Translation of "Motivos y fallos" by Ginés Cutillas

Motives and sentences

He had no idea how he just appeared in the middle of the desert with a revolver in his hand. Even less certain was the origin of the man that was lying on the ground in front of him and who seemed to be waiting for something to be resolved. Unsettled, he looked at the gun and the stranger, who was at that time lifting his head up begging him not to do it. Do what? he wondered. Shoot him?

                He weighed the situation while he paced in circles around the man without lowering his aim. There had to be an explanation for such a scenario. The last thing he remembered was leaving the office and… what was he doing there now?

                On the other hand, life had taught him that he had to take advantage of all possible opportunities. How many times could he kill a man and go unpunished? He then felt a disturbing power that ended in the tip of the barrel.

                Startled, he tried to clear his thoughts by expressing them out loud. The stranger stopped moaning. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Was he trying to get the man to give him reasons why not do it?

                He then thought to ask him if he knew why there were there. He seemed to know but didn’t want to say.

                It didn’t take him long to find the definitive question: “Tell me. What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

                The man’s hesitation cost him a bullet.

Translation of "La puerta" by Ginés Cutillas

The door

It’s not that different from the others. It’s true that the others are wooden and this one is metal. It’s also true that it has two panels – instead of one – that open in the middle to let you in and out. But aside from those two small differences, it’s nothing more than that: just a door.

                I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested in the numbers above it. A scale from zero to nine just above the upper door frame, where the digits light up in sequential order but don’t always reach nine, although they always go back to zero.

                I couldn’t resist the temptation to peek inside and was surprised to find a cubicle, two meters squared, with mirrors all over. I guessed that when you close the door, one of the other three walls opens up giving access to…

                I sat down here, in the hotel foyer, studying it carefully and writing down everything going in and coming out in order to try to deduce some rules.

                At 7:45 p.m., a couple formed by a relatively young man and woman go in; he’s thirty-something and she’s twenty-something. The numbers successively light up to five and then the countdown begins back down to zero. When the door opens, the couple has aged at least thirty years. He now looks about seventy and she looks about sixty. Corollary number 1: when level five intensity is applied to a sample young couple in the small room behind the double doors, they age by approximately three decades. I also observed that they were now dressed differently. Maybe it’s just a dressing room that ages people.

                At 7:52 p.m., a kid about thirteen years old goes in. The scale goes up to three and stays there for a while. The door doesn’t open again until another teenager, around 15, arrives. Mysteriously, the thirteen-year-old isn’t there anymore. The second adolescent is swallowed by the fourth mirror, and level four intensity is applied. The door opens again. Again, there isn’t anyone there. Corollary number 2: it makes people under the age of sixteen disappear if they are alone. That explains the sign prohibiting children unaccompanied by an adult from using the dressing room.

                At 8:05 p.m., an eighty-year-old couple goes in. According to my calculations and applying Corollary number 1, which would age them thirty years, I doubt they’ll come out of this one alive. Intensity eight. Twenty minutes later – 8:25 p.m. – I confirm that my suspicions were correct: they don’t come back out. Instead, two very smiley twenty-something-year-old girls go in and level six intensity is applied – what determines the force that is applied? The result is two unsmiling kids with black skin. Corollary number 3: mood is another variable, which, combined with intensity, produces changes in sex, race and mood. Age remains unaffected.

                Nothing else happens until 8:48 p.m. This time the door closes by itself without anyone going in and level four intensity is applied. When it descends back to zero, the two young teenagers come back out dressed in athletic clothes. Rectification of corollary number 2: it does not make people under the age of sixteen disappear, it just retains them. Corollary number 4: more time is needed to put on athletic clothes.

                I start to get hungry with so many continuous discoveries. I reach the conclusion that there are infinite combinations of variables and that it would take me years to chart my findings. Before going to dinner, I decide to try the dressing room myself to complete my investigation. I take advantage of the open door to step inside. I observe myself in the mirrors. I still look the same. I wait a minute for the door to close and for one of the other walls to open, maybe to some clothes lined up on hangers. Nothing happens. I wait a little while longer. I move. Nothing. I decide to jump. At the third jump, the door closes. Corollary number 5: to start up the dressing room, you have to jump three times.

                 I see that the scale is also displayed inside the door frame. Intensity eight. I continue to stare at myself in the mirrors. I don’t see any new wrinkles, or exhaustion, and my clothes haven’t changed.

                When the door opens, I let out a scream. The dead eighty-year-olds appear in front of me with the same clothes they were wearing before. The foyer has disappeared. Behind them, there is a long hall with an infinite number of doors on both sides. Is this heaven? I wonder. “Going down?” they ask. To which I respond affirmatively with tears in my eyes while sobbing that I’m not ready yet. They come in. Our eyes do not part throughout the process of reincarnation. The intensity goes back down to zero. As soon as the door opens, the foyer appears before me once again. I throw myself down to kiss the floor. Thank God, I’m still alive.

Translation of "Mascarada" by Ginés Cutillas

Masquerade

When Fred told his wife that morning that he was going to buy the newspaper, little could she imagine that the police would knock on their door an hour later to tell her that her husband had died in a car accident. Apparently his car had smashed into a guard rail on the M-30 highway.

During the hours before the funeral, Mary couldn’t stop wondering where he was driving. He always bought the paper from the newsstand on the corner.

Mass was quiet. Children, friends and colleagues hadn’t expected to attend a death so soon. The few whispers running through the halls and vaults were those that praised the generosity and honesty, the good father and even better husband he had been, now lying before them. Nobody skimped on flowers, wreaths and more than one of the mourners even wrote poetry.

Right before being closed up, two sinister whistles echoed inside the coffin.

Instinctively, the attendees looked at the widow who, after the initial shock, moved closer to the coffin, patted the corpse’s pockets and took a cell phone out of the front inside pocket of his jacket, which she had been unaware of. She was so nervous that she gave the phone to her son who, after confirmed that the unfortunate caller was a Laura, read out loud: “Honey, where the hell are you?”

Translation of "Cualquier dia" by Ginés Cutillas

Any day

Manuel gets up in the morning and wakes the kids up. He makes coffee and has breakfast with his wife. Later he affectionately says goodbye to his children as he drops them off at school. When he gets to work, he greets all his coworkers with a friendly good morning. He’s been there a long time. He calls his clients, eats from the lunch box Aurora prepared for him and throws out all his invoices. Later, he jokes around while saying goodbye to each of his coworkers.

He takes advantage of the down time between the end of the work day and picking up the kids from the pool to go buy groceries at the supermarket. With a trunk full of food and the car flooded with children’s laughter, he heads home. She still hasn’t arrived. When she finally does, a delicious, steaming hot dinner waits for him in the kitchen. He kisses her, cuddles her, tells her how pretty she is, how lucky he is. He puts the kids to bed, giving them a kiss goodnight after reading them a story. He goes to his bedroom and sees his wife asleep with a book in her hands. He takes off her glasses and puts the book on the nightstand. He sits next to her on the bed and fixes the covers around her. Then, he opens a drawer in the nightstand and takes out a revolver. Aurora shifts a little and turns. He looks straight into the barrel. He sticks it so far into his mouth that the pain causes him to shed a few tears. He pulls the trigger. She clears her throat. Manuel inspects his brain splattered all over the headboard with his fingertips, as if it were the first time he’d seen it. He’s tired. He turns off the light. Tomorrow he has to stop by the IRS before going to the office.

From here

From here I can see all the people walking to their respective destinations, driving their cars and scooters and bikes, riding the bus, looking around or looking inward. It amazes me that everyone cannot be conscious of everyone else in their everyday lives. I always imagine the rest of the story behind the momentary glimpse of people’s faces, body language, as they pass by… For instance the waiter who delivers dishes of food slipping around on the plate without paying attention if it’s the right table, while he imagines his girlfriend of 4 years, who is lying in bed thinking of packing her bags because he doesn’t want to have a baby. Or the toll-booth collector who drops lifeless coins in my hand as he quietly hums the melody that’s been forming in his head over the past few hours, so as not to forget it when he goes home to his parent’s basement where he has accumulated a plethora of instruments and sound recording equipment. Or the mom fumbling through her purse as unnecessary lipsticks and receipts and hairballs fall out, a line forming behind her while that damn bus ticket continues to escape her, as do her two little boys who were just moments earlier tugging on her drool-stained blouse that her not-so-tiny toddler has fallen asleep on with the dead weight of a KO’d pro wrestler. Or the old lady who has painstakingly matched her babygirl pink lipstick with her shuffling flats, her breast-level skirt and her delicately doilied jacket just to go to the fruit shop a block away, and then shuffle back to her silent, empty home.

Maybe they’re wondering how someone like me, who seemingly has nothing in common, could feel what they’re feeling.

Or maybe they’re all just wondering what I’m staring at.

Electricity

There’s something electrifying about the air around you

Do you mind if I stand a little closer and breathe you in

So close, the hairs on my arms stand up and reach towards you

Our bodies separated by the energy charging between our skin

I shake the shivers off and imagine enveloping your warmth

Permeating every corner of my being to fingertips and pinky toes

I can’t find the right words so I invent them blindly

They pour out of me in a drunken stupor that grows

Inebriated by your silence

And I’m thirsty for more

Translation of "Una historia doméstica" by Ginés Cutillas

A domestic story

Discovering the plants was strange but pleasant when all is said and done. I always thought my bachelor’s studio could use a feminine touch.

It was less pleasant when I found used tampons in the bathroom wastebasket. Not because it was an odd place to find them – I wouldn’t want my words to offend anyone – but because I lived alone and, as far as I knew, without a stable partner or any other kind, for that matter.

It was rather disturbing when the wall color changed from one day to the next, but I quickly got used to it. It gave the apartment a certain warmth.

Soon, the furniture changed positions. That bothered me. Nevertheless, I had to admit there was a certain logic in the new distribution. A new shower curtain followed, a rug in the living room, blinds on the windows, new dishes, but also long hairs in the shower, piles of panties in the drawers and items from a makeup kit scattered all over the house.

When I started to wonder what to do with the intruder, the romantic dinners began. I got home from the office and all I had to do was sit and enjoy the music, the candles and the exquisite dishes I had no idea that my precarious kitchen was even capable of producing.

In gratitude, I began to leave sweet notes on the refrigerator and roses on the pillows, which later appeared in vases.

I work. She takes care of me. I’m sure we're the envy of all the neighbors: they’ve never heard us argue.

I don’t know her. And I think it’s better that way.

Translation of "Doble Salto Mortal" by Ignacio Ferrando

DOUBLE DEATH JUMP

March 13^th, Thomas Solvein bent his knees, bowed to the public, grabbed the trapeze bar and jumped off the platform under the watchful eye of his wife. He and Eliza had been separated for twelve years without hearing from one another, searching for each other in the news, asking family and neighbors, but on March 13^th, the same day that George Bataille brought his erotisme to the printing press and surgeon Ake Senning put his first pacemaker into a dying man, the Great Circus passed through the old city, in the outskirts of Berlin, and Solvein, now a trapeze artist, knew that Eliza would not miss the occasion to see him again. It was the last number of the evening and from the air, feeling the elastic tension and the pendular swinging of the trapeze, Thomas Solvein could see the audience forming a scattered mass, excited and festive. The spring storm had gotten worse over the course of the evening and many neighbors, especially those who lived in Wansee Bay, had opted to stay at home, watching TV and playing écarté. Any good trapeze artist knows that you should never do a double death jump on a day like that, with a storm and your wife, whom you haven’t seen in over a decade, watching you from the stands. You also shouldn’t do it on the 13^th. And much less, as Thomas Solvein intended, without a protection net or safety wires. As he’d told Ariadna two hours earlier, “when a trapeze artist goes out without a net, it’s because he feels the intimate need to do so.” He stressed the adjective “intimate” as if it hid an invisible justification. His trapeze partner looked at him with a certain distance. She was used to Thomas’s ridiculous reflections and would have liked to add that she also knew about the need for balance and that one only jumps without a net when one wants to die or at least needs to know that they have that last escape. But she merely held his gaze and smiled and said yes, that she would jump with him that stormy evening, even if it was the 13^th and they didn’t have any safety wires or a net.

In the air, Thomas Solvein felt that familiar weightlessness of the world below and listened to the murmur of the children in the audience, captivated by the swinging trapeze. He searched for Eliza in the crowd but realized that he didn’t even have a vague hazy memory of her. After twelve years she would have changed, of course. He remembered her “tenderness,” yes, that was her best accessory, her sweet face, her sweet nose, her lips, her bun with a pencil through it and her white blouses, always white and the sound of the sewing machine and her straight back and her profile silhouetted against the evening twilight. Everything about Eliza was repetition, he thought gaining momentum. The light those evenings was sinister, as were the spotlights hanging from the big top. All trapeze artists know that they have to be careful not to get blinded by the lights. Thomas Solvein looked straight ahead, forcing the angle and saw that Ariadna was already there, counting the seconds, concentrating on synchronizing the jump. Her thigh was wound up in the ascent rope and she looked like a mermaid with her scaled sequin suit, waving at the crowd with her hand extended. 

While swinging, Thomas Solvein thought about a lot of things. One of them, which might explain all the rest, was that, just as cars increase their speed on the highway and in a tachycardia your heart accelerates for no apparent reason, on the trapeze, the seconds seem longer and everything becomes more fleeting and intense. Sometimes he had the feeling of being divided in two, of being two different people, two irreconcilable halves and then, in the loneliness of the trapeze, he felt the need to speak with his antagonist, who was more reasonable and worthy. And if today, finally, I let go and do a triple?, he asked him, you wouldn’t be able to do anything, not today, today would be too late, he yelled at him, and if I just let go and fall on top of everybody? The other part of him stayed quiet, indifferent. It’ll be easy, he continued, just one wish and you’ll end up bleeding to death on the sand floor. But his reasonable half, with whom he spoke in an inconsiderate and informal way, knew that he was an imposter and that he liked to show off, especially while hanging from a trapeze and both their lives depended on him.

Theirs was the last number that evening. The storm fell hard on the big top, provoking a chaotic, constant pounding. In the air, the oxygen was charged with ozone and the ground let off a warm smell of elephant urine and wet earth. While swinging, Thomas remembered the dampness pervading the frozen sheets in the cabin he and Eliza had shared in the country, when they were still a married couple. They only went there when they needed to forgive each other for some infidelity or when something inhospitable appeared between them with a silent din. It was a small cabin near the wetlands, with high reed ceilings, the smell of firewood and the crackling of the hearth and the infinite horizon of reeds and her and Thomas Solvein, a tight-rope walker then, reading infinite texts lounging on the couch, naked feet touching, The Gulag Archipelago, for example, words after more words and then the fight, the negotiation, the evidence and the breakdown of Thomas’s few certainties and the heat inside, near the hearth, the uneasiness and the last shouts before going to bed and outside the storm and flashes, all poetry as adornment for the eternal time spent in that cabin. The next morning, as the storm got worse, they went out to walk on the trail and reached the wetlands where ghostly trees grew with their roots on tiptoe above the water and they got lost in the reeds, feet sinking in the black mud. They knew the wetlands by heart, but the marsh changed its own impulsive geography and replaced the trails they made as a force of habit, forming a dynamic and unsustainable labyrinth. Nobody in the world, Thomas Solvein liked to think, could find them there, in the middle of the reeds, gathering duckweeds in their hands. The duckweeds were tiny specks of green that floated in the corners of the marsh. When the water drained through their fingers, the duckweeds stayed stuck to their skin, like alien moles. Eliza put them all over her face and they laughed together, each one at the other. Sometimes, posed in that position, with the excuse of the reeds covering their heads, Thomas Solvein got serious, took her neck, with his two hands, strong (he felt her weak neck and the feeling that life, what was normal, she, was something fragile and subtle) and asked her what would happen if he killed her right there, if he kept squeezing his hands until she couldn’t breathe anymore and she turned blue and stopped kicking, “if you shout, nobody will hear you,” “if you try to escape, you know I’ll get you,” “what would happen,” he continued, “if you were to die at the hands of the person who loves you the most in this world.” It would just be an inexplicable contradiction, Thomas thought, but there are contradictions as admissible as they are terrifying. She then, closing her eyes, lazy, as if she were a virgin surrendering to her parents’ sacrifice, wracked with silence, resigned to the idea of death and said, “there couldn’t be anything better than dying in your hands.” When Thomas Solvein removed them from her neck, her skin was red and there were white fingerprints in the center that disappeared little by little. The duckweeds came off her skin when Eliza got up and straightened her skirt to go back to the cabin.

Solvein lowered himself from the trapeze bar, hanging from the back of his knees, extending his hands as far as he could reach. The trapeze bar creaked, flexing under his weight. In that inverted, pendular world, Ariadna rubbed her hands with chalk on the platform and adjusted her wristband. A circle of light framed her body against the big top, near the center pole’s tension cable. Thomas Solvein had always thought that Ariadna moved with the meticulous elegance of an Italian tightrope walker. If she could’ve heard him she would’ve told him that elegance cannot be meticulous and that Italians may be many things, but they are never meticulous or elegant. Yes, that’s why he fell in love with her. Not because of her habit of correcting him all the time, but because of her body, her curves, her hips and the meticulous elegance, he repeated, because it was precise, studied and unalterable. Three adjectives in disuse sliding down her figure. Ariadna murmured something between her lips, caught the bar by the ropes and jumped in the air, throwing herself into the synchronized swinging that Thomas had initiated mere seconds earlier. And then he saw her, there below, in the audience, in one of the first rows. It was Eliza. There was no doubt. Time passes and people change, thought Thomas, your skin becomes wrinkled and your eyes sink from longing, the tear beds get deeper, you learn to suffer, you change, you’re someone else, but there are things, thought Thomas, your tenderness, the pencil in your bun, the white blouse, the look, those things, which remain unalterable, indolent to history.

Next to her there was a boy with very open, very black eyes, looking up at the height of the trapeze at that very moment. Thomas Solvein could not avoid fantasizing that the boy was as old as his separation, twelve years, and that he was the fruit of something that was as painful as it was necessary. Eliza was staring at him, unafraid, like those afternoons in the wetlands when she let herself be strangled with such docility. Ariadna was now swinging in front of him. One afternoon, in the back of the caravan, she had also confessed that the double death jump was as close as you could get to being rescued from death. “It’s like jumping into the abyss and, in the inertia, being caught by two hands that free you from the free fall.” Sometimes Ariadna was too much like Eliza. They had repeated the jump thousands of times, following a dangerous but flawless protocol. She would pull her legs up as high as possible and, extending her arms, she would wait for him to catch her in the precise moment, mathematic, not before not after, exact, physics applied to the body. “It’s like being a suicide victim regretting it a thousand times over,” she said, “there’s always someone determined to rescue you.” When they were coming back from the wetlands, he and Eliza had the same feeling, that there was someone determined to rescue them from themselves. Sunday afternoon, after the traffic jam, they reached the city and everything became constant repetition.

Thomas had lived on the ground floor for many years, he’d been a tolerant neighbor, he’d organized barbecues and he’d had a decent run. He was working in Berlin, in construction, walking on beams at great heights and keeping his balance with his arms. Few people know it. But in construction, as in rock climbing, there’s always a pioneer risking his life, someone who lays the first beam, the first post, the plank that will serve for his comrades to walk across behind him. That worker doesn’t have any safety measures, he depends on his own balance for a minute or two. Enough to die each day. When work was over, Thomas Solvein stayed on the metal beams for a moment, exploring the entire expanse of the city, calm, sleeping, its puzzle of streets and avenues, the pollution like a grey carpet, the skyscrapers bracing the horizon. The trapeze, he was sure now, was in his body.

And one day he left everything. He joined that entourage of scoundrels going from town to town, without leaving a trace other than the ridiculous flyers stuck under cars’ windshield wipers and the elliptical silhouette, like a flying saucer, of the tent in the empty grounds, far beyond the reeds. And now Eliza was there, with her child, watching Thomas fly above from the ground below, a childish demand for an explanation whose answer was unknown. Trapeze artists work instinctively. There’s no other way, no other explanation, to jump into the abyss. Reason and logic would otherwise make something like this impossible. That’s why, on instinct, he left home and Eliza never heard from him again. He changed his name to Thomas Solvein, which was more professional (although, deep down, he only intended to erase his tracks), and put on his flying suit, a tight, black leotard, and hung from the trapeze. It was easy, like satisfying a childish necessity. The mountain cabin and the circus trapeze weren’t all that different. Isolated, waterproof universes to inhabit. The story of Eliza and him could have been one of the saddest, most vulgar stories published by the world of incomprehension, but maybe because Thomas Solvein sensed the danger, when she told him that she was pregnant, and fled before the inevitable became reality. He remembered that Saturday morning in the cabin. From the window he could see the wetlands combed by the wind from the north, cold, almost mythological and far away, on the trail, the procession of cut-out silhouettes from the circus, with its signs, its trucks and that despondent and downcast elephant and those clowns practicing on stilts. Ariadna was leading a panther, but he couldn’t see much more because the wind stopped and the reeds stood back up and besides, at that time, he still didn’t know Ariadna and he couldn’t have known that she was the girl with the panther. Thomas Solvein turned around and saw that Eliza was sleeping and instinct, the only motor running when everything else fails, brought him to the certainty, unstable, presumptuous, that he had to escape and that he had do it in a humiliating, cowardly way. He didn’t even leave a note. While Eliza was sleeping, he grabbed a few changes of clothes, a book by Valery and escaped from the house like a thief, following the fungus-covered paths to the trail. Eliza must have woken up when he closed the door but, since it wasn’t the first time that Thomas Solvein had escaped, she probably thought it was just another of her husband’s unsuccessful pranks. But that day he didn’t come back and the circus people hired him to clean the cages, help set up and feed the animals. The first person he spoke to was Ariadna’s husband. He was Bullet Man, a deformed Jew, older than her, with an unpronounceable Swiss name, a secondary character that always wore gloves and never apologized to anyone. Ariadna and Thomas observed each other in silence while he fed the alligator and she hung up her husband’s immense long underwear and the thousands of gloves he wore on his hands for no apparent reason. They smiled at each other, of course, she with her absolute goddess superiority and he with the selfless submission of an animal feeder. Like the pieces of a puzzle, like a deciphered hieroglyphic, as if you were playing poker and Aces suddenly appeared in your hands, all those flirtations and games through the clothesline and Bullet Man’s long underwear, one evening became a long, light, unplanned kiss, a kiss that, ultimately, not only brought together a few millimeters of skin, but also vast expanses of desire. While they made love, Thomas noticed that the caravan ceiling was plastered with newspaper clippings, “Bullet Man traces a perfect parabola, y=x²,” “dumbfounded mathematician verifies perfection of technique,” “Bullet Man bursts through the circus tent”… and when they were finished, wrapped in the folds of the sheets, he told her, “only a stranger can cure a fugitive.” She did not respond, she just kissed his armpits, between his ribs, on his belly button, her lips leaving behind an inextinguishable trace of saliva.

The storm had turned into a deafening downpour. Solvein felt the tension cable trembling and the expectant silence in the stands. He couldn’t take his eyes off Eliza, down there, contemplating his swinging body, with her hands on her lap, as if she presumed something serious was going to happen. The inverted world under the big top was a world of affection traffickers. They professed a protective love amongst themselves, almost tribal. The Great Circus travelled around the country that year from one end to the other, through the white landscapes of Flensburg and Lek, on small roads where time didn’t exist and when it was too cold and impossible to breathe, they returned to Lower Saxony, to eat smoked meat and enjoy the weather and the green color of the world around them. In one of those warmer towns, they left Bullet Man on the side of the road, with his suitcase at his feet and his gaze fallen on a small cluster of houses. Like all secondary characters, he achieved exile through his own free will, aware of his nullity in the story’s plot. That was when Ariadna mentioned creating a number together. “The day you no longer love me” she joked “all you have to do is let me slip.” “I’ll look at you” she continued “I swear that our eyes won’t separate even for a moment as I fall to the sand.” Later she shrunk against his chest like a sea star out of water, searching for Thomas Solvein’s breath. Ariadna had a gifted body for balance, while Eliza had been conceived under the atmospheric pressure of good sense. Ariadna was above, Eliza was below. He began to count, one, two, three. Thomas Solvein knew that vertigo was a luxury he could never allow himself, but now the ground, the stands and Eliza, took on a distant light. Ariadna clapped twice and extended her arms before shouting the order in the distance. He felt his sweaty, moist hands. The rain fell on the big top forming a turbulent noise, the drumming of a metronome gone crazy. Three, four, Ariadna swung in the distance, gaining momentum for the jump. She gave him the second warning. At the third she would let go of the bar, do two somersaults and when she unfolded her body, slowly, opening herself to the emptiness, he had to grab her wrists, squeeze and feel that she was squeezing too and thus free her from the fall. The seconds on the trapeze, as Thomas had always thought, dilated, the lights were gleaming snakes and the movements were extremely precise. He could see each of Ariadna’s gestures in her approach swing towards him while Eliza observed from below, with her eyes closed and the drumroll and the absolute silence in the audience and the boys pointing their fingers and the notion that something could go wrong, that with such strict protocols, the smallest mistake could have major consequences.

Thomas Solvein asked his reasonable side what would happen if he let go of Ariadna, if he let her fall, he asked: will she look into my eyes like she promised? And if so what will her eyes reflect? will they show betrayal? the end? submission? It’s possible or maybe it’ll become a death fall, frenetic kicking, in a hysterical pirouette, with a scream building under the big top, mingling with the terror of the audience. What would happen if the one who fell was me? I shouted at him, what would Eliza think when she saw us strewn across the sand, forming an impossible X, broken? She’d think that she never should have come to the 9:00 show, she’d curse the 13^th, the last performance and she would have the irremissible certainty that some things end and only memories remain, like scars with poorly executed stitches. She’d think that she should never have desecrated the unstable balance of a trapeze artist. And if we both fall? I asked “and if Ariadna and I speed to a romantic death, a last communion, a dual suicide? Of course, if Ariadna had been able to censor his thoughts, she would’ve said that a suicide, no matter how much you try, could never be dual, it could be synchronized or in solidarity, or both things, but in the end it’s an act of intimate loneliness. The murder victim would be her.

Five, six. Thomas was marking the time. He saw Eliza two more times in the swinging interval. One of those times their eyes met ineffectively. At least that’s what Thomas Solvein thought at 40 meters above the ground. And then Ariadna shouted, the last signal, ten and she let go of the bar. He saw her trace an exact arch, with her body closed and initiate a rotation on the invisible axis passing through her abdomen. During these two slow rotations his attention was drawn to the stands, to Eliza, to that boy with the big black eyes, immense, as Ariadna completed the two somersaults and executed the double death jump. He extended his arms as far as he could, opening the palms of his hands and realized that they were dripping with sweat. Ariadna began to open, like a newborn after months of darkness, Thomas breathed in the wetland air one more time, the stench of the cages and the figure of Bullet Man getting smaller in the rearview mirror. A lot happened while he was up there and Ariadna traced a perfect curve towards his arms and then it occurred to him, to move his hands away, to let her slip through the air and then, while he was thinking of how to do it, how to move away and repeat the story of his life, complete resignation, he felt the violent and familiar smack of Ariadna’s hand upon completing her trajectory. She grabbed his forearm tightly but he didn’t want to respond. He felt how she slipped down his skin, how the weak applause was starting, how people were breathing when the drumroll finished, but she kept slipping in that useless swing, invisible to the crowd’s eyes. And she must have understood because she looked up and looked him in the eyes and it was a look that didn’t ask for any explanation, a last look of farewell, almost a promise. Below was the sand floor and Eliza and that boy and Ariadna smiled due to her own weakness and started releasing the pressure of her fingers, as he had done with Eliza’s neck in the wetlands and he felt her slip until, at the last second, Thomas squeezed tightly, so tight that he felt the narrowness of her bones, he squeezed and squeezed with so much strength that if Eliza’s neck had been in its place, it would have snapped with a fragile, precise, vertebral break. Breaks can never be vertebral, that’s what Ariadna would have told him if she hadn’t surrendered and submitted to the fall.

Then Ariadna, with the same precision and agility as always, did a pirouette, escaped from his arms and returned to the platform. From up there, among the applause, she waved at the audience, with her arm extended. Then the crowd’s effusiveness lost intensity and people started getting up from their seats, forming a resigned flow of the defeated silently going home to their houses on the lake. Eliza and the boy got up and, hand in hand, got lost under the big top, without even turning around. Ariadna observed him from the platform, taking off her wristband without looking him in the eyes.

From up there, Thomas Solvein thought that he’d been right, just as cars increase their speed on the highway and in a tachycardia your heart accelerates for no apparent reason, on the trapeze, on a day like that, everything was intensified and became more fleeting and real.

Translation of "Cul-de-sac" by Mercedes Cebrián

Cul-de-sac

Autumn/Winter

Someone randomly chose three Chinese characters – the concepts of deafness, landing and firewood – and decided to print them all over the fabric for our sheets this season. The label says RAVENTÓS TEXTILES, TARRASA (SPAIN), which is both geographically and conceptually far away from the Chinese master who, once upon a time, carefully wrote these symbols in calligraphy and then ate a simple bowl of white rice after finishing his work. He obviously wasn’t the one who digitally formatted the characters so they could be printed on matching sheets, upholstery and curtains. Whoever it was, did they know the 8,000 characters in the Chinese dictionary? The 1,800 kanjis approved for use by the Japanese government in 1946? Or was it probably just a designer from the Iberian peninsula, completely unaware of that information? And what if it was a textile designer named Mireia Torrá who got her degree in London?

Indeed, it was Mireia – another victim, just like the rest of us, of the wide-spread idealization of the meaning of Chinese characters. Due to their calligraphic sophistication, we assume they must symbolize meaningful values like justice or understanding, or at least represent some sort of placid natural phenomenon, like a delicate rain (diametrically opposed to a downpour), when in reality our sheets are more likely decorated with mere morphemes of very little spiritual value (the concepts of deafness, landing and firewood). Even so, we’re able to lie in them for hours, invaded by words that we wouldn’t normally accept on our bed sheets if they were written with the Latin alphabet (not even Mireia). Mireia was simply following orders from the textile company director who hired her to come up with prints – to randomly choose three Chinese symbols (the concepts of deafness, landing and firewood) during a professional meeting held last quarter – and decided to sell the bed linen set with an oriental print, TERIYAKI model. Oriol Raventós, therefore, was the one responsible for what had happened to our sheets.

Meeting at Raventós Textiles to decide on prints for the season

– Oriol Raventós: Let’s see, Mireia, what do you have for me? Something oriental, as I suggested? Oriental patterns are so in right now.

– Mireia Torrá: Yes, so what do you think? 

– Oriol Raventós (quietly murmuring the syllable “hmm” as he studies it: hmmmmmmm): I like it a lot. It’s very simple. Chinese letters are so elegant, so there’s no need to overdo it. The Chinese and the Japanese are so delicate. Well, orientals in general.

Orientals in general

And what if one night we dared to bring the duvet cover downstairs to the corner store and asked the Chinese owners to translate the print? They don’t speak Mandarin, they speak Cantonese, but luckily the writing is the same. Would we really go down to the late-night corner store carrying a queen size duvet cover? Imagine ourselves among squishy, sugary gummy worms; 4-packs of flavored yogurts; plastic nets of oranges, lemons and onions. There we are, under the brash overhead light, asking: “Would you be so kind as to tell me what this item says that’s supposed to cover our bed? See, the thing is, we aren’t impervious to the meaning and Mireia, the designer, can’t help us.”

We wouldn’t dare take the duvet down to the corner store, or the dollar store, or Jade Dragon where we order Chinese food a few nights a week. We also wouldn’t call a certified Chinese translator. We’re never going to know the meaning of the characters on the duvet cover and that’s that. Whether we like it or not, thousand-year-old Chinese writing has been squandered away daily as if being thrown out far away from its corresponding recycling bin – corrugated cardboard, styrofoam, aluminum containers. Still, not understanding the symbols on a duvet cover isn’t as dangerous as not knowing what a stoplight means when it’s red or green. It’s much less worrisome than not being able to read Attention, slippery when wet (tilted car over wavy lines on a yellow background) and, of course, it’s not half as dangerous as not knowing how to decipher Danger, live wire (red bolt of electricity). Our duvet cover is more like a last-minute gift wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper than a three-color stoplight or the traffic signs you have to memorize in order to get your driver’s license. In the end, Mireia and Raventós are not responsible for our vital successes or failures. We’ve all seen movies where someone tries to read encrypted messages where there’s nothing actually to decipher – on the walls, in the newspaper – but Mireia and Raventós’ intentions don’t involve encrypting. And since they aren’t encrypting and we aren’t suffering from paranoia, then what’s wrong with us, doctor? When faced with the authority of systems of meaning, why do we have the desire to interpret it all? Ban all alphabets: Chinese, Arabic, Cyrillic letters. Prescribe simple structures with superficial lines and colors, plain stripes or plaid prints, the equivalent of a season in a spa, far away from semiotics.

Spring/Summer

Another season: time to choose the tablecloth, but it has to match the dish towel, oven mitt and apron. After looking through a large sample collection, we opt for a traditional Scotch plaid. The fact that our tablecloths and children’s private school uniforms will now have the tartan of the MacLaines, or the Kirklands, or the Abercrombies, doesn’t mean a whole lot to us. It doesn’t force us to cross or wait at the crosswalk. Once again, we’ve forgotten the commendable efforts of the MacLaine of Lochbuie in creating a pattern that represents them.

The MacLaine of Lochbuie creating their tartan (circa 1610)

– Fiona MacLaine: A’ll take oot a a wee bit ae red and add some mair blue or oor kilt will look tae much like the Sinclairs.

– Alastair MacLaine: Fiona, do as ah say. Leave the red as is, the red is bonnie. It’ll help tae see it from far away. We’re descendants of the brave warrior Gilleana-Tauighe, ye ken! Oor tartan has to hae the color of blood.

– Fiona MacLaine: Remember yer color blind, Alastair.

– Alastair MacLaine: Och Lassie! Do yee want them to confuse us with grass frae the highlands?

– Fiona MacLaine: Oh, Alastair, yer so stubborn! How no, whatever yee say; that’s how it’ll be then. Bairns! Here’s the MacLaine tartan! But the MacLaine of Lochbuie, nae the Keppochs or the Clanranalds.

Their conversation is part of the fabric in my oven mitt, one of my tablecloths and my matching napkins, although they have no idea. All the bravery of the MacLaine of Lochbuie clan and pride in the land they received from John – the first Lord of the Islands in the 14^th century – are there for us to desecrate with the gravy we’re taking out of the oven, with a “careful! oven mitt please! this is hot and I’m gonna spill the gravy.” And they also appear in an updated version, modified by Mireia upon Mr. Raventós’ request:

– Raventós: Let’s see, Mireia, what do you have for me? Something Scottish, as I suggested? Scottish patterns are so in right now.

– Mireia: Yes, I think you’re going to like this.

– Raventós: (quietly murmuring the syllable “hmm” as he studies it: hmmmmmmm): The truth is it looks really, I mean really, good. And they’re really colorful. Scottish plaids are so happy, classic and, at the same time, always stylish. But do me a favor, add a little yellow to the final pattern. It’ll look good, it will make it warmer.

It will make it warmer

We look for warmth, well-being and comfort. The fact that this is advertising vocabulary is the very least of our concerns: we have fully appropriated it. Do we feel better eating on the MacLaine of Lochbuie’s tartan with extra yellow? Do we digest our food better on that excess of color? We’re not forced to eat haggis, porridge or Scotch pie on it, nor do we have to necessarily cross the street when the technological warbling birds urge us to do so. The auditory symbol of you-can-cross-the-street is a warbling bird, and the symbol of warmth and an intimate home is the tartan of the MacLaine of Lochbuie clan, which we can quietly enjoy with its warm tones, warmer today than in 1610 thanks to Raventós and Mireia.

Once again, we shouldn’t blame the manufacturing-design team, although Fiona and Alastair would tell them off, the poor things, so from another century – they wouldn’t understand that their tartan had become public domain. We’ve forgotten Fiona’s efforts to avoid looking like the Sinclairs, an effort that has now been chromatically modified. Fiona, let’s share Mediterranean recipes on your digitally-formatted tartan. Do you like the dishes with the apple-apricot-strawberry border? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have your dishes decorated with apples, apricots and strawberries rather than clocks, sandals and lungs? And since it’s for food, why not stick with the theme of gastronomy and draw little stomachs around the edge? Who decided against stomachs? I look at the other side of the bowl and see that my dish was Made in Italy: PETRONE DESIGN. The architect is once again from another peninsula.

– Fiorella Petrone (partially translated for convenience sake): Yes, I tell you before that I want pleasing set of dishes, but stomachs too much risk Stefano. Non sono divertenti, gli stomachi.

– Stefano Gatti (industrial designer, also partially translated): Why no, Fiorella? You yourself talk of a line with great risk, you insist to move away from the classics, because they are boring you with the mele, albicocche e fragole.

– Fiorella Petrone: Lo so, lo so, ma… Senti, Stefano, that is what I say before, but now I change my idea: it is too much. Let us stay with apples, apricots and strawberries. They will give a better result, trust in me.

In between seasons

But what happens if this time we’re the ones who don’t want Fiorella and Stefano’s apples, apricots and strawberries on the border of our dishes? We’ve already swallowed Raventós Textiles’ genetically modified/transgenic Scottish plaid and their re-appropriation of Chinese calligraphy. We’ve been taking it for entire seasons, Mother’s Days, Father’s Days, Christmases… but it’s all over: tomorrow we’re going to the linen section of a department store where, with a mixture of disdain and relief, we will systematically rule out the Oriental, African and Aztec designs in chocolate and orange tones with crude drawings done by fake indigenous people. And we would go down the escalator empty-handed if it weren’t for the fact that we still have the “color” white: there it is, nude and defenseless, with its lack of connotations, there for us to cling to after definitively abandoning all excess communication. Maybe with white dishes, white oven mitts, and white towels, apparently void of any visual messages, we could save ourselves some time and instead pay attention to more productive tasks. We could finally rest in the absence of color: maybe Fiorella and Raventós have opted for white in some of their collections to repent the sin of omission, of non-communication. They would save on ink, which would be the first domino in a set of advantages, followed by others that would fall one after another, once they’ve finally made their decision.

We cross our fingers, since Raventós is already asking Mireia to come to his office to discuss white. You can hear him all the way from here: he’s proposing something about towels. You want the fringe to have drawings, curves, lines? Wow, we forgot about the texture! And even though we can’t see Fiorella and Stefano together in Milan, we can assume that they are already testing out new designs on white, introducing Braille texts on tiles, dishes. There is no escape: Petrone Design’s new line of products will be called BRAILLE. It will feature just that, texture; your fingers won’t rest even though your vision will: that’s the idea. Furthermore, white will bring us elegance, simplicity; it will fill the house with new adjectives. We will be forced once again to cross when the light is green and to not touch for danger of live wires.

Translation of "Un pequeño problema" by Ginés Cutillas

A small problem

I stopped using a watch the day my left hand disappeared. It took me a while to get used to the idea of its loss, but I thought that my right hand would be enough for daily tasks.

The disappearance of my knees was more complicated, since although my feet were still there, there was no connection to the rest of my body, so I had to leave them in the shoe closet. The most logical place I could find.

The day that I woke up without any hips, I thought about going to the doctor. He couldn’t find any explanation for what was happening to me. Painkillers and rest was his advice. But that didn’t work.

After my hips, my left arm followed, then my torso, my back and my shoulders. Which caused my right arm to fall off, which still led to a hand. All by itself, it crawled to the shoe closet and crept inside, I guess it didn’t want to feel lonely.

And there I was, with my head and neck stuck to the floor like a wild mushroom.

The last thing I was able to think, before disappearing completely, was: "Maybe she's forgetting about me."

Translation of "Victoria y derrotas" by Ginés Cutillas

Victory and defeats

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main.”

-John Donne

In the seven years he’d been shipwrecked on that island, he hadn’t missed one day of sending a message in a bottle for them to come rescue him from his prison of water. He was so sure that his prayers would be answered, he never moved from the beach where he landed that first night when he was swept in by the sea.

When he ran out of bottles he had no other choice but to leave the shore.

After traveling for two days, he reached the highest point at the center of the island where he could see the entire perimeter, especially the sparkling shoreline on the other side, where the current had decided to accumulate each and every one of the bottles he had trusted in.

Translation of "La Extraña" by Ginés Cutillas

The stranger

I woke up next to a stranger. Although what's really amazing is that every time I blink a different woman appears.

Now all I think about is keeping my eyes open the day she comes back.

Translation of "Contradicciones" by Ginés Cutillas

Contradictions

Last night someone rang my doorbell at three o’clock in the morning.

I hoped it was her.

Just in case, I didn't open the door.

Translation of "Matrimonio" by Ginés Cutillas

Marriage

They tried the missionary position one more time, the one that had driven them so crazy months ago. They tried new creams with unusual flavors, hard-to-find sex toys, they even insinuated inviting someone else in. Neither one of them wanted to admit that the magic was gone.

                

Now in their respective cars, they breathed a sigh of relief and were turned on by the mere thought of who was waiting for them at home. 

Translation of "Anacronismos" by Ginés Cutillas

Anachronisms

Atila changed the channel to see Cassius Clay beating on Mike Tyson while the dinosaur, embarking on the ship that would take him to Pluto, watched as Noah came back to pick up a pair of tamagotchis that forgot to get on and called Jesus on his cell phone, who was waiting at that moment for the pizza scooter that would bring the food for the last supper, in which I would get up on a chair to proclaim my unconditional decision to the entire world, to fall in love with her.

Translation of "Simbiosis" by Ginés Cutillas

Symbiosis

The writer decided to kill his character at the end of page seventy-three. The latter, in disagreement, not only reappeared on page seventy-four, but also in the three following novels. Tired of each other, they agreed to a truce with the suicide of the former.

Translation of "Notas falsas" by Ginés Cutillas

False Notes

He chose the melody carefully. It had to be catchy enough and unusual. The next day, in the office, he spent the entire day whistling it to his colleague. When his wife got home that night humming the melody, his suspicions were confirmed.

Translation of "Fusilamiento preventativo" by Ginés Cutillas

Preventative execution

"We know your secret. If you don't kill Rubén Ramos, we'll make it public.” That was all the note said. Being the most powerful man in the country means you sometimes get anonymous messages like this. No matter how much I think about it I can't figure out who could have written the note. I don't even know any Rubén. Why would they want him dead? Just in case, I ordered his arrest and execution. I didn't have a choice, imagine the scandal if my secret became public. On the other hand, I don’t really know what secret they were referring to.

Translation of "El koala de mi armario" by Ginés Cutillas

The koala in my closet

A koala lives in my closet. I know it sounds strange, but one night, at five in the morning, a noise woke me up. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t believe what I saw. A koala was zig-zagging towards my closet. He opened it, curled up among the folded clothes and closed the door.

At first I thought I was dreaming, but after getting up to check, I realized that the koala had been living in my closet for who knows how long. Since he was sleeping peacefully, I felt bad waking him up. So I closed the door and went back to bed thinking about what I would tell him the next day. But when morning came, I hadn’t thought of what to say (what do you say to a koala that lives in your closet?) and so the days passed. I never said anything to him. One night, when he was late getting home, I was worried and didn’t turn off the lights until he showed up while I pretended to be asleep. If he came home really drunk I even helped him get in, sure that he wouldn’t remember the next day.

He knows that I know that he exists, but we’ve reached a non-verbal (and non-written) agreement to ignore each other.

I'm writing this while eating at the table. He's sitting in front of me, chewing leaves, right in front of the TV. I pretend not to see him.

Translation of YARDBIRD by Ignacio Ferrando

(for Pablo Insua)

I’ve always wanted to learn how to play the sax so I could go up on the roof of our building on summer nights, with the neon lights of Sweep’s in the background, and play Yardbird suite, while the French girl from the third floor, who’s lost both her arms, poor thing, observes my silhouette and wonders who’s the crazy guy with the sax. That’s why I signed up for private classes. When I explained my initial need (and my only commitment to my dreams) to Salva, my music teacher, he told me that no one learns how to play the sax for such an odd reason, “insolvent” was the word he used, and I reproached him, perhaps too vehemently, on whether those of us in wheelchairs, and I paused, don’t have the right to dream, to become Charlie Parker for a moment and play on the rooftops of the neighborhood so that women who look like the Venus de Milo can listen to us. Because my French girl, I continued explaining to Salva, looks like the Venus de Milo, with no arms and her hair petrified in a Greek bun that never gets disheveled. You could say that I know her body from memory, I explained, that I’ve caressed each of her curves, including her nubile breasts and that I’ve suffered from unjust provocation. Because since the French girl moved into the apartment across from me, I’ve been creating, with my hands, in her honor, replicas of the Venus de Milo. I’m not bad at plastic arts, so I make them out of plaster, bronze and marble. Sometimes I give them away or I destroy them or I sell them or I continue creating my own personal army of mutilated beauties.

- So why don’t you give them arms? – Salva asked, taking the instrument out of its case.

For a teacher, he didn’t seem to understand anything. I couldn’t expect him to just get it like that though, out of the blue, in the first class.

- If she had arms she wouldn’t be the Venus de Milo.

She would be something else, but not a Venus de Milo, I explained, besides, if she had arms, what position would they be in? as if she were posing for Vogue magazine? as if pretending to wait for the local train? as if thinking, what time do I have to go to the dentist tomorrow? No, I have my own theory about classic cruelty and there are tragedies that, inevitably, have to end badly and the Venus de Milo is beautiful, among other things, because she doesn’t have arms. Like my French girl. I understand that her creator, some Alexandros or Agesandros or something like that, thought of putting an apple in her hand, because the apple is the symbol of Milos, but later he must have changed his mind and threw that arm with the apple far from the river, so that nobody would ever find it near his Venus.

- And what does that have to do with the alto sax?

- Too much – I responded -. I don’t believe in metaphors, but I’ve resigned myself to believing they’re just a part of the nature of things and raw material for artists. As a musician, you should know that.

Salva looked at me distantly and merely charged me for the first class. He extended a receipt towards me and before giving me the paper, looking me in the eyes he said:

- You know?, there’s something about playing in that wheelchair. I’m not going to lie: when you play sitting down, your diaphragm’s obstructed and the notes come out sounding hollow. The truth is that, if you continue, it’ll be a big problem.

- More than a problem – I responded smiling – it’ll be an obligation.

He shrugged his shoulders and told me that classes were Tuesdays at 7, and that I should be punctual. We played in a basement on Ferrocarril Street, in a small, dark room with no ventilation that was far from the neighborhood rooftops I’d been dreaming of. There were no stars there, no moon, no antennas, no sheets in the breeze, no windows with lights, no cats annoyed that you’ve usurped their territory. The efflorescence of the walls and the posters of Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins (who, incidentally, was Salva’s favorite) made it sound sort of padded, like the sunken bells of a ghost town. The notes, to use the musical terminology, were born sick, covered in mold and upholstered with rust from the depths. I confess that, since the first class, I was impatiently waiting for the month of August to come so I could get out of my wheelchair and go up on the roof to play Yardbird suite, forgetting all about that dark practice room.

Yes, there was another student, his name was Mateo and he was an old man, skinny, a small thing, with grey hair and a very focused look. He was the oldest student there and had spent years learning scales, but whenever he got to the high “A” he turned red like a tomato and was out of breath. The worst, Salva told me, was that he suffered from shortness of breath and that over time, with each passing day, he was farther and farther from the possibility of successfully completing the scale.

- It doesn’t surrender itself to just anybody. Without pain, and Sonny knew that well – Salva said looking at the poster on the wall – no one can play the sax.

On the poster, the black man appeared in one of his shows in a dive in New York, with his wide-brimmed hat, sweaty, eyes closed, kissing the mouthpiece and caressing the perfect curves of the sax. He seemed to surrender himself entirely to every note. Salva had a theory. He thought that Saint Teresa of Ávila and Sonny Rollins, when they reached ecstasy, were not as different as people may think.

After practice, when I got home and closed the door, all the Venus de Milos were there to greet me in single file, identical, flogged by the intermittent neon light. Under their watch, attentive and military, I made dinner. Afterwards I told my small legion about how my day had gone, what progress we’d made and the little time left, not even six months, until that night in August. We worked on the details and they were proving to be efficient, strong and feminine.

I practiced a lot that winter and it cost me a pneumonia. When I pushed the footrests down on my wheelchair, my lungs whistled like Mateo’s when he finished his peculiar rehearsals of do-re-mi-fa-so-la… Sometimes I got tired and wanted to throw in the towel and Salva said to me:

- If you don’t have the need it means you don’t have the feeling. No self-respecting feeling can be controlled.

Salva was an intelligent guy, with a good ear and instinct, but he was too used to noise. Little by little we were building a common cause together. Tuesdays, at practice time (finally I could escape from my mass production Venus factory) we were able to get more out of the sax than any other therapy, more than any catechism class. Our convictions closed in on the frontiers of friendship.

By Christmas vacation I’d already begun basic scales and by February I was mastering the language. I learned quickly under the watchful eye of Mateo, who kept doing his own thing, without making any progress with the scale’s high notes, without dying of envy. In March, Salva told me I was ready to start with the first notes of Yardbird suite. It was the second happiest day of my life. To show him how happy I was, the following Tuesday, I gave him a Venus, a 1.2-meter-tall one, in stuccoed plaster. The texture of stucco is as close to the texture of real skin as I know. The skin of Salva’s Venus was velvety and smooth, not shiny. I remember that while we were practicing, the delivery guys knocked on the door and brought her down as if she were a gymnast on parallel bars. Salva signed the delivery slip and looked at me skeptically.

- I just wanted to thank you for the classes – I told him.

Mateo, in the frenzy of his scale, in a suicidal, terminal “A,” was out of breath. The deliverymen left her next to the poster of Sonny Rollins. Truth is they didn’t make a bad couple. She had traveled across the distance of centuries and he was playing for her in New York, leaning in, attentive, as if he’d finally found his muse.

Salva moved closer to her with curiosity and touched her shoulder, the left one, the one that was lower down. Then he slid his hand along the curve of her stomach, along her waist, along her plaster hips and along the folds covering her legs. Nobody touches a stone like that unless they desire it, I know from experience. And I felt jealous or something similar to jealousy. I guess that small infidelity served for Salva to understand a lot of things.

- And your French girl, is she this hot?

I didn’t answer him, I rotated my chair towards the corner, opened my leather case and putting the mouthpiece together, I began to practice.

* * *

I suppose it’s important to have a motive that dignifies the tenacity of a sacrifice. One day, already in the month of July, I ran into the French girl in the doorway of our building. She was getting back from grocery shopping, with a bag hanging from her left shoulder with a bunch of parsley and two loaves of bread sticking out. I had never spoken to her before. She was wearing blue jeans and a white cotton blouse, loose-fitting with red edges, no bra. We said good morning according to the languid protocol of good neighbors and, when the elevator arrived, she asked me to hold her shopping bag. She opened the door with her foot and leaning on her stomach, with the weight of her entire body, pushed my wheelchair forward. I could feel the closeness of her skin, the accidental graze of her chest and the mischievous brush of a hanging piece of her hair. Up close, the Venus de Milo smelled softly of violets, wild berries, something archaic and almost childlike. While she pushed my wheelchair to the elevator platform I could feel the heat from her abdomen, a kind of intense radiation. I’ve always thought that if one is close enough to a woman and breathes her in, her neck, her hair or her arms, even though it’s only a mere gesture of courtesy and she doesn’t even realize it, one captures something of her, an indivisible portion of her soul, breaking off a piece of her like a kiss or a caress, but much more intense, a fragment of her that leads, on its own, to an unstable labyrinth of memories. As a general rule, for a man in a wheelchair, this kind of pleasure, almost poetic, is the only gift reserved for us by desire.

Once we were inside the doors closed and there was a dense silence, indescribable, something completely empty that lasted until the third floor. In the mirror I could see her reading the elevator plaque, “450 kg., in case of emergency stay calm”… On her back, at the edge of her blouse strap, was a tattoo that looked like a robbin, or a baby snake, or something like the Norwegian coastline. She realized that I was studying her and turning around, she gave me a sad, impossible smile. The piece of hair that had escaped from her bun fell across her forehead like a spring. I would have liked to ask her if she liked music, if she knew who Charlie Parker was and if she had listened to his amazing sax in Yardbird suite, I would’ve liked to introduce her to her fan club, to her army of impersonators, but the elevator got to the third floor just in time, with an abrupt, muffled boom.

- Will you be ok alone?” – she asked me.

It took me a while to respond. When one disconnects from reality, the same as when one goes out into an outdoor space, one needs a phase of decompression, to reconnect with the world.

- Sure, sure.

And the doors of the guillotine closed, cutting her vertical image, transforming her into a reflective steel surface. Then, I looked away.

That afternoon, for the first time, after thinking about it a lot I dared to modify the resin molds. In two years I hadn’t changed them even by a millimeter. I took my chisel and on her back, between her shoulder blades, I drew a shadow, a snake or a robbin or a Norwegian fjord and when I finished I looked at it from a distance and thought yes, it looked like the French girl’s tattoo. I shaved a few millimeters off the curvature of her shoulders and on the tunic, near her groin, I smoothed over the plaster form with my fingers, over the impossible fissure of her stomach. I then took the rest of the Venus de Milos and, one by one, I destroyed them, breaking them into powder and rubble.

* * *

A stage manager always demands the best. He meticulously prepares each act, studying each and every move of his actors, utilizing the decorations and atmospheric conditions. Every gesture is important and nothing can be left to chance. That’s how I wanted it to be that night, calculated, predictable. When the heat came and with it the month of August, I had already learned how to play the sax and I easily managed the notes of Yardbird. Sometimes the same thing that happened to Mateo happened to me, my diaphragm closed and the notes wouldn’t come out no matter how much I wanted them to. Salva observed me from behind his score.

- Maybe you should wait until next year, I think you’re still a little weak.

But I knew it wasn’t true, that desire has its own laws, chemical laws, any moron knew that, and that chemistry and its molecular connections lose intensity over time and become unstable and I looked at the poster of Sonny (who was enjoying his eternal romantic relationship with the Venus right now) and imitated his gestures, his surrender, his body bent over and his soul escaping from the bell of his sax, wailing. His eyes were closed and the sounds emerged like the bellowing of a mammoth against the padded echo of the basement.

We’d spent the last two weeks in suffocating weather, around 40 degrees Celsius. On television, the weather reporter said that that night would not be cloudy, nor would the next and that, throughout the week, and she made a resigned pause, no changes were expected, that the sky would be clear and cloudless. I confirmed on the calendar that the moon was gaining its last quarter and that that night, it would be full or almost full. I’d calculated its trajectory against the black background of the night, I’d written down the lunar coordinates and I’d obtained the precise angle and position where I should sit so that the French girl, from the third floor, saw in me what I wanted to show her. Of course Charlie Parker would never have accepted playing in a wheelchair. The cats were in heat and they’d been restless for days, trying to catch the males’ attention with their purring. Some neighbors had gone to the beach and on the terraced rooftops, to confuse the thieves, sheets and shirts waved in the breeze for weeks. Most of the people who’d stayed slept with their windows open, letting the suffocating wind invade their bedrooms. Sometimes, in the middle of the night you could hear a piano. There was a man who, punctually, leaned out the window to smoke in a tank top. He spent the time looking at the stars or down to the end of the street and then he threw the butt and was lost in the darkness of the last-quarter-moon. Another lady sat in a rocking chair two floors below and read a thick novel for a while. She would fall asleep there, with the book on her chest.

Yes, that night would be perfect.

There was only one question, one small detail, that was beyond my control and that didn’t pertain to routines, or forecasts: the French girl had an air conditioner. I could see the machine hanging over the façade, dripping like a slug, with its fan whirring. That’s why she closed the windows and pulled the curtains shut. Sometimes, in the darkness, I could see her silhouette crossing behind the yellow curtains, in the direction of the bedroom. How could I be sure that she’d come to the window when she heard my sax that night on the rooftop. Yes, it was an eventuality that had to be considered. I thought all afternoon and only one plan occurred to me. Someone must be with her when I start to play and at the right moment, open the window, look up to the rooftop and say something like who’s that crazy guy with the sax, come here, look at that and point with their finger at my silhouette against the liquid moon…

- You’re crazy.

- No, no, it’s just that you’re the only one I can trust. Only you know what I stand to lose.

- I’m just your teacher.

- It’ll be really easy, you just have to pretend you’re a neighbor from the building and when she asks what you want, ask for a little salt or oil or improvise whatever you want, I don’t know. Meanwhile, Mateo and I will prepare everything up there, on the roof and when it’s the right time, you open the window and say…

If Salva accepted it’s just because there are men who move on the instinct of curiosity. We’d gone too far, he reminded me, and it wasn’t a good idea to let everything go to waste because of a mere question of qualms.

That night, before the designated time, I called them to my apartment. I spread out a plan of the neighborhood’s rooftops on the table and marked my position with a little red flag.

- Mateo, you’ll go over here, and you – I told Salva – in this area. At 12:20 you open the window and look up at the roof – I said pointing to the other point - Is that clear?

Mateo and Salva looked at each other. Then, like in an action movie, I told them we had to synchronize our watches, that everything had to turn out perfectly.

- What do you think we’re going to do rob a bank or something – Salva responded laughing.

I looked him in the eyes. I suppose there are silences as clear as any response. Mateo gave me his alto sax, a SELMER with the mother-of-pearl keys and wooden reed he had brought me. When I looked at him, he seemed emotional, as if he were handing over the keys to a destroyed city or as if that instrument were some kind of generational witness.

Since the extermination of my Venuses, only a few days earlier, I had made four new ones, all with that small robbin on their backs. I warmed up for a few minutes, while they positioned the Venuses facing towards the window, in the orchestra of the theater my apartment had become. Salva noticed the robbin detail and wanting to make a last joke asked me:

- What? A touch of modernity?

But I didn’t answer him. I don’t know if Salva ever understood. That night he left confused. Maybe that’s why he became a musician, because he felt uncomfortable when someone wasn’t making any noise. We heard him walk up and down the hallway and finally, disappear into the floors below. The elevator didn’t go up to the top floor, so I leaned on Mateo to go up to the roof terrace. When we went outside, absolute silence filled everything. The city was cut up in a chaos of plans and lines below an asphalt horizon.

- Come help me.

Leaning on Mateo I jumped over the small, brick overhang and dragged myself with my arms to the eaves. From where the French girl was she would only see me, waist up. I could still see Mateo for a few seconds, with bright, intense eyes. Later he turned around and disappeared on the roof terrace.

The city, seen from up there, was like a beast that offered the nape of its neck to be caressed. The disorderly chaos of the rooftops extended out to the soccer fields, in the outskirts of the city. It was really hot that night and it was hard to breathe. An ambulance passed with the siren on. The neon sign of Sweep’s, at my back, buzzed like a mosquito every time it changed from fuchsia to blue and from blue to fuchsia. I could see the patio and the lit-up window of the French girl. Once I got comfortable, I looked at my watch: 12:10. The time was drawing near. I thought for a few moments, privileged seconds, about those of us who prepare ourselves our entire lives for something. These seconds deserve extra consideration, a less insignificant measure, reducing their ephemeral condemnation. I took Mateo’s sax and put the mouthpiece together. The neon light, reflected on its metal body, produced a hypnotic effect, a curve of light. Far away, maybe on a television, I heard a fight between a man and a woman. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and put my black felt hat on, like Parker’s, tilted towards the front.

12:20. I filled my lungs with air, positioned the sax further out, separated from my body and closed my eyes, concentrating on the keys. Then I let all the air out, a moderate, measured flow. But only a trumpeted nervous sound emerged in the middle of the night, a kind of metallic murmur similar to what Mateo did in practice. “The sax doesn’t surrender itself to just anybody” I reminded Salva. I looked towards the window but didn’t see anyone. Two cats, small bumps on the overhang, observed me lazily, licking their paws. If everything had gone right Salva should’ve already been in the window. I tried to blow again and this time the sound was like the fury of a prolonged Viking horn. The man in the tank top had come out on time and was looking at me from his window. The old lady in the rocking chair had just gotten up to close the window and her expression didn’t leave any room for doubt. And suddenly I saw it, a shadow coming closer to the window, a shadow with arms, I thought. At any moment, the curtain would be opened and I’d see my French girl. But the window didn’t open and Salva stayed there for a while. Past 12:20. The silhouette of the Venus came closer to Salva. Their shadows were almost superimposed. They were very close to each other. And then I understood and everything shifted, inside and out, as if my lungs, my ribs and my stomach were being emptied out, and their contents, guts and intestines, were replaced with an alkaline, bitter substance. I guess Sonny felt the same that night in the club in New York. The man in the tank top put out his cigarette against the geranium pots and closed the window and only then, without any audience, without any fear, I leaned over my sax and began to play. I looked at the curtain and saw their two shadows together, practically joined as one. That was the last lesson from Salva, without pain, he told me in the first class, nobody can play the sax and I filled my lungs as much as I could and blew with controlled force, exhaling my soul, selling myself without any conditions, holding onto the instrument with both hands, as if it were the waist of the Venus and I kissed her lips of metallic plaster and the first sounds emerged, hasty, distant, necessary and I think I smiled, I lifted the instrument up in front of me and let out the notes, one after the other, so that they’d spill out over the rooftops, so that they’d fall like liquid over the streets and dignify how fleeting those privileged seconds were. Yes, I let my soul become oxygen and let the oxygen fill my lungs and from my lungs emerged the heartbeats of Yardbird suite or my soul became Yardbird suite. Then I saw her, with no arms, with her petrified bun, in her window, watching closely. Two, maybe three seconds. Never again. I don’t know if you’ve ever hear Yardbird by Charlie Parker. It’s not a sad song, nor is it melancholy, but rather more like a windy Charleston, relatively happy and without too much conviction. When I looked back, the light in the room had been turned off and the air conditioner rumbled in the middle of the night.