‘But what do you want? Not all the times are good ones. When they least expected it they were presented with the first shortage of heads.
‘Then began the best part.
‘Mere natural deaths already were insufficient. The Minister of Public Health, feeling sincere one dark night, with the light turned off, after unceasingly caressing for a little while his wife’s breast, confessed to her that he considered himself incapable of elevating mortality rates to a level pleasing to the Company’s interests, to which she replied that he should not worry, that he would see that everything would turn out well and that it would be best that they sleep.
‘In order to compensate for this administrative deficiency, it was indispensible to take heroic measures and a harsh death penalty was established.
‘The judges consulted with each other and they elevated to the category of a crime, punishable by hanging or firing squad depending on its seriousness, even the most trivial of faults.
‘Even simple mistakes became criminal acts. For example, if in an ordinary conversation someone carelessly said “It is very hot” and later it could be proven, with thermometer in hand, that in reality it was not so hot, that person was fined a small amount, executed on the spot by the army, who sent the head to the Company and, fair to say, the trunk and limbs to the bereaved.
‘The legislation regarding illnesses earned immediate renown and was talked about much by the diplomatic corps and by the ministries of foreign affairs of friendly powers.
‘In accord with that memorable legislation, the gravely ill were granted 24 hours to place their affairs in order and die, but if in this time they were lucky and managed to infect their family, they obtained as many monthly stays as relatives that were infected. The victims of slight illnesses and those simply indisposed earned the scorn of the country and in the streets anyone could spit on their faces. For the first time in history, the importance of doctors (there were various Nobel Prize candidates) who didn’t cure anyone was recognized. Dying was turned into the most exalted example of patriotism, not only on a national scale, but instead more glorious, on the continental.
‘With the impetus that reached other subsidiary companies (the coffin industry, in particular, flourished with the technical assistance of the Company), the country entered, as they say, a period of great economic growth. This growth was particularly evident in a new flower-lined path, along which strolled, enveloped in the melancholy of the golden fall afternoons, the deputies’ wives, whose pretty little heads went yes, yes, everything was well when some soliciting journalist, from the other side, greeted them while tipping his hat.
‘As an aside, I will note that one of these journalists, who on one occasion emitted a wet sneeze he could not explain, was accused of extremism and was brought to the firing squad wall. Only after his selfless end did the academics recognize that the journalist had one of the country’s grandest heads, but once shrunken it looked so well that no one could notice the difference.
‘And Mr. Taylor? By that time he already had been designated as a special adviser to the Constitutional President. Now, and as an example of what individual effort can achieve, he was counting his thousands by the thousands; but this did not cause him to lose any sleep because he had read in the final volume of The Complete Works of William G. Knight that to be a millionaire was no dishonor if one did not despise the poor.
‘I believe this will be the second time that I say that not all the times are good ones. Given the prosperity of the business, the moment arrived in which only the authorities and their wives, and the journalists and their wives remained in the vicinity. Without much effort, Mr. Taylor mused that the only possible remedy was to foment war with the neighboring tribes. Why not? It’s progress.
‘With the help of some small cannons, the first tribe was cleanly beheaded in scarcely three months. Mr. Taylor tasted the glory of extending his domains. Then came the second, and afterward the third, the fourth, and the fifth. Progress extended with such rapidity that the hour arrived in which despite the efforts of the technicians, it was impossible to find new tribes to make war against.
‘It was the beginning of the end.
‘The two paths began to languish. Only once in a while could one see on them some lady or some poet laureate with a book under his arm. The weeds overran anew the two paths, making difficult and thorny the ladies’ delicate steps. Along with the heads, the bicycles became scarce and almost all the happy optimistic greetings disappeared.
‘The coffin manufacturer was more sad and funereal than ever before. And everyone felt as though they had awakened from a pleasant dream, from that wonderful dream in which you find a bag full of gold coins and you place it under your pillow and go back to sleep, and very early the next day, upon waking, you search for it and find emptiness.
‘However, painfully, business went on as usual. But now one slept with difficulty, due to the fear of waking up exported.
‘In Mr. Taylor’s country, of course, demand continued to rise. Daily new substitutes were appearing, but deep down inside nobody believed in them and everyone demanded the little heads from Latin America.
‘It happened during the last crisis. Mr. Rolston, desperate, begged and begged for more heads. Despite the Company’s stocks suffering a sharp decline, Mr. Rolston was convinced that his nephew would do something to bail him out of that situation.
‘The shipments, once daily, shrunk to once a month, now with anything, from children’s heads to those of ladies and deputies.
‘Suddenly, they ceased totally.
‘One harsh and gray Friday, home from the Exchange, stunned still by the cries and by the lamentable show of panic given by his friends, Mr. Rolston decided to jump through the window (instead of using a gun, whose noise filled him with terror) when upon opening a mail package he found the shrunken head of Mr. Taylor, brought to him from the distant, fierce Amazon, with a false child’s smile that seemed to say, “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”’
Axolotl
Julio Cortázar
Translated into English by Gio Clairval
Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) was an Argentine writer who became an architect of what is known as the Latin American Literary Boom. A novelist, poet, playwright, and nonfiction writer, Cortázar also wrote many short stories, collected in Bestiario (1951), Final del juego (1956), and Las armas secretas (1959), among others. His entry point to the weird tale was the influence of surrealism. His fantastical stories almost always begin with a mundane reality into which unexplained strangeness intrudes. This fine translation of his ‘Axolotl’ (1956) by Gio Clairval is the first new English version since the 1950s and considered the definitive translation by the author’s estate. Cortázar’s work as a translator, including the stories of Poe, also influenced his fiction.
There was a time when I thought quite often about the Axolotl. I used to go and see them in the aquarium of the Jardin des Plantes and remained for hours captivated, gazing at them, observing their immobility, their indistinct movements. Now I, too, am an Axolotl.
Chance led me to them one spring morning when Paris was spreading its peacock tail after a long wintering. I strolled down Boulevard de Port Royal, took Saint-Marcel and L’Hôpital, saw green among all that grey and remembered the lions. I was acquainted with the lions and the panthers, but had never entered the dark, humid building that was the aquarium. I left my bicycle against the railing and went to see the tulips. The lions were sad and ugly and my panther was asleep. I opted for the aquarium, looked askance at banal fish until, unexpectedly, I came face to face with the Axolotl. I gazed at them for an hour and left, unable to think of anything else.
In the Sainte-Geneviève library, I consulted a dictionary and learned that the Axolotl are the larval stage, complete with gills, of a species of batrachians belonging to the genus Ambystoma. I already knew they were Mexican by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the sign above the tank. I read that specimens had bee
n found in Africa capable of living on dry land during the periods of drought, and continuing their life under water when the rainy season set in. I found their Spanish name, ajolote, and the mention that they were edible, and that their oil was used (it seems now no longer used) like codfish liver oil.
I didn’t care to consult any of the specialized works, but the next day I went back to the Jardin des Plantes. I began to go every morning, morning and afternoon some days. The aquarium guard gave a perplexed smile as he took my ticket. I would prop myself up on the railing in front of the tanks and set to study them. There was nothing strange in this, because after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant continued to unite us nevertheless. It had been enough to keep me that first morning in front of the glass wall while bubbles rose through the water. The Axolotl huddled on the skimpy, narrow (only I can know how narrow and skimpy) floor of stone and moss in the tank. There were nine specimens, and most pressed their heads against the glass, looking with their eyes of gold at whoever approached them. Confused, almost ashamed, I felt indecent for lingering in front of these silent, still figures heaped at the bottom of the tank. To study them better, I mentally isolated one that was on the right and somehow apart from the others. I saw a rosy little body, translucent (I thought of those Chinese figurines of milky glass), similar to a small lizard about fifteen centimeters long, ending in a fish tail of extraordinary elegance, the most sensitive part of our body. Along the back ran a transparent fin that joined the tail, but I was obsessed with the feet, of the subtlest grace, ending in tiny fingers with minutely human fingernails. And then I discovered the eyes, the face. The eyes were two holes as tiny as heads of pins entirely made of a transparent gold, devoid of all expression but still gazing, opening up to my stare, which seemed to pass through the golden spot and lose itself in a diaphanous inner mystery. A very thin, black ring encircled the eye and etched it in the pink flesh, and onto the rosy stone of a head vaguely triangular but with a curved and irregular outline, which created a strong likeness to a statuette corroded by time. The mouth was concealed by the triangular plane of the face, its considerable size only guessed in profile; in front a delicate cleft barely slit the lifeless stone. On both sides of the head, where the ears should have been, there grew three tiny sprigs, red as coral, a vegetal outgrowth, the gills, I suppose. And they were the only part that seemed alive; every ten or fifteen seconds the sprigs pricked up stiffly and again began to relax. Whenever a leg twitched, I saw the minuscule toes alight on the moss in a smooth movement. In fact, we don’t enjoy moving a lot, and the tank is so cramped – hardly do we move in any direction than we bump into one another’s tail or head – conflicts arise, fights, fatigue. Time feels shorter if we remain quiet.
This sense of tranquillity fascinated me the first time I saw the Axolotl. In some obscure way, I understood their secret will, to abolish space and time with indifferent immobility. Later I knew better; the contraction of the gills, the probing of the delicate legs on the stones, the sudden swimming (some of them swim with a simple undulation of the body) proved to me that they were capable of escaping the mineral stupor in which they spent entire hours. Above everything else, their eyes obsessed me. In the tanks on either side of them, various fish showcased the simple stupidity of their beautiful eyes so similar to our own. The eyes of the Axolotl told me of the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing. Gluing my face to the glass (the guard, worried, coughed sometimes), I tried to see better those minuscule golden spots, this entrance to the infinitely slow and remote world of the roseate creatures. No point in tapping with a fingertip on the glass right in front of their faces; they never reacted in the slightest way. The golden eyes kept burning with their soft, terrible light; they kept gazing at me from an unfathomable depth that gave me vertigo.
And nevertheless they were close. I knew it before this, before being an Axolotl. I knew it the day I approached them for the first time. Contrary to what most people think, the anthropomorphic features of a monkey reveal the distance that separates them from us. The absolute lack of similarity between the Axolotl and a human being proved to me that my recognition was well founded, that I was not sustaining my theory with easy analogies. Those little hands alone…But the common lizard has such hands, too, and we are not at all alike. I think it was the Axolotl’s head, that triangular pink shape with the tiny eyes of gold. That gazed and knew. That claimed. They were no animals.
It seemed easy, almost obvious, to dive into mythology. I began seeing in the Axolotl a metamorphosis that could not quite destroy some mysterious humanity. I imagined them aware, slaves to their bodies, forever condemned to an abyssal silence, to a hopeless meditation. Their blind gaze, the tiny golden disc, expressionless and nonetheless terribly lucid, entered my mind like a message: ‘Save us, save us.’ I surprised myself by mumbling words of consolation, conveying childish hopes. They continued to look at me, stock-still; from time to time the small, pink branches of the gills stiffened. In that instant I felt a dull pain. Perhaps they did see me, grasped my efforts to penetrate the impenetrable essence of their lives. They were not human beings, but in no animal had I ever found such a profound connection to myself. The Axolotl were like witnesses to something, and at times like horrible judges. I felt ignoble in front of them; there was such a terrifying purity in those transparent eyes. They were larvae, but ‘larva’ means mask and also specter. Behind those Aztec faces, expressionless but of an implacable cruelty, what appearance awaited its hour?
I was afraid of them. I think that had it not been for the proximity of other visitors and the guard, I would not have dared to be alone with them. ‘You’re eating them with your eyes,’ the guard said, laughing; he probably believed me a little insane. He didn’t realize they were the ones that devoured me with their eyes, slowly, in a cannibalism of gold. Away from the aquarium, my thoughts revolved solely around them, as though they could influence me from afar. At one point, I went to see them every day, and at night I thought of them unmoving in the darkness, slowly putting a hand out which immediately encountered another. Perhaps their eyes could see in the dead of night, and for them the day continued without end. The eyes of the Axolotl have no lids.
I know now that there was nothing strange, that it had to happen. Each new morning, as I leaned against the tank, the recognition grew stronger. They suffered; every fiber of my body reached out to sense that muzzled pain, that rigid torment at the bottom of the tank. They kept furtive watch over something, a faraway dominion now destroyed, an era of freedom when the world belonged to the Axolotl. Such a terrible expression trying to disturb the forced blankness of their stone faces could carry no message other than pain, proof of their eternal sentence, of the liquid hell they endured. To no avail, I tried to convince myself that my own sensitivity projected a nonexistent consciousness upon the Axolotl. They and I both knew. Therefore, nothing of what happened was strange. My face pressed against the glass of the aquarium, my stare attempted once more to penetrate the mystery of those eyes of gold, without an iris, without a pupil. Close up, I saw the face of an Axolotl immobile near the glass. Without transition or surprise, I saw my own face against the glass, I saw it outside the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back, and I understood.
Only one thing was strange: to think as I did before, knowing. At first, this realization resembled the horror of a man buried alive awakening to his fate. On the outside, my face came close to the glass again; I saw my own mouth, lips pressed together in the effort of understanding the Axolotl. I was an Axolotl and then knew instantly that no understanding was possible. He was outside the aquarium, and his thinking was a thinking outside the aquarium. Recognizing him, being him, I was an Axolotl and I was in my world. The horror began – I knew it at the same moment I believed myself a prisoner in a body of Axolotl, transmigrated into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an Axolotl, condemned to move lucidly among insensitive
creatures. But this feeling stopped when a leg brushed my face, when I moved a little to the side and saw an Axolotl next to me who was watching me, and I understood that he knew also, no communication possible, but in such a limpid way. Or I was also in him, or all of us were thinking like men, incapable of expression, limited to the golden splendor of our eyes staring at the man’s face pressed against the aquarium.
He returned many times thereafter, but he comes less often now. Weeks pass without his showing up. I saw him yesterday; he looked at me for a long time and left abruptly. I had the impression that he was not so interested in us any more, that he came out of habit. Since all I do is think, I could think about him a lot. It occurs to me that at the beginning we did communicate, that he felt more than ever one with the mystery over which he was obsessing. But the bridges were broken between him and me, because that which was his obsession is now an Axolotl, alien to the life of a man. I think that at the beginning I was capable of becoming him to a certain extent, only to a certain extent – and I knew how to keep alive his desire to know us better. Now I am definitely an Axolotl, and if I think like a man, it’s only because every Axolotl thinks like a man behind that appearance of pink stone. I believe that all this I succeeded in communicating somehow to him in those first days, when I was still he. And in this final solitude to which he no longer returns, it consoles me to think that perhaps he will write about us, that, believing he’s imagining a story, he will write all this about the Axolotl.
A Woman Seldom Found
William Sansom
William Sansom (1912–1976) was an English writer who worked as a firefighter during the Blitz and was directly influenced by the Surrealists. Using descriptive, muscular prose, Sansom took the mundane and transformed it through his surrealist’s eye. His previous story in this volume, ‘The Long Sheet,’ explored weird ritual. ‘A Woman Seldom Seen’ (1956), by contrast, is something rare for Sansom: an excellent example of the traditional weird tale and his most anthologized story. Readers wishing to explore more of Sansom’s prose should seek out the new volume from Faber & Faber, The Stories of William Sansom (2011).
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories Page 76