Found in Translation

by Frank Wynne

  Amina sobbed, ‘What have you done, Baba, our Mahesh is dead.’

  Gafoor had turned to stone, neither moving nor speaking, only staring at a pair of unblinking, bottomless dark eyes.

  Within an hour or two, a group of cobblers from one end of the village arrived, and slinging Mahesh up on a pole took him to the dumping ground. Gafoor trembled when he saw their shining knives, but closing his eyes, he didn’t say a word.

  The neighbours said that the zamindar had sent someone to Tarkaratna to find out what should be done next, ‘You may have to sell your house as penance.’

  Gafoor did not reply to any of this, burying his face in his knees and not moving.

  Late that night he woke his daughter up, saying, ‘Amina, we must go.’

  She had fallen asleep outside the front door. Rubbing her eyes and sitting up, she said, ‘Where will we go, Baba?’

  Gafoor said, ‘To work at the jute mill in Phulbere.’

  His daughter looked at him in astonishment. Despite all their troubles her father had never been willing to work at the jute mill. She had often heard him say that it was impossible to maintain one’s faith there, that women had neither honour nor protection.

  Gafoor said, ‘Hurry up, Ma, we have to walk a long way.’

  Amina was about to take the tumbler and the brass plate her father ate from, but Gafoor stopped her. ‘Leave them here, Ma, they will pay for my penance for Mahesh.’

  He left in the dead of night, holding his daughter’s hand. He had no family in this village, no one to inform. Crossing the yard, he stopped abruptly beneath the familiar tree and suddenly burst into tears. Raising his eyes to the star-studded black sky, he said, ‘Allah! Punish me as you will, but my Mahesh died with a thirst. There was no land he could graze on. Do not forgive the sin of whoever it was who did not let him eat the grass you gave us, or quench his thirst with the water you gave us.’

  THE PURSUED

  Horacio Quiroga

  Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden

  Horacio Silvestre Quiroga Forteza (1878–1937) was a Uruguayan playwright, poet and short story writer. He wrote stories that, in their jungle settings, use the supernatural and the bizarre to show the struggle of man and animal to survive. He also excelled in portraying mental illness and hallucinatory states, a debt he owed to Edgar Allan Poe, according to some critics. His influence can be seen in the Latin American magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez and the postmodern surrealism of Julio Cortázar. Before Quiroga was two and a half months old, on March 14th 1879, his father accidentally fired a gun he was carrying in his hands and died as a result. His writer friend Ferrando had received bad reviews from a Montevideo journalist, and challenged him to a duel. Quiroga, anxious about his friend’s safety, offered to check and clean the gun that was to be used. While inspecting the weapon, he accidentally fired off a shot that hit Ferrando in the mouth, killing him instantly.

  One night when I was at Lugones’s home, the rain so increased in intensity that we rose to look at it from the windows. The wild pampa wind whistled through the wires and whipped the rain in convulsive gusts that distorted the reddish light from the street lamps. This afternoon, after six days of rain, the heavens had cleared to the south, leaving a limpid cold blue sky. And then, behold, the rain returned to promise us another week of bad weather.

  Lugones had a stove, which was extremely comforting to my winter debility. We sat down once again and continued our pleasant chat concerning the insane. Several days before, Lugones had visited an insane asylum, and the bizarre behavior of the inmates, added to behavior I myself had once observed, afforded more than enough material for a comfortable vis-à-vis between two sane men.

  Given the circumstance of the weather, then, we were rather surprised when the bell at the street door rang. Moments later Lucas Díaz Vélez entered.

  This individual has had quite an ominous influence over a period of my life, and that was the night I met him. As is customary, Lugones introduced us by our last names only, so that for some time I didn’t know his given name.

  Díaz was much slimmer then than he is now. His black clothes—the color of dark maté tea—his sharp face, and his large black eyes gave him a none too common appearance. The eyes, of surprising steadiness and extreme brilliance, especially demanded one’s attention. In those days he parted his straight hair in the middle, and, perfectly smoothed down, it looked like a shining helmet.

  Vélez spoke very little at first. He crossed his legs, responding only when strictly necessary. At a moment when I had turned toward Lugones, I happened to see that Vélez was observing me. Doubtless in another I would have found this examination following an introduction very natural, but his unwavering attention shocked me.

  Soon our conversation came to a standstill. Our situation was not very pleasant, especially for Vélez, since he must have assumed that we were not practicing this terrible muteness before he arrived. He himself broke the silence. He spoke to Lugones of some honey cakes a friend had sent him from Salta, a sample of which he should have brought that night. They seemed to be of a particularly pleasing variety, and, as Lugones showed sufficient interest in sampling them, Díaz Vélez promised to send him the means to do so.

  Once the ice was broken, after about ten minutes we returned to our subject of madmen. Although seeming not to lose a single word of what he heard, Díaz held himself apart from the lively subject; perhaps it was not his predilection. As a result, when Lugones left the room for a moment, I was astonished by his unexpected interest. In one minute he told me a number of anecdotes—his expression animated and his mouth precise with conviction. He certainly had much more love for these things than I had supposed, and his last story, related with great vivacity, made me see that he understood the mad with a subtlety not common in this world.

  The story was about a boy from the provinces who, after emerging from the debilitating weakness of typhoid, found the streets peopled with enemies. He underwent two months of persecution, committing, as a result, all kinds of foolish acts. As he was a boy of certain intelligence, he commented on his own case so cleverly that it was impossible to know what to think. It sounded exactly like a farce, and this was the general impression of those who heard him discuss his own case so roguishly—always with the vanity characteristic of the mad.

  In this fashion he spent three months displaying his psychological astuteness, until one day his mind was cleansed in the clear water of sanity and his ideas became more temperate.

  “He is well now,” Vélez concluded, “but several rather symptomatic acts have remained with him. A week ago, for example, I ran into him in a pharmacy; he was leaning against the counter, waiting for what I don’t know. We started chatting. Suddenly an individual came in without our seeing him, and, as there was no clerk, he rapped with his fingers on the counter. My friend abruptly turned on the intruder with truly animal quickness, staring into his eyes. Anyone would have similarly turned, but not with that rapidity of a man who is always on his guard. Although he was no longer pursued, he must have retained, unawares, an underlying fear that exploded at the least surprise. After staring for a moment, not moving a muscle, he blinked and averted his disinterested eyes. It was as though he had guarded a dark memory of something terrible that happened to him in another time, something he never wanted to catch him unprepared again. Imagine, then, the effect on him of someone’s grabbing his arm on the street. I think it would never leave him.”

  “Undoubtedly the symptom is typical,” I confirmed. “And did the psychological talk come to an end also?”

  A strange thing: Díaz became very serious and gave me a cold, hostile look.

  “May I know why you ask me that?”

  “Because we were speaking precisely of that!” I replied, surprised. But obviously the man had seen how ridiculous he had been, because immediately he apologized profusely.

  “Forgive me. I don’t know what happened to me. I’ve felt this way at times
… unexpectedly lost my head. Crazy things,” he added, laughing and playing with a ruler.

  “Completely crazy,” I joked.

  “And so crazy! It’s only by chance I have an ounce of sense left. And now I remember, although I asked your pardon—and I ask it again—that I haven’t answered your question. My friend does not talk about psychology any more. And now that he is eminently sane, he does not feel perverse in denouncing his own madness as he did before, forcing that terrible two-edged sword one calls reason, you see? It’s very clear. ”

  “Not very,” I allowed myself to doubt.

  “Possibly,” he laughed, conclusively. “Another really crazy thing.” He winked at me and moved away from the table, smiling and shaking his head like someone who is withholding many things he could tell.

  Lugones returned, and we dropped the subject—already exhausted. During the remainder of the visit Díaz spoke very little, although it was clear that his own lack of sociability was making him very nervous. Finally, he left. Perhaps he tried to overcome any bad impression he may have made by his extremely friendly farewell, offering his name and the hospitality of his house along with the prolonged clasp of affectionate hands. Lugones went down with him, since the now-dark stairway was so precipitous that no one was ever tempted to try it alone.

  “What the devil kind of person is he?” I asked when Lugones returned. He shrugged his shoulders.

  “A terrible individual. I don’t know how he came to speak ten words to you tonight. He often sits a whole hour without speaking a word, and you can imagine how pleased I am when he’s like that. On the other hand, he comes very seldom. And he’s very intelligent in his good moments. You must have noticed that, since I heard you talking.”

  “Yes, he was telling me about a strange case.”

  “What case?”

  “About a friend who is pursued. He knows as much about madness as the devil himself.”

  “I guess so, since he himself is pursued.”

  Scarcely had I heard what he said than a flash of explanatory logic illuminated the darkness I had felt in the other. Undoubtedly …! I remembered above all his irritable air when I asked him if he didn’t discuss psychology any more…. The good madman had thought I had guessed his secret and was insinuating myself into his consciousness….

  “Of course!” I laughed. “Now I understand! But your Díaz Vélez is fiendishly subtle!” And I told him about the snare he had thrown out to me to amuse himself at my expense: the fiction of a pursued friend, and his comments. But I had scarcely begun when Lugones interrupted.

  “There is no friend; that actually happened. Except that his friend is he himself. He told you the complete truth; he had typhoid, was very ill, and is cured to this degree, and now you see that his very sanity is questionable. It’s also very possible that the business of the store counter is true, but that it happened to him. He’s an interesting individual, eh?”

  “And then some!” I responded, as I toyed with the ashtray.

  It was late when I left. The weather had finally settled, and, although one could not see the sky above, he sensed the ceiling had lifted. It was no longer raining. A strong, dry wind rippled the water on the sidewalks and forced one to lean into it at street corners. I reached Santa Fe Street and waited a while for the streetcar, shaking the water from my feet. Bored, I decided to walk; I quickened my pace, dug my hands into my pockets, and then thought in some detail about Díaz Vélez.

  The thing I remembered best about him was the look with which he had first observed me. It couldn’t be called intelligent, reserving intelligence to be included among those qualities—habitual in persons of certain stature—to be exchanged to a greater or lesser degree among persons of similar culture. In such looks there is always an interchange of souls: one delves into the depths of the person he has just met and, at the same time, yields part of his own soul to the stranger.

  Díaz didn’t look at me that way; he only looked at me. He wasn’t thinking what I was or what I might be, nor was there in his look the least spark of psychological curiosity. He was simply observing me, as one would unblinkingly observe the equivocal attitude of some feline.

  After what Lugones had told me, I was no longer astonished by the objectivity of the madman’s stare. After his examination, satisfied surely, he had made fun of me, shaking the scarecrow of his own madness in my face. But his desire to denounce himself, without revealing himself, had less the object of making fun of me than of entertaining himself. I was simply a pretext for his argument and, above all, a point of confrontation; the more I admired the devilish perversity of the madman he was describing to me, the more he must have been furtively rubbing his hands. The only thing that kept him from being completely happy was that I didn’t say, “But isn’t your friend afraid they’ll find him out when he denounces himself that way?” It hadn’t occurred to me, because the friend didn’t interest me especially. But now that I knew who the pursued one was, I promised myself to provide him with the wild happiness he desired. This is what I was thinking as I walked along.

  Nevertheless, two weeks passed without my seeing him. I knew through Lugones that he had been at Lugones’s house to bring him the confections—a good gift for him.

  “He also brought some for you. Since he didn’t know where you live—I don’t think you gave him your address—he left them at my house. You must come by and get them.”

  “Some day. Is he still at the same address?”

  “Díaz Vélez?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes, I suppose so; he didn’t say a word about leaving.”

  The next rainy night I went to Lugones’s house, sure of finding Díaz Vélez. Even though I realized, better than anyone, that the logic of thinking I would meet him precisely on a rainy night was worthy only of a dog or a madman, the probability of absurd coincidence always rules in such cases where reason no longer operates.

  Lugones laughed at my insistence on seeing Díaz Vélez.

  “Be careful! The pursued always begin by adoring their future victims. He remembered you very well.”

  “That doesn’t matter. When I see him, it’s going to be my turn to amuse myself.”

  I left very late that night.

  *

  But I didn’t find Díaz Vélez. Not until one noon when, just as I was starting to cross the street, I saw him on Artes Street. He was walking north, looking into all the shop windows, not missing a one, like a person preoccupied. When I caught a glimpse of him, I had one foot off the sidewalk. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t, and I stepped into the street, almost stumbling. I turned around and looked at the curb, although I was quite sure there was nothing there. One of the plaza carriages driven by a Negro in a shiny jacket passed so close to me that the hub of the rear wheel left grease on my trousers. I stood still, staring at the horse’s hooves, until an automobile forced me to jump out of the way.

  All this lasted about ten seconds, as Díaz continued moving away, and I was forced to hurry. When I felt sure of overtaking him, all my hesitation left and was replaced by a great feeling of self-satisfaction. I felt myself in perfect equilibrium. All my nerves were tingling and resilient. I opened and closed my hands, flexing my fingers, happy. Four or five times a minute I put my hand to my watch, forgetting that it was broken.

  Díaz Vélez continued walking, and soon I was two steps behind him. One step more and I could touch him. But seeing him this way, not even remotely aware of my presence in spite of his delirium about persecution and psychology, I adjusted my step exactly to his. Pursued! Very well …! I noted in detail his head, his elbows, his clenched hands—held a little away from his body—the transverse wrinkles of his trousers at the back of the knee, the heels of his shoes, appearing and disappearing. I had the dizzying sensation that once before, millions of years before, I had done this: met Díaz Vélez in the street, followed him, caught up with him, and, having done so, continued to follow behind him—behind him. I glowed with the satisfaction of
a dozen lifetimes. Why touch him? Suddenly it occurred to me that he might turn around, and instantly anguish clutched at my throat. I thought that with my larynx throttled like this I wouldn’t be able to cry out, and my only fear, my terrifyingly unique fear, was that I would not be able to cry out if he turned around, as if the goal of my existence were suddenly to throw myself upon him, to pry open his jaws, and to shout unrestrainedly into his open mouth—counting every molar as I yelled.

  I had such a moment of anguish that I forgot that it was he I was seeing: Díaz Vélez’s arms, Díaz Vélez’s legs, Díaz Vélez’s hair, Díaz Vélez’s hatband, the woof of Díaz Vélez’s hatband, the warp of the warp of Díaz Vélez, Díaz Vélez, Díaz Vélez….

  The realization that, in spite of my terror, I hadn’t missed one moment of him, Díaz Vélez, assured me completely.

  A moment later I was possessed by the mad temptation to touch him without his noticing it, and immediately, filled with the greatest happiness one’s own original creative act can hold, softly, exquisitely, I touched his jacket, just on the lower edge—no more, no less. I touched it and plunged my closed fist into my pocket.

  I am sure that more than ten people saw me. I was aware of three. One of them, walking in the opposite direction along the sidewalk across the street, kept turning around with amused surprise. In his hand he was carrying a valise that pointed toward me every time he turned.

  Another was a streetcar inspector who was standing on the curb, his legs spread wide apart. From his expression I understood that he had been watching us even before I did it. He did not manifest the least surprise or change his stance or move his head, but he certainly did follow us with his eyes. I assumed he was an elderly employee who had learned to see only what suited him.

  The third person was a heavy individual with magnificent bearing, a Catalan-style beard, and eyeglasses with gold frames. He must have been a businessman in Spain. He was just passing us, and he saw me do it. I was sure he had stopped. Sure enough, when we reached the corner, I turned around and I saw him, standing still, staring at me with a rich honorable bourgeois look, frowning, with his head thrown back slightly. This individual enchanted me. Two steps later, I turned my head and laughed in his face. I saw that he frowned even more and drew himself up with dignity as if he doubted whether he could be the one intended. I made a vague, nonsensical gesture that disorganized him completely.