Carol Bensimon translated by Adam Morris

They so happened to be born in a rather small town between two more or less larger ones, something they couldn’t get used to because it meant they had the whole highway to stare at. And they stared. And it so happened that on the shoulder of the highway was a store run from out of a house built in nineteen thirty-something, its front steps a set of bleachers for the girls. They’d sit there, all afternoon. Some cars went by, another stopped. Titi let her thin legs stick out onto the sidewalk, her mosquito bites scabbed into little cones of blood from so much scratching. Her t-shirt went down to her thighs, if you could call them thighs. The traveler begged her pardon and went inside. Titi hid her laughter. Lina, three years ... Read More »]]>

Carol Bensimon
translated by Adam Morris

They so happened to be born in a rather small town between two more or less larger ones, something they couldn’t get used to because it meant they had the whole highway to stare at. And they stared. And it so happened that on the shoulder of the highway was a store run from out of a house built in nineteen thirty-something, its front steps a set of bleachers for the girls. They’d sit there, all afternoon. Some cars went by, another stopped. Titi let her thin legs stick out onto the sidewalk, her mosquito bites scabbed into little cones of blood from so much scratching. Her t-shirt went down to her thighs, if you could call them thighs. The traveler begged her pardon and went inside. Titi hid her laughter. Lina, three years older, was more melancholy. She didn’t show her legs or anything else, and she was starting to have something else to show. She was scratching her name out with a stone, only a blue beaded bracelet ruptured her all-black attire. The traveler left with a coke. If families came in, so much the better, the store would creak like an old woman. Dona Celestina was doing the accounting with a pencil, in the slow hand of a grade school girl. The traveler hurried to get back to his travels. And inside the store the old men were playing dominoes without so much as speaking to each other.

Titi said early one March: it’s hot, we could go swimming, and smiled at Lina. Because by forcing their way down a path through the underbrush, they could get to where the river appeared, running like the road, its shores stretching into the distance, up to the sawmills, the abandoned factory, and dismal fish-fry-with-lemon on a plastic plate for anyone who couldn’t afford a more scenic vacation. But the girls hadn’t seen any of this. Lina didn’t think the river was so great anymore. Her feet stuck to the bottom, toes scraping the rough and sinking into the sand, and what kinds of places and people that water had been through was anybody’s guess. She didn’t respond. Titi rolled her gum into a ball, stuck her tongue through the middle. Some river, Lina went on thinking. It was even worse because now the boys went there to smoke, hidden behind the fig tree and laughing at any stupid thing, their feet sticking into the water, talking loud, laughing about whatever.

*

Titi got a running start into the river, beating the water with her open palms. Droplets went flying in scoops, a sound that drowned out the cars on the highway. She always seemed to be having fun, in spite of the endless repetition, and this made Lina feel pangs of rage that she smothered to keep from feeling wicked. Then she’d soothe herself and presto, she was breathing normally again. But who knew what would happen in two or three years if Titi kept up this eager pleasure for every little thing.

Lina started into the water slowly, feeling the chill, adjusting her bikini, looking at the shore, the forest. There wasn’t a single bicycle leaned against the trunk of the fig tree, and in the tree’s shade, nobody sprawled out, face up. There were only birds and fish nearby, the weariness of nothing happening at all. Stupid town. A square, a church, no stoplights, repeated conversations. Anyone who made it out became a hero, end of story. On Sunday, families went out walking from one end of the street to the other, very slowly, so they wouldn’t get to the end of town too quickly. They walked through the church. They walked along the square. When a hero came back from afar, the family went out to parade him around. And the others, on the corners, the few corners, cupped hands to their ears so they could go and tell what they’d heard him say.

Lina waded halfway into the river. As she submerged, she heard Titi start to say something, then the water muffled the rest. She opened her eyes underwater. Her sister’s legs were kicking in sync, like a wind-up toy in a tub. Lina took advantage of the silence for as long as she could. It was sort of nice. It gave her a moment to imagine or remember João. João was one of the boys, or the only one. The rest were just the boys who followed him around. They all laughed the same way (at João’s jokes). They all sat the same way (around João). They all played João’s video games. From the window some nights came the blue glow of the living room, the smell of popcorn, the sound of fingers tapping buttons, and the shouts of destroyed zombies, pow pow pow, but João was really good and they beat the game so quickly they were already asking for another one, because in João’s home there weren’t any special days for presents, no need to show good behavior. So it was this João that Lina wanted to imagine perched on a branch of the fig tree, with a cigarette behind his ear, smiling and offering—want one, Lina? Nothing happened.

She came up from the water. Just then the little one was flailing toward her with her big eyes sparkling from some happy fear, anxious to tell her something. You hear that? Yeah, uh, it’s a noise, what is it. Spit it out. Titi was breathing heavily. And even though there was virtually no one in sight, Titi cupped a hand around her mouth, and spoke from behind it.

*

They raced to gather their clothes and ended up with things on backwards. But you saw what? How big? How many? Lina was carrying her slip-ons in her hand because she was in too much of a hurry to put on her socks. They went quickly, their shirts dampened in spots, Titi out ahead pushing through stinging foliage with her legs, Lina with her jeans dragging in the grass. João must have been killing zombies when, near the river, the city shook with an uncovered secret. Lina’s foot slipped in the mud and they kept running. They got up close, huddled in the bushes. There were three bulldozers pushing everything under. They uprooted the trees, which fell one against the other. They backed up and then started forward again. Then came the sound of branches snapping and the exaggerated rustling of leaves, as in a big squall that sends children huddling beneath the covers on their beds. And from the split trunks, the sweet smell of sap filled the March air.

An empty space had already been opened in the middle of the mountain of green. It was where a man was giving orders and indicating directions to the bulldozers, and his fat, soft belly appeared every time he raised his arm. Six out of every seven days, this is what he had to do, demolish. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead and looked around. The girls crouched further down, and pulled each other into a thicker patch of underbrush. The man cleared his throat, the sound of a savage animal preparing to attack.

He spat on the ground. The earth had never seemed as red as it did now. The man shouted, pointed, spat. A bulldozer was wrestling with a huge tree that wouldn’t budge. The machine got louder and went full force. It cracked the trunk, and went at it again. A pleasant smell. From the sap. The earth stirred up. Again. They heard something give way, failing, a rip, a dry sound, like a fire being lit, like a princess carried off by her hair.

* *

Read this in Portuguese

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Image: Lucía Vassallo

Nuno Ramos translated by Adam Morris

Geology Lesson

There’s a layer of dust covering things, protecting them from us. Dark sooty powder, fragments of salt and seaweed, tons of grainy matter that goes crossing the ocean and transforms itself into transparent fibers deposited little by little to preserve that which remained underneath. Almost nothing has been thought about this phenomenon. It’s probably all an enormous camouflage operation, of equalizing a remote signal that we’d easily perceive in the absence of this mountain of tiny accretions. Something inside of things is being disguised, hidden at whatever price, and even this extract of stone, earth, and dry lava where we walked, built our cabins and birthed our children seems to be there to wrap something that tends toward the center. The endless aggregation of Gravity, of mass falling upon mass, matter embracing matter ... Read More »]]>

Nuno Ramos
translated by Adam Morris

Geology Lesson

There’s a layer of dust covering things, protecting them from us. Dark sooty powder, fragments of salt and seaweed, tons of grainy matter that goes crossing the ocean and transforms itself into transparent fibers deposited little by little to preserve that which remained underneath. Almost nothing has been thought about this phenomenon. It’s probably all an enormous camouflage operation, of equalizing a remote signal that we’d easily perceive in the absence of this mountain of tiny accretions. Something inside of things is being disguised, hidden at whatever price, and even this extract of stone, earth, and dry lava where we walked, built our cabins and birthed our children seems to be there to wrap something that tends toward the center. The endless aggregation of Gravity, of mass falling upon mass, matter embracing matter with constantly renewed appetite, comprises the most evident expression of this principle. It’s as though a primordial being, in the midst of an ancient howl, perceived a slit in its body or pus in its eyes, a plumage of strange color in its fur or even a malformation in one of its limbs. Before descending into despair, ashamed by what it saw, it still managed to cover itself with what lay nearby, snatching up everything that had escaped it, and so the material with which it was now dressed had until then formed part of its perfect body — the dust and the earth, the foliage and the plumage, the explosive fire of the stars and the frozen darkness. A giant moving spiral, concentric, curling like a fetus, into which this divinity retracts itself, incapable of self-understanding, of wholly including itself, showing to time and space that until then they were inside it, they were it, its basic behavior—collapse, jolt, suspension; sand, matter, enigma. It’s hard to understand how this attitude of reclusion and shame has irradiated throughout things. Matter, in fact, is perhaps nothing more than the first expression of this escape. Inverse to the explosive affirmation deriving from a complete nothingness, all Physics would have for its starting point the negation and occlusion of some perceived thing, the disguise of a defect, a protective spiral around an identity full of aversion. The expansion of the universe, according to this point of view, should proceed only until the coverup is complete, thereafter becoming unnecessary. But if the flux of dust and lava in our planet continues, if the light diverges from its spectrum toward red, indicating the progressive distancing of stars already so distant, it’s because the ashamed body still couldn’t cover itself completely. In fact, the movement by which the heated gases turn, the collisions of polar masses with the lighter and warner tropic air, the condensation of storms over the ocean, all the salt thrown into the atmosphere, the struggle of membranes and gills, the very suffering of human aspirations, dragons spreading their sequins and scales, shorn lives, chunks of shipwrecked wood, eyes veiled by cataracts, basins where the sargasso dwells, everything that turned grey and later flourished in the spring, everything that the autumn equalized with silver and monotony, the soft pink of sunset, air that fills the chest with joy, seem in fact to be part of a wisdom, furtive gestures that we don’t comprehend, resulting from an enormous and defective body that uselessly tries to conceal itself, to flee beneath appearances. The motive of its failure, probably, is due to the fact that the matter with which it covers itself is itself a part of it, sharing in its deception—it also wants to hide itself, reproducing infinitesimally the movement that ought be restricted to the core of its origin. Through mimicry and resemblance it ends up playing the role that was assigned it during the long litany of existence, turning its face inward, neutralizing its factions, parading slowly. Perhaps it’s a curious contradiction that the thing which makes such at attempt to hide itself should require witnesses like us, that contemplate, admire, and moreover, find it beautiful. Such is all the progressive extinguishing, the periodic nebulization from which it could sprout it riotous flowers, the monotony of a language that ought to be flesh, a mathematics which ought to be of trunks and of marble, yes, the whole lagoon of possibilities that the fragile ambition of our organs never truly rises to desire, gains its imprimatur, its documentation in terms of need—we embrace that which flees from us, we invert its very aversion and refusal, we judge this ashamed and defective nature to be perfect, we adhere, in the end, forlorn and forever to that which seems beautiful, because we have gotten used to obeying love.

* *

Ash

If the fire comes from the forest, we’ll have our ditch. If it comes from inside one of the houses, there’s earth all around them to prevent it from spreading. It if blooms in the big hut, then here’s to its destruction. Perhaps it will be a bolt that strikes us. We know that the fire will come because we all have the same dream. A blue flame and light smoke. The sweet smell of burned flesh. The flight of the survivors among coals, all the way to the dry lagoon. Our calcified carcass beside that of two lions. Later the new trees growing, the new houses, the big hut. Later the same dream and dissipation, all over again.

* *

Wasp

They told me that it was the neighbor lady who said it, that they came after me shrouded in hoods. I was submerged. They ransacked the whole room in search of the ticket. The whole room and the ticket. The sofa sinks. The walls are limp. I would have rather they found me later. I’d have rather it all stopped and they let loose the wasp on me. She’s imprisoned in the sugar pot now, gorging herself. They told me, it was the neighbor lady who said it, that this is exactly what they were going to do.

* *

Moonband

The last strong rain tore up the earth above them. They went about in bands. They followed the moon. It’s been proven they don’t transmit our diseases, but we delight in the final howl. We make soap. We make boneflour, hot fur and blood. Afterwards I wash myself with it. This animal thing. Man’s best friend flees from man. It’s there drying on the asphalt with a limp paw, moribund.

* *

I Take Care Of Them

Since the arrival of the highway I take care of them. I only need a spade, a bit of lime, a bucket, and a bicycle. I don’t even need to pedal much. I hang the bucket with the bottom full of lime from the handlebar. Every morning there’s another dog. At least one. I size him up. Sometimes a few pieces of asphalt come along with it, crags of tar hardened in fur. I try to remember what each was like. I take note of the size, the pattern of spots, the place where the car struck him and the date. If anyone comes to ask me I’m ready. Later I cover them with dirt from my yard. I need to exhume the oldest ones to make room for the newest. I’d like to know their names. When I meet the owner, I ask.

* *

Her Only Chance

I doubt it will work. The hatch will close first. They’ll shoot first. I doubt she speaks German. I doubt they’ll ask me anything. Maybe she’ll pull her documents from her purse before they ask her name. I doubt she knows. They’ll shoot first. Before she can move, murmur. I doubt she’ll know how to say naturally why she’s here. Maybe they’ll want to know. It’s their right. I think for me there’s no risk. I speak German well. But I doubt my German will come out. I also doubt they’ll ask me. They’ll want to know about her, specifically. They’ll ask like this: how can you have such alabaster skin if you come from such a faraway country? How can you walk around there, with your light skin under an overcoat? Don’t you see that everyone’s wanting?  And so then one turns to me, but I doubt anyone would do that. One turns to me and asks, in his sly German: where’d you find her? Is she your bitch? He makes a big deal of being rude. Where do you keep her? You guys fuck? You fuck her ass? And so on, but I doubt anyone would speak to me like that. Maybe she’ll be able to run fast, but I doubt she’d do that. She’ll get a cramp, but it would be her only chance. She’ll stand there looking down the barrel of the gun, but it would be her only chance. That hatch is low, I think she’d be able to jump it, but I doubt she’d do it.

* *

Against the Light

Here the earth endures our weight and provides us with crabs. We want to return to the earth, to inside the earth, but above us the sky remains, escaping the tips of the dry trees. Here it is only the wind that stays, balancing the ignoble ball of light, by which we are disgusted. Here we are disgusted by the light.

* *

It Won’t Work

Return the wrinkled skin. Return the toothless mouth. Return the mutilated mixture, inheritance that won’t work. Return to the moon, and take. Spread out your ashes. Now that the light doesn’t watch over this cortege—carnival, silence—close your own eyes. Close them for yourself.

* *

Image: Nuno Ramos, “Untitled” (2005). O pão do corvo was published by Editora 34.

Adam Morris

Slakers shambled along the coasts, the brine in the breeze searing nostrils, lashing cheekbones and the edges of eyelids, whittling parts of faces to skin-wrapped bone. Aside from slits for vision their bodies went draped in canvas and denim, thick twill: fabrics too sturdy for perspiration to mix with the sting in the air. They pushed carts of rags and tarps and funnels and metal drums of dun-colored water, sloshing lukewarm but still able to quench and sometimes, also, to cleanse. Their ministry was as secular as the suffering it attended: pouring slim, dusky streams into withered gullets gone feathery and tight in the dusty, gagging air.

They were journeymen, they were shamans, they were witches: that’s what was said. New Bedouins of the Atlantic Coast. The Slakers were driven from dry places like a curse. ... Read More »]]>

Adam Morris

Slakers shambled along the coasts, the brine in the breeze searing nostrils, lashing cheekbones and the edges of eyelids, whittling parts of faces to skin-wrapped bone. Aside from slits for vision their bodies went draped in canvas and denim, thick twill: fabrics too sturdy for perspiration to mix with the sting in the air. They pushed carts of rags and tarps and funnels and metal drums of dun-colored water, sloshing lukewarm but still able to quench and sometimes, also, to cleanse. Their ministry was as secular as the suffering it attended: pouring slim, dusky streams into withered gullets gone feathery and tight in the dusty, gagging air.

They were journeymen, they were shamans, they were witches: that’s what was said. New Bedouins of the Atlantic Coast. The Slakers were driven from dry places like a curse. In the remaining inhabitable wetlands they knew they were unwelcome, regarded with scorn and watched closely as known thieves. It was seldom trusted that all they desired was to hover under low pressures, to collect the dew, the drizzle, the infrequent rain. But they carried no divining rods. They were not snake-dancers or tremblers. Some had been evangelicals, some still were: it’s true. Others had been and now weren’t, they and their God having mutually forsaken salvation. Still others were idealists: student-age in less-dire times. In the twentieth, twenty-first, some would have been armlocked freedom-marching rebels or dewy-eyed dreadlocked lovers calling for an end to dams or nukes or war. But Slakers of both sexes kept their napes close-cropped, aside from the occasional penitent tonsure; hair would only get matted in dirt and oil, though stubble, for lack of moisture, abounded. Razors had long fallen from favor. Some Slakers had studied the hippies and some knew of the Shakers, whence the name: it was said the first Slakers followed a young preacher who styled herself Mother Help. Shunning procreation, converts and recruits became adept at abstention and homosexuality.

Under sunsets scored in pink and gold and even green they spread their tarps along the roads outside the barricades that mark the makeshift cities surrounding the desalination plants, heaps of hovels that swarm with Settlers, the name the Slakers use for those still fettered to the devices and solutions of the so-called civilized, the stationary. And in the morning, before the scorching sun can crest the shining line of the horizon, turning to slice the sea, a slow stream of three or four Settlers will abandon the plant, shuffling and gasping past the barriers to where the Slakers gather up their tarps.

**

Image by Ser Jiménez. Curated by Marisa Espínola for Espacio en Blanco. (More)