Lucio’s father pauses in the middle of chewing a piece of meat, which gives us time to debate the credibility of the story and imagine a sex life based on hang-ups and unhealthy shame. Though Lucio’s mother doesn’t go into detail on the matter, she does insist she’s telling the truth. Dag asks if they ever considered a testicular implant. Lucio’s father manages to answer that no, no they didn’t, before something lodges itself in his throat. Dag knocks him on the back. Lucio’s mother says that of all possible forms discomfort could take, her ex-husband always chooses the most vulgar.
“You’ll have to show us, Dad,” says Lucio.
Dear Lynda, I can’t help you with your idea for the end of the dissertation. What theoretical gain could there possibly be in pointing out the physical changes that come with time? The current photo you request simply isn’t possible. I haven’t heard from Sebastian since he confided in me that he was going to start cultivating comemadre to sell to the local mafia.
Please let Lucio know that the museum in Copenhagen sent me a dossier of the project involving my jarred hamster, Wright, and my cadaver; if I agree to sell it to them (they call it a “compensated donation”), I get a lifetime pension and can curate the room where I’ll be exhibited. Maybe Lucio can arrange something similar with a museum in Oslo.
Barricaded in a closet, the father calls the police. Officials find the two-headed baby lying facedown in the flooded backyard. The still-inarticulate shrieks are coming from the lone posterior mouth. As the days go by, he begins to form complete words and sentences, usurping his brother’s voice. An interviewer asks what he thinks about the forced coexistence. Below, the transcript I promised:
I feel cold and hunger like him, and with him, but it’s his body. He’s the one who sees and breathes. If there’s an itch, he’s the one who scratches. I hear his thoughts like a prosthesis over my own, as if someone sewed a foot onto my feet or an eye onto my eye.
Our memories, though, are different.
If my face pointed toward him, I’d chew through his neck with these teeth. Sooner or later, I’d get to the spine. Neutralize him. Even if I miscalculated, if I bit too deep and he died, I’d still have a few seconds before I expired to take in the world as me, and only me.
Buenos Aires, September 2009
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RECENT LATIN AMERICAN TRANSLATIONS FROM COFFEE HOUSE PRESS
After the Winter
Guadalupe Nettel
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Among Strange Victims
Daniel Saldaña París
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Diego Zuñíga
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Verónica Gerber Bicecci
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Valeria Luiselli
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Valeria Luiselli
Translated by Christina MacSweeney
ROQUE LARRAQUY is an Argentinean writer, screenwriter, professor of narrative and audiovisual design, and author of two books, La comemadre and Informe sobre ectoplasma animal. In 2016, he was named the director of Argentina’s first degree-granting program in creative writing, housed at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes, a public institution. Comemadre is his first book published in English.
HEATHER CLEARY’s translations include Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets and The Dark, both nominated for national awards, and a selection of Oliverio Girondo’s poetry. She is a founding member of the Cedilla & Co. translation collective and a founding editor of the digital, bilingual Buenos Aires Review, has served as a judge for the BTBA, and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
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