Peruvian Short Stories: An Anthology by Stories From Peru

ANTHOLOGY OF PERUVIAN LITERATURE

First published this edition in 2014 by SFP London www.storiesfromperu.com Copyright ÂŠ Stories From Peru. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of OUP.

Índice

1. The Solution by Julio Ramón Ribeyro.

2. Voices by Fernando Ampuero.

3. Distant by Jorge Eduardo Benavides.

4. Everyone, out in the Square by Ricardo Sumalavia.

5. Back to Front: A Story by Pedro Novoa.

6. Cousin Arturo by Doménico Chiappe.

7. To Serve a Man by Alejandro Neyra.

8. The Argentine Writer by Sergio Galarza.

9. Red Wine at McDonald’s by Gunter Silva.

THE SOLUTION By Julio Ramón Ribeyro Translation by Ruth Clarke

“So, Armando, tell us, what are you writing now?” There it was: the dreaded question. They had finished their dinner and were sitting in the living room of Armando’s cliff-top villa, drinking coffee. The half-open window looked out over the streetlamps lining the seafront and the winter fog as it rose up from the cliffs. “Don’t pretend you didn’t hear”, Oscar insisted. “I know writers don’t like to talk about what they’re working on sometimes. But you can trust us. Give us a preview.” Armando cleared his throat, looked at Berta as if to say ‘our friends are so annoying’, and finally lit himself a cigarette and decided to reply. “I’m writing a story about infidelity. As you can tell, it’s not a very original subject – so much has been written about infidelity! Think back to The Red and The Black, Madame Bovary, Ana Karenina, to name just the masterpieces… But actually, I feel drawn to things that aren’t original, the ordinary, the well-used… On that note, I’ve put my own spin on something Claude Monet said: the subject matter, for me, is irrelevant. What matters are the relationships between me and the subject matter… Berta, why don’t you close the window? The fog’s getting in!” “As an introduction, that’s not bad”, Carlos said. “Now let’s get to what it’s really about.” “I’m coming to that. It’s about a man who suspects his wife is cheating on him. I should say, first of all, that in twenty years of marriage, or more, this thought had never entered his head. The man, let’s call him Pedro, or Juan, whatever you like, had always trusted his wife implicitly and, as he was also a liberal, modern man,

he let her have what they call “a life of her own”, and never made her account for anything.” “The perfect husband”, Irma said. “Are you listening to me, Oscar?” “In a way, yes”, Armando went on. “The perfect husband… Anyway, as I was saying, Pedro, let’s call him that, starts to doubt his wife’s fidelity. I won’t go into details about where these doubts come from, but what we do know is when it happens he feels like his whole world is crashing down around him. Not only because he was deeply in love with his wife. Not with the passion of youth, of course, but perhaps in a more lasting way, with understanding, respect, tolerance, all those little kindnesses and concessions that come from having a routine, and which form the basis of your married life together.” “I don’t like routine”, Carlos said. “Routine is the denial of love”. “Possibly”, Armando said, “Although that just seems like something to say. But, let me go on. As I was saying, Pedro suspects his wife is cheating on him. But because this is just a suspicion – all the more distressing for it’s not definite – he decides to look for proof, and while he’s looking for proof of this affair, he discovers a second affair, which is even more serious because it’s been going on for longer and is more passionate.” “What proof was there?” Carlos asked. “When it comes to infidelity, proof is hard to come by.” “Let’s say letters, or photos, or accounts from people he can completely trust. But that’s not the important thing at this point. What we know is that Pedro sinks even deeper into despair, because now he’s dealing with not one but two lovers: the most recent one, who he suspects he knows, and the older one, of whom he thinks he has proof. But it doesn’t stop there. As he continues to investigate the frequency, severity and circumstances of this betrayal, he discovers the presence of a third lover, and when he tries to find out more about this third, he uncovers a fourth… “ “A real Messaline, you mean”, Carlos cut in. “How many did she have, in the end?”

“For the purposes of the story, I’ll make do with four. It’s the right number. I could have made it more, but that would have given me some compositional problems. So, Pedro’s wife had four lovers. And all at the same time, too, which shouldn’t come as a surprise as all four of them were very different from each other (one quite a bit younger than her, another older, one very cultured and polite, another more ignorant, and so on and so forth) which meant they could satisfy the different appetites of her body and mind.” “And what does Pedro do?” Amalia asked. “I’m coming to that. You can imagine the terrible state of anguish, rage, and jealousy he must be in in this situation. Many pages of the story will be dedicated to the analysis and description of his state of mind. But I’ll spare you that. I will just say that, thanks to his tremendous willpower and above all his exacerbated sense of propriety, he doesn’t let his feelings show and resolves, alone, without confiding in anyone, to find the solution to his problem.” “That’s what we want to know”, Oscar said. “What the hell does he do?” “To be honest, I don’t know either. The story isn’t finished. I think Pedro contemplates a series of alternatives, but I still don’t know which one he’s going to choose … Berta, can you pour me another coffee, please? In any case, he tells himself that when life presents us with an obstacle we have to eliminate it, to get back to the original situation. But of course, there isn’t one obstacle here, but four! If there were only the one lover, he wouldn’t hesitate in killing him…” “A crime?” Irma asked. “Would Pedro be capable of that?” “A crime, yes, but a crime of passion. As you know, criminal laws all around the world contain provisions that mitigate the punishment in cases where there is a crime of passion. Especially if a good lawyer shows that the perpetrator committed the crime in a violent state of passion. Let’s say Pedro was prepared to run the risk of a murder, knowing that given the circumstances the punishment wouldn’t be too bad. As you can see, killing one of the lovers wouldn’t actually solve anything, as he would still be left with the other three. And killing all four 9

would be a very serious crime, a massacre really, which would earn him capital punishment. So Pedro dismisses the idea of a crime.” “Of crimes”, Irma corrected. “Right, of crimes. But then he has a brilliant idea: to set the lovers against each other, so they eliminate themselves. He imagines the idea like this: since there are four of them – and now you understand why that number worked for me – I’ll have a kind of knock-out, like in a sports tournament. Setting two against two and then the two winners, that way at least three of them will be eliminated…” “Now it’s sounding like a novel”, Carlos said. “What the hell does he do? In practice, I don’t think it works.” “But we’re in the world of literature, that is to say the world of possibility. Everything rests on the reader believing what I’m telling them. And that’s for me to worry about. So, Pedro divides the lovers into One and Two, and Three and Four. By anonymous letters or phone calls or some other means, he reveals to One the existence of Two, and to Three the existence of Four; all using a gradual strategy and treacherous technique that let him provoke in his chosen killer not only the most terrible jealousy, but a passionate desire to annihilate his rival. I forgot to tell you that Rosa’s lovers – let’s make that the wife’s name – were fiercely in love with her, thinking that only they were the keepers of her heart, and that’s why the revelation that they have competition hits them just as hard as it hits Pedro.” “That is possible” Carlos said. “A lover must be more jealous of another lover than of the husband.” “To sum it up”, Armando went on, “Pedro carries the whole thing off so well that lover number One kills Two, and Three kills Four. So that leaves just two. And with these two he goes through the same process, so that lover One kills Three. And then the survivor of this bloodbath is killed by Pedro, which means he personally commits a single crime, and as it’s just the one and motivated by passion, he gets a lenient sentence. At the same time, he achieves what he set out to do, which is remove the obstacles in the way of his love.”

“I think it’s ingenious”, Oscar said, “But I still say that in practice it just wouldn’t work. Suppose lover One doesn’t actually kill Two, he just injures him. Or lover Three, however much he loves Rosa, is incapable of committing a crime.” “You’re right”, Armando said, “and that’s why Pedro rejects this solution. Setting the lovers against one another so they take themselves out of the equation isn’t viable, in reality or in literature.” “What does he do, then?” Berta asked. “Well, I don’t know, myself… like I told you, the story’s not finished. That’s why I’m telling it to you. Can’t you come up with anything?” “Yes”, Berta said. “Get divorced. Nothing simpler!” “I’d thought of that. But what would divorce solve? It would be a pointless scandal, because one way or another, a divorce is always scandalous, even more so in a city like this, which, in many ways, is still quite provincial. No, divorce would leave the problem of the lovers and Pedro’s suffering exactly how it was. And it wouldn’t even satisfy his desire for revenge. Divorce wouldn’t be the right solution. I was actually thinking of another one: Pedro throws Rosa out of the house, after he’s shown her the proof of her betrayal and given her a piece of his mind. He brutally throws her out onto the street with all her belongings, or without them. That would be a manly and morally justified solution.” “I think so, too”, Oscar said, “A real man’s solution. You cheated on me, it serves you right! Now you’re on your own.” “It’s not that simple”, Armando went on. “I don’t think Pedro would go for that solution either. Mainly because throwing his wife out would be almost unbearable, when what he really wants is to keep her. Throwing her out would make her even more dependent on her lovers, drive her into their arms and further away from him. No, throwing her out of the house, although it’s possible, doesn’t solve anything. Pedro thinks the most sensible thing to do would be the opposite.” “What do you mean the opposite?” Irma asked. “Leave home, disappear. Without a trace. Leaving just a letter, or not leaving anything. His wife would understand the reasons for this disappearance. Leave 11

and head for a far-off country to start a new life, a different life, new job, new friends, new wife, and never have to account for anything. And even supposing Pedro and Rosa have children – although it would be better if they didn’t, that would make the story too complicated – but Pedro would leave, abandoning everything, including his supposed children, because romantic passion comes before paternal passion.” “So Pedro leaves. Then what?” Berta asked. “Pedro doesn’t leave, Berta. He doesn’t leave. Because leaving isn’t the right solution either. What would he gain by leaving? Nothing. In fact, he’d lose everything. It would be a good solution if Rosa were financially dependent on Pedro, as she would at least have that reason to suffer his absence, but I’d forgotten to tell you that she had a personal fortune (rich parents, family wealth, whatever), that means she could get by perfectly well without him. Besides, Pedro’s not a kid anymore, and it would be hard for him to start a new life in a new country. Obviously, him running away would only benefit his wife, who, once she was rid of Pedro, would give more attention to her relationships with her lovers and could have as many as she liked. But the main reason is that while Pedro would successfully settle and prosper in a far-off city, and as they say “start his life over”, he would always be tormented by the memory of his unfaithful wife, and by the pleasure she was still deriving from this deal with her lovers.” “It’s true”, Amalia said. “Disappearing is just crazy.” “But this option of running away has a variation”, Armando piped up. “A variation I quite like. Let’s say Pedro doesn’t disappear without a trace, but simply moves into another house after a calm explanation to his wife and an amicable separation. What could happen then? I think something is possible, at least in theory. But that requires some expansion – if I may? I think lovers are rarely better than husbands, not intellectually, or morally, or as human beings, not even in bed. What happens is that the relationship between a husband and wife gets contaminated, corrupted and devalued by day-to-day life. It’s disrupted by hundreds of problems, that come from living together and cause constant disagreements, from how to raise children, if there are any, to unpaid bills, what furniture needs to be replaced, what to have for dinner…” 12

“Who you need to visit or invite over”, Oscar chipped in. “Exactly. These problems don’t exist in the relationship between wife and lover, because their relationship operates exclusively on a sexual level. The wife and lover only meet to make love, leaving all their other concerns aside. The husband and wife, on the other hand, take home and constantly face the burden of their life together, which makes it impossible, or difficult, to be romantic. This is why I’m saying that if the husband leaves home, the barriers that get imposed between him and his wife would disappear, which would leave the way free for a pleasant relationship. In short, what I mean is that an amicable separation would have the advantage for Pedro of lumbering the lovers with the day-to-day problems, and all the trouble and destruction they cause for romantic passion. Pedro, in distancing himself from his wife, would actually get closer to her, as the lovers would end up taking on the role of the husband, and he that of the lover. Living in closer proximity to her lovers, thanks to Pedro leaving, and only seeing him occasionally, the situation would be reversed, and from then on the lovers would get the thorns and the husband the roses. Or in Pedro’s case, the Rosa.” “That all seems very eloquent and well set out”, Oscar interrupted. “Reversing the roles with a strategic withdrawal. Not bad! What do you all think? If you ask me, it’s the best option.” “But it’s not.” Armando said. “And believe me, I’m sad that it’s not. An author, however cold and objective he might want to be, always has his preferences. Oh, it would be wonderful if things could work like that! Preserving his status as husband and being her lover at the same time. But this solution has at least one flaw. The main one, in any case, is that Rosa is probably already sick of Pedro and can’t stand to have him near or far, as her husband or her lover. Anything related to him is tainted by the life they shared, which means that, even though they’re not living together, she would only need to look at him for the ghosts of their domestic experience to be resurrected in her mind. The husband carries with him the burden of their past marriage – which would always prevent him from approaching his wife as a stranger.” “All in all”, Carlos said, “it looks like Pedro’s running out of options.”

“No, there are still other options. Just to do nothing, accept the situation and carry on with his life with Rosa as though nothing had happened. This solution seems intelligent and elegant. It would show understanding, realism, a sense of cohabitation, and even a certain nobility, a certain wisdom. I mean, Pedro would accept that he had a pair, or rather four pairs of magnificent horns and resign himself to the fact that was now part of the corporation of cuckolds which, as we all know, has no membership limit.” “Hmmm!” Carlos said. “I don’t agree with that. Of course, it would show a broadness of mind, absence of prejudices, as you say, but I think it would be rather undignified, humiliating. At least, I wouldn’t stand for it.” “Me neither”, Oscar added. “So you listen, Amalia. When we get home, let this be a lesson to you.” “Oh, our husbands!” Amalia said, “What a bunch of chauvinist pigs!” “But this alternative has its advantages”, Armando insisted. “The main one is that, by accepting his situation, Pedro would keep his wife by his side. A wife who’s cheating on him, of course, and who physically and spiritually belongs to other men, but who is there, at the end of the day, within reach, and who might offer him the occasional random gesture of affection. He wouldn’t get to keep her body or her soul, but he would keep her presence. And I think that seems like a marvellous proof of love, on his part. Proof we should all take our hats off to.” “A hat which Pedro would never get on his well-decorated head”, Oscar said. “No, clearly I don’t think it’s a good idea to accept the situation. Going along with it, in this case, makes him less of a man, less of a husband.” “Possibly”, Armando said, “but I still think it’s a considered solution that would require a certain magnanimity. Perhaps it’s better to be unhappy beside the woman you love, than happy away from her… But still, let’s say this isn’t a good option either.” “He can’t kill the lovers…” Carlos said. “He can’t throw his wife out of the house, and he can’t disappear, or divorce, or get used to the situation. So what’s he left with? I must say your character’s got himself in quite a mess.” “There’s still another way”, Armando said. “A clean, straightforward way: suicide.” 14

Irma, Amalia and Berta protested in unison. “Oh, no!” Irma said. “No suicides! Poor Pedro! To be honest, I think he seems like a nice man. What about you Berta? You have influence over Armando, persuade him not to kill him.” “I don’t think he’ll kill him”, Berta said. “The story would turn into a vulgar melodrama. And anyway, Pedro’s too clever to commit suicide.” “I don’t know whether he’s clever or not”, Oscar said. “After all, that’s your assumption, but the situation is so messed up that he’d be better off shooting himself. Don’t you think, Armando?” “Shooting himself?” Armando repeated. “Yes, shooting himself… But what would that solve? Nothing. No, no, I don’t think suicide is the right way to go. And not because it’s a melodramatic ending, as Berta says. I love melodrama; I think our lives are made up of a series of melodramas. The thing is that this solution would be just as bad as disappearing without a trace. With the aggravating factor that it would be a disappearance with no chance of coming back. If Pedro leaves home, he still has some hope of a return, and even a reconciliation. But if he commits suicide!” “True.” Carlos said. “I’d always rather have a return ticket in my pocket. Although, it’s not a ridiculous solution. If Pedro commits suicide, he erases himself from the world, he also erases Rosa, and her lovers, and that means he erases his problem. Which is one way of resolving it.” “You’re not wrong”, Armando said. “And I’m going to reconsider that hypothesis. Although there’s a big difference between resolving a problem and avoiding it. And anyway, who knows! Maybe Pedro’s pain is so bad that it would follow him beyond the grave!” “Your character is in real trouble”, Oscar yawned. “I can see you haven’t found a solution to your story. But our story is that it’s after midnight and we have to work tomorrow. And we do have a solution: leaving without any further ado.” “Wait”, Armando said. “I’d forgotten another option…” “There’s another one?” Berta asked. 15

“And one of the most important. Actually, I should really have mentioned it at the start. It’s also possible that Pedro could come to the conclusion that Rosa isn’t being unfaithful to him, that all the evidence he’s gathered is false. As you all know, in matters like this, the only proof is flagrante delicto. All the rest of it – letters, photos, accounts – can be discounted. Maybe he misinterpreted it, maybe there are fake or inauthentic documents, or malicious witnesses, anyhow, circumstances that lend themselves to an unfounded accusation. And the truth is, Pedro hasn’t got all the evidence.” “That’s it!” Oscar said. “You should have started there. You’ve had us going round in circles over a problem that didn’t really exist. Shall we get going, Irma? “Wouldn’t you like a cognac, or a mint?” Berta asked. “Thank you”, Carlos said. “Armando’s story has kept us entertained, but Oscar’s right, it’s getting late. Anyway, Armando, I hope next time we meet you’ll have finished your story and you can read it to us.” “Ah!” Armando said. “The most interesting stories are generally the ones we can’t find an ending for… but this time I’ll do what I can to finish it. And with the right solution.” “Would you fetch us our things, Berta?” Amalia said. “I’ll fetch them”, Armando said. “You and Berta make arrangements for the next meeting.” Armando went inside, while Berta and the two couples said their goodbyes. Where will the next dinner be? At Carlos’ place? In a fortnight? In a month? An urgent bang came from the back of the house. They stood, paralysed. “You’d say that was a gunshot”, Oscar said. Berta was the first to run down the corridor, just as Armando reappeared carrying a bag, a scarf and a coat. He was pale. “Strange!” he said. “That kind of coincidence could be quite disconcerting. While I was looking for a tablet on my bedside table, I moved my revolver and I don’t know how, but a shot went off. It went through the table drawer and ricocheted off the wall.” 16

“You gave us quite a fright!” Oscar said. “That’s how accidents happen. That’s why I never carry weapons. Be more careful next time.” “Pah!” Armando said. “There’s no need to exaggerate, either. After all, nothing happened. I’ll see you out.” The seafront was still shrouded in mist. Armando hoped the cars would start, slid the latch on on his way into the house, and went back to the living room. Berta was taking the dirty ashtrays to the kitchen. “The girl will tidy up in here in the morning. I’m really tired now.” “I, on the other hand, am not at all sleepy. That conversation gave me some new ideas. I’m going to work on my story for a while. You haven’t told me what you made of it…” “Please, Armando, I told you, I’m really tired. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.” Berta went to bed and Armando headed off to his study. He spent a long time revising his manuscript, crossing words out, adding words in, making corrections. Eventually he switched off the light and went into the bedroom. Berta was asleep on her side; her bedside lamp still on. Armando looked at her blonde hair spread out across the pillow, her profile, her delicate neck, the way her body moved as she breathed under the eiderdown. Opening the drawer in his bedside table, he took out his revolver and, stretching out his arm, shot her in the back of the head.

Julio Ramón Ribeyro (Lima, 1929-94) is considered one of the greatest Latin American shortstory writers. Born and raised in Peru, he spent much of his adult life in Paris. He published dozens of books, including novels, plays, journals, and essays. His best-known collection of short stories is Los gallinazos sin plumas (Featherless Buzzards, 1955). In the year of his death, he was awarded the prestigious Premio Juan Rulfo de literatura latinoamericana y del Caribe. His work has been translated into numerous languages.

VOICES By Fernando Ampuero Translation by Anna Heath

I easily recognised it was her Juan Ramón was talking to me about, because I’d noticed particular details from the beginning: the tailored suit, the old-fashioned tortoiseshell frames, the carefully-made bun. ‘You have to have seen her, Fernando. It was a week ago, last Tuesday.’ ‘Yes, I did!’ I said, completely sure. At about seven, the light had been fading from the sky. I’d been watching her for at least ten minutes, and it wasn’t at all difficult to recall her once more, as if she was right in front of me. She was a short, pale woman, and, looking at her properly, quite delicate, although it looked as though she made habitual attempts to appear otherwise. She had a severe, almost manlike expression. How old could she be? I would say thirty-one, thirty-two at most, but later Juan Ramón told me she was exactly twenty-seven. It was her, no doubt about it, and she was also with a boy, a child of about eight. She, the child, and I, and three other individuals whom I did not know, had been waiting in the little waiting room at Juan Ramón’s surgery. It was a fresh, well-ventilated place, on the twelfth floor of a modern building in Miraflores, with colourful plants, and comfortable armchairs. Juan Ramón is an ear, nose, and throat specialist, but above all, he’s an old friend. His friendship allowed me to pretend I had a serious illness, and skip to the front of the queue. He immediately welcomed me in. Later, about twenty minutes later, he would summon in the woman in the tailored suit. Some people are good at remembering images, I reflected. Others, situations. My memories come from everything: images, situations, even sounds, like in films. When it comes to this, what I always thought about was the mother’s relationship with the boy… she was looking out for the child, because from time to time he would lose his temper. The poor boy had such a bored face! And I can see that before me now, I can just see him. 18

The child was rushing around the little room from one side to the other, which gave rise to tellings-off from her, or he kept still, silent, absorbed, with his hands against the glass of a window, contemplating the night, scattered with little twinkling lights. ‘The curious thing is, Fernando, that same day I was talking to you about weird cases that come to the attention of ear, nose, and throat specialists. Do you remember?’ How could I not remember? I had been to see him that day for an examination of my ears. At some point, I had been afraid that my problem could also be classified as weird. Juan Ramón cut straight to the point as soon as he ushered me in. ‘What’s wrong with you, Fernando?’ ‘Nothing serious, I hope’, I said with the worry of every defenceless mortal who goes to the doctor, ‘but let’s say that when the television is on at home, the world might end, and I wouldn’t even realise.’ I was nurturing the hope that everything would come down to a piece of earwax, as a colleague from the newspaper had predicted. ‘Are you deaf, or just a bit deaf?’ he asked with a smile. ‘A teensy bit more than a bit deaf.’ ‘Well, mate, let me examine you’, he said, and started to look me over with a little torch and a videoscope monitor. Half a minute later, he concluded: ‘What you have is swimmer’s ear, Fernando. But not to worry, it’s just fine. It’s really very common.’ If his diagnosis required such a declaration, I would have preferred him to come out with something more like what I was actually feeling. ‘What about a change of metaphor,’ I answered. ‘I think I have more of a stonecutter’s ear, or smelter’s ear, or of whatever the work of those poor guys with ear protectors is, the ones who go in front of the aeroplanes and can’t think straight because of the thundering of turbines.’ 19

‘What do you mean?’ I think that, more than not hearing, I confuse sounds. For example, a car horn goes off in the street and I say to my wife, who is in another room: ‘Just coming, my love, wait for me a second.’ It’s a bit ridiculous, I know. Patricia comes up to me every so often to ask, ‘Who are you talking to?’ Juan Ramón burst out laughing. ‘Reassure her that you’re just a little deaf, not crazy,’ he said. And suddenly, going back to his professional tone, he added: ‘And with regards to what you say about metaphors, you’re making a mistake. I have not used a metaphor. I have simply described the condition of your ears, which is exactly the same as many people who do water sports or use a pool, as in your case. People who are exposed to or go through water with their ears, causing their cartilage to grow in size. It develops into a kind of wall of defence, stopping the flow of water towards the ear canal. It’s a natural defence. Now, the negative consequence of this is that you hear less.’ That was when our chat, as Juan Ramón would say, changed direction to the strange anomalies of other patients. ‘Although, in that patch of confusing sounds by thinking they’re voices, some people go beyond that. There are people who hear entire speeches.’ ‘How many phrases?’ ‘Two or three in a row.’ ‘Extraordinary!’ I said. ‘That must have been what happened to Ginsberg.’ ‘To Ginsberg? Who is Ginsberg?’ ‘A poet… a poet I interviewed in New York. He told me that he was not the author of his poems. He said that he considered himself just a simple secretary, seeing as how he only heard voices, some voices that dictated verse to him. All of his work consisted of copying them down in a notebook. Naturally, I interpreted that as lyrical exaltation of an artistic fact, of literary creation. But perhaps I was wrong, right?’ 20

‘I don’t know,’ said Juan Ramón with a smile. ‘To give you an answer, I’d have to examine the ears of the Ginsberg man’ – I refrained from telling him that would no longer be possible, since the poet had died just a few days earlier, and carried on listening to him increasingly attentively. ‘But, you can take for granted the fact that he, Ginsberg, is only one of a whole number of writers in those circumstances… What do you think happened to the unknown writers of the Bible? They also heard voices. To be more precise, they heard voices all the time, almost as if they were listening to the radio. In the stories of the Old Testament, the powerful voice of Jehovah resounded innumerable times speaking to the Jews from heaven, not to mention the infinity of angels and archangels with celestial recommendations appearing every two pages,’ – and suddenly excited, Juan Ramón got into pathological territory – ‘Oh, Fernando, we could talk about that topic for hours! You have no idea! A colleague of mine, who lives in Philadelphia and gives talks in North American universities, knows the most enormous range of cases. He’s met people who hear voices at certain times of the day, very specific times. He talked to me once about someone who hears them from nine o’clock to ten o’clock in the morning, and the rest of the day he lives normally.’ ‘But who are these people? Mental patients on a schedule?’ ‘Well, yes, it’s a type of schizophrenia. Although not all those who suffer know this, and that’s exactly why they end up in the ear, throat, and nose surgeries. They think their illness has a physical, auditory cause.’ ‘And what do the specialists do in these cases?’ ‘Theatre.’ ‘What?’ ‘Theatre, a bit of theatre’, repeated Juan Ramón. ‘Look, mate, a lot of the modus operandi of various professions depend on a command of the stage. You need to observe the patient serenely, nod your head comprehensively, and smile to lift their mood. Bringing up a couple of specialised terms can be propitious, affected and ambiguous enough to not say anything, but communicating the sensation that you’re arriving at an essential point. With this theatre, in short, the doctor can gain time, and find an exit. 21

Nevertheless, to once and for all get to what interests us here, one thing is to say what people usually do, and another very different thing is to demonstrate it in facts.’ Juan Ramón’s theatrical theory found the rare opportunity to confront itself with practice immediately, and the truth is that, as the curtain went up, my friend stumbled. He lost his poise, his emotional control. They were certainly only a few seconds, but that was enough to send up his theory. The following appointment with the woman with the tailored suit and her child was to reveal this. ‘It was a unique appointment from the start,’ Juan Ramón was saying now on the terrace of his beach house, where he had invited me to have a drink. A week had passed now, in which we hadn’t seen each other, and, if he had overcome the embarrassing impression of the experience, something had roosted in his soul, like a remnant, like the side effect of a strange frustration. ‘To start off with, the child, who was obviously the one I had to examine, or she would have come alone, did not respond to any of my kindly, welcoming gestures, dodging them entirely, as if he could not trust smiles. I shouldn’t have been surprised at that. Children do not like doctors, and in that respect they are very transparent with their feelings. But I suspected something strange, without determining what it was. Later, I realised the mother’s worry, a logical worry, especially when one’s child is ill. But that, too, could have made me feel suspicious. More than a worry, she actually felt uncomfortable about her child’s attitude… Juan Ramón decided to rebuild the scene of that consultation, exactly as if it were a theatre set. Or, at least, that’s what I imagined: the woman and child, formally attired, sitting opposite his fine mahogany desk; he, in an impeccable black coat, making notes in a new notebook. ‘I don’t know what to do with my son, doctor,’ she said. ‘But I hold onto the hope that you will help me put an end to his problem.’ ‘Throat, or ear problem?’ ‘Ear.’ ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He can’t hear well, doctor. That’s to say, he can hear some things and not others… To begin with, of course, I thought that he was behaving that way out of sheer rudeness. But now, I don’t know how to put it… I think there are things he really can’t hear.’ The child, silent and with his hands interlaced, looked askance at his mother. Juan Ramón was going to proceed with his routine preliminary questioning, but he ran out of steam. Impulsively, he sat up from his seat and bent down to the child, trying to whisper something in his ear. Then he asked him: ‘Did you hear what I said?’ ‘Yes,’ the child murmured. ‘What did I say?’ ‘You said, “Kids have red feet”.’ Juan Ramón winked at him. ‘That’s right,’ he said, and, turning around for a second towards the mother, he vouched for it: ‘It’s not a problem with poor hearing.’ The boy seemed normal in his reactions to the conversation between the three of them, but at times, he found him hostile and even afraid. As if he thought that they wanted to annoy him, as if he didn’t like the world of adults. Whatever it was, he knew perfectly that the only way of forming an opinion demanded other tests: examining him with the otoscope, or taking an audiogram. That would take him a certain time. He immediately steered himself to a bend in the surgery, about to get his instruments ready. Meanwhile, he distractedly proceeded to his questioning, threshing out questions, collecting every kind of information about his young patient. The woman very conscientiously provided the answers. The child didn’t suffer from chronic illnesses, he had never had inflammation of the ear, he didn’t listen to music on his Walkman, he didn’t use cotton buds in his bathroom routine, and there was no family history of deafness. At every answer, Juan Ramón eliminated possible causes. Until, at one of them, the woman blurted out something that had nothing to do with anything. She affirmed that the father of the child, from whom 23

she was divorced and whom she hadn’t seen for two years, had flat feet, and that her son had inherited this unpleasant malformation. Juan Ramón was on tenterhooks, as if this information was crammed with secrets, and noticed that the child was looking at his feet. Then, concentrating again, or pretending to concentrate on the place where the cable connected to his light, he suffered a light coughing fit. ‘There’s a question I haven’t asked you,’ he said, then, slowly, ‘Can you tell me what your son hears, and what he doesn’t hear?’ The woman looked up, and answered, ‘It’s not important what he hears, doctor. He hears the television perfectly, noises in the street, and you and me when we talk. What worries me more is what he doesn’t hear. He never obeys what my mother tells him, or what my father tells him either,’ and, facing the boy, she added, ‘Is it true what I’m saying, or not?’ ‘Yes,’ the boy said sulkily. ‘And why don’t you?’ the woman insisted. ‘Because I don’t hear them,’ said the boy. ‘So you see, doctor. He says he doesn’t hear them.’ Juan Ramón felt obliged to intercede. ‘Why don’t you hear your grandparents?’ he asked. ‘Do they talk very quietly?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said the child. ‘Don’t you get on well with them?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t hear them.’ The woman shook her head energetically, as if sending a signal that everything happening to her son was making her very nervous. Managing to calm her down, Juan Ramón then turned to her. ‘And have you lived with your parents for a long time?’ he asked.

‘Yes, since I divorced,’ she said. ‘As soon as I got divorced, I moved back to my parents’ house. That must have been three months before the accident.’ ‘Before what accident?’ ‘My parents’ accident,’ the woman talked more quietly now; her son, who wasn’t looking at his feet any more, had put one of his little hands on his mother’s lap. ‘My parents died in that horrible accident, the one where the aeroplane fell down to the sea, a year ago.’ Juan Ramón observed her in silence, seized by a slight trembling, as if a window had suddenly opened on a freezing drought. ‘But I talk to them every day, doctor,’ she continued. ‘At breakfast time, before I go to work, and also at night, before I go to bed. At home we all watch TV together, and we have really long, animated conversations. My parents are very talkative. But this boy doesn´t even notice!’

Fernando Ampuero (Lima in 1949). Studying at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, he works as a journalist and broadcaster. His fictional oeuvre includes the novels Caramelo verde (1992), Puta linda (2006) and Hasta que me orinen los perros (2008), works forming an urban trilogy centred on Lima. He has also written several collections of short stories: Deliremos juntos (1975), Malos modales (1994), Bicho raro (1996), Mujeres difíciles, hombres benditos (2005), and Fantasmas del azar (2010). Other books are the travel accounts Gato encerrado (1987) and El enano, historia de una enemistad (2001), and the play Arresto domiciliario, performed in 2003. His work, translated into various languages, features in well-known national and international anthologies.

DISTANT By Jorge Eduardo Benavides Translation by Anna Heath Raúl loves snow, which is a white and delicious thing we could make into lemon sherbets and ice creams if we could always eat them up. Unfortunately, Raúl has never seen real snow, although he would like to, especially at this time of the year when it falls in Europe and some parts of Spain. In winter people wear coats because it´s really, really cold, more than in Lima anyway, which is a grey and sad city, especially since Raúl´s mother went to Spain to work and send money to him and his father, who worked in construction, although recently he stays at home, lying in bed, looking at the ceiling and not constructing anything. Raúl also works. He sells chewing gum and cigarettes on the microbuses, which are like buses but smaller, and although sometimes the drivers get upset because they say it annoys the passengers, he always manages to get on and sell something, never much, but enough to be able to eat a sandwich and a juice. Sometimes he´s lucky and can buy himself something for his llama to eat, because in Peru there are lots of llamas, which is a bit of a strange animal, between a horse and a camel. As everyone knows, the Peruvians are descendants of the Incas, a great people conquered by the Spanish a long time ago. A long time before Franco died, who was a man who inaugurated reservoirs all day. Raúl doesn´t work that much because he goes to school in the mornings, and then he has to do his homework, just as he promised his mother the day she left for Spain and asked him to please study hard and not become a sponger like his father. When Raúl´s father heard this, he was extremely pissed off, but it was already time for the aeroplane to take off and everyone hugged each other and cried a little, mainly his mother. So on the days Raúl doesn´t want to study or prefers to stay outside selling cigarettes and chewing gum, he suddenly remembers his mother and wants to punish himself for being a sponger, and he goes home to do his homework. Raúl writes in some old notebooks that the teacher has given him. His teacher also wants to go to Spain, and Raúl feels something similar to pain when she talks about the country, because it always seems that she is about to go, as many people really do nowadays. 26

Raúl misses his mother above all at this time, when Christmas is coming and he walks through the centre of Lima, which is the capital of Peru, pressing his face against the brilliant shop windows, where there’s an enormous amount of toys that he’ll never be able to buy. Now he doesn’t even dare to insinuate this to his father, because he’s always pissed off, and takes his llama and -wow! – he goes to look for work in construction and returns at night angrier than ever because they have no money. Raúl´s father also gets a little sad at Christmas, and sits at the table for hours, not saying a thing, staring at the calendar because he knows that at the end of the month, the money his mother is sending them from Spain will arrive. With that money they can live, although it´s never much, of course. Raúl´s mother always writes to him, and last Christmas she also sent him a present, a Ronaldo shirt. Raúl really likes getting letters from his mother. He likes smelling them a little before he opens them and reads them many times, lying in his bed, until he almost learns them off by heart. In her letters, Raúl´s mother always tells him about things in Spain, where she works as a cleaning lady, in someone´s house. The husband is a lawyer and the wife is a teacher. At the start, Raúl´s mother cried a lot because she missed her son, and also her husband, although he´s a bit of a sponger. Now she doesn´t cry as much any more because three years have gone by, and although she always thinks about those two, about how much she wants to see them, she knows that it’s the best thing for everyone. At least this way Raúl is able to eat, and buy himself shoes, and feed his llama. Raúl´s mother is saving money to be able to pay for Raúl and his father´s aeroplane tickets. Then everyone will be together, especially now that Christmas is coming. They live apart, and this is totally unfare. ‘Mum, is unfair with ARE?’ ‘No, with AIR.’ Paco looks out of the window and sighs. The snow is falling thick and fast and Curro and Manolo will probably be playing happily, while he has to finish the homework they asked him for in class and he still hasn’t finished, because he was thinking about Christmas. Christmas is an especially happy time in Spain. The streets are decked with an infinity of lights and wreaths, people walk about hurriedly making their purchases, and they all receive presents, since as well as 27

the traditional Three Kings, lately they also have Father Christmas, so Christmas is flooded with gifts: toy cars, soldiers, Nintendos, computers. And there are always sweets and food. Here nobody starves to death and everyone has coats for the cold, and in summer they go to the beach in their own cars. There they play, drink wine and eat paella, which is a special yellow rice. Also they like ham, and potato tortillas, very tasty traditional meals. In Spain everyone has work and they live happily in their own homes, and it doesn’t matter if it’s cold or if a tremendous rain falls, because they always have heating and hot food. Spain isn´t as big as Peru, but it has a big population and that’s why they could conquer the whole of America, except the United States, which is bigger and people speak English, which is why you can’t understand them. The thing is that in Spain, Christmas is the best thing in the world, and Paco, after writing his essay about this momentous holiday, will go out to play in the park. As he lives in Madrid, he most likes to play at snow fights with his friends, and then go away skiing or skating. He also goes out to play catch, then he comes back home and eats cakes and pies all the time. Paco’s dad is a bull-fighter and his mum is Andalusian. As they have lots of money they can give each other all the presents in the world when Christmas arrives, and they also go away travelling whenever they feel they’d like to. Paco likes to go to his grandparents’ town. They are retired and have the national health service for their infirmities, and when his mum and dad can’t take him, he takes the Metro and in ten minutes he’s in Barcelona, in Real Valladolid or in Sporting de Gijón, that are other cities in Spain, very clean and well taken care of and each one has its own football team, although Paco supports Real Madrid, where Ronaldo, Raúl, and Sidane play, who are players that Alianza Lima or Universitario de Deportes would have right now. Paco also likes bulls a lot, like all the Spanish, and when he grows up he wants to be a bull-fighter, just like his father. Or a footballer, although in Spain there are more bull-fighters than footballers, and that´s why the good footballers are taken away to South America. This Christmas Paco is going to ask his mum and dad for a bull-fighter costume, and he´s going to go and practice in the bull-fighting field that is very close to the park where he plays football with his friends. But Paco´s mum and dad´ll give him a load of other presents and then they´ll travel 28

all over Spain having amazing fun and they´ll have a really good time. As Paco´s parents are very good, they will definitely also take the Peruvian lady who does the clining with them, food and everything they need. They´ve had this lady at home for three years and they say that they´re lucky and she also says that she´s lucky because she could have had different people, who do not pay well and exploit immigrants and sometimes they even kill them. But they´re not like that. They know that this lady is Peruvian and that she has a son the same age as Paco, a son she misses a lot, above all now that Christmas is coming, which is a date when the family should be together. To them, that this lady could live so far away from her loved ones is completely unfare. ‘Dad, is unfair with ARE or AIR?’ ‘With AIR. I think.’

Jorge Eduardo Benavides (1964) Studied law and political science at the Universidad Garcilaso de la Vega. From 1991 to 2002, he lived in Tenerife; there, he was a regular contributor to the cultural supplement Diario de Avisos and the editorial director of Siglo XXI. In Tenerife he also founded and directed the literary workshop Entrelíneas, after having taught creative writing at the Casa de la Cultura de Santa Cruz and the Universidad de la Laguna. He has published two books of short stories, Cuentario y otros relatos (Okura 1989) and La noche de Morgana (Alfaguara, 2005), as well as the novels Los años inútiles (Alfaguara, Madrid, 2002), El año que rompí contigo (Alfaguara 2003) and Un Asunto Sentimental (Alfaguara, 2012).He was shortlisted for the prestigious Rómulo Gallegos Prize 2003 and won the Julio Ramón Ribeyro nouvelle Prize 2009.

EVERYONE, OUT IN THE SQUARE By Ricardo Sumalavia Translation by Ruth Clarke

Before I arrived in the village, nothing led me to suspect that tonight there would be a secret meeting about the murder of a certain Ramiro. In fact, I had very little to do with the man; and it’s not his loss that brings me here, but the discovery that it was my friend Lucas who killed him. A group of neighbours came to look for me as soon as I got back from the city, to persuade me to come to the square. I noticed it had been remodelled; and now that nobody’s attention is on me, I can see it looks even stranger because of the number of people coming and going, with all their questions and comments. From amongst the crowd a fat, sweaty woman emerges, claiming that she had been there when they killed Ramiro, and trying to give me as much information as possible. She’s acting as though she’s known me for years, and the truth is I can’t recall having ever seen her before. But that’s not important. She’s talking about Lucas and doing so as though he were a despicable human being. This woman is irritating: she grabs my shirt, shrieks and goes on with her accusations. I’m on the verge of giving her a reaction, and if I contain myself it’s only because I realise that nobody around me is disconcerted by what she’s saying. I’m reluctant to accept these assertions about Lucas. The two of us used to live two streets from this very square and we were always good friends. He never stopped writing to me when I had to travel and be away for long periods; and he never mentioned any kind of grudge against Ramiro. Most of his letters just referred to his love life, his amazing collection of butterflies, and his book of dreams. I need a way to show them Lucas is innocent, or else a way to convince myself he’s guilty. I’m sure they’re all aware of my friendship with Lucas; but a skinny man with a thin moustache, I think his name is Antonio, confuses me by trying to take me up to a tired, solemn looking individual who it seems is the victim’s younger brother. The others gather around and ask me to take them to Lucas’ 30

hiding place. Like I’m supposed to know where that is! I shrug my shoulders in response and they get even more worked up. Two men come up to me and I manage to recognise them; they went to high school with Lucas and me. One of them has confirmed him as the killer. He says the two of them had been winding each other up for months and it was only a matter of time before one of them set out to kill the other. My friends leave me so they can join the mob.It’s impossible to quell the excitement in the crowd. The man with the skinny moustache raises his voice, almost shouting; he calls for people to go looking for Lucas, saying Ramiro’s death must be avenged. Everyone agrees amidst the cries. An anonymous, highpitched voice calls out that Lucas is hidden six streets from here, in the attic of the house where Lina, the prostitute, lives. We start walking up. And I don’t know how, but after a few minutes, I find myself leading the march, with Ramiro’s brother at my side. We take a firm grip on the knives they pass to us. Neither of us has tried to speak. We’re close, and I can see the attic from here. The lights are out. It seems like there’s no-one there; but I know Lucas is waiting for me. Ramiro’s brother has moved back a few paces. All the shouting has deafened me. At the entrance to the house I lift my head and everything upstairs looks calm. Only then, before I start to kick down the door, do I imagine Lucas sitting on the edge of a bed, pulling the pins out of his butterfly collection.

Ricardo Sumalavia (Lima, 1968)He has been a lecturer at the Universidad Católica del Perú and coordinator of its Centre for Oriental Studies. He spent several years in South Korea, working as a teacher. He currently teaches at the Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3, France. He has published short story collections: Habitaciones [Rooms] (1993), Retratos familiares [Family Portraits] (2001) and Enciclopedia mínima [Encyclopaedia Minima] (2004), and two novels: Que la tierra te sea leve [Let the Earth Lie Light on You] (2008) and Mientras huya el cuerpo [While the Body Flees] (2012).

BACK TO FRONT: A STORY By Pedro Novoa Translation by Anna Heath With my eyes in bits of sleep, and my mouth in bad breath, I woke up in the morning after a long and eventful night. It had left me turned upside down. A wince of boredom drew my mouth and part of my nose, and immediately a yawn filled in the rest of my face. I picked up the newspaper with the latest word, as well as the fresh milk from the foot of the door, and, bending over, I leafed through the dairy, its cream, its misfortune. I added a little coffee to the newspaper, and drank it with the serenity of knowing that it was Sunday, and that if nothing at all funny happened, then Sunday would carry on for the whole day. Nothing at all decided to happen for a few minutes, while the television watched me and changed my channel all the time, thanks to a small but effective device. The telly got bored of me quickly, and the remote control ended up turning me off. The armchair was fed up of shaping my bottom, so it stood me up. I rang, and the handset took me by the ear. A woman´s voice, between apologetic and stupid, pleaded, ‘Manuel, are you coming?’ I told her I was, and asked her if the guy she´d been going out with a few months ago would be there. ‘Yes, you know, we´re a couple now, and my girl has got attached to him, and…’ The phone went dead. It was pointless to carry on holding it in my hand. It shook me off. The calendar, circling today’s date with a red circle, was shouting out my daughter Rosita’s birthday on the wall. Written above it were the words ‘don’t forget that you promised her you’d write a story about the dinosaur who lived upside down’. The calendar was right on time. I went to the bathroom, so that the mirror could see me. But it had its complaints. I had to shave and have a shower to make it happy. The mirror looked at me again and decided I’d improved a bit, but it still didn’t like my natural smell. The deodorant remade my armpits, and a cheap perfume remade my skin. A towel threw itself round me from the waist down, and whipped me off to my room. 32

A shirt, underwear, and my trousers dressed me quickly. It was that evil watch that was hurrying them. The tick tock was running with sprinter’s trainers. A tie began to string me up. I was able to escape thanks to some shoes that took me back to the living room. The window watched me, and saw the roads crossing their pedestrians in different directions. Posts were urinating, as always, on their favourite dogs. A church, sitting in the entrance of a beggar, put its hand out asking for spare change. There was no doubt about it: the city walked through the street on its head, the sky was the floor. It was then that I understood why drunks and hooligans spit on it and piss on it whenever they feel like it. After a second, the computer switched me on. On the screen, I could see the story of the dinosaur that had been writing me for a couple of days. Suddenly, the bell rang someone insistently at the door. As anyone would expect, the door opened for me. It was some pens that were selling an obese and sorry-looking woman. I said I wouldn’t buy anything, and the door slammed on me. After this abrupt and unpleasant interruption, the story on the computer decided to carry on writing me. Funny things, all of them face down and turned upside down, were read there about the dinosaur. Back-to-front things, like that someone´s eyes were in bits of sleep, and their mouth was in bad breath. And to be able to write these final lines, for a short while, I had to stop standing on my head. 1 This story was chosen as a finalist in the 1st annual Axolotl Magazine Literary Contest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in August 2006. It was published in El Dominical, the Sunday edition of El Comercio, on April 28th, 2013.

Pedro Novoa (Lima, 1974) Writer and university lecturer. He was awarded the Peruvian prize for playwriting, the Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia 2004, and the Premio Internacional de Cuento Corto Dante Alighieri for short stories. He has published the novel Seis metros de soga (ed. Altazor), for which he won the Premio Nacional Horacio 2010 in the short novel category, and the novel Maestra vida (ed. Alfaguara), for which he won the Premio Internacional Mario Vargas Llosa. 33

He has contributed to anthologies published in Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, and Peru. One of his stories, ‘Inserte cuatro monedas de a sol, por favor’, was translated into Italian by the writer Gianluca Turconi. It was included in the anthology Schegge di futuro (Splinters of the Future) with the title, ‘Inserisca quattro monete da un sol, per favore’. The Cervantes Institute has published his essay ‘Cristales quebrados y la reconstrucción de totalidades escindidas del “boom” latinoamericano’, a work with which he participated in the conference Canon del Boom Latinoamericano in Spain in 2012.

COUSIN ARTURO By Doménico Chiappe Translation by Anna Heath

Between the greetings towards the end of a letter to my aunt, I asked her again about my cousin. We’re fine around here, how about you? I’ve been writing to her now for a few months, on and off, hoping she will tell me how Arturo is doing, but she always avoids replying. Her letters are short, and she only talks about her grandchildren, who are my other cousin’s children. I started to have my suspicions. She never says anything about him, but I know he is still living with her, even though he is almost forty. A few years ago, Arturo wrote me the last letter that I´ve received from him. Always on paper and by post, in shaky handwriting, and without commas, he wrote: ‘I’m fed up of seeing how the people around me in this city want to be authentic but they all wear shoes.’ Later, he wrote to me: ‘We’ve gone far away and they keep hunting me down.’ My aunt emigrated after her divorce, taking my cousins with her. Arturo was eighteen, and Elisa was sixteen. I was her age. Both of us treated Arturo as if he were our younger brother. We grew up together, we lived in the same building. Gabito used to take the mickey out of him, and Arturo just kept quiet. One night, I found Gabito at a party in my old neighbourhood. He came up to talk to me, and I interrupted him: ‘What did you say your name was? Gabriel?’ ‘Yeah, I lived in the block, but I don’t remember you, who are you? I’d remember your face, you look a little bit like—Arturo?’— ‘Arturo who?’ That night, when I pretended not to remember my cousin, I started to really remember him. When he left, I didn’t even miss him. I’d said goodbye as if I’d see him the next day.

Afterwards, I’d felt relieved. I wouldn’t have to defend his criticism of Yordano any more: ‘A singer-songwriter is someone whose voice isn’t good enough to be called a singer,’ ‘I won’t move a finger is only what morons say,’ and other things that no-one, not even his sister, could hear without wanting to physically spit at him. At that time, the radio played Yordano every four songs, a phenomenon not seen since the Bee Gees. It’s not just that no-one used to look for him, no-one stayed when he arrived. Not even Elisa. Just me. I stayed there, because it was the same listening to him from the patio wall as from the sofa in my aunt’s house. It didn’t seem to bother Arturo that people left. He was noticeably nervous when anyone came up close. My mother asked me to be patient, and to help him in whatever way I could. In June, when he repeated the school year, and then when they let him pass it on the condition that he change school, my mother repeated a refrain she’d heard about bad influences. My cousin Arturo told me that whenever he started to feel comfortable in any school, he would discover that someone was lying in wait for him at the main door. ‘Who?’ ‘Someone.’ ‘What’s he like?’ ‘Like all of them.’ ‘Who? Who are they?’ ‘Them, the same as always.’ He used to study, that’s true, at home, but he went out very little. He started to shut himself away. My aunt said I was his only contact with the outside world. Arturo called me every day. He gave me brainy analyses of things that were of no interest to anyone, only to him. ‘Have you seen that they’ve made Windows in Quechua?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ 36

‘The problem isn’t the language of the programme, it’s in the access to the technology!’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ‘I mean, it would have been more useful if the government had spent that money on computers and on Wi-Fi connections.’ ‘I don’t follow you.’ ‘Instead of going for free software.’ Arturo left his house only if I asked him to. He was almost two metres high, but I felt that he wanted my protection. I didn’t think I could ever defend him, but I wanted to be there as a witness, in case anything should happen. He always used to say that something would happen to him. My mother was saying to her sister that she should take Arturo to see a specialist. In the end, my aunt resorted to the psychologist. He prescribed pills for him, and for my aunt, who couldn’t stop smoking. He made both of their eyes go dark, and their cheeks redder. My aunt fell in love with a colleague when she was on the drugs, and my cousin finished therapy in a year, stopped spinning around alarmingly in the street, and stopped calling me, too. I saw him sitting on the wall at the block a few times, a distance away from everyone, and he came up to me. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked me. ‘Right now? Nothing.’ ‘Have you been to the cinema?’ ‘Not recently, no— I’m saving up’— I responded. ‘And aren’t you afraid they might kill you?’ Arturo was afraid of that. On the day they were leaving, getting into the taxi that would take them to the airport, he said to me: ‘If I manage to get on the aeroplane, you’ll know that I’ve won.’ Then, afterwards, his first letter arrived, with writing he still couldn’t control, and with proper punctuation: ‘Here, there 37

isn’t only one, there are many, all the same, a horrible colour.’ I didn’t know if he meant the typical blondes from up north, or the people who were after him. In another letter, he told me he’d met someone, that he loved her, that he would tell her soon. He stopped writing. When I visited them, Elisa, who now went by the name Laisa, picked me up at the airport. She told me she didn’t have any problem with the language any more, and she even dreamed in English. I asked after Arturo. It feels like he was born here, she said, you’ll see. I realised why she had never interested me: she had the same face as her brother, just that she didn’t widen her eyes as if she was trying to pop the eyeballs out of their sockets. I stayed at my aunt’s house, where I noticed that she was acquiring a rancid colour in her cheeks. On the first night, we stayed up talking, trying to allow more time for Arturo to arrive. ‘And the winter?’ ‘It’s horrible, I’ll never get used to it!’ ‘Me neither.’ ‘The only person who gets on with it is Arturo.’ ‘Sometimes he goes out without his coat.’ ‘Once, he froze!’ I asked them if he ever went out without shoes. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘He couldn’t even take a step!’ ‘You have to experience what it’s like to be twenty below zero!’ I only saw Arturo a week after I’d arrived. He said he’d been very busy with work. He was sewing costumes for a theatre, jobs. It was going well. ‘I have my things here, I don’t want my mother to feel alone, but I prefer to sleep in hotels, always in a different one,’ he said. ‘Are you afraid they’ll kill you?’ I asked him. 38

He didn’t respond. He got up and took out his bicycle. ‘Come on, there’s Elisa’s bike over there! Let’s go out to get some fresh air.’ We arrived at a park, and Arturo set off into the middle of a pine forest, where there was no path. ‘It’s the only place we can talk without them hearing us.’ ‘The same people as always?’ ‘They knew you would come, they were watching the house.’ He told me that they had kidnapped a woman he loved, that the police interrogated him, that they had never found her. ‘Did they kill her?’ ‘She never loved me. She lived with me because she was one of them, she just wanted information. When she got it, she changed identity, and, I’m afraid, her face. And she had the most beautiful face ever.’ We carried on pedalling, and he didn’t tell me much more. I thought he seemed distressed. We got deeper into the forest, which he seemed to know very well. He wanted to start up conversation again, and I tried to make jokes. ‘It’s a good place to bury someone.’ He didn’t reply. I asked him, ‘Do you remember Gabito, and the people from the building?’ ‘I can even smell them.’ ‘In dreams?’ ‘When they pretend they know me, and they look at me out of the corner of their eyes.’ ‘Here?’ ‘Wherever I go.’

In the next few days, I went out a lot with Elisa. I met her intended, and two of her friends. She invited me to the stadium, and to the Hard Rock. I was surprised at the enormous tips she left, and at her kindness in letting me check my e-mail on her computer. But Arturo was out for several nights, until I found him by the hinge of Elisa’s bedroom door. I was looking on the internet. ‘Some day, you’ll regret using that.’ ‘Don’t you ever go online?’ ‘Never.’ ‘Don’t you even have an e-mail account?’ ‘So they’ll know what I’m thinking and feeling, as well?’ ‘There are ways of protecting yourself, with passwords and software.’ ‘I know that nothing of what I can learn will ever surpass the knowledge they already have about ways of subjugating us.’ On the last night, when my aunt was in her room, Elisa knocked on my door. She was wearing a very long shirt, with naked legs. I was watching television. I had just had a shower, and I had put on some children’s perfume. I had used it since I’d been living in the old building. Gabito said that it woke up women’s maternal instincts, that it mixed them up with sexual feelings. He’d said it was an infallible method. Things had not gone badly for me with that trick. ‘You’ve always smelt like a baby.’ ‘I don’t understand this programme.’ ‘It’s a competition.’ ‘So I guessed.’ ‘Tomorrow I won’t be able to take you to the airport, but Arturo wants to know if you’ll wait for him. He’ll come and say goodbye.’ Arturo arrived with a present, a Gameboy with a Tetris game on it. He told me his highest score, and challenged me to beat it. We hugged, and I went out to wait for the taxi. 40

I received a few e-mails from Elisa, over the space of a couple of years. She got married on a golf course, and moved city. Finding herself at a distance from Elisa, my aunt bought herself a computer, and started to forward me jokes and news stories, and sometimes, photos of Elisa’s children. I used to delete her messages without reading them, until the memory of Arturo started to worry me. I wrote both to Elisa and to my aunt. Elisa didn’t reply. My aunt did, saying that she would visit her daughter at the weekend. I asked her about Arturo and Elisa, neither of whom had replied. My aunt told me that Elisa had changed her e-mail address when she’d changed company, but she didn’t give me the new address. She didn’t say anything about Arturo. I wrote to her again. I just asked her about Arturo, I wanted to know about his life, how he was doing. Two days later, my aunt replied with photos of her grandchildren. She wanted me to look at how much the children looked like Elisa. The same eyes, the same mouth. She said nothing about Arturo. DOMÉNICO CHIAPPE (Lima, 1970) is a writer and multimedia author. He has published the nonfiction book Tan real como la ficción: herramientas narrativas en periodismo (Laertes, 2010); the novel Entrevista a Mailer Daemon (La Fábrica, 2007); the book of short stories Párrafos Sueltos (UCM, 2003; Musa a las 9, 2011); and the multimedia work Tierra de extracción (Land of Extraction), which has been selected in 2011 by the Electronic Literature Organization for its anthology ELC2 as one of the best works of multimedia literature in a foreign language. He grew up in Venezuela, where he worked as a journalist, and has lived in Madrid since 2002.

TO SERVE A MAN By Alejandro Neyra Translation by Caroline Maricourt and A. Neyra

From above, I can see them all. From above creatures look smaller and funnier than they are. From above diplomats are also recognisable as a peculiar and unique species. And I won’t talk about diplomats in meetings or cocktails – which constitutes their natural habitat. I mean generally. Manners. Jargon. Odour. Gazes. It is true that every single profession has its own characteristics and vocabulary, but in the case of diplomats, behaviour precedes them. You can smell them. They recognise each other as well, and conduct themselves accordingly. If they would lose their diplomatic attitude in a distracted moment of normality; if they would just recover their humanity for a while, they would immediately recover their diplomatness at the simple observation of another of their kind. Diplomats are – worse, they feel like – legendary beings. Indeed, mythology considers Hermes, Zeus herald, as the first diplomat. Some dare to say that actually angels were the first diplomats since they were – are? – God’s envoys. But it’s clear that since civilisation started and peoples began to realise that cooperation was sometimes better than war, diplomacy started its own sacred history. As a famous saying goes, diplomacy started when first human societies decided that it was better to hear the message than to eat the messenger. From my privileged position – the interpretation booths above those meeting rooms where the corps diplomatique takes shape – I see them all. And I am paid to interpret what they say. That is the correct word, yes. I have to interpret them, to rehearse and play their roles more than just changing the language in which they speak – even though that is what they believe. And they trust us. They don’t see us but they have faith in us. In that way we are also above them all. I cannot tell precisely why I started to do this. But I remember that I was still almost an adolescent when I saw for the first time something that looked like the 42

United Nations. It was strange to find it out on my favourite TV series. I loved The Twilight Zone and it was strange to see aliens arriving at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Probably you know that episode too. The Kanamits, a friendly alien’s race, come to the earth. They make a presentation to the UN in order to deliver their message of peace offering their technology to help us. Representatives of Argentina, France, America and the Soviet Union (never knew why Argentina, when there are many other countries that speak a much better Spanish) speak to the Kanamit’s “Ambassador” and they got convinced of the good purposes and deeds promised by these extremely tall guys. They leave a book with what they offer but it is in their language and they leave the challenge to translate it. In the meantime, they transform arid lands into fertile fields, provide free food to the poor, and finally offer free tours to their planet. Probably then I realised the importance of translation and of the meaning of the words. Because the end of the story is that someone deciphers the name of the book “To serve man”. Everyone believed that it was a guide to assist the humankind, a book of knowledge… and by the end we acknowledge it is nothing else but…a cook book! In The Twilight Zone series everyone spoke English of course but in the background of that episode you could hear some other languages: Spanish, Russian, and French. I was young and even though I had already started my biology studies, I suddenly realised that my future was about to be something different. I started with French and Spanish, and a few years later I was travelling to Geneva to start my internship as an interpreter in the International Labor Office. I did translation as well, of course, and many other small jobs, but afterwards I became one of the specialised interpreters for human rights and humanitarian issues. At this times I must confess that work was a little bit easier. Fewer meetings, fewer countries and fewer diplomats, you know. And it was simpler to predict the statements in a bipolar world, even with the creation of the Non Aligned Movement – the guys that supposedly were neither pro Americans nor pro Russians. But then, even then my task was the same. I am not used to interpret ing languages; I interpret people…that is the great part of my job. How many people have passed by these rooms? I would not even dare to guess. Many. 43

Probably too many. Of course, I remember some. Some leave and come back, sometimes with the same rank, sometimes with a higher rank, sometimes even as High authorities. This is Geneva, the city where everything seems to change but everything is just the same. From above, I could see everything. I mean, I was very interested not only in the speeches, which of course is the main part of the job, but also in the movements of the diplomats. Most of the negotiations occurs behind the scenes. You could see Americans lobbying most Latin Americans or Russians talking to Cubans (I am talking about good old Cold War times of course). They whisper and laugh, got serious and even shout. They behave interpreting the roles of their own countries. Tough big powers have tough – and normally also big – diplomats. Other smaller countries have more humble guys, but they always behave like one of their species. To serve man, you know. Sometimes I could see diplomats flirting with others. That was the funniest part of my job, what I did in my breaks. Anyway, in English, you know, this phrase is innocuous, but in French or Spanish I would have to write the gender, because of course diplomats flirted regardless of sexual orientation. I saw many hidden couples behaving as if no one else would notice… anyone else but us, the Argos of hundred eyes, the interpreters of myriad-eyes. We are the ones that serve men. Or at least the ones that serve diplomats – those who firmly believe they serve mankind. For me that is crystal clear. But I won’t continue with diplomatic stories. Because afterwards diplomats – as peculiar as they are – are just another branch of the homo sapiens, not kanamits. Rara avis, yes, but they are all part the Animal Kingdom as everybody. And I just wanted to tell you a little love story. A small diplomatic love story. I will tell you about that guy. Small – not only from above – and shy he was. Peruvian – dark and eagle-nosed as those men you have probably seen in cards and pictures coming from that exotic country, just if you need more details. But just keep in mind that this is just a small tale and I am a diplomatic interpreter, a lier-teller in a world full of lies. The guy was always there in the meeting room, sitting, talking few times with some other colleagues (never when his Ambassador – another small although very old and grumpy guy- showed up, which occurred sporadically). Sometimes he talked to his Philippine, Portuguese and Paraguayan 44

colleagues, and especially to his Dutch neighbours, but only if there wasn’t that particular pretty Dutch girl, because otherwise he would just remain quiet and silent, intrigued and defenceless. (Here probably I should just make a small explanation. Weird and bureaucratic United Nations rules – in French-speaking Geneva – make Pérou and Pays Bas sit together, otherwise they would be just slightly more far away Peru and Netherlands, which would have made this story impossible). Small and shy, remember. I observed him for long. I don’t recall now, but it was more than just some weeks or months; probably a couple of years watching at him trying to find an urgent sense of courage. I started following him. He took the tramway to his little flat around Plainpalais. I don’t know whether it was luck or coincidence but it happened that I moved very close by. Sometimes in the mornings I could keep an eye on him. He was always reading French Literature. Camus, Sartre, Gide, Mauriac, but also more contemporary French writers like Vian and Perec –whom I suppose were among his favourites. Sometimes he read also poetry, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine. Mallarmé I think was his preferred poet. Literary guy. A vrais connaisseur. You can imagine. Observing from above was different than observing him in the tram. He seemed more relaxed there. A l’aise. Always quiet but never worried, unless a beautiful girl would sit next to him or nearby. I repeat it: small and shy. Extremely shy. And suddenly one day he appeared with a notebook in which he was writing something. I realised that it was not poetry. He was writing some ideas. October 1989 it was. The Berlin wall had gone down. Everybody talked about it. And here was my small friend scribbling some words over a typed page, just before going to the Palais des Nations where a special session of the Commission of Human Rights would be held to commemorate the historic moment. He never saw me and I sat just in front of him. Watching at him there, suddenly I thought that this guy had finally decided to take the floor and say something (and impress her platonic muse). I was worried for him. Probably he would make many mistakes. Probably too many quoting – something that is always unbearable. Probably he would just collapse while taking the floor. I needed to do something, so I started writing a speech. In 45

English, of course, since it is the language most people hear and the basis for my other colleagues’ interpretations. I would do everything at hand to interpret him and if something went wrong I could just start with my own speech. No one cares. Spanish speakers hear always in their language and my colleagues would not notice. I wrote a magnificent speech, I have to admit without humbleness. Short and concise. There is no one better to prepare a diplomatic speech than an interpreter, I can assure you. So there I was, doing my own notes while the guy did his own. And so we came to the meeting. And I waited and waited for Peru to take the floor. I convinced my colleagues that I was friend of the Peruvian guy in order to stay there just in case he would decide to talk about the wall. I was prepared. It was a matter of time…but it never happened. The meeting was long and exhausting. Many took the floor. But Peru was not in the list of speakers. I thought the guy was just frightened, or simply that he was waiting for his old Ambassador to arrive. At the end of the session I saw him approaching to his Dutch neighbours, while the blond girl just smiled at him. And there it came. The small sheet of paper passed to her hands and she just kept smiling, as beautifully as I have never seen again. In fact, she never came back again (he must have known). And he just stood there, with a face full of happiness and innocence. He never came back again either. It was in that historic moment. The wall, Berlin, History. Everything was just an anecdote. He was worried about his insignificant personal History, to bring down his own wall, to find love…his own freedom. I always think about that moment. There he was the small guy, smaller than ever, smiling while she was holding the sheet of paper, without daring to gaze her lips – that tender face that only myself could see from above, where things that matter are observed and interpreted. Here where I am now watching the same old meeting room. I came again and again, even though I retired long ago; just to see diplomats in action, just to see them moving around flirting and plotting. Just to see if some day the small guy appears in order to know what happened next. Did the wall really fell down? How the History ends? And I just would ask him if I could have done anything to serve him… just to serve you, man.

Alejandro Neyra. (Lima 1974) Writer and diplomat. BA in literature from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (2001) and in law from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru (1998). MA in Diplomacy from the Academia Diplomática del Peru (2000) and MA (Hons) en Internacional Relations (MIS) from the American University, Washington DC (2011-2012). Author of the book of short stories “Peruanos Ilustres” (Solar, 2005), considered one of this year’s outstanding publications. He is also the winner of the IV short novel prize 2012 at the Peruvian Chamber of Books with “CIA Peru, 1985”. And winner of Copé de Plata prize in the “short story” category, 2012.

THE ARGENTINE WRITER By Sergio Galarza Translation by Ruth Clarke

The Argentine writer is at the hairdresser’s. He flicks through a style magazine while the hairdresser, a young man they call Flying Hands, follows his instructions. The Argentine writer is as particular about his haircut as he is when it comes to choosing an adjective. He stops at a page where another writer, a long-haired Spaniard – good looking despite a squint in one eye, or perhaps thanks to that strange beauty which stems from the unusual – is describing his favourite winter clothes. The Argentine Writer knows him and envies his squint. He has, in the bathroom at home, hidden away from his wife, taken photos of himself in front of the mirror, crossing his eyes; but he’s never managed to achieve the effect of looking seductive, distracted and insane all at the same time – like this luminary of Spanish literature – because the Spanish writer is also revered by his peers, and for the Argentine Writer there is no greater glory than being the head of your generation. Flying Hands tells him his wife is pregnant, but his client isn’t paying attention, he hasn’t even realised that he’s cut off one of the tips he’d been asked not to touch; he’s as engrossed as when he’s daydreaming that his books are top of the best seller list in Germany. He can’t believe it: there they are right before his eyes, hugging and smiling; him with his perfect teeth gleaming out from his dark face with its rounded features, and her, ashamed to look so happy. He doesn’t know how much longer he can put up with this: that his ex-girlfriend and someone who was one of his first friends in Madrid carry on parading themselves around at literary parties, bookshops and cinemas. He lingers over the photo on the society page like an entomologist admiring an insect he’d like to squash because the fame accompanying its discovery belongs to one of his colleagues. He brings the magazine as close as he can to his glasses. The photo is the biggest of all, and underneath it says it was taken at the opening of a new art gallery. His Ex has changed her hairstyle; it’s longer but uneven, a younger look, a nod to her punk years without getting ridiculous. The Traitor, as he often refers, secretly, in his 48

head, to the man who used to be his friend, is looking younger. The couple pose so tightly embraced, so together, that they seem to share the same skin. Flying Hands, quite the nosy parker, remarks that these two in the photo make the perfect couple. So the Argentine Writer closes the magazine and throws it down on the counter. “Ecuadorian prick, maybe you should go back to your own country”, the Argentine Writer curses at Flying Hands, under his breath, unaware that the hairdresser is actually Peruvian, just like the Traitor. The truth, which the Argentine writer keeps hidden when he’s ranting about the Traitor, his Peruvian friends and all other Peruvians, is that he was the one who left his Ex. He left her for the girl who is now his Wife, whose house he moved into the morning after he broke up with his Ex. But nowhere did his plan feature the part where his Ex fell in love with the Traitor, who, politely, sent him an email to ask whether it would be ok with him if he started dating her. It all happened like one of the stories the Argentine Writer tends to write, where everything appears normal, the characters mind their manners, and don’t let themselves succumb to fits of rage or disappointment. They’re like icebergs, preferring to melt drop by drop rather than crack in half. However, much to the Argentine Writer’s discomfort, the story turned into one of those teen dramas where the plot goes beyond the tangled knot of romances and break-ups, and the tragedy is technicolour. The plot: his Wife had been the lover of a Peruvian journalist, who left her for a young Swedish girl and, as they were all part of the same circle of up-and-coming literary stars and editors with badly shaven beards, the Wife secretly fell in love with the Traitor, who arranged to meet her one day to tell her that another friend wanted to go out with her. “No, you’re the one I like”, the Wife confessed, and even though, at that time the Traitor had gone several weeks without sleeping with anyone, he put his loyalty to his dearest friend first. This was how the Wife ended up in the arms of the Argentine Writer, rejected by two Peruvians who looked like streetball players, with their sweatcoated muscles glistening in the sunlight, unlike the Argentine Writer, who was pale and jumpy like a laboratory rat. The Argentine Writer is still in a state of shock when he leaves the hairdresser’s; he wants to call someone and tell them what he’s just seen in the style magazine, 49

shout about how unfair it is – although he can’t explain why – but he doesn’t know whose number to call. When he got married he asked the Omnipresent Journalist (who he used to make fun of with the Traitor and his old friends, passing comment on his columns) to be his best man. Since then there have been no more jokes about his omnipresence, just praise for his interviews with writers he hasn’t read and the fact that he never misses a single literary soiree. He would call him, because he always turns to him when he reads a positive review of a book by one of his contemporaries, and needs someone to listen to his crushing arguments against his competitor; but the Omnipresent Journalist will be busy, and the phone would surely be answered by one of the interns who write his weekly columns, do the majority of his interviews, and, they say, even act as his representatives at the wakes of artists whose memory he insults by writing obituaries riddled with clichés and affectation. The Argentine Writer walks down calle Valverde and recites from memory the catalogue of the publishing house that puts out his books. Which of them could he call? When he got married he invited all the authors from the catalogue who lived in Spain, although he barely knew them, and added the number of his bank account so they could deposit a gift which he dreamed he could use to travel to China. In the end he had to make do with a honeymoon in Tunisia. When the Argentine Writer and the Traitor were friends, they would laugh about the fact that their greatest fear wasn’t dying young, but that the Omnipresent Journalist would write their obituary. On some, very rare, occasions, the Argentine Writer misses these conversations and smiles secretly to himself when he walks down the streets of Malasaña or Chamberí. After he smiles, he turns around and retraces his steps, taking a good look around to check whether anyone has noticed this sudden burst of nostalgia. When he reaches the flat his Wife bought, he finds the fridge full of fruit, yoghurts, and all kinds of drinks. He remembers a time when he didn’t care that there was only food in the freezer, which his Ex had brought back from her parents’ house. Then he would cook rice and fry an egg to go with his lunch, drink water and meditate like a zen master: if only hecould transfer that austerity to his writing, if he were able to use minimalist language to reflect the horrors of Nazism, an obsession cultivated in his years as a PhD student in Cologne, where he met his Ex. In Cologne eating fruit was like biting into a plastic doll. Maybe there was real fruit, but they didn’t have the money to buy it. As poor students in 50

a foreign country whose language had worn them down so much it had hardened their hearts as much as their accents, they believed that their future depended on the knowledge they could accumulate and their talent for putting it into practice. When they moved to Madrid they spent some time living with his Ex’s parents, until she passed her exams to be a language teacher. They rented an interior flat in Vallecas, near the school where she taught. The Argentine Writer didn’t like the neighbourhood, but then he hadn’t liked any of the neighbourhoods in Cologne, or the one where he grew up in Rosario either. They had all been interior flats, which he only left to go to the library. Before they met and while they were together, the Argentine Writer always stayed on the margins of literary society, he said he didn’t need anyone to like him for him to contribute to magazines or get picked up by a major publishing house. During the same period, no magazine which paid its contributors accepted his book reviews, and he only just managed to put out a book of short stories with a publishing house in the provinces called “Exile”. His Ex respected the Argentine Writer’s politics, but she was the only one who took any responsibility for the bills, since they weren’t in Cologne anymore, and her boyfriend had no grant to put any funds into their savings account. Money: that’s what the Argentine Writer reduced all his relationship problems to. But that was barely even the start of the collapse, an image he liked to visualise when he remembered those days. Standing up, facing one another, their legs start to crumble like blocks of cement that can no longer hold the weight of their torsos; they hold on to each other, but it’s too late. The Argentine Writer likes to recall the images he invented in his mind at that time: goodbyes in airports with planes taking off and someone burying their hands in their pockets; couples doing their shopping in the supermarket, their eyes welling up with tears; men trying to write while their wives are sobbing in the bathroom. They were part of the tragic stories he told himself to make the break-up less painful when the day came. When the end did come it was because his Ex wasn’t strong enough to support him; this is what he told himself day in, day out. A writer is a long distance runner, and she had abandoned him in the middle of the race. The Argentine Writer is sitting on the sofa in the lounge, with his arms relaxed, like a plasticine doll, trying to clear his mind, as if that way he could erase his Ex’s 51

happiness in that photo in the style magazine which had printed good reviews of his books. Since the split, his literary career had taken off, and that should have meant he could forget her. Why can’t he do it? Perhaps he thought she would be miserable forever because he left her? Or was he dreaming she would beg him for a reconciliation? No. No. No! He curls up on the sofa for a few minutes, hugging himself. He looks for his mobile and calls his Wife. She answers, but he says nothing. She’s used to these phone calls which he says are panic attacks brought on by doubts about his next novel, and she waits, whispering a song to him until he reacts. The Argentine Writer stammers until he finds the right words and asks her if she’d like to have dinner at Casa Granada, his Ex’s favourite restaurant; he also mentions the possible advance they might pay him for his next novel, which they could use to take a trip to Samarkand on holiday, a trip he’d promised himself he would take with his Ex when he won a literary prize; and to end with he adds that when he was at the hairdresser’s he saw a model in a magazine who looked a lot like her with a punky haircut. “I think you’d look great like that.”

Sergio Galarza Puente (1976)Studied Law at the University of Lima. He has published four collections of short stories. The first was Matacabros [Dirty Work] (Asma, 1996) and the latest La soledad de los aviones [The Loneliness of Aeroplanes] (estruendomudo, 2005). In 2006 he won second prize in the Cope Short Story Competition. He won the first Competition for Peruvian Migrant Narratives in Spain for his short story Teleoperadores [Telephone operators]. The same year, his first novel Paseador de Perros [Dog Walker], was published in Peru. It was republished in Spain in 2009 by Candaya, and won the FNAC New Talent Award. Dog Walker is the first part of his Madrid Trilogy, which continues with JFK.

RED WINE AT McDONALD’S By Gunter Silva Translation by Ruth Clarke and Jethro Soutar

They'd arranged to meet outside Brixton station. She'd been the only one to reply to his advert. It was a short note, posted a week ago on a well-known classifieds webpage. From the cubicle of an innocuous internet café, Felipe had typed four words: English nationality for cash.

He was shivering like an Eskimo with no coat, one hand stuffed in a pocket,

the other holding on to a coffee. Autumn was setting in. A few dry leaves flew about him, others collided with buses crammed with passengers. It was rush hour and the sound of engines had taken over the street.

His mobile vibrated in his jacket pocket. It was a text from her. I'm on my

way, be there in five.

Felipe got on the lookout. Every time a girl came along, he stared into her

eyes, trying to guess if she were Kloe. He saw a young girl approaching, blonde and pretty. He desperately hoped it was her, but no, she walked straight past him, heels clacking against the ground, and kissed a boy dressed in leather trousers and cowboy boots waiting on the other side of the station exit.

Kloe knew what Felipe looked like. He'd described his appearance in an

email, while she'd only said she was a young woman.

A few minutes later she appeared. Felipe was surprised when he saw her:

she was quite a lot younger than he'd imagined. She was wearing comfortable baggy trousers, the sort you might wear to the gym, and was accompanied by a playful creature.

“He's called Shadow,” she said.

Kloe suggested they get something to eat at McDonald's. There was one on

the corner nearby and they set off towards it, heading south, as if they were going to Streatham Hill. They walked in silence. She held the dog on a silver chain and 53

Felipe would sometimes deliberately fall behind, eager to catch a glimpse of her bum swaying from side to side as she walked.

When they got to the door, Kloe clenched her fist in a signal to the dog.

Shadow sat down on the pavement, keeping quite still. Felipe thought how well trained the animal was. They went inside and both ordered a burger and chips, Kloe with a strawberry milkshake, Felipe a Coca-Cola, no ice. As they made their way towards the only empty table, Kloe caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and stopped for a moment to look at herself. She gently placed her right hand under her hair to straighten it. Felipe noticed the huge hoops she had dangling from her ears.

“Everything's stressing me out at the moment,” Kloe said. “I'm scared of

losing my dole. I fell out with my mum a while back and moved out. I’m gonna use the money to train to become a hairdresser, I get nervous just thinking about it - and I ain't even signed up yet! The hairdressing school’s only a few streets from here.” Kloe gestured in the school's direction with her hand.

There was an innocence in her face; it was a girl’s face, not a woman’s. She

wore layers and layers of make-up, as if trying to hide her real face, her identity. The orangey powder didn’t cover all her neck and it reminded Felipe of the first time he'd seen his sister with make-up on; this made him want to laugh, but he resisted. Instead he asked her if she liked football; he'd noticed a Kappa logo printed on her sweater.

“No,” she said, casually.

“I see,” Felipe said, without knowing quite what to say.

“My mum rang earlier,” Kloe said in that voice women use to gossip. “Asked

me if I’d left my computer on. We live in the same block of council flats. What makes me laugh is she never practices what she preaches. She goes on and on about how we should do this, that and the other to save on electricity, when she’s the one who gets her internet cut off coz she can’t pay the bill. I’m the organised one, the one who scrimps and saves, while she's busy spending money she ain’t got on eBay.”

Felipe looked at her with great curiosity, the way a child watches cartoons

on television for the first time. She looked prettier than she did a few minutes ago. He started to see her less as a teenager, more as a woman.

Kloe made a horrible noise with her straw. She blushed and apologised. 54

After a few seconds of silence they both started to laugh at what had happened. Felipe suddenly felt like he and Kloe were old friends, despite the fact that it was only half an hour since they'd met in person for the first time.

“Maybe it really is all relative,” he thought.

“I go on Facebook like nine times a day, and I spend a maximum of three

hours on there, answering comments and messages,” Kloe went on. “I use Twitter on my phone, I hardly ever put messages on Twitter from the web page. The only thing I need the internet for is to sell stuff I don’t use no more on eBay, or to look for work. I need constant internet access if I'm gonna find a job, a decent one, something I'll like or enjoy doing. I’m not talking about my ideal job, just something to pay the bills and give me a bit of spends, keep me going until I find something I really want to do, you know what I mean?” She paused while she straightened her hair. “Are you on Facebook?” she eventually asked.

“No, no,” said Felipe. “I was once but I ended up shutting it down, it seemed

to be taking up a lot of my time, I realised I'm not suited to such things...”

“So... How do you keep in touch with friends and family then?”

“I use Skype, it's cheap and I can speak to my parents for hours,” Felipe

said. She carried on staring into his eyes, as if somehow satisfied with his answer.

Felipe realised luck was on his side. Kloe was heaven-sent: he'd been illegal

for three weeks; they'd refused to renew his visa. Marrying Kloe was his last chance, his last throw of the dice.

“The biggest throw of my life,” he thought for a moment.

“Man, don't feel bad about it,” Kloe said as if reading his thoughts, as she

sucked up what was left of her milkshake. “Getting married for papers ain't no crime, I do things that aren't legal too you know. I do house cleaning for two women and get paid cash in hand. If I declared it, I'd get my benefits cut. The government's loaded, it don't need no more cash, it's us lot what ends up paying more tax than the rich.”

Felipe nodded in agreement. He reached into his jacket and took out a little

bottle, no bigger than his thumb, containing red wine. He mixed it in with his Coca-Cola and took a sip.

“If you were my husband, like for real, I'd teach you how to save money,”

she said. “I've started ordering food online because it works out cheaper, and you don't waste time putting things you don't need in your trolley. My mum don’t have 55

a clue how to save money, she goes to the supermarket and buys everything she sees. My mum's business shouldn't be my problem, but my little brother still lives with her and I do care about him. My mum's never had a job in her life, apart from one that lasted three months, a favour from a friend who's got his own business. She won't be able to claim benefits for my brother no more when he turns eighteen, in four months’ time.”

Felipe imagined for a moment he was on a blind date. He'd once thought

about signing up to match.com. He could still remember the advert on the tube. A couple were just about to kiss and beneath them in big letters it said find love with match.com. He didn't do it in the end, as much out of laziness as shyness.

She rubbed her last chip in a puddle of ketchup and popped it in her mouth.

“I've been freaking out all morning, faffing arounds, doing nothing,” Kloe

said as she licked the tips of her fingers. “I want to practice cutting hair on someone so I'm ready when my course starts. Wouldn't you fancy giving it a go, Felipe?”

“Scissors make me nervous,” he said, “and anyway, I've always had my hair

long.”

Felipe listened to her carefully. He had with him part of the money they'd

agreed to via emails a few days ago. He'd give her the other part once they were married.

He took out the envelope and handed it to her. Kloe neither opened it nor

bother to count the money. She just slipped it straight in her pocket.

“Thanks,” she said, fiddling with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter she'd put

on the table.

“I've smoked all my life. Always have done, always will,” she said out

of nowhere, as if she were some kind of veteran smoker at her young age. After an hour they said goodbye with a kiss on the cheek. As he watched her leave McDonald's, Felipe wondered whether Kloe was perhaps an angel, and Shadow her little helper. “Shadow,” Felipe muttered to himself. It wasn’t even black. Quite the opposite in fact: the dog was white. He went upstairs to the bathroom, unzipped his fly and started to pee. Written on the wall, underneath “Hot Chat,” was a telephone number similar to Kloe’s. Only the last digit was different, a six instead of a two. 56

He washed his hands and went downstairs, thinking about changing the six for a two as he made for the exit. Outside, the rain had cleared the streets and Shadow was nowhere to be seen. A group of policemen stood waiting for him with folded arms. Despite the early-evening darkness, Felipe could still make out the warm, childlike smile that played across her face.

Gunter Silva (Lima, 1976) studied law and political science at the Universidad Católica de Santa María in Peru and holds a BA in the Arts and Humanities. He has published two books of short stories, Crónicas de Londres (Atalaya ed., Lima, 2012) and Homesick (SU ed., Miami, 2013). He has also contributed to a range of publications such as Ventana Latina, La Tundra, Sub Urbano magazine, among others. He is currently based in London.

A special thank you to all the writers and translators for making this happen