stories to the south of the world 3

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The texts included in this book have been selected by the corresponding Region coordinator Graciela Bialet.Contact: [email protected]

[email protected]

Spanish to English translation by Julieta Barba and Silvia Jawerbaum: Translators. Theyhave translated several books of essays, as well as literary texts for anthologies andschoolbooks. 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 traslos ojos (2000), awarded by a jury made up of Vlady Kociancich, Augusto Roa Bastos andAndrés 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 nochepublished his third novel, Los destierrados. His short stories have been included in anthologiessuch 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.

Minister for Education

Prof. Alberto Sileoni

Consultants´ Chief of Staff

Mr. Jaime Perczyk

Secretary of State for Education

Prof. María Inés Abrile de Vollmer

Secretary for the Federal Council

for Education

Prof. Domingo De Cara

Director for the National

Reading Program

Margarita Eggers Lan

Head of State

Dr. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Selection, editing and design

National Reading Program

Selection

Graciela Bialet, Ángela Pradelli,

Silvia Contín and Margarita Eggers Lan

Graphic Design

Juan Salvador de Tullio

Mariana Monteserin

Elizabeth Sánchez

Natalia Volpe

Ramiro Reyes

Paula Salvatierra

Foreign Office, Trade and Cult

Foreign Secretary

Héctor Marcos Timerman

Chief of Staff

Ambassador Antonio Gustavo Trombetta

Frankfurt 2010 Organizing Commitee

President

Ambassador Magdalena Faillace


3

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 diversecultural identities -as diverse as each region and province containingthem- this small selection aims to offer a sample of the valuableproductions comprising Argentina’s Cardinal Narrative.

The National Reading Program reaches out beyond its natural limits inorder to show the world the richness of our words, and to make thosehaving the chance to go through these pages, feel passionate for a goodreading, which keeps growing day after day, in every corner of the nation.

We hope for these stories, selected for each one of the Program’scoordinators, to meet new eyes and to continue astonishing the world.

National Reading ProgramMinistry of Education of Argentina


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CONTENTS

The hunter César Altamirano

Boys Daniel Salzano

EvitaDaniel Salzano

The spellCristina Bajo

Reptilian jungleFRAGMENT

Joaquín V. González

Aunt LilaDaniel Moyano

Negro ShonoJorge Ponce

The call of themountainJorge Ponce

CÓRDOBA LA RIOJA

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Friends in the windLiliana Bodoc

We can fly Antonio Di Benedetto

Horse in thesaltpeter land Antonio Di Benedetto

The spider Berta Elena Vidal de Battini

The spellPolo Godoy Rojo

Death lastsbut a short whileDavid Aracena

InfiniteJosé Eduardo González

A ghost’s handJuan Pablo Echagüe

MazamorraAntonio Esteban Agüero

SAN LUIS SAN JUAN MENDOZA

Pág. 39 Pág. 51Pág. 60

Pág. 65

Pág. 53

Pág. 56

Pág. 42

Pág. 66

Pág. 47


CÓRDOBA


808 ollowing the traces left by the doll on the earth in thecourtyard, you could get to the boy.

In the sierras, they no longer remembered when thepersistent northerly wind had started to blow. Below, the river

was on the verge of disappearing –a thread threatened by engulfingsand, 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 windfrom 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 shehad been emptied. She got the mate while the man wiped the sweatoff his forehead with his arm.

The blows went on. The tala resisted, small chips of wood flyingin all directions. A crosswise blow and then one with an oppositeslant were proof of the man’s skil l . He had began early in themorning, hoping for fresh air, but it was already hot at dawn –arelentless weather.

As if after a mysterious sign, all cicadas cried at once. It was adeafening sound.

The hunterCésar Altamirano

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909

A lizard turned green moved across the courtyard towards the lowstone wall.

The woman noticed the boy and shouted at him in a low-pitchedvoice, “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 heldhis 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’llbe a hunter.”

The brownish cacholote marched past.

In the shadow, the boy stared at the apparition in ecstasy. It was asnaking thin yellow, orange and black thread. A shaft of light across thereed eave brought the colours out.

The black acacia stick had two thorns that turned it into a fork. Theboy rolled the snake up and put it into Superman. The doll thenbecame a lethal trap. The boy covered the hole in the doll with hishand. The coral snake stirred inside. It rose suddenly up twice, dartingat the hand-lid, but could not bite its smooth palm. The boy liked thetickling, thinking his prey was playing with him. Then the snake calmeddown, curling up at the bottom of its jail.

As he felt nothing moved, the hunter moved his hand and lookedinside the doll.

He watched attentively.

Filtered through the plastic doll, the light made the colours of thesnake duller. The thread moved, and the boy could see its little blackvelvety 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 andplaced it on the earth. When set free, the snake slithered in search offreedom, but it did not go far away. The thorn fork held it by the middleof 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 lefthis Superman on the ground, placing a flat stone on its hole. There theywere, the container and its contents, while the boy rushed to the table.

The man and woman were waiting under the reed eave. The boy saton the peeled light-blue stool and gulped down his lamb stew, eager to


return to the shady adobe and his treasure.

A huge black and hairy spider crawled ceremoniously along abeam. The man saw it and said, “It’s going to rain, no doubt. Thetarantula’s out.” He finished off his wine.

Before going back to woodcutting, he picked an ember and lit achala fag.

The woman was filling the carob pan with water to do the washingwhen 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 aferocious 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 backbeing really fierce. We should chain it.”

The restless animal resisted, but his neck went through the collar. Asif hiding something, the hunter went through the fibre curtain and lay onhis cot, the doll-cage clasped against his chest with his hand on top.

“I told you to go to sleep,” his mother said, lying with her backto him.

The boy turned, removing the hand on the container to find acomfortable position. The coral snake stuck its head out, guided by itsnervous, rhythmical tongue. With half its body out, it explored thewoman’s back but found no hole in her cotton dress. It went back intothe doll and the hand of the boy, who was sleeping carefree, blockedthe 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 remindedthe woman that she should wake the hunter up.

A sleepy boy appeared between the fibre curtain and the doorframe, 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’sbroken 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 plasticcage belched the fleeing snake out.

Instinctively quick-minded, the man crushed the coral thread as hebitterly brandished his machete, ready to sever the arm as the onlypossible remedy.

Turning the reptile’s body with his frayed espadrille, he saw thewhitish 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 andHistory for several years, he became a writer, although his storytelling activityhad began much earlier. He is still in the healthy habit of telling stories toyoung and adult audiences in schools and clubs. He has published two booksof shorts stories, Los anillos del diablo and Zona roja y otros cuentos (withJuan Coletti and Carlos Gili). The story in this collection first appeared in DesdeCórdoba narran (Bohemia y Figura, Córdoba, 1978). 11


12 ou can see them in the city in short sleeves, their hair thickand a look only responsive to the stimulus of fear. Theywalk through the door of a coffee bar like shadows ofthemselves, doing as much as tapping at your shoulder orplacing an open hand before your face. The under-

childhood in Córdoba has changed its system. They do not sell aspirinsor hand out religious cards any more. They under-childhood does notspeak any more. They do not complain. They do not say thank you.Their only visible concern is that a waiter may touch them. There aretimes when waiters call the police. And there are times when waiterskick them out.

You can also see them in the corners, hanging around. Some stillcarry their pacifiers. Cheap, innocent, easily manipulated labour. Theless imaginative fight for a place by cab doors. The luckiest ones arerecruited by the mafias controlling street corner windscreen cleaning,water and soap. Córdoba is not very respectful of its children.

You can see them at midnight, on Chacabuco street, looking for aplace to watch a bar TV. Any place will do. Lying in the middle of thepavement, climbing trees, sitting on the roof of pickup trucks. Theybehave neither well nor badly. They are not noisy. They do not say aword. They watch Tom and Jerry and never laugh. They see Fito Páezand 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

Y

BoysDaniel Salzano


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were a fistful of wind. It is all part of the same hardening, the samedehumanised routine.

And a day like any other they wake up being men.

And then you will never see them again.

Evitahe rumour spread in Alta Córdoba that Perón and Eva werecoming from Buenos Aires by train to take a look at theneighbourhood.

The train that carried Perón and Eva, retired FFCC Belgranoengine drivers said, included a gym where the General played pelota inthe morning, a built-in gold basin in a little Venetian toilet, and a coachat the back, whose doors were opened by invisible hands that let outPulpo balls, Volcán stoves, trays with meringues, and Sportlandiafootball boots.

All you remember from the day when the train that carried Perónand Eva came to Alta Córdoba is that your image of a boy inastonishment was raised and shaken by a passionate crowd withfluttering flags in one hand and blows delivered on the express trainof the nation on the other.

You could not see Perón (he must have been in the gym), butsuddenly you were faced with a close-up of Eva, who was leaning outof the meringue coach.

Evita was an fair-skinned, thin woman, smil ing just l ike inschoolbooks and wear ing a br ight red dress shaped l ike anequilateral 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 andEvita looked like Rita Hayworth, and that they had not given out themeringues because the policeman who tried them died… poisoned.

The problem for filmmaker Alan Parker when shooting Evitawould 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 resembleRita Hayworth.

DANIEL SALZANO

Was born in Córdoba. He is a writer and a journalist. He lived in Europeduring the military dictatorship. He is a weekly contributor of the localnewspaper La Voz del Interior, where he writes about people and events in hisneighbourhood, town, country, and the world giving original, poetic descriptionsof them. Many of his poems were turned into songs and sung by Jairo. Hisworks include El libro de Amador, El alma que canta, El espadachín mayor dela ciudad, and Los días contados (Op Oloop Ediciones, Córdoba, 1996). Thestories in this collection first appeared in Los días contados.


15he girls ran across the open ground with the cages hangingfrom their fingers like bunches. Sundown scared them, butthey ran, their arms held high, the birds fluttering with suchpanic 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, orthey'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 seesthe fire.”

T

The spellCristina Bajo


“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 chirpedand 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 reallybad 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.”

They walked around some fallen fences and reached a tree thatSara found threatening. She regretted she had given in to the seductionof her cousin, of the stories they listened in on from behind the door ofMr. Manuel's library, when they were helping Mrs. Rita. She felt she hadlet herself get caught in her cousin's games and the word “sin” grewuntil 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 awaywithout 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, thekerosene-lit kitchen, the big iron stove that fired up warmth from theembers in its belly, the cluster of cousins in the half-light, crowdedaround the table to eat the thick soup that would serve as dinner,seemed to her like the very essence of happiness. That immigrant'sroom, dark but warm and full of her aunt's loving presence, seemed likeheaven.

“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 “Icannot 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, buthesitated when she felt the heartbeat trapped in her hand, between thesilky feathers. She couldn't skewer it in the thorns, like the spell says,because her cousin knocked her on her back, shouting. The birdescaped from her fist, flapped its wings and shot away like an arrowtowards the river. Then, while she tried to get back on her feet, Sarastarted opening the cages, shaking them so the birds got away. Sheswatted at her, furious, but they had all disappeared among the treesby the river. The need to fulfill the ritual drove her mad. She grabbed thethe feathers which were floating in the air, which were left inside thecage, in her clothes, as she mumbled “My soul, I give you my soul withthese 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 bloodstained her palm. Hers, the canary's? She didn't know, but it looked likea sign.

Sara wept harder and harder.

“Stop, it's over.”

Goldfinches, cardinals, canaries, calandra larks, they had all gotaway; only the empty cages bounced against the yellow heart of thefire.

“It's done,” she panted, “it's done.”

Sara had turned her back on her, shrunk in fear; she was afraid ofher 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 someoneas she asked for what she had gone there to request, although herhope faded away along with the fire. With the last embers, she turnedaround, took her by the hand and they ran away across the plankbridge, feeling as if the air was pulling them back and the wind waswhispering in their ears names that must not be pronounced. From theshadows, sharp fingers tried to catch them. When they got to thehouse, the street was barely lit by the light that leaked out of a windowand an open hallway. What they were leaving behind was a big blackvoid that stopped, suspended, in the corner. Choking, with their handclutching their sides which had stitches that wouldn't let them standstraight, they looked at each other, Sara feeling relieved, Lydia,disappointed. “It's all lost now,” she thought, “and perhaps Mom willsuspect that I took the birds and punish me with her belt.”

Later, at the table, her mother, with exhaustion showing in her faceand her posture, told them she had received a letter from her father,who had returned to Spain to bring her mother and her sisters toArgentina.

“Where is Spain?”

“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 sailon the ocean for a long time to get to Spain.”

after saying that, the woman made a t ire remark about thedisappearance of the bird cages, questioning them with her eyes. Allseven children shook their heads in denial. For a few minutes, all thatwas heard was the noise of the spoons lifting the crusts of stale breadthat the Galician baker sent them for free and which the womanroasted in the fire.

Sara's hands trembled, rattling the crockery, and Lydia touched herunder the table; facing the punishment, especially her mother'sdepression, wouldn't have mattered if at least she had got something inreturn. But everything seemed so useless. It's not like she wasexpecting, wow!, a red balloon and Him in the middle saying...

“Wash your hands, your face and your mouth. Go urinate and comeback 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 thetoilet; I'm sure they've been peeping at don Manuel's books and nowthey're scared.”

Elena stood up all smug. She was pretty, with a healthy, ordinaryface. She ate almost every day with don Manuel and his wife, twopeople from Catalonia who made a good living importing olives and oil.The lady was very devout; he was a big reader, a dedicated student ofthings the girls found weird. Elena insisted that one day she wouldmarry Rafael, their pampered child, the child they had late in life whowould one day inherit the house with the molded Portland cementfacade and balconies with iron grilles, with the conservatory brimmingwith 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 toeach other. The black void they had left at the corner sailed towardsthem, brimming with noises and things moving and flapping andwhispering over their heads.

At the toilet, Elena set a candle on a stool, resuscitating quiveringshadows 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: thefear, the sin, the terrible promise. Outside, they could hear the voices ofthe other girls encouraging each other. While she straightened herclothes, she kept thinking whether her soul could be worth as much asthe lives of the birds she was supposed to offer.

She was picking up the candle to leave when she saw through thesmall triangular window the goat's face, the reddish beard, the hair litup like fluff on fire and the eyes like yellow embers. But, above all, sherecognized the bumps on the forehead and the evil smile. She shoutedand the candle went out, and even though it was dark she could stillsee 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 hadhappened 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 wouldall come to pass.

Her sister went to doña Rita's to read to her, complaining becauseshe would be late: you could already hear the 9 o'clock tramwaycoming up the hill in San Martín. Seconds later they heard the squeal ofmetal, a high-pitched cry and something falling softly, like a bale. Hermother tensed up and took her hands to the cross hanging from herneck. Somebody told them “It's Elena: the tramway ran her over. Sheneeds to be taken to hospital, she was hit badly.”

Lydia, in a kind of ecstasy, knew that now the promises would reallycome true. She would get Elena's things: her white socks, her patentleather shoes, her frilled dress, the small piece of rouge she had stolenfrom the lady at the shop, the bar of perfume, Rafael's communion'sholy card, the mantilla in yellowed lace that was slightly frayed in acorner. She would eventually find a way to console her mother, shewould help out with the younger brothers, she would behave better, shewould...

She heard Sara weep inconsolably and she regretted having cometo her for help. She understood that, sooner or later, she would have todo something to stop her from telling on what they had done. Itwouldn't be right to make her mother sad now that they were going todo 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; Entiempos de Laura Osorio; El jardín de los venenos; Tú, que te escondes; Latrama del pasado; Guardián del último fuego (legends for children); Elogio dela Cocina.

Her books have been published in Spain and translated in Greece, Portugaland Romania. She currently gives History and Literature courses; and she iswriting two novels.


LA RIOJA


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Reptilian JungleFRAGMENTJoaquín V. González

hepherds suffer the most when the summer sun scorch theboulders, parch the pasture, convert sand into smolderingembers, and dry up the springs and fountains. And Pedro,he of the rustic melodies, rising at dawn, and returning atdusk, spent countless wilting hours during the blazing

afternoon naps, when all life in the valleys, forests, and hills seemed toconsume itself , and his bedraggled f lock came l imping backexhausted, huddling under the trees and the rocky overhangs of thecliffs, while his inseparable friend droopily circled him, panting andsuffocating, 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 heonce owned with happy echoes and harmonious resonances. And hisjuvenile imagination, excited by the perennial caress of nature, reeled andswooned and, as during a feverish delirium, he dreamt about the mostextraordinary things, and saw in the trees, and among the distantpinnacles, and in the mirages of the wavering air, a welter of weird andrarefied images, frantic, superhuman, diabolical, ominous.

Only at these moments was he fr ightened, and wished hiscompanion (the dog) had words. But he felt content with watching hiseyes, reading in them the heartfelt expression of fraternal affection and,turning to scan the horizon, searched the snarled screens of the forestsfor scenes of a known reality. (...)

S


One of those most stringent of days, he drove his flock up the narrowthroat of a mountain pass, so as not to miss out on the shade and therefreshing breezes; and before noon the bordering ridges were dotted withsheep, like the folds of Lebanon, in the Canticles. At the bottom of thegorge, a torrent burbled among enormous stones; gigantic trees followedthe fissure, gradually thinning out as they climbed the mountainside untilthe leaves of the last of them brushed the summit; there, aloof andimmune, some condors wheeled impassive, and the January sun beganto foment a swelter among the currents of the air.

Soon enough, afternoon arrived, and with it the hour of the oppressiveand deadly siesta. Poor Pedro took refuge under the branches of anancient tala . His lambs, sheltered in secure asylum, needed no care:keeping vigil over them were their mothers and the loyal dog, which neverslept on his watch. But if there had not been so much fire in the air, soindefinable a terror in the lonely woods, so mysterious hints in the cavesand in the deserted nests and forsaken dens, the shepherd would havedozed on the soft sands. Siestas are similar to midnight, and during themthere appear rapacious goblins, menacing insects, fantastic and terrifyingvisions of suffocation and silence- Then again, the brain of an adolescentis rich in strange ramifications, aberrant memories, and the stinging fearsengendered by tales heard on bonfire nights.

He was fearful of everything around him; in spite of the intense heat, afreezing twinge of apprehension contracted his tanned and weather-beatenskin; he glanced behind him left and right, determined to defend himselfagainst the attacks of beasts, demons, or witches, and climbed the trunk ofa sturdy tree where, at a considerable height above the ground, he seatedhimself on a massive bough, screened off by spiky foliage.

His dog, brother in upbringing, and lifelong friend, was keeping his postand, a true sentinel, it was sacred, inviolable. Just at this moment the boymight have begun to believe that the solitude of the mountains wassolitude indeed, if he had not remembered his flute all of a sudden, whoselittle mouthpiece made of tree resin was peeping from one of his pockets.Oh, no! The loneliness of the mountains was not loneliness after all, andthe subtly fleeting phantoms of the January afternoon dissipated like puffsof 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 asmile which the shepherd, though terrified, could not confine to his face. (…)

Half asleep by the somnolence of the atmosphere, by the ecstaticrapture of his music, and by a vague fear beyond all control, Pedro kepthis 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 ifsurprised by their delectable dream, three monstrous serpents withflecked, varicolored skin and fascinating stares writhed in violent,entranced contortions above his head, encircling him with their shinyelastic loops, and slithering in spirals along the rough and enormoustree trunk that served him as refuge.

It was at the shock of this unexpected and horrendous vision that thepoor shepherd boy let loose a strident scream that sent a shudder athousand times, then a thousand times again, through the slumberinghills and ridges, the relentless mountain spires, the dense forest canopy;he plunged into alarm the nests, the grottoes, the flock, and the bands ofwandering guanacos which responded with loud, startled whinnying. Inthe branches of the tree, not finding an near exit, twisted and twined in animpossibly 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 theirrancorous eyes, gnashing fangs of ivory fineness, agitatedly coilingthemselves into indissoluble clusters, and dropping in knotted clumpsonto the ground. On all sides the sand was alive; moving, crawling, as ifeach of its innumerable grains were covered in undulating, oscillating,reptilian life, in spontaneous and marvelous generation. The leaves, itsstems, its red roots with their parasitic plants, its cracks and crevices, itsgashed and hidden places, acquired in Pedro's horrified eyes the sinuouscurves and restless wriggling of the viper, and were colored with itsinimitable tints, blazing around him like light and fire.

The hideousness of the situation reached its climax when he sawthat they threatened to imprison him in their scaly hoops and frigidfolds, to clamp onto his flesh their ivory hooks and the forked filamentsof their scarlet tongues which flicked furiously from their gaping gullets;wreathing, winding, intertwining, biting viciously bit one another'stwitching resonating rattle-tipped tails and, irritated by their own poison,sank their dripping teeth into the peeling bark of the tree, or lashed outat their own flesh in delirious and suicidal frenzy.

To the horrific scream of fright, the loyal dog responded with adolorous yowl which sowed panic in the resting flock, and by the timethe poor animal had reached his unfortunate friend, the latter hadarrived at the supreme resolution of leaping to the ground to try tomake a desperate run to save himself from the ophidians, which hecould hear everywhere around him, hissing, sibilating, crepitating in hisears, rubbing, grazing, scraping his cheeks with their cold, scaly skin,and boring into his neck with the points of their lethal lancets. Every fewyards, he swiveled his bewildered, horror-stricken face, mesmerized by

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the same nightmarish spectacle, and saw that the reptiles crept fasterand faster in a hungry, hissing horde, struggling to reach the fugitiveprize, in order to wallow in his youthful blood.

Aghast, the poor shepherd frantically tore off his hat, his poncho , andthe rest of his clothes, so as to fling them to the voracity and avidity of thediabolical swarm of persecutors. These, in a gasping, writhing heap,squirmed in blind fury over the heated earth, to molest him, to tormenthim, to pierce him with holes like a sieve. As they fastened onto his cast-off garments, puncturing them again and again with their needle-keenteeth until all that was left was a handful of pulverized shreds, the lucklessboy managed to hobble quite a distance in his demented flight before helost all awareness of the whereabouts of his pursuers, and of the caninecomrade who trailed him whining, and of the cloud of dust raised by hispanicked flock retreating towards the far-off corrals (...)

People of the mountainous village refer that, on that same day, shortafter noon, they made out towards the spot where the shepherd had ledhis flock in the morning a huge dust whirl which run in the direction of thehouse through the dusty road of the valley, and soon afterwards theydistinguished, partly with amazement and partly with the deepest sorrow,Pedro the shepherd, coming in desperate and blind escape, giving criesof terror, his face altered, his pupils dilated and his naked flesh pouringblood, closely followed by his dog which cried without end, and a little farbeyond by all the flock which was overcome with the strangest terror. (…)

Oh! Oh! The snakes, the snakes! And between the whining of the dogand a deep drowsiness, he fell asleep, stirred by horrible nightmares. (…)

His pupils remained closed forever with a vague expression ofhorror, and when charity’s favors or the brief flashes of lightning of hismemory made him smile, his smiles were so quick that the subsequentcontraction 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 withwhich 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 inBuenos Aires in 1923. He studied Law at the University of Córdoba and thenwas a renowned public figure: Deputy, Senator, Governor of La Rioja, Ministerfor Home Affairs and Minister for Justice. As a writer, his most famous book isMis 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 LilaDaniel Moyano

oor Aunt Lila with her white dress, so tall, so single. A dressmade by the best seamstresses in the sierras, who pleatedit and shaped it like an undulating bell. Aunt Lila wore itevery 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 pleatsmade it possible for Aunt Lila to lift it or flutter it without her knees beingseen. Its folds were endless. They never disappeared, not even whenshe 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 toturn it into a rosette. When she danced the dress swirled around her,just like the whirlpool that swallowed Uncle Jacinto up. And it had somany laces and embroideries, multi-coloured threads that created twobig butterflies in the chest, replicated in the sleeves, whose cuffs werefastened 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, trapno goldfinches. Be good to Uncle Emilio, who’s so kind and will giveyou goat’s milk with chicharrón and honey from his honeycombs.Beware, dear little boys, be sensible and well-mannered with UncleEmilio, who’s so kind so handsome.

No bird hunting, no needles in birds’ eyes, think God may punishyou 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 itseyes. So the best thing you can do is behave yourselves and collectwatercress 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 makesUncle 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, mycages with flycatchers, my daisy and bridal wreath spirea beds. No,thanks, Uncle Emilio, we want to go to the pitch. OK, boys, God blessyou, but please don’t mix with the black boys, don’t fight, and don’t saybad words. No, Uncle Emilio, we’d never do that, for God is everywhereand he can see everything we do and he will judge both the living andthe 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, theycan have no ball. But they point to the ground and we see lots of toadsthat 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 andweaves on its own. Nice bouncing ball for knock-up shots. The badthing is when you have to change toads. You are sometimes stopped inthe 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 youdoing 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 notthe ball, they jump across the pitch as if they were playing too; onegoes up while another goes down, bouncing their way from the streamto Uncle Emilio’s house, to his flower beds. Throbbing toads all around.Titilo delivers an overhead pass. One of the black boys rushes to headthe ball, but he remembers what the ball is made of just in time, so hestops the ball with his chest before it drops to the floor. What a playerhe is. He holds the ball with his knee, moves it with his left leg andshoots with his right foot. It is a furious middle-height shot. I am wellprepared and can grab the ball effortlessly. But I throw it away almostimmediately, just over my goal, it is so cold. Corner, some of the boyscry. 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, itsbelly bleaching when it flies across the goal area, danger, I am out ofstep but Carozo solves the situation by knocking the ball about. Hisfabulous 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’sdead, poor man.

We do not want to pray, nor do we want to hear the story of UncleJacinto again. We have already forgotten about him. We know he usedto wear a moustache and a broad-brimmed hat because this is how helooks 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 whitefingers, 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. Wealways bathe in whirlpools, it is nicer than in calm water. You just let go,spinning down a few metres, and at the bottom whirlpools arepowerless points tending to zero. All you have to do is step on thebottom and with a spurt go up sideways, so that you are out of the fieldof centrifugal force.

Then you swim up to the surface, take a deep breath, and go backin. Like a chute, but more fun. There are no whirlpools in the bottom ofthe river, everybody knows that. Everybody except Uncle Jacinto, ofcourse. And those who were watching him drown told him so; spring upwhen 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 hedid not heed the warning signs.

Instead of doing what he was told, he gestured too, but of coursenobody understood what he meant. The onlookers said three, showedthree fingers, and he also showed three fingers whenever he emerged:three fingers, seven fingers, nine fingers. Three times, they said, but heignored them and made his will: three cows, seven sheep, ninecanaries, I bequeath them to my dear brother Emilio. His moustacheand his hat dripping wet. The whirlpool spares your life three times. Butthen, 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 legsbecause I am thinking of Uncle Jacinto. Thank God it is not valid, forhalf the ball was in but the other half went over the woodwork. This isthe new ball, says one of the black boys and he breaks away andheads 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.


Titilo is intent on drawing the match. As he knows I am not verygood at catching overhead shots, he sends the ball over the crossbar. Ijump as high as I can, noticing the toad is flying in the direction ofUncle Emilio’s house. I scrape the ball with my nails but it is notenough: it flies off, spinning belly up to crash against the cage of theyflycatcher. Soon enough I can hear Aunt Lila, so good, so proud, hervoice saying for God’s sake, my boys, leave that little toad alone andcome here to pray. She talks about this toad and we have already usedsome twenty of them.

Stop, penalty, many of the boys cried. I do remember the equalisingpenalty. 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 theend it was Titilo. It was always him. They put the ball in place. Titilostared at it, took a run-up, and sent a middle-height shot that I wasunfortunately unable to catch. Meanwhile, we could hear Aunt Lila cryas if she were leaving this world, swirling down as her white dresschanged colour, as she cried softly, as if her cries were in fact signs,almost languorous, as if instead of shouting she were saying what haveyou done, my dear boys, don’t forget God and Uncle Jacinto arewatching.

Goal, goal, goal, Titilo and his black boys cried, hugging Beto. Iwrithe in anger on the ground, biting the grass. Letting the ball in andgetting Aunt Lila’s dress dirty on top. Now she will think we do not loveher. Her white dress, full of laces and embroideries, with the toad burstbetween 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. Youcannot focus on the candle-lit portrait of Uncle Jacinto. We pray and welook sideways at Aunt Lila, who is crying in her underskirt while washingher dress in a bowl. We will never know if she is crying for her dress orfor Uncle Jacinto. Titilo prays staring at the portrait, his eyes glitteringwith joy. I pray and try to conceal my anger. Just a little more and Icould have caught it, at least a leg, for a corner kick. If I had stretcheda little more, we would have won 1-0.

Uncle Emilio is praying with us as if he were counting melons orkids. Aunt Lila, whom we would forget the following summer, just likeUncle Jacinto as we never went back to the sierras. Aunt Lila, whobelieved in so many good things. Aunt Lila, who is said to have beenunable to remove the blood stains we made on her white dress. AuntLila, 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, henever returned to the country after going into exile during the militarydictatorship. He died in Madrid in 1993. Maybe because he was in jail forseveral years, his novels and short stories reflect a lack of hope sometimesconcealed behind everyday events and verge on magic realism. His worksinclude Artistas de variedades, El rescate, La Lombriz, Una luz muy lejana, Elfuego interrumpido, El oscuro, El trino del diablo, and El vuelo del tigre. Thestory in this collection is an excerpt of his short story “Tía Lila” in La otrarealidad. Cuentistas de todos los rincones del país (Ediciones Desde la Gente,Buenos Aires, 1994).

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Negro ShonoJorge Ponce

n the mist of May, or under the straight weight of summer siestas,you could see “Shono” Baginay striding across the wide, sandystreet. His black, broad-brimmed hat covered his face from the sunand sunk in the dark, bringing his eyes out and his teeth like athree-fire night. Another night, this one starry, was his pig leather

belt, studded with coins and polished silver rosettes.

A strange man, Negro Shono was. His frizzy beard, covering hisstrong jaw, which was capable of the most tender of smiles to entranceeven a mother-in-law and the loudest guffaw to shake siestas at thebar “La Puertita,” and his robust body, sinewy like an old carob tree butamazingly agile, made all calculations on Negro Celedonio’s age andmischievous ember-like eyes, no matter how rough they might be,futile. Some said, “Quite old, the man is.” Others, maybe led by hisappearance, thought differently. The most daring talked about somepact… There were rumours of night walks along unknown ravineswhen the moon is so full that it becomes pregnant with mystery andgives 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 eventhe oldest women knew how or when or why one day he settledsomewhere between Cochangasta and La Quebrada.

He had got himself a shack that could barely stand, far away, at thefoot of the mountain, at the top of a round hill lost amidst thistles andjarilla bushes. At some point –nobody knows when–, he had fenced

I


the courtyard in with prickly pears, barbary figs and column cactuses,so that not even weed grew in the dusty square. And nothing grew, theysaid, because of the dances held there, dances in which wine pouredout of jars and music galloped in the air turning the hours into weeks,heating the girls up, keeping the old women alert, on tenterhooks. Hehad 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 soleowner and proprietor. In the distance, the flat landscape barely stoodout and the shack was a sparse mound of tickseeds. With time, peoplehad stopped coming there –especially by night or during the summersiestas, for they said it was the time of voices, whistles, noises, andthere were even those who claimed they had seen something frightful,some “horror.” It were precisely those “events” that had earned Shonorespect, or at least a mix of fear and suspicion, so much so that somedid their best to avoid him and, when they had no choice and could notchange routes, they greeted him ceremoniously, because even thoughNegro was not a braggart or a quarrelsome man, fear was alwayshanging in his shadow like the dog of a cart driver and children felt thiswhen drunk and staggering, walked down the street brandishing thesun in his bottle, and he laughed and cried in a weird mix of pleasureand agony. Then the kids stopped their games and left their toys andsought the protection of their mothers’ skirts, and their mothersenclosed 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, withthe ditch and the bottle between his legs, his shoulders bent, his eyeslooking inward, hollow, empty, like the murmur that came out of hismouth.

It was then that people, and not just his fellow drinkers andmerrymakers, came close to Shono, who looked like a living dead manmouthing an unintelligible litany. It was then that whispering wentbeyond thatches and fences in the active tongues of old women. “Idon’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 inan invisible trial before the plaintiff. He said these things once andagain, mixing his argument with gulps of wine, until suddenly, as ifdriven my some force, he rushed up the street in search of the bar, or aparty where he forced everyone to drink wine or gin until alcoholknocked his tree-like strength down. As a matter of fact, not everythingwas fear and suspicion around Negro Shono, a regular in all kinds ofparties, carousals, and fêtes held in Cochangasta or La Quebrada. Assoon as a courtyard was swept and aired, and bathed by the white lightof a lantern, Baginay appeared ready for dance. And it was nice to seehim display his manly grace in zambas, gatos, chamamés, and

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valsecitos, making witty flattering comments and spreading hisinfectious laughter to the dismay of boyfriends and mothers-in-law.

It was March, and Aurelio Quinteros wanted to celebrate hisanniversary in style. It was Friday, and nights were still hot, so hedecided that the dance and meal –“asau,” he said– would take place inthe evening. “Girls, get the courtyard ready and then, to the kitchen!Boys, slaughter the animals and then go get the beverages!,” heordered. Soon everything was ready for a party until dawn. The firstguests arrived early, giving a hand with tables, benches, and otherpreparations. Certainly, Baginay was among them.

The youngest daughter of the Quinteros family was of courtingage. She was a vivacious girl, and she was beautiful. Negro, who wasalways ready for courting, had already set eyes on her. Thinking abouther, 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 theeast –a huge red moon caught in the left side of the mirror, just by hisface. 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 thehandle eluded him. He tried again, but the silver burnt his fingers. Hewent into the kitchen and took his machete out of the thatching. Hewould wait and fight, he would stand facing fear until he could cut theknots of fate or die in the attempt. The minutes became longer…heavy… as they tend to be when fear is around, when you do notknow if they are long or short, if they are many or just a few. Thewhistle came closer like a gallop in the mountains and scratched thecourtyard with its hooves like a colt, making clouds of dust thatvanished into laughter.

“Negro Shono!... Are you afraid?... Your Master’s here!” The voiceguffawed and the laughter morphed into swirling dust, dancing on itslaughing foot in a corner of the courtyard.

A new whistle, this time from the west, breaking the fence off. Aflapping of wings could be heard behind the shack, and a new swirldanced, this time in the west corner. Another whistle, and the jarillas onthe east side were lashed against the ground, whining, at the feet ofHuayra Muyu that cursed and called Celedonio. Crying and moaning,weeping, a laughing flock, a grumbling murmur seized the early nightand a shroud-like cold hissed in the thatch, snaked down the wall, andentered Shono’s bloodstream just through the place where his backleaned against the back wall of the room. He sized his decision upagainst the strength with which his hand clutched the handle of themachete 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 orfour times, but he only made it denser. In the dark that had finallyvanquished the sunset, a new whistle moved, undulating like a liltingsnake. I t came closer… It got lost… It appeared again in themountains… It came closer in slow motion, stepping on the hairs of thetalas 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 houseand four Huayra Muyus stormed the sand and the dust in the drycourtyard with their swirling moves. When they came close to the well,the water bubbled slitting the throat of the earth, its mouth painted withthe thick smell of blood.

“Celedonio Baginay! I’m right here!” The door frame echoed thewords. “I told you not to put up any resistance. I did my part, now youhave to do yours even without me coming. The first swirl should’vebeen enough, but you defied me. So here I am! And I’m really mad, youfucking Negro!” Outside, the laughter and the voices demanded Shonoto pay his debt. In the dark shack, Negro fought for his life with hisdagger, sparks from it illuminating the scene when it clashed againstnothing. The corners of his eyes showed fear whenever his machetehurt the air and he heard the cracking of dry skin. In each crack it washis body that got a new wound. With each wound he became morefurious, 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 tocrow and Saturday was being born, one of the swirls thinned into apiercing whistle and rested on the middle fence post –sharp snake,spring on the alert. Whistle upon whistle, it hit Shono in the forehead. Itwas almost midnight, dance was at its best at the Quinteros’ when theyheard the cry. It was a cry they had never heard before, a cry that madewomen cross themselves and froze the blood of even the bravest men.Trying not to frighten his guests, Don Aurelio placed a rosary behind thedoor, just in case. The rings of the moon vanished in the sky and aglimmering fire rose from the hills.

The last coals burnt down as the morning brightened up. On theround hill, ashes and a sulphurous smoke showed where the shackhad been. In the middle, the corpse of a grey-haired, wrinkled old manwith a machete swaying in his forehead showed a set of spotless brightwhite 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 aninterest in painting, engraving, ceramics, and literature. He has been part ofmany art exhibitions in La Rioja and Argentina, and he has been a member ofmany juries. He has published the book of poems Del balcón de los sueños(1995), Runa Unancha Chinkasq’a o Mensaje del hombre ausente (1999), ElTinkunaco: ¿Encuentro o encontronazo?, and many other books. He is therecipient 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 mountainMiguel Bravo Tedín

arly one morning it started giving out small cries.

The birds got scared, some cows stopped grazing, lookedtowards the mountain a bit surprised and then continuedeating. Nature regained its course. And the animals kepteating and running. But the mountain persisted in its

shouting. On the next day some louder cries surprised the cows andanimals. Even a farmer was a little surprised. He looked up, took off hisstraw hat and scratched his head. Then he went back to work.

The most surprising thing was not that the mountain shouted, butthat other mountains followed suit and also, coyly at first, as if warmingup their voices and taking courage, started their own small cries. Andnobody, neither the cow nor the farmer nor the animals, wasconcerned.

A while later, the group of mountains, much bolder now, not onlyshouted but sang. Nowadays it's a glorious thing to hear in the sunset,as the sun pulls slowly away, the beautiful choir of the mountainssinging ecstatically.

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MIGUEL BRAVO TEDÍN

Is a historian and writer born in La Rioja who lived for many years inCórdoba. In that city, he was the co-founder of the legendary humourmagazine Hortensia, very famous throughout the country in the 70s. Hecurrently lives in that province. He is the author of Historias de La Rioja andCordobnés culo al revés (Lerner, Córdoba, 1991), from which this story wastaken. Tedín (1940) is a historian and writer born in La Rioja who lived formany years in Córdoba. In that city, he was the co-founder of the legendaryhumour magazine Hortensia, very famous throughout the country in the 70s.He currently lives in that province. He is the author of Historias de La Riojaand Cordobnés culo al revés (Lerner, Córdoba, 1991), from which this storywas taken.

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SAN LUIS


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The spider Berta Elena Vidal de Battini

he evening was calm. The rural silence was now andthen broken by the c icadas or the bleat ing sheepreturning 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 herchubby hands weaving the threads and the comb simultaneously. Theother, in her fifties, dry and wrinkled, spun impossibly white fleece; herspindle bopped with amazing skill, while she puffed at her chalacigarette.

Leaning back and sighing, the younger girl said, “And Cliofe wantsthe 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 aprincess.”

“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 andevil with poor people.”

“Ya know, rich people are all the same.”

“But there was no other woman of the same breed. Everybody wasafraid of her. If you came to her and ask’d for something, they beat yaout. 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 mostpowerful kings and princes…

“Many want’d to marry her, for she was beautiful.”

“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 thepalace and ask’d for the cloths they threw away to make a shawl, ashers was in threads. She couldn’t finish her speech, for the princess gother 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 princessvanish’d and she morph’d into a spider, an ugly, hairy, poisonouscreature. And the worse thing was, she was condemn’d to weave all herlife 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 theirlesson.”

Night had silently set in.


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The two women, who were not working now, were thoughtful, staringat the shadows in the fields, absent-minded, weaving who knows whichdeep thoughts triggered by the mysterious tale told by the olderwoman.

BERTA VIDAL DE BATTINI

Was born in San Luis in 1900 and died in 1984. She spent her life travellingacross Argentina in search of regional features of speech and oral narratives.Her pursuit led her to research into popular legends and traditions. In 1966 shepublished El español en la Argentina; Mitos sanluiseños, the book where thisstory was first included, was released later. Vidal de Battini also publishedTierra puntana and Cuentos y leyendas populares de la Argentina. In 1957 shewas awarded for the Argentine Commission of Culture for her research into thespeech of rural areas in San Luis.


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The SpellPolo Godoy Rojo

e stood motionless. The water coming down along theclear trails tickled our bare feet with the sand itcarried. The rainbow on the other side of the hills wentacross the valley and the sky, and disappeared at thefar end.

We held hands tenderly. In her eyes, where it was always dawn inthe green weather brought by the rain, it seemed that evening had setin, dark.

After the sound of a far-away car climbing up the river banks, whichwas like a lasting underground thunder, everything went silent again.

Then, upon the unbraiding rain, there was a cry calling from thebunch 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 floodedsandy trail, breathing in the perfume of pennyroyals, without knowing ifI wanted to laugh or cry. My mother was waiting for me, ready to takeme 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 braidson her back, following me with her eyes. I thought I could hear hercalling me, but I couldn’t be so, for she must have lost her voice, herclear 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 camedown like rain drops on my heart.

In the distance I saw Grandma surrounded by carob trees, squattingby the royal road. For the first time she looked small to me. The car wasin 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 carthat brought my young and beautiful Mother, laden with the hundredsof delicious things which she always gave us. But now I was suffering; Ifelt I was walking on the edge of danger and wanted the car to be faraway, very far away still. I would have wanted to have one more day tosay goodbye to everything that had put a spell on my heart.

In the afternoon, as soon as the rain stopped, I had gone out withMara along the gravel driveways that started at the house and went upand down the meadows and multi-coloured rocks and up into the sky.

The air was playful, the usual air dancing in the pichanas and thetender sprigs, silence drawing things to perfection: a handmadetriangle in the open ground, the squealing rabbit amidst the branches,the gnome-faced dried tree trunk that seemed to be promising hewould come some time to play our games with us. Higher up, the threeslanting round stones, the slippery stones we went down along, yourmouths filled with laughter and our eyes filled with excitement, and,finally, the house, the big house, “The Spell,” as we used to call it, whichbelonged to the big boys and we could only enter when they allowedus 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 therest: 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! Hereour voices seemed not to belong to us and our steps seemed toreverberate in others that never seemed to fade.

In every stone, in every hollow, in every old tree, a trace, a clear signthat someone had been here before us, people we could not quiteimagine but we could feel.

Perfectly round stones with ornaments, tiny arrow tips that we foundin the alpatacos and pencal cactuses where the ants had loosened theearth, 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 amystery we would never cross.

In the afternoon, I went with Mara along the trail that would take usup and down and to a place where it was always dawn. Runningbetween the stones and shrubs, we suddenly reached a clearing. Alittle ravine could be seen below, a chañar shrub standing in the middleof it which I thought was always in bloom and which housed some larksthat never stopped singing. Up behind, the stream flowed amidst reeds,cattails, and fabulous dark crags that opened into jaw-dropping cavesfrom time to time. Pumas and bogeymen left their traces in thesandstone, traces that both took our breath away and encouraged us tocome closer.

Down the slope, the trail fanned out, and in the morning you couldsee the shacks of Patricia or Doña Genera, warming up in the sun.Beyond, the royal road and yet beyond the murmuring ditch, the hillsagain, the stony hills full of alpataco, thyme, and mysteries thatattracted you by day and frightened you by night.

Joy and merriment for your heart, life was a wonderful game, a skypopulated with friendly birds, a docile donkey carrying you smoothly,simple and kind men and women that called us “dear boys,” and whomwe greeted by lifting our caps.

“Shall we come back now?”

“Not yet, no,” Mara replied. “Let’s go down through the home ofUncle Juan de Dios. There’s something there I want to give you.”

When we got there, the goats were scattered along the green banksof the stream and into the valley, showing where the ditch was. Theheavy-topped willows, overflowed with light green shades, lookedglorious.

“It was in here,” Mara said, stepping carefully out the trail in her barefeet. I followed her, curious.

“Here! Here it is!” she said in excitement.

Here it was the white hachón flower. Without hesitation, her fingerspicked 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 mysoul like a song, a vital force that made me feel for ever like a flower, ariver, a patch of the sky.

“You say nothing?” It was true. I was speechless. I put my hand in


my pocket and took my marble out, the tiny little thing that was alwayswith me, that was my confidant, that knew about my dreams, that I sleptwith, 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 wouldnot have been able to live without it.

There it was, in my hand. I hesitated until finally, I took a final look atit. Its delicate blue stripes zigzagged in its watery appearance, blurredafter 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 neston a dry branch, its owners joyfully celebrating the rain, the tree with alow horizontal branch where we used to try a thousand pirouettes, thelittle clearing where we used to play, everything.

From an early spring shoot, an old acquaintance was bidding acolourful and boisterous farewell. “Bye-bye, dear great kiskadee!” Icried, unable to conceal my sorrow.

Other voices were still with me, and bits of landscapes, of nightsand days went through my heart at an amazing speed as I movedalong the thread of water. I could hear soft, lethargic, uncomplainingvoices, loving, praying, blessing, humbly concealing grief and sorrow.The face of Don Tristán came to me, with his short white beard on acalm night, the hooves of his mule stomping on the limestonecourtyard. And then words said in a low voice, like litanies, lost in themystery of an endless night. Beyond, in a cock-less night, the summermoon flooding the courtyard with light and painting the shadows of thetall carobs. Then, a sweet, mellifluous guitar, losing the wonderfulharmonies that I tried to repeat, to no avail.

I was being followed. Guadañín, skirting the evening as he alwaysdid and giving me his strange, unintelligible songs; Grandma, with herpolished face, her kind eyes, her long patience, her courage, and herbedtime stories. And then, as if reflected in a mirror, lying by the ditch,the garden of Aunt Delfina, a small Garden of Eden, a fragranthoneycomb where all kinds of fruit ripened, a green murmuring countryfor 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 stillsplashing around in joy. It was the end of a different rain, of anafternoon 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 andits colour prism sheds light on all the things inside it, as spellbindingas ever.

POLO GODOY ROJO

Was born in Santa Rosa del Conlara, San Luis, in 1914 and died inCórdoba in 2003. He was a schoolteacher in both San Luis and Córdoba. Apoet and a storyteller, he was the recipient of multiple literary awards. Hewas a contributor to La Prensa, El Hogar, Mundo Argentino, and Estampa.His works include Poemitas del alba, De tierras puntanas, El malón, Elclamor de la tierra, Campo guacho, Nombrar la tierra, Cuentos del Conlara,and Pisco-Yacu (published by the author, 1989). “The spell” (“Elencantamiento”) was first included in Nombrar la tierra, published in 1970with a subsidy from the Department of Culture of the Provincial Governmentof Córdoba.

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47

Death lasts but a short whileDavid Aracena

he land was good, but the water, scarce. That year, Topaldamarked new watering canals. First he drew them in hismemory and then in his hands, on the shovel, as he priedinto the hard soil of the peninsula, that portion of land hisancestors had walked, between the shrubland, the whitish

olivillos, the high tides.

He found water above 100 meters. And good one, at that. Youusually 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 hismemory he piled long lines of sheep, their ears dropping, huddled oneagainst 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 belowcame the splash of water. It was well lined, no doubt. They were goodat that. He would go down, with the swing, down to the bottom. The

T


beams crossed over the mouth of the well. The steel cable wasreleased by a rig.

Before descending, Topalda, with the help of a mirror, looked at theglimmering bottom of the well. The shiny, taut wire creaked as itbrought Topalda back up.

“Still 80 meters left,” said someone.

Topalda's voice came muffled from below. Suddenly, the gravel thatsurrounded the mouth of the well started opening into a small crackthat sucked in a fine shower of earth and rocks.

The metal sheet at the bottom of the lining opened up and formeda funnel when the structure above it subsided.

The walls started crumbling and hit the narrow end of the hollowedmetal sheets.

Topalda's unconcerned voice rose from the bottom:

“Pass me an iron bar to pry this open.”

Then came the rhythmic bangs of Topalda hammering against thesheet to open his way. The rig hoisted him up, meter after meter, untilpart of the inner soil caved. The sound of falling earth at noon drownedTopalda's screaming from under the sheets.

The next day, the police captain, the judge and a driver went toPuerto 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 abluish smoke. The transparent air stuck on the windows.

“If only it rained,” said the judge. And a warm halo hit him in the facelike 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 dunland. At a thirty-degree angle, the flaps swung from left to right, like apendulum. The driver grabbed a rifle and took aim. Theshot rung in thehot air.

The shot hit square in the back of the animal and knocked it upsidedown. The ostrich continued running , always down the road. The sameswing, the same tac tac of the legs. Its entrails made a track on thedusty 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 lowshrub 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 alittle?”

The other smiled and said: “Are you scared of dying? Death is but alittle while.”

DAVID ARACENA

Born in San Luis, lived his life in Chubut. Is usually mentioned as one of thebest Patagonian writers. He was born in San Luis in 1914, lived his whole life inChubut and died in Comodoro Rivadavia in 1987. Not much is known of hislife, but he wrote many short stories published in magazines from Buenos Airesand other parts of Argentina. He also received many awards. “Death lasts but alittle while” was taken from Puro Cuento magazine, issue 15, March/April 1989.

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SAN JUAN


51

InfiniteJosé Eduardo González

fter dinner, the judge of the literary award went back to herroom, locked the door, and sat behind her desks, where allthe stories lay that she had to read. By the light of theadjustable floor lamp, she began reading the story at thetop 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 thatshe had to read. By the light of the adjustable floor lamp, she beganreading 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 roomopen, they found no traces of her. On her desk, the adjustable floorlamp shed light on a page where you could read a title, INFINITE, andbelow:

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 universityteacher, and a writer and playwright. He is the recipient of several literaryawards. The story in this collection got the 10th Prize in the 13th Puro CuentoShort Story Awards and was published in the organising magazine, issue No.33, March-April 1992.


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A ghost’s handJuan Pablo Echagüe

nly the footsteps of the mules on the rough trail disturbedthe calm night in the vast slumbering countryside. Theprisoner was in front, his legs tied in the stirrups below thecreature’s belly. Guarding him from behind, his carbine onhis shoulder and his sabre on his side, was Sergeant

Pérez. Both were silent and musing yet they looked sideways at eachother as the mules went down the trail that stretched endlessly aheadlike a fleeting snake in search of shadow.

Pérez was thinking. The prisoner, a dangerous criminal who wasbeing moved to another jail, disturbed him. His stubborn silence sincethey 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 familiarwith this simple job. This was at least his fifth prisoner. When DonJavier, the deputy director of the Department, asked him to take one ofthese poor devils to the capital, adding “Have him run away,” he knewthe rest. Along this very trail the mules trudged… just like now. Andthen across the river, in the tangled reed bed on the bank, suddenly,giving them no time to commend themselves of the devil, boom! Ashot. It broke his heart. Afterwards, he would go back to town, draggingthe mule of the deceased. And, standing to attention before Don Javier,his hand on the visor of his kepi and the proud, earnest expression ofthe man who had done his duty on his face, he reported, “Sir, theprisoner 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 reallyconcerned 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 twomen, silent and sombre, marched slowly along the trail and across thefields.

Channelled between the tall walls of a ravine or divided into deepand mighty branches, the turbulent river flowed down the plains in animpetuous current. If you stuck to the ford, you could wade across theriver, although it was dangerous. Even when a great many riders hadbeen swallowed by the waves, they still preferred the risky fifty-metrepass to the long detour that avoiding it meant.

Step by step, stealthily feeling the slippery rugged river bed, themules that carried Pérez and his prisoner staggered into the water. Theyhad come together, their legs deep in the water, and slowly, cautiously,leaning against the current, they reached the deepest part. With hislegs on the hindquarters of the mule to prevent them from getting wet,the Sergeant looked ahead. The prisoner, who could do nothing tomove his tied legs, sat by his side, resisting the torturing bath withfreezing water in silence, his limbs numb by now.

The mules struggled to avoid the most dangerous spots. Almostbrushing past his prisoner, unsafe on the saddle with his legs bent,focused on guiding his mule with a firm hand. As quick as treason, theprisoner turned and pushed him into the river. He cried in anguish; thewater splashed; the prisoner, putting pressure on his mule and leavinghis victim behind, made it for the other river bank.

When he fell from his mule, Pérez, who had managed to keep thereins in his hand, clutched them in despair. His body got trapped in thecurrent, 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 inthis face, making him blind, strangling him, exploding in his ear. Youcould have said that, enraged at the resistance of the prey and awareof his waning strength, they rushed to finish him off by delivering himliquid blows…

Meanwhile, the rider-less mule, torn apart by the battering wavesand the tugging Sergeant, had stopped in the middle of the river. Withthe water up to its neck, it raised its head in fear, struggling not to loseground. The beast understood the danger: its big watery eyes stared atthe contorted body hanging from the reins, which seemed to be readyto carry it along in its sacrifice. For a while it stood like that, withoutmoving. It snorted, as if complaining. Its pricked-up ears revealed its


contracted muscles, stretching in the ultimate resistance. But is wasuseless: the waves pounded against it, delivering catapult blows. Thetugging at the reins was becoming increasingly violent.

It began to flag, losing ground while scratching the rocks on the riverbed 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 whilethey bumped against the crags in the bottom, in a roaring escapeacross the darkened countryside, until they disappeared in the swirlingwater.

The prisoner had reached the far bank of the river and got lost in thereed bed, as dreary as a ghost.

After that event, all travellers avoided wading across the river at thatpoint. 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 youinto the river stream.

JUAN PABLO ECHAGÜE

Was born in San Juan in 1877. He was a journalist under the pen nameJean Paul and a high school teacher. He also taught History of Drama at theBuenos Aires Conservatoire. He was President of the National Committee ofCommunity Libraries and a diplomat in Europe. In 1938 he received theNational Literary Award. He published many books, some of which arePuntos de vista, Prosa de combate, Una época del teatro argentino, Letrasfrancesas, 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. Inthe year of his death, 1950, his posthumous novel La tierra del hambre waspublished in en Buenos Aires.

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56 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

MazamorraAntonio Esteban Agüero


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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

The author of this beautiful poem, can be considered to be the poet of SanLuis. He was born in Piedra Blanca in 1917 and died in 1970. He was ateacher, a journalist, and a civil servant. As a poet, he received many awardsand tributes. “La mazamorra” is part of Un hombre dice su pequeño país(1972). Another of his finest books is Las cantatas del árbol (1953). Herecorded some of his poems. Listening to him reading them is an unforgettableexperience.


MENDOZA


60 ometimes, life is like the wind: it messes things up andsweeps them away. Something it whispers, but you cannotunderstand 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 tosee. I mean our real eyes. Pages written in seemingly familiarhandwriting pass by. The sky moves faster than the hours. And theworst 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 alsoremember the dry clothes shaking in the sun as my mother closed thewindows 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 askedme the highest number of questions in my life.

Friends in the windLiliana Bodoc

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61

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 thefact that her boyfriend had a son was a real threat. Again, danger in mylife. 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 myknees. 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 filledwith 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. Shewas 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 wewere beginning to laugh heartily and take bike rides together, oneRicardo appeared to put everything at risk again.

Mum took the coconut cookies out of the oven. Before the wind, sheused to bake them every Sunday. Then she seemed to feel resentfultowards the recipe, for just the mention of it got her nervous. Now, thisRicardo and his Juanjo had got her bake them again. Something I hadfailed to do.

“I’m going to get dressed,” Mum said, looking at her hands. “I don’twant 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 stayedthere on my own, imagining what lay in store.

Horrible Juanjo would wolf the coconut biscuits down. And bits ofmeringue would stuck in the corners of his mouth. He would also getthe soap dirty when he washed his hands. And he would talk about hisdog 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 ofall, I feared that he would be one of those boys that produce noisesinstead of words: screeching of brakes, blows to your stomach, fireengine 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 waswearing a ridiculous T-shirt and his trousers were too short.

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,” thebirthday woman suggested, in desperate need of air. I had swallowed itup in an attempt to suffocate our guests.

I obeyed without complaining. The horrible boy followed me. I sat onone of the beds. He sat on the other. He must have been deciding thatwe 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 thiswas a sad day. It was not fair, so I decided he should suffer too. So Ifound a thorn and placed it before an interrogation mark:

“When did your mother die?”

Juanjo opened his eyes wide in an attempt to conceal hisembarrassment. “Four years,” he replied.

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 achoked 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 thewind. Could it be the same wind that blew in my life?

“Is it a wind that comes all of sudden and reaches every corner?” Iasked. “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. “Andbuildings 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 sweepsthem away. Something it whispers, but you cannot understand it.Everything is at risk, even things with roots. Buildings, for example. Oreveryday 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 toopen the windows.

LILIANA BODOC

Was born in Santa Fe in 1958, but she has lived in Mendoza since she wasfive. She is the recipient of a wealth of literary awards, among which we canmention the award to Best Youth Fiction 2000 of Fundación El Libro, The WhiteRavens 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. Herfiction books include La saga de los confines, Sucedió en colores, La mejorluna, Memorias impuras, and El mapa imposible.


65s 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, pickedup out of compassion, its pedigree is unknown. It’s a cat andit likes water. In the case of ditches, it prefers, muddy streams

to sewers. It leaps into the water, puffing and panting, it steps in asplashing move. It lowers its mouth and pretends to be drinking, but itdoesn’t drink. It does it to smack its lips. You’d think it’s not a cat but adog. Also because of its indifference to other cats. Likewise, it watchesdogs from a distance and never gets excited with a street fight. Since it’sawfully out of tune and hoarse, you can’t tell if it’s meowing or barking.” Ipretend to be amazed. But I do not open my mouth, for if I asked aquestion or make a comment, she would ask why and I would have toexplain and engage in complicated dialogue. But she is no longer talkingto me. She is talking to herself. She goes over what she knows and shewants to know more. “It’s a cat and it likes water. That doesn’t mean it’s adog. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s a dog or a cat, for neither dogs norcats can fly, and this animal can fly. I began to fly a few days ago.” Iexpect 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 Ithought of that. Or better, I thought she would think about it. But she didnot. “Isn’t it amazing?” “Yes, of course. It is amazing. Just amazing.” I couldbe amazed, of course. But I am not. I could be amazed by the fact that thecat-dog can fly. But I am not just talking. I am thinking. I think she believes

We can fly Antonio Di Benedetto

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I should be amazed because what she thought that was a cat could infact be a dog or what could be a cat or a dog could also be a bird or anyother flying creature. I should be amazed because it is not what she thinksit is. But I cannot. Am I amazed by the fact that you are not what yourhusband thinks you are? Am I amazed by the fact that I am not what mywife 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, PedroOrgambide and Roberto Yahni (eds.) Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1972.Available online at www.literatura.org.

Horse in thesaltpeter land

he airplane charges forward through the air.

As it flies over the huts huddled by the station, the childrenscatter and the men brace their legs to hold up the jolt.

It's already on the other side, disappearing behind thewoodland. The children and their mothers come out like they do afterrain. 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 Pascuallistens in and takes his lead from the most knowledgeable amongthem: 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, inthat poor lost land of dunes.

Pedro Pascual wants to see it to tell his wife. It would be better if shewere here. Pedro Pascual likes sharing with her, even if it's just a matéor 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 fromMendoza laugh at his Córdoba accent.

He hides behind the heap of bales. All that land, his boss' land thathe looks after, and he has to carry around pressed grass and wirenetting to keep the cows from starving. The hands that have tightenedand tied find the herbs they have reaped along the way: a medicinalprecaution for home. Pearlfruit, tabaquillo, burrito tea, butcher's broom,atamisqui caper... He moves and arranges the bunches and the blendof fragrances fills his home, contained in an aromatic cup. But theintensity of thyme takes over his nose and Pedro Pascual wants tocompare it to something but misses, until he thinks, sure, “... this mustbe the king, because he brings a new smell to the field.”

That was the king's train? A small locomotive and a wagon puffingoff 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 hadbeen distracted with a toy and then someone had sneaked the stormbehind his back. However, why so upset and concerned? Isn't it waterthat the field needs? Yes, but... his field is beyond the Loma de losSapos. The small locomotive whistles as it leaves the station and toPedro 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 ifit were lighting him up from the inside, because the cloud front seemsto have backed up to bring the water precisely where he needs it.

Now Pedro Pascual returns to the place where he's standing. Nowhe understands everything: the locomotive was something like atracker, or the clown that heads the circus' parade. The “king's train,” thetrain that must be different from all the other trains that slide down therails, comes more seriously, there at the back. It is different, PedroPascual says to himself. He gives himself reasons: because the festoonhas the country's coat of arms, and two flags... and why else? Becauseit seems uninhabited, with its windows down, and nobody looking outfrom 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 toattention 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'tsound. They talk loudly to each other, to show off their courage, butnone of them look at the train, like it wasn't there.

Then, when it leaves, then they do, they stare at its back andcomment: “Could it be...!”

Before the train fades into memory, the deferential little plane flies infrom 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.

An hour's walk from the station, where the goat stations end, he isreceived and harassed, blinded by the sky's water. It daunts him, flipshim, as if it was trying to push him into a hole. It intimidates him, makeshim scared, weaved with the lightnings which are as pure as a blade ofthe most dangerous steel. Pedro Pascual steps off the coachman'sseat. He doesn't want to leave the horse out in the rain, but thewoodland is pretty low and there's hardly enough room for himsquatting. The meek animal obeys an unspoken command and stayson the path, bearing the downpour on its back. Then it happens. Thelightning tears like a white blaze and sets fire to the the curvy-branchedmesquite that was sheltering the man. Pedro Pascual gets to scream ashe burns. He makes a noise, a burning noise. The horse, a few metersaway, neighs in panic, blinded by the light, and bolts into the nightdragging the burden of the cart and cart and the grass which sinks thewheels 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, andstops. The cart weighs like a drag along the poles; still, he holds on. Hetosses his head in sleep. The house wren pecks the surface of thegrass and leaps boldly along the back of the horse, all the way to hishead. The animal wakes up and shakes and the bird flies around it andpuffs the white feathers of its chest, the ornament of its brownish-graymass. Then it abandons the horse. The animal obeys the commands ofhunger, more than fatigue. The wet grass of his burden smarts its nose.He sinks his hoof, tightens the pastern to get traction and goessearching. He sniffs the air, trying to get his bearings, even thoughwhere he is now there isn't even the track to help and the silence is soimpervious that the animal doesn't even neigh, as if participating in auniversal deaf and dumbness. The sun beats on the sand, bouncesand gets down his throat. It still isn't hard to drink, because the recentrain has set at the foot of the carobs and the branches shield it fromquick 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 itsthorns, stabs his lips.

Sunset calms the day and grants the animal some rest.

The new light shows a triple set of tracks, which approaches thecart, tangles up and pulls away. It was formed by the legs, which barelylift from the ground, of the pink fairy armadillo, the Juan Calado, he ofthe incomplete dress of glass cotton. The bales of grass could havebeen its nighttime delight; stationed there, an infinite warehouse. Tootall, however, for its short legs.

Too ugly, besides, like a sign of the helplessness and passivity of thehorse with defeated eyes. There it is, weak, consuming, unable torespond to the urges of his stomach.

A partridge unravels from the woodland and raises with its tweetsthe fear that begins to rule, more than the hunger, over the animalyoked to the cart. The jaguarundis are circling nearer. The partridgeknows it; the horse doesn't, but something inside is telling him. The twomassive cats, one dark brown, the other a shade of cinnamon, knockeach other down playfully, roll around as a ball and with velvety handsfeign blow upon blow without harming one another, the claws reservedfor the unaware or slow prey that will surely come their way. The horse'sflanks suddenly drip with sweat and he bolts. The excessive noise, thatnoise 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 pullingtowards the dunes. The sand is soft, and soft are also the curves of itshillocks. Different, in precise straight lines, is the geometry of the cartthat struggles to climb them. Still, the animal finds a small truce in thatwar of sand. Worked up and puffing, its nostrils flaring, he hasn't sniffedaround for food in a long while, but his foot, roaming freely, has hit arough patch of ephedra. His head can finally lower for something otherthan exhaustion. His lips feel greedily about until they find the rigidstems. It's like swallowing a stick; however, his stomach receives themwith welcoming grumbles.

The posy of fine desert needle grass leaves is protected by thesturdiness of the ephedra and, to prolong the calm hours that pay backfor so much starvation, the edible desert needle grass intertwinesfurther down with the tender stalks of the rose moss in the decumbentbranches.

The smell of one plant has given away the other, but nothing revealsthe presence of water, and the animal returns, with a new day, to the“islands” of woodland that usually circle it. A murky marshland, oenwhich does not reflect the sunlight, a decadent marshland that will begone 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 populationdiminishes as they hurt each other, but it never goes empty.

The horse is upset by the loud, squabbling vicinity, although nobodyhas yet troubled him. One day he keeps his distance, damning himselfto the sun on the sand; the following day, he takes his chances andgets to gnaw at the misery of the broom's bark.

The hare breaks from the islands. The guinea pig digs its cavedeeper. The fox disregards its hatred of sunlight and shows itspompous tail followed by its skinny body in the open field. There is lifeonly in the branches, that of birds; but even they are silent now: thepuma comes, the short-haired bandit, the cunning hunter who lookstiny 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 thehorse 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 theislands for water.

The unexpected presence of the male makes her neigh inanticipation and the horse, fixed to the cart's poles, turns his head as ifhe could see, causing nothing but a stirring of flies. In the last fewmeters, the mare prances a trot and finally shows herself, in front ofhim, stepping back, with her long mane and her healthy body. Carnallust resuscitates in the horse. If she postponed her thirst, he canovercome physical decline.

He approaches, he and his cart approach. The mare does not trustthat monstrous motion, does not understand how the cart moves whenthe male moves. She bucks, pulls away from the rapprochement ofheads that he attempts as a weird, atavistic foreplay. She jumps,excited and wary; dazed by the warm energy that runs through her. Andstunned, moved, careless, she puts down her wildlife guard and rollswith a neigh of panic at the puma's first leap and its first swipe. As ifwounded in his own flesh, as if chased by the predator that is bleedingthe female, the horse runs wild in an escape that is a pitiful clatter intothe sands.

The sand was short for the terror. The hoof steps on the saltpeterymarshland. It is an adherence, a drag that seems to suck it to thebottom of the floor. He must come out, but comes out into a whiteplains, barely spotted by fine sand every now and then.

It gathers strength for another push munching on evergreentraveler's joy, the lonely daughter of the saltpeter land, a paper-like leafwrapped around the two-meter-tall stem as if around a cane. Further


on, he chases the smells. He sniffs avidly. He senses something in theair and pushes on towards it, with his sickly step, until he loses it and islost. Now he feels the smell of grass, of grassy, juicy, corral grass. Hesniffs 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. Heis smelling the grass from his cart, feverishly chasing what he isdragging behind him. He circles a deadly circle. The cart makes a track,gets stuck and the poor horse cannot pull forward. He pulls, pullsforward his chest and slips. The last of his life is spent. He is so dry, soskinny, that then, on the next day or the day after that, with nothinggravitating against it, the weight of the bales pulls the cart backwards,the poles point at the heavens and the vanquished body hangs in theair. In the distance, meanwhile, the black vulture, who never eats alone,comes in its dark robes.

OONNEE SSEEPPTTEEMMBBEERR

Clean is the cart, clean are the bones, not so much from the rain asfrom the corrosive, purifying fumes of the saltpeter.

Ruinous are the bones, fallen and scattered, once the cage of theskin has gone. But the collar of the harness got its leather straps caughtin the end of the pole and has now become a bag which holds, upsidedown, the long half-bare skull. Life happens over the ruin, searching forthe certainty of survival: a flock of light blue parakeets, the malesalmost blue, the females of a white that was barely tainted with theshade of the sky. With them, a couple of pigeons migrate from the SanLuis drought. In their flight they discover the stimulating flowering of thepalo brea, which broadly paints the western hills yellow.

Still, the little dove with the fresh brown plumage understands thatshe won't make it that far with her motherly burden. Below, in themiddle of the tense aridity of the saltpeter land, she glimpses the cartthat could be a support and shelter. She circles twice in the air to makeher descent. She coos, to warn the male pigeon that she's not followinghim. But the male doesn't stop and the family is undone. It doesn'tmatter, because she has found a ready-made nest to lay her eggs. Likea cupped hand, ready to receive water or seed, the inverted head of thelittle blind horse takes the sweet, sweet bird in its hollow. Then, whenthe 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 ofLos 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 literarycareer, which reached its peak with Zama, which could be said to be one ofthe greatest Argentine novels. A few hours after the military coup d’état onMarch 24, 1976, he was kidnapped by armed forces. “I will never be sure if Iwas imprisoned because of something I wrote. It would have alleviated my painif they had ever told me what it was exactly. But I never knew. This uncertaintyis 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 andwent into exile in the United States, France, and Spain. He returned toArgentina in 1985. He died of a brain haemorrhage in Buenos Aires on October10, 1986.

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This book was printed on September, 2010 in Cooperativa Gráfica el Sol Limitada

2190, Av. Amancio AlcortaParque Patricios, City of Buenos Aires.


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stories to the south of the world 3

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