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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
The texts included in this book have been selected by the corresponding Region coordinator Graciela Bialet. Contact: planlectura@me.gov.ar plecturamarga@gmail.com Spanish to English translation by Julieta Barba and Silvia Jawerbaum: Translators. They have translated several books of essays, as well as literary texts for anthologies and schoolbooks. Silvia is also a biologist, whereas Julieta is a teacher of translation. Pablo Toledo: He won the Premio Clarín de Novela in 2000 for his first novel, Se esconde tras los ojos (2000), awarded by a jury made up of Vlady Kociancich, Augusto Roa Bastos and Andrés Rivera. He published the novel Tangos chilangos in digital serialized form in 2009 (www.tangoschilangos.wordpress.com), and on the same year Editorial El fin de la noche published his third novel, Los destierrados. His short stories have been included in anthologies such as La joven guardia (2005 in Argentina and 2009 in Spain), In fraganti (2007), Uno a uno (2008). He also writes the blog www.lopario.blogspot.com.
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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
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CÓRDOBA
LA RIOJA
The hunter
Reptilian jungle
César Altamirano
FRAGMENT Joaquín V. González
Pág. 8
Pág. 22
Boys
Aunt Lila
Daniel Salzano
Daniel Moyano
Pág. 12
Pág. 26
Evita
Negro Shono
Daniel Salzano
Jorge Ponce
Pág. 13
Pág. 31
The spell
The call of the mountain
Cristina Bajo
Jorge Ponce
Pág. 15
Pág. 36
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SAN LUIS
SAN JUAN
MENDOZA
The spider
Infinite
Berta Elena Vidal de Battini
José Eduardo González
Friends in the wind
Pág. 39
Pág. 51
Liliana Bodoc
Pág. 60
The spell Polo Godoy Rojo
A ghost’s hand Juan Pablo Echagüe
Pág. 53
Death lasts but a short while
We can fly Antonio Di Benedetto
Pág. 42
Mazamorra
Pág. 65
Antonio Esteban Agüero
David Aracena
Horse in the saltpeter land
Pág. 47
Antonio Di Benedetto
Pág. 56
Pág. 66
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A Cร RDOB
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The hunter César Altamirano
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F
ollowing the traces left by the doll on the earth in the courtyard, you could get to the boy.
In the sierras, they no longer remembered when the persistent northerly wind had started to blow. Below, the river was on the verge of disappearing –a thread threatened by engulfing sand, ready to swallow up the last drops. The dry earth rested pollen-like on everything.
The man put his axe down to hold the mate and said, “The wind from the south is laden with water.” “Let’s hope it comes soon then!,” was the reply. The woman was motionless, as if she were a wood carving, waiting. Her reddened eyes seemed to be looking at nothing. You could say she had been emptied. She got the mate while the man wiped the sweat off his forehead with his arm. The blows went on. The tala resisted, small chips of wood flying in all directions. A crosswise blow and then one with an opposite slant were proof of the man’s skill. He had began early in the morning, hoping for fresh air, but it was already hot at dawn –a relentless weather. As if after a mysterious sign, all cicadas cried at once. It was a deafening sound.
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A lizard turned green moved across the courtyard towards the low stone wall. The woman noticed the boy and shouted at him in a low-pitched voice, “I’ve told you you shouldn’t play on the wall! It’s dangerous!” The boy stopped poking at the stone joints with a stick and held his Superman under his arm. He found shelter under the adobe. The big head-less doll was a cage where he kept toads, lizards, ringdove pigeons. From time to time, the man looked at the prays and thought, “He’ll be a hunter.” The brownish cacholote marched past. In the shadow, the boy stared at the apparition in ecstasy. It was a snaking thin yellow, orange and black thread. A shaft of light across the reed eave brought the colours out. The black acacia stick had two thorns that turned it into a fork. The boy rolled the snake up and put it into Superman. The doll then became a lethal trap. The boy covered the hole in the doll with his hand. The coral snake stirred inside. It rose suddenly up twice, darting at the hand-lid, but could not bite its smooth palm. The boy liked the tickling, thinking his prey was playing with him. Then the snake calmed down, curling up at the bottom of its jail. As he felt nothing moved, the hunter moved his hand and looked inside the doll. He watched attentively. Filtered through the plastic doll, the light made the colours of the snake duller. The thread moved, and the boy could see its little black velvety head, his eyes like two tiny embers. He removed his hand, clearing the exit. The prisoner was dead-like still. The boy poked at it with his stick. The snake tossed and rolled up the stick. The boy brought it out and placed it on the earth. When set free, the snake slithered in search of freedom, but it did not go far away. The thorn fork held it by the middle of its body, so it raised its head and bit at the stick. It did not bite it, though, and curled again. The boy then put it back in the doll. “Supper’s ready,” he heard while absorbed in his own world. He left his Superman on the ground, placing a flat stone on its hole. There they were, the container and its contents, while the boy rushed to the table. The man and woman were waiting under the reed eave. The boy sat on the peeled light-blue stool and gulped down his lamb stew, eager to
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return to the shady adobe and his treasure. A huge black and hairy spider crawled ceremoniously along a beam. The man saw it and said, “It’s going to rain, no doubt. The tarantula’s out.” He finished off his wine. Before going back to woodcutting, he picked an ember and lit a chala fag. The woman was filling the carob pan with water to do the washing when she saw the boy hurry towards the adobe. “Go to bed!” The phrase hit him when he was about to grab his doll and avoid a ferocious attack from the dog, who sprang out of the churquis barking, its hair on end. “León, stay put! When the dog goes into the wild, it comes back being really fierce. We should chain it.” The restless animal resisted, but his neck went through the collar. As if hiding something, the hunter went through the fibre curtain and lay on his cot, the doll-cage clasped against his chest with his hand on top. 10
“I told you to go to sleep,” his mother said, lying with her back to him. The boy turned, removing the hand on the container to find a comfortable position. The coral snake stuck its head out, guided by its nervous, rhythmical tongue. With half its body out, it explored the woman’s back but found no hole in her cotton dress. It went back into the doll and the hand of the boy, who was sleeping carefree, blocked the exit once again. And so they slept. The nap flew like the wind in the desert. With the logs in piles, the man was making mate when he reminded the woman that she should wake the hunter up. A sleepy boy appeared between the fibre curtain and the door frame, clutching his plastic doll. The chained dog leapt on him, but the chain stopped it short. The woman realised León had anticipated danger. Frozen in terror, she began sweating, her eyes set on the plastic jail. “Come here!,” she shouted. “Let go of that!” The boy moved back defensively, his hand clutching Superman’s broken neck. It was then that he felt his itching finger and saw the tiny red drops.
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With a violent slap, the man hurled the doll to the ground. The plastic cage belched the fleeing snake out. Instinctively quick-minded, the man crushed the coral thread as he bitterly brandished his machete, ready to sever the arm as the only possible remedy. Turning the reptile’s body with his frayed espadrille, he saw the whitish belly, still throbbing. “Fake!,” he said, spitting the cigarette out.
CÉSAR ALTAMIRANO Was born in 1926 in Córdoba, where he still lives. After teaching Maths and History for several years, he became a writer, although his storytelling activity had began much earlier. He is still in the healthy habit of telling stories to young and adult audiences in schools and clubs. He has published two books of shorts stories, Los anillos del diablo and Zona roja y otros cuentos (with Juan Coletti and Carlos Gili). The story in this collection first appeared in Desde Córdoba narran (Bohemia y Figura, Córdoba, 1978).
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Boys Daniel Salzano
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ou can see them in the city in short sleeves, their hair thick and a look only responsive to the stimulus of fear. They walk through the door of a coffee bar like shadows of themselves, doing as much as tapping at your shoulder or placing an open hand before your face. The underchildhood in C贸rdoba has changed its system. They do not sell aspirins or hand out religious cards any more. They under-childhood does not speak any more. They do not complain. They do not say thank you. Their only visible concern is that a waiter may touch them. There are times when waiters call the police. And there are times when waiters kick them out.
Y
You can also see them in the corners, hanging around. Some still carry their pacifiers. Cheap, innocent, easily manipulated labour. The less imaginative fight for a place by cab doors. The luckiest ones are recruited by the mafias controlling street corner windscreen cleaning, water and soap. C贸rdoba is not very respectful of its children. You can see them at midnight, on Chacabuco street, looking for a place to watch a bar TV. Any place will do. Lying in the middle of the pavement, climbing trees, sitting on the roof of pickup trucks. They behave neither well nor badly. They are not noisy. They do not say a word. They watch Tom and Jerry and never laugh. They see Fito P谩ez and never sing. They watch the goals on Sunday and are never happy. Sometimes you give them a few coins and they take them as if they
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were a fistful of wind. It is all part of the same hardening, the same dehumanised routine. And a day like any other they wake up being men. And then you will never see them again.
Evita
T
he rumour spread in Alta Córdoba that Perón and Eva were coming from Buenos Aires by train to take a look at the neighbourhood.
The train that carried Perón and Eva, retired FFCC Belgrano engine drivers said, included a gym where the General played pelota in the morning, a built-in gold basin in a little Venetian toilet, and a coach at the back, whose doors were opened by invisible hands that let out Pulpo balls, Volcán stoves, trays with meringues, and Sportlandia football boots. All you remember from the day when the train that carried Perón and Eva came to Alta Córdoba is that your image of a boy in astonishment was raised and shaken by a passionate crowd with fluttering flags in one hand and blows delivered on the express train of the nation on the other. You could not see Perón (he must have been in the gym), but suddenly you were faced with a close-up of Eva, who was leaning out of the meringue coach. Evita was an fair-skinned, thin woman, smiling just like in schoolbooks and wearing a bright red dress shaped like an equilateral triangle. When you came home and they asked about the Sportlandia boots, you made up a film. You said Perón was a tall guy wearing spurs and Evita looked like Rita Hayworth, and that they had not given out the meringues because the policeman who tried them died… poisoned. The problem for filmmaker Alan Parker when shooting Evita would not be the recreation of the railway station in Alta Córdoba or
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the bidet of the little Venetian toilet but to have Madonna resemble Rita Hayworth.
DANIEL SALZANO Was born in Córdoba. He is a writer and a journalist. He lived in Europe during the military dictatorship. He is a weekly contributor of the local newspaper La Voz del Interior, where he writes about people and events in his neighbourhood, town, country, and the world giving original, poetic descriptions of them. Many of his poems were turned into songs and sung by Jairo. His works include El libro de Amador, El alma que canta, El espadachín mayor de la ciudad, and Los días contados (Op Oloop Ediciones, Córdoba, 1996). The stories in this collection first appeared in Los días contados.
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The spell Cristina Bajo
T
he girls ran across the open ground with the cages hanging from their fingers like bunches. Sundown scared them, but they ran, their arms held high, the birds fluttering with such panic they didn't even chirp. “Let's do it here,” begged Sara, the eldest.
“It's too close.” “My side hurts, Lydia, I can't run any more!” “Do you want them to see us? Besides, it has to be far away, or they'll find the cages.” “I want to go back home, it's too dark!” “Don't be a crybaby, there's still light!” “By the time we've finished...” “I'll make a torch with a lit rag.” “And what if the old laundry lady sees us?” “She won't see us.” “And what if Fido bites us?” “Fido will run away with his tail between his legs when he sees the fire.”
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“It will go out, it always does.” Sara's voice sounded heartbroken and Lydia took pity on her. “Well, here we are. Be careful when you cross the bridge.” They stepped cautiously across the narrow walkway; a bird chirped and the sound, sad and unrecognizable, attacked Sara's heart. “Let's get back, Lydia. I feel so sorry for them...” “Are you crazy? We have to go on with it now, or something really bad could happen to us.” “Couldn't we just release them?” “No, we couldn't.” Her cousin's tone was final. “And don't talk now. I need to count the steps.”
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They walked around some fallen fences and reached a tree that Sara found threatening. She regretted she had given in to the seduction of her cousin, of the stories they listened in on from behind the door of Mr. Manuel's library, when they were helping Mrs. Rita. She felt she had let herself get caught in her cousin's games and the word “sin” grew until it scared her. Fright blinded her and she tripped on a stone. “Come on, Sara, please: you have to step where I step!” It had to be venial, Sara thought; and if it was, she could get away without confessing it to father José. However, killing... killing was... She almost when she saw the heap of branches with yellow flowers, almost as tall as them, over rags and old papers. “Do you know what this plant is called?” “What do I care; I want to go back. I'm not playing anymore.” “This is not a game.” The coldness in her voice made Sara shiver. Suddenly, the kerosene-lit kitchen, the big iron stove that fired up warmth from the embers in its belly, the cluster of cousins in the half-light, crowded around the table to eat the thick soup that would serve as dinner, seemed to her like the very essence of happiness. That immigrant's room, dark but warm and full of her aunt's loving presence, seemed like heaven. “I cannot do it.” Lydia tried to persuade her, but she insisted:
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“Couldn't we just release them?” “Does grandma skip the Our Father when we pray the rosary?” “She doesn't, but the rosary is sacred.” “So is this.” “No; this is...,” she choked and then mumbled under her breath “I cannot do it.” Lydia understood that nothing in the world could make her change, so she yielded. “Fine, but you're going to hand me the birds.” “All I will do is hold the cages,” toughened up Sara. “And I'm not walking down the street like the Romans. If night falls, I'll leave you and go back home.” “Fine, fine.” She opened the cage, stuck her hand in and grabbed a canary, but hesitated when she felt the heartbeat trapped in her hand, between the silky feathers. She couldn't skewer it in the thorns, like the spell says, because her cousin knocked her on her back, shouting. The bird escaped from her fist, flapped its wings and shot away like an arrow towards the river. Then, while she tried to get back on her feet, Sara started opening the cages, shaking them so the birds got away. She swatted at her, furious, but they had all disappeared among the trees by the river. The need to fulfill the ritual drove her mad. She grabbed the the feathers which were floating in the air, which were left inside the cage, in her clothes, as she mumbled “My soul, I give you my soul with these feathers, as I could not give you the birds.” Then, as in a trance, she looked for the matches and lit the fire. By the light of its warm, yellow, smelly tongues, she looked at her hands. A drop of blood stained her palm. Hers, the canary's? She didn't know, but it looked like a sign. Sara wept harder and harder. “Stop, it's over.” Goldfinches, cardinals, canaries, calandra larks, they had all got away; only the empty cages bounced against the yellow heart of the fire. “It's done,” she panted, “it's done.” Sara had turned her back on her, shrunk in fear; she was afraid of her cousin, even though she didn't know why> she had never hit her.
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Lydia, meanwhile, moved her lips conjuring something or someone as she asked for what she had gone there to request, although her hope faded away along with the fire. With the last embers, she turned around, took her by the hand and they ran away across the plank bridge, feeling as if the air was pulling them back and the wind was whispering in their ears names that must not be pronounced. From the shadows, sharp fingers tried to catch them. When they got to the house, the street was barely lit by the light that leaked out of a window and an open hallway. What they were leaving behind was a big black void that stopped, suspended, in the corner. Choking, with their hand clutching their sides which had stitches that wouldn't let them stand straight, they looked at each other, Sara feeling relieved, Lydia, disappointed. “It's all lost now,” she thought, “and perhaps Mom will suspect that I took the birds and punish me with her belt.” Later, at the table, her mother, with exhaustion showing in her face and her posture, told them she had received a letter from her father, who had returned to Spain to bring her mother and her sisters to Argentina. “Where is Spain?” 18
“Far, far away,” replied their mother with infinite sadness. “In Buenos Aires?” “Much further. You have to get to Buenos Aires, board a ship and sail on the ocean for a long time to get to Spain.” after saying that, the woman made a tire remark about the disappearance of the bird cages, questioning them with her eyes. All seven children shook their heads in denial. For a few minutes, all that was heard was the noise of the spoons lifting the crusts of stale bread that the Galician baker sent them for free and which the woman roasted in the fire. Sara's hands trembled, rattling the crockery, and Lydia touched her under the table; facing the punishment, especially her mother's depression, wouldn't have mattered if at least she had got something in return. But everything seemed so useless. It's not like she was expecting, wow!, a red balloon and Him in the middle saying... “Wash your hands, your face and your mouth. Go urinate and come back quick, it's cold.” Saradidn't want to go out. “I don't want to urinate, auntie.” The woman's tired eyes flashed a spark of intolerance.
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“Lydia, go with Sara.” “I don't need to either, Mom.” “Sweet mother of Jesus! Elena, take these two big babies to the toilet; I'm sure they've been peeping at don Manuel's books and now they're scared.” Elena stood up all smug. She was pretty, with a healthy, ordinary face. She ate almost every day with don Manuel and his wife, two people from Catalonia who made a good living importing olives and oil. The lady was very devout; he was a big reader, a dedicated student of things the girls found weird. Elena insisted that one day she would marry Rafael, their pampered child, the child they had late in life who would one day inherit the house with the molded Portland cement facade and balconies with iron grilles, with the conservatory brimming with ferns, and the library. “Let's go, I need to go read for doña Rita.” They walked out into the darkness of the patio, the girls clinging to each other. The black void they had left at the corner sailed towards them, brimming with noises and things moving and flapping and whispering over their heads. At the toilet, Elena set a candle on a stool, resuscitating quivering shadows on the walls. A little further, restless hens clucked. “Come in once and for all.” Sara peed quickly and badly; then Elena did so and finally Lydia, who kept repeating to herself that everything had been useless: the fear, the sin, the terrible promise. Outside, they could hear the voices of the other girls encouraging each other. While she straightened her clothes, she kept thinking whether her soul could be worth as much as the lives of the birds she was supposed to offer. She was picking up the candle to leave when she saw through the small triangular window the goat's face, the reddish beard, the hair lit up like fluff on fire and the eyes like yellow embers. But, above all, she recognized the bumps on the forehead and the evil smile. She shouted and the candle went out, and even though it was dark she could still see those lit coals. “The Devil, the Devil, the Devil!” She rammed the door open and ran, faster than the other girls, chased by Sara's crying and her guilt and everything that had happened that afternoon. But in her bedroom, by the fire, hugging her mother by the waist, as
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she stammered her account of what she had seen, she knew it would all come to pass. Her sister went to doña Rita's to read to her, complaining because she would be late: you could already hear the 9 o'clock tramway coming up the hill in San Martín. Seconds later they heard the squeal of metal, a high-pitched cry and something falling softly, like a bale. Her mother tensed up and took her hands to the cross hanging from her neck. Somebody told them “It's Elena: the tramway ran her over. She needs to be taken to hospital, she was hit badly.” Lydia, in a kind of ecstasy, knew that now the promises would really come true. She would get Elena's things: her white socks, her patent leather shoes, her frilled dress, the small piece of rouge she had stolen from the lady at the shop, the bar of perfume, Rafael's communion's holy card, the mantilla in yellowed lace that was slightly frayed in a corner. She would eventually find a way to console her mother, she would help out with the younger brothers, she would behave better, she would...
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She heard Sara weep inconsolably and she regretted having come to her for help. She understood that, sooner or later, she would have to do something to stop her from telling on what they had done. It wouldn't be right to make her mother sad now that they were going to do so well.
CRISTINA BAJO Was born in Córdoba in 1937. She was a rural teacher and did various jobs, as she was writing her novels and gathering historical information. Among her works are: La Señora de Ansenuza y otras leyendas; En tiempos de Laura Osorio; El jardín de los venenos; Tú, que te escondes; La trama del pasado; Guardián del último fuego (legends for children); Elogio de la Cocina. Her books have been published in Spain and translated in Greece, Portugal and Romania. She currently gives History and Literature courses; and she is writing two novels.
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A LA RIOJ
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Reptilian Jungle FRAGMENT JoaquĂn V. GonzĂĄlez
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S
hepherds suffer the most when the summer sun scorch the boulders, parch the pasture, convert sand into smoldering embers, and dry up the springs and fountains. And Pedro, he of the rustic melodies, rising at dawn, and returning at dusk, spent countless wilting hours during the blazing afternoon naps, when all life in the valleys, forests, and hills seemed to consume itself, and his bedraggled flock came limping back exhausted, huddling under the trees and the rocky overhangs of the cliffs, while his inseparable friend droopily circled him, panting and suffocating, tongue lolling, dry and supplicating eyes. Then, even the loneliness of the mountains didn't seem lonely to him, his weariness and abjection were also transmitted to all the objects he once owned with happy echoes and harmonious resonances. And his juvenile imagination, excited by the perennial caress of nature, reeled and swooned and, as during a feverish delirium, he dreamt about the most extraordinary things, and saw in the trees, and among the distant pinnacles, and in the mirages of the wavering air, a welter of weird and rarefied images, frantic, superhuman, diabolical, ominous. Only at these moments was he frightened, and wished his companion (the dog) had words. But he felt content with watching his eyes, reading in them the heartfelt expression of fraternal affection and, turning to scan the horizon, searched the snarled screens of the forests for scenes of a known reality. (...)
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One of those most stringent of days, he drove his flock up the narrow throat of a mountain pass, so as not to miss out on the shade and the refreshing breezes; and before noon the bordering ridges were dotted with sheep, like the folds of Lebanon, in the Canticles. At the bottom of the gorge, a torrent burbled among enormous stones; gigantic trees followed the fissure, gradually thinning out as they climbed the mountainside until the leaves of the last of them brushed the summit; there, aloof and immune, some condors wheeled impassive, and the January sun began to foment a swelter among the currents of the air. Soon enough, afternoon arrived, and with it the hour of the oppressive and deadly siesta. Poor Pedro took refuge under the branches of an ancient tala . His lambs, sheltered in secure asylum, needed no care: keeping vigil over them were their mothers and the loyal dog, which never slept on his watch. But if there had not been so much fire in the air, so indefinable a terror in the lonely woods, so mysterious hints in the caves and in the deserted nests and forsaken dens, the shepherd would have dozed on the soft sands. Siestas are similar to midnight, and during them there appear rapacious goblins, menacing insects, fantastic and terrifying visions of suffocation and silence- Then again, the brain of an adolescent is rich in strange ramifications, aberrant memories, and the stinging fears engendered by tales heard on bonfire nights. He was fearful of everything around him; in spite of the intense heat, a freezing twinge of apprehension contracted his tanned and weather-beaten skin; he glanced behind him left and right, determined to defend himself against the attacks of beasts, demons, or witches, and climbed the trunk of a sturdy tree where, at a considerable height above the ground, he seated himself on a massive bough, screened off by spiky foliage. His dog, brother in upbringing, and lifelong friend, was keeping his post and, a true sentinel, it was sacred, inviolable. Just at this moment the boy might have begun to believe that the solitude of the mountains was solitude indeed, if he had not remembered his flute all of a sudden, whose little mouthpiece made of tree resin was peeping from one of his pockets. Oh, no! The loneliness of the mountains was not loneliness after all, and the subtly fleeting phantoms of the January afternoon dissipated like puffs of dust in the candent air, to the echo of his soft and beloved songs. When the sacred and sepulchral silence of the steep granite necropolis, with which the somber noises of night had been lulled into desultory accord, was disturbed by the flute's first notes, the narrow canyon widened into a smile which the shepherd, though terrified, could not confine to his face. (‌) Half asleep by the somnolence of the atmosphere, by the ecstatic rapture of his music, and by a vague fear beyond all control, Pedro kept his eyes squeezed shut and, by doing this, he found himself more
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confident and calm. But it was necessary, at some point, to rest and, when his song and its inebriating spell suddenly broke off, as if surprised by their delectable dream, three monstrous serpents with flecked, varicolored skin and fascinating stares writhed in violent, entranced contortions above his head, encircling him with their shiny elastic loops, and slithering in spirals along the rough and enormous tree trunk that served him as refuge.
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It was at the shock of this unexpected and horrendous vision that the poor shepherd boy let loose a strident scream that sent a shudder a thousand times, then a thousand times again, through the slumbering hills and ridges, the relentless mountain spires, the dense forest canopy; he plunged into alarm the nests, the grottoes, the flock, and the bands of wandering guanacos which responded with loud, startled whinnying. In the branches of the tree, not finding an near exit, twisted and twined in an impossibly prolific confusion before the shepherd's bulging eyes, hundreds of vipers and lizards which, gripping him with terror, clambered, jostled, darted, and dangled, emitting sparks of blood from their rancorous eyes, gnashing fangs of ivory fineness, agitatedly coiling themselves into indissoluble clusters, and dropping in knotted clumps onto the ground. On all sides the sand was alive; moving, crawling, as if each of its innumerable grains were covered in undulating, oscillating, reptilian life, in spontaneous and marvelous generation. The leaves, its stems, its red roots with their parasitic plants, its cracks and crevices, its gashed and hidden places, acquired in Pedro's horrified eyes the sinuous curves and restless wriggling of the viper, and were colored with its inimitable tints, blazing around him like light and fire. The hideousness of the situation reached its climax when he saw that they threatened to imprison him in their scaly hoops and frigid folds, to clamp onto his flesh their ivory hooks and the forked filaments of their scarlet tongues which flicked furiously from their gaping gullets; wreathing, winding, intertwining, biting viciously bit one another's twitching resonating rattle-tipped tails and, irritated by their own poison, sank their dripping teeth into the peeling bark of the tree, or lashed out at their own flesh in delirious and suicidal frenzy. To the horrific scream of fright, the loyal dog responded with a dolorous yowl which sowed panic in the resting flock, and by the time the poor animal had reached his unfortunate friend, the latter had arrived at the supreme resolution of leaping to the ground to try to make a desperate run to save himself from the ophidians, which he could hear everywhere around him, hissing, sibilating, crepitating in his ears, rubbing, grazing, scraping his cheeks with their cold, scaly skin, and boring into his neck with the points of their lethal lancets. Every few yards, he swiveled his bewildered, horror-stricken face, mesmerized by
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the same nightmarish spectacle, and saw that the reptiles crept faster and faster in a hungry, hissing horde, struggling to reach the fugitive prize, in order to wallow in his youthful blood. Aghast, the poor shepherd frantically tore off his hat, his poncho , and the rest of his clothes, so as to fling them to the voracity and avidity of the diabolical swarm of persecutors. These, in a gasping, writhing heap, squirmed in blind fury over the heated earth, to molest him, to torment him, to pierce him with holes like a sieve. As they fastened onto his castoff garments, puncturing them again and again with their needle-keen teeth until all that was left was a handful of pulverized shreds, the luckless boy managed to hobble quite a distance in his demented flight before he lost all awareness of the whereabouts of his pursuers, and of the canine comrade who trailed him whining, and of the cloud of dust raised by his panicked flock retreating towards the far-off corrals (...) People of the mountainous village refer that, on that same day, short after noon, they made out towards the spot where the shepherd had led his flock in the morning a huge dust whirl which run in the direction of the house through the dusty road of the valley, and soon afterwards they distinguished, partly with amazement and partly with the deepest sorrow, Pedro the shepherd, coming in desperate and blind escape, giving cries of terror, his face altered, his pupils dilated and his naked flesh pouring blood, closely followed by his dog which cried without end, and a little far beyond by all the flock which was overcome with the strangest terror. (…) Oh! Oh! The snakes, the snakes! And between the whining of the dog and a deep drowsiness, he fell asleep, stirred by horrible nightmares. (…) His pupils remained closed forever with a vague expression of horror, and when charity’s favors or the brief flashes of lightning of his memory made him smile, his smiles were so quick that the subsequent contraction of his face would cause more sadness and grief. But never was he abandoned, until his death, by two friends of his, very close to him: his flute made of tree resin and his loyal dog with which he got on like a house on fire. JOAQUIN V. GONZALEZ Was born in 1863 in Nonogasta, in the Province of La Rioja, and died in Buenos Aires in 1923. He studied Law at the University of Córdoba and then was a renowned public figure: Deputy, Senator, Governor of La Rioja, Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Justice. As a writer, his most famous book is Mis Montañas. As a jurist he published Manual de la Constitución Argentina. His Complete Works were published in 1935, divided into 25 volumes.
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Aunt Lila Daniel Moyano
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P
oor Aunt Lila with her white dress, so tall, so single. A dress made by the best seamstresses in the sierras, who pleated it and shaped it like an undulating bell. Aunt Lila wore it every afternoon, when she called us from the porch. Boys, quit it with the ball now, go wash your hands, scrub your knees, and wipe your noses for it’s time to pray. A dress whose pleats made it possible for Aunt Lila to lift it or flutter it without her knees being seen. Its folds were endless. They never disappeared, not even when she got its hem around her shoulders and pretended to be a peacock, or when she raised her hands above her head and spread the bell to turn it into a rosette. When she danced the dress swirled around her, just like the whirlpool that swallowed Uncle Jacinto up. And it had so many laces and embroideries, multi-coloured threads that created two big butterflies in the chest, replicated in the sleeves, whose cuffs were fastened with yellow laces. It locked Aunt Lila up in whiteness. Boys, we’re going to Cosquín today, we’re visiting Uncle Emilio. Please behave, leave your catapults at home, kill no ground doves, trap no goldfinches. Be good to Uncle Emilio, who’s so kind and will give you goat’s milk with chicharrón and honey from his honeycombs. Beware, dear little boys, be sensible and well-mannered with Uncle Emilio, who’s so kind so handsome. No bird hunting, no needles in birds’ eyes, think God may punish you and make you blind for the rest of your lives. Follow Uncle Emilio’s
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example: he’s so good he never killed a bird or stuck prickles in its eyes. So the best thing you can do is behave yourselves and collect watercress and peppermint, chañar and buckthorn for Uncle Emilio. And don’t forget to ask for his blessing. And can we bring the ball? No, no, Aunt Lila says, because you’ll play and shout, and shouting makes Uncle Emilio nervous and frightens his bees away. God bless you, dear boys, Uncle Emilio says, his hand on our heads. Now come see my flowers, my honeycombs, my kids, my melons, my cages with flycatchers, my daisy and bridal wreath spirea beds. No, thanks, Uncle Emilio, we want to go to the pitch. OK, boys, God bless you, but please don’t mix with the black boys, don’t fight, and don’t say bad words. No, Uncle Emilio, we’d never do that, for God is everywhere and he can see everything we do and he will judge both the living and the dead. In the pitch, we gesture to the black boys living like flies in their huts. Hey, you, don’t you have a ball? We could have a match. No way, they can have no ball. But they point to the ground and we see lots of toads that have come out of the stream for bugs; they are jumping all around. The good thing about this is that the ball helps, it dodges and weaves on its own. Nice bouncing ball for knock-up shots. The bad thing is when you have to change toads. You are sometimes stopped in the middle of a move: Hey, this ball is no longer useful, can’t you see? This is the new ball. There’s shouting and bickering. Boys, what are you doing in that pitch, for God’s sake, we can hear Aunt Lila. Carozo and Titilo have set up two teams. I am Carozo’s goalkeeper, Beto keeps the other goal. Then there are four black boys per team. And there are lots of toads, which are also players: when they are not the ball, they jump across the pitch as if they were playing too; one goes up while another goes down, bouncing their way from the stream to Uncle Emilio’s house, to his flower beds. Throbbing toads all around. Titilo delivers an overhead pass. One of the black boys rushes to head the ball, but he remembers what the ball is made of just in time, so he stops the ball with his chest before it drops to the floor. What a player he is. He holds the ball with his knee, moves it with his left leg and shoots with his right foot. It is a furious middle-height shot. I am well prepared and can grab the ball effortlessly. But I throw it away almost immediately, just over my goal, it is so cold. Corner, some of the boys cry. I go fetch the ball, but Titilo says leave it, we can’t use it any more. And from the corner a new toad is kicked with its legs stretched, its belly bleaching when it flies across the goal area, danger, I am out of step but Carozo solves the situation by knocking the ball about. His fabulous shot takes the other goalie by surprise; he cannot see the ball
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when it brushes past the woodwork and crashes I do not know where. It is now 1-0. Carozo and I hug, and our black team-mates join us. Boys, don’t get dirty, Aunt Lila says from under the magnolia tree. And then come for we have to pray together for Uncle Jacinto, who’s dead, poor man. We do not want to pray, nor do we want to hear the story of Uncle Jacinto again. We have already forgotten about him. We know he used to wear a moustache and a broad-brimmed hat because this is how he looks in the portrait on the wall. The whirlpool swallowed him up and belched him out three times, Aunt Lila always says as if we did not know, showing three white fingers, and no one could even give him a stick or a board, poor guy. After the third time, he never emerged again. He drowned because he was a moron, Titilo and I always say. We always bathe in whirlpools, it is nicer than in calm water. You just let go, spinning down a few metres, and at the bottom whirlpools are powerless points tending to zero. All you have to do is step on the bottom and with a spurt go up sideways, so that you are out of the field of centrifugal force. 28
Then you swim up to the surface, take a deep breath, and go back in. Like a chute, but more fun. There are no whirlpools in the bottom of the river, everybody knows that. Everybody except Uncle Jacinto, of course. And those who were watching him drown told him so; spring up when you’re down, Jacinto, the whirlpool will take up three times only. They said it and showed him with gestures in case he was deaf, but he did not heed the warning signs. Instead of doing what he was told, he gestured too, but of course nobody understood what he meant. The onlookers said three, showed three fingers, and he also showed three fingers whenever he emerged: three fingers, seven fingers, nine fingers. Three times, they said, but he ignored them and made his will: three cows, seven sheep, nine canaries, I bequeath them to my dear brother Emilio. His moustache and his hat dripping wet. The whirlpool spares your life three times. But then, it chucked him in. Screw him, Titilo and I always say. What are you doing, you asshole, Carozo cries when I let the ball in, when I cannot see the toad like a bolt of lightning between my legs because I am thinking of Uncle Jacinto. Thank God it is not valid, for half the ball was in but the other half went over the woodwork. This is the new ball, says one of the black boys and he breaks away and heads for the other goal. When he is about to shoot, Titilo goes out, blocks him, the ball changes hands, and a new toad is needed.
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Titilo is intent on drawing the match. As he knows I am not very good at catching overhead shots, he sends the ball over the crossbar. I jump as high as I can, noticing the toad is flying in the direction of Uncle Emilio’s house. I scrape the ball with my nails but it is not enough: it flies off, spinning belly up to crash against the cage of they flycatcher. Soon enough I can hear Aunt Lila, so good, so proud, her voice saying for God’s sake, my boys, leave that little toad alone and come here to pray. She talks about this toad and we have already used some twenty of them. Stop, penalty, many of the boys cried. I do remember the equalising penalty. They were quarrelling over who should shoot. It was a big toad, very fat indeed, which would not stay put while the quarrel went on. They placed him on a little mound and it headed for the stream. In the end it was Titilo. It was always him. They put the ball in place. Titilo stared at it, took a run-up, and sent a middle-height shot that I was unfortunately unable to catch. Meanwhile, we could hear Aunt Lila cry as if she were leaving this world, swirling down as her white dress changed colour, as she cried softly, as if her cries were in fact signs, almost languorous, as if instead of shouting she were saying what have you done, my dear boys, don’t forget God and Uncle Jacinto are watching. Goal, goal, goal, Titilo and his black boys cried, hugging Beto. I writhe in anger on the ground, biting the grass. Letting the ball in and getting Aunt Lila’s dress dirty on top. Now she will think we do not love her. Her white dress, full of laces and embroideries, with the toad burst between the butterflies, just on the tucked yoke of Aunt Lila’s dress, peacock and rosette. It is very uncomfortable to pray when you are sweating like mad. You cannot focus on the candle-lit portrait of Uncle Jacinto. We pray and we look sideways at Aunt Lila, who is crying in her underskirt while washing her dress in a bowl. We will never know if she is crying for her dress or for Uncle Jacinto. Titilo prays staring at the portrait, his eyes glittering with joy. I pray and try to conceal my anger. Just a little more and I could have caught it, at least a leg, for a corner kick. If I had stretched a little more, we would have won 1-0. Uncle Emilio is praying with us as if he were counting melons or kids. Aunt Lila, whom we would forget the following summer, just like Uncle Jacinto as we never went back to the sierras. Aunt Lila, who believed in so many good things. Aunt Lila, who is said to have been unable to remove the blood stains we made on her white dress. Aunt Lila, who did not know we would carry on killing toads.
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DANIEL MOYANO Was born in La Rioja in 1930. One of the greatest Argentine storytellers, he never returned to the country after going into exile during the military dictatorship. He died in Madrid in 1993. Maybe because he was in jail for several years, his novels and short stories reflect a lack of hope sometimes concealed behind everyday events and verge on magic realism. His works include Artistas de variedades, El rescate, La Lombriz, Una luz muy lejana, El fuego interrumpido, El oscuro, El trino del diablo, and El vuelo del tigre. The story in this collection is an excerpt of his short story “Tía Lila” in La otra realidad. Cuentistas de todos los rincones del país (Ediciones Desde la Gente, Buenos Aires, 1994).
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Negro Shono Jorge Ponce
n the mist of May, or under the straight weight of summer siestas, you could see “Shono” Baginay striding across the wide, sandy street. His black, broad-brimmed hat covered his face from the sun and sunk in the dark, bringing his eyes out and his teeth like a three-fire night. Another night, this one starry, was his pig leather belt, studded with coins and polished silver rosettes.
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A strange man, Negro Shono was. His frizzy beard, covering his strong jaw, which was capable of the most tender of smiles to entrance even a mother-in-law and the loudest guffaw to shake siestas at the bar “La Puertita,” and his robust body, sinewy like an old carob tree but amazingly agile, made all calculations on Negro Celedonio’s age and mischievous ember-like eyes, no matter how rough they might be, futile. Some said, “Quite old, the man is.” Others, maybe led by his appearance, thought differently. The most daring talked about some pact… There were rumours of night walks along unknown ravines when the moon is so full that it becomes pregnant with mystery and gives birth to those tales no one believes yet no one dares to prove. The truth was –if there was anything true about Negro Shono– not even the oldest women knew how or when or why one day he settled somewhere between Cochangasta and La Quebrada. He had got himself a shack that could barely stand, far away, at the foot of the mountain, at the top of a round hill lost amidst thistles and jarilla bushes. At some point –nobody knows when–, he had fenced
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the courtyard in with prickly pears, barbary figs and column cactuses, so that not even weed grew in the dusty square. And nothing grew, they said, because of the dances held there, dances in which wine poured out of jars and music galloped in the air turning the hours into weeks, heating the girls up, keeping the old women alert, on tenterhooks. He had dug a well that, by some mystery of nature, supplied him with fresh, clear water, and he stamped his boot footprint on the ground as its sole owner and proprietor. In the distance, the flat landscape barely stood out and the shack was a sparse mound of tickseeds. With time, people had stopped coming there –especially by night or during the summer siestas, for they said it was the time of voices, whistles, noises, and there were even those who claimed they had seen something frightful, some “horror.” It were precisely those “events” that had earned Shono respect, or at least a mix of fear and suspicion, so much so that some did their best to avoid him and, when they had no choice and could not change routes, they greeted him ceremoniously, because even though Negro was not a braggart or a quarrelsome man, fear was always hanging in his shadow like the dog of a cart driver and children felt this when drunk and staggering, walked down the street brandishing the sun in his bottle, and he laughed and cried in a weird mix of pleasure and agony. Then the kids stopped their games and left their toys and sought the protection of their mothers’ skirts, and their mothers enclosed their fear with a gate of prayers. But the aftermath of wine was not always laughter. Sometimes, although not often, El Negro sat under the tala of the Fernández, with the ditch and the bottle between his legs, his shoulders bent, his eyes looking inward, hollow, empty, like the murmur that came out of his mouth. It was then that people, and not just his fellow drinkers and merrymakers, came close to Shono, who looked like a living dead man mouthing an unintelligible litany. It was then that whispering went beyond thatches and fences in the active tongues of old women. “I don’t have much time left,” “It won’t be so easy to take me away, shit!,” “You’ll have to sweat it, like hell, you!,” Celedonio said, gesturing as if in an invisible trial before the plaintiff. He said these things once and again, mixing his argument with gulps of wine, until suddenly, as if driven my some force, he rushed up the street in search of the bar, or a party where he forced everyone to drink wine or gin until alcohol knocked his tree-like strength down. As a matter of fact, not everything was fear and suspicion around Negro Shono, a regular in all kinds of parties, carousals, and fêtes held in Cochangasta or La Quebrada. As soon as a courtyard was swept and aired, and bathed by the white light of a lantern, Baginay appeared ready for dance. And it was nice to see him display his manly grace in zambas, gatos, chamamés, and
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valsecitos, making witty flattering comments and spreading his infectious laughter to the dismay of boyfriends and mothers-in-law. It was March, and Aurelio Quinteros wanted to celebrate his anniversary in style. It was Friday, and nights were still hot, so he decided that the dance and meal –“asau,” he said– would take place in the evening. “Girls, get the courtyard ready and then, to the kitchen! Boys, slaughter the animals and then go get the beverages!,” he ordered. Soon everything was ready for a party until dawn. The first guests arrived early, giving a hand with tables, benches, and other preparations. Certainly, Baginay was among them. The youngest daughter of the Quinteros family was of courting age. She was a vivacious girl, and she was beautiful. Negro, who was always ready for courting, had already set eyes on her. Thinking about her, Shono hung his mirror in the nail in the eastern fence post and, whistling a tune, he combed his tight curls as the moon rose in the east –a huge red moon caught in the left side of the mirror, just by his face. A chill went down his spine. It was a sign! That was the night! He rushed to his shack and searched for his silver dagger, but the handle eluded him. He tried again, but the silver burnt his fingers. He went into the kitchen and took his machete out of the thatching. He would wait and fight, he would stand facing fear until he could cut the knots of fate or die in the attempt. The minutes became longer… heavy… as they tend to be when fear is around, when you do not know if they are long or short, if they are many or just a few. The whistle came closer like a gallop in the mountains and scratched the courtyard with its hooves like a colt, making clouds of dust that vanished into laughter. “Negro Shono!... Are you afraid?... Your Master’s here!” The voice guffawed and the laughter morphed into swirling dust, dancing on its laughing foot in a corner of the courtyard. A new whistle, this time from the west, breaking the fence off. A flapping of wings could be heard behind the shack, and a new swirl danced, this time in the west corner. Another whistle, and the jarillas on the east side were lashed against the ground, whining, at the feet of Huayra Muyu that cursed and called Celedonio. Crying and moaning, weeping, a laughing flock, a grumbling murmur seized the early night and a shroud-like cold hissed in the thatch, snaked down the wall, and entered Shono’s bloodstream just through the place where his back leaned against the back wall of the room. He sized his decision up against the strength with which his hand clutched the handle of the machete pointing at the door. Suddenly, silence seized the shack like a sticky enveloping cobweb.
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It was so dense that Negro tried to pierce it with his machete three or four times, but he only made it denser. In the dark that had finally vanquished the sunset, a new whistle moved, undulating like a lilting snake. It came closer… It got lost… It appeared again in the mountains… It came closer in slow motion, stepping on the hairs of the talas towards the door, crunching the dead leaves in the dead of night. Celedonio cried and cursed silently, delivering and dodging blows. Like a smell and a flash, the whistle dropped dead before the house and four Huayra Muyus stormed the sand and the dust in the dry courtyard with their swirling moves. When they came close to the well, the water bubbled slitting the throat of the earth, its mouth painted with the thick smell of blood.
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“Celedonio Baginay! I’m right here!” The door frame echoed the words. “I told you not to put up any resistance. I did my part, now you have to do yours even without me coming. The first swirl should’ve been enough, but you defied me. So here I am! And I’m really mad, you fucking Negro!” Outside, the laughter and the voices demanded Shono to pay his debt. In the dark shack, Negro fought for his life with his dagger, sparks from it illuminating the scene when it clashed against nothing. The corners of his eyes showed fear whenever his machete hurt the air and he heard the cracking of dry skin. In each crack it was his body that got a new wound. With each wound he became more furious, making the fight last longer, climbing up the steps of the night, carrying it to the death of Friday. On the dot of twelve o’clock, when the cock was getting ready to crow and Saturday was being born, one of the swirls thinned into a piercing whistle and rested on the middle fence post –sharp snake, spring on the alert. Whistle upon whistle, it hit Shono in the forehead. It was almost midnight, dance was at its best at the Quinteros’ when they heard the cry. It was a cry they had never heard before, a cry that made women cross themselves and froze the blood of even the bravest men. Trying not to frighten his guests, Don Aurelio placed a rosary behind the door, just in case. The rings of the moon vanished in the sky and a glimmering fire rose from the hills. The last coals burnt down as the morning brightened up. On the round hill, ashes and a sulphurous smoke showed where the shack had been. In the middle, the corpse of a grey-haired, wrinkled old man with a machete swaying in his forehead showed a set of spotless bright white teeth carrying the laughter of death.
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JORGE PONCE Born in La Rioja in 1952, Jorge Ponce is a multifaceted teacher with an interest in painting, engraving, ceramics, and literature. He has been part of many art exhibitions in La Rioja and Argentina, and he has been a member of many juries. He has published the book of poems Del balcón de los sueños (1995), Runa Unancha Chinkasq’a o Mensaje del hombre ausente (1999), El Tinkunaco: ¿Encuentro o encontronazo?, and many other books. He is the recipient of many awards, including the First Prize in Letters, and Gold Medal, and the CFI Federal Award 2000.
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The call of the mountain Miguel Bravo TedĂn
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E
arly one morning it started giving out small cries.
The birds got scared, some cows stopped grazing, looked towards the mountain a bit surprised and then continued eating. Nature regained its course. And the animals kept eating and running. But the mountain persisted in its shouting. On the next day some louder cries surprised the cows and animals. Even a farmer was a little surprised. He looked up, took off his straw hat and scratched his head. Then he went back to work. The most surprising thing was not that the mountain shouted, but that other mountains followed suit and also, coyly at first, as if warming up their voices and taking courage, started their own small cries. And nobody, neither the cow nor the farmer nor the animals, was concerned. A while later, the group of mountains, much bolder now, not only shouted but sang. Nowadays it's a glorious thing to hear in the sunset, as the sun pulls slowly away, the beautiful choir of the mountains singing ecstatically.
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MIGUEL BRAVO TEDÍN
Is a historian and writer born in La Rioja who lived for many years in Córdoba. In that city, he was the co-founder of the legendary humour magazine Hortensia, very famous throughout the country in the 70s. He currently lives in that province. He is the author of Historias de La Rioja and Cordobnés culo al revés (Lerner, Córdoba, 1991), from which this story was taken. Tedín (1940) is a historian and writer born in La Rioja who lived for many years in Córdoba. In that city, he was the co-founder of the legendary humour magazine Hortensia, very famous throughout the country in the 70s. He currently lives in that province. He is the author of Historias de La Rioja and Cordobnés culo al revés (Lerner, Córdoba, 1991), from which this story was taken.
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S SAN LUI
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The spider Berta Elena Vidal de Battini
T
he evening was calm. The rural silence was now and then broken by the cicadas or the bleating shee p returning to the fold.
In the courtyard, hollowed after so much broom scrubbing, two spinners were talking slowly, with short, sometimes broken phrases, and with reluctance.
One of them, young and beautiful bent over the loom, moved her chubby hands weaving the threads and the comb simultaneously. The other, in her fifties, dry and wrinkled, spun impossibly white fleece; her spindle bopped with amazing skill, while she puffed at her chala cigarette. Leaning back and sighing, the younger girl said, “And Cliofe wants the blanket tomorro’…” “That’s right,” the older woman said. “Oh, mother, if I were a spider…” “Don’t say that, you girl.” “Just to be fast, I meant.” “But it’s curs’d!” “Says who?”
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“My late godmother used to say when I was a girl, and not just her, many other people knew about it, that the spider used to be a princess.” “Really?” “But this was a long time ago. And it liv’d in a golden palace.” “And where was that?” “It must’ve been in other lands… And they tell how it was proud and evil with poor people.” “Ya know, rich people are all the same.” “But there was no other woman of the same breed. Everybody was afraid of her. If you came to her and ask’d for something, they beat ya out. Some people had their shacks or farms set on fire just for fun.” “And what about the authorities?” “There was nothing they could do, for she was friends with the most powerful kings and princes… “Many want’d to marry her, for she was beautiful.” 40
“They didn’t know who they were dealing with, did they?” “No, how could they? She pretended to be good. But she got her lot.” “Once upon a time, a very old and very poor lady came to the palace and ask’d for the cloths they threw away to make a shawl, as hers was in threads. She couldn’t finish her speech, for the princess got her beaten out. The old lady then cast a terrible curse on her.” “And did it reach her?” “Of course!” “It must’ve been Virgin Mary…” “So they say. Because of the curse, all the riches of the evil princess vanish’d and she morph’d into a spider, an ugly, hairy, poisonous creature. And the worse thing was, she was condemn’d to weave all her life like those in need. “Did your godmother see this.” “No, but her grandpa did.” “These things don’t happen any more, do they?” “Who knows… It depends on the sin, but they’re all taught their lesson.” Night had silently set in.
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The two women, who were not working now, were thoughtful, staring at the shadows in the fields, absent-minded, weaving who knows which deep thoughts triggered by the mysterious tale told by the older woman.
BERTA VIDAL DE BATTINI Was born in San Luis in 1900 and died in 1984. She spent her life travelling across Argentina in search of regional features of speech and oral narratives. Her pursuit led her to research into popular legends and traditions. In 1966 she published El español en la Argentina; Mitos sanluiseños, the book where this story was first included, was released later. Vidal de Battini also published Tierra puntana and Cuentos y leyendas populares de la Argentina. In 1957 she was awarded for the Argentine Commission of Culture for her research into the speech of rural areas in San Luis.
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The Spell Polo Godoy Rojo
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e stood motionless. The water coming down along the clear trails tickled our bare feet with the sand it carried. The rainbow on the other side of the hills went across the valley and the sky, and disappeared at the far end.
We held hands tenderly. In her eyes, where it was always dawn in the green weather brought by the rain, it seemed that evening had set in, dark. After the sound of a far-away car climbing up the river banks, which was like a lasting underground thunder, everything went silent again. Then, upon the unbraiding rain, there was a cry calling from the bunch of houses. I did not know why, but I felt my heart missed a beat. “I’m leaving,” I said hurriedly. “Are you coming back?” “Of course. As many times as I can.” With my clothes and fringe dripping wet, I ran fast down the flooded sandy trail, breathing in the perfume of pennyroyals, without knowing if I wanted to laugh or cry. My mother was waiting for me, ready to take me away. There I was, bidding farewell to my dream country. I stopped for a while and turned my head, seeing her where we last
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held hands, motionless, with her little white apron and the black braids on her back, following me with her eyes. I thought I could hear her calling me, but I couldn’t be so, for she must have lost her voice, her clear voice. I moved on and was not able to look back on her again. Up in the poplar trees a bird sang mellifluously. Its whistle came down like rain drops on my heart. In the distance I saw Grandma surrounded by carob trees, squatting by the royal road. For the first time she looked small to me. The car was in the courtyard, a huge black box. Three horses were waiting. They had come for me in that car. The car I had longed for, the car that brought my young and beautiful Mother, laden with the hundreds of delicious things which she always gave us. But now I was suffering; I felt I was walking on the edge of danger and wanted the car to be far away, very far away still. I would have wanted to have one more day to say goodbye to everything that had put a spell on my heart. In the afternoon, as soon as the rain stopped, I had gone out with Mara along the gravel driveways that started at the house and went up and down the meadows and multi-coloured rocks and up into the sky. The air was playful, the usual air dancing in the pichanas and the tender sprigs, silence drawing things to perfection: a handmade triangle in the open ground, the squealing rabbit amidst the branches, the gnome-faced dried tree trunk that seemed to be promising he would come some time to play our games with us. Higher up, the three slanting round stones, the slippery stones we went down along, your mouths filled with laughter and our eyes filled with excitement, and, finally, the house, the big house, “The Spell,” as we used to call it, which belonged to the big boys and we could only enter when they allowed us to do so. It was surrounded by a curtain of trees and climbing plants, the big square stones standing in the middle, impossible to move, which doubled as table and chairs. The taste of the dwellers did the rest: perfect cleanliness, flowers, hanging ornaments with fruit, feathers, and bird eggs, stone pieces, multi-coloured glasses, and snails. What a different world it was, far from adults, in the silent wild! Here our voices seemed not to belong to us and our steps seemed to reverberate in others that never seemed to fade. In every stone, in every hollow, in every old tree, a trace, a clear sign that someone had been here before us, people we could not quite imagine but we could feel. Perfectly round stones with ornaments, tiny arrow tips that we found in the alpatacos and pencal cactuses where the ants had loosened the earth, arrowheads in all shapes and colours. After the excitement of our
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findings, we were puzzled, thinking that we were on the threshold of a mystery we would never cross. In the afternoon, I went with Mara along the trail that would take us up and down and to a place where it was always dawn. Running between the stones and shrubs, we suddenly reached a clearing. A little ravine could be seen below, a chañar shrub standing in the middle of it which I thought was always in bloom and which housed some larks that never stopped singing. Up behind, the stream flowed amidst reeds, cattails, and fabulous dark crags that opened into jaw-dropping caves from time to time. Pumas and bogeymen left their traces in the sandstone, traces that both took our breath away and encouraged us to come closer. Down the slope, the trail fanned out, and in the morning you could see the shacks of Patricia or Doña Genera, warming up in the sun. Beyond, the royal road and yet beyond the murmuring ditch, the hills again, the stony hills full of alpataco, thyme, and mysteries that attracted you by day and frightened you by night.
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Joy and merriment for your heart, life was a wonderful game, a sky populated with friendly birds, a docile donkey carrying you smoothly, simple and kind men and women that called us “dear boys,” and whom we greeted by lifting our caps. “Shall we come back now?” “Not yet, no,” Mara replied. “Let’s go down through the home of Uncle Juan de Dios. There’s something there I want to give you.” When we got there, the goats were scattered along the green banks of the stream and into the valley, showing where the ditch was. The heavy-topped willows, overflowed with light green shades, looked glorious. “It was in here,” Mara said, stepping carefully out the trail in her bare feet. I followed her, curious. “Here! Here it is!” she said in excitement. Here it was the white hachón flower. Without hesitation, her fingers picked it skilfully from amidst the thorns and placed it in my hand. “Do you like it?” “Yes, very much.” The perfume of the rain filled my chest. This day, life streaming in, clear water flowing down the trails, they all came to my soul like a song, a vital force that made me feel for ever like a flower, a river, a patch of the sky. “You say nothing?” It was true. I was speechless. I put my hand in
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my pocket and took my marble out, the tiny little thing that was always with me, that was my confidant, that knew about my dreams, that I slept with, clasping it with my hand under my pillow, telling it my secrets. “Now I almost lost you, but I won’t play with you any more.” I would not have been able to live without it. There it was, in my hand. I hesitated until finally, I took a final look at it. Its delicate blue stripes zigzagged in its watery appearance, blurred after so many blows. “Here you are,” I said, holding out my hand. “Are you giving it to me?” “Yes.” Her cheeks flushed. Then we heard the call and I broke out at once. Once again, everything that had been mine began to recede: the little ovenbird nest on a dry branch, its owners joyfully celebrating the rain, the tree with a low horizontal branch where we used to try a thousand pirouettes, the little clearing where we used to play, everything. From an early spring shoot, an old acquaintance was bidding a colourful and boisterous farewell. “Bye-bye, dear great kiskadee!” I cried, unable to conceal my sorrow. Other voices were still with me, and bits of landscapes, of nights and days went through my heart at an amazing speed as I moved along the thread of water. I could hear soft, lethargic, uncomplaining voices, loving, praying, blessing, humbly concealing grief and sorrow. The face of Don Tristán came to me, with his short white beard on a calm night, the hooves of his mule stomping on the limestone courtyard. And then words said in a low voice, like litanies, lost in the mystery of an endless night. Beyond, in a cock-less night, the summer moon flooding the courtyard with light and painting the shadows of the tall carobs. Then, a sweet, mellifluous guitar, losing the wonderful harmonies that I tried to repeat, to no avail. I was being followed. Guadañín, skirting the evening as he always did and giving me his strange, unintelligible songs; Grandma, with her polished face, her kind eyes, her long patience, her courage, and her bedtime stories. And then, as if reflected in a mirror, lying by the ditch, the garden of Aunt Delfina, a small Garden of Eden, a fragrant honeycomb where all kinds of fruit ripened, a green murmuring country for birds hunted by the crystal-clear sound of a cowbell. I came to the end of the trail, full of fresh water, my bare feet still splashing around in joy. It was the end of a different rain, of an afternoon I would never see again, of rain, peach, and fennel perfumes
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that would stand still in time. And Mara’s voice, ever-present, alive, still reaching me: “Are you coming back?” “Of course. As many times as I can.” As many times, just like now, when the rainbow fills my heart and its colour prism sheds light on all the things inside it, as spellbinding as ever.
POLO GODOY ROJO
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Was born in Santa Rosa del Conlara, San Luis, in 1914 and died in Córdoba in 2003. He was a schoolteacher in both San Luis and Córdoba. A poet and a storyteller, he was the recipient of multiple literary awards. He was a contributor to La Prensa, El Hogar, Mundo Argentino, and Estampa. His works include Poemitas del alba, De tierras puntanas, El malón, El clamor de la tierra, Campo guacho, Nombrar la tierra, Cuentos del Conlara, and Pisco-Yacu (published by the author, 1989). “The spell” (“El encantamiento”) was first included in Nombrar la tierra, published in 1970 with a subsidy from the Department of Culture of the Provincial Government of Córdoba.
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Death lasts but a short while David Aracena
he land was good, but the water, scarce. That year, Topalda marked new watering canals. First he drew them in his memory and then in his hands, on the shovel, as he pried into the hard soil of the peninsula, that portion of land his ancestors had walked, between the shrubland, the whitish olivillos, the high tides.
T
He found water above 100 meters. And good one, at that. You usually find salt water, near the shoreline. First he tested the sample with his eyes, at the rim of the well, dipping a finger, wetting his thirst. It was the scorch of midday. In his memory he piled long lines of sheep, their ears dropping, huddled one against the other, thirsty. It was the fifth well he had built. “Much water, José?” “Yes.” “Nobody down there?” “No” And he carefully lifted a large rock and dropped it. From below came the splash of water. It was well lined, no doubt. They were good at that. He would go down, with the swing, down to the bottom. The
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beams crossed over the mouth of the well. The steel cable was released by a rig. Before descending, Topalda, with the help of a mirror, looked at the glimmering bottom of the well. The shiny, taut wire creaked as it brought Topalda back up. “Still 80 meters left,” said someone. Topalda's voice came muffled from below. Suddenly, the gravel that surrounded the mouth of the well started opening into a small crack that sucked in a fine shower of earth and rocks. The metal sheet at the bottom of the lining opened up and formed a funnel when the structure above it subsided. The walls started crumbling and hit the narrow end of the hollowed metal sheets. Topalda's unconcerned voice rose from the bottom: “Pass me an iron bar to pry this open.”
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Then came the rhythmic bangs of Topalda hammering against the sheet to open his way. The rig hoisted him up, meter after meter, until part of the inner soil caved. The sound of falling earth at noon drowned Topalda's screaming from under the sheets. The next day, the police captain, the judge and a driver went to Puerto Madryn to carry out the routine formalities for Topalda's death. The straight road glistened in the sun. the hills on both sides let out a bluish smoke. The transparent air stuck on the windows. “If only it rained,” said the judge. And a warm halo hit him in the face like a riding whip or an insult. The dark man who was driving the car stopped the car. An ostrich started running in front of the car. Its legs beat on the dun land. At a thirty-degree angle, the flaps swung from left to right, like a pendulum. The driver grabbed a rifle and took aim. Theshot rung in the hot air. The shot hit square in the back of the animal and knocked it upside down. The ostrich continued running , always down the road. The same swing, the same tac tac of the legs. Its entrails made a track on the dusty road. The car followed him from behind. The animal didn't slow down. Suddenly, the ostrich raised its head, looked to the side and changed course. Its entrails tangled on a low shrub and slowed him down a little, but the animal kept running, empty. A few meters further, he finally fell.
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The driver stepped on the gas pedal. The man sitting in the middle asked “could you please slow down a little?” The other smiled and said: “Are you scared of dying? Death is but a little while.”
DAVID ARACENA Born in San Luis, lived his life in Chubut. Is usually mentioned as one of the best Patagonian writers. He was born in San Luis in 1914, lived his whole life in Chubut and died in Comodoro Rivadavia in 1987. Not much is known of his life, but he wrote many short stories published in magazines from Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina. He also received many awards. “Death lasts but a little while” was taken from Puro Cuento magazine, issue 15, March/April 1989.
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N SAN JUA
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Infinite José Eduardo González
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fter dinner, the judge of the literary award went back to her room, locked the door, and sat behind her desks, where all the stories lay that she had to read. By the light of the adjustable floor lamp, she began reading the story at the top of the heap, titled INFINITE, which went:
After dinner, the judge of the literary award went back to her room, locked the door, and sat behind her desks, where all the stories lay that she had to read. By the light of the adjustable floor lamp, she began reading the story at the top of the heap, titled INFINITE. She was immediately caught in the grip of such a disturbing story, which seemed to go beyond the boundaries of fiction. A strange, indescribable feeling seized her as she read on. On the following day, when her family forced the door of her room open, they found no traces of her. On her desk, the adjustable floor lamp shed light on a page where you could read a title, INFINITE, and below: After dinner, the judge of the literary award…
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JOSÉ EDUARDO GONZÁLEZ Was born in San Juan in 1948. He is a chemical engineer, a university teacher, and a writer and playwright. He is the recipient of several literary awards. The story in this collection got the 10th Prize in the 13th Puro Cuento Short Story Awards and was published in the organising magazine, issue No. 33, March-April 1992.
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A ghost’s hand Juan Pablo Echagüe
nly the footsteps of the mules on the rough trail disturbed the calm night in the vast slumbering countryside. The prisoner was in front, his legs tied in the stirrups below the creature’s belly. Guarding him from behind, his carbine on his shoulder and his sabre on his side, was Sergeant Pérez. Both were silent and musing yet they looked sideways at each other as the mules went down the trail that stretched endlessly ahead like a fleeting snake in search of shadow.
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Pérez was thinking. The prisoner, a dangerous criminal who was being moved to another jail, disturbed him. His stubborn silence since they had left the town was really strange. Was he planning to run away? If so, he would be making things easier for him, and he was familiar with this simple job. This was at least his fifth prisoner. When Don Javier, the deputy director of the Department, asked him to take one of these poor devils to the capital, adding “Have him run away,” he knew the rest. Along this very trail the mules trudged… just like now. And then across the river, in the tangled reed bed on the bank, suddenly, giving them no time to commend themselves of the devil, boom! A shot. It broke his heart. Afterwards, he would go back to town, dragging the mule of the deceased. And, standing to attention before Don Javier, his hand on the visor of his kepi and the proud, earnest expression of the man who had done his duty on his face, he reported, “Sir, the prisoner tried to run away and I had to shoot him down.”
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Come on, it had to be done with again with this one. He was really concerned with the grim appearance of his impervious, unsociable face. The frost let its subtle flakes down. In the lights of the flickering stars, you could see the plains covered with a whitish blanket. And the two men, silent and sombre, marched slowly along the trail and across the fields. Channelled between the tall walls of a ravine or divided into deep and mighty branches, the turbulent river flowed down the plains in an impetuous current. If you stuck to the ford, you could wade across the river, although it was dangerous. Even when a great many riders had been swallowed by the waves, they still preferred the risky fifty-metre pass to the long detour that avoiding it meant.
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Step by step, stealthily feeling the slippery rugged river bed, the mules that carried Pérez and his prisoner staggered into the water. They had come together, their legs deep in the water, and slowly, cautiously, leaning against the current, they reached the deepest part. With his legs on the hindquarters of the mule to prevent them from getting wet, the Sergeant looked ahead. The prisoner, who could do nothing to move his tied legs, sat by his side, resisting the torturing bath with freezing water in silence, his limbs numb by now. The mules struggled to avoid the most dangerous spots. Almost brushing past his prisoner, unsafe on the saddle with his legs bent, focused on guiding his mule with a firm hand. As quick as treason, the prisoner turned and pushed him into the river. He cried in anguish; the water splashed; the prisoner, putting pressure on his mule and leaving his victim behind, made it for the other river bank. When he fell from his mule, Pérez, who had managed to keep the reins in his hand, clutched them in despair. His body got trapped in the current, which concentrated all its might on him. But the Sergeant, which had sunk for a while, put his head out and, clinging to the reins, resisted. The waves charged again. Once and again they splashed in this face, making him blind, strangling him, exploding in his ear. You could have said that, enraged at the resistance of the prey and aware of his waning strength, they rushed to finish him off by delivering him liquid blows… Meanwhile, the rider-less mule, torn apart by the battering waves and the tugging Sergeant, had stopped in the middle of the river. With the water up to its neck, it raised its head in fear, struggling not to lose ground. The beast understood the danger: its big watery eyes stared at the contorted body hanging from the reins, which seemed to be ready to carry it along in its sacrifice. For a while it stood like that, without moving. It snorted, as if complaining. Its pricked-up ears revealed its
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contracted muscles, stretching in the ultimate resistance. But is was useless: the waves pounded against it, delivering catapult blows. The tugging at the reins was becoming increasingly violent. It began to flag, losing ground while scratching the rocks on the river bed with its hooves, tossing its head, shaking, snorting… In the end it fell down, vanquished. And then the whirlpool trapped the two bodies –man and mule–, knocked them down, swallowed them up, and swept them along while they bumped against the crags in the bottom, in a roaring escape across the darkened countryside, until they disappeared in the swirling water. The prisoner had reached the far bank of the river and got lost in the reed bed, as dreary as a ghost. After that event, all travellers avoided wading across the river at that point. For it happens that, in the middle of the crossing, a haggard, tense hand emerges from the waves to tug at your reins and drag you into the river stream. 55
JUAN PABLO ECHAGÜE Was born in San Juan in 1877. He was a journalist under the pen name Jean Paul and a high school teacher. He also taught History of Drama at the Buenos Aires Conservatoire. He was President of the National Committee of Community Libraries and a diplomat in Europe. In 1938 he received the National Literary Award. He published many books, some of which are Puntos de vista, Prosa de combate, Una época del teatro argentino, Letras francesas, Paisajes y figuras de San Juan, Por donde corre el Zonda, Hombres y episodios de nuestras guerras, Tres estampas de mi tierra, Tradiciones, leyendas y cuentos argentinos, San Juan: leyenda, intimidad, tragedia, Tierra de huarpes, Hechizo en la montaña, Mi tierra y mi casa. In the year of his death, 1950, his posthumous novel La tierra del hambre was published in en Buenos Aires.
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Mazamorra Antonio Esteban Agüero
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Mazamorra, you know, is the bread of the poor, The milk of the mothers with breasts dry as thorn, I kiss the hands of Inca Viracocha For inventing and teaching the growth of corn. It comes to the table to bring families together Revered by old men, celebrated by kids Where goats overcome the deafening silence And hunger is a cloud standing on wheat wings. Everything’s beautiful about it: the ripe corn, Whose grain is removed on windy nights, The mortar and the girl with plaited hair Adding to the mix flushes and sighs. If you want it perfect get an earthen bowl And with careful moves beat it thick
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Of the mixer made with fig tree branches Which outside houses birds and figs. Add a pinch of jume ashes, The plant condensing all salt pans, And let the flame lend its strength Until you get an amber-orange mix. When you eat it, the People’s with you Across the valleys and the river bends Amidst big rocks and below cactuses Scraping the glass of summer with their thorns. The People’s with you when you eat it They’re there, by your side, Whispering things into your bloodstream To break the wall of selfish pride. For you’re one and all when you eat this food In the feast of a quiet lunch, Sweet mazamorra that’s the bread of the poor And the milk of mothers with breasts dry as thorn. When you eat it you feel the earth’s your mother Rather than the sad old lady waiting by the road For your return from the fields, the mother of your mother, Her face a stone engraved for centuries. Cities ignore its American flavour And many can’t remember its Argentine taste
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But it’ll still be what it was for the Incas: The nursemaid of the peoples in the Andean highland. The night when they shoot songs and poets For having betrayed and corrupted Music and pollen, birds and fire Maybe I’m spared for this verse I’m singing.
ANTONIO ESTEBAN AGÜERO
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The author of this beautiful poem, can be considered to be the poet of San Luis. He was born in Piedra Blanca in 1917 and died in 1970. He was a teacher, a journalist, and a civil servant. As a poet, he received many awards and tributes. “La mazamorra” is part of Un hombre dice su pequeño país (1972). Another of his finest books is Las cantatas del árbol (1953). He recorded some of his poems. Listening to him reading them is an unforgettable experience.
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ZA MENDO
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Friends in the wind Liliana Bodoc
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ometimes, life is like the wind: it messes things up and sweeps them away. Something it whispers, but you cannot understand it. Everything is at risk, even things with roots. Buildings, for example. Or everyday habits.
When life behaves like this, our eyes get dirty that we use to see. I mean our real eyes. Pages written in seemingly familiar handwriting pass by. The sky moves faster than the hours. And the worst thing is, nobody knows if peace and quiet will ever come back. It happened so when my father left. Life became wind unexpectedly. I remember the door closing behind his shadow and his suitcase. I also remember the dry clothes shaking in the sun as my mother closed the windows so that, inside and inside, things were kept in place. “I told Ricardo to come with his son. Is that OK with you?” “Yes,” I lied. Mum stopped polishing her tray and looked at me: “You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.” “I don’t have to be enthusiastic.” “And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked the woman who asked me the highest number of questions in my life.
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I had to look up. I was reading. “It means it’s your birthday, not mine,” I replied. The cat left its basket and got tangled in Mum’s legs. The fact that Mum had a boyfriend was almost unbearable. But the fact that her boyfriend had a son was a real threat. Again, danger in my life. Again, wind in the horizon. “You’ll get along,” Mum said. “Juanjo’s just your age.” The cat, the only creature who understood my sorrow, leapt on my knees. Thank you, cute kitty. Several years had passed since that wind had taken my father away. All damage had been repaired. The gaps in the bookcase where filled with new books. And I had long been unable to find teardrops in vases, or disguised into stalactites in the fridge. Disguised into bits of glass. “I’ve just broken a glass,” Mum used to say to conceal her grief. She was capable of that and of many other astounding charms as well. There were no traces of the wind or the crying left. And just when we were beginning to laugh heartily and take bike rides together, one Ricardo appeared to put everything at risk again. Mum took the coconut cookies out of the oven. Before the wind, she used to bake them every Sunday. Then she seemed to feel resentful towards the recipe, for just the mention of it got her nervous. Now, this Ricardo and his Juanjo had got her bake them again. Something I had failed to do. “I’m going to get dressed,” Mum said, looking at her hands. “I don’t want them to see me looking like a real mess.” “What are you wearing?” I asked in a loving effort. “The blue dress.” Mum left the kitchen; the cat returned to her basket. And I stayed there on my own, imagining what lay in store. Horrible Juanjo would wolf the coconut biscuits down. And bits of meringue would stuck in the corners of his mouth. He would also get the soap dirty when he washed his hands. And he would talk about his dog only to make my cat look inferior. I could see him walking clumsily around, his shoelaces undone, trying to figure out the way to driving me out of my bedroom. Worst of all, I feared that he would be one of those boys that produce noises instead of words: screeching of brakes, blows to your stomach, fire engine sirens, machine guns and explosions.
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“Mum!” I cried behind the bathroom door. “What’s up?” she replied from under the shower. “What’s you call those words that sound like noises?” Under the lukewarm water, Mum tried to understand my question; the cat was sleeping and I was waiting. “Words that sound like noises?” she echoed. “Yes,” I said, adding, “Plop, Bang, Ouch…” ¡Ring! “Please,” Mum said, “they’re at the door.” I had no option but to open the door. “Hi!” the roses before Ricardo said. “Hi!” Ricardo said from behind the roses. I took a merciless look at his son. Just as I had imagined, he was wearing a ridiculous T-shirt and his trousers were too short. 62
Mum joined us soon. She was as pretty as if she had done nothing. It happened quite often. The blue dress matched her thick eyebrows. “You could go to your bedroom and listen to some music,” the birthday woman suggested, in desperate need of air. I had swallowed it up in an attempt to suffocate our guests. I obeyed without complaining. The horrible boy followed me. I sat on one of the beds. He sat on the other. He must have been deciding that we would soon own this bedroom. And that I would sleep in the basket, next to the cat. I did not play music, for there was nothing to celebrate. To me this was a sad day. It was not fair, so I decided he should suffer too. So I found a thorn and placed it before an interrogation mark: “When did your mother die?” Juanjo opened his eyes wide in an attempt to conceal his “Four years,” he replied. embarrassment. But I would not stop there. “How did it happen?” I asked. This time he half-closed his eyes. I was ready to hear anything except for what he actually said in a choked voice.
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“It was… It was like a wind.” I lowered my head and let all the air out. He was talking about the wind. Could it be the same wind that blew in my life? “Is it a wind that comes all of sudden and reaches every corner?” I asked. “Yes, that’s the wind.” “Is it a whispering wind?” “My wind whispered, but I didn’t understand what it was saying.” “I didn’t either.” The two winds blended in my head. Then there was silence. “It was a wind so strong that it shattered the buildings,” he said. “And buildings have roots.” Then there was breathing. “My eyes got dirty,” I said. Then there was breathing twice. “Mine too.” “Did your father close the windows?” I asked. “Yes.” “My mother did, too.” “Why would they do that?” Juanjo looked frightened. “It must have been to keep things in place.” Sometimes, life is like the wind: it messes things up and sweeps them away. Something it whispers, but you cannot understand it. Everything is at risk, even things with roots. Buildings, for example. Or everyday habits. “If you want, we can eat coconut biscuits,” I told him. For Juanjo and I had a wind in common. And maybe it was time to open the windows.
LILIANA BODOC Was born in Santa Fe in 1958, but she has lived in Mendoza since she was five. She is the recipient of a wealth of literary awards, among which we can mention the award to Best Youth Fiction 2000 of Fundación El Libro, The White Ravens special mention 2002 of the International Board on Books for Young
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People (IBBY), and the Merit Diploma 2004 of the Konex Foundation. Her fiction books include La saga de los confines, Sucedi贸 en colores, La mejor luna, Memorias impuras, and El mapa imposible.
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We can fly Antonio Di Benedetto
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s if before a placid, harmless mystery, which it could be, wanting to talk, unlike me, she tells me about her cat. “It is, yes. Of course it is. But… First of all, as it’s an orphan, picked up out of compassion, its pedigree is unknown. It’s a cat and it likes water. In the case of ditches, it prefers, muddy streams to sewers. It leaps into the water, puffing and panting, it steps in a splashing move. It lowers its mouth and pretends to be drinking, but it doesn’t drink. It does it to smack its lips. You’d think it’s not a cat but a dog. Also because of its indifference to other cats. Likewise, it watches dogs from a distance and never gets excited with a street fight. Since it’s awfully out of tune and hoarse, you can’t tell if it’s meowing or barking.” I pretend to be amazed. But I do not open my mouth, for if I asked a question or make a comment, she would ask why and I would have to explain and engage in complicated dialogue. But she is no longer talking to me. She is talking to herself. She goes over what she knows and she wants to know more. “It’s a cat and it likes water. That doesn’t mean it’s a dog. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s a dog or a cat, for neither dogs nor cats can fly, and this animal can fly. I began to fly a few days ago.” I expect her to ask me if I think it could be a spell. But she does not. Apparently, she does not believe in witchcraft. I do not, either, but I thought of that. Or better, I thought she would think about it. But she did not. “Isn’t it amazing?” “Yes, of course. It is amazing. Just amazing.” I could be amazed, of course. But I am not. I could be amazed by the fact that the cat-dog can fly. But I am not just talking. I am thinking. I think she believes
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I should be amazed because what she thought that was a cat could in fact be a dog or what could be a cat or a dog could also be a bird or any other flying creature. I should be amazed because it is not what she thinks it is. But I cannot. Am I amazed by the fact that you are not what your husband thinks you are? Am I amazed by the fact that I am not what my wife thinks I am? Your creature is a cynic, that is all. A well-trained cynic.
1 Source: Graciela de Sola, Diccionario de la Literatura Argentina, Pedro Orgambide and Roberto Yahni (eds.) Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1972. Available online at www.literatura.org.
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Horse in the saltpeter land
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he airplane charges forward through the air. As it flies over the huts huddled by the station, the children scatter and the men brace their legs to hold up the jolt.
It's already on the other side, disappearing behind the woodland. The children and their mothers come out like they do after rain. The voices of the men resurface: “Could it be Zanni..., the flier?” “No way. Zanni is flying around the world.” “So what? Aren't we in the world?” “We are, but nobody knows that, besides ourselves.” Pedro Pascual listens in and takes his lead from the most knowledgeable among them: the plane must be trying to cross the path of the “king's train.” Humbert of Savoy, prince of Piedmont, is not a king, but he will be, they say, when his father, who is a real king, dies on him.
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That very afternoon, they say, the prince from Europe will be there, in that poor lost land of dunes. Pedro Pascual wants to see it to tell his wife. It would be better if she were here. Pedro Pascual likes sharing with her, even if it's just a maté or a laugh. And he doesn't like being alone, like an appendix to the visit, in front of the yard. He's not surly; he's just not settled: people from Mendoza laugh at his Córdoba accent. He hides behind the heap of bales. All that land, his boss' land that he looks after, and he has to carry around pressed grass and wire netting to keep the cows from starving. The hands that have tightened and tied find the herbs they have reaped along the way: a medicinal precaution for home. Pearlfruit, tabaquillo, burrito tea, butcher's broom, atamisqui caper... He moves and arranges the bunches and the blend of fragrances fills his home, contained in an aromatic cup. But the intensity of thyme takes over his nose and Pedro Pascual wants to compare it to something but misses, until he thinks, sure, “... this must be the king, because he brings a new smell to the field.” That was the king's train? A small locomotive and a wagon puffing off steam? I cannot be; yet, people say... Pedro Pascual disregards them. He is drawn to that charge of bluish, lowish clouds that is covering the sky. He feels betrayed, as if he had been distracted with a toy and then someone had sneaked the storm behind his back. However, why so upset and concerned? Isn't it water that the field needs? Yes, but... his field is beyond the Loma de los Sapos. The small locomotive whistles as it leaves the station and to Pedro Pascual it looks as if it has scared the clouds away. They swirl, change course, open up, as if torn, as if jostled by a formidable blow. The sun falls on the gray, brownish sand and Pedro Pascual feels as if it were lighting him up from the inside, because the cloud front seems to have backed up to bring the water precisely where he needs it. Now Pedro Pascual returns to the place where he's standing. Now he understands everything: the locomotive was something like a tracker, or the clown that heads the circus' parade. The “king's train,” the train that must be different from all the other trains that slide down the rails, comes more seriously, there at the back. It is different, Pedro Pascual says to himself. He gives himself reasons: because the festoon has the country's coat of arms, and two flags... and why else? Because it seems uninhabited, with its windows down, and nobody looking out from them, no one coming on or off. The engineer, there, and a guard, here, in the station's slabs of Portland cement a soldier stands to attention making a salute, but to whom? The people, who didn't dare, now sneaks onto the platform and nobody stops them. The children are
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glued to what's going on. The men walk, up and down, stepping hard, and they would make a noise if they could, but their espadrilles don't sound. They talk loudly to each other, to show off their courage, but none of them look at the train, like it wasn't there. Then, when it leaves, then they do, they stare at its back and comment: “Could it be...!� Before the train fades into memory, the deferential little plane flies in from behind, not willing to lose track of it. He will have to regret, Pedro Pascual, for his curiosity and the delay; but little time will be granted him for his regrets.
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An hour's walk from the station, where the goat stations end, he is received and harassed, blinded by the sky's water. It daunts him, flips him, as if it was trying to push him into a hole. It intimidates him, makes him scared, weaved with the lightnings which are as pure as a blade of the most dangerous steel. Pedro Pascual steps off the coachman's seat. He doesn't want to leave the horse out in the rain, but the woodland is pretty low and there's hardly enough room for him squatting. The meek animal obeys an unspoken command and stays on the path, bearing the downpour on its back. Then it happens. The lightning tears like a white blaze and sets fire to the the curvy-branched mesquite that was sheltering the man. Pedro Pascual gets to scream as he burns. He makes a noise, a burning noise. The horse, a few meters away, neighs in panic, blinded by the light, and bolts into the night dragging the burden of the cart and cart and the grass which sinks the wheels on the sand but does not stop him. The sky begins to clear, but not the animal's eyes. He has run all night. He slows his pace, sleepy and weary, and stops. The cart weighs like a drag along the poles; still, he holds on. He tosses his head in sleep. The house wren pecks the surface of the grass and leaps boldly along the back of the horse, all the way to his head. The animal wakes up and shakes and the bird flies around it and puffs the white feathers of its chest, the ornament of its brownish-gray mass. Then it abandons the horse. The animal obeys the commands of hunger, more than fatigue. The wet grass of his burden smarts its nose. He sinks his hoof, tightens the pastern to get traction and goes searching. He sniffs the air, trying to get his bearings, even though where he is now there isn't even the track to help and the silence is so impervious that the animal doesn't even neigh, as if participating in a universal deaf and dumbness. The sun beats on the sand, bounces and gets down his throat. It still isn't hard to drink, because the recent rain has set at the foot of the carobs and the branches shield it from quick evaporation. The smell of the pods stirs his instinct, after the
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experience of another day of desperate hunger, but the carob, with its thorns, stabs his lips. Sunset calms the day and grants the animal some rest. The new light shows a triple set of tracks, which approaches the cart, tangles up and pulls away. It was formed by the legs, which barely lift from the ground, of the pink fairy armadillo, the Juan Calado, he of the incomplete dress of glass cotton. The bales of grass could have been its nighttime delight; stationed there, an infinite warehouse. Too tall, however, for its short legs. Too ugly, besides, like a sign of the helplessness and passivity of the horse with defeated eyes. There it is, weak, consuming, unable to respond to the urges of his stomach. A partridge unravels from the woodland and raises with its tweets the fear that begins to rule, more than the hunger, over the animal yoked to the cart. The jaguarundis are circling nearer. The partridge knows it; the horse doesn't, but something inside is telling him. The two massive cats, one dark brown, the other a shade of cinnamon, knock each other down playfully, roll around as a ball and with velvety hands feign blow upon blow without harming one another, the claws reserved for the unaware or slow prey that will surely come their way. The horse's flanks suddenly drip with sweat and he bolts. The excessive noise, that noise that doesn't belong in the desert, scares the jaguarundis away, but that is out of the beast of burden's reach and he keeps pulling towards the dunes. The sand is soft, and soft are also the curves of its hillocks. Different, in precise straight lines, is the geometry of the cart that struggles to climb them. Still, the animal finds a small truce in that war of sand. Worked up and puffing, its nostrils flaring, he hasn't sniffed around for food in a long while, but his foot, roaming freely, has hit a rough patch of ephedra. His head can finally lower for something other than exhaustion. His lips feel greedily about until they find the rigid stems. It's like swallowing a stick; however, his stomach receives them with welcoming grumbles. The posy of fine desert needle grass leaves is protected by the sturdiness of the ephedra and, to prolong the calm hours that pay back for so much starvation, the edible desert needle grass intertwines further down with the tender stalks of the rose moss in the decumbent branches. The smell of one plant has given away the other, but nothing reveals the presence of water, and the animal returns, with a new day, to the “islands� of woodland that usually circle it. A murky marshland, oen which does not reflect the sunlight, a decadent marshland that will be gone in three sunrises, holds him and holds him like a dear corral. The
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islands and islets are populated by animals in transit; the population diminishes as they hurt each other, but it never goes empty. The horse is upset by the loud, squabbling vicinity, although nobody has yet troubled him. One day he keeps his distance, damning himself to the sun on the sand; the following day, he takes his chances and gets to gnaw at the misery of the broom's bark. The hare breaks from the islands. The guinea pig digs its cave deeper. The fox disregards its hatred of sunlight and shows its pompous tail followed by its skinny body in the open field. There is life only in the branches, that of birds; but even they are silent now: the puma comes, the short-haired bandit, the cunning hunter who looks tiny in the front but grows in its hind quarters to help power its leap. He's not looking for water, he will not eat rabbits. He has sensed the horse without a man from the distance. He prowls against the wind. With the wind, instead, the air brings the smell of a wild mare, free, who has never known a saddle or any kind of harness. It comes to the islands for water. 70
The unexpected presence of the male makes her neigh in anticipation and the horse, fixed to the cart's poles, turns his head as if he could see, causing nothing but a stirring of flies. In the last few meters, the mare prances a trot and finally shows herself, in front of him, stepping back, with her long mane and her healthy body. Carnal lust resuscitates in the horse. If she postponed her thirst, he can overcome physical decline. He approaches, he and his cart approach. The mare does not trust that monstrous motion, does not understand how the cart moves when the male moves. She bucks, pulls away from the rapprochement of heads that he attempts as a weird, atavistic foreplay. She jumps, excited and wary; dazed by the warm energy that runs through her. And stunned, moved, careless, she puts down her wildlife guard and rolls with a neigh of panic at the puma's first leap and its first swipe. As if wounded in his own flesh, as if chased by the predator that is bleeding the female, the horse runs wild in an escape that is a pitiful clatter into the sands. The sand was short for the terror. The hoof steps on the saltpetery marshland. It is an adherence, a drag that seems to suck it to the bottom of the floor. He must come out, but comes out into a white plains, barely spotted by fine sand every now and then. It gathers strength for another push munching on evergreen traveler's joy, the lonely daughter of the saltpeter land, a paper-like leaf wrapped around the two-meter-tall stem as if around a cane. Further
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on, he chases the smells. He sniffs avidly. He senses something in the air and pushes on towards it, with his sickly step, until he loses it and is lost. Now he feels the smell of grass, of grassy, juicy, corral grass. He sniffs it and chews on his bit, as if he was chewing on grass. He chews, smells and turns to reach out for what he imagines he is chewing. He is smelling the grass from his cart, feverishly chasing what he is dragging behind him. He circles a deadly circle. The cart makes a track, gets stuck and the poor horse cannot pull forward. He pulls, pulls forward his chest and slips. The last of his life is spent. He is so dry, so skinny, that then, on the next day or the day after that, with nothing gravitating against it, the weight of the bales pulls the cart backwards, the poles point at the heavens and the vanquished body hangs in the air. In the distance, meanwhile, the black vulture, who never eats alone, comes in its dark robes. ONE SEPTEMBER Clean is the cart, clean are the bones, not so much from the rain as from the corrosive, purifying fumes of the saltpeter. Ruinous are the bones, fallen and scattered, once the cage of the skin has gone. But the collar of the harness got its leather straps caught in the end of the pole and has now become a bag which holds, upside down, the long half-bare skull. Life happens over the ruin, searching for the certainty of survival: a flock of light blue parakeets, the males almost blue, the females of a white that was barely tainted with the shade of the sky. With them, a couple of pigeons migrate from the San Luis drought. In their flight they discover the stimulating flowering of the palo brea, which broadly paints the western hills yellow. Still, the little dove with the fresh brown plumage understands that she won't make it that far with her motherly burden. Below, in the middle of the tense aridity of the saltpeter land, she glimpses the cart that could be a support and shelter. She circles twice in the air to make her descent. She coos, to warn the male pigeon that she's not following him. But the male doesn't stop and the family is undone. It doesn't matter, because she has found a ready-made nest to lay her eggs. Like a cupped hand, ready to receive water or seed, the inverted head of the little blind horse takes the sweet, sweet bird in its hollow. Then, when the eggs open, it will be a box of trills. ANTONIO DI BENEDETTO Was born in Mendoza in 1922. As a journalist, he was the deputy editor of Los Andes and a correspondent of La Prensa. He published his first fiction
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book, Mundo animal, in 1953. This marked the beginning of a brilliant literary career, which reached its peak with Zama, which could be said to be one of the greatest Argentine novels. A few hours after the military coup d’état on March 24, 1976, he was kidnapped by armed forces. “I will never be sure if I was imprisoned because of something I wrote. It would have alleviated my pain if they had ever told me what it was exactly. But I never knew. This uncertainty is the most terrible torture you can be subject to,” he said a few years later. Beaten, humiliated, and broken, he was released on September 4, 1977 and went into exile in the United States, France, and Spain. He returned to Argentina in 1985. He died of a brain haemorrhage in Buenos Aires on October 10, 1986.
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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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