, and though the women who came to the door tried to tell me he wasn’t in I told them: Not so fast ladies. When he finds out that not even in Bolivia will he find statuettes like these – and I’ll send the priest to tell him so – you’ll never earn such an ill-gotten salary again in your lives. The women looked me up and down, furious, but they let me in. Of course Mr. Arimayo loved the statuettes. But he acted like he didn’t care. So I said I washed my hands of it, that saints this realistic practically look back at you, and it was in my interest to keep them instead of letting them go make rain in Bolivia. Mr. Arimayo was still
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laughing when we heard a peal of thunder that must have split the mountain down the middle. I’m leaving before it rains I said running out with the saints, Mr. Arimayo at my heels. We’d barely crossed the street when it came down on us like swords. We ran into the church hall, although Mr. Arimayo could have gone back into his house, but whatever! By then he was so in love with the saints he couldn’t live without them.
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The storm was huge. I was more interested in watching it than in having a sales talk with Mr. Arimayo. Our mountain has a cleft with a permanent rainbow in it, and I was sure a stroke of lightning was about to give it a twin, splitting the mountain like a cake with lilac, yellow, purple, pink and even black layers. I was waiting for the gash to appear, and I was in no rush to appease Mr. Arimayo, the unrequited lover of my saints. But he was so stubborn he wouldn’t leave me alone; he kept grabbing my arms to reach the saints, and just then it occurred to the priest to come out to the porch. He saw what he saw, he crossed himself, he raised his hand and spoke of the divine, deserved anger at tireless sinners who even take advantage of sacred places and moments such as these to satisfy their lust. And he pointed a finger at the cake of the mountain, which was shrinking under the downpour, while with another finger he pointed at the square, where the water was carrying off all the plants in their pots. And suddenly his finger found itself pointing at what looked like a wheel-less carriage rolling by on this sea. We couldn’t tell what it was until more of them began floating by, with no lid on them. The water pushed us inside, so we climbed the stairs to watch from a little window at the top. The carriages were running about the square without a lid, and everything inside them had come loose: a little skull here, a little skeleton there, came sailing from the cemetery, which is uphill from the village. The coffins were taking the dead out for a spin. At the other end of the square –from the window- we saw the police waving like madmen. I said they must be looking for culprits to blame for the commotion, and that reminded the priest of me and Mr. Arimayo. He accused us of breaking the sky open and mixing the skeletons so that the village families would have to mourn bastard dead. And so on until he was almost in tears, regretting that he recommended me as daughter-in-law to a decent man. If he wasn’t going to let me put a word in edgewise, what was I going to say? Mr. Arimayo had been pining over the saints and mesmerized by the beauty of the floating dead, but he suddenly snapped out of it. He told the priest he wanted the saints, not my arms, but that I was a touchy, stubborn woman, that he didn’t even have time to ask the price when I ran out. Let’s see these saints, said the priest. I had to show them to him and, you know, priests are selfish. The minute they set eyes on what
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doesn’t belong to them they lust after it; they promise you heaven if you’re rich and hell if you’re poor so you’ll hand it over. But he didn’t know what to promise me when I said: –No. These I’m keeping, so I can charge to make rain come. He called me a witch and a usurer, but I wouldn’t back down: –Thanks to me, no one in my house goes hungry. Finally we made a deal. I sold one saint to Mr. Arimayo for the price of four, just for acting like he didn’t care. I told the priest I’d have to ask my husband for permission to give him one, pending of course free access to his vegetable garden; but that no one would make me part with the other two, because they’d proven how miraculous they were (of course, I didn’t mention they were kind of bungler in their miracle-making) since it’s better to live with some miracles than without any at all. He himself must see how much we poor human beings need them in order not to fall into temptation; and, who knows, had they not made the rain miracle, Mr. Arimayo might have ended up falling in love with my arms from touching them so much. The priest got a little irritated and read me the riot act: What’s this lack of respect for lack of pedigree? Mr. Arimayo was looking daggers at me; but he wanted that saint so badly and maybe others in the future, that he would have agreed to anything. And in this way, by taking my little saints out of the basket, I satisfied them both. Afterwards I got to wondering if I was the reason that the “mister” went home dragged by the current on an open casket. Our village carpenter works just so we won’t stick our noses into his real business; no one can say his coffins are made to last forever. But my little saints must have been waiting for someone to believe in them because as soon as I said they made miracles, they set the dead free. Whether “the mister” was muddy or not when he appeared in the patio no one could or would tell me. Dirty or clean, no one can deny it was out line of him to show up where he wasn’t wanted.
ELVIRA ORPHÉE Was born in 1934 in Tucumán and currently lives in Buenos Aires. She has published, among others: Uno (1961), Dos Veranos (1965), Aire tan dulce (1967), En el fondo (1972) and La última conquista del Ángel (1983). This story, whose final fragment is excerpted here, was published in Puro Cuento
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magazine and in the collection The Other Reality: Stories from all over the Country, Colección Desde la Gente, IMFC, Buenos Aires, 1994.
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Past Perfect FRAGMENT
Hugo Foguet
m talking to you about Solanita but not to make you jealous. Solanita is another side of my heart... her sharp profile, her aquiline nose, her eyes, a little big for her face, dark and Tucumanos1 , her straight silky hair like a cascade of flax seeds and also her madness, her hot-bloodedness, her accelerated metabolism, her nervousness when she throws back her hair, lights a cigarette, smokes, laughs, crosses her legs. A pure-breed; the final product of an almost extinct species. Solanita at 2am between philodendron leaves and big pots of ferns and with the moon over the patio at Professor Santillán’s; the rectangle of the sky high up between ivy-upholstered walls, the tiled well and Solanita dropping the bucket while complaining about uncomprehending husbands and limpet-like children.
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–It’s crystal clear, Max –she tells me as I help her draw the chain– the basket is the uterus, the dangerous draw of the void. You want to let yourself go, Maximiliano, to sink into the sea, into the uniform and the definitive. –Nonsense –retorts her husband, who is drinking whisky with Santillán. –Nonsense –repeats Solanita and touches my hands and drawing me under the light of a lamp half-hidden between the plants she starts to read the lines and who knew, she says, it looks like I have incredible potential and she looks at me pityingly making me feel like a complete fail, condemned to wasting away in an accounting office. She asks and 1. From the province of Tucumán.
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in a low voice I tell her Sagittarius and it’s the moment, between two shots of whisky, for the centaur to come skipping out between the plants, extending his bow. –No way –says Solanita– a fire sign for you a wet bag like you. I tell her I’m still waters and I kiss her and Solanita hugs me and laughs.
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–Nonsense –says the husband– . Let me introduce you. Women drool over him... athletic, blond like a male valkyrie; he has a university testicle, excuse me, title, which he doesn’t use, or rather he uses it for everything except designing mills or trains, but the husband is worth three and a half million maybe four depending on whether he does public relations or determines the curve of incidence of massage therapy on conjugal happiness. —More nonsense, but without looking at each other and when I’m betraying Solanita in my thoughts, which is what she deserves for being so visceral and subversive she tells me “Look, I believe in astrology and even botanics if need be, but this one is impossible to classify.” And it’s true. And I make love to her again, this time with the window open and the scent of magnolia on the pillow. I tell her and Solanita laughs, wants a cigarette, smokes in great puffs and drinks whisky and doesn’t stop talking. –So you were born on the same day as Rilke. How funny you haven’t been able to forget it. –That’s not true. I don’t care about Rilke and what I do know I know through Cienfuegos, now that’s someone who had some Rilkean upheavals, round about ‘48. All I remember is some verses Juan Bautista used to repeat and I dare recite them now that I’m loaded on whisky and Solanita’s long teeth as she laughs with her mouth wide open.
You who never cease to accompany me, I salute you, old sarcophagi… which don’t tell Solanita a thing. She prefers the North Americans, Whitman and Pound. –I don’t like the kind of man who’s always surrounded by clucky women, living in borrowed castles. –and she adds between drinks–: He had sad eyes and his lips were suspiciously thick. Also he was a premature baby. –Definitive –says the husband from the other side of the patio. –Poor thing –murmurs Solanita–, he’s taking culture baths with the secretary, a traditional stew for national executives…. an appetizer so
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he’ll have something to say about things like the top ten books etc. Getting back to our subject (I have her thighs within reach because she’s sitting on the edge swinging a leg as she leans back, right over the mouth of the well, which scares me, drunk Solanita), Miguel in the basket from the bakery. –Was it from a bakery? –That’s what you said. One of those baskets you put on top of a fox. –Granted. It was a bakery basket. –And you wanted one just like it? –I already told you; at first I liked the Spyker. –So tell me: Where the hell do you find these museum cars? –From Yuffa’s Match Box collection. –So you made the dream up. –No. I dreamed the dream. –It’s very complicated. We’d better ask Ezequiel. Ezequiel Etchepare Cifuentes is the psychoanalyst... a self-confident type of guy… balanced... the kind who thinks he’s got the world by the balls… the kind of person I rarely have anything to do with but in Solanita’s case he hit the nail on the head, although I know of some reactionaries who miss the mystical, God-fearing Solanita (so beautiful, it’s true), who would come back from the Santo Domingo altar as though walking on air, with down-cast eyes and hands clutching her breast, an angel-woman, supremely humble, giving off a scent of nards and lilies like a consecrated virgin... and they say she derailed, went to the opposite extreme, became libertarian and shrill, vital, contradictory, dirty-mouthed, flesh and blood, desirable, a woman at last, way better and so what if she sometimes suffers. You know how it goes: suddenly the iceberg stops being the tiny tip you believed it to be and the rest appears, everything that was underwater, hidden by layers of culture, education, socially-imposed repression. You’ll get to know her better soon. I’ll show her to you little by little, a bit how she is now and a bit from a few years back, like that montage we once came up with for San Miguel, the city no one will have heard of in a few years, luckily, and which I won’t miss and now that I think of it, isn’t that why I dreamed it so cold and impersonal and about to be abandoned in those little floating little cars? The unconscious is a fucked-up thing but it rarely misses. That’s the secret.
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HUGO FOGUET (1923-1985) was born and died in San Miguel de Tucumán. A graduate of the National Nautical School, he traveled the world as a sailor. A poet and a story-teller, he was critically acclaimed, receiving several important prizes. Among his original, vertiginous prose, which combined the colloquial with the erudite, are the following titles: Hay una isla para usted (1962); Advenimiento de la bomba (1965); Frente al mar de Timor (1976); Pretérito perfecto (1983), the novel from which this excerpt has been taken); and Convergencias (1985). His poetry books include: Lecturas (1976), Los límites de la tierra: en el canal (1980) and Naufragios (1985).
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The Shotgun Julio Ardiles Gray
e moved forward among the orange trees. The sun fell with such intensity he had to screw up his eyes. The dove hopped from one branch to the next, and the next, and disappeared into the highest foliage. Pointing the shotgun, Matías reached the tree trunk. He searched it leaf by leaf, but couldn’t find the dove. Strange, he thought, scratching his neck.
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Suddenly he heard a sound above his head. He peered up again. Hidden in the branches was a bird. Not his dove; it was something else, between bluish and ashen. Carefully, Matías rested the gun against his shoulder and cocked the trigger. “Since the dove is nowhere to be found –he said to himself– I’m not going home empty-handed.” Just then the bird hopped to a fork in the branch and shook its wings out; it swelled its throat out and started singing. Matías, who had got to the first landing, slacked off the pressure on the trigger and listened. “How strange –he said to himself–. I’ve never heard this kind of bird sing before.” In the circle of the nap its warbling rose like a noisy golden tree. It seemed to Matías that more than song, what was being distilled was the soporific scales of the nap itself. A kind of sweet torpor began to invade him, the desire to abandon himself to happy memories of
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bygone times and to do nothing else but listen to the song of the bird; it continued to rise, this time like a bittersweet green perfume. The better to listen, he dropped the shotgun to one side. Dragging his feet, he moved to the trunk and leaned on it. The bird had disappeared, but its song still floated on the air. Unable to resist the temptation of looking up to the sky, he lifted his eyes. Among indolent clouds spinning off gigantic thistle flowers, two large black birds flew in gigantic, languid circles. Matías could not distinguish whether the sweetness he felt was coming from the song of the bird or from the clouds, now drunkenly fading in the distance. Just then the song stopped. The birds and the clouds disappeared, and he came back to himself. “I’m becoming really absent-minded” –he said to himself, shaking his head. He looked for the shotgun but it was no longer where he thought he’d left it. He walked further, retraced his steps: it was no use, the weapon was gone. –And that’s for being a fool! –he yelled out loud. 24
He kept searching, in vain. After an hour, tired, he said to himself: “I better go home and get my boy. Two sets of eyes are better than one...I can’t lose such a beautiful gun.” And he cut across the fields to the lane. It was when he entered the village that strangeness came over him. He felt disoriented: some buildings seemed to be missing, while others he’d never seen before in his life. The more he advanced the more the sensation intensified. And when he reached his house, a wave of fear blew a vague, terrible premonition into his face. He entered the hall. In the patio, four kids were playing and singing. They scattered upon seeing him, yelling: –The Old Man…! The Old Man…! A woman came out of one of the rooms, shaking lint out of her skirt. Matías mumbled in a small voice: –Who are you…? I’m looking for Leandro… The woman stared at him, frowning. –What do you mean, my good man? –she said. –I’m looking for Leandro –Matías stammered–. My son Leandro… This is my house.
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–Your house? –said the woman. –Yes, my house! –Matías yelled–. The home of Matías Fernández. The woman made a bewildered gesture. –It was… –she said, smiling sadly–. We bought it twenty years ago, when Mr. Matías disappeared and all his children left the village. –What! –shouted Matías, raising his arms as though in self-defense. –Yes… –the woman asserted fearfully. And that’s when Matías noticed that his hands were wrinkled, very wrinkled, and shaking like those of a very old man. Overcome with terror he ran, screaming away.
JULIO ARDILES GRAY Was born in Monteros, in Tucumán province, en 1922. A teacher and a journalist, he has written poetry and drama but stands out as a narrator. His poetry collections include Tiempo deseado (1944) and Cánticos terrenales, (1950). Among his plays are Égloga, farsa y misterio (1963); Vecinos y parientes (1970) and Fantasmas y pesadillas (1983), while his prose texts include Los amigos lejanos (1956); Los médanos ciegos (1957); El inocente (1964); Las puertas de El Paraíso (1968); Historias de taximetreros (1976); Como una sombra cada tarde (1979); La noche de cristal (1987) and Cuentos amables, nobles y memorables (San Miguel de Tucumán, Ediciones del Cardón, 1964), from which this story has been reproduced. It was also published in 35 Argentinian Short Stories (Siglo XX Editorial Plus Ultra, Buenos Aires, 1999).
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TERO S E L E D O SANTIAG
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The Green Snake Jorge W. Ábalos
—
S
ir!… Sir!… There’s a snake in the jujube tree. It’s green! This last detail reached me as the house boy was trying to catch up with me, as I had broken into a run as soon as I registered his first words.
The place he mentioned was nearby: it only took me a couple of minutes to reach the foot of the tree. —It was on that branch just now! —panted my informant. —Where?… —I couldn’t located the snake in the great jujube. —There!… There!… I managed to see her as she slid suavely in the highest branches. It was a beautiful specimen of Chlorosoma baroni more than six feet long. The snake’s light green color merged noticeably with that of the branches and the leaves. With its elegant slide, it looked as though it was swimming in the foliage. Just then she was stretching her slender neck, and her fine head and snout, which prolonged itself into a little turned-up trunk, were etched against the sky. This is a very aggressive snake, and difficult to capture because of the speed of her movement among the branches. I observed the terrain: clear ground, no nearby trees giving her a chance to go for a stroll. I told the boy and the laborers who had gathered
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not to lose sight of her, and to direct me to her once I was high up. One of the laborers suggested, timidly: —Be careful, sir; those green snakes can whip you really hard with their tail. We wouldn’t want her to toss you out of the tree… —What I would like to know is where you all get this nonsense from. —Well, sir, it’s what they say… I climbed up the thick trunk of the jujube, which forked into thick branches about ten feet off the ground, and began my hunt armed with a long, slender stick. The snake slipped through the leaves, the men below guiding my pursuit. I want to force her or knock her downwards with a blow from my stick, because they’re less agile on the ground. I approached her; she slid deftly from one branch to another in the top of the tree. The chase was lasting a while and though I had her within range several times, she was faster, and managed to avoid my attack. I slipped two or three times, which forced me to slow down. I began to grasp the value of having a tail for my zoological ancestors. 28
Sometimes the snake remained motionless and observed as I came closer, looking at me out of her little round pupils; I would aim a blow and just when I was sure I’d hit her, she’d appear, tauntingly, on some further branch. My failed attempts got me impatient. It seemed that the snake was actually mocking me, and scattered giggles from the peanut gallery only increased my irritation. It was hot and I was sweating profusely. I took off my shirt and my bandana and threw them to the ground. This whole thing was taking too long. After a series of fruitless attacks followed by elegant reptilian avoidance moves, with a magnificent aerial stretch in which she seemed to be flying, the snake leaped to the next branch over. I was stuck. I had to climb back down, grumbling, to where the trunk branched off in order to reach the sector the snake was now slipping and sliding in. I lost sight of her from below. I was just beginning to scale the second branch when the snake, in a lightning raid from her hiding place among the leaves, bit my hand furiously. I couldn’t help gesturing sharply in surprise, and fell out of the tree. Sore and swearing, I ripped out the snake teeth that were incrusted in my hand. No one said anything, but everyone “knew” that the snake had knocked me out of the tree with its tail; because of this, over the next few months, all the parts of my body that the tail had touched would slowly dry up.
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Myself, I couldn’t forgive the men for witnessing my defeat. Grabbing a thick club I found nearby, I climbed the tree again. What began then was no hunt, but rather a vicious persecution. I was no longer a naturalist in search of a collection piece, but an enraged man trying to annihilate his antagonist. The “slender snake,” the “beautiful specimen”, “the magnificent snake”, had become “the snake,” the “cheating, filthy, disgusting reptile.” I climbed wildly, careless of thorns and twigs; I got scratched, my clothes tore, but I kept going up aiming random, furious blows any time I thought she was within range. It had become a struggle between intelligence and brute force. The branches creaked ominously under my weight as I -heedless of all danger- continued the chase. Finally my moment came: the snake was trying to cross from one branch to another, when her body was outlined against the sky. I threw the club; it hit her in the middle, dragging her to the ground. It was only through extreme effort that I did not accompany her in her fall. I went home sweaty, scratched, my clothes destroyed: but satisfied. Brute force had triumphed once more. 29
JORGE WASHINGTON ÁBALOS Was born in 1915 in La Plata, in Buenos Aires province, and spent his entire life, until his death in 1979, in Northern Argentina. He was a country schoolteacher in Santiago del Estero and a university professor in the national universities of Tucumán and Córdoba. He received grants to study in Brazil and the United States. Following the death of a student from snake bite he studied medical zoology, focusing on poisonous and disease-transmitting animals, and became director of the snake laboratory (in Córdoba) which produces antidotes to snakebite poisons. This experience fed his entire literary production: Shunko, Norte pencoso , Animales, leyendas y coplas, Coplero popular, Shalacos and Terciopelo, la cazadora negra (Editorial Losada, Buenos Aires, 1981) from which the story The Green Snake was excerpted from.
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Silly Silly FRAGMENT Clementina Quenel
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A
n event upset the boy’s secret preoccupations.
It was on one of those mornings that smell like fresh dawn and taste like tender grass, while El Taruca was handing him the mate1, that Mr. Delivano sent him to the counter to measure out some sugar. Maybe the boy dropped one spoonful too many on purpose, or maybe his head was in the clouds, but the shopkeeper’s eagle eye appreciated the generosity of the swollen package. –You dumb coward… you clumsy, no-good fool … –Mr. Delivano said, and slapped his face twice, with relish. El Taruca, who knew about boss’ anger fits, stared at the man without blinking, as though a whole fish were stuck in his throat. But suddenly, as though coming out of his own body, with a single whiplash he snapped the family tero2 bird’s legs in two. He’d never known he was capable of such an impulse. From that day on he was in tears; straying far from home, gazing at the lilacs and gold flowers of the fading afternoons, his slingshot hanging idle. He almost wept over the tero bird; and lashed at his own legs, over and over, in a cruel approximation. A bitter grief tore at his mute, stubborn nature; a few times he even hid in a grove of mistols3, seeking relief in his solitude habit and his harmonic sister…
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One night in anguish he said: –Mother, I’m leaving… I have to go! I need to find work somewhere… Come and cook for me … The mother turned around and began to sob, speaking slowly: –Is that really what you’re thinking… Later, Taruca had to lay slices of potato over Casia’s temples to ease the headache that was afflicting her, forcing her to bed. In this way, silently, Taruca made a pact with his mother; and remained bound in surliness to the life of the shop. In exchange for his assiduity he inherited from Mr. Delivano clothes that barely fit him. So year in year out, with silent or unsociable intervals and an intimate consolation tiding him over his darkest moments, the boy went unspooling worlds and inklings of manhood on the tip of his adolescent chimeras. A hard show-off began to erase the childlike lights that stretched in his eyes. His hair, spiky like meadow grass feathers, spilled over his freckled face with an uncouth expression. The soft, serious mouth flushed and darkened, grimacing when it reluctantly uttered a few words. He had already begun to beat the drum at the dances and to wander long hours looking for odd jobs, which kept him away from home on many an afternoon. Until one day, unexpectedly, the draft opened up for him certain vistas laced with secret hopes and bitter sorrows: he was already a man… He left at the end of a December, on a clear, polished, calmly blue morning; the scents of the night still spread on his poncho and knapsack, both of which had spent the night in the field, awaiting their master. Neither did he forget the harmonica: that sweet sister who always approached him, times when his soul stiffened into a log-like posture. Twin tears weighed his eyes down, as from afar he still saw Casia, standing as though rooted at the aguaribay4 gate. Juan de Dios had become a man.
1. Traditional South American infused drink. 2. South American bird. 3. South American tree. 4. Tree used by the Jesuits for medicinal purposes.
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CLEMENTINA ROSA QUENEL (Santiago del Estero, 1908-1981) wrote short stories, poetry and novels. She won numerous prizes, and her body of work has been recognized by the people of Santiago del Estero. Among her books are: El bosque tumbado , Poemas con árboles, Elegías para tu nombre campesino . She also published the plays La Telesita and El retablo de la Gobernadora. The story Silly Silly was excerpted from the book La luna negra (Cervantes Publishers, Tucumán, 1952). It also appeared in Anthology: Regional Argentine Stories from Catamarca, Córdoba, Jujuy, Salta, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán, Colihue Publishers, Buenos Aires, 1999.
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Repentance Julio Carreras, Jr.
F
—
orgive me Father, for I have sinned! —I exclaimed in a sudden fit of compunction. The priest was motionless inside the confessional booth.
—Have mercy on this miserable worm… but don’t deny me absolution! —I implored. The priest’s cold eyes were fixed on my face; and yet nothing answered me. —Oh!… I’ve been so clumsy, so perverse, like a fragile larch leaf, a defenseless toy in the whirlwind of my ignoble passions! Cruel and violent, impulsive, rashly defying the wrath of God!… The priest didn’t move. —I curse the hour in which I allowed my hand to return to the sword! Cursed be my Spanish blood, inherited from old-century monsters! Cursed be my gift for the thrust!… He did not reply. —Father… Isn’t it your job to forgive me? Will you force me to bear this cross on my conscience forever? Was my sin that terrible? Such was to be my destiny, apparently, since the priest did not change his cold expression by one iota. I left in distress, crying. Unfortunately my thrust had been too accurate: his heart, pierced through and through, left him no life-breath with which to answer me.
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JULIO CARRERAS (h) Was born in Guasayán, Santiago del Estero, Argentina, in 1949. A musician, writer, journalist and painter, he taken was prisoner and tortured along with his wife during the last military dictatorship. Upon the return of democracy he edited the magazine Quipu; subsequently he directed the Culture and Education supplement of El Liberal newspaper. He is the author of essays and poetry collections. The short story Repentance appeared in Puro Cuento magazine, issue #19, November 1989.
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SALTA
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The Circus Liliana Bellone
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I
went up to the terrace that sun-warmed October afternoon. I could see the entire village, and the train tracks entering the plain in the light blue distance.
My father sat on the stone seat he’d had carved when he bought the house: the biggest in the village, with ten bedrooms, a living room, porches, a basement, and an attic with a pointed roof. I sat next to him on one of the stone benches in front of a table, which was also made of stone.
I noticed that the ferns, which Helena usually took care of, were parched by the sun. I was about to go downstairs to get some water for them when my father stopped me and pointed towards the main street, where the newly arrived circus had begun to parade. I still remember its colorful clowns and acrobats, the dogs with their bonnets and especially a trio of masked ladies, who were staring insistently in our direction. Helena, with her eternal hospitality and goodwill must have invited them in, because they appeared on the terrace. Sitting on the stone benches, they pulled out their knitting, muttering among themselves and ignoring us. Upset, I was about to confront them and ask them to leave when a flock of vivid balloons invaded the sky, announcing the circus. The balloons rose, paddled a while, disappeared. My father made his usual comment about his wisdom of buying this house, in this village that was far from the big city but connected to it by the railway that ran just below our house; rising on a kind of embankment
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or hill, so it could be seen from a radius of various blocks. In a village of low, conventional houses, a two-story stone residence with a tower attracts some attention. Perhaps this had been the intention of its builders: elderly, enigmatic Finns who never spoke to their neighbors, and one fine day decided to return to their homeland. From our privileged spot we watched the circus caravan moving away. We saw the last floats and the children running after them. Then we watched as the dust they left behind slowly dissipated in the spring afternoon. Living here is lovely, said my father gazing into the distance. Once again I noticed the strange women. They were still cutting and winding their wool but they no longer irritated me: they must have run away from the circus, I thought, and were hiding among us. Far away we saw the plume of smoke from an approaching train. My father insisted once more that this was the best place to live in the whole world. I looked at the sky, saw the clouds suspended in the serenity of the afternoon. I felt the silence and as always, in my innermost self, with the deepest part of my consciousness, I agreed with him. Suddenly I looked at him and I was overcome as I remembered that he’d died six years ago. I remembered that my father was dead and I was astonished, and yet a strange relief invaded me as I knew that this was death. And we remained contemplating the afternoon silently, from the terrace.
LILIANA BELLONE Was born in the capital city of Salta in 1954. A poet and a novelist, she graduated as Professor of Literature from National Salta University in 1977. She has published the following collections of poems: Retorno (1979), Convergencia (1986), Elegía en primavera (1988), El Cazador (1991), La travesía del cuerpo (1992) and Voluntad y otros poemas (1993). She has obtained various distinctions, among them the Fondo Nacional de Las Artes prize in 1978. This text is from the book Cuentos, Salta, (1992).
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Bunchi Bunchi Girl César Antonio Alurralde
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tell my mom that my school is way stuffy and old and we’d like to go to a new one, like the one a whole bunch of boys from the neighborhood goes to and also my cousin who makes fun of me by sticking out his tongue and folding his ears like flaps. I don’t react because if I catch him at it god forbids I sock him one right then and have to run and hide under my bed there and then. I won’t let him get away with it! And if he keeps bugging me I’ll smear snot all over his face like last time even though he runs crying wolf to my aunt. She calls me Judas Skin but I don’t know who that is; and all because she doesn’t know the truth about her goody two-shoes son, who steals money behind her back and buys loads of cakes and stuffs his face without sharing ever, he’s such a coward. I hope he gets constipated!
I
Today our Music and Singing Teacher made us line up and sing, one by one, next to her as she banged on the piano. Afterwards she tells me my voice is really nice and I’m in the school anniversary pageant. There are twelve of us and they take us out of last period every day so we can practice. I’m so happy I show off like crazy; the only bummer is that every afternoon we also have to go to the Teacher’s house for more practice. We have to sing and dance and make these really weird steps. And she says we’re about as graceful as a bunch of yams and we better get our act together because there’s only a few days left before the school pageant. And we go over and over it until it’s decent. The record is scratched from playing it so much
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on the Victrola and I bet she wasted a whole box of needles. We know the lyrics because they’re way easy, they go like this: “Come dance my girl, bunchi girl, come sing my girl, bunchi girl, a, a, a, e, e, e”, and so on like a million times until the teacher makes signs for us to stop, and we wave and exit to the sides. All the mothers got together to buy the same fabric because it’s cheaper that way. They measured us and each mom is making a costume following the pattern the teacher gave them. I don’t even want to talk about this because it makes me so mad, but even though I’m so embarrassed I’ll tell you anyway… I don’t know if you know my school is boys only and in the number we’re practicing, six of us play boys and six play girl dancers, and it turns out I have to play a girl. No way am I ever falling for that one again! I don’t know who the hell told my classmates, who tease me all day long by walking with their legs stuck together like faggots; I’m sure some hot shot took on the job of spreading it all over the school since it’s no skin off his back. Day after tomorrow is the pageant and today we have dress rehearsal. God! I look so pathetic in this little pink skirt with this stupid bow on my head. Even worse, they put blush on my face and lipstick on my mouth, and they even smeared my eyelashes and eyebrows with this really greasy really thick black pencil. It seems like this pageant is way important because the Council President, the members, the Principal with her face all powdered up and her starchy uniform stiff as cardboard, the entire school board and the parents are all sitting up front, and all the grades with their teachers stand in rows at the back. Some extra fussy mothers have someone save their seats while they run to the room next to the stage, which is where we’re hiding, to smear more paint on our faces, fix up our frills and give us advice which of course we don’t listen to. There are also some speeches and verses, which we barely hear. Our number is the last one, the “grand finale” as I heard someone say I can’t remember who. We’re so excited we’re all shaking and talking at the same time until someone yells at us to shut up because we’re about to go on any minute. One of the mothers who’s being the lookout on the stairs sticks her head in to tell us it’s our turn and runs like hell back to her seat. Our Music and Singing Teacher puts the record on the Victrola, which sits on a chair stage left with a big green horn to make it louder, and winds it way up. Then she runs across the stage and pulls on some ropes so the curtain will go up. She raises it and we appear in a single file, singing and dancing to this crazy fox-trot, which is really popular right now. Everything is turning out great and we’re so happy; the Council President is drumming the beat on his knee without realizing it while a little smile escapes from his
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usually stony face above his neck, which is squeezed by a black tie the same color as his suit. The Principal sheds a little tear and secretly looks around to spy everyone’s reactions. We keep dancing and spreading the love as they clap to the beat like mad. So far so good. We’re beginning to taste victory.
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But suddenly we start to fall out of step with the record. We each do what we can; we look for clues stage right at our Singing and Dancing Teacher: her face is green and she’s gesturing madly for us to keep going, so we try to cover up with these really idiotic smiles as we keep screwing up. The music goes slower and slower: “Giiiiiiiiirrrrllll, giiiiiiiiirrrrllll, buuuunchiiiiiii, giiiiiiiiirrrrllllllll.” All hell breaks loose as we start bumping into each other and falling on our asses while belting the song out any way we can. People double over laughing, holding their bellies. The Council President giggles discreetly into a neatly folded handkerchief, tears streaming from his eyes. The Principal’s glasses slide off, she coughs, swallows, gets up and sits down with little snappy movements like a puppet. The boys yell all kinds of things from the back; it doesn’t look like we’re making it to our graceful side exit. Our Singing and Dancing Teacher tears her hair out but doesn’t have the guts to cross the stage to go wind the Victrola, which is slowly grinding to a halt: “Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrllllllll, giiiiiii...”
CÉSAR ANTONIO ALURRALDE Was born in Salta in 1940 and is a renowned poet and story-teller specializing in short and very short stories. He published both his remarkable collections, Cuentos Breves and Los Nadies, in 1984. This text was taken from the latter, published by the Salta Canal 11 Foundation in 1986.
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The Rising Tide Juan Carlos Dá valos
M
r. Ventura Perdigones was a Spanish vegetable-seller who lived in Salta. From Vaqueros, where he had his plot of land, he would bring a basket of fresh vegetables to sell on the village streets every morning.
Vaqueros is two leagues from the city, on the left bank of the river by the same name. And I say river because that’s what in my land, despite the strict definition of the word, we call what in winter is little more than a peaceful stream, and which summer rains turn into formidable avalanches of mud and stones.
One morning Vaquero was coming along way too uppity, as people in the provinces say. A storm had hit the mountains the night before, and, with a huge racket, its muddy waters were dragging thick trunks and heavy rocks downstream. All along the bank, several farmers on horseback waited for the worst of the tide to pass before fording. Perdigones was there on his donkey, which was loaded with baskets of cabbages and lettuce. He wanted to cross as soon as possible, ignoring the advice of those who pointed to the danger; and stubbornly spurring his animal, he stood up in his stirrups the better to decide where to jump from.
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Perdigones saying yes and the donkey saying no, beast and man each fought to do his own bidding, much to the enjoyment and mockery of the onlookers. –Don’t go in there Mr. Ventura. The tide will get you –said one. –No point trying to convince him. That Spaniard is hard-headed as a mule –yelled another. –Hold on tight, you might lose your baskets - vociferated a third. –Come on, man! - Perdigones answered- What’s all the fuss? And this one here ain´t beating me –he said of the donkey, whipping him hard. Perdigones won in the end, though it would have been better for him not to; because spurring the donkey, losing the baskets, and man and beast, ropes and vegetables tumbling to perdition, was all one thing. The current was dragging them down fast. The gauchos were quick to tie their lassoes and throw them to an unhappy Mr. Ventura. But thrashing and diving and flipping in the middle of the water, he couldn’t reach the helping hands. 42
And it would have ended badly had he not, with the last of his strength, grabbed the roots of a willow tree. Once back on dry land and over the scare, a farmer said to the Spaniard: –Hey there Mr. Ventura, now that you’re safe you should give thanks to God; because this was truly a miracle. And the Spaniard, surly and shivering, answered him: -Man, why don’t you thank the willow; because what God wanted was to drown me.
JUAN CARLOS DÁVALOS Was born in San Lorenzo, Salta, in 1887, and died in 1959. A poet and storyteller, he was a renowned and popular figure in his province and throughout Northeastern Argentina, from where his influence spread to the rest of the country. He was also the author of many popular songs, and today his name is synonymous with the culture of his region. He was a university professor and a member of the Argentine Academy of Literature. Some of his published works include: El Viento Blanco and Cuentos y relatos Del Norte Argentino (1946), of which this text is an excerpt from.
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JUJUY
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The Ankuto Pila Jorge Accame
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I
n almost every jungle of Northern Argentina, there is an animal which is rarely seen by human eyes. It is elusive and has a strange gift for concealing itself. People call it ankuto pila. It is a kind of a thin hairless bear (in Quechua1, pila precisely means “bald” or “naked”), not bigger than a German shepherd, with donkey ears, a flabby body (but, paradoxically, possessing a colossal strength) and a spare loose hide that splits into two below the abdomen as waves of a stream. It is somehow similar to the Madagascar’s Aye-Aye, though of a bright and shining dun color and with no protruding eyes. So far nobody has been able to study its features in depth; however, it is thought to belong to the same family of the coati.
The few peasants to have hunted an ankuto (mostly cubs that had lost their mother) and have kept it in captivity, were able to observe its tracking skills. This animal can be used to track down anything, but its instinct seems to have one main obsession: it is an infallible bloodhound when it comes to finding dead or lacerated victims to big felines. Long time ago, in the province of Jujuy, an event occurred near the Ramal area that is known only to a few. It was told it in San Pedro by one of its main protagonists, Daniel Naser. In the sixties, Daniel was a young man with a Don Juan reputation. The families of half a dozen girls were on his lookout to
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claim unredeemed promises of love, but he always managed to extend the deadline. That warm, damp night, he and Clara Singh had gone to take a walk. The constant black snow of cinders fell over them. Between March and October, sugar cane stubbles are burned at the Ramal fields and long and fine ringlets of soot rise up to the sky and then gently go down and blacken everything they touch. The couple reached the border of the plantation and lay down on the grass. Naser kissed Clara and then, pulling apart from her he caught sight, over her shoulder, of the head of a tiger down in the sugar-cane plantation. Trying to keep calm, he warned his friend, and they both stood up slowly. They headed for the pond that formed the nearby irrigation ditch. The skin of their back standing on end, they took a few steps as the jaguar shuffled behind them and made the sugar cane leaves sizzle very gently. Daniel Naser never knew what happened to Clara. When he reached the pond, he saw a boy submerged up to the neck, and that distracted him for a second. When he finally turned back, the girl was gone. He dived into the water and there, standing next to the boy, unwillingly awaited the roaring and the cries of terror. However, he did not hear a thing. During the long minutes that he stayed in the pond, he could not perceive anything but the purring of the irrigation ditch and the short swell hitting the shore. Or his own breathless panting when the tip of some grass stroked the hairs of his head. Or the breathing of the boy, who kept on staring at him from the dark, and whom only then did he recognize as Marcos Singh, Clara’s younger brother. Daniel guessed that he had been sent by his father to follow them. Although that stillness disturbed them, all of a sudden, and without uttering a single word, they decided to leave the shelter and run back to the houses. Soon later they were back on the spot with relatives and dogs boring through the night. They found no trace of Clara. The father of the girl was the only person in the village who owned an ankuto pila, and at dawn he took it out of its cage. A party of men, including Daniel who had been accepted by the old Singh, headed for the scrubland. Naser describes Clara’s father as a peasant of few words, of an intense look, who was feared because of his unexpected anger fits. Already elderly, during a fight he had cut off, with a clean blow of his machete, the arm of a teasing lad who kept on speaking badly of his mule.
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The men walked for hours along the scrubland, carrying the ankuto tied to a leash and a collar. The animal walked in all fours, its body trembling like jelly because of the trotting; all of a sudden, it rose in front of a huge grove in an open field. There it stood on its hind legs, opened its mouth wide and screamed. It is odd, but the screaming of these animals when they have found what they were looking for has something of a desperate mother, as if they knew the victims´ conditions before anyone could have seen them. The animal broke free and started to run. At first it ran on two feet, like a donkey, swinging side to side, making it possible for the men to follow it from a short distance. But after a few yards it resumed its natural position and sprang at full speed, disappearing within the incredibly high tuft. It was found half an hour later, among the quebrachos2. It was sitting on the ground, covered in blood, and it looked dejected; it barely moved when the men came closer. A few meters further ahead there was a family of jaguars; that is to say, what was left of them. The cubs were dismembered; there were pieces spread all over the ground, torn apart by an unearthly force. The mother of the tiny tigers hung softly from the branch of a tree, its bones broken as a rag doll. 46
Never did the men fully convince themselves that the ankuto had been capable of such a slaughter. However, there were no traces of any other animal, and the jaguars´ bodies were still warm. In vain they searched every single plot of land for miles around. The girl did not appear. But they knew the ankuto was never wrong. Clara had been devoured by the jaguars, even though they would never be able to find any evidence. On the following day, they went back to the houses with the ankuto, which meekly allowed itself to be lead back. A last piece of information: Daniel Naser was accepted by the old Singh as a member of his family. The name of Clara was never mentioned again between them. Some years later, Daniel married another one of his daughters.
1. Quechua is a Native American language family spoken primarily in the Andes of South America. 2. South American hardwood tree.
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JORGE ACCAME Was born in Buenos Aires in 1956 and moved to Jujuy in 1982. He has taught Literature in secondary schools and at the University. Some of his works are: Días de pesca, ¿Quién pidió un vaso de agua?, Cuarteto en el monte, El Jaguar, Diario de un explorador, El puente del diablo ; and some plays such as Pajaritos en la calle and Casa de piedra. This short story has been originally published in Cumbia (Edit. Sudamerica, Buenos Aires, 2003.)
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Dreams of mother Carlos Hugo Aparicio
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M
y little sister was sent to my grandmother’s house for a week against her will, where else? see if by getting her away from that lousy mechanic my mother gets them to split up, or her to forget about him
she deserves better, not such a vulgar scruff, oh today’s girls, and you go out of your way dreaming of a good marriage for her, not with a nobody, the least with such a common man as that, anyway, may God and the Blessed Virgin wish that up there her rapture wears off, or what and it’s been already two months since she’s gone, she doesn’t even reply to the letters why is it always me the one that has to write; and my old man in vest besides the post is terrible and I’m sure there’s not a single postman in the middle of those mountains, I don’t know how my mother can stand living there the hoarse voice, picking his teeth with a broom straw, afterwards he doesn’t hear or so he pretends what better, this way she doesn’t bug around with her evil spells anymore, devil bitch my mother’s mutter while she swills out the bucket to later fetch some water from the pipe on the other side of the road when it’ll get cooler, and actually she stares at my brother with an irritated look, rings under her eyes, and he now pulling his stubble
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hey, you are the one that will have to go and bring her back as soon as I can afford the ticket, got it? my old lady stops staring at the blue mountains in the distance while you’re there go see whether that filthy bastard is hanging around, it’s been a while since I last saw him on the corner, go figure if they were together, and moreover if that sorceress was protecting them, you don’t know what to think anymore and she sits back to keep on crushing with a stone the nail of the shoe that hurts her; my old man doesn’t look away from the clouded rain water in the puddles along the street under the sun that bites even more in its glare and if I go out it makes my eyes water inevitably; and my brother must be choking on his own saliva because he’s missing the Championship and Saturday’s ball at the basketball club. But he did go to bring her back. Another month has just passed since then, and they don’t reply to the telegram either we didn’t eat two days to send it urgently what the hell is the matter with those ones, besides how come my mother let them stay, you don’t think mom is screwed, do you? the one that does show up at noon getting off from the cab snorting a bag in one hand and a packet in the other is precisely my grandmother, white scarf on her head, her round face sweating, shinbone length blue house coat and black moccasins; my old man stumbling on the dry tracks of the street, still finishing to put on his shirt, hastily buttoning it up goes out to catch up with her but mother, see, what a miracle, what are you doing here, where are the kids, mother? behind me my old lady clears her throat, coughs and after spitting on the floor she walks away limping and murmuring again and again surely to tidy up her grey hair a little bit, to straighten her blouse over her flat chest. My grandmother leaves two bags on the floor son, sonny, nice to see you, what?, the kids?, but son, look, how on earth will they want to come back, look at them son, look at them carefully, sonny and still panting she takes a photo out of her pocket; I approach them as well, I poke about as I tiptoe, and yes it’s true, it’s in colors, and there they are the two of them, unrecognizable they are, taller I think, they have put on weight, and even my little sister is wearing a miniskirt, and I can almost hear them laugh, and I swallow sharp saliva, and my stomach pulls, and I belch, and my feet are burning inside my rubber trainers with its soles about to get holed
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and you are skinny instead, look at you, already tubercular, why not? don’t you feel terrible? and what can I do? And what about that nigger? my olive-skinned rather white woman shows up again straightening her blouse inside her skirt which gets baggier and baggier hi, hi, what a nice surprise, look who’s here, how are you, how do you madam, we weren’t expecting you here, how nice, and the kids?, oh? my grandmother doesn’t bother to utter a single word and won´t let my father help her carry the bags either, she just grumbles to him, look at her, see my mother stepping aside to let her into the room first as if she were the owner crossing herself time and again you people are worst than ever, still living in this slum?, oh my God, son, the kids have told me such horrible things, my poor son, if only you had paid attention to me why, mother, there are no jobs, only odd ones and not every day, what can we do?
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my old lady brings the least worst of the two chairs, and - without cleaning the dust on it- she leaves it there; now she rushes to pick up from the floor the chipped washbasin and one of the tins placed to collect the leaking water; I don’t dare to look at her face, her eyes; and trying to walk normally she leaves the room and what have you eaten today, son why, mother, a spaghetti stew— it’s true, mother, I swear I belch the flavor of the bland mate cocido1 , barely tepid and with no bread, and I covertly clean my eyes with my hand have some stew, will you? No, son, no, no, thanks, you don´t worry, what time is it? it must be around one o’clock, mother, perhaps it’s earlier aha, so there’s still time, son, let’s see, quickly, quickly, clean up the table good, everybody come here, tell her also to come, but hurry up, come on, let´s go and my grandmother with her growing shrill voice rushes to carelessly place her bag and the packet in the first drawer that she finds, she tightens the scarf on her head, puts a silver crucifix around her neck, with both hands removes the sweat from her face as if she was washing it and then grabs the chair, shakes it and places it almost on the threshold go take your seats at the table, come on, swiftly, swiftly so that she could sit with her back to us and facing the bluish
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mountains in the West and receive the sunlight of a sun that has already began to filter; and she sits down and up several times, changes the position of the chair until she finally feels satisfied with it and leaves it there and turns around to give us a look; my old man has already fetched the other chair, my old lady kept on rubbing the wood of the table until restoring its shine, and I drew the stool up to the table for her and a couple of concrete blocks for me, and the tree of us sit down without removing our eyes from my grandmother to see how she nods with a frowning, congested face, she draws a cross in the air as the priest does at mass in the chapel and stares at us first at my father then at me aha, listen carefully, no questions at all, pay attention to me, listen to me, think strongly about what you like to get, close your eyes and think, now, now, now, that’s it, go on, go on, think, think, and don’t you dare open your eyes, do not open them until you hear me snore, and help yourself quickly ‘cause there’s no much time left and she goes quiet and has to turn around to sit on the creaking chair and she must be changing position because the chair creaks more and more, and it sounds as if she were praying, and I squeeze my eyelids shut and being in the dark makes my bitter mouth water and I become so drowsy that I can’t help falling asleep and I nod off and I don’t know how long has passed and only after hearing clearly the snores do I open my wet eyes still half asleep and the mouth I open it too that it drips the few saliva that’s left, and I have been given a dish filled with one schnitzel, two fried eggs and chips better than what I had expected with all my hopes, there are even slices of lemon that remind me of “Los dos chinos”, that tearoom downtown, and a huge orangeade, and the cutlery and the transparent glass glisten over the pink tablecloth, and my father at the head of the table, such big eyes, he licks his lips once and again at the sight of his enormous dish filled with steaming locro2, the little dish with spring onions, the one with salsa criolla and the bottle of red wine and the soda siphon, and my old lady doesn’t give a single look at her little dish of watercress salad, meat and minced potatoes, but stares without blinking, squeezing so much her mouth shut that her lips get even thinner, her cheeks more drawn than ever before, her fists on the table, she looks again and again daggers at the blonde girl behind my old man, a smiling young lady wearing a strong red lipstick, and such a low-cut blouse that you can peer both her white breasts all the more when she stoops to give him a hug, to stroke his stubble with her hand where rings and a golden little watch bracelet glisten, to keep on smothering his hair with kisses, to try to kiss him in the mouth, my father not taking a blind bit of notice starts to eat the boiling food, so do I, with this belly pulling as never before under the increasing snores of my grandmother.
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1.Traditional South American infused drink. 2. Hearty thick stew popular along the Andes mountain range
CARLOS HUGO APARICIO Was born in La Quiaca, Jujuy, in 1935, but he has lived in the nearby province of Salta since he was 12. He is the author of several poetry books, including Pedro Orillas, El grillo ciudadano and Andamios, as well as short stories compilations such as Los bultos, Sombra del fondo, La familia tipo and Trenes del sur. He has been the Head of the Victorino de la Plaza Provincial Library in Salta and he has lived for a while in the United States of America, where he was granted a Scholarship. This short story was published –preserving the original orthography and grammar of the manuscript sent by the author– in the 19th issue of Puro Cuento, in November 1989.
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The circus Hector Tizón
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t was an adobe house, with thick, old walls, long ago peeled away but still showing that once they had been painted in white. At the end of house, an ivy plant tried, every spring, to reach the roof, but it always fell short, its long innumerable thin fingers clung to the edge of a cavity as a window —open ventilation for the fruits stored in the hut—, and there she began to die away, letting the yellow and cold death sneak inside her, through the tips of the guides that then started to dry away, until someone cut them off, chopping them off with a blow of machete. Inside the house my cousin José lied in bed, numb with cold, thin, with sunken eyes, always asking for some water. And my mother, aunt Machaca, Manuela and some other people I did not know were around José, sitting down or walking on tiptoes near the bed, looking into his eyes, uttering faltering words in a low voice, coughing softly, or just being quiet. I had paced up and down my boredom a hundred times already. I wanted to go back home, get close to the river to see my father give the “green light” in wicker rings to the engine drivers who passed by, making their locomotives blow, rather than being at my cousin José’s house. But my mother said no; that I should leave her alone. Days and days were passing by; and, from the roof, lying on thick moldy tiles I watched, with such open eyes that they’d hurt me, the hours slowly go by over the back of the clouds, towards the horizon.
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Only during the siestas did I indulge myself to be close to José; during the heavy siestas, when everybody fell overcome by sleep and by the sweet red wine of the large earthenware jars taken from the back of the house. José did not sleep. I told him about the circus. The circus had come to town before us, settling down beneath its enormous patched tent, just a few blocks away from the house. José did not know what a circus was. The first time I paid for the ticket, but on the second time I discovered I could sneak in beneath the tent through some holes close to the ground, so then I would use that money to buy those apples-on-a-stick that an old man sold inside. José did not know what an apple-on-a-stick was, so I tried to explain all those things to him during the siestas. José looked at me with big, dry, funny eyes. The giraffes, the cycling monkey, the dancing dogs. And then all of them together on the arena, when they came out holding that big sign lifted by the elephant with its trunk, towards the end of the show, when everybody clapped their hands. 54
When the doctor stopped coming back, an old, toothless woman with black and dirty hair entered the house; she came for the next three consecutive nights and I could see how she wrapped José in an old poncho1 and after lighting a fire on a corner of the room with the tree barks that she brought wrapped in newspaper, in the middle of smoke she called him: “Joseée… come back… Joséee...” Sometimes I also would go to the river, wander along the edge of the thick walls of the borders, watch how women beat their clothes on the rocks. Then I would go back to the house and referred all that to my cousin. Some sunrises made me cry; an inconsolable, monotone, drown out weeping escaped from my window only to fade away swallowed by silence. “Help me”, said José. Once again the siesta had settled down over the sleepless, defeated will of the grown-ups. I went to tell him how I had seen on the beach a cat be hung to death from a wire. “Help me”, he said, “I’m getting up”. My cousin rose and sat up in bed. He had shining, beautiful eyes; his long, straight hair fell over the neck of his faded Franciscan habit. Then he said: “We’re going to the circus”; and he added: “You hear that? Is that the music from the circus?” I had already told him that in the circus there was a group of men who played music by blowing their cornets; some lively, stentorian music that made you stand up, shout and burst to dance and run after the dwarf horses. He asked me to help him and when I held him I could feel his thin, fragile, soft chest, his skinny, prominent ribs beating underneath the faded
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Franciscan habit. He held me back and I felt his warm, damp face against mine, until I finally managed to place him on the nearby chair. “Do you feel the music?”, he said once again; but I could not hear it. He looked up to the ceiling and added: “the donkey riding on the giraffe”. Then he remained very still; lying against the back of the chair; in silence, his eyes shut. A long, unrestrained howl made me finally remove my eyes from the little, thin feet of my cousin José which had long ago ceased to swing. 1. Outer garment designed to keep the body warm.
HECTOR TIZÓN Was born in Yala, Jujuy, in 1929. Apart from being a writer -the most renowned novelist from Northwestern Argentina- he is also an attorney and a judge. He lives in Yavi, Jujuy. Sceneries play a fundamental role in his works, together with the grief of his characters. His works have been translated into several languages and he has been given many awards. Some of his works are: El traidor venerado, La casa del viento, El hombre que llegó a un pueblo, El gallo blanco, Luz de las crueles provincias. This short story has been taken from Cuentos de Jujuy, a Youth Collection compiled and commented by Jorge Accame. Univ. Nac. Jujuy,1998.
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This book was printed on September, 2010 in Cooperativa Gráfica el Sol Limitada 2190, Av. Amancio Alcorta Parque Patricios, City of Buenos Aires.
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