Short stories by Jorge Olivera

It was three in the morning. An owl flew over,
singing a simple tune. He did so from time to time. It was like a
degraded whistle with the intonation of a beginner. The tune swelled.
The echo left delicate resonances in the air like leaves hanging from a
row of tall and bulky trees.

A crowd of crickets entered the competition with
classic choral style unaware that their unremitting musicality was
disconcerting and bolted the doors of impartiality and judgment. The
melody disintegrated into a deafening racket. Nonetheless, Daniel did
not seem to notice. He was absorbed in his own thoughts. The
preparations for the meeting, the declaration of love, the shirt that
had torn that afternoon as he was taking it out of the suitcase, the
brown trousers in which he had always imagined making his debut. A
shortage-proof showcase.

He should definitely wear grey. The  colour of
the owl’s feathers and the texture of clouds. Attire only attainable in
the realms of desire. Areas as impregnable as metaphysics. His options
were limited to a grey, somewhat despondent looking cloth and a pair of
shoes dressed up with a layer of ink he stole from a pen. He could do
without socks. Only those with the black trim and square pattern
remained. The sheer number of holes in the cotton material indicated
their heavy use and the appetite of the rats.

He was able to make shoelaces out of the sheet.
He had sufficient ingenuity to turn six strips of cloth into a solution
that would allow him to wear his shoes without the fear that his feet
would be exposed to the elements. Nor would he have a problem adjusting
the size of his trousers. There were over three inches left over, so he
no longer had to worry about the possibility of going unclothed.

He stared at the pillow case with the intensity of a
shipwrecked man sighting land. From the bottom of it he made a belt and
finished it off with a pattern of green thread. There were 30cm left of
the reel. Just enough to avoid looking ridiculous in front of a woman
who, in her photograph, had seemed impossibly beautiful.

He pushed a comb through hair decimated by a barber
consistent with the extreme nature of his business. The electric
clippers had cut his locks scrupulously, leaving behind a plain where
before there had been a forest of filaments, both black and white. He
was already approaching fifty.

He had managed to style his hair by the light of the
moon, which created an exact replica in shadow on the wall. The other
Daniel looked good, larger, more handsome. Envy of this image spouted in
the form of a snort, and withdrew shortly afterward in the hope of
erasing the apparition’s motivations. He changed his posture, thinking
that such listlessness could lead to disaster. His attire, which
displayed both poverty and ignorance, crushed his self-esteem like a
dinosaur’s footstep.

For the moment, jealousy had not succeeded in
clouding his nerves. He could throw the fact in their faces that he
would have a fiancée, a young woman of twenty-four, extravagant with her
offerings and loyalties.

As magnificent as he was, he would not be able to
kiss those lips – lips that had terrified him at first sight. Nor,
thanks to his ignorance, could he read the three letters written
perfectly with the proverbial sentiment of giving their recipient
vibrant hope, resplendent like a spherical body antagonising the sky
with darkness.

A second later, Daniel lost his cool. He moved from
restraint to chaos. The self-recriminations began to bounce off the wall
with nuances impossible to control. Each and every gesture corresponded
with that of the incriminated figure.

The anger manifested itself in the clear depths like a
cinema screen. A unique film, a monologue in the shadows, saturated
with verbs and pantomimes that the moon amplified. All the while, the
owl continued with its cacophonies and acrobatics.

That figure appeared again, imitating him, pestering
him to put into perspective his losses in days gone by and his haste in
the present, deliberately cruel reality. His enormous stature, the black
custom-made  suit, his ability to lose himself for an indefinite period
of time and his appearance this morning, even more striking than usual .

“Do you want to take Amalia away from me?”, Daniel
prompted, emphasising the name that transported him to an unfamiliar
world, undoubtedly very different from his previous existence in the
confined space he had lived since his youth.

Without thinking he threw a punch in the direction of
his opponent’s chin. His aim was flawless, and his fist landed exactly
where he had intended. A bone had been broken; the sound of a dry crunch
was lost in the sound of the recital that the crickets continued with
titanic willpower. An exclamation that captured the essence of intense
pain scattered like fireworks. Daniel’s forearm was fractured. While his
breathless voice let out several shrieks, it occurred to him that
launching another attack would define a situation that already looked
set to worsen. The animosity of his wound multiplied.

“You are going to find out who I am”, said the man in
a fit of anger, who just ten minutes before had seemed to be a paradigm
of good sense. As he did so, he leant over and an onslaught of bullish
qualities began to take shape on the wall.

His head crashed with force against his rival. His
cranium creaked, his eyes filled with blood and his legs lost their
strength, succumbing to a frenzied dance only to end in a resounding
collapse. With great effort, he managed to sit up . He was bathed in
blood and his mind was filled with delirium. Like a stranger, he asked
himself where was this place where the air was humid and smelt of the
trunk of a corsair, where the irons on the door were intertwined and
rusting and seemed to belong to the front door of a 15th century
fortress, where the window looked like the mouth of a dragon.

He got to his feet. With difficulty, he made his way
to the bed and tugging he seized a scrap of the sheet in order to stop
the bleeding. “This will be your last day,” he mumbled with a
determination which didn’t quite fit with his fragility. “You will pay
for the audacity of meddling in my affairs” he added in a more
noticeably threatening tone.

By dawn, he was in the air, with a somewhat pale
and dislocated countenance. He wore the sheet as a robe, clinging to his
neck while hundreds of flies sucked at the blood escaping from the
wound in his head.

The following morning, Daniel was still there, still
levitating. His remorseful shadow hid in the corner of the cell, under
the imprudent glare of the full moon.

The Dinner

The hit ended the game. Everybody gathered around the
bird, looking delighted with themselves. Evaristo still held the ball
in his hands. He was still enjoying that final shot; the launch had been
long and calculated. The ball had gone through the hoop so exquisitely
that I had risen to my feet.

Ariel applauded with a delirious intensity. Rodolfo’s
delighted exclamations awoke in me a certain feeling of suspicion. His
shrill voice hammered my eardrums like a medieval heretic. Filiberto
joined in the frenzy like a victim, confirming my fears that the
displays of happiness would spread like a disease. I too succumbed to
the contagion. I joined in and threw several brief cheers into the air.

As if it had been ordered, the silence was welcomed
by all with monk-like piety. Their faces were euphoric, filled with
other happinesses, taking form within their consciences, ready to ooze
out like lava from a volcano.

The meat was a faded red color; you could see it perfectly from all angles. The animal’s stomach was torn open.

Through the wound, the entrails were escaping rapidly
as if the stomach itself were getting in the way. Exploited, the animal
that fell from the sky lay in a corner subject to the twenty pairs of
scrutinizing eyes photographing it with the eagerness of criminals
intent on a crime.

Evaristo sat at a table covered with a silk
tablecloth and silver cutlery,  and gulped down his white wine. The
waitress left the kitchen with the order, and moved around slowly. They
were forced to watch her high heels with  a calmness inappropriate to
their already dull and hungry minds. Finally, the delicacy appeared on a
marble plate with a thin line around its edge. Its smell spread around
the room. Oh, the memory of meat. The last contact with protein had been
in the “Resplandor”, a restaurant where you would go to spend money on
your mistress.

The creature’s entrails sprawling on the unpaved
floor brought out feelings ranging from delight to the animal instinct
to wolf them down as they were.

His mouth flooded with saliva, his canines began to
grow longer and his skin filled with bitterness. He felt his whole body
tingling. Minute by minute his reason evaporated. Meanwhile, his glowing
pupils were fixed on the innards, like trophies allowing him to break
the rules of discretion. Spellbound, like Albert Einstein before the
discovery of the Theory of Relativity, Evaristo shook his head  to
signal that the silence had come to an end.

“I saw it first”, he shouted defiantly, with one foot
on top of the empty abdomen. Ariel reacted with the ferocity of a
predator. He would not allow such an egotistical claim, nor this
victorious stance. He was willing to do the impossible for an equal
share. It was a question of honor and justice. An equal portion would
undeniably be equivalent to no more than a bite per person, but his
first aim was to clip the wings of Evaristo’s power.

“You’re wrong. I saw it 20 meters ago”, Ariel
determinedly assured him. “Don’t even think about trying to appoint
yourself leader,…” he added, assuming the attitude of someone
anticipating an attack. Evaristo leapt forward the few meters that
separated them. Were it not for Rodolfo intervening, his fist would have
ended up embedded in Ariel’s face.

The atmosphere changed; a tumultuous fight was beginning.

Rodolfo cried out for a solution. He stated his right
to a share in the animal’s remains for allegedly having caught it as it
fell, mere seconds before it exploded on the unpolished concrete floor.

He explained it with lavishing detail; “Look, all I
want is a thigh. You can have the rest. That is all I ask for as a
reward for my skilful observation, which marked me out from the rest of
the group”, he concluded, emphasizing the part where he demanded payment
for his apparent visual sagacity.

“Stop joking around. Don’t you try playing the brainy
one – I’ll tear you apart like a piece of paper,” threatened Filiberto,
with a serial killer’s expression. Indeed, in killing terms, he was the
boss. He had chopped eight women’s bodies into pieces and faced the
death penalty.

The situation was heating up. Each one put forward
their demands in a recital, in which it was impossible to guess at the
tessitura. The row was peppered with shouts aiming to justify their
requests, accompanied by struggles and a conflict of scruples, to
summarize, the events that so often arise from a relentless fight.

A single kick, emerging from the pandemonium,  began
the cycle of savagery. Ariel was weakened in the act by Evaristo’s kick.
“Son of a….” The insult remained incomplete in a face that could hardly
conceal a look of terror.

Ariel, nursing his crushed testicles, fell to the
floor with his mouth inches from the creature’s intestines that he had
dreamt of eating.

A piece of meat, incredible luck, an image of swallowing painted on the brain with the skill of Leonardo da Vinci.

Brandishing a knife, Filiberto ensured that no-one
could get near him. He had already plunged the blade through Rodolfo’s
chest. He breathed heavily with his mouth wide open. His left arm
outstretched, reaching out in a vain attempt to reach an intestine that
had been separated from the rest as a result of the fight.

Evaristo was similarly unable to sate his carnivorous
voracity. Rodolfo had had time to punch him in the back of the neck,
which clouded his senses in no time at all. Filiberto trampled
reluctantly towards the specimen. He had to move quickly to avoid
defeat. His bare feet crushed the entrails in his haste to save himself
from being lynched. The group was prepared to remove him from where he
was by any means.

Slashing at the air and moving himself with agility,
he maintained something of an advantage. In the clamor of the dispute,
he devised a way to remain unharmed by the pack of human hounds. He took
the piece with his right hand and threw to the wind the remaining
feathers.

With a cut, he separated the head from the body, throwing the latter in the direction of the pack of convicts.

Carlos, one of the survivors, told me that it was a
delicious dinner. He instructed me as to how he had obtained a quarter
of the breast meat and the membrane that covered the gallbladder.

I couldn’t go to the feast. I fainted from fright.
The  mangy turkey buzzard’s eyes were open, blinking, as if it were in
the prime of existence.
 

Originally posted with the url: www.englishpen.org/writersinprison/writersinexile/shortstoriesbyjorgeolivera/

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